Guild Wars 2

HoT is not going to change anything, all it does is try to cure the symptoms rather than the cause.

Before I get to the real core of the problem I will also point out 3 other problems.
If you don’t want to read that go to part 2.

Part 1

1) the races – why are there 5 races? Why, tell me why? It makes to difference which race you play except visual. You know I probably did not play every game where you can select your race, but each one I did play did make some difference depending on the race you select. I even played old 2D 16bit which had such things.
Don’t believe me? “Ninja Turtles” – well that wouldn’t be different race but each character differed a bit. Most notably each had a different special attack.
So what are they for? The recial skills which hardly anyone uses?
Because they are all bad except maybe the Sylvari Elite “Take Root.”
Or maybe the story? Well thats problem 2.
2) Yes the story makes no sense. Why? Because we constantly resolve disputes between others. Really? Are we not facing the apocalypse? And instead of getting all together on their own, they need us to convince them to do so. The 3 orders, the 5 leaders of each race and Destiny’s Edge. Or if it isn’t that then someone is just caring about his own interests instead of the greater good. Like Caudecus, the LA council or Phlunt. More over some of the situations were absurd, I think the dumbest was the escape from LA. Not only did the council not listen despite suffering 2 major attacks before, but the best was when Scarlet attacked with the miasma.
Can anyone explain to me why we were evacuating civilians each time the miasma thined? I mean once it got thick enough we had to run or else we would die.
So how did any civilians survive? They learned not to breathe? LA should have looked like an etermination camp from WW2 – there should be bodies everywhere not survivors.
3) Why do we level up? We get scaled down anywhere we go so it makes no difference if there were 80, 200, 30, or no levels at all. It makes the feeling of making progress rather dull. We may as well just have item rarity while rest i.e. attributes and traits unlocked from the start and it would be all the same. In the original GW there were only 20 levels, but the difference was that most of the areas there were for those that are level 20. While only a few like the “noob islands” were for those under level 20.
Here however most of the areas are for those under level 80 while only a few for level 80. That is why we have this scaling system as the “noob island” is now the majority of the game rather than just the warm up.

Part 2

There are 2 things which cause the core of the problem:
1) THERE IS NO SYNERGY! Yes SYNERGY for which the original Guild Wars was famous for. Don’t even try to tell me that stacking Might is synergy coz it’s not.
Thats only a way for pseudo-pros to get hard by getting big numbers on their display.
Who think hitting for 10k once every 20 sec is better than hitting for 2k each sec.
Many skills in GW had synergy with one another, there was class synergy and multi-class synergy.
An example of class synergy would be “Searing Flames” the Elementalist elite which caused burning on foes and fire damage on all foes that are already burning.
So it had synergy with “Mark of Rodgort” an Elementalist hex which caused all foes that took fire damage to burn, which removed the problem of reapplying burning and thus “Searing Flames” delt damage every time.
Then there was also Glyph of Immolation which instantly applied burning by your next spell thus “Searing Flames” delt damage on it’s first use.
Or you could do both to make it even more effective. And then other synergetic skills like Fire Attunement, Glowing Gaze, Aura of Restoration etc.
Now multi-class synergy – what I mean by that is skills from different classes working well together for mutual benefit. Like the Rangers “Winter” which created the “Spirit of Winter” which converted all elemental damage into cold damage. It had synergy with the Mesmers “Mantra of Frost” which redused all cold damage the user took and gave energy each time the user got hit by cold damage. (This combination was used in the elite mission “Domain of Anguish” which is why the team build was dubbed “Frostway”) Or “Spinal Shivers” a Necromancer hex which caused the target to be interrupted every time he took cold damage.
Another example is the Nectomancer hex “Mark of Pain” which did nothing to the foe hexed with it but delt armour-ignoring damage to nearby foes if the foe hexed with it took physical damage. So it had synergy with a Warriors “Hundred Blades” which delt AoE slashing damage combined with “Whirlwind Attack”. As Hundred Blades would srike for each foe hit by Whirlwind Attack and thus Mark of Pain would cause massive damage. Same was for the Dervish “Vow of Strength” in combination with “Eremite’s Attack”.
Now I could go on and on but you probably get what I mean. We do not have such skill synergy here in GW2. And thus we will never have such class cooperation, which I would like to point out is quite hypocritical. The story constantly asks us to make others cooperate and yet we can’t even get our skills to do so.

