Guild Wars 2

There’s still a lot of features to the UI and overall gameplay that are missing. I remember reading that anet wanted their game to be ready and done on release, but recent updates such as previewing items on trading post that was JUST added really shows there’s still so many basic features missing.

I’d list what I can think of in terms of ‘baseline’ features that without a doubt should have been already implemented long ago:

Alliance/Raid/Squad UI - 5 man grouping is not enough, why is there still no raid group options? Whether it be required to have a commander, or just anyone as raid leader, there’s no reason to not have raid group UI. Squad is not even close to the same thing and many people don’t even know it exists.

Internal LFG gw2lfg does indeed work, but we need an LFG channel that exists in-game. lfg site is just a hassle to use and is not as efficient as in game.

Currency Tab - I understand Anet’s reasoning behind not having this – no tab for tokens/relics/commendations/etc creates a need to buy bank and bag slots. But how about getting over it, and allowing these tokens to be held in an unlimited tab slot in banks similar to collectibles. From what I understand, a personal guild bank requires about10g to buy the influence, or a long time of solo influence.

Forums - There are no server forums, or even WvW tier forums. Not a priority, but again, easy enough.

Precursors - Spark has reached 700g, The lover is almost 700g, Dawn/Dusk 600g, legend 700g. Why is there still no other option to acquiring these beyond pure luck. The mystic forge is a complete crap shoot, chest drops are 1 in a million, and outright buying it costs about the same as the entire recipe combined; there’s nothing ‘legendary’ about any of these options and are really just huge wastes of time – a legendary quest line of some sort needs to be added.

Inspecting Players Only agony resist is relevant We still cannot view what players are wearing. The argument that inspecting creates gear requirements is indeed true – so many have suggested having the UI only show MF and AR values and avoiding gear stats all together. Or to have MF/AR appear as a buff icon.
I’m actually leaning more and more away from this. I think it’s anet’s way of pushing us players to explore and collect our own gear sets by not allowing us to see every title piece at any time.

“/Search” Command for Players The only way to view a players class is through guild/contacts/party without them being right infront of you. There should be a command to search a character for their class, level, guild, location. For example: /search playername would produce a line of text of said information.

Saving Gear Sets An option to save sets of gear for easier interchanging between armor sets.

Linking Trading Post We still cannot link items straight from the trading post.

Traits While allocating trait points, currently if you screw one up you must respec. We should have a system that only saves trait points once we are confirmed finished. It would allow us to add/subtract points at will until we confirm the traits and they become active.

Guesting Players of the server need some kind of priority over guests with respect to ending up in overflow. Major chest events are clogged at peak hours due to guesting onto other servers to complete a players alts every day – this may be fixed on the coming update.

Wilderness FFA PvP: One of the major things I would love to see is a wilderness style PvP area. A large map that allows for open world non team based PvP. Whether it be server exclusive or another WvW form, an open world PvP area is needed for a long lasting game.

This is really something that makes or breaks the game for many – I could spend endless hours in a pvp area designed for “PKing” – because let’s face it, WvW gets old, fast, with the zerg/siege/capture gameplay. I would imagine the area is heavy with level 80 mobs/veterans and gathering nodes with open areas away from the farm spots, and little to no waypoints available. There would be no teams, but instead only allowable 3-5 man groups; party members would be friendly status to each other while others outside the party are enemies. Perhaps it could share badge of honor drops, or a whole new badge currency for a new set of gear. The game truly lacks any sort of dangerous and risky PvP or farm areas.

Other suggestions

Trade - We can’t trade directly with players, another loss in community interaction and trading post variety. Put a 15% fee on it for all we care.

Duels – I have heard about an area to be added into heart of the mists, but there should still be one outside of heart to allow for custom gear sets.

Comments and other suggestions are welcome, I love hearing what people think in terms of ideas and suggestions.

Don’t forget the ability to trade, and the ability to duel other players. Also I agree with your “wilderness” idea, where it would be just a free-for-all pvp area, that would be fun.

Raid UI: A commander squad has 12. Zergs larger than this descend into unorganised chaos anyway. (Except for the really hardcore guilds, which is an unlimited group chat you can also use.)

