Looking Ahead: Guild Wars 2 in 2013

[draykorinee]

I think a lot of Anet's proclamations w/r/t gameplay have to be taken with a large dose of salt. As it is very unlikely dungeon rewards, ascended armor and so forth will change the operation of playing Guild Wars 2. We will probably always have the same relatively shallow Action MMO designed for casual play regardless.

This is my thoughts, Ill dabble in the game again when the LFG comes out, for now its back to steam, hitting 80 was a huge amount of fun, the spell after has been pretty disheartening.

[Valeron]

hitting 80 was a huge amount of fun, the spell after has been pretty disheartening.

Why is that? There is no difference to the game once you hit level 80. Does the goal of level 80 the defining factor in this regard?

[Kelimbror]

Why is that? There is no difference to the game once you hit level 80. Does the goal of level 80 the defining factor in this regard?

Yes, but not for the reason youre thinking.

Hitting 80 is an easily definable and approachable goal. It literally is 90% of your time when you first play the game. Once you have attained that particular achievement, 90% of the game's motivation is removed for a lot of people. Now it's fine if there are enough additional activities to replace it, but there kinda aren't.

It would be one thing if SAB was still in, if all the one time events were still in, if all of these upcoming ideas were in, and if it was easier to form groups...but currently it's not. Now that's not faulting the game, as it has a very particular design and it accomplishes it for the most part. You are supposed to just naturally keep doing the same activities that you did while leveling.

Unfortunately your rewards from that play are greatly diminished, as is your choice of where to do those activities in the first place.

[draykorinee]

Why is that? There is no difference to the game once you hit level 80. Does the goal of level 80 the defining factor in this regard?

My mindset mainly, I had a target, which was hitting 80 I enjoyed the experience moving zone to zone, mixing everything up, then it boiled down to chasing champions and wvw. I thought I had escaped the 'end game' view of mmo's but I hadn't, there still felt a lack of something once I started working on my gear. The social element was lacking too, the only really important element for me, and I still after all this time believe GW2 is the most anonymous mmo I have playhed.

Edit: Kitty put it well before I hit send..

[Lane]

You are supposed to just naturally keep doing the same activities that you did while leveling.

Unfortunately your rewards from that play are greatly diminished, as is your choice of where to do those activities in the first place.

Yeah, map completion is probably the least rewarding activity you can do in the game, unfortunately. You're scaled down, but not much is scaled up to whatever level you are. The completion rewards are always whatever level zone you're in, material drops are always whatever level the enemies are, gear drops still have a relatively high rate of being enemy level instead of yours, etc. (Not that the latter currently matters that much since level 80 blues and greens for the most part are only worth their vendor value anyway.)

I also semi-recently noticed that as a level 80 I'm getting less than half the karma (not sure about exp since I quit paying attention after 80) I used to get for completing events in Queensdale. It's not like karma (or exp for that matter) is a particularly valuable resource to be stingy on in the first place, especially since karma vendors also don't scale and there's not much from the ones in Orr worth buying.

The coin you receive for completing hearts has always been abysmal and that's only amplified by being level 80 doing lower level zones and getting less than 1s for your trouble.

I've always complained about difficulty making gold in GW2 and it's largely due to the fact that there's very little to be made playing through the outside world of the game. Even camping events you get hit with DR very quickly. I've read some people say they get lucky with JP chests, but even those are usually not worth it and if it weren't for achievements I would not consider most JPs worth doing at all.

[Karizee]

These achievement chests are getting mighty sexy! ^.^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15rSb...ature=youtu.be

15 gold
400 gems
10 laurels
Another Zenith weapon skin
Total Makeover kit
Experience Scroll (instantly level a new toon to 20)
Bunches of boosters, revive orbs, merchant and bank summons
3 Pvp chests full of pvp skins

They are quite simply the most generous gaming company I've ever seen. No wonder they have such a loyal fanbase

[zito]

Experience Scroll (instantly level a new toon to 20)

Oh cool, that saves me an hour XD

[Svifnymr]

Oh cool, that saves me an hour XD

I had made a charr elementalist, went through to 30 for the story and achievement, then deleted to make an asura elementalist because Asura are just cooler, but then didn't like the fire breathing animation and stuff, so tried a sylvari, but doesn't really complement the infernal claws. So I remade the Charr elementalist (with slightly different appearance to counter some of the little stuff I disliked on the first)...

But I didn't really feel like unlocking all the skills at that time, so was just going to wait, then I got the scroll, so BOOM, level 20!

Very good timing for me, for the scroll.

[Meledelion]

All my toons are 80 so I hop they'll introduce a new class "soon".