2) There is no failure – we cannot fail at all. How do you expect anything to be challanging if we can’t fail no matter what, but simply try and try again untill we get it right. In the original GW if the whole party died during a mission be it normal or elite you had to redo the whole thing. There were also other factors often like an NPC you had to keep alive. If we had this then maybe some people would start using some other stats besides berserker. But obviously we are past the era where challange in gaming is no longer a common thing, but only rarely appears in games like “Dark Souls”. Now we are back to the “Ursanway” build which got nerfed in GW only now it’s called “Zerker”. Yeah something that was considered bad in the original is now ok in the sequel.

So yeah these are the causes why GW2 is so bad right now – no synergy and no failiure as without it there is no challange.

To each his own I guess, but I’m looking forward to playing new class specialization sand the new maps. So to me it’s not useless.

It simply sounds like you don’t like the game. That’s fine. But I don’t think any of your points are a fault in the game. It’s your perceptual bias. Your opinion. I suggest finding a game that suits you better.

this is not Gw1
class-synergy got replaced with player-synergy.
one puts down combo fields, the other finishes it.
One cc’s a target, the others focus their burst.

The combat system is way faster, but less complex, something that many people actually enjoy, so what you consider as problem, is a strength of this title for others.

And beyond that you have class-unique buffs or builds that excel in a particular supportive way.

warrior-banners: class-unique, and buff everyone.
ranger-spotter: class-unique and bolster everyone
elementalist cleansing myst: additional heal, stackable with regen and other passive class-heals (like backpack regenerator from engis)

And runes / sigils also add a new layer of class-synergy and support.
Defender runes f.e.: If a whole group runs them, one guardian F3 is enough to heal everyone for 4k, regardless if they have access to aegis in their builds or not.
This combo will get even more powerful with the upcomming changes to engi, where they get a minor trait in the inventions-line that aoe-cleanses 1 condi if using a healing skill (which defender runes bonus 6 counts as), and also gets regen when cleansing condis from the second minor.

so if you have 1 guardian and 4 engis, the guardian just has to press F3 while under aoe-fire, so the whole group gets healed for 4k, looses 4 condis, stacks up regen like crazy and gets granted a second aegis right after, which ten will stack up even more regen.

There is complexity in this game, for those who want to min-max everything, while the combat system in itself is fast paced and easy to pick up.

Your problem is that you loved Gw1 and can’t accept that there will never be a true sequel to it. Yes, this is a shame, but moving on and trying out new ways has served Gw2 rather good so far, even tho we still have issues in the game… they are just not there where you imply them.

Long bug-lists and skippable /stackable dungeons, this is what really hurts the PvE part of the game, along with a general class-balancing, focused solely on PvP…

Don’t get me wrong, I love PvP and WvW, but balancing 3 game-modes around a single one sounds already like a bad idea, even if you don’t have any clue about Gw2 or MMO’s in general.

Ralanost.8913:

It simply sounds like you don’t like the game. That’s fine. But I don’t think any of your points are a fault in the game. It’s your perceptual bias. Your opinion. I suggest finding a game that suits you better.

Im with Ralanost on this

Arantheal.7396:

this is not Gw1

This. The main part of your angst seems to be that the classes don’t synergize enough, but in GW1 you were never solo, as in, on your own without other players or heroes/henchmen. You could build around team synergy. GW2 is a totally different game. It’s an actual MMO for a start and not an instanced game, so there are times when you will need to be completely alone. Having skills that don’t do anything for you personally whilst solo makes no sense.

Absolutely.

