Guild Wars 2

Having received a response from Chris Whiteside in a previous thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/We-your-community-need-more-communication/first#post1052008 we can see some light at the end of the tunnel:)

I would like to put together a constructive set of questions that the community has had since the last live discussion.

I believe that unlike the first AMA, the list questions should not be gathered on an unofficial fan website but from the guild wars 2 official forums. They can be presented in a readable format and answered wherever is appropriate during the next live discussion.

I will Edit this post with new questions as we go so:

1) Read before you post; we don’t want duplicate questions to clutter the thread.
2) Keep your posts clean and constructive, around 3-4 lines tops.
3) Don’t call out names or refer to specific people/developers

Post ahead

Edit: I will be including “1-2” questions from each poster that i consider most valuable. I do understand that some of you have many questions but i don’t think that all can be answered. Also, some of the questions i see here have already be answered in the previous AMA or in forum responses. If you feel that my choice was unfair, feel free to pm me and i’ll see if i can adjust it.

1. Thieves are a hot topic on the forums and cause a lot of grief for players while not necessarily being overpowered in a competitive setting.

What are your plans to overcome this gap and make Thieves more fun to play against without undermining their competitiveness?

2. Mob respawn rates are pretty intense throughout the game. Is this intended and if so, for what reason? If not, will it be adjusted?

3. Can you outline your future plans for Ascended gear and the Fractals Dungeon?

4. How do you feel about Dungeon access being limited a lot of the time due to Dynamic Events?

5. How far along are you towards identifying the underlying bug that causes so many Dynamic Events to bug?

6. What are your thought on how the downed state and constant resurrections affect WvW dynamics?

7. What kind of progression system/reward system are you considering for WvW (if any)?

8. Currently melee combat is extremely punishing in PvE with frequent untelegraphed attacks resulting in lots of deaths, especially when compared to the relative safety of ranged combat. Is this intended and what’s your design philosophy when it comes to ranged vs. melee combat?

9. What annoys you when you play the game?

About the guardians balance, we all know that the description provided to us on the 12\14 patch notes dont fit what actually the class is, so:

• There is any plan to provide to us a proper class that fit that description?
• If yes, can we have some hint about?

My question that didn’t get answered during the last AMA:

What is the state of guesting, and how soon do you expect it to be implemented?

1. When will we be able to get ascended gear outside of FoTM, wheather by crafting or karma vendor?
2. Is there an alternate set of legendary’s in the work’s? Similar to the light/dark greatswords sunrise and twilight.
3. When will the other activities become available, aka polymock arena?

Done it all. My question is, when is the next campaign coming up? I want to kill more dragons. Fractals level 40 gets boring for the same loot.

1) Will it be possible to get some way to get people back to trying to do Meta-events? Either via a weekly promotion and/or increased rewards.
Especially since the main end-game is the DEs and people really don’t do them enough.

2) Do you plan on doing in game surveys to help address any issues or ideas that may be worked on by Anet?

When a game expansion is realeased and the level cap is raised what are the plans with legendaries? Are they obsolete lvl 80 weapons or do they get thier stats bumped to lvl 90 or whatever the new expansion lvl will be?

The top WvW brackets seem to have solidified into fairly predictable outcomes over the last few weeks with very little movement between the brackets or within the tiers themselves.

Is this how you envisioned this playing out? If not, what are your plans to introduce some mayhem into the mix so that we can see some upsets?

—Are the loot drop rates permanent?
—Will we ever have player housing?
—Will we ever have guild housing?
—Will new useful treasures be introduced often that we can play the game for?
—New armour designs?
—New exciting solo content for level 80’s?
—Will craftables ever be worth more then the matts are worth?

Is guild wide email, or other mass communication tool, in the works? If so, when can we expect it?

GUESTING!

Will always welcome:

More armour designs
More variety in DE’s.
More dungeons rewarding smart play and better teamwork. With more interesting scenarios e.g include puzzles or riddles to solve too instead of mindless combat.

Many players have experienced experienced significant loot rate drops since recent patches in open world events is this a bug or ‘working as intended’?

Why were the drop rates from ads in the Jormag event nerfed?

There is significant player unrest around the diminishing return system especially given that the majority of bots have been eliminated, what are your future plans re this system?

