Guild Wars 2

Let’s make a list of things we’d like to see change in the HoT maps. I’ll start off a few:

- Stop resetting our map participation % when we leave a map, even for the shortest time. I just literally went to my guild hall for 20 seconds to withdraw some bloodstone dust to feed to Herta because I forgot to do it yesterday, in time before reset, and I came back to Tangled Depths with 0% participation. There goes 150%… all because I wanted to withdraw something from my bank. Wow.

- Have all HoT Meta’s happen every hour. This will encourage players to get familiar with them and be able to practice without having to wait so long.

- Decrease the difficulty of the Chak Gerent Meta. While I understand it’s important to keep some sort of struggle with Meta’s, this is just downright hard. You shouldn’t have to get an organised guild with teamspeak in order to do this. I’ve seen many randoms come together from nowhere and succeed in the Auric Basin Meta – why should this be any different? Also, as it is right now, and as another player said in one of my other threads, this is harder than the Dragon’s Stand Meta! That is seriously messed up. As another person said, perhaps Chak should strive for world domination, because right now they seem to be more powerful than Elder Dragon’s themselves.

- Increase the rewards from crystallized supply caches in Tangled Depths. Apart from the Ley Line Sparks, there really isn’t much reward going for these. Perhaps add some unique skins (like with the Lightward’s Battlestaff from Airship Cargo in Verdant Brink).

- Increase the rewards from the normal Exalted Chests. Right now, people know that it’s only worth it to open your keys on the ‘Greater’ and ‘Grand’ chests. So why bother with the lesser chests? There’s no incentive to open them. Perhaps like with the crystallized supply caches suggestion above, add in some unique skins that can be dropped from any of the Exalted Chests, but obviously have a better chance from the better chests.

- Increase the amount of noxious pods in Dragon’s Stand – without having to have a successful meta in order to get to a decent amount of them. Right now I still have over 36 unused machetes – what’s the point of having an abundance of machete’s, with very few pods to use them on?

- Redo the Tangled Depths maps. Right now it’s just a nightmare to navigate. Many people agree, and I’ve seen it mentioned countless times in map chat that they just hate this place in general and can’t wait to get out of it.

- Ditch the time gate on Zinn’s Study Guide. There’s no point to it, and it’s just a nuisance having to keep an alt there to buy one item at a time, every day. The fact that it’s only open after a series of events makes it even more annoying to get to.

- Make night-time areas in Verdant Brink more accessible during the day time. Perhaps add a few more updrafts that can take you up to those really high, hard to reach places. The only benefits to night-time VB are the unique bosses and events, which is nice, and I get that, but for those trying to get map completion and have to wait till night-time to remember which areas they suddenly have to go to and get out of the way before day time hits, isn’t fun at all.

- Nuhoch Alchemy is useless. You remove chak goop when you dodge already anyway without this mastery, so why is there a mastery for it? Makes no sense. What I suggest is make it so that chak goop no longer affects you (or damages you), and also add maybe a +3% damage bonus and +3% defence against chak. Now THAT would be deserving of 12 mastery points.

Exalted Gathering mastery is a bit average for something that requires 3,302,000 experience. So you have a chance to mine auric slivers… Woopty doo. Perhaps add black diamonds, evergreen slivers, mordrem slivers, agate orbs, moonstone orbs, maguuma burls, leaf fossils and ebony orbs to it, then this mastery will be worthwhile.

- Make adventures available 24/7. No one likes to wait for these to become available after certain events have been completed. To make sure events aren’t deserted though, perhaps add some sort of incentive in doing them – be it unique rewards, better xp, more currency from completing them (airship parts/lumps of aurillium/ley line crystals), karma… whatever it takes to make people want to do them.

- Stop randomizing the path of the fallen masks adventure. No wonder people can’t even get silver for this – there’s an RNG factor that plays a role where each attempt can be VERY different to the previous one. So if you’re trying to go for silver (or heaven forbid, gold), good luck to you, because you won’t be able to practice and get used to a pattern, because it’s not 100% the same all the time. Anet, you don’t randomize the path of Bugs in the Branches, or Tendril Torchers (thank goodness), and many other adventures, so why should this be any different? Why make this SO difficult for everyone? As it is I just finally managed to get silver with only 7 seconds to spare – I don’t know how on earth people manage to get gold in this but I know I’m not even going to bother trying.

