Guild Wars 2

This is an open letter to Josh Davis, Competitive Brand Manager of ArenaNet

Dear ANet Staff and Mr. Davis,

I am writing to you because in general I feel the PvP staff at ArenaNet are not doing such a good job at giving the community what it needs. The validation of my stance can be inferred from the improvement recommendations below. Please consider making the following changes.

• Balance so that non-elite specs are competitive again. The Conquest PvP meta consist of only six builds. All of those builds are utilizing Elite Specs. All the pre-HoT meta builds are obsolete. We see a handful still traditional meta builds but the old meta is done. What’s going to happen when the next expanshion comes out and we get new elite specs? Are you going to always make the latest elite specs more powerful than anything else to sell product? Think about the long term impact. Is that sustainable? If not, end this madness now. Balance it so the Elite Specs are less powerful across the board. The old meta core game specs should not have been wiped so quickly. It’s clear you intended to balance it like this and I think it’s a big mistake in the long term and the short term.

• Solo vs Pre-made queues. Please count the number of people calling for this!. Yes it will mean longer queue times, the answer is simple. Retool to allow those in sPvP queue to go do other things as they wait. Furthermore, when matching pre-mades improve your algorithms to match pre-mades of various sizes (e.g. ideally a pre-made of 3 should not be pitted against a pre-made of 5 if a pre-made of 3 is in queue)

• Give us access to the match end-game score card of past matches and give us more analytic tools to see how we done on specific classes when paired with others, etc.. As it is now this information is quickly presented then lost forever unless we take a screen shot. We have no way to track who we played with, etc… There is so much potential for this data and it’s all tossed away.

• Nix the unranked win/loss tallies. Keep these internal, use them for internal things if you must but do not show them to players. Too many uncontrollable variables are at play in unranked this data to be represented You have people feeling as if unranked ratios still matter. While this is not suppose to be the case, as you’ve designed the game it feels like it.

• Give us the ability to spectate the past few matches. Think of any real-world sport. Think of the importance of a coach to watch the playback with his team post-game and evaluate what went wrong and what went right. We are crippled from doing this in GW2 sPvP. It’s difficult to evaluate top contributors as the score card does not tell all. This is so critical. It’s an opportunity for ArenaNet to montiize. hell the playback feature on a monthly basis. You have to devote hard drive space to store the recorded matches it makes sense this would be a for-pay feature and serious teams will pay for it

• Why do we have a checkbox for Stronghold and Conquest but no option to queue up for deathmatch? Courtyard is still in the game and many players would love to queue up just for Courtyard (give those who hate point capture their cake and get them out of stronghold and conquest, it’s as easy as adding this checkbox).

• Take Skyhammer out of rotation, put Courtyard back in rotation. No one likes Sky hammer. It’s rarely voted for in unranked queue. You have this data. Leaving Skyhammer in the rotation is a sign the game is still setup to appease the developer and not representative of what the player base actually wants.

• Give us the ability to queue for only ranked maps. Please! For those of us who are focused on ranked play, forcing us to play on Sky Hammer and Spirit Watch are really wasting our time. These maps aren’t well balanced. You know that, we know that. This is why they aren’t included in Pro play.

• Do not drop the ball on Leagues! I love the concept of Leagues, but I also do not like what I’m hearing so far. It seems ArenaNet’s stance is that Leagues exist so that all guild teams competing in league play only have the goal of making into the legendary division and becoming one of the top 8 legendary guilds to be the guild challenger league. That philosophy undermines the value of league divisions. League divisions should categorize players of like skill and give each division it’s own progression with a mini-tournament for most divisions at seasons end. Those of us who love the game with realistic expectations should have our own progression and champions outside those who only inspire to compete at pro level. Leagues were advertised as making PvP more casual friendly. As it stands, it appears a lot of thought was put into a nice league division system and that current plans for this season will not really utilize it to give more casual types much to look forward to. That’s a real shame. There is still time. Time to organize mini-tournaments for most divisions at least. Do not drop the ball of league divisions outside legendary. Use leagues to elevate PvP in this game to the status it deserves. Your casual PvP players deserve a progression path and they will become your ESL Pro spectators.