Why indeed have level ups? New players should be able to instantly equip max level gear.
Why scale us down? How dare you try to let content designed for lower levels continue to be challenging to level 80s. This is not some game we play, we just want to insta-acquire everything.
Why would you ever put selfish personalities in the story?! People never put themselves above others, or try to take advantage of a terrible situation to strengthen or further their own position, or increase their wealth. During the wars, companies didn’t manufacture weapons and sell them to invading countries for profit at all!
Exactly! Why are we constantly evacuating civilians? Why not let them all be dead after the first iteration of the event? If players weren’t online and in the area immediately after the update that brought that event, they should not be able to play it. I mean seriously, what it this, a game?
And the different races being the same! It’s just terrible. I mean who of us knows anyone that picked a particular race for a particular class purely for styles or the animation differences?

(Tried to type serious response. Couldn’t do it. [This part isn’t sarcastic.])

Impact.2780:

Absolutely.

Why indeed have level ups? New players should be able to instantly equip max level gear.
Why scale us down? How dare you try to let content designed for lower levels continue to be challenging to level 80s. This is not some game we play, we just want to insta-acquire everything.
Why would you ever put selfish personalities in the story?! People never put themselves above others, or try to take advantage of a terrible situation to strengthen or further their own position, or increase their wealth. During the wars, companies didn’t manufacture weapons and sell them to invading countries for profit at all!
Exactly! Why are we constantly evacuating civilians? Why not let them all be dead after the first iteration of the event? If players weren’t online and in the area immediately after the update that brought that event, they should not be able to play it. I mean seriously, what it this, a game?
And the different races being the same! It’s just terrible. I mean who of us knows anyone that picked a particular race for a particular class purely for styles or the animation differences?

(Tried to type serious response. Couldn’t do it. [This part isn’t sarcastic.])

I wanted to say all this, Impact did it better than I could ever have done it.

Every point you tried making here was just ignorant, op. This post ruined my day

I stopped reading after the completely ridiculous concept about races. Now OP this may come as a shock to you, but there are people out there complaining that there are no new races in HoT. It’s an actual complaint. Thus some people must want new races and a new race would solve at least some of THEIR problems. Here’s how I read your post.

I don’t think this stuff is important, it won’t fix it for me, so therefore it solves nothing.

This is my answer to your post. It solves nothing for you. There are several things in HoT that will solve things for me, and for other players I’ve talked to as well.

People should learn to talk for themselves.

Rikimaru.7890:

There are 2 things which cause the core of the problem:

1) THERE IS NO SYNERGY!

My opinion: this is not a problem.

Rikimaru.7890:

2) There is no failure – we cannot fail at all. How do you expect anything to be challanging if we can’t fail no matter what, but simply try and try again untill we get it right.

Yes we can fail, because thats why we have to try it then again.

It seems you want, that failure has much more negative consequences to players.

Rikimaru.7890:

So yeah these are the causes why GW2 is so bad right now – no synergy and no failiure as without it there is no challange.

That is an interesting opinion. But I don’t share that opinion.

The only useful sentence was this one:

no failiure as without it there is no challange.

This is one very important thing for me when playing games.

Part 1
1. Races, they made races equal for the sole purpose of not making specific races REQUIRED to play a specific profession. Racial skills are intentionally weak. Races change the appearance and the story you experience, and that’s good enough.

2. The story is about us (the players) bringing Tyria together against the common threat. If you paid attention to the story you’d realize that the races, the orders and Destiny’s Edge aren’t at good terms with each other and it’s up to us to resolve their differences. Not to mention at the beginning the player is a random nobody that first needs to make a name for themselves.

3. Only the pre-80 zones are nothing like the noob island of GW1 BECAUSE you are downleveled. Downleveling allows players to experience content on all levels without making it super easy (starting zones aside). As for the progression part, you get new traits and skills while leveling, and also become better yourself. The player plays a much more important role in the game than your “build”

Part 2
Synergy
There is a lot of synergy between classes in GW2, if you want to optimize your runs. There is a reason Elementalists, Thieves, Guardians and Warriors are more needed than the others, they provide excellent synergy with each other. Obviously someone who hasn’t done any optimizing like the OP wouldn’t know anything about synergy because it’s hardly ever REQUIRED. But it’s there.

Also, look at the GvG team builds and how well they work together, buffs, debuffs, stability, etc proper composition is needed in GvG and players spent quite some time learning the “best” set-ups".