- A ‘Raids’ tab in the LFG (Looking For Group) interface. Currently, there’s way too many LFR’s spamming up the ‘Open World Content’ tab. It’s quite distracting to be honest, it takes away from all the other different LFG’s in this particular tab, and I don’t understand why Raids doesn’t already have its own section when things like fractals, wvw, pvp and personal story have their own separate sections, for example.

There are probably more, but when I remember others I’ll add to the list. Feel free to add yours.

Zaoda.1653:

- Decrease the difficulty of the Chak Gerent Meta. While I understand it’s important to keep some sort of struggle with Meta’s, this is just downright hard. You shouldn’t have to get an organised guild with teamspeak in order to do this. I’ve seen many randoms come together from nowhere and succeed in the Auric Basin Meta – why should this be any different? Also, as it is right now, and as another player said in one of my other threads, this is harder than the Dragon’s Stand Meta! That is seriously messed up. As another person said, perhaps Chak should strive for world domination, because right now they seem to be more powerful than Elder Dragon’s themselves.

AMEN! This meta is a pain, and I’ve been trying to do it for days to get ahold of the final piece I need for the Mistward Headwrap. Adjust this so we can do this with randoms, Anet, it’ll help revitalize this map (since I barely see anybody on this thing).

Zaoda.1653:

Let’s make a list of things we’d like to see change in the HoT maps. I’ll start off a few:

- Increase the amount of noxious pods in Dragon’s Stand – without having to have a successful meta in order to get to a decent amount of them. Right now I still have over 36 unused machetes – what’s the point of having an abundance of machete’s, with very few pods to use them on?

there are alot of these actually if you look hard enough and just reset the map every once a while personally I use 100+ machete’s each day hoping to get the mordrem Saber without having to finish the boring meta

Zaoda.1653:

- Make night-time areas in Verdant Brink more accessible during the day time. Perhaps add a few more updrafts that can take you up to those really high, hard to reach places. The only benefits to night-time VB are the unique bosses and events, which is nice, and I get that, but for those trying to get map completion and have to wait till night-time to remember which areas they suddenly have to go to and get out of the way before day time hits, isn’t fun at all.

it is possible to go up into the canopy at day but you’ll need Advanced Gliding to do so
i’ve done it multiple times I can show you how.

Zaoda.1653:

- Make adventures available 24/7. No one likes to wait for these to become available after certain events have been completed. To make sure events aren’t deserted though, perhaps add some sort of incentive in doing them – be it unique rewards, better xp, more currency from completing them (airship parts/lumps of aurillium/ley line crystals), karma… whatever it takes to make people want to do them.

I believe the reason for this is because they want you do to the events first and not let the adventure slow down the meta ( like what the raid is doing now for verdant brink)

No changes need to be map to the structure of Tangled Depths. It’s by far the most interesting map to explore, with so many hidden places. It just takes getting used to and those that complain aren’t giving it a chance.
However the meta event does need a rejig. The fact that CC’ing the Gerent is detrimental to the success of the event shows how badly made it is. Also it encourages DPS only setups which can cause friction between players. I’ve seen a commander tell any non zerkers to alt-f4, saying that was the harsh truth of the meta.

I haven’t gotten far enough to talk intelligently about the others, so I’ll only comment on the first two:

Let’s make a list of things we’d like to see change in the HoT maps. I’ll start off a few:

- Stop resetting our map participation % when we leave a map, even for the shortest time. I just literally went to my guild hall for 20 seconds to withdraw some bloodstone dust to feed to Herta because I forgot to do it yesterday, in time before reset, and I came back to Tangled Depths with 0% participation. There goes 150%… all because I wanted to withdraw something from my bank. Wow.

- Have all HoT Meta’s happen every hour. This will encourage players to get familiar with them and be able to practice without having to wait so long.