In general there appears to be a disconnect between the leadership of the pvp side of the game and an understanding of the basic needs of a pvp community being met (e.g. spectating past matches, etc…). I am not clear if this is because you are under staffed or because you simply do not see some of these core things are priority. If it’s about not seeing them as priority then I don’t understand. Much of what I’ll bullet listed is beyond subjective. It’s common sense features. Some of these features you can even monitize and PvP community will likely pay for them.

As someone who loves the game and loves PvP in this game, it sure does appear things just aren’t being prioritized or managed very well. Just trying to be transparent as a customer. It’s very clear from reviewing forum post here that my grievances do not stand alone. Few of these are really functional changes to the game, most don’t even require reworked UI. It’s difficult for me to grasp why the development effort on some of these things has not been given high priority given it’s value.

As a player I feel it’s our job to call out what we see as problems and request the changes. Ultimately making those changes and keeping players around is up to you, the ANet staff responsible for PvP. You guys won the lotery. You work for an amazing company on one of the greatest games ever and yet this aspect of the game is being crippled by so many little things. Please consider the power you have to make these positive changes.

Sam

dare to dream, dare to dream

arena net doesnt care..elite specs op—>more money

Thanks Sam for this post, i have posted a similar topic to underline the HoT pvp.
Devs have seriously to understand that pvp balance between each professions is not when only one build is viable in pvp. Always nerf a build up another etc etc
To have a real robus balance in pvp they have to:

1) balance elite professions and old ones
2) balance all skills and traits in a same profession, all traits have to be competitive. A traits is a way to play, we are not forced to take one.
3) balance profession between them.

In pvp there are not just 6 competitive professions but 6 builds, with quasi same skills, same traits, same weapon!!!! Why all profession are not represented?
Why all trait line are not all represented?
And please, when you up or nerf a class in pvp just think about the repercusion in pve. Because you have uped the berserker dps in pvp recently but is it really neccessary in pve ? You will certainly down the ingi hammer dps in pvp for example , but it will be kill the pve engi hammer.

You have to work a lot in the game satbilization and balance. We are done with those nerf/up/nerf/up and this unbalance game .

Honestly, I’d settle for active communication. Say two to three Dev responses a day on PvP forum? The last dev post was 4 days ago I think. Comon…

Edit: Ok so there was a post an hour ago. But I meant before that XD
Edit2: I’m dumb. I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving that much. Ignore my post about the time frame, that I would like more communication especially in places of unrest. PvP, Thief, Warrior and HoT discussion seem to be hotspots- WvW is more of early on. Needs help, but there is time as this is the second month of new content.

Serious Thought.5394:

Honestly, I’d settle for active communication. Say two to three Dev responses a day on PvP forum? The last dev post was 4 days ago I think. Comon…

Edit: Ok so there was a post an hour ago. But I meant before that XD
Edit2: I’m dumb. I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving that much. Ignore my post about the time frame, that I would like more communication especially in places of unrest. PvP, Thief, Warrior and HoT discussion seem to be hotspots- WvW is more of early on. Needs help, but there is time as this is the second month of new content.

That would be nice as well. There seems to a an enormous focus from ANet to push ESL Pro League. It’s clear much money and resources have gone into giving getting the ESL Pro League off the ground and yet the light shines though the cracks all the time. For example in week one we see a Thief on one of the Pro teams running a pre-HoT traditional build and the announcer says “I’m very surprised he’s not running the elite spec” as if it’s just suppose to be understood the new Elite Spec’s destroy the classic meta. The announcers are treating this problem as just matter-of-fact. Nevermind the three years of balance it took to get sPvP in GW2 at the solid place it finally was out leading up to HoT.