Currency Tab: A guild costs 1s to make. And can store all your non account/soul bound gear, freeing up space in your bank for tokens and what not. Not really much of a problem there.

Legendaries: They’re supposed to be hard to get, we don’t want to see every single person running around with a legendary, especially when there’s only one of each weapon.

Inspecting players: Be gone elitist, people can wear what they want. The nit picking would go through the roof and demanding particular builds would go beyond the walls of COF. At most you should be able to see someone’s MF% to see if their armour is contributing, I…. Would actually be okay with that :]

“Search” Command: The colour of the signets is the easiest way to tell, in lieu of that seeing one or two animations is a quick giveaway. Remembering that you have this same advantage over them, so really, not much of a problem.

Guesting: I actually prefer overflow for the larger crowds O.o

Though those above were met with criticism. I agree with the rest, though some aren’t really that much of a problem, as bigger issues should maintain priority :]

slender.1482:

There’s still a lot of features to the UI and overall gameplay that are missing. I remember reading that anet wanted their game to be ready and done on release, but recent updates such as previewing items on trading post that was JUST added really shows there’s still so many basic features missing.

I’d list what I can think of in terms of ‘baseline’ features that without a doubt should have been already implemented long ago:

Alliance/Raid UI - 5 man grouping is not enough, why is there still no raid group options. Whether it be required to have a commander, or just anyone as raid leader, there’s no reason to not have raid group UI.

Agree.

Internal LFG gw2lfg does indeed work just fine, but we need an LFG channel that exists in-game.

Why devote precious dev time to something that already exists, and by your own words works just fine? I see no reason to make this a priority.

Currency Tab - I understand Anet’s reasoning behind not having this – no tab for tokens/relics/commendations/etc creates a need to buy bank and bag slots. But how about getting over it, and allowing these tokens to be held in an unlimited tab slot in banks similar to collectibles.

agree

Forums - There are no server forums, or even WvW tier forums.

Community things should be left to the community. I personally feel like the official forums should be removed altogether.

Precursors - Spark has reached 700g, The lover is almost 700g, Dawn/Dusk 600g, legend 700g. Why is there still no other option to acquiring these beyond pure luck. The mystic forge is a complete crap shoot, chest drops are 1 in a million, and outright buying it costs about the same as the entire recipe combined; there’s nothing ‘legendary’ about any of these options and are really just huge wastes of time – a legendary quest line of some sort needs to be added.

I agree but only when implemented very, very well. I’d rather wait another 6 months for a good precursor hunt, than have a bad one next patch. See my sig.

Inspecting Players We still cannot view what players are wearing. Whatever reasoning is behind this? All I can think of is trying to avoid having gear ‘requirements’ put in place as we are able to view gear sets – but is that really valid? If a player is wearing full rare magic find in level 20 fractal without us knowing it, should we be carrying them? Also, just a general interest in other player’s gearsets and armor stats is always lingering without any concrete way to find it out.

I’m on the edge. I’m inclined to say yes to gear inspect, but only names. As far as stats go, only +AR and +MF are relevant.

“/Search” Command for Players The only way to view a players class is through guild/contacts/party without them being right infront of you. There should be a command to search a character for their class, level, guild, location. For example: /search playername would produce a line of text of said information.

No. It was a gimmick feature in WoW, pretty fun to play around with, but pretty much useless.

Saving Gear Sets An option to save sets of gear for easier interchanging between armor sets.

Absolutely, but it isn’t a priority.

Linking Trading Post We still cannot link items straight from the trading post.

not a priority.

Traits While allocating trait points, currently if you screw one up you must respec. We should have a system that only saves trait points once we are confirmed finished. It would allow us to add/subtract points at will until we confirm the traits and they become active.

Yes!

Guesting Players of the server need some kind of priority over guests with respect to ending up in overflow.

I don’t believe it’s nearly the problem people make it out to be. Most players just play on their home server and most people causing overflows aren’t guests.