Some players have experienced magic find gear seemingly reducing their chance of getting higher level loot, is this a bug?

In the last AMA you stated that the crafting cost of crafted ascended gear would be reduced. A minor change to the loot drop rate of 1 ingredient has been changed leaving ridiculously high requirements for other ingredients. This looks like you were merely paying lip service to the original complaint. Will this be addressed further and with other craftable ascended items when they become available?

The ingredient cost in terms of gold or time to farm the mats for apothecary gear is extremely high for gear that merely has slightly different stats from other exotic gear and is otherwise the same as other craftable gear can this cost be reduced or the loot drops on the ingredients be increased?

What are your plans to get people doing open world dynamic events at level 80 again?

Will you be adding more dynamic events to Southsun cove?

Is there any plans to adjust dungeon token rewards to the dungeon’s difficulty?

Ex. Twilight Arbour path 1 is by far easier than path 3, yet both reward the 60 tokens. Also any Arah path is by far more difficult and much longer than the most diffucult path of Twilight Arbor , yet both reward the same 60 tokens.

If no adjustment is necessary in your opinion, are there plans to implement any token trading system (that would also include Badges of Honor)? This owuld encourage people to run different dungeons to help their friends and still progress towards their personal goal.

Not 1 to 1 trade, but scale by difficulty and how much the dungeon is ran vs another. As example, 1 Arah token would be worth 10 COF tokens or something of this sort.

At the moment if John is not interested in PVE at all and wants to WvW efficiently he still need to get level 80 in PVE, which is probably for the best anyway as it allows him to learn the game mechanics and the character. However he want a Nightmare rune set for his Necro, he now realises that he must farm TA for weeks, which is not something he wants to do (all John wants to do is WvW, he is not interested in dungeons at all). If John could trade his badges of honour towards TA badges, he can just WvW until he has enough.

Thanks for the questions. I’m at work, will have a look and update my post tonight

Keep them coming

1.) I would love to see story based, solo friendly missions in scale somewhere between the personal story and the renown hearts. Such as region centric mission story arcs.

More info here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/New-Quest-Type/first#post1053170

2.) Will we ever see the entire planet of Tyria? I noticed it shows up in some imagery in the game, but what are the chances we will be able to play on some brand new continents in the future? Something based on a stylized American Southwest would be epic.

3.) Not a question, but keep up the fantastic work.

There will be Guild x Guild?

I’d like to bring to your attention major bugs that come with content releases; in November we had event chain issues with the Lost Shores events, in December, it is widely known the new Giver’s items’ +duration have no effect. How rigorous are the development team’s testing and are there plans to step up the testing? Are there repercussions for the development staff when errors of great severity are found by the community?

1. Will they start fixing current content before adding more damage each patch.

2. Loot and Drop rate are appalling in open world, are we going to get this looked at…

3. Races and balances in classes need a bigger focus, when can we expect this.

4. Can we get a Decision on what you’re planning with the broken mechanic that is “Magic Find”…

5. Crafting and NPC Weapon/Armor merchants are unused due to the lack of choices in Weapons and Armor aesthetics, can these things be updated with newer and more choices of weapons and skins.. They do not need to be fancy just enough choices to keep players using them..and selling them..

6. Dynamic Events need to scale better, to suit population increases and more importantly decreases…can we get this please.

7. Dungeons Rewards need to equate the rewards with the risks involved, or we get whats happening now players exploiting areas, bypassing others…adding rewards to suit how hard these are would go a long way too helping fix these things, and bring more player to do them..

1. In the last AMA the final question was regarding the loot drop rates we were promised an investigation. What exactly was the result of the investigation.
2. Will anything be done in the jan/feb patches to improve drop rates of rares?
3. Will the drop rates of rares ever return to chests?
4. Will the drop rates of bags for level 80 T6 materials have an increase?
5. What will be done to make magic find function properly again?
6. Will DR ever be adjusted so that it no longer affects legit farmer players?

Time for me to chip in:
A very sensitive subject; one of unique exotic/legendary weapon material requirements. More specifically, of Charged lodestones. I have been observing the market of all lodestones for several weeks and i have noticed that the supply/demand ratio of charged lodestones is quite disproportionate compared to the other ones. Of-course this should come to no surprise, since several very longed weapons require charged lodestones as a component.