Of course it is their money to toss around as they choose, but I believe for any e-sport to take hold you have to have a really, really great experience available to those who play outside pro level. The non-pro players have to love the game enough to actually care about the ESL Pro League to watch the matches. So when the pvp meta is broken at a fundamental level as it is now to put these pro produced ESL matches up on Twitch and to pretend these issues don’t exist and to pretend the game studio is taking care of it’s non-pro community, well it just feels disingenuous.

I understand how in a spreadsheet, on a chart someone at ArenaNet is looking at the data saying “look sPvP has grown by x to y from 2014 to 2015 so we are investing z in ESL Pro play” but I thinks it’s a huge misstep when the foundation problems are there and so very clear by the forum post here, on reddit, in map chat in Heart of the Mist, etc… sPvP in GW2 needs a real champion on the inside dev team. Someone to really fill the gap, take a strong look at these problems. Open communication with the community and explain why things are being done as they are and why certain request are being ignored or given low priority. They clearly do not feel they owe us that. They clearly have an agenda for ESL Pro League and it appears certain individuals on staff are ignoring some problems that really need to be addressed (tunnel vision) as they focus on certain goals.

I like skyhammer more than courtyard tbh.

Ramoth.9064:

I like skyhammer more than courtyard tbh.

same, much prefer skyhammer rather than courtyard or spiritwatch, of all the unranked only maps skyhammer is my favourite…

but i agree there should be an option for “ranked maps only” if they are going to always disable ranked between seasons.

Agree with most points except getting rid of Skyhammer. All maps should be available in unranked including Capricorn, Skyhammer and Courtyard.

I agree with you on everything except the very first point. Elite spec is purposely design to be stronger than non-elite spec. Why would gaming company do this? It’s not only to hype up the new builds to encourage sales, but also to change the metas to keep the game fresh. If the new elites were not better than the old, then players will not care much for it. In the gaming world, new things is what keep players coming back for more. If the new things sucks or if it doesn’t live up to their hype, then the game becomes stale and boring. Look at the warrior community, their Berserker elite sucks and they are not happy. If the community is not happy, players will eventually leave for something new and better. So it’s very important that Anet made the elite spec stronger than old spec. It will keep game exciting as players will need to learn how to play and defeat the new metas. This is what you call progression. And it makes the game fun and extend the life of it. As a gamer, why would you want to keep playing with the old builts? 3 yrs of playing the same stuff gets old.

Pretty sure Josh has nothing to do with game development…

Doon.2364:

I agree with you on everything except the very first point. Elite spec is purposely design to be stronger than non-elite spec. Why would gaming company do this? It’s not only to hype up the new builds to encourage sales, but also to change the metas to keep the game fresh. If the new elites were not better than the old, then players will not care much for it. In the gaming world, new things is what keep players coming back for more. If the new things sucks or if it doesn’t live up to their hype, then the game becomes stale and boring. Look at the warrior community, their Berserker elite sucks and they are not happy. If the community is not happy, players will eventually leave for something new and better. So it’s very important that Anet made the elite spec stronger than old spec. It will keep game exciting as players will need to learn how to play and defeat the new metas. This is what you call progression. And it makes the game fun and extend the life of it. As a gamer, why would you want to keep playing with the old builts? 3 yrs of playing the same stuff gets old.

So to be clear your stance is that all those who purchase the GW2 core game prior to HoT and all those who signed up for a Free To Play account should be required to upgrade to HoT and to abandon their favorite build (in some cases their favorite class) in order to be effective? I don’t know if you’ve thought about it that way, but that is exactly what you have said.

Why I disagree with you.

1. Even if the Elite Specializations were toned down to the point that the core game pre-HoT meta builds were relevant again, players would still be playing the new elite specs. They would still be competitive and because of this players would still have to figure out new strategies to deal with them. It would still be for the better if the core pre-HoT meta pvp builds were still relevant. It would add more variety which is never a bad thing. The only reason it’s been done as it has is to drive people to buy HoT.