Wilderness One of the major things I would love to see is a wilderness style PvP area. A large map that allows for open world non team based PvP. Whether it be server exclusive or another WvW form, an open world PvP area is needed for a long lasting game.

Consider it done. WvW is open world PVP.

Comments and other suggestions are welcome, I love hearing what people think in terms of ideas and suggestions.

You suggested several quality of life improvements. None of those are priorities, yet all of them would be good when implemented. I really hope A.net takes it’s time with those, make sure they’re really, really good.

Have to agree with everything suggested but ‘wilderness’ PvP as WvW fills this need nicely. Player inspection is the only suggestion that gave me pause to consider. I believe it is contrary to the Guild Wars franchise, but in the game its become it makes perfect sense.

Dolan.3071:

Inspecting players: Be gone elitist, people can wear what they want. The nit picking would go through the roof and demanding particular builds would go beyond the walls of COF. At most you should be able to see someone’s MF% to see if their armour is contributing, I…. Would actually be okay with that :]

He isn’t elitist for wanting to inspect players. If you read what he said about fractals its very true. ANet cant just add something super hard that you need specific gear for, then not allow us to tell if someone has that gear on. As someone who loves doing fractals, I’d love inspect, but at the very least I’d love to see how much AR people have.

Its not really from a “I’ll boot you for anything less than full exotics” mindset, its more of a “Fractals take hours to run in the higher levels, and I don’t want to carry a guy in full magic find who has been lying to me about his gear for three hours” mindset.

Worst part is I cant even link items properly, as infusions dont show up in them when I do.

slender.1482:

Precursors - Spark has reached 700g, The lover is almost 700g, Dawn/Dusk 600g, legend 700g. Why is there still no other option to acquiring these beyond pure luck.

Anet hired economists to consult.
These hacks are of the opinion that any expected reward must be account bound, so you can only trade things which come from chance.

Feedback and personal opinions

• Alliance/Raid UI: Can’t really weigh in here. Never been a fan of raids. While I realize a large number of the dynamic events are already basically raids (in that they require a lot of people), communication via map chat ensures that ANYONE on the map can participate and jump in. Communication kept strictly within a raid channel might hinder the experience.

• In-game LFG: Yes. I’m of the firm belief that any time the player base has to make something to make the standard game run smoother, the company is failing somewhere. But there is a difference between tools that should be in-game and tools that the company should never give to the player. A group organizing tool is part of the former.

• Currency Tab: Ehh…between every account owner being able to make a guild and simple inventory management, I can’t support this.

• Forums: This would be interesting, but I’m no entirely sure if its necessary.

• Precursors: Part of me says sure, this is obvious. The other part of me says, if there’s a definite way to get a precursor, removing the trial and error, I want it done to Every. Single. Item. Why make it easier to get a Legendary when there’s just as much chance involved in getting some of the more obscure exotics?

• Inspecting Players: No. I will never support this. Gear-checking and the elitist picky bull it produces and allows outweighs any good that can come from it. If you want to know what someone is wearing, ask them. If you can’t be bothered to ask, then it wasn’t that important.

• Player Search: If LFG is implemented, not sure how this is necessary.

• Gear Sets: I have no idea how much I’d use it, but I can see it being useful.

• TP Linking: Another no-brainer that would be awesome. “Hey man, you think I should by THIS or THIS”

• Traits: More weird no brainers that I’m not sure why they aren’t there _

• Guesting: Because of the intended reason guesting exists, I can’t support this idea.

• Open World PvP: See…I could see a guesting-exclusive PvP server. It’d make it so the open world PvP exists and people can’t be trolled without knowing what they’re walking into. It also doesn’t add new content to a generally PvE environment (a sudden wilderness map) with rewards where your main enemy is everyone else in the game. It goes against the entire unity idea the game aims for. A giant free-for-all PvP map accessed through The Mists might also work.

Trading and dueling are others I forgot about – will add.

Dolan – Squad and raid UI really can’t compare. We need to see classes and health bars, maybe even endurance, of the entire group. It’d enhance gameplay so well.

To have a guild bank we still need influence and such.. but it does still work

Hard to get legendary is already hard to get with or without a precursor quest. Currently though we are crafting the legendary blind hoping to get the exact precursor we need.

