Guild Wars 2

Here it is from Dulfy. Thank you Dulfy!

Really Anet this should be done by you guys. But I know you can be busy. I also read in another post someone saying that this should be done every 3 – 4 months I totally agree and this would go a long way to calming down the community in times of stress.

One thing that wasn’t discussed was once again a Trait Saving System.

Gaile. I’m not going ask you for an answer but perhaps you could go ask someone for us, if someone could provide us with new information about this highly requested feature. This request has been going on since launch. There was a poll by Anet what we wanted the most and Trait Saving was the most requested feature. Ive said this in other posts, it doesn’t need to have armor and weapons and trinkets to start with. Just the traits. Make it a creation that evolves over time.

Anyway on to the rest of the information via Dulfy.

Schedule

Next big quarterly update in April to reduce grind and improve rewards. After that we will do live beta tests of improvements to WvW
Raid Wing 3 will be launched in May or June and then LW3 and the next Quarterly update after.
120 devs working on live game, 70 devs on expansion 2, 30 devs on core teams that support both. With in the live release/expansion groups we have the PvP team, the WvW team, the Fractals team, the Raids team, the Living World team, the Legendaries team, and a couple others
We will ship things when they are done and polished rather than on a hard schedule.
There are a couple things we’re focusing on going forward. First of all, sustainability. We don’t want to shift back and forth, so we need to make sure Expac2 doesn’t need us to pull down Live devs and vice-versa. Second, quality. When we’re shipping every two weeks, we just have to ship. But going forward it’s much more important for us to be proud of everything we ship, and for you to be proud of everything we ship, than to hit a specific cadence.
We can’t get back to the 2-week cadence, not only because we’re also working on an expansion pack at the same time, but also because shipping every two weeks forces us to sacrifice quality. However we do love to sprinkle little bits of stuff in there between releases.
The Story Journal was created as a way to provide story content to players in a way that they could control the pace at which they choose to play. We’re definitely looking to continue with that.
New Eite specializations are part of expansion packs.

Hot Maps

Current Hot Maps seems to push players to just do group event content rather than free-form exploration. That is not our intention. When we make maps we try to make them great both group events and exploration.
It is not our intention to kick players off a map with progression to one with no progression and we are working on ways to fix it.
Players should not have to take part in multiple hour long zergs. There’s a lot of content in HoT and we’re trying to make it rewarding to play in a variety of play styles.
With HoT we leaned more heavily on the organized content unfortunately at the cost of more casual experience. This is something that we plan on making adjustments to and are taking into account as we develop maps in the future.
Availability of Adventures is absolutely something we are addressing for the April release!
HoT daily achievements were overlooked during development. Expect to find these and some of their friends in an upcoming release.

Items

Studio has regularly conversations about differences between male and female armors. Things like skimpy male armors are being discussed.
We are working on bringing the Apostle and Tribal armor Old PvP skins back into the game.
There are some improvements on obtaining the new HoT gear in the April update but it won’t resolve the issue of having some builds difficult to gear than others until Living World Season 3.
Armor sets are one of the most time consuming things we make for GW2. Each set has an incredible amount of detail and customization, and then has to be fit to very disparate rigs. That’s a big part of why we did the number we did for HoT.That being said, there are plans for more reward armor sets in the future
It take about ten times the dev effort to make an armor set as to make an outfit.
We believe that armor sets make great rewards and the best place for them is earned, in-game rewards.We designed the rewards for raids around the acquisition of Legendary Armor and have no alternate plans for getting them.
We are working towards completing the entire set of 16 HoT legendary weapons (sorry underwater). Of the 13 left, they are all in various stages of concept, modeling and design, but the two that are furthest along in development are the Short Bow and the Mace. We will be releasing them as they are ready with each of the packaged releases.
Legendary armor are still being released as part of raid rewards, that has not changed.
We have delinked Fractal backpieces from the leaderboards and can release it sooner. It took sometime to undo the link to Fractal leaderboards and now we are testing it to make sure everything works correctly.

Story/Living World S3

Living World should come back around the time of the July quarterly update.
Living World Season 3 will require players to have purchased HoT
The story will definitely pick up in Season 3 where we left off in HoT. You will certainly hear more about Rata Novus, the egg, etc and we always look for ways to put in bonus and optional story for the folks who really want it
As we continue, we will absolutely have epic events like the ones in LS1 as some of our broad story goals
Team loves weaving long established lore into our new story, and we’re excited about a lot of ways that we will be doing that in upcoming releases. Magic in Tyria is broader than dragons.
We have a long term plan for the story and not just brainstorming things along the way. That being said, there are many ways for us to get to the big milestones along the way, and with every new release/season/xpac, we always do a lot of brainstorming on the best ways to get us there
Expect to see permanent changes in the world, that can happen in new maps or old maps
We also love telling stories in open world. We’re definitely looking at all the ways we can tell our story in upcoming Living World releases.

Dungeons/Fractals

We’re continuing to focus on Fractals as our primary focus for 5-man content. However, given the reaction, we are taking a second look at the current dungeon rewards.
We didn’t need to nerf dungeons like that. But we also don’t have a dungeons team to keep dungeons updates. So that’s the dilemma. We have no current plan to staff a dungeons team; no free developers to staff one with.
No new dungeons. Just Raids and Fractals for the foreseeable future.
Development on Fractal Leaderboards has been suspended. The more we worked on Fractal Leaderboards the more we realized it just wouldn’t work with Fractals as they are right now.
We did come up with something else entirely that we really do like as an alternative, but that would take a lot of development work and we just have too many problems with Fractals in their current state before we can devote those kind of resources to a project like that.
We’re working on some new Fractals right now and also looking into making improvements to Fractals as a game mode. We can’t commit to a specific date, but we would really like to get some of these changes in for the next quarterly update, New fractals are still in early prototype state and won’t be ready for Q2.
We’re looking into making certain existing encounters into fractal content, and have found one that seems promising. Claw Island would be fun. Maybe at some point? Mechanically though, if we convert existing content into Fractals going forward they will definitely need a mechanical tune-up. What works well for a Living World instance doesn’t necessarily make a good Fractal.
New Fractals would replace existing levels.We don’t really want to add more levels past 100, because that opens up a whole new can of worms. For much, much later on, at some point I think we will need to simply change how Fractal Scales work. Maybe instead of having scales at all, you would just play Core Molten Duo or Casual Jade Maw or something like that, instead of Scale 40 and Scale 20.
To make high level fractals more challenging, we’re borrowing a page from Raids here with things like phase transitions and different attacks, which will then become more challenging at higher scales (e.g. larger AoEs, shorter breakbar windows, more punishing attacks when you fail to dodge, etc.) We are looking at both doing this for new Fractals and reworking old Fractals to incorporate these things as well. It will take us some time to get to all the old Fractals though.
Instabilities are one of the things we’re working on. We’re absolutely working on new Instabilities. We agree than many of the ones live right now are more frustrating than anything else. We really want Instabilities to be something that mixes up gameplay at higher scales and become something players need to interact or react to, and not just something which passively makes the Fractal harder.
As we develop new, better Instabilities we do plan on phasing out the old ones. We’ll likely end up with a mix of new and old Instabilities for a period though, at least until we develop enough new ones.
We are currently reworking Fractal instabilities, though we’re still in the very early stages of development on those.
We want to incentivize players to play all of our Fractals, not just the shortest/easiest ones. We have several ideas on how to tackle this, starting with changing how the Daily Achievements work
Random fractals like before were not accessible to everyone as you needed 1-2 hrs to sink into fractals. We want to make Fractals more accessible to new players and make sure it’s something that is easy to just pick up and play.
There are plans to increased Ascended drop rate.
We do want to rework how Agony and Agony Resistance works, but those are plans for far in the future, as we have other more pressing issues we need to work on first.
We really want to add more incentives to play a wider variety of different Fractals, though we do know there are some people who do enjoy it so we don’t want to nerf Swamp/Duo directly.
The primary goal for HoT fractal changes was to make them more accessible to new players. This was partially successful, but I think it came at too high a cost to players who loved Fractals as they were. In the future we want to make sure we can have Fractals that appeal to both crowds.
Ad Infinitum was held back because we were trying to work it into Fractal Leaderboards. The problem is Fractal Leaderboards, as a feature, ended up evolving into something else entirely that was taking way more development time than originally intended.