2. I don’t believe Guild Wars 2 PvP should be pay-to-win. As implemented a player who comes in on a free account has to buy the expanshion to be competitive. A player who has spent thousands of hours in core game and only does PvP who has no interest in the elite specs is forced to buy HoT to be competitive now. I strongly disagree with that. People are leaving the game over this. Some of these people are my friends.

3. What happens down the road when the next batch of Elite Specializations are released with the next Expanshion? Once again are we going to see our old builds superseded and flushed down the toilet? What if you hate the direction of the next expansion and just want to continue to PvP? Do you really like the idea of being forced to buy every expansion in order to stay competitive. Through your own comments, that is exactly what you are endorsing. I don’t see this as a sustainable way to move forward.

Scenario

Two weeks after HoT I see a few old PvP friends on-line. I know they are good. We team up. After 120 points I realize to my_horror_ they are running classic pvp meta builds that are ow outdated. I try to make the best of it but end up loosing momentum because I’m healing a lot more than I should be.

The other team wins (or course)

Post match party chat is in flames as these old friends rage over how all the mechanics they loved about their class has been taken from them. You hear jagged comments “it doesn’t feel like the same game” and “I do everything on my Warrior…. I don’t have any alts and don’t plan to.”.

Gently you try to break the news to them that the new meta is all elite specs. You explain how you know this and give examples and things become weird. It’s clear you are that geek PvP friend who knows too much. They are even more frustrated one of them says “I’m done. Leaving the game. I need to spend more time in Fallout anyway”. The other “I definitely won’t be doing pvp much”.

ArenaNet gave me the burden of telling them their favorite PvP MMO died and has been reborn into something that doesn’t tolerate their old playstyle.

Two weeks pass. The player who said he was leaving has not been on in 14 days. The other hasn’t been on line in 12. It’s clear these two have moved on.

This is the reality we are dealing with. This is 100% caused by the decisions made to buff up the Elite Spcecs and make them out power everything else. Their design is actually putting us (the loyal fans and players) in the situation where we are having to start aurguments just to share this horrible news and once the reality sits in deal with the fact that our sharing this info drove our friends away from the game.

Not happy at all about this ArenaNet.

Any chance of selling Skillsets seperate from the expansion?
I’d love to throw you either 10$ or 800 Gems so I could pvp like a pro.

Thanks,

Darnis.4056:

Any chance of selling Skillsets seperate from the expansion?
I’d love to throw you either 10$ or 800 Gems so I could pvp like a pro.

Thanks,

Will never happen, they want your full buy in to HoT.

Guys guys, the day that they truly listen is the day that we all stop playing this game. Mark my words..

Great open letter, thank you!

i dont really understand the complaints.

We all know, that ONE of the two will be balanced, Elites or Non-Elites, this is because there will always be the agreement of ONE meta, u’ll never see both a Reaper and a Necromancer under Meta because thats just not simply possible, in even the most balanced circumstances STILL players will form on the majority to beleive one is stronger then the other.

This problem has existed in PvP and PvE Throughout every game to come so far, no matter if u play a MMO or MoBA Or even a FPS, Something is always considered the Best in Slot.. or the Best champion or the Best build, no game has ever Achieved the capability for EVERYTHING to be perfectly just as strong as one another, its just never existed…. so why are u Chasing something u’ve NEVER experienced.

Realistically your setting a target which tbh isnt reachable, no matter how balanced or not balanced the game is u will forever have One thing considered meta, There wont be two things, because if there are 2 things then neither of them are Meta, Meta is the best possible build against the majority of Opponants choices or what provides the best situations for your role.

for Example

Engineer, your never going to use Scrapper for a Condi build and your never going to use a Condi build for Scrapper, One of these two damage types will provide best for the engineer at one time, which means u’ll Either be wanted as a Engineer or Wanted as a Scrapper.

on the next point

buying Skillsets/Elites Seperate from the expansion, Again NO GAME DOES THIS atleast not ones Actually releasing Expansions as a bought thing, why would u again expect a game to provide this, in my honest opinon, they did enough not raising the level barriers so u could atleast Access PvP/WvW without being completely ruined left right and centre.

