Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, next week at PAX East GW2Guru has been given the opportunity to participate in a Q&A with Jonathan Sharp and Jon Peters!

We’re looking for questions that the community would like to see asked. If YOU have a question, feel free to post it here!

Will we ever get to choose our own skills?

Here’s one for JP: “Can you please increase the speed on the Necromancer Staff 1 Projectile?”
This has been the longest standing problem with that weapon, haha.

GW2, unfortunately, has some of the worst clipping & bulging armor of any MMO I’ve played. (example: the fat Norn & Charr leggings bulge unnecessarily almost a foot off their bodies. it’s AWFUL) with all the bug fixes we have had no visual fixes to the major armor issues that make Charr & Norn armor clunky, bloated & ugly looking. It’s not slight at all. it’s the most important visual aspect of the game: our characters.

Will we ever get visual fixes to armor?

Adding in New weapons vs adding old weapons to classes any thoughts or willing to give us any inside view on it?

I have a feeling they are going to make an official one for it in the next week but this may be merged into it.

Could we have a detailed dev blog about the continued work of ANet on adding skills mechanics & variety ?

You know, like the ones we used to have before release ……….

Will weapon skills ever see more variety, or are you (Anet) happy with the way they are currently, and have no plans on changing it?

By variety I mean optional skills. (2-3 options for skill #5, for example)

Pandeh.5248:

Will we ever get to choose our own skills?

On top of this question:

• Can they make it so it’s like in GW where you have to hunt the skills down, as opposed to just being given them? I guess this question could also apply to Traits, in the event we get new ones.

• Skill Depth: A lot of the GW skills meant you had to set up or wait for the right moment to use them effectively, as opposed to in GW2 where additional effects are applied automatically in most cases (Ranger Shortbow 1 + 5 come to mind as exceptions). For example, Glowing Ice would return energy if you used it on a target with a Water Magic Hex. If you were to introduce more skills, would you consider skills have effects like this, and not automatically applied conditions.

Some other questions:

• Lore: Will more lore be introduced? For example, the PoI’s. What makes them points of interest, as opposed to just random places on the map? While some are obvious (Pyre Fierceshot’s statue), others just seem to be dots on the map.

• Dungeons: Will we be getting more of the old dungeons back (kind of like Sorrow’s Furnace became Sorrow’s Embrace)?

• Ascended Armour and Weapons: As opposed to just getting them, what about a process like in GW1 (Get an item > take it to an NPC > they make with the magic and give you an item that you can use on your gear)?

• Precursor and Legendary Process: Any updates on the Precursor hunt? And are you happy with the current Legendary crafting process? Do you feel there could be anything you could do to improve it?

Will we ever get to drive the tanks/helicopters…?

Will we be getting a public test server so that we can all give feedback before we all get hit with a patch?

Stop making hats/caps/hoods remove hair.. and give a little flow to dresses etc lol

Can I come? Just tell me what meeting room you’ll be in.

Where are the minigames. For serious, I’ve waited 7 months for all the ones promised prior to launch.

any plans to improve the glicko rating system?

it has some pretty looming issues with ratings gaps and tier isolation. the wvw devs are mum, as if they dont think there are real issues.

Are there any plans for a PTS at all?

I would like to see Anet add more Legendaries effects in this March update

-Any plans of changing aggro so that stacking toughness actually imrpove survivability instead of diminishing it?
-Is a rework of the ranger class in the works or all we’ll get are minor buffs/fixes (like trait rework, moving traps out of critical/precision line etc)
-The new Trinity is here to stay? Or all classes should be equally viable in pve?
-Will we see more skill splitting or , to ensure consistency, classes that work very well in pvp will be bad in pve / vice-versa?
-Will expansions be available throug the gem store, or only reteailers?
-TP flipping, monopoly and artificially increasing prices. Here to stay as necessary evil in a community driven economy or plans for a fix?

What is the status of Guild Halls and the Home Instance? Anything going on that’s more than just ‘future plans’?

Any chance of HORROR elements in game that would be amazing actually feeling afraid to do a dungeon

• Will there ever be new WvW siege gear?
• Do you have any plans of having 4 unique maps for WvW instead of 2?
• Will there ever be content tailored to more than 5 people outside of the open world?
• Are there any plans for making the dragon world fights more interesting than giving them pedicures?
• Are we going to be able to infuse ascended amulets and accessories?
• Are you working on a system to allow for easier communication across the world?
• Are there going to be guild alliances?
• Will we see more weapon types implemented into the game?
• Will ascended items ever be craftable from crafting professions?
• Would you be interested in putting waypoints on the world map for world bosses that spawn?
• Will ranger spirits ever be able to take a sneeze from a monster and not die?
• Are there any more plans of holiday-themed events between now and Halloween?
• Are you working on new fractal dungeons?
• Will we be able to use more utilities or elites underwater, and if not will we get underwater-only abilities to compensate for the lost abilities?