Having said that and having accepted the long destiny that is getting a legendary that requires them, i was wondering if there is a thought of increasing the supply of these lodestones to bring them up to par with the other ones to some extent. At this point they go for up to 4g each, which is a quite hefty amount, especially when you need 250 of them for a non legendary item. Additionally, these lodestones fall prey to the appetites of heavy duty market manipulation.

Some adjustment was made to several T6 material drop rates (from loot bags) and i have noticed that their prices have moved to be much more comparable to the other T6 mats, albeit still relatively higher. Can a similar approach be considered viable?

So, my question is: What are your thoughts about the market of lodestones and are you planning to make some adjustments?

The ascended gear related question already posted aren’t tackling the right angle IMO, so I’ll add my own.

1. With many players are already owning all currently available ascended items and beginning to loose motivation, can you give us a timeframe for when new ascended items will be released?

2. Are you considering adding meaningful titles that can alter your stats like you did in GW1?

3. Have made any progress on the subject of open world dueling, or dueling in general?

1. What are your future plans for the UI? Is there any possibility of unofficially allowing non-game changing UI mods (such as the ability to shrink individual elements as opposed to the entire UI) and if not please express that the UI will in the least not become completely officially neglected forever.

Well, the questions I have are of the uncomfortable sort, which is why I don’t have high hopes they will be asked/answered.

-After all the negative feedback regarding Downed State in PvP, are you considering changing something drastic about what happens when players reach zero life in PvP?
-When can we expect meaningful changes to PvP balance so tactics, skill and build diversity become more important?
-Are there plans to lessen the downtime in WvWvW when fighting somewhere far away from a Waypoint? (running across half the map for minutes, fighting a few seconds, get wiped by zerg, ress at home and run again for minutes, that kind of downtime)

Almost forgot.
4.) See link.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Council-of-Stellar-Management/first#post1054133

with the DR system “shutting the gateway to wealth” for everyone who either does not exploit or did not get to farm orr for the first month of the game, and the current droprates on lodestones and precursors, what is being done to staunch the massive wealth gap and price inflation which has caused any weapon skin worth having to quickly soar out of reach for players who play the game in the intended, paced manner you have presented?

examples: precursors inflating by double-digit gold figures every day, foefire’s essence costing 700g.

I added my questions to list last AMA, but Chris never got around to them because people kept on hammering away the questions on ascended gear. Anyway, my questions were:

• Less and less people are interested in running dungeon story-modes, which is detrimental to new players. Are there any plans to fix this? And also an increase to the replayability value for players who have already completed their run?

• It’s been stated that old content will receive new updates as content is released, especially during the January and February updates. Are there any plans in the works for an Orr update, where the experience is seen more as an “annoyance” then an actual “challenge”?

• Are there any planned revisions for the leveling system used in Fractals so that the dungeon-running community is less fractured by it? At this time, progressively-minded people have no reason to run lower level Fractals other than to do “dailies”, but if progression could still be made by running Fractals by just a few levels lower than usual, then I think it might not be that bad.

• The Auto-Grouping function currently used for the Toypocalypse dungeon is pretty nifty and works for its intended purpose, but it is very basic. I posted my initial thoughts here with the impression that this feature would be used as a basis for a queue-up system used for finding groups for dungeons. However, should we expect something more out of this when/if it becomes implemented for the original eight dungeons and Fractals?

• Will there ever be a Public Test Server for players to join so that they can test future content? If not, then how would I go and become a Private tester for future content? Considering that some of the features that debut seem to be heavily scrutinized, I think ArenaNet could benefit from more testers, whether Public or Private; especially specialized testers that focuses on a certain facet of the game (eg. dungeon-specific testers, WvW-specific testers, and so on).