Resetting percentage, I think, should be a daily reset, right along with the regular reset. It took me two hours to get to 200% (for the first time), and then the map emptied out enough that megaserver asked me to change maps. I did what they asked.

I haven’t been back there since. That just really sucked, even more than the other crap in HoT.

Not necessarily every hour. I like the Vinewrath timer in SW. It steadily progresses as you do events, but does not require specific ones like the HoT zones seem to. Then again, the Dry Top timer is exactly and hour, and that offers some predictability. Either one would work for me.

1. Remove adventures altogether. I don’t want to do some terrible time trial to get a mastery point that I need not for the stupid time trial mastery track which does not exist, but for the actual content and type that I might enjoy and have been enjoying since 2012.

2. Remove the event participation drain. People leave maps when they know it is going to fail and pretty soon you’re sitting in a dead map and depending on the map, nothing to do but watch your reward drain away because if 100 people couldn’t do the events, chances are you’re not going to be able to solo it.

warbignime.4610:

So you want nerf difficult and interesting content to boring mindless spammy regular maps. What a great idea.

Thanks for the sarcasm, but that’s not really helpful to the thread – if you think my points my invalid, then please back up your comments with reasons, but don’t speak on my behalf and claim that I want to nerf everything and say I find it all boring when it’s quite the opposite. I actually find a lot of the HoT content interesting, I just see a lot of things that need improvements to make it MORE interesting or at least playable (no one can kill Chak Gerent with 2 players).

Speed Mushrooms granted earlier and in addition Speed Mushrooms grants a couple seconds of stealth in the Mastery as casuals wouldn’t have to complain about difficult mobs that much if they had a mount like deal where they could simply run past them. Also no Gliders don’t count for this as this isn’t Aion where you can skip and hop across the ground through mobs.

Reduce poison damage as some people simply want to explore a map first which is impossible when they hit walls like poison so something that can at least heal through will be helpful to them.

Ascended rewards in HoT maps as this goes into improving the reward system which is different than basic loot. Many people are already wearing ascended for instance I have full ascended with the exception of my water breather which I’ll get to whenever it’s actually needed for something. So getting a rare exotic drop unless it’s a pre doesn’t really do much and with an ascended rare drop like with Teq I can at least chuck it on an alt and feel like I’ve been rewarded with something I’ll actually use.

Guild Halls removed from World Map and added to the Mists like WvW and PvP

Raids have zones I can see them on the map so let the Raid entrance exist in the raid zone and LFR can be done in that very zone freeing up the map.

Nerf mobs and what not that exist on the main story path cut through the maps so casuals can traverse easier.

Add an additional Map with greater rewards than either of the existing four maps but have an increased mob density and mob difficulty present on this map to compensate.

Loot is horrible in HoT so either increase Key drops on HoT maps or since there were noble ships in the area let mobs have a chance to drop ticket scraps. There merely needs to be superior drops from mobs and more than merely the reclaimed set.

LFR option in LFG window

Lower Mastery exp costs by a substantial amount and then remove the account wide mastery and make it individual. The exp amount needed is too high and it’s obviously designed to be that way due to it being account bound. However not only is it an undo burden to people with a single main but it takes all the fun out of the altoholics as well as soon as there alt hits 80 there done and have all there masteries they never get to play and unlock masteries again for the rest of there game and these altoholics will get bored and leave.

Return Core maps back to the original loot tables and rewards systems this includes Dungeons.

Give up on E-sports and besides I don’t consider something in which the overlaying world is programmed by a developer to be a sport anyway. A sport shouldn’t be broken and twisted on a developers whims or new characters and constant balancing. Hell balancing a character in these so called E-sports should disqualify those who exploited the system which you don’t have in the real world of earth and sunlight sports. Well besides drugs but that’s more of a hack there isn’t programming error though so no more forcing e-sport balance patches on the rest of us.