Will you ever bring back hexes?

I mean, 25o years later and Tyria forgot how to hex?

Come on, bring them back.

This is a pvp or balance oriented interview, right?

My main question is:
- GW1 had a very fun, simple and streamlined character building system with a lot of depth behind. But for GW2, experimentation requires a small fee or loading times to teleport into the mists, a lot of dedication to get the right exotic/ ascended level of stats, involves several different mechanics (utility skills, traits) and even lacks a fun skill-hunting system. Is there any plans to improve, expand or streamline the current systems?

Secondary questions:
- Are there any plans to customize the weapon’s skill selection, or would that be troublesome for balancing?
- Any plans to change how elite skills work, how they are obtained, or even the possibility to swap them forother utility skills?
- Does the existence of conjure weapons for the elementalist means that they won’t ever get a greatsword, axe, etc weapon?
- What are your goals with conjure weapons?

When will you fix the TABULATION targeting system, to avoid targeting pets,mobs in WvW,and even ally ?

When will you fix left and right click on anything at 10m around our target,when we just want to roll camera ?

When will you fix the targeting lost for same reason ?

When will you fix your camera to not zoom 5 times in and out when you are near any bush or other ? Increase range view anytime soon ?

Could we hope a way to get any exotic nice skins weapons without pay cash shop or farming 1 year to craft only 1 weapon ? Same question for ascended accessory .

Why did you put karka island ?

Boss fight will have interest or strategy in near futur or staying a dodge fight brainless build ?

Will they expand horizontal progression through collecting special itens to craft glow effects for skins (like enchanted dyes that makes armor glow)?

Did Jon Peters forget that ranger class exists (Jon created this ranger update topic 5 months ago promising us a big ranger patch yet all we got was the troll Aquaman patch and pet icon fixes. The topic has 150 494+ views & 1249 replies on it, however Jon himself only replied 2 times there and was never seen again at ranger forums after that → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update) or is he just selectively passing them by?

Will they agree that the “No Holy Trinity” combat system is a failure or at least needs some improvement?

Without group roles the classes become generic everyman, great at nothing, so so at everything. Fights are a zerg fest and stale. Without class roles the fights cannot have phases or any sort of depth.

Since traits really lock you down to weapon sets, perhaps open up weapon swapping to also include simultaneous trait swap.

Something needs to be done.

Will there be added new armour sets in the forseeable future?

Or perhaps an option to hide more pieces of your equipment, like we currently can with head gear, shoulderpads and backpacks?

Not being able to hide my armour as a Norn kind of makes me sad, because I don’t get to see my tattoos.
It also goes for my Charr. I hardly ever get to see most of my fur, which is what makes Charr look so different from each other. The facial costumization is rather poor for Charr, so we kind of rely on our fur to not look like clones.

AoE cap; do you regret it, has it solved the problems you wanted it to, and are you happy with the (fairly negative) impact it’s had on WvW?

There is no counter in WvW to a huge blob of players BECAUSE of the AoE cap. Have Anet considered changes to damaging AoE to be do the most damage at it’s epicentre, reducing to almost nothing at it’s edges? This would limit the awfully boring “testicle-up” (i.e. all stack in a tight ball to spread damage) playstyle which is becoming prevalent for most guilds (and not only prevalent; optimal).

If the AoE cap is going to stay as it is, and AoE is simply being tuned downward, are Anet going to do anything to make WvW more than just a zergfest. Seriously Spreadsheet Vs Spreadsheet (i.e. biggest ball wins) is getting incredibly tedious. Are Anet happy with how WubWub has evolved or do they see the zerg as problem? (important: your playerbase sees it as a problem). Any thoughts/mechanics to address this?

WvW as it stands is becoming very, very stale. Apart from player-progression are there ANY plans to reinvigorate it? (more maps? Arenas in the maps for GvG? Environmental features such as the bushes in the halloween PvP map that could stealth and make for ambushes… etc etc etc). Would love to hear some of Anet’s ideas and thoughts on the current state of WubWub… all we ever hear about in “State of the game” videos is sPvP, and forgive me for saying this, but that’s only one feature of a massive game and the rest is starting to feel ignored.