Search command I’m talking about is to be used on allied players in different zones or just far away from you in general – not WvW enemies.

Guesting priority refers to large group events with enormous chest at the end. It’s very common to end up in an overflow for shatterer, maw, etc. and is most likely due to guests.

I do agree with others with respect to inspecting – avoid any other stats except AR and MF would suffice, maybe also total health as a number.

Open world PvP wilderness is due to me reminiscing over many other MMOs that I’ve played which have pvp areas. It feels way differant than WvW style of having a large team and safe zones behind you and definitely produces a whole new community within the game.

In theory we could pretty much take the EB map, leave all of its gates open to forts/garrison/tower and such and have no guards or teams. Fill these spots with hostile NPC or safe area, and make supply camp areas into wooded/water/mountain/plains/ice themed areas. Maybe even add a small dragon/drake attack event to each themed area – a way to concentrate the zone every hour or so. Just some idea of what I’m thinking of.

Want to know how to get rid of the asking for inspect? Make AR appear as a buff that can be moused over right alongside MF. If you have any than it is plain as day on your buff bars.

You’re dream of PKing…is BORING. Non-objective driven PvP is incredibly boring and only the most easily amused, or those hoping for gank fests while people are doing something else, find any honest enjoyment from it. The only form I’d accept it in is gladiator bouts where you enter the arena and have no idea who or what you may be fighting, including being out numbered perhaps.

slender.1482:

1.Internal LFG gw2lfg does indeed work just fine, but we need an LFG channel that exists in-game.

2. Currency Tab - I understand Anet’s reasoning behind not having this – no tab for tokens/relics/commendations/etc creates a need to buy bank and bag slots. But how about getting over it, and allowing these tokens to be held in an unlimited tab slot in banks similar to collectibles.

3. Inspecting Players We still cannot view what players are wearing. Whatever reasoning is behind this? All I can think of is trying to avoid having gear ‘requirements’ put in place as we are able to view gear sets – but is that really valid? If a player is wearing full rare magic find in level 20 fractal without us knowing it, should we be carrying them? Also, just a general interest in other player’s gearsets and armor stats is always lingering without any concrete way to find it out.

4. “/Search” Command for Players The only way to view a players class is through guild/contacts/party without them being right infront of you. There should be a command to search a character for their class, level, guild, location. For example: /search playername would produce a line of text of said information.

5. Traits While allocating trait points, currently if you screw one up you must respec. We should have a system that only saves trait points once we are confirmed finished. It would allow us to add/subtract points at will until we confirm the traits and they become active.

6. Guesting Players of the server need some kind of priority over guests with respect to ending up in overflow.

Other suggestions

7. Trade - We can’t trade directly with players, another loss in community interaction and trading post variety. Put a 15% fee on it for all we care.

8. Duels – I have heard about an area to be added into heart of the mists, but there should still be one outside of heart to allow for custom gear sets.

1. They have talked about putting in a in game LFG that is linked to the site or something along those lines, although as of right now the site works fine.

2. Someone already said it but guild bank personal, although for 400 gems you can get an extra bank slot stash them there. Where I wouldn’t argue adding them to Collectibles, I would argue them working on it when there are other important things

3. Inspect, no and more no’s, Inspect features always lead to elitist egos making the game un-enjoyable for others, I been in level 32 fractals and have been ask on joining groups to link my ascended pieces, that should be enough and I have no issue with this. Although that is only for high level fractals, people complain about MF sets and how they carry people through, although 9 out of 10 times people never notice the difference. If you truly want to ask for people to ping their sets then go for it, although I have found that people that do it on the Lfg site usually wait 45 minutes to an hour to get groups. There is no reason to have an inspect or to ever inspect someone.

4. This is one of the novelty things that is not needed, and I would rather not have Arena Net working on this when there are other things they could be doing that is more productive. beyond that I could care less if they add it or not.

5. I love the Idea of a template for traits, then a apply button. Although the respec rates are next to dirt cheap and if your worried about that rate ( which can be gained back by doing one event ) then you have larger issues.