Same for sPVP, the difference between a team of randoms and a team that with great synergy is huge.

So yeah we got a GW1 fan with rose-tint glasses posting his opinion while having zero knowledge of the mechanics GW2, zero knowledge of builds in GW2, spent zero time building his characters himself (or theorycrafting) and in general doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Let me guess, in GW1 you only followed PVX wiki and facerolled through everything?

1. How dare Arenanet implement customization! I don’t want to have a multitude of diverse perspectives on the game world. I just want to run around as a human like guild wars 1 and only see things from that angle.

2. The story doesn’t make sense! Why aren’t all these diverse nations that were, until recently, generally at eachother’s throats not just lining up to automatically trust and work with eachother. That’s totally not like reality at all.

3. Why do we level up? Why can’t I run into a beginner zone and just one shot everything, allowing myself to have fun for thirty seconds, before I realize what a giant waste of time that was? I should be able to deprive other low level characters of their heart progress because I’m destroying everything in sight!

Part 2

1. I’m completely forgetting about the synergy examples like blast finishers needed to stack affects in the first place.

2. (without sarcasm) I can actually kind of agree with this but they took out group story questing so it’s kind of irrelevant. This argument, however, doesn’t apply to dungeons because by their very nature you must try and try again until you succeed.

To your 2nd part:

Point 1: I agree. Most skills are just of their own and don’t bear the synergy it should’ve. There is no complex rotation that we even in WoW have. Of course there are a couple of ‘synergies’ like Blood is Power/Deadly Swarm and some rotations to stack buffs and stuff, but it’s never at a level of gw1 or other MMOs.

Point 2: Only half true: Only a couple of elite missions had this erronous mechanic. If you remember the dungeons introduced with Eye of the North had respawn points. Also, it’s a kittenty mechanic to artificially raise the difficulty. I see no point in this and it was only frustrating.

Rikimaru.7890:

1) the races – why are there 5 races? Why, tell me why? It makes to difference which race you play except visual.

I’ll assume you don’t play a lot of video games, particularly not ones with competitive aspects (with the exception being asymmetric multiplayers games which you might want to look into, seems more your thing). The races are designed to be only (or mostly in this case since you do have racial abilities) visually distinct because if they didn’t do so mechanically they’d limit how people play (i.e. is someone wants an Asura Warrior… Oops no Norn are the strongest, got to choose Norn or everyone will shout at you in LFG).

Rikimaru.7890:

Can anyone explain to me why we were evacuating civilians each time the miasma thined? I mean once it got thick enough we had to run or else we would die.
So how did any civilians survive? They learned not to breathe? LA should have looked like an etermination camp from WW2 – there should be bodies everywhere not survivors.

Ludo-narrative dissonance. It one of those things people do to make the game more fun. Unless you wanted the Escape from LA to be a single non-repeating event?

Rikimaru.7890:

3) Why do we level up? We get scaled down anywhere we go so it makes no difference if there were 80, 200, 30, or no levels at all.

I assume you haven’t played GW2 too much. There’s a big difference between a level 80 in a level 10 map then a level 10 in a level 10 map. The scaling is also a very good system (although I do think it could scale a bit more…), since it means that you don’t out-level content. This is what happens in games like WoW, you level up and the content becomes dull and boring since you’re one-shot-ing everything. Friends can’t really play together if the one is at max level etc.

Rikimaru.7890:

1) THERE IS NO SYNERGY!

Yes there is, why do you think people kept complaining that Necros don’t have support skills? Certain group make-up do increase group effectiveness, which I do believe is the meaning of synergy, 1 + 1 = 3. Sometimes a class might sacrifice individual ability to boost group ability but again that is synergy.
And although hardly ever used, there is the combo system.

Rikimaru.7890:

Don’t even try to tell me that stacking Might is synergy coz it’s not.

But by definition it is. The entire groups effectiveness is raised past the sum of it’s parts.

Rikimaru.7890:

Many skills in GW had synergy with one another, there was class synergy and multi-class synergy.
[snip]
Now multi-class synergy – what I mean by that is skills from different classes working well together for mutual benefit.
[snip]
Now I could go on and on but you probably get what I mean. We do not have such skill synergy here in GW2.