Have fun at PAX chaps, quite jealous.

Purgatory.5296:

Will they agree that the “No Holy Trinity” combat system is a failure or at least needs some improvement?

Quoting this to echo it too. The removal of the trinity, or at the very least treat management tools is a major mistake IMHO. I don’t feel like I have a real role in this game and PvE is very shallow.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the guild I lead; PvE is dull as no matter how you dress it up you win by “Dodging out of red circles” and dealing damage. Every member has at some point uttered “I miss being a healer” or “I miss being a tank” etc etc.

It seems to me that removing the trinity is a reaction to grouping problems as opposed to removal of the trinity because the trinity as a mechanic is flawed.

What’s worse is groups running the game’s higher level content (high fractals, etc) are already asking for specific classes.

Could Anet give us their top three problems they’re solving next (after culling)?

Could Anet give us their top three features that are coming soon (after Leaderboards… we get it, they’re coming)?

GvG; is it coming? (I guess custom arenas are the pre-cursor to this? any eta on those?)

instead of summoning an Ice Bow, why not just let ele’s use bows?

What will be the requirements for Ascended Armor in the future? Tacking on additional material requirements (like Ectos) is cheap and not as fun as it should be.

WvW stuffs? i don’t play wvw much, but some ppl in my guild do a lot, so i thought i would ask.

will there be more living stories, or after this current one (flame & frost) will we end up waiting for an expansion? will the other areas of the world open up this year? would really like to explore the dwarven area, and maybe revisit the fire isles.

will there be mini missions that players can play, revisiting past lore events (like the GW1 ones with Master Togo, or Gwen, when she escaped the Charr camp)

will the “achievement minus 1” problem be fixed? i do not have 200 gold like i once did (it’s kind of a one-off achievement, i think, i don’t bank-roll the TP like others do).

moar town clothes

more clearly communicated goals for forums (besides the blog posts and wiki). every major change should have a top post, stating what/WHY it is being done. leaving it to player speculation results in possible hostile, then locked threads, angering it’s frequenters more. come out, and just post what’s going on!

Q1: Any chance that some weapons will be able to be dyed?

Q2: Your current system keeps a player in combat even if they`ve only been hit once & ten hours ago, as long as both players are still near each other. Will you ever put a proper timer on “Have not been hit for nth seconds, is out of combat”?

Q3: Pre-release you said you`d keep an eye on weapon swap for the Ele` & that was the last we heard of it. conjured weapons are next to zero use as are limited casts & also take up a much more valuable utility slot. Saying getting out of combat is fine, but your system doesn`t always let a player do that.

Will male cof medium shoulderpads ever display correctly with the rest of the armor?

Are speed runs of dungeons part of working as intended or are they something that was unexpected and just easier to leave as is than rock the boat?

Is there any chance of either one toning down the high burst profession, giving less burst based profession access to burst builds, or improving the sustained damage to remove this overall perception (true or not) that burst is always better then sustained damage.

Oh, i can’t wait to read another interview full of “we are awesome, game is awesome, everything is awesome, we are going to add such awesome thing… We don’t even know what or when, but it will be awesome! And yes, there’s still 1 or 2 minor things like bugs and broken mechanics but they’re still awesome!”

Pandeh.5248:

Will we ever get to choose our own skills?

This this this and this is the only thing that matters. Also, free allocation of traits would significantly increase build versatility.

Vorch.2985:

Where are the minigames. For serious, I’ve waited 7 months for all the ones promised prior to launch.

would be amazing if we could play Poker and bet in game gold. At least you’d have more things to do in LA than be AFK

Raid frames for squads? Yes? Please? Running large teams in WubWub is painful.

Why can’t they just answer these questions here?

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Why can’t they just answer these questions here?

Indeed.

They have a community team that could quite easily gather these kinds of questions weekly in a thread, take the top 10 and post the answers on the blog. But, narp, we’re expected to throw random Qs at a fellow community member on the hope they get more than 15 minutes at a conference.

All my questions pertain to the PvE side of the game.

1-: Will weapons ever be dye-able like in the original Guild Wars?

2-: Will we ever be able to cosmetically mix and match the different armor skin classes to create even more unique looks in compensation for the lack of armor skins currently in-game and allow for even more customization of heroes.

3-: Will there ever be profession specific armors that could not be transmuted to use with another profession?

4-: Will capes ever be implemented?

5-: Will there be more town clothes?