Raids

Raid teams are smaller than teams for Living World releases. For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months.
Raids had always planned for 3 wings to encompass the first raid. So we had some stuff and ideas in progress before we ever shipped the first release. While it seems like it’s the priority over smaller group content, that is definitely not the case. We just got a head start is all.
Raid in MMOs are high-end content designed for the more hardcore player. However, from an analytics standpoint, the participation is higher than other games we’ve seen. This is likely due to the nature of our progression system in GW2.
We have multiple teams working on different types of content for Guild Wars 2 and raid content is just one of them. Expect to find a variety of content types of varying difficulty in future releases of Living World and Expansions.
Living World Season 3 should open some avenues for non-raiders to gear up with ascended equipment. This should also allow non-raiders to get the gear/stat combinations that are currently only available in the raids, like jewelry with the new HoT combinations.
One of the things you’ll see in Salvation Pass are some new achievements that force you to play the encounter differently. It’s one of the ways we are slowly exploring making encounters with opt in extra difficulty.
There will be variances between the raid releases regarding the number of encounters / bosses depending on complexity of development and design. Most raids will try to be of a consistent size.
There are no plans for a final boss that is only accessible after you cleared all 3 wings.
You will need one Gift of Craftsmanship to upgrade each piece of the final set of precursor armor to legendary. I’m still working on balancing the number of legendary insights you will need, though if you raid regularly and successfully, you should have enough to complete your armor without having to go back and grind more insights.We’re looking at making the provisioners easier to access to make it less of a hassle.
No plans for 5 man version of the raid or easier mode of the raid. We are working on solutions for finding raid groups such as adding raids to the LFG tool.
We’ve slowly started talks about what the raid after Forsaken Thicket is and where it will take place, but that’s the extent.

WvW

Stephen is the studio technical director of ArenaNet. He’ll be the new director for WvW and clear the log jam.
At a high level we plan to address core WvW issues such as population imbalance, scoring issues, and rewards. Of those, the first updates you’ll see will be related to population balance and rewards. As always, as we get closer to releasing an update we’ll be publishing a blog post including more details.
We are set to live beta-test changes starting after we publish the April update .In a Live Beta, the beta feature is available on the live game servers, but we are able to quickly disable the feature in the event that it’s negatively impacting gameplay, or any other serious issues arise. Depending on the feature the length of a live beta can be highly variable, it may be a few hours, a weekend, or much longer. It’s an opportunity for us to gather feedback on the feature, from the entire playerbase, and update the feature before shipping it ‘for real’. The live beta will be available to everyone.
Right now our priorities are population imbalance and rewards. But they don’t have to be. I’ll contact WvW opinion leaders and put them in front of the team to make sure we’re working on the right things.
We overscoped a big “WvW 2.0? awesome update that was taking forever … so now we will ship lots of small incremental improvements that get us to where we want to be, and so y’all know we are actually working on it! Some of the things done over the last year and a half are reusable, and we’ll get those to a ship-able state.
The WvW team’s current top priority is fixing population imbalance. It’s a really hard technical problem. It has taken us a long time to ship a solution, so it’s been a long time since we’ve shipped significant updates, and of course that hurts. Currently, we’re clearing the log-jam by making sure we can roll-out incremental updates to the Live servers. It will be nice to be back in a mode of shipping frequently.
Once we’ve released our blog, announcing the first part of the big WvW update, we’ll be able to be a lot more open when answering questions about our solutions to these big issues and how exactly the updated systems will work.
We are currently working on layout improvements to the Desert Borderlands map. Specifically, we are looking at changes that simplify navigation, reduce line of sight blockers, reduce/eliminate critical choke points (Fire Keep Lord Room), reduce lethal fall locations, etc.
We still intend to eventually bring back the Alpine Borderlands map, but it’s not as simple as just toggling it back on. We don’t have the tech for rotating between the two borderlands built yet, and the map itself required a significant amount of content updates to support all of the features that were added to WvW as part of the HoT update.
When we made the new borderlands we planned to be able to switch between it and the previous map, perhaps by round, or perhaps by ‘season’. But the tech to support that on-the-fly swap never worked; we kept thinking it shouldn’t be that hard, because we can redirect people to/from PVE and PVP maps with simple configuration changes. (One big problem is the overworld map can’t dynamically update). We didn’t mean to get into a place where there was only the new map but unfortunately we did.
We moved resets to Saturday because sometimes we do a build on Fridays and just about the time we wanted to activate the build was during the reset time. So we thought it would be better if there was no conflict in the timing of those things. Since people love Friday, but we might do a build on Friday, we need to talk about exactly what time of day would be good for the community, and then adjust based on that.