I think I get what you mean, you want a far more restrictive system in which only specific abilities and specific classes work well together and people who don’t play those classes can… reroll I guess?
Have you ever heard of ‘bring the player not the class’. It’s a thing that came up in WoW. The problem was that they had very strong class synergies, so some classes simply weren’t optimal and were thus kicked to the side. The design idea was to ensure that classes have similar capacities to contribute to the group, so that no one would be discriminated against because of their group. Granted GW2 isn’t exactly there (i.e. Necros and very little support) but I definitely prefer a system by which I’m not kicked out of a group for playing a necro or a ranger.
So to each their own.

Rikimaru.7890:

2) There is no failure – we cannot fail at all. How do you expect anything to be challanging if we can’t fail no matter what, but simply try and try again untill we get it right.

Your idea of failure is odd. Especially since you used the words ‘simply try and try again’. If we can’t fail then why do we need to try again, doesn’t the very idea inherently imply a failure. Unless you want rogue-like elements such as perma-death so that failure is permanent. I like being able to fail and try again. Judging by the popularity of games such as the souls series other people also like to fail and try again. Mind you I do think GW2 would definitely use a massive difficulty spike in it’s content (again soul-series) but that doesn’t mean you can’t fail.

That’s your opinion. Here is mine.

Part 1

1) Race are purely cosmetic. It’s not a problem it’s a design choice and I like it. When you give special advantage to different race you push people into using certain race with certain class. Everybody want to be an human as a mage because it have a special magic bonus, everybody want to be a Orc as a warrior because of the strength bonus, etc. You end up with everybody have the same class/race combo and everybody that doesn’t is at a disadvantage. Both choice have some strength and weakness. GW2 give us more liberty for witch profession we want, while the ’’usual’’ system give more immersion since it make more sense to be a bad warrior when you are a tiny ball of fur.

2) Yes because everytime there is a problem the whole word come together and stop fighting in real life right? World hunger, climate change, WW2, Cold War. We always see the big danger, acknowledge it and then band together to fix it. Human nature is nice like that. For the second part of this point, it’s a video game and it come with weakness that you need to work around that can force you make illogical story telling. You need to make your game replayable, especially since it’s a mmo. You gonna defend that merchant several times, you gonna kill that boss several times, you gonna do that dungeon several times. Do you really think that GW2 is the first game that make you do stuff several times over for replayability?

3) I agree that they could have keep the max level to 80. Hell, they could have put zero level, I would be fine with it. Be the scaling system is far better than the usual MMO system. AC is one of the most popular dungeon and it would be long forgotten if there was no scaling system. It allow content to not become obsolete, which is a big deal.

Part 2

1) I don’t see that as a problem, at least not a big problem. It would be a nice addition to the current game for sure. I would love to see that, but it’s not a problem right now.

2) I kind of agree with that. I see too much bad players using zerker because they gonna rally in the fight anyway. But again the game was marketed from the start as a casual game for casual. I want to have a hard time in a game and the almost 3 years old content of GW2 is pretty easy for me and lot of people. But I also know a lot of people that have a hard time with the game and if failure was more dramatic, they would probably quit the game. Remember that hardcore game are niche game that sell rarely several millions copies. I would prefer if Anet took a more challenging path, but I can understand why they made the game more casual.

First of all, none of your points are really a problems into the game, just random opinions of yours.

1 – Races are ther for lore content and for a variety of branch choices into the personal history of the game. And it fill the fucntion of variety of choice for player preferences (I love to play as asura, I wouldn’t even play the game if it only had humans).

2 – First take some GD narative/writing lessons before judgin by “Your preferences”. Gw2 does indeedly have some holes to fill, but the personnal history was greatly and well done built-in the game. Living story was a experiment, and had some tecnical problems, but they advanced a lot in season 2.

3 – Because of progression. If you never designed a game, you probably don’t understand how important is progression into a game. You don’t put Mario in the lava castle at start of the game, and so, you don’t put your gw2 started character on the same level of end mobs like dragon champions. Your character need to progress into some way, and levelling is ther eonly for that purporse. It is not meant to be a hardcore number increasing chase. It is there only to have a sense of skill progression.