[Frozenbeef]

-LFG tool

would be great, lvl 80 and haven't been in any dungeon yet which has made the story seems a little disjointed ...one moment i was helping zojja then suddenly I'm in the vigil/ pact with no word from her other than a few random messages as the destinys edge story apparently happens in dungeons 0o

[draykorinee]

These achievement chests are getting mighty sexy! ^.^

They are quite simply the most generous gaming company I've ever seen. No wonder they have such a loyal fanbase

Vomit inducing. They are quite simply enticing people to play as much as possible to try and get more money via the shop.

- - - Updated - - -

would be great, lvl 80 and haven't been in any dungeon yet which has made the story seems a little disjointed ...one moment i was helping zojja then suddenly I'm in the vigil/ pact with no word from her other than a few random messages as the destinys edge story apparently happens in dungeons 0o

Yup, ill be back then.

[Deleted]

http://www.gw2lfg.com/

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/ (not perfect but mostly accurate)

I know it's not in-game but still you can easly find group for story modes.

[Kelimbror]

Vomit inducing. They are quite simply enticing people to play as much as possible to try and get more money via the shop.

While I agree with your initial statement, there are other ways they could go about accomplishing that effectively that would not be positive. At least they have figured out a positive way to do most of this. As someone who pretty much reviles cash shop development affecting a game's design, GW2 bothers me none at all.

[Deleted]

Ah, MF gone. I can't express how much I hated that stat.

[Deadite]

Vomit inducing. They are quite simply enticing people to play as much as possible to try and get more money via the shop.

Yeah giving people free gems will get people to buy gems. Make me sick as well that they reward loyalty. DAMN THEM!!

As some on sitting on just over 4k achievement points i have no compulsion to play more to get to the next chest. I say good luck to the people who are still on the free loot gravy train. People that put more time into the game are getting more out of it. Seems pretty reasonable to me. ArenaNet are being extremely generous with these chests. I am actually quite looking forward to see what treasures the 10k chest holds.

[Lane]

As some on sitting on just over 4k achievement points i have no compulsion to play more to get to the next chest.

Well, the 5k chest is worth getting. The Total Makeover Kit and Experience Scroll were nice surprises.

I could really do without the abundance of PvP stuff though. I haven't found any use for the tokens other than cheaper ascended gear, which also takes laurels. The gear is completely useless to me and I can't even salvage it without PvPing for enough glory to buy a specialized PvP salvage kit, which is ridiculous. I hate to just destroy the stuff, but I really don't know what else to do with it.

[Deadite]

I haven't found any use for the tokens other than cheaper ascended gear, which also takes laurels.

I have nearly enough tokens to buy a complete set of Soldier or Invader exotic gear as they call it on the vendor for either my warrior or mesmer and still have enough to buy a full set of Rabid gear for my Necro when i get to 80. Pretty sweet really. Will let me save karma if i ever start another character.

[Lane]

I have nearly enough tokens to buy a complete set of Soldier or Invader exotic gear as they call it on the vendor for either my warrior or mesmer and still have enough to buy a full set of Rabid gear for my Necro when i get to 80. Pretty sweet really. Will let me save karma if i ever start another character.

Most of my characters are in Berserker. The one character I have in Rabid I purchased everything with karma and still have almost 300 jugs of karma in my bank (not to mention roughly ~200k per character -- why karma is not account bound I will never know). I don't foresee myself ever hurting enough for karma that I need to conserve it by using PvP tokens unless they *gasp* actually add something worth buying with karma.

[draykorinee]

Yeah giving people free gems will get people to buy gems. Make me sick as well that they reward loyalty. DAMN THEM!!

Giving people free gems will keep them playing a game that relies on people playing the game to make money its naive to look at it as just free loot and not a smart business move. Whilst I applaud arena net for giving said freebies away, they are hardly sending you a stuffed toy in the post, its a small virtual token of appreciation that costs them little to no effort, I got a whole free game from studio 4a, was it because they love me..not at all it was to entice me to buy their most recent game, smart business moves abound. I'm still feeling a bit queasy from Karizees initial statement.

[Deadite]

Giving people free gems will keep them playing a game that relies on people playing the game to make money its naive to look at it as just free loot and not a smart business move. Whilst I applaud arena net for giving said freebies away, they are hardly sending you a stuffed toy in the post, its a small virtual token of appreciation that costs them little to no effort.

Yeah but they didn't have to give you anything. I am pretty sure no one was expecting such generosity. You are one of the only people going out of their way to find the cloud in this silver lining i have seen. Guess we will have to agree to disagree. Getting people to keep playing their game and therefore buy stuff really does go without saying surely? It is their business model.