Guild Wars 2

As the title says, new weapons should be the number one priority Anet should focus on right now. New weapons would do several things:

Bring some freshness to this game that has had 1 new skill added for every class since launch

Increase the play as you want mentality Anet seems to be striving for by giving more weapon options.

Shore up some weirdness with some of the classes (necros have no cleave and only one melee attack, engis have 3 weapons, no melee weapon and no hammer)

Allow Anet to easily balance out the classes more (aoe for mesmers in wvw, group utility for necros in pve, usefulness for rangers in zerging, soft counters to the Guardian Warrior meta that is plaguing this game).

So my question to all the people on the forum is: Do you agree that weapons should be the highest priority for Anet? If not what do you think should? Utilties, Deathmatch in PvP, WvW map?

While I’m all for new weapons, I think doing so would bring an overwhelming number of bugs and needed fixes that would consume ANet. For now, let them focus on the current bugs and fixes and then, perhaps, new weapons could be discussed.

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

Weapons would be massive. I’d rather they take 6 months to add a lot new to the game instead of taking 6 months to try to improve whats already here. Bugs will always exist, things will break, oh well, but I’d rather play with NEW broken things than the same weapons I’ve had for 2 years.

Bhawb.7408:

Weapons would be massive. I’d rather they take 6 months to add a lot new to the game instead of taking 6 months to try to improve whats already here. Bugs will always exist, things will break, oh well, but I’d rather play with NEW broken things than the same weapons I’ve had for 2 years.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS SOOOOO MUCH THIS ^^^^. New stuff keeps players interested, and can actually help balance things out by providing counters to currently popular things. I agree bugfixes are important, but new content keeps a player base not bugfixes and balance.

Aberrant.6749:

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

this, i’d prefer them to balance the existing content when they get back from their 8 month holiday.
what? they’re not on holiday? so honestly, what do they do?…

zapv.8051:

Bhawb.7408:

Weapons would be massive. I’d rather they take 6 months to add a lot new to the game instead of taking 6 months to try to improve whats already here. Bugs will always exist, things will break, oh well, but I’d rather play with NEW broken things than the same weapons I’ve had for 2 years.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS SOOOOO MUCH THIS ^^^^. New stuff keeps players interested, and can actually help balance things out by providing counters to currently popular things. I agree bugfixes are important, but new content keeps a player base not bugfixes and balance.

Except if new content is so bug ridden (or breaks older aspects of the game) to the point where people don’t want to have to deal with it. Besides we have new content coming, in less than 2 weeks.

Also Engis have more “weapons” from their kit options, it’s the same reason they don’t have a swap.

As for new weapons, I don’t really see the big need here. Maybe bringing back a weapon type from gw1 (spears or scythes) wouldn’t be a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s really necessary. Plus it just adds a lot more costs in having to design a bunch of new weapons (~30-50+) for each new weapon type. That’ll take a lot of design hours.

You’d also need to come up with 2-5 skills for each new weapon/profession that gets that weapon, test for balance, test it with current trait set ups, etc. Then you need to add/balance new traits that pertain to this new weapon for each profession that’s getting it. That’s a lot of work to do.

Personally, I don’t want new weapons, just new weapon skills (and maybe another elite or two for each class). I really just want choose-able 2-5 skills. Either pick from a pool (like utilities work) or assign 2-3 options per number (personally I prefer the first, but the latter would be much easier to balance). You like bifrost on your necro but hate marks, well you’d be able to choose different skills to allow our current weapons to fill different build options. Though this has the same bottle neck as above (besides having to design new weapons), this would take a lot of time and resources.

Honestly, don’t expect anything like that until another big content patch (I’d assume during a mid break from season 2 or after it concludes).

Aberrant.6749:

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

You don’t work in software development, do you?

As a ranger who just wants to use bows in content. I am disgusted with your suggestion.

Reading the official ranger summary references bows and “archer”. Yet bows are not viable in PVE and lack in WvW. Talking of delivering on core-design promises… my pet is useless in content where it matters.

AN delivering on core-design promises > Balance > bug fixes > new things.

Balance will never be perfect. There will always be bugs. Introducing new weapons would most likely cause huge balance shifts and result in a number of new bugs. However i feel the game needs this change pretty soon. The game has become stale. The new traits barely added anything. Weapons will definately add a lot more freshness to the game and its something the game needs as soon as possible. Along with more endgame pve content.

I have all classes at 80 yet i find myself bored with all of them because