For three years this game survived and people have complained but those people complained for 3 whole years and obviously have no will of there own so why cave to them in HoT they’d never leave to begin with. However these changes have let those who are willing to leave the game those who liked the way the game was to pack up and ship out. I like the difficulty but even I know these so called hardcore elitist aren’t hardcore elitist at all or they’d simply find a game tailor made for it and thus they’d never leave the game anyway and remain and complain to casuals nonstop because there is no spine to simple move. The population dips is because you’ve upset real people who understand capitalism and how the world of the consumer and the product actually work.

warbignime.4610:

So you want nerf difficult and interesting content to boring mindless spammy regular maps. What a great idea.

You might want to try reading a post before commenting on it.

What the OP said and what you said had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Keeping my map participation when I’m prompted to move to another map would be terrific. I also think maps closing an hour after getting this message regardless of how well the meta is doing is something that needs fixing.

Having the events progress on a faster timer would be really nice, as well. The mandatory waiting is not fun and I’ve seen many map groups fall apart during the wait.

I agree that the Gerent Meta needs reworking. I think it expects too much of a group for open world content.

Noxious pods are…what can I say? Obnoxious! I would like to see more of them on the map pre-dragon-kill. Definitely too many machetes.

I still think Hero Challenges should be soloable. Again, waiting for help that often doesn’t come is not fun.

And I’d love it if we could have more access to the entirety of the Dragon’s Stand map for map completion purposes. So much of it is locked away for so much of the time.

Doam.8305:

LFR option in LFG window

Can’t believe I forgot that, and it’s so annoying seeing the multiple LFR’s in the LFG interface. I agree, it seriously needs a separate tab for it. Edited it into my main post.

Lahmia.2193:

No changes need to be map to the structure of Tangled Depths. It’s by far the most interesting map to explore, with so many hidden places. It just takes getting used to and those that complain aren’t giving it a chance.

Agreed with this. Once you get used to it (and Nuhoch wallows helps a lot), this map is really fun. Each of the four lanes has a unique little story, which I like. The biggest map annoyance (and this applied to all of them) is that if you don’t know the events well, it can be a royal pain to tell if they are above or below you.

By the way, there already are unique skins for Pods/caches/etc. Duffy has a list of them:
http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/

Zaoda.1653:

I just see a lot of things that need improvements to make it MORE interesting or at least playable (no one can kill Chak Gerent with 2 players).

You should not be able to kill the chak gerent with two players. Now the chak gerent fight probably needs some adjustment. I notice pugs have the most difficulty with nuhoch so that might be the place to start. And they need to fix it so that we have reason to break the bar. It’s kind of silly using the no cc strat. It works great yes, but it feels very wrong to do this. Very poor design.

I hated the TD map at first (and it’s still my least favorite) but if you have nuhoch wallows mastery it makes it pretty easy to navigate around the map.

Misguided.5139:

Lahmia.2193:

No changes need to be map to the structure of Tangled Depths. It’s by far the most interesting map to explore, with so many hidden places. It just takes getting used to and those that complain aren’t giving it a chance.

Agreed with this. Once you get used to it (and Nuhoch wallows helps a lot), this map is really fun. Each of the four lanes has a unique little story, which I like. The biggest map annoyance (and this applied to all of them) is that if you don’t know the events well, it can be a royal pain to tell if they are above or below you.

By the way, there already are unique skins for Pods/caches/etc. Duffy has a list of them:
http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/

I like some of the unique skins, but the crystallized supply caches (as far as I know, I could be wrong?) don’t give any unique skins, like the lightward’s battle staff (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightward%27s_Battlestaff) that you can get from airship cargo in Verdant Brink. Which is a bit odd.

You’d think that the various keys/chests/cargo/caches would offer unique rewards tied to their regions, along with perhaps themed skins of those creatures or areas, but some offer much greater rewards than others (in this case, airship cargo’s can reward you with an item that’s worth over 450g, whereas the crystallized supply caches don’t offer anything even remotely near that value).

Edit: Apparently Ebb and Flow can drop from the caches, so nvm then :-P I’ve never seen any drop from them, I guess they’re just really, really rare.

I agree with most of this post, but a couple of things, I don’t agree with, or at least I"m not sure I agree with.

Not 100% sure about increased rewards. I’m not against it, I’m just not necessarily sure it’s necessary. Sure everyone wants more rewards, but that doesn’t make it necessarily something that should be done.