6. A lot of people like to claim that guesting is not the problem to the lag and overflow on servers. That is false, although where it is not the sole problem it is adding to it when it shouldn’t. Although coming up on the 26th of march, that shouldn’t be an issue any longer. Most people from server and guest farm events on all toons for the rare/ exotic from the chest. on the 26th that reward will only be able to be acquired once a day per an account. So no more getting it on 3 toons on your home server and then guesting to get it again.

7. Adding a 15% fee on a trade, you might as well use the TP. in game trade is not needed, the TP adds a profit margin in which they use to sale gold for gems. Also there is a loop hole in your plan. You can avoid the 15% on trade by mailing the item. You can’t tax gold sent in the mail, since there are people that send gold back and forth to friends and guild mates, is it really fair to tax them for not trading for items?

8. You should also read the wiki, yes they are adding private rooms in the mist for private games. Although they are also adding a world dueling feature to the game, the wiki can tell you that I will provide the link for you below.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features

Lastly, not sure why you want to add PK’ing into a game that has never had that, if you want PK’ing go to the motherload of all PK’ing EvE Online

you call basic features wow feature.
the only things i find useful of what you said are bank space or wallet for tokens, traits and gear saves.
nobody is running fractals in magic find gear that is just magic find paranoia and also magic find gear is useful only in the grawl level, dredge and jade maw, for the rest of fractal is completely worthless!

slender.1482:

Currency Tab
Forums
Inspecting Players
Trade

• The collections tab is also limited to 250 stacks.
• There’s a total of 51 Servers. Currently, there’s a total of 40 subforums. It’s just not balanced. Plus, some of those forums would be in French, Spanish or German. And who says that all servers are even active enough to warrant a forum? The thing is, if you put a forum for one server, you have to do it for all. And that’s a potential for a massive amount of very inactive subforums.
• There have been tons of topics about inspecting, and the general opinion towards it has been pretty negative.
• Why would we need trading? I have not seen one justification for player-to-player trading that made sense.

Trading is more so to add some interaction, or to just avoid the silly mail trading going on, there’s no variety of offering items lower than the TP prices to have quicker sales, or selling cheaper in bulk, etc. Trading allows for player-player interaction off the TP and stirs up chat and such. Every mmo ever has had trading and while some people are saying they can’t think of a reason to add it, I can’t think of a reason for why it wasn’t included from the start. I have no knowledge of coding, but relative to other additions, adding a trade window really can’t be too difficult or resource demanding.

Yes I also agree with the ideas for MF/AR – add a buff for their character, or just make the inspection UI only show gear and total AR/MF. I understand the threat of gearing and elitist requirements.

Maybe I don’t understand how easy a gbank is to make – but from what I’m thinking don’t we need 5k influence? which translates to ~50g to buy.

And yes, people are most definitely running fractals in MF. In vent/mumble my buddy always jokes around – “carry me bro full MF” and its completely true, not that I mind because I know he can carry the weight, but who knows how many failures have been due to missing 5k hp from the gear of other pugs.

I don’t think everyone knows what I’m really aiming for – some of the features are all really just baseline things that are missing. The game with some of these such as trading, dueling, previewing, linking and such, are what I think is missing from a well rounded game, things that should have been there on release. Most of these I would think shouldn’t have even had a second thought in development.

slender.1482:

Trading is more so to add some interaction, or to just avoid the silly mail trading going on, there’s no variety of offering items lower than the TP prices to have quicker sales, or selling cheaper in bulk, etc. Trading allows for player-player interaction off the TP and stirs up chat and such. Every mmo ever has had trading and while some people are saying they can’t think of a reason to add it, I can’t think of a reason for why it wasn’t included from the start. I have no knowledge of coding, but relative to other additions, adding a trade window really can’t be too difficult or resource demanding.

Trade has never open interaction on a social standard in any game, even in wow the people I have traded with I never spoke to again (usually). You have more of an opportunity to spark interaction just in map chat, if you do not have the ability to strike up conversation with a random person on a common view through a LA Map chat, then a trade wont do that for you.