sPvP

Halls and Tombs were a huge part of GW1. While we loved those modes in GW1 we wanted to try something different for GW2.Guild Wars 2 PvP takes a new and different approach to PvP and overall is much more successful for it.
The old iteration of the leaderboard will not be returning, but we do have the Legendary Division Leaderboard which highlights our top Ranked Arena players as well as the Guild Challenger League which highlights our top guild teams.
We are definitely aware that there are some frustrating match-ups being made during this Season’s initial kick off period and we are actively working to improve this for Season 3, particularly during the start of the season.
No plans for a betting system for PvP esports games.
We believe that having distinct meta periods is healthy for the state of PvP, but keeping the meta constantly in flux is frustrating for most players, because things that were effective one day were ineffective the next week.
We use MMR for minor matchmaking considerations (like finding similarly skilled teammates), but it doesn’t really work as a determiner of which division you technically belong in for our specific league system. There is a lot of things involved in the League progress system, but sufficed to say, we’ve explored the idea of using MMR as the sole means of determining player positions and we identified enough pitfalls that we decided to opt for a different system instead.Right now, for the purposes of matchmaking, MMR is currently used when searching for players to be on your team (unless you’re in a pre-made group, of course). We do not plan on making any changes to matchmaking until after Season 2 has ended.
We are looking at ways to get higher tier players to where they need to be faster. In S2 we added win streaks which our data has shown has helped a lot to achieve this. Again, no solid plans yet but this is something that the team is keeping a close eye on.
It is definitely our intent to build new maps for PvP for both Conquest and Stronghold. Before we dig into that, we are taking a pass on making some improvements to our existing maps. We’ve had some feedback from some of our top players on how some existing maps could be adjusted to be more competitive. Expect to see some adjustments along those lines first.
No plans for 1v1 or 2v2 PvP gamemodes at the moment or plans for match sizes larger than 5v5 in PvP.
We’re aware that there are still existing pain points on the Battle of Champion’s Dusk map and we are actively working to address them.
Our currently supported gamemodes are Conquest and Stronghold. Courtyard still has a place in custom arenas, but it won’t be returning to Unranked or Ranked arena.
How players move between maps in PvP is different than in the rest of the game and because of that it there are technical limitations on our ability to have players queue from outside the Mists. If we can find a solution to the technical challenges around this we would love to be able to do this but it is a very difficult problem given how the code between these systems work.

Class Balance/Testing

We do have a team that works on skills. We focus on maintenance and balance of current skills, in addition to the implementation of new player skills down the road
Internal testing is a mix of Dev/Q.A./tester Hands-on interaction, and some automation.
When discussing changes for classes, we look to a variety of areas to determine what should happen. We use metrics from many areas of the game, feedback from a plethora of sources (yourselves included), along with our own spreadsheet comparisons and experiences. In addition, we have meetings with each feature team to discuss the issues in that we then investigate and come up with solutions for. We balance from many different perspectives, top tier pvp is included as well as Raids, Fractals, WvW roaming/group play, casual open world, huge map-wide encounters and a few more
We are not fully against skill splitting between the different game modes but it adds a lot of overhead to every balance and design decision. While it does give you another tool box it does lead to optimizing skills heavily for each game type which does make power creep.Its on the table and it’s something we may use in the future

Technical/Features

Extended Experience never really existed in the form promoted in that blog post and the team working on it was restructured to focus on other things. Don’t expect us to ship anything like what the blog post promised, it’s not a good use of our time. We decided a long time ago that it would be far better to have the community own the extended experience than for us to do it internally.
Character rendering API is still a “that would be awesome” sort of long-term goal
New Bug Tracker is intended to simply make our processes more transparent, it will display a highlight of all the bugs being worked on. It is to improve communication between QA and the customer base.
No plans for graphics engine update (i.e. no Direct X 12 or moving to Vulkan).
Mac version was done via a shield party shell to host the Windows version and isn’t a true Mac application. We are actively experimenting with getting native code that runs directly on the Mac with OpenGL etc
Guild Anthems weren’t fully polished so we pulled it from the HoT launch. We want to get back to but not actively working on it right now.
Megaserver/Taxi behavior is a very complex problem. The taxi system is not designed to be the primary way people make it into maps with their friends. That being said, we don’t think getting rid of the options gets us many benefits. There are two major problems with megaservers: the criteria for who your playing with is immense and it isn’t a load balancing problem in the normal sense. We can’t say specifically at this point what the final experience will be like, but I can say that it will be better. We’ve been at work for several months already. There will be very little random about the new system.
Keyrings is a cool suggestion but we are not working on that as we got our plates full with other developments.
We’ve experimented with public test servers and there are two problems for us: 1) much of our stuff is story driven, and not suitable for a public test server; and 2) the results from play patterns don’t match what we see later on live. Instead, we developed a system we used for HoT where we can beta test characters and maps on the Live servers with a cute little personal sandbox that surrounds beta characters.We will be exploring using that tech more so we can do public-test-server-like things but in the live game, so we get real useful results back
No plans for aerial combat. We like it but working on other things.

Fluff

Colin is leaving due to a new opportunity that allow him to see his family more and support his wife on a project. Also less commune for him.
Game directors coordinate it all, set the long-term direction, set the anchors that teams use to make decisions, and generally ensure that the finished product is more than the sum of its parts.
Official fashion contests are a nice idea that the team can discuss and see if it fits.
Weapon design contests like we did for GW1 are tricky due to legal issues that restricts who can enter and can take a lot of work to implement. The team will be happy to discuss this possibility in the future.
Original designer of the crafting system was in love with fishing and it had more documentation than the rest of the crafting system. Unfortunately we never had the plans to do it and the guy left the company 5 years ago. This designer is actually the husband of the current crafting designer. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be fishing in the near future but she will keep bringing it up.
Roy is now a team lead on creatures and working on Expansion 2.
QA at launch had a very large group of 60ish people in house but it is more leaner now.
The hardest part of writing any music for the game is making sure it matches the intent of the rest of the team, from the artists to the writers to the designers. The other difficult part is making sure it feels “Guild Wars-y”, for lack of a better term. There is room to grow and expand what that means, but I’m always very aware of the legacy of Jeremy Soule and what he means to the world of Guild Wars.

Thanks for finding and posting that.

Here is the link to the Dulfy site post: AMA summary.

As an aside, regarding trait saving, what makes you think they ARENT working on it right now? They arent going to say anything about anything if something isnt “done” enough for them to be confident it will make it in game. Remember precursor crafting? There was an update a while ago in which there was a passing mention that a precursor scavenger hunt method they had was completely obliterated by certain story journal changes, and they would have to revisit the methods. Shortly after…. we started raising Mawdrey. The smart (or those with astounding logic leaping ability) people started wondering, correctly, whether Mawdrey was a sort of test of how to acquire precursors in an “easier” way. Then HoT comes and with it precursor crafting.

Gaile’s also said that just because they arent posting anything about ideas being put forward, doesnt mean they arent looking into it. One of her posts gives 3 categories most of the ideas fall under- Not Possible, Technically Impossible/Unfeasible, Not in This Timeframe. Trait saving is likely under the last category.

Aidan Savage.2078:

As an aside, regarding trait saving, what makes you think they ARENT working on it right now?

Gaile’s also said that just because they arent posting anything about ideas being put forward, doesnt mean they arent looking into it. One of her posts gives 3 categories most of the ideas fall under- Not Possible, Technically Impossible/Unfeasible, Not in This Timeframe. Trait saving is likely under the last category.

Actually they did say that it was on the table buried under all the HoT stuff and they would try to get to it after HoT released. A simple yes we are actually working on it still wouldn’t hurt them and would make the where is it posts drop. It also doesn’t have to have a date and time linked to that. (They did drop off after they mentioned it was on the table. It has once again been started to be asked again because no further mention of it has occured.)

