Guild Wars 2

Edit – I originally created this Thread because the “I hate Anet” comments in This Thread was approaching critical mass rather quickly and I was sure it was going to be locked. Since that seems to have cooled down, atleast a little bit, This thread is no longer relevant for now. I would go read that one starting with This Post

TL;DR : ……You should probably read the whole post. Its all important.

My Thoughts on PvE consumables (and enviromental weapons in general…)
- They should exist as rewards for completing events, and they should exist to enhance your overall experience when playing the game, but not so much as to make the game go easier as to let you faceroll the keyboard all over the place.

- For example, Many people look at the jar of bees and don’t even give it a second look after that. I like it because when I am fighting 5-8-10+ enemies at a time, that almost pathetic amount of extra damage per second (’bout 50 or so) actually helps out a little, but its still weak, and not so powerful that I can throw it, forget about it, and expect a couple hundred honey bees to kill the enemies on their own (which would be an awesome idea for a Ranger pet, by the way…..)

- I also like to use Skale Venom, mainly for the weakness, because Rangers have very little access to it. Even though it can’t be stacked with and replaces your utility nourishment (sharpening stone, etc.), I do think it is kind of powerful, since you can endlessly stack weakness on an enemy for 10 straight minutes, and it does kind of make all non-critical hits 50% less effective (which makes it alot more powerful than pretty much anything else that can go in the Utility nourishment slot). I can literally stand infront of some champions, and me and my pet(I do main a Ranger), can just attack all day with no fear of ever dying.
This Item should probably be more like the Thief’s old Skale Venom Skill, just slightly buffed so any profession can take advantage of it, but not so powerful that everything becomes a trivial walk in the park, so that way if we do have the item, we have to be smart about how to use it.

- One recent discovery that I found was the Medical Pack and the more powerful Medical Kit. I haven’t found a use for it yet, and while it will always be weaker than an Engineer’s own Med Kit(when traited), its neat to know that it exists, and when there are no other players around in the most desolate parts of the game world, I can get some very fast energency healing if I need it.

- and…, guys, Lets face it, the Fire Elemental Powder let you get way too powerful. When 50-100+ players all use it at once, it allows you to stack might endlessly, and make even the toughest battles a trivial exercise in boredom. While the reason the fix was put in place was to fix server performance, I think that nerfing player’s abilities to yawn their way past everything is a very beneficial side effect. And, it wasn’t removed from the game, just given a nice long cooldown. If you coordinate when you bring out your fire elementals and ogre pets (10-20 players at a time instead of all at once), you can still stomp a mudhole in tequatl in a very short amount of time, with zero issues.

- The problem with all of these items is that, many of them aren’t well balanced. Some are very powerful, like the Fire Elemental Powder. Others don’t really justify the 30 minute cooldown, like the Mortar Seed Turret. Others of these consumable items are kind of Balanced, like the Medical Kit item I mentioned, and others are so weak, or have so little use, I wonder why they even exist at all, like the Hylek Blowgun.

….

A FEW SUGGESTIONS TO ANET.
-Instead of putting band-aids on them, and calling these items bugs that should have never existed, I would like to make the suggestion that you give ALL of these items a pass, look at them, and balance them out (cooldowns, power levels, etc), with themselves, player skills, and other enviromental weapons that already exist out there laying around.
-Instead of leaving many of them in the game as nearly worthless items, actually make (all of) them a functioning part of the game that players would actually want to seek out and use in the right situations.

• Some Items that give Enviromental weapons like the Hylek Blowgun could be expanded to include 5 skills instead of 3, so it is useful as an actual weapon that every player and class has access to, instead of of being a cool distraction.

- All of these consumables should probably have a cooldown as well, balanced for what it can do, so that way they can’t be taken advantage of. If you bring out the Hylek Blowgun, only to drop it for something else, you should have to wait 10 seconds(weapon swap cooldown), or longer up to a minute or two before you are allowed to use the item again.

- If you really don’t want us using and stacking as many of these as possible, then give us 2 Consumable slots just above the Endurance bar on our interface that can be switched out freely out of combat. Let us continue to use Utility nourishments and Foods unhindered, but disable the ability to use other combat related consumables from our inventory. Instead, make us decide which ones we want to use in combat so that way we actually have to think about what we use, instead of just using everything at once.

-Yes,…since all professions have access to them, it would be difficult to balance them all in just the right way, but since they are PVE only, and most of them can’t be used in dungeons anyways, there 2/3’s of the work already done. No need to balance for WvW or PvP!

In conclusion…..
Anet, Enviromental weapons were one of the reasons why I bought this game, I read your original blog post on it years ago, and thought that was AWESEOME that I could pick up all sorts of items laying around and use them. Whoever thought to make some enviromental weapons consumables was a freaking genius because enviromental weapons change depending on location in the game world, and its nice to be able to take some of them with you to other places. I really enjoy little extra things like this when I play games, and I would very much like for them to stay in the game as useful items.

Anyone else have thoughts or want to add on to this?

Moved my suggestion to this issue from the other thread:

A long term solution for this and other things, something to work on over time, could be an optional and more prioritized culling.

Enemies always visible
Players in party always visible
Guildmates and friends more likely to be visible than others
Everyone else less likely to be visible

Go to escape ? settings ? graphics ? Enable culling. What is and isn’t visible is determined by FPS- it optimized to put you at 20-30 fps, or an fps you choose. Removes players and non-aggressive NPCs as necessary

That would pretty much render this issue moot, as players can turn it on and no longer worry about lag from too many objects on the screen.

I’d like to add that I used the ember in RP, and wouldn’t mind getting a mini in exchange for all the powders I currently own.