You raise some interesting points. However, many people play the game despite your perceived flaws and many others as well.

That’s not to say I think you’re wrong.

I may be in the minority here, but I am against there being only five races. Don’t get me started on HoT not having the Tengu either. Incorporating GW1 lore, the birds and the Centaurs easily could have been added into the game.

The more choices we have, even if they are cosmetic only, the more variety our world has.

Rikimaru.7890:

2) There is no failure – we cannot fail at all. How do you expect anything to be challanging if we can’t fail no matter what, but simply try and try again untill we get it right. In the original GW if the whole party died during a mission be it normal or elite you had to redo the whole thing. There were also other factors often like an NPC you had to keep alive. If we had this then maybe some people would start using some other stats besides berserker. But obviously we are past the era where challange in gaming is no longer a common thing, but only rarely appears in games like “Dark Souls”. Now we are back to the “Ursanway” build which got nerfed in GW only now it’s called “Zerker”. Yeah something that was considered bad in the original is now ok in the sequel.

What?? Many events can fail. You can fail to kill Tequatl. You can fail SW vinewrath. And yes, if you fail you can just try again. But you try again from the beginning of the event, ie you redo the whole thing. What are you expecting? That if a group fails to kill Tequatl, then all participants will permanently die and their characters get deleted?? Or maybe the whole sparkfly fen will become infested with mobs and become inaccessible

And there are many escort and defending events in the game. I’m not sure why you say there’s nothing like keeping NPCs alive

HoT is removing hobosacks, op’s argument is invalid.

Lightingale.6502:

Rikimaru.7890:

2) There is no failure – we cannot fail at all. How do you expect anything to be challanging if we can’t fail no matter what, but simply try and try again untill we get it right. In the original GW if the whole party died during a mission be it normal or elite you had to redo the whole thing. There were also other factors often like an NPC you had to keep alive. If we had this then maybe some people would start using some other stats besides berserker. But obviously we are past the era where challange in gaming is no longer a common thing, but only rarely appears in games like “Dark Souls”. Now we are back to the “Ursanway” build which got nerfed in GW only now it’s called “Zerker”. Yeah something that was considered bad in the original is now ok in the sequel.

What?? Many events can fail. You can fail to kill Tequatl. You can fail SW vinewrath. And yes, if you fail you can just try again. But you try again from the beginning of the event, ie you redo the whole thing. What are you expecting? That if a group fails to kill Tequatl, then all participants will permanently die and their characters get deleted?? Or maybe the whole sparkfly fen will become infested with mobs and become inaccessible

And there are many escort and defending events in the game. I’m not sure why you say there’s nothing like keeping NPCs alive

Permadeath… GW2: Hardcore Rage QQ Edition.

Actually. It would be interesting to have an MMO with an optional permadeath functionality (I’m thinking of Diablo’s hardcore mode). There would have to be stipulations such as PvE only, but it’s something to think about it.

I’m reminded of the WoW WotLK Iron Man challenges:

• Common items only
• No Dungeons
• No Crafting
• No PvP
• No Help
• First one to 80 without dying wins

Translation: I hate everything because it’s not GW1 and it doesn’t cater to only me.

CodeHavoc.7926:

Translation: I hate everything because it’s not GW1 and it doesn’t cater to only me.

this.

so tired of the mopey nostalgia. GW1 exists…go play it.

rikimaru if you dont like the game JUST DONT PLAY IT!

You know whats funny? I didn’t think HoT was meant to fix any problems. I was thinking it was to provide new content, like other expansions do. Sure, its seriously adjusting traits, but its also providing elite specializations, a new class, new areas, etc, and perhaps thus only a small part is for doing any mechanics or balance fixes for the rest of the game.

You only mention core game features there, if you don’t like those things you should try another game. As I understand the game stands by some rules and principles and those won;t change with HoT. HoT will only add some new mechanics, “classes”, challenges and other content. They won’t remake GW2…

You’re aware this is a game right ?