As to the Not In This Time Frame statement you said. 3 and a half years of being asked for. At least one new post about it every month or 2. I think the time frame is a little long and perhaps others do as well..

I totally believe in When Its Ready. Not due at this time. Its why I am a Nintendo Fan through and through. Their games aren’t released until they are done and that is why their games are generally regarded with great respect.

There’s been many changes to underlying systems in that time as well. Even if they had a trait-saving system released with the old trait system, would it have survived the changeover to specializations? Or did they have a system being worked on that was rendered obsolete/defunct as a result of the changeover to specializations, thus resulting in starting over from a day zero point?
Just because it’s been X months/years since Y came out, doesnt mean that Z should have been possible by now Things Change.

Still no mention about fixing the horrid masteries system in Core.

They also pretty much told us that we won’t be seeing separate balance between WvW, PvP, and PvE because it’s just “too hard right now.”

I really don’t understand how that can be too difficult. It’s something that should have been there from the beginning. Because of it, we’ll always see balance issues in some game mode. The mode they’re focusing more on will be balanced, and the rest will have to just deal with it. I left WoW for that reason, but WoW is smart enough to make that needed change finally.

Get with the times. This game isn’t THAT old, but it sure feels like it.

Aidan Savage.2078:

There’s been many changes to underlying systems in that time as well. Even if they had a trait-saving system released with the old trait system, would it have survived the changeover to specializations? Or did they have a system being worked on that was rendered obsolete/defunct as a result of the changeover to specializations, thus resulting in starting over from a day zero point?
Just because it’s been X months/years since Y came out, doesnt mean that Z should have been possible by now Things Change.

That’s a very good point. And something I haven’t put a lot of thought into.

They really only removed the stat bonus’s from the old Trait System and made it so you can only choose one trait from each section and not have it so the number 2 trait could be in the Grand Master trait. I don’t think it would have been that hard to modify it compared to the changes they made to the trait lines themselves. They did also change some of the Traits themselves.

But your right there could have been something in the background that stopped them.

However it doesn’t stop them from saying

“Hey we know you want this, we started on it, but when we made the new trait system we found some things that stopped it from working. We have started again but at this stage we don’t know how long it will take.

We will give a progress report in 3 months time if there is something to report."

3 months later.

“Hey so the trait system is progressing. We have sorted out some things to help simplify it. Update in 2 months if we have any problems”

2 Months Later.

“Sorry Guys, The Interface for Trait saves broke the whole game and so we have to scrap the idea for 6 months as we need to get all Devs working on LS 3 for the next 6 months.”

6 Months Later.

“Guy’s Guy’s…. We did it! We hope that it’s going to be out sometime in the next 3 month’s barring something changing.”

See the only time frame would be the update times. And they don’t need to commit to it either.

I really think this Dev AMA idea every 4 months wouldn’t hurt anything and would help the community feel like there is a communication flow. And like Nintendo, Anet can withhold information they don’t want to share till its ready.

Anomaly.7612:

They also pretty much told us that we won’t be seeing separate balance between WvW, PvP, and PvE because it’s just “too hard right now.”

It’s not hard at all. It just takes too long.

Do you really want balance changes and new content to take even longer to come out?

Schedule:
Sounds reasonable to ship it if it is ready. A word then and when what comes next would be nice though.

Items:
Armor sets are hard to make, outfits are easy. Ok. A set then and when would help to appease people.
Not happy about raids still gating legendary armor.

Story:
Not happy about Rata Sum. If I want to hear something about smurfs, I will watch the real smurfs *Shakes fist at Asura centered news".
Very happy about permanent changes in open world and some ls1 events. It is for example about time that undead loose some influence in the open world with the defeat of Zhaitan. At least remove them from starter zones and replace them with fungi for Sylvari for example. Nightmare court needs some work too.

Fractals:
New fractals in work. I take that with a grain of salt, but it is at least something.
Please move away from mainly smurf content there too(reactor etc), there is so much exciting lore in GW that you can test some excting new or long missed creatures there.

Wvw:
Population imbalance. Yes please. I love my T6 EU server, but it is painfully obvious that the guys who are also T6 will waltz over us as much as we waltz over the T7 servers.
From the point of view of being stingy, I also refuse to pay for something that is not my fault(gems for server change to escape such matchups).

I liked this one more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/490u3k/missed_the_ama_heres_a_summary/

Sarrs.4831:

Anomaly.7612:

They also pretty much told us that we won’t be seeing separate balance between WvW, PvP, and PvE because it’s just “too hard right now.”

It’s not hard at all. It just takes too long.

Do you really want balance changes and new content to take even longer to come out?

Yes. Here’s why:

Ok, great. We get new content. That’s awesome, I’d love for more things to do. After we wear the content out in a week, what’s left? For me, I PvP/WvW most of the time. Because of that, I first hand see how balance is out of whack right now. Balancing the game is the foundation. We play the classes to then play the content, so if the classes are imbalanced, the content will be less fun (for those with classes that aren’t performing as high as others).

Example: I started the HoT maps on my Thief. I died instantly numerous times to all the AoE/Pocket raptors/etc that’s littered around like glitter at a rave. I got mad and logged onto my Necro (which I don’t like playing), went into HoT, face rolled everything with ease. I understand that Thief is hard to play and it takes time to learn to play it at a level in which you don’t die to fluff as much as a Necro, which is why I’ve been playing since vanilla beta, but the QoL shouldn’t be that low in contrast in my opinion. Now, I can go on to talk about ranked PvP, but that’s a big wormhole. TL;DR, Thief isn’t viable in the current meta. The imbalance is there, and I like playing my Thief, but when I’m shown constantly that the game just doesn’t want me playing my Thief, and to play Rev/Engi/Necro/Ele/Guard instead, I’m not given much motivation to even try the content out.

That is why I personally would rather have balance over content. I can wait. That would just make the content more polished and give players more time to play in the (hopefully soon) WvW beta maps to give more feedback. We’ve already been waiting for a long time, if they can take a couple months to create separate balance throughout WvW/PvP/PvE, I’d never leave this game. It really shouldn’t be that difficult, but it seems that Anet has a hard time developing anything in an efficient and timely manner, given the good volume of workers they supposedly have.

I thought that while i’m waiting for my new game to download on steam, i’d read up on some GW2 news and changes.

But the wall of text from both reddit and this topic makes my eyes bleed. That the devs are responding on reddit means things haven’t changed since i last actually played.
And browsing though all the new information makes me feel i haven’t been missing anything while i’m playing Fallout4, FC Primal and RotTR.

There is so much stagnation (it really feels that way) in GW2 and so many interesting games coming out, that GW2 slowly retreats in the back of my mind. In hindsight, I’d rather have spend the 50€ from HoT on another game. What a waste.

Anomaly.7612:

Sarrs.4831:

Anomaly.7612:

They also pretty much told us that we won’t be seeing separate balance between WvW, PvP, and PvE because it’s just “too hard right now.”