The Tangled Depths map is not going to be redone and it’s a really cool map. I hope it’s not redone, actually.

Also high point masteries should be less useful than low point ones. Because you don’t want to make something so useful that people feel they have to grind for it. The most useful masteries should be those easy to get. Which means the later ones can be done at a much more leisurely pace, People are complaining about grinding already. Making really cool stuff for the highest level masteries just makes that problem worse.

Other than those comments, good post OP. I hope Anet takes note of it.

Need more mastery points that are not locked behind jumping puzzles, getting gold in adventures or redoing the story over and over again.

Heres my list – if you find things in it that I repeat from the OP, then this simply means I agree on this
——

• Redesign Adventures to be all instanced areas that you can play 24/7 whenever you want. However, to be able to use that Feature, you must aqquire certain HoT Masteries.
  Example: To become able to pay Auric Basin Adventures whenever you want, you need to have Exhalted Assiatance first.
  If you want to to play Verdant Brink Adventures whenever you want, you need to have first Itzel Language, that will change its place with Blazing Mushrooms.
  If you want to play all TD Adventures in instances, then you need to have first Nuhoch Language.

• Rebalance all Adventures, some are way too easy, some are just impossible to get Gold and offer absolutely no space for marginal mistakes, where you get Gold only with like 1-2s left over like Floor is Lava?, while others like Haymire Punch o Matic are just impossible . Thats insane!! Others rquire you to have RNGeesus on your side to bless you with luck, like Fallen Masks and shooting gallery.
  The Mastery Points need to be lowered down to Bronze/Silver Rewards and not Silver/Gold requiring to get the MPs. Adventures shouldnt wall you off from getting all the MPs to max out your masteries. Gold should reward the players with something different and significantly more valuable, than a MP. Gold should reward you with a good boost to your AP, like +25AP and a chest with chooseable ascended equipment, so that players for example that hate crafting grind, but want to get an ascended equipment for their main characters can earn it through gettign gold with the adventures for the first time. 15 adventures, that woudl be enough to gain equipment for 2 characters, for the main and 1 alt. That would be appropiate rewards for the time effort of getting gold on the hard adventures and would help making GW2 again a bit more alt friendly like the game was before ascended stuff got added.

• Redesign the Chak Gerent Meta completely from scratch. The whole event shouldnt instantly completely fail, only because 1 of the four lines doesn’t get its job successfully done. The Chak Gerent should simply receive 4 unique buffs for the final battle in the middle of the place, which are only removeable, when a line of the four does their job successfully, before the chak gerent spawns in the middle.
  these 4 buffs shold make it significantly harder to defeat the Chak gerent in the given time for it. So when each of the lines is successfuly, it will make defeatign the gerent at the end just that much easier, that you have an easier time to defeat him within the timer that ticks down.

Example:

Buff 1: The Gerent regenerates Health whenever he receives a new Condition
Buff 2: The Gerent has constantly Protection, Retaliation and Stability, so he can’t be CCed
Buff 3: The Gerent will costantly spawn significantly more and stronger Chak Adds to help him
Buff 4: The Gerent has significantly higher Stats, more Health and regenerates Health and removes Conditions when moving through Chak Glob.

So if all four lanes are successful, before the Gerent spawns, you wll battle the Gerent with having none of these 4 Buffs. Say for example the Nuhoch Lane fails now, while the others are successfull, then this could lead for example to the point, that the Gerent will call for reinforcements, so Buff 3 will then still be active, making the battle naturally then alot harder and less likely, that people will defeat him right in time, but it would be still possible at least, if just everyone hangs themself in ands gives everything, it would juts be instantly a frstrating fail of the whole event giving everbody the feelign of having wasted just time and needign to wait 2 hours just to get another chance.
Also the event should respawn FASTER after a fail, than on a success.
If the map fails, then it should respawn already again after like 30 minutes to maximum an hour, 2 hours respawn time should be only after a successful defeat!.