• Will there ever be more exclusive Armor skins that could be crafted? I think more recipes that utilizes the lesser-used Lodestones could add some more value to them and match them up with Charged and Onyx Lodestones, thus farming any kind of Lodestone could be quite lucrative, not just previously mentioned two.

zippo burntfur.9307:

1. When will we be able to get ascended gear outside of FoTM, wheather by crafting or karma vendor?

I’d expand this one a bit:

It has been already acknowledged in previous AMA, that you understand you have made an error in both limiting ascended eq to Fractals dungeon, and making it’s cost extremely prohibitive. Considering it, can you tell us:
1. when can we expect other ways to get current ascended eq to appear
2. which of the currently existing methods (Crafting, MF, karma vendors, WvW vendors, TP resale, dungon token vendors – both fractal and older ones, event chest drops, open world drops) will be used for this
3. what would you consider a reasonable price range for these items? (aproximate gold/karma value, hours needed to obtain)
and
4. can we expect for currently missing stat sets (knight, healing power ones, etc)to become available in ascended tier eq (and if so, when?)

What’s the point? He will just ignore the most sensitive issues and he will give only PR half-thruts.
Just like the first AMA.

I have few:

1) A three part question. There are currently several topics within the forum that, in many players opinion, lack acknowledgement/input from Arena Net representative(s).

i) What is your opinion on that?

ii) Do ANet representatives follow threads closely, especially relating to the games core issues?

iii) Why don’t ANet representatives reply more often in the forums? Especially to topics which have been ongoing for long periods?

2) Another 3 part question relating to gem/gold and TP.

i) In your opinion, what are some of the causes for the somewhat drastically increasing gold to gem cost?

ii) Would you agree that some of game-based items such as bank/inventory slots bought for gems should not be influenced by fluctuating exchange rate? If ‘no’, then why?

iii) It was mentioned previosuly that safety nets are implemented to keep the economy functioning accordingly. Would you agree with me that to some extend it would suggest “manipulating” the TP and/or it’s affiliations?

3) With regards to the loot roulette mechanic – i.e. loot rarity. What are some of the variables that influence loot rarity? Also, is the mathematics behind as simple as landing on a specific number between 1-10? If ‘no’, what is(are) the mechanic(s) involved with determining the loot rarity obtained?

4) With regards to game expansions. Is Anet working and/or planning to release more explorable zones? If ‘yes’, can you provide some information at this time?

5) Another 3 part question. From the player’s perspective, we feel that the DR/RNG mechanics are punishing us. It was mentioned previously that ANet is continuously working to improve this.

i) Is this primarily related to the TP?

ii) If so, why is there so much emphasis placed on the TP?

iii) Would I be wrong to assume that the TP is a major means of profit for ANet?

Didn’t we do this here for the last one as well?

And they dodged the important questions (or gave handwavy answers that didn’t actually mean anything). I don’t expect any better from their PR department this time around.

Engineers are doing crazy damage with both pistols and bombs, can we get an ETA on when a fix for this is coming?

Would ANet ever explain the philosophy behind weapon skills and traits so that players might understand the intent of the game design?

I feel a lot of player concerns or criticisms might be alleviated by a simple 101 as to how ANet wanted things to synergize or differentiate.

Illiander.8049:

Didn’t we do this here for the last one as well?

And they dodged the important questions (or gave handwavy answers that didn’t actually mean anything). I don’t expect any better from their PR department this time around.

You suggest we should make it even easier for them by not asking hard questions?

Most DE’s that I’ve experienced either reset automatically, or aren’t worth the effort that it would take a player to continually “keep the enemy at bay.” Is there a plan for further changes/enhancements to make staying in PvE without aimless wandering more beneficial?

I have two questions and they are very simple.

When will Anet actually address gross class imbalance?

- and-

Is Anet going to review the skill trees to help encourage more than cookie cutter builds you can pull up on Youtube?

This is a very key question to many players. This is especially noted in WvW and SPvP where you can easily spot the most imbalanced classes simply by the number of them you see.

There are several classes/builds that are well known to be over the top and very unbalanced in this game. This relegates many classes to uselessness in structured and world PVP events.

There are also many parts of the skill tree’s that are simply useless. Does Anet have any plans to make each skill tree as viable as any other? Or are players going to be forced to pick cookie cutter build A, B or C to be able to be part of WvW, SPvP and even most dungeon runs?

My question is:

Do you feel that measures taken against bots hit the average player base much more than intended? Wouldn’t it be possible to implement kind of Turing test so the normal players are not punished for playing (grinding) more than set amount of time?