It’s not hard at all. It just takes too long.

Do you really want balance changes and new content to take even longer to come out?

Yes. Here’s why:

Ok, great. We get new content. That’s awesome, I’d love for more things to do. After we wear the content out in a week, what’s left? For me, I PvP/WvW most of the time. Because of that, I first hand see how balance is out of whack right now. Balancing the game is the foundation. We play the classes to then play the content, so if the classes are imbalanced, the content will be less fun (for those with classes that aren’t performing as high as others).

Example: I started the HoT maps on my Thief. I died instantly numerous times to all the AoE/Pocket raptors/etc that’s littered around like glitter at a rave. I got mad and logged onto my Necro (which I don’t like playing), went into HoT, face rolled everything with ease. I understand that Thief is hard to play and it takes time to learn to play it at a level in which you don’t die to fluff as much as a Necro, which is why I’ve been playing since vanilla beta, but the QoL shouldn’t be that low in contrast in my opinion. Now, I can go on to talk about ranked PvP, but that’s a big wormhole. TL;DR, Thief isn’t viable in the current meta. The imbalance is there, and I like playing my Thief, but when I’m shown constantly that the game just doesn’t want me playing my Thief, and to play Rev/Engi/Necro/Ele/Guard instead, I’m not given much motivation to even try the content out.

That is why I personally would rather have balance over content. I can wait. That would just make the content more polished and give players more time to play in the (hopefully soon) WvW beta maps to give more feedback. We’ve already been waiting for a long time, if they can take a couple months to create separate balance throughout WvW/PvP/PvE, I’d never leave this game. It really shouldn’t be that difficult, but it seems that Anet has a hard time developing anything in an efficient and timely manner, given the good volume of workers they supposedly have.

Well what build are you using on your thief in HoT, there is a particular build that makes daredevil really tanky without loss to dps. Or not that much loss. Maybe you should go find more or read more guides. I just found that build to have a clunky playstyle so I don’t play it much

Roxanne.6140:

Anomaly.7612:

Sarrs.4831:

Anomaly.7612:

They also pretty much told us that we won’t be seeing separate balance between WvW, PvP, and PvE because it’s just “too hard right now.”

It’s not hard at all. It just takes too long.

Do you really want balance changes and new content to take even longer to come out?

Yes. Here’s why:

Ok, great. We get new content. That’s awesome, I’d love for more things to do. After we wear the content out in a week, what’s left? For me, I PvP/WvW most of the time. Because of that, I first hand see how balance is out of whack right now. Balancing the game is the foundation. We play the classes to then play the content, so if the classes are imbalanced, the content will be less fun (for those with classes that aren’t performing as high as others).

Example: I started the HoT maps on my Thief. I died instantly numerous times to all the AoE/Pocket raptors/etc that’s littered around like glitter at a rave. I got mad and logged onto my Necro (which I don’t like playing), went into HoT, face rolled everything with ease. I understand that Thief is hard to play and it takes time to learn to play it at a level in which you don’t die to fluff as much as a Necro, which is why I’ve been playing since vanilla beta, but the QoL shouldn’t be that low in contrast in my opinion. Now, I can go on to talk about ranked PvP, but that’s a big wormhole. TL;DR, Thief isn’t viable in the current meta. The imbalance is there, and I like playing my Thief, but when I’m shown constantly that the game just doesn’t want me playing my Thief, and to play Rev/Engi/Necro/Ele/Guard instead, I’m not given much motivation to even try the content out.

That is why I personally would rather have balance over content. I can wait. That would just make the content more polished and give players more time to play in the (hopefully soon) WvW beta maps to give more feedback. We’ve already been waiting for a long time, if they can take a couple months to create separate balance throughout WvW/PvP/PvE, I’d never leave this game. It really shouldn’t be that difficult, but it seems that Anet has a hard time developing anything in an efficient and timely manner, given the good volume of workers they supposedly have.

Well what build are you using on your thief in HoT, there is a particular build that makes daredevil really tanky without loss to dps. Or not that much loss. Maybe you should go find more or read more guides. I just found that build to have a clunky playstyle so I don’t play it much

I’m running meta D/P, and that’s probably my issue. I’m very open to try new builds. I’d just have to install the game again, first. xD

But seriously, I’d love a new build with a guide. SOMETHING to make Thief more viable in this AoE/Condi spam meta. I love this game. It has PvP like none other and I’m clinging to unraveling strings here.

Feel free to PM me builds/ideas.

welp our lord and savior Colin is leaving, all hope is lost .

Thanks for this summary.
Now to my thoughts about it as reaction as brief as possible:

Schedule

• I like that the next Update is all about reducing Grind in GW2, because this game has become lately so grindy in many places, even when most of it is just optional for some visual fluff, but even for somethign like that some grind of this Game has reach absolute real absurd highs – Wintersday 10k Drinks for example just to say.
• I hope this Grind Reducer addresses following things:
  - Reducing Material Costs of too cost high things in this Game, like recipes that require 100 or even 250 units of something rare like lodestones
  - Raising Drop Rates or adding more ways of getting certain way too rare items, like the Orrian Pendant… over 400G for such an item just to get a more or less useless chest for your personal instance is outright ridiculous!!
  - Reducing significantly the cost factor of everything that has to do with Scribing and adapt it far more to work like all the other Crafting Jobs, just with the difference, that you can learn this Job only, if you own HoT. 5k Gold Costs to max this Job is not acceptable at all
• Increasing Dungeon Token Rewards, so that playing Dungeons isn’t anymore much slower to work on Dungeoneer, than playing simple PvP.
• Implementation of Boss Tokens so that you can work steadily on something you want from certain World Bosses like Tequatls unique skinned Weapons, rather than grinding your butt of eternally and hoping each time, that RNGeesus likes you today.
• Adding more Account Bonus Systems for example for Crafting Exp, for Gathering Effectiveness and so on
• Reworking the Login Bonus System to provide for more things more effectively that can reduce grind, by removing useless junk out of the table and add to the created gaps something more useful.
  Example:
  Remove Bags of Luck, Remove Bags of Experience, Remove Bag of Transmutation Charges, Remove Bags of Black Lion Goods.
  Add in the gaps therefore: 1-2 more Bags of Crafting Materials for exampel for ascended materials, add instead of Lion Goods 1-2 Bags with randomly either Black Lion Key or a Black Lion Ticket and make Keys/Tickets also sellable on TP, makes no sense, that both arent sellable. Theres surely alot of people out there, that don’ need these items, but could make some good money with them if they’d be able to sell these to other players via TP. Add in 1-2 Bags with randomly Rare Materials like Lodestones, Giants Eyes, a Bunch of Ectos ect., add in a bag of 1-2 Dyes that have also a certain chance to drop for you Gemstore Dyes

HoT Maps
It’s not their intention to suppress free form exploration?
Then you would have to completely redesign all the HoT maps, because thats exactly what they all do and their Meta Events, because they all were designed with Group Play mainly back in mind.
The only thing that can be changed, without having to touch the Maps at all and at the same time reducing the grind is it to make the Map Exploration more accessible:
- Rebalance the Hero Points, make the spawning enemies SCALE accordingly to the number of players that are at the spot when the event gets activated.
- Make in general Exploration for Alt Characters easier, nobody, I repeat, absolutely NOBODY wants to do exactly the same thing like 100% Map Exploration with more than 10+ characters or even lower again and again.