GW2 arnt going to take a cut in its profits because you DONT want to pay into a Expansion just like they arnt going to make Elites irrelevent because you Dont want to pay into the expansion, in every game, each expansion changes ur class/Proffessions set up, GW2 just did it in a different way to suit the games gameplay.

For Example.

World of Warcraft, During the raise of 10 levels you’ll get new abilities and new traits which will put u higher up then what u orginally had, it’ll change how you play and what abilities become a priority, you dont see them nerfing those to balance them with old skills to ensure all abilities remain useful. The idea is its New, its More fun… its different to what u played for the previous years.

why would u pay $50 in for a week of Elite use then stop using them, like seriously if Non-Elites got nerfed below Core proffessions im pretty sure we’d sere a HUGE Rage fest because some would have litterally wasted their money.

claiming there is “no variety” is ridiculous, Just because ONE TRAITLINE is used for ur elite doesnt determine the other 2 choices, Any 2 combinations could be put with that Elite, and that is your variation.

The idea of the f2p model is to SELL YOU THE GAME not simply give you the game without a reason to actually pay into it, Will Elites stay as far ahead as they are in comparison to core proffessions? prolly not but tbh i think we’ll see elites sticking around.

Thx for this open letter, i agree with most points and i havent given up the hope quite yet!

@drayos

You are really simple minded or havent read the ops post at all! He is not telling anyone to make elite specs obsolet or talking about the def of meta or what the meta should be composed of..He is talking about a true balance between old and new skillz and traits and a stop of the ongoing poower creep! An indication of that really happening is the new meta which is elite specs only!

All depends of how they see GW2´s lifetime. Of course money is the driver and if GW3 or something similar is already in their mind, then GW2 is already lost. They will never tell and try to keep the players hope so GW2 survives till GW3 is anounced.
So if they are down to do business and not to create the best product for long term experience we can´t expect much.
But a lot of things do hint to keep GW2 long. Also some are for money like the hated power creep. Problem is, players usually accept power creep and go for stronger characters.

Actually that was a pretty good letter, well said. I more or less agree with all those points. I would also add pls fix hotjoin (ie remove spectate or change how it is implemented).

I know its cool to say hotjoin is for noobs so don’t spend any time on it, but if your suggestions were implemented then it would be good to have a place to play spvp while waiting for queues to pop.

YoungStar.3569:

Thx for this open letter, i agree with most points and i havent given up the hope quite yet!

@drayos

You are really simple minded or havent read the ops post at all! He is not telling anyone to make elite specs obsolet or talking about the def of meta or what the meta should be composed of..He is talking about a true balance between old and new skillz and traits and a stop of the ongoing poower creep! An indication of that really happening is the new meta which is elite specs only!

if u read what i had written, u’d have reliesed i actually perfectly understood this

I specifically wrote no matter HOW BALANCED THIS IS, ONE WILL BE DECIDED TO BE BETTER THEN THE OTHER.

At the end of the day, Meta is Decided on whats “OP”, its Decided on what plays the best AGAINST what the majority in Top MMR are currently playing, U call me simple minded for my post but u failed to really understand what i was getting at.

if Elites are Nerfed, or the base proffession brought up even to a perfect match, One would still outdo the other, being Balanced… and being Valuable in Meta are two completely different things.

Take Diamond Skin currently overused, This is ebcause this is the Best Option against the Majority of builds, Stone heart ISNT underpowered or any less valuable, its Just the case of the condis currently is Mental, it’d be perfectly viable in a Zerker meta.

The game WILL NEVER Facilitate such a Variety in PvP or PvE, meta will always dictate everything at the end of the day and sure we can fight that “OMG U DONT NEED METABATTLE TO BE GOOD” well no u dont, but a build doesnt have to be good to simply outplay another either, i highly doubt Pros are backing up bad builds as they actually have a RL Incentive to win their games where we actually dont.