Also the trading post is the main source of Gold sink/ Profit margin for arena net, since they take a hefty % of the money made there and sale it to the players through Gem trans action. To the people that think they just make the gold, take an economics class, you will find you can make a more stable market by recycle at a set amount then producing more.

slender.1482:

Yes I also agree with the ideas for MF/AR – add a buff for their character, or just make the inspection UI only show gear and total AR/MF. I understand the threat of gearing and elitist requirements.

You don’t need this at all, if you want to know ask someone, if this is due to high level fractals and AR then ask. I personally hate people that ask for gear pings ( i think they are silly and moronic ) but that is their right, ALTHOUGH in high level fractals I have no issues with linking all 6 ascended items. Why? cause that is the only place in the game that it is required to have X stat and X gear.

slender.1482:

Maybe I don’t understand how easy a gbank is to make – but from what I’m thinking don’t we need 5k influence? which translates to ~50g to buy.

5k influence is not 50 gold, it is 2 gold per 1000 influence, ergo you would spend 10 gold if you didn’t have any guild accommodation

slender.1482:

And yes, people are most definitely running fractals in MF. In vent/mumble my buddy always jokes around – “carry me bro full MF” and its completely true, not that I mind because I know he can carry the weight, but who knows how many failures have been due to missing 5k hp from the gear of other pugs.

If your friend can carry his own in MF, then others can too. Therefore it can’t be the MF or the gear. By your own example he can hold his own in Full MF, so your problem is your blaming the gear, when it is the bad players. So in turn the bad player in what you would consider good gear is still going to be bad.

The TP fee is a source of gold, which is why I say to apply it to trades as well. Trading would just allow for so much more complexity.

If it is someone’s right to gear pings, then just allow it to be inspected. Also, I’m no longer talking about gear stats, but instead just a simple mf/ar value. If at high level fractals you need to see it anyway, then just allow it.

Missing the hp/toughness by wearing MF is many times the difference between getting 1 shot or surviving. A bad player will indeed be downed, but a bad player wearing MF or no AR is pretty much useless and should have been dropped from the get go. I mention a personal instance to compare it to pugging – I KNOW who can carry their own, but I do not know if a pug has even done the instance before or if he even has AR for the fractal; is he going to get 2 shot every time by the boss? only one way to find out.

why one person should go in high level fractal without agony resistance when he can go to level 10 to start gathering AR?
i don’t think people enjoy being downed or defeated in every major fight

A lot of people just aren’t fully informed to AR mechanics. A few weeks ago we had someone join the level 14 group – we noticed he had 400 achievement points, which is a raging clue to a new player, so we asked if he knew what it was. He didn’t, so I explained in whispers and told him we’ll get someone else, and he was not mad or offended and said he’d look into the wiki and never even did a fractal.

With the update that took away fractal level requirement on entry, which I think was a great idea, there’s no hard restriction on entry. But we should at least have some kind of indication as to who’s prepared; to know who can at least produce some of the stat. Perhaps the buff would just say “Agony Resistance” and not even give a value. Make it show only at levels 20+ if they must.

The problem is heightened with yet another bug – linking non-ascended items doesn’t even show its infusion slot (assuming this is a bug actually). Meaning that if the item isn’t ascended (which have a set stat for agony), then we can’t know if it’s even infused. If its not a bug, then Anet is truly dead-set on not allowing an AR check.

Then again, all of this dumbs down the inspection idea further and now I’m thinking more about the reasoning behind not having it. I fully agree not to show stats, but at least allow us to follow up on curiosity of their armor and weapons. Show the character’s picture and formal title of the gear (ie: “Whisper’s Hood” and not “Berserker’s Whisper Hood”). However, I get a feeling that Anet doesn’t want this – maybe they want to keep this feeling of randomness and unknown armor, to create the guild wars world where a major part of gearing is to find our own sets and explore. maybe I’ve been convinced here heheh.

slender.1482:

The TP fee is a source of gold, which is why I say to apply it to trades as well. Trading would just allow for so much more complexity.