Adventures need to be rebalanced better, especially Fallen Masks, Shooting Gallery, Tendril Torchers and Scrap Rifle Field Test and they need to become accesssible whenever you want to play them. make them all instances just like Haywire and Scrap Rifle Field Test, that way you can play them all whenever you want, regardless of what happens on the maps. When it works for these Adventures, then it can work the same way for ALL ADVENTURES.

Items

Good to hear, that missing content will hopefully soon come back finally and personally it was from begin on clear to me, that Anet will hold certain rewards, like that weapon skin set from HoT Beta Days most likely back as some kind of special reward for living Word Season 3 and that the new items from HoT will become with Living Story also more accessible.
But hopefully this means also in regard of reducing grind, that the HoT Currencies, especially Crystalline Ore will become more accessible through LS S3, because that grind for that ore currently is absolutely terrible where you have only 2 choices and both are absolute grind gallore high 3, either replay countless of tiems the Hot Story or grind your buff off eternally in Dragon Stand to farm those pods for a measly 1-10 ore units where it most oftnely will ever be 1 when you are unlucky, when these pods should range rather between 15-100 of them given the costs of them in the reward sections that require them stay untouched to reduce the grind for them.

Story/Living World S3

Sad to see that we still have to wait several months, until it starts, HoT was so low on Story Content, that alot of people are already starving for new story since months.
The Personal Story of the Main Game was in regard of Replay Value and Long Term Entertainment alot better than HoT with its much longer story that provided also multiple different PATHS..something that I terribly missed in HoT.
I hoped Hot would surpass the story telling and replay value of the Personal Story and would work actually as continuation of it, but instead it was just underwhemling short compared to it and basically provided no replay value at all, given the fact you played HoT directly with a Sylvari-Character, otherwise you have only the tiny replay value of replaying it with a Sylvari if your first character you play HoT through with is not a Sylvari, just to see the very minor differences in the expansion between how Sylvari and Non-Sylvari experience the situations…

I really hope the next Expansion will reach again the same quality and replay value, that the personal story basically Living Story Season 0 had, where YOUR CHOICES MATTER and result in different stories.
Also I hope it doesn’t take so long anymore, until Living Story season 1 gets reintegrated into the game with the same mechanics and gameplay that Season 2 brought to the game.

Dungeons/Fractals

I keep on hearing this, sorry to say this – “excuse”, that they curently have since a longer time now no dungeon team ect. but wouldn’t it be simply said the BEST thing to do to let the Fractals Team take over this content and let them work on Dungeons also too?
Fractals are basically nothing else, than dungeons, just shorter…
Throw Fractals and Raids Team together finally and let them work on all three things together – Dungeons, Fractals and Raids, because thats god in hell our ENDGAME CONTENT and call it then Endgame Content Team. Finish – problem solved, no more excuses anymore!!!
This selfmade dilemma wouldn’t exist, if you manage just better your teams to work together in regard of game content, that is in itself already very similar to basically exactly the same and belongs together.
If I’m not right with this, so please correct me and show me up reasons, for why it is better to have seperate teams on dungeons, raids and fractals, when the content for all 3 modes is practially the same design wise, with the exception of AR/Levels/Rewards.

To make Fractals in itself easier accessible for new players and to reduce grind in this game, I would massively reduce the ridiculous grind in this game that comes from getting Agony Resistance high enough to be able to play together with your friends in the higher level fractals and to survive there.
Thats something, that holds back new players massively from joining the fractals, because you need to grind for AR first and get your equipment ready, before you do something or can join your friends at the higher levels without being a BURDEN for them that needs to get dragged through more dead than alive.
Yes, you added with the last patches some nice things and getting Infusions has become also cheaper.. but just take a look still at the prices of the higher AR infusions that you need, it becomes quickly ridiculous due to the bad system with that you rise the AR higher, which becomes way too fast too cost expensive.
Rework your Infusion System to make fractals more accessible for new players.
It has so much unused potential and is so underdeveloped, like it has been designed with the sole intention only to be a giant gold sink and nothing else in mind.
Instead of having to do this horrible plus 1 + 1+ = +2, +2 + +2 = +3 and so on grind …
Make AR a BASELINED attribute of your Ascended Equipment and change AR into some kind of LEVEL that you can raise by using up infusions on that equipment, where every used up infusion raises the AR Intensity Bar of your Equipment, until its AR Level rises.
No more stupid AR grind for like +10 or higher infusions , its instantly accessible for new players, as they can use up all the infusion rewards the get instantly in their ascended equipment to increase right from the start its defense against Agony.
Brief said, just turn AR into the same mechanic, that MAGIC FIND IS and make infusions just like Luck Essences but this time not bound on your account, but bound to your characters ascended/legendary equipment!

Raids

Raids need to become more accessible.
I think it would be best to implement also some kind of “Easy Mode” that is good for making just the Achievements and to LEARN THE BASICS, where you can just join for fun and the story parts that come with the raids.
And when you think you have learned good enough the basics of the raid wings in this kind of “Practice Mode”, then you can go for the real deal for the far more rewarding harder normal versions of the raids.
Also raids per see need to be more adjusted, hopefully through class specific masteries, so that ALL CLASSES become wanted for them.
For example you will want to have a Thief with you, because their class based Raid Mastery line will make Raids for the Group more rewarding, not essentialy much easier, but essentially more rewarding for everyone.
That is what thieves are for in “Raids”..they are the treasure hunters and trap disablers in raids so that you can get to treasure, that youd normally not see/find without a Thief in your group.
Every class needs for raids such a kind of unique speciality for why you would want to have if possible of all classes at least 1 with you.
So rebalance Raids, so that double classing just for DPS performances isn’t absolutely neccessary anymore. Rebalance and rework class skills, so that all classes can partake in raids and so something helpful there.
I think this has completely been overlooked when raids were designed and it hasn#t been thought about this for a single second, which is the very reason, why you see currently in Raids permanently only people asking for the same class meta the very first moment people saw at dulfy, what kind of group constellation can do them successfully due to only specific classes beign useful for Raids due to the massive DPS race that raids are… Take that silyl Timer out of Raids, and this dumb DPS race would immediately stop. Yes, it woudl make raids a bit easier, but at leats for the advantage, that all classes are then more wlecome to raids, because you dont need to think mainly on DPS then anymorewhen makign the group just to be successful!
You can put in that timer back in if you want for some kind of more rewarding “Speed Run Mode/Speed Clear Leaderboard” or so ,but the normal raids shouldn’t have this silly DPS race.
Thats just something for people that like to race against the time!