6-: Will the Cities be made to feel more “alive” then they do now? As in will there be more unique vendors, mini games, and/or in city events?

7-: Will the home instances be more customizable to make it feel more like player housing like other MMORPGS? Examples would be like unique trophies you could gain from dungeons, world events, and/or accomplishing certain achievements so you have some thing to show for your hard work journeying and adventuring through Tyria.

8-: Will more weapon types be added to the game? Examples being like Battle Axes, Fist Weapons, Spears for land use, and/or Whips?

Could you describe how your team goes about identifying and improving on skills that are either too powerful or too weak or boring? How did you come up with the recent changes to Mesmer GS and Scepter weapon skills for example?

Will Rangers ever get to stow their pet, i mean jumping puzzles, certain dungeons we need to be able to put it away permanently…

Will rangers ever get to steal back our poison skills off the thieves?

Will Rangers Spirits ever be worked to be team useful or new skills added to be team useful

Will Engineer ever get a damage boost to elixir gun and flamethrower…

I enjoy running dungeons with friends and even PUGs but are there any plans to allow story mode dungeons and the final one in the personal story to be soloable? The story mode dungeons focus around your character’s interactions with Destiny’s Edge and needing to have others following along dilutes that. This applies even moreso with the personal story. The previous PS chapters don’t require grouping and storymode dungeons are one shot deals so why can’t we solo them?

When will we get new armor sets? When we do, will we get more pant options?

Parthis.2091:

Purgatory.5296:

Will they agree that the “No Holy Trinity” combat system is a failure or at least needs some improvement?

Quoting this to echo it too. The removal of the trinity, or at the very least treat management tools is a major mistake IMHO. I don’t feel like I have a real role in this game and PvE is very shallow.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the guild I lead; PvE is dull as no matter how you dress it up you win by “Dodging out of red circles” and dealing damage. Every member has at some point uttered “I miss being a healer” or “I miss being a tank” etc etc.

It seems to me that removing the trinity is a reaction to grouping problems as opposed to removal of the trinity because the trinity as a mechanic is flawed.

What’s worse is groups running the game’s higher level content (high fractals, etc) are already asking for specific classes.

And everyone in my guild says the exact opposite, most of us saying we’d never play a trinity role again…ever. If they put a trinity in this game, I’d leave. It’s a terrible, lousy, lazy, contrived device that other people like because it’s easy to know what you’re doing. There’s plenty of synergy and roles in Guild Wars 2 combat, if you’re playing with a guild particularly. It’s a lot harder on pugs I’d wager.

This is just a comment to let Jon Peters know that some of us really despise the trinity and not having it here is one of the reasons we play Guild Wars 2.

1.- Will you ever fix/buff the necromancer?
2.- Can you remove the annoying scream made by a female Sylvari (the one that sound like an oooooooooooooh made by a mentally challenged person)?
3.- Will you add more “cultural” armors (I hate human clothes on my Silvary)?
4.- What the heck are the Anet Points for?
5.- Will you stop fixing bugs on the mesmer to fix bugs from other professions?

When will ascended items be available in WvW?
Are new WvW maps being worked on?
Is the NA Tier 8 WvW situation being discussed?
Is the increasing skill lag in WvW being looked at?
Higher level fractals are quite unrewarding is anything being done to make the rewards on a par with dungeons?
When will ascended backpieces be available other than via fractals?
Is anything being done to address the issues small guilds have with guild missions?
Are you considering expanding the weapon types available to all classes.
Why are the clothing options available in the gem shop so poor? Will you make more armor and weapon skins available through the gem shop?

Are there any planned changes for the Town Clothing system such that use of gear/clothing for purely cosmetic reasons is actually seen in game be it just in town areas or in the game world at large?

Purgatory.5296:

Will they agree that the “No Holy Trinity” combat system is a failure or at least needs some improvement?

Without group roles the classes become generic everyman, great at nothing, so so at everything. Fights are a zerg fest and stale. Without class roles the fights cannot have phases or any sort of depth.

.

I couldn’t disagree more. This is merely “your” opinion. One could argue being forced into a hearler or tank roleis EXTREMELY limiting. I am so glad that dated way of thinking is NOT in this game. There are plenty of other MMO’s that cater to that mindset. No more waiting for tanks and healers that hold the rest of the group to randsom. You have the ability to tailor your character to how you see fit. If you want to be tanky, there is nothing stopping you changing up your weapons, armour, runes and utilities to do so. Seriously, think out of the box!