Even with this, there are ways to exploit it to never see the % take out of it. Simply trade them the Item and have them mail the gold. Ergo ignoring the % take out and garnishing more profit for you as the player.

slender.1482:

If it is someone’s right to gear pings, then just allow it to be inspected. Also, I’m no longer talking about gear stats, but instead just a simple mf/ar value. If at high level fractals you need to see it anyway, then just allow it.

Because having the right to ask is one thing, inspecting someone is taking that right away by forcing people to reveal. If someone ask, the asked person can deny it, like wise in regular dungeon runs on the lfg site people post {ping gear on invite}. People that don’t agree with this have the option to say no to it, applying an inspect function removes that option. Also you don’t need to know what their MF score is plain and simple ( more on that below ).

slender.1482:

Missing the hp/toughness by wearing MF is many times the difference between getting 1 shot or surviving. A bad player will indeed be downed, but a bad player wearing MF or no AR is pretty much useless and should have been dropped from the get go. I mention a personal instance to compare it to pugging – I KNOW who can carry their own, but I do not know if a pug has even done the instance before or if he even has AR for the fractal; is he going to get 2 shot every time by the boss? only one way to find out.

I have one toon with full MF and have never been 1 shotted ever. Secondly you sited a personal instance that proves a player can do just fine in full MF, then say this is because of pugs? How do you know the pug isn’t just like your friend and can hold their own. You don’t, I been in many instances with people in full exotics ( zerker gear) 1 ascended piece, and a legendary (transmoged form a Zerker GS ) with no Map completion star and less than 300 hours played over all his toons and 300 hours played on that toon ( was his only 80 ). He was a CC jockey, and yet he spent 80% of the time dead in our Arah run, and a guild mate of mine in greens and yellows only died once. The gear doesn’t matter, Unless

• your doing high level fractals
  then the only gear that matters is the ascended gear and your agony resist.

So trying to justify a Inspect feature because of pugs and trying to blame the MF gear when it is the player that is bad is not a valid reason. You your self have proven that someone in full MF can hold their own, why discriminate against a person you have no clue about in Full MF, cause if he is bad no matter what gear you put him in he will still be bad. Then again that pug in Full MF could be a better player than your friend. So an inspect feature for MF should never be the case by your example alone. An inspect feature for AR ratting is not needed when you can just ask for them to ping their ascended items. But taking the right away from someone to show or not show regardless of the situation, is far different than asking.

The inspect function wont tell you if the player is a good player or bad player, ergo the inspect function is not needed.

slender.1482:

A lot of people just aren’t fully informed to AR mechanics. A few weeks ago we had someone join the level 14 group – we noticed he had 400 achievement points, which is a raging clue to a new player, so we asked if he knew what it was. He didn’t, so I explained in whispers and told him we’ll get someone else, and he was not mad or offended and said he’d look into the wiki and never even did a fractal.

With the update that took away fractal level requirement on entry, which I think was a great idea, there’s no hard restriction on entry. But we should at least have some kind of indication as to who’s prepared; to know who can at least produce some of the stat. Perhaps the buff would just say “Agony Resistance” and not even give a value. Make it show only at levels 20+ if they must.

The problem is heightened with yet another bug – linking non-ascended items doesn’t even show its infusion slot (assuming this is a bug actually). Meaning that if the item isn’t ascended (which have a set stat for agony), then we can’t know if it’s even infused. If its not a bug, then Anet is truly dead-set on not allowing an AR check.

Then again, all of this dumbs down the inspection idea further and now I’m thinking more about the reasoning behind not having it. I fully agree not to show stats, but at least allow us to follow up on curiosity of their armor and weapons. Show the character’s picture and formal title of the gear (ie: “Whisper’s Hood” and not “Berserker’s Whisper Hood”). However, I get a feeling that Anet doesn’t want this – maybe they want to keep this feeling of randomness and unknown armor, to create the guild wars world where a major part of gearing is to find our own sets and explore. maybe I’ve been convinced here heheh.

Now this is an idea I can stand behind, show a mini boon/ buff saying Agony resist with no value is a great idea +1

bump for more input, I’m sure there’s other stuff people are thinking of