WvW

Im personalyl really interested alot in this part of the update!
Personally I hope the big change and solution of the population issues means, that we will finally see an end to “World Servers” as rumors say and get a completely new “Faction System”, where Factions share players from basically all servers at the same time.
This actually would solve the Population/Night Capping Issues instantly.
GW2 had from begin on never at all something like “Server Pride”..people bunny hop from the first moment of WvW on permanently always to the winning sides, so stop please with this unfittign argument and “Faction Pride” can easily replace that if you seriously need some kind of “pride” to play for a side…

SPvP
Nothing to say here, I’m not that PvP Player… but everything that makes PvP more interesting for new players and those that aren’t super PvP nerds, is absolutely welcome xD

Class Balance/Testing

I’m absolutely for Skill Splitting. Skill Splitting is the very reason for why you reduced so significantly the amount of skills in GW2 compared to GW1, if we need to remember you Anet, so that balancing the game will become alot easier for you and that something like Skill Splitting will become also easier to handle and to maintain than it would have been in GW1 with its tons of skills.
—

The last two points do I keep out, nothing to say to them , other than I hope that we will see Fishing in the future …especially due to that responsible dev that left 5 years ago Anet being “the husband of the current craftign designer”.. cough

PS: just to say… anyone who dies on Thief from Pocket Raptors, seriously plays this class wrong, as it takes just only 1 single skill to survive long enough against tons of them to nuke them all before they can kill you and even if you get near to death,. you still have Stealth… just using Signet of Malice makes you survive by nuking all the Raptors with Cluster Bomb Spam … or Pistol Whip Spam even better as you evade also incoming hits, while killing off tons of them and healign your self …

Rezzet.3614:

welp our lord and savior Colin is leaving, all hope is lost .

Its sad that you think that. He is just a man.

Orpheal.8263:

Thanks for this summary.
Now to my thoughts about it as reaction as brief as possible:

Schedule

• I like that the next Update is all about reducing Grind in GW2, because this game has become lately so grindy in many places, even when most of it is just optional for some visual fluff, but even for somethign like that some grind of this Game has reach absolute real absurd highs – Wintersday 10k Drinks for example just to say.
• I hope this Grind Reducer addresses following things:
  - Reducing Material Costs of too cost high things in this Game, like recipes that require 100 or even 250 units of something rare like lodestones
  - Raising Drop Rates or adding more ways of getting certain way too rare items, like the Orrian Pendant… over 400G for such an item just to get a more or less useless chest for your personal instance is outright ridiculous!!
  - Reducing significantly the cost factor of everything that has to do with Scribing and adapt it far more to work like all the other Crafting Jobs, just with the difference, that you can learn this Job only, if you own HoT. 5k Gold Costs to max this Job is not acceptable at all
• Increasing Dungeon Token Rewards, so that playing Dungeons isn’t anymore much slower to work on Dungeoneer, than playing simple PvP.
• Implementation of Boss Tokens so that you can work steadily on something you want from certain World Bosses like Tequatls unique skinned Weapons, rather than grinding your butt of eternally and hoping each time, that RNGeesus likes you today.
• Adding more Account Bonus Systems for example for Crafting Exp, for Gathering Effectiveness and so on
• Reworking the Login Bonus System to provide for more things more effectively that can reduce grind, by removing useless junk out of the table and add to the created gaps something more useful.
  Example:
  Remove Bags of Luck, Remove Bags of Experience, Remove Bag of Transmutation Charges, Remove Bags of Black Lion Goods.
  Add in the gaps therefore: 1-2 more Bags of Crafting Materials for exampel for ascended materials, add instead of Lion Goods 1-2 Bags with randomly either Black Lion Key or a Black Lion Ticket and make Keys/Tickets also sellable on TP, makes no sense, that both arent sellable. Theres surely alot of people out there, that don’ need these items, but could make some good money with them if they’d be able to sell these to other players via TP. Add in 1-2 Bags with randomly Rare Materials like Lodestones, Giants Eyes, a Bunch of Ectos ect., add in a bag of 1-2 Dyes that have also a certain chance to drop for you Gemstore Dyes

HoT Maps
It’s not their intention to suppress free form exploration?
Then you would have to completely redesign all the HoT maps, because thats exactly what they all do and their Meta Events, because they all were designed with Group Play mainly back in mind.
The only thing that can be changed, without having to touch the Maps at all and at the same time reducing the grind is it to make the Map Exploration more accessible:
- Rebalance the Hero Points, make the spawning enemies SCALE accordingly to the number of players that are at the spot when the event gets activated.
- Make in general Exploration for Alt Characters easier, nobody, I repeat, absolutely NOBODY wants to do exactly the same thing like 100% Map Exploration with more than 10+ characters or even lower again and again.

Adventures need to be rebalanced better, especially Fallen Masks, Shooting Gallery, Tendril Torchers and Scrap Rifle Field Test and they need to become accesssible whenever you want to play them. make them all instances just like Haywire and Scrap Rifle Field Test, that way you can play them all whenever you want, regardless of what happens on the maps. When it works for these Adventures, then it can work the same way for ALL ADVENTURES.

Items

Good to hear, that missing content will hopefully soon come back finally and personally it was from begin on clear to me, that Anet will hold certain rewards, like that weapon skin set from HoT Beta Days most likely back as some kind of special reward for living Word Season 3 and that the new items from HoT will become with Living Story also more accessible.
But hopefully this means also in regard of reducing grind, that the HoT Currencies, especially Crystalline Ore will become more accessible through LS S3, because that grind for that ore currently is absolutely terrible where you have only 2 choices and both are absolute grind gallore high 3, either replay countless of tiems the Hot Story or grind your buff off eternally in Dragon Stand to farm those pods for a measly 1-10 ore units where it most oftnely will ever be 1 when you are unlucky, when these pods should range rather between 15-100 of them given the costs of them in the reward sections that require them stay untouched to reduce the grind for them.

Story/Living World S3

Sad to see that we still have to wait several months, until it starts, HoT was so low on Story Content, that alot of people are already starving for new story since months.
The Personal Story of the Main Game was in regard of Replay Value and Long Term Entertainment alot better than HoT with its much longer story that provided also multiple different PATHS..something that I terribly missed in HoT.
I hoped Hot would surpass the story telling and replay value of the Personal Story and would work actually as continuation of it, but instead it was just underwhemling short compared to it and basically provided no replay value at all, given the fact you played HoT directly with a Sylvari-Character, otherwise you have only the tiny replay value of replaying it with a Sylvari if your first character you play HoT through with is not a Sylvari, just to see the very minor differences in the expansion between how Sylvari and Non-Sylvari experience the situations…

I really hope the next Expansion will reach again the same quality and replay value, that the personal story basically Living Story Season 0 had, where YOUR CHOICES MATTER and result in different stories.
Also I hope it doesn’t take so long anymore, until Living Story season 1 gets reintegrated into the game with the same mechanics and gameplay that Season 2 brought to the game.