I would very much like you to add this line to the DR-related question:

“As we all know, bots have ability to teleport at will between different locations. Meaning they can be easily set up to teleport through different zones every 10-15 minutes. And that essentially means DR never has any chance to hit them. With this in mind, why is DR still in game and what is the real purpose behind this mechanics?”

Thank you.

1.) Will the personal story continue in the coming expansions and, if so, are there any plans to have the biography choices we’ve made (particularly the choice of Order, but also others) affect how our future storyline progresses?

2.) Has feedback the writers have received about the personal story so far prompted any changes in thinking about how aspects of the story will be handled in the future?

Thanks.

Keep them Coming folks! i like what i see here

• Condition specs can be fun for some professions, but they definitely need work when it comes to doing group content with other condition-specc’ed players due to the stacks capping at 25. Conditions also fall flat when it comes to certain objects in the world, like the graveling burrows in AC and siege weapons in WvW— as in objects aren’t affected by conditions. Can we expect some improvements to conditions in the next big content update?

Updated current question selection with an attachment in the main post. Will continue to add as we go

All questions up to date in the attachment. Keep them coming

Liquid Swords.1740:

When a game expansion is realeased and the level cap is raised what are the plans with legendaries? Are they obsolete lvl 80 weapons or do they get thier stats bumped to lvl 90 or whatever the new expansion lvl will be?

They’ve already answered that. They said legendaries are meant to be best of the best and will be upgraded whenever something new comes out. For example when ascended weapons are finally released Legendaries will be upgraded to ascended stats.

fellyn.5083:

Liquid Swords.1740:

When a game expansion is realeased and the level cap is raised what are the plans with legendaries? Are they obsolete lvl 80 weapons or do they get thier stats bumped to lvl 90 or whatever the new expansion lvl will be?

They’ve already answered that. They said legendaries are meant to be best of the best and will be upgraded whenever something new comes out. For example when ascended weapons are finally released Legendaries will be upgraded to ascended stats.

Their answer addressed only the eq tier, not the level. And since they are now playing the “we might have suggested this, but we have never said this explicitly, so we didn’t break our word” game, what they didn’t say becomes also very important.

So, by their explanation it’s entirely possible that the Legendaries will become ascended/any new tier, but their level will not go up.

Is there any news on a DX11 mode for GW2?

-Condition builds in are basically nonexistant in endgame pve, since they do suffer heavily in both dynamic events and dungeons. Dynamic events because they do not tick fast enough to tag mobs when players heavily outnumber them, in dungeons they are generally frowned upon because they suffer heavy diminishing returns due to the stack limit makind more then one bleed stacker obsolete.

-Slightly related, bleed right now is the only condition worth building for. Burning and poison don’t increase in damage no matter how often you stack them, making them much worse in comparison. Will this be changed any time in the future, or will we have to stick with it so that condition builds won’t be overpowered in pvp?

-the ability to save and restore builds got lost in the transition to gw2, will this change?

- elite skills are heavily unbalanced right now. Warrior’s signet of rage is insanely strong for example(guaranteed untraited 50% uptime on 5 might, swiftness, and fury in a slot that doesn’t allow much else) while engineers might as well unbind their elite skill key (random comic relief effects on yourself are not in any way elite…), most of them do seem to be geared towards pvp and fall flat in pve. Could you consider allowing utility skills in their slot again?

I came up with another question and it regards Magic Find:

• Regardless of anyone’s opinion about bringing Magic Find items in a dungeon, I think anyone can agree that Magic Find only benefits the person who’s utilizing it and not their teammates. For example, I can bring a Guardian that has many defensive stats and abilities and they benefit my party by keeping us alive a little longer; while bringing a Warrior with offensive stats and abilities would benefit my party because stuff dies faster. However, bringing a Warrior or Guardian with Magic Find gear would only benefit those two and no one else in my party. If Magic Find is here to stay, then What is being done to Magic Find so the stat is more welcoming for group content?

I don’t like the idea of coming up with AMA questions ahead of time. That gives ANet the chance to look at these questions and have their PR people come up with answers ahead of time. The purpose of an AMA is to get impulsive, spontaneous, and off-the-cuff answers. Watered down, PR answers where you get answers to questions without the question being answered is not what people are looking for in AMAs.