• The Map shouldnt be redesigne,d they just need improved navigation systems. it needs to become clearer how to get to certain points. There needs to be added an Explorer Mastery, that massively helps players out to find things, somethign like this:

Tier 1: Tyrian Sightseer
All unexplored Points of Interests, Panoramas, Waypoints become highlighted on hover over one of them on your Maps for all your characters, so that you can easier see exactly, where and which of them are missing for you.

Tier 2: Explorer of Lands
Significantly increases all the Experience you gain, whenver you explore something new and whenever you explore something new with your Characters, your Character gains for 10 minutes an Experience Booster Buff for Kills. Writs of Experience can be used now also on Masteries in Heart of Thorns Maps that you have explored to 100%

Tier 3: Tyrian Master Cartographer
Increases Event Rewards on Maps for you that you have explored to 100% and gives you on 100% explored Maps +100% Magic Find, +25% Gold Find and 50% reduction on WP Costs

Tier 4: Compass of Truth
Gain access to the Compass of Truth, that enables you to show you optimal Traveling Routes for whichever thing you lock on for it. If you lock on as target for the Compass of Truth for example a yet not received Hero Point, then the Compass of Truth will exactly tell you, which Masteries you may need to get to it and will show you on the Minimap a GUIDE LINE that will route you to the target locked location if you just follow it. Hero Points now also get highlighted on the Maps on hover over of them with the mouse cursor.

Tier 5: Map of Wealth
You earned a magical Treasure Map, that shows you all the Treasures in maps, which shows you now also on the Map all locations of Material Nodes, which lets off a signal tone, when you are near hidden treasures or achievement related collectables that you would normally see only when holding down control and alt gr or whatever buttons you assigned for that mechanic to show you thigns that lie on the ground like Exhalted Masks, Lost Coins ect. if you have the Map of Wealth and you have explored a Map to 100%, the Map Boni for that will be greater and more rewarding by doubling the rewards. So if you would receive normally 1 Charged Lodestone as map Reward after some events beign done, with the Map of Wealth, you earn 2 as reward.

Tier 6: Tyrian Legendary Cartographer
Grants you access to Cartographer NPCs that sell you Map Pieces which when used on characters that haven’t fully explored maps to 100%, increases the map progression for the character in the map this item is used on by directly 10%.
So buy 10 Map Pieces, use them with a character that has explored a map region not yet and that character wll have then for that map region 100% map exploration directly. These Map Pieces will be bought with large amounts of Karma and a bit gold (10s), so to get map exploration for a region the lazy way, it will cost you then 1G, so more, than what you will gain with the Map Exploration bonus for getting 100%, so that the lazy way lets gold sink in the end.
Tier 6 is progression locked, Exp on this mastery can be earned only, if you have at least 1 Character with 100% Map Exploration
Grants you the Title: Legendary Cartographer of Tyria

• Improve the Mastery System, give them all 6 Tiers to make the system consistent.
  Add missing masteriers, where for example is the mastery, that was supposed to make us more efficient in killing Mordrem, because of mordrem having a otherwise without having learned that mastery a much better defense against our attacks=?
  This would be something fitting for Exhalted Tier 6

Exhalted Magic: Increases the defense against Mordrem Attacks and offense agaisnt Modrem by 10%. Gain more experience from killed Modrem (Max 10 Stacks). Conditions from Modrem are 20% lesser effective agaisnt you, while your Conditions are 20% more effective against them

Pact Commander T6: The Leader’s Personal Guard
Gain access to Hero Companions. You can now use Characters from your Account as “Companions” in open world maps or personal story instances to create an own 5 Person Group. Companions don’t count as Players.

Fractal Tier 5 & 6

T5: Mistlock Matrixes: Increases the Efficiency of Mistlock Singularity, giving you now instead of +5AR a Bonus of +15AR and a deadly attack heals you now not with 25% Health, but instead 50% and grants you Protection and Resistance for some time additionally

T6: Master of Defracturization
Activating Mistlock Singularities deactivates for you the negative Singularity Effects of Fractals for some time.
—-

• Raids need to receive an own Starting Instance, Forsaken Thicket should be a small Outpost Instance that you should be able to enter fro mVerdant Brink, that works then as Startign point to enter the Spirit Vale Raid Instance.

Good Resume of a poor designed HoT map & system.