Relshdan.6854:

CodeHavoc.7926:

Translation: I hate everything because it’s not GW1 and it doesn’t cater to only me.

this.

so tired of the mopey nostalgia. GW1 exists…go play it.

Agree

In response to Part 1 section 1: Racial differences may be cool but the bigger issue is that it breaks being able to roll a character exactly like you want. Want a tankier character? Have to roll a Norn for their “beefy” inherent racial stats. A thief or Mesmer? Have to do Sylvari for their “natural camo” abilities. You should be able to roll any race/profession combo you want.

ArenaNet’s system for this is way better because you don’t have everyone on the same race/prof combos. I get wanting it to be that way, but then the same argument can be made. Why not just have only 1 race and you can roll any profession you want and not be at a disadvantage because you wanted a Charr Thief but weren’t getting that 5% racial stealth bonus that Sylvari got and now no dungeon PUG will take you?

No thanks

Iason Evan.3806:

In response to Part 1 section 1: Racial differences may be cool but the bigger issue is that it breaks being able to roll a character exactly like you want. Want a tankier character? Have to roll a Norn for their “beefy” inherent racial stats. A thief or Mesmer? Have to do Sylvari for their “natural camo” abilities. You should be able to roll any race/profession combo you want.

ArenaNet’s system for this is way better because you don’t have everyone on the same race/prof combos. I get wanting it to be that way, but then the same argument can be made. Why not just have only 1 race and you can roll any profession you want and not be at a disadvantage because you wanted a Charr Thief but weren’t getting that 5% racial stealth bonus that Sylvari got and now no dungeon PUG will take you?

No thanks

I’m actually mixed on this. I can see completely your sentiment on forcing certain professions to take certain races in order to be viable, but I’ve always wished that, for purely lore reasons, your decision of what race to play was more important.

Just as a random example: The Charr supposedly distrust all spellcasters, and part of their beef with the Flame Legion surrounds their use of magic, but they’re perfectly cool with a Charr necromancer heading up a warband, representing a legion to outside groups, and palling around with the Tribunes of the various legions. It doesn’t make sense in the context of the world they created, but it’s a situation where gameplay and story came into conflict, and story won.

Using WoW as an example (which I am actually loathe to do, b/c GW2 is so superior, IMHO), the various races have bonuses and are restricted from playing certain classes, but the bonuses didn’t prevent people from playing all available classes on any of the particular races (in that you can see Orc Warlocks, Warriors, Rogues, etc in end game raids). I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to implement something similar in GW2, but whether it’s worth sacrificing a small amount of gameplay utility for a small amount of additional story cohesion considering is definitely an open question.

MattyP.6954:

Iason Evan.3806:

In response to Part 1 section 1: Racial differences may be cool but the bigger issue is that it breaks being able to roll a character exactly like you want. Want a tankier character? Have to roll a Norn for their “beefy” inherent racial stats. A thief or Mesmer? Have to do Sylvari for their “natural camo” abilities. You should be able to roll any race/profession combo you want.

ArenaNet’s system for this is way better because you don’t have everyone on the same race/prof combos. I get wanting it to be that way, but then the same argument can be made. Why not just have only 1 race and you can roll any profession you want and not be at a disadvantage because you wanted a Charr Thief but weren’t getting that 5% racial stealth bonus that Sylvari got and now no dungeon PUG will take you?

No thanks

I’m actually mixed on this. I can see completely your sentiment on forcing certain professions to take certain races in order to be viable, but I’ve always wished that, for purely lore reasons, your decision of what race to play was more important.

Just as a random example: The Charr supposedly distrust all spellcasters, and part of there beef with the Flame Legion surrounds their use of magic, but they’re perfectly cool with a Charr necromancer heading up a warband, representing a legion to outside groups, and palling around with the Tribunes of the various legions. It doesn’t make sense in the context of the world they created, but it’s a situation where gameplay and story came into conflict, and story won.