Dungeons/Fractals

I keep on hearing this, sorry to say this – “excuse”, that they curently have since a longer time now no dungeon team ect. but wouldn’t it be simply said the BEST thing to do to let the Fractals Team take over this content and let them work on Dungeons also too?
Fractals are basically nothing else, than dungeons, just shorter…
Throw Fractals and Raids Team together finally and let them work on all three things together – Dungeons, Fractals and Raids, because thats god in hell our ENDGAME CONTENT and call it then Endgame Content Team. Finish – problem solved, no more excuses anymore!!!
This selfmade dilemma wouldn’t exist, if you manage just better your teams to work together in regard of game content, that is in itself already very similar to basically exactly the same and belongs together.
If I’m not right with this, so please correct me and show me up reasons, for why it is better to have seperate teams on dungeons, raids and fractals, when the content for all 3 modes is practially the same design wise, with the exception of AR/Levels/Rewards.

To make Fractals in itself easier accessible for new players and to reduce grind in this game, I would massively reduce the ridiculous grind in this game that comes from getting Agony Resistance high enough to be able to play together with your friends in the higher level fractals and to survive there.
Thats something, that holds back new players massively from joining the fractals, because you need to grind for AR first and get your equipment ready, before you do something or can join your friends at the higher levels without being a BURDEN for them that needs to get dragged through more dead than alive.
Yes, you added with the last patches some nice things and getting Infusions has become also cheaper.. but just take a look still at the prices of the higher AR infusions that you need, it becomes quickly ridiculous due to the bad system with that you rise the AR higher, which becomes way too fast too cost expensive.
Rework your Infusion System to make fractals more accessible for new players.
It has so much unused potential and is so underdeveloped, like it has been designed with the sole intention only to be a giant gold sink and nothing else in mind.
Instead of having to do this horrible plus 1 + 1+ = +2, +2 + +2 = +3 and so on grind …
Make AR a BASELINED attribute of your Ascended Equipment and change AR into some kind of LEVEL that you can raise by using up infusions on that equipment, where every used up infusion raises the AR Intensity Bar of your Equipment, until its AR Level rises.
No more stupid AR grind for like +10 or higher infusions , its instantly accessible for new players, as they can use up all the infusion rewards the get instantly in their ascended equipment to increase right from the start its defense against Agony.
Brief said, just turn AR into the same mechanic, that MAGIC FIND IS and make infusions just like Luck Essences but this time not bound on your account, but bound to your characters ascended/legendary equipment!

Raids

Raids need to become more accessible.
I think it would be best to implement also some kind of “Easy Mode” that is good for making just the Achievements and to LEARN THE BASICS, where you can just join for fun and the story parts that come with the raids.
And when you think you have learned good enough the basics of the raid wings in this kind of “Practice Mode”, then you can go for the real deal for the far more rewarding harder normal versions of the raids.
Also raids per see need to be more adjusted, hopefully through class specific masteries, so that ALL CLASSES become wanted for them.
For example you will want to have a Thief with you, because their class based Raid Mastery line will make Raids for the Group more rewarding, not essentialy much easier, but essentially more rewarding for everyone.
That is what thieves are for in “Raids”..they are the treasure hunters and trap disablers in raids so that you can get to treasure, that youd normally not see/find without a Thief in your group.
Every class needs for raids such a kind of unique speciality for why you would want to have if possible of all classes at least 1 with you.
So rebalance Raids, so that double classing just for DPS performances isn’t absolutely neccessary anymore. Rebalance and rework class skills, so that all classes can partake in raids and so something helpful there.
I think this has completely been overlooked when raids were designed and it hasn#t been thought about this for a single second, which is the very reason, why you see currently in Raids permanently only people asking for the same class meta the very first moment people saw at dulfy, what kind of group constellation can do them successfully due to only specific classes beign useful for Raids due to the massive DPS race that raids are… Take that silyl Timer out of Raids, and this dumb DPS race would immediately stop. Yes, it woudl make raids a bit easier, but at leats for the advantage, that all classes are then more wlecome to raids, because you dont need to think mainly on DPS then anymorewhen makign the group just to be successful!
You can put in that timer back in if you want for some kind of more rewarding “Speed Run Mode/Speed Clear Leaderboard” or so ,but the normal raids shouldn’t have this silly DPS race.
Thats just something for people that like to race against the time!

WvW

Im personalyl really interested alot in this part of the update!
Personally I hope the big change and solution of the population issues means, that we will finally see an end to “World Servers” as rumors say and get a completely new “Faction System”, where Factions share players from basically all servers at the same time.
This actually would solve the Population/Night Capping Issues instantly.
GW2 had from begin on never at all something like “Server Pride”..people bunny hop from the first moment of WvW on permanently always to the winning sides, so stop please with this unfittign argument and “Faction Pride” can easily replace that if you seriously need some kind of “pride” to play for a side…

SPvP
Nothing to say here, I’m not that PvP Player… but everything that makes PvP more interesting for new players and those that aren’t super PvP nerds, is absolutely welcome xD

Class Balance/Testing

I’m absolutely for Skill Splitting. Skill Splitting is the very reason for why you reduced so significantly the amount of skills in GW2 compared to GW1, if we need to remember you Anet, so that balancing the game will become alot easier for you and that something like Skill Splitting will become also easier to handle and to maintain than it would have been in GW1 with its tons of skills.
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The last two points do I keep out, nothing to say to them , other than I hope that we will see Fishing in the future …especially due to that responsible dev that left 5 years ago Anet being “the husband of the current craftign designer”.. cough

PS: just to say… anyone who dies on Thief from Pocket Raptors, seriously plays this class wrong, as it takes just only 1 single skill to survive long enough against tons of them to nuke them all before they can kill you and even if you get near to death,. you still have Stealth… just using Signet of Malice makes you survive by nuking all the Raptors with Cluster Bomb Spam … or Pistol Whip Spam even better as you evade also incoming hits, while killing off tons of them and healign your self …

Wow. Just Wow.

That was super well thought out!

Orpheal, new players dont belong in high level fractals in the first place. Additionally, there really ISNT any “grind” getting the AR. To top it off, scale 1-50 fractals are, frankly, stupidly easy for new players to access. 65 AR is what you need to do a scale 50 fractal. By then you should have 2 rings already, maybe one or both infused, which can be up to 20 AR alone, just doing dailies would mean you’d have enough laurels for the amulet for 25 total, and if you run guild missions, you’d have one or two accessories for up to 35 total. If you did any of the crafted backpieces, that’s 40 AR. That right there lets you get up to scale 38-39. If you’re really invested in doing fractals, you’d be in possession of at least an ascended weapon, and maybe one or two pieces of ascended armor, bumping yourself up to 50-55 AR.