My argument is simply.

We will NEVER see a meta, which will faciliate both a Base proffession AND its elite, they’re not Different enough in what they do to make this possible.

Druid being a Exception as it Really is Different enough to faciliate such a idea.

Reaper v Necro?…. Never, Scrapper v Engineer, only if Power and Condi became Completely balanced and even then if Rifle took ahead of Hammer it’d be used over hammer purely because Less Risk for the Same reward Tempest v Ele… Same Specc just depends which offers alittle more damage or Support.

What we’re asking of Anet… not even blizzard could achieve.

my argument is Simply, Balancing something as simular as the Elites are to the base proffession isnt really viable i mean i agree on the power creep it is insane, but it will forever be a Elite only or core Proffession only Game from now on, thats just factual, no one can get a MMO that balanced

Feck it u dont even get MoBas that balanced.

ofcourse this is entirely from a PvP point of view, in WvW / PvE this is prolly alittle more achievable as Proffessions dont hold Grips to specific Roles as they do in SPVP, apart from details.

at the end of the day, my argument more goes back to the statement

“Why be a Warrior when u can be a Revenant”

Right now, if u match Proffession to its Mirror, the Core Proffessions in alot of cases are just as good, the issue is this

“why be a bunker guardian when u can be a bunker Druid” that is a proffession problem, thats Simply being out-proffession’d. you cant Nerf a Druid BECAUSE bunker guardians below it, thats Simply ridiculous, it’d just make Druid unviable in the process.

I mean there are proffession such as the Chronomancer, Which realistically do not get used Outside of chronomancer, because the utility they bring, but u cant Fix that, no matter how balanced the two are Alacrity will make chronomancer take the lead Because raid wise its Just better also as mesmer bunker is the current meta, it was obvious Shield would take the lead, the mesmer doesnt really have alot of defencesive alternatives.

I mean u can carry the whole “why be this when u can be that” argument carries through SOOOOO Much, and its simply the new elites have Replaced ALOT of core proffessions main strengths in the previous meta, at the end of the day, the Elites have only replaced the core proffessions in 1 specific way.

Guardian – DH brings it a DPS Tree, its Replaced the Guardian in DPS builds, but not Bunker or Cleric builds, Guardian would be a more likely choice in both of these, the issue is bunker guardian sucks currently and given auramancer and Druids theres better support out there Guardian.

Engineer – tbh, for condi damage you’d never take scrapper and in PvE you do not take scrapper so i dont see a problem here.

Elementalist – from the very start Both elementalist and Tempest have sat pretty close to one another, only reason tempest is of higher use is Because how much support it really offers in comparison that isnt because tempest is stronger then Elementalist thats because in premades Auramancer offers More… in Solo queue Most elementalists dont use Tempest (outside the people who just copy and paste from Metabattle)

Chronomancer and Reaper are clear Replacements right now, but for obvious reasons.

Ranger – in power builds u dont use druid… its Just they’re considered one of the best bunkers which is why druids are on the Meta and not base rangers, but then again WHEN WAS BASE RANGER EVER ON THE META?… it hasnt been for a long time at minimum not for aslong as i’ve played it (havnt been here for 3 years so dunno before my time)

Warrior currently is better ten Berserker but both are bad.

Thief is bad all over and in the same boat as Warrior.

u can balance core and Elite proffessions together to match.. but nothing will stop those details..

no matter how Equal a Dragonhunter is to a Guardian, a Druid will be better then a bunker guardian, no matter how equal guardians are to guardians, Dragonhunter will be Used, Because it is a DPS Specc, why would u NOT use a DPS traitline to build a DPS Character.

im not claiming a Elite should be better then a core, but im saying one will always be better then the other, at the end of the day base mechanics, every proffessions a DPS… and no two builds will do the Exact same DPS, so one will take the lead

Does the gap need to be Shortened? Yes.