Using WoW as an example (which I am actually loathe to do, b/c GW2 is so superior, IMHO), the various races have bonuses and are restricted from playing certain classes, but the bonuses didn’t prevent people from playing all available classes on any of the particular races (in that you can see Orc Warlocks, Warriors, Rogues, etc in end game raids). I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to implement something similar in GW2, but whether it’s worth sacrificing a small amount of gameplay utility for a small amount of additional story cohesion considering is definitely an open question.

The other reason being that armor sets for certain races have had very mixed results. If the same attention to detail were given to Charr armor sets as human sets it would be a tad different. Being coerced into rolling a certain profession because of inherent stats would end up putting a damper on some people’s time with the races they were pointed towards with certain professions.

I overall find it refreshing in this game to not have cookie cutter bonuses to races. I want the race I want with the profession I want on equal ground with all the other race/prof combos. Full stop.

MattyP.6954:

Just as a random example: The Charr supposedly distrust all spellcasters, and part of there beef with the Flame Legion surrounds their use of magic, but they’re perfectly cool with a Charr necromancer heading up a warband, representing a legion to outside groups, and palling around with the Tribunes of the various legions. It doesn’t make sense in the context of the world they created, but it’s a situation where gameplay and story came into conflict, and story won.

That’s more an issue of ANet not liking complicated dialogue trees and a lot of different ambient conversation triggers. That doesn’t mean I like it though.

MattyP.6954:

Using WoW as an example (which I am actually loathe to do, b/c GW2 is so superior, IMHO), the various races have bonuses and are restricted from playing certain classes, but the bonuses didn’t prevent people from playing all available classes on any of the particular races (in that you can see Orc Warlocks, Warriors, Rogues, etc in end game raids). I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to implement something similar in GW2, but whether it’s worth sacrificing a small amount of gameplay utility for a small amount of additional story cohesion considering is definitely an open question.

Racial stats bonuses have a negligible impact in PvE however (by all accounts I found by doing a google search). So I guess if what you’re looking for is racial stat bonuses that have next to no impact on actual gameplay…. oh I’ll complain but I’d probably eventually accept it.

Ralanost.8913:

It simply sounds like you don’t like the game. That’s fine. But I don’t think any of your points are a fault in the game. It’s your perceptual bias. Your opinion. I suggest finding a game that suits you better.

This.

Rikimaru.7890:

HoT is not going to change anything, all it does is try to cure the symptoms rather than the cause.

The problem with your argument is you have systematically ignored the main aspect of HoT which is this

STORY LINE CONTINUATION.

To say that this will not change anything means you have neither the knowledge of the lore nor the first game and history and obviously the fact you have ignored the whole story all together where there are SIX and I repeat, SIX dragons of which one is defeated on the original game BEFORE any expansion leaving a further five yes, FIVE dragons to contend with. This fact alone means the story MUST continue regardless or there is no real END GAME meaning no real END TO THE STORY.

This means your argument is negated by your very own post which is dis-information by the very definition to start with. This means any reader need not continue past this first line to read the rest of your post in reality and therefore any reading past your post is pointless and a waste of time unfortunately. This I am sure was not your intention.

Such lines are said by people who do not realise what it is they say which is actually a lot. It means you have not been paying attention to the story nor season 1 of the living story nor season 2 which leads up to where we are today with the expansion. Nor does it take into account any lore of mentioned characters, like Vekk and Oola and the golems and their labs we see in GW2 and why the Asura even came out from under the ground to take Ratasum, (Mursaat) in the first place and even why destroyers are even mentioned in GW1. (Genius Operated Living Enchanted Manifestation/s). Or why Ogden is the last remaining dwarf turning to stone. The point is this: Alot of work has already gone into GW2 to correspond with existing lore and history etc. and the fact we even see Glint in GW1 all has meaning as to the expansions we will get for GW2. I would rather see expansions than new game clients that link as in GW1 not including EotN expansion (obviously). Therefore the argument which you base your points on are mute at best. It shows a lack of knowledge and game play as in involvement in READING the games PS line alone without the rest that has taken place.

This means to ask the question then, (since your argument is baseless and mute at best), cure what symptoms?

Please do not think I am trying to flame but I am rather just pointing out the error in your post. With ALL the information can we make informed decisions but without ALL information we have no basis to argue properly and adequately.