Does Everything need Scaling back down:? Yes..

but will this game Ever not be a Solid Pick this or Be bad? no, forever One will be better.

“Does the gap need to be Shortened? Yes.
Does Everything need Scaling back down:? Yes..”

Funny how you came to the same conclusion as Op and me in the end we were never claiming there will be a point with no meta and everything equal..

And this was only one of the many good points the Op was making!

Drayos.8759:

YoungStar.3569:

Thx for this open letter, i agree with most points and i havent given up the hope quite yet!

@drayos

You are really simple minded or havent read the ops post at all! He is not telling anyone to make elite specs obsolet or talking about the def of meta or what the meta should be composed of..He is talking about a true balance between old and new skillz and traits and a stop of the ongoing poower creep! An indication of that really happening is the new meta which is elite specs only!

if u read what i had written, u’d have reliesed i actually perfectly understood this

I specifically wrote no matter HOW BALANCED THIS IS, ONE WILL BE DECIDED TO BE BETTER THEN THE OTHER.

At the end of the day, Meta is Decided on whats “OP”, its Decided on what plays the best AGAINST what the majority in Top MMR are currently playing, U call me simple minded for my post but u failed to really understand what i was getting at.

if Elites are Nerfed, or the base proffession brought up even to a perfect match, One would still outdo the other, being Balanced… and being Valuable in Meta are two completely different things.

Your wrong and your assessments doesn’t make sense as others have pointed out. You don’t really understand what I’m asking. I won’t call names, but it’s very clear you are one of those types who go against anyone who suggest change. Not going to turn my own thread into a series of argumentative exchanges. I know you will likely respond with a rebuttal, but I think you’ve written a lot already and I don’t think you make a good point at all. I’ll let others respond from here on.

the solution for warrior and thieves isn’t to nerf everything else…

A nerf is deserved when u can’t do anything to “counter” it.
Like the perma port revenant —> 5 sec CD
Too many burns on D/D ele —> nerf burn duration
Mesmer abusing of mantras —> cd start at the last use

The thing i don’t like about your post is you describe Elite spec as a totally different profession. But in this case, elite spec is 1/3 of the same-old-core profession.

Why that elite spec is that Overpowered then? cause(for me) the 3rd trait line of the core prof isn’t that usefull … and the elite spec gives more than the other trait lines left … that’s it …

To fix that, anet just need to rework only one trait line from the profession they want to fix (if they want to make elite spec more balanced) but i’m fine with the elite state for now.

Skyhammer is a map like another … the fact u don’t like it doesn’t mean some ppl doesn’t too. that reason isn’t good enough to delete it.

then … listening to the community (especially on the forum) isn’t a great idea. There’s probably only 10% (or less) of comments which are really helpfull and well wrote. So listening to the community … ok but not giving everything they ask. It would be gamebreaking.

Wolfric.9380:

All depends of how they see GW2´s lifetime. Of course money is the driver and if GW3 or something similar is already in their mind, then GW2 is already lost. They will never tell and try to keep the players hope so GW2 survives till GW3 is anounced.
So if they are down to do business and not to create the best product for long term experience we can´t expect much.
But a lot of things do hint to keep GW2 long. Also some are for money like the hated power creep. Problem is, players usually accept power creep and go for stronger characters.

GW2 is a mmo, and is based on thee idea of a perpetual game. They don’t plan for sequels while the existing game is still functioning.
Although arguably expacs are sequels.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Darnis.4056:

Any chance of selling Skillsets seperate from the expansion?
I’d love to throw you either 10$ or 800 Gems so I could pvp like a pro.

Thanks,

Will never happen, they want your full buy in to HoT.

Yeaaa but they did this before in Guildwars 1, come on arenanet, look at how much of a killing you could make : Sell me just ONE of the 8 Sets of specializations, 10$.
(That’s 80 if I wanted all of em!)

Think of how many other players are out there that would love this feature.
There’s tons now right, since you went F2P for the original game/pvp?
Micro transactions make more money then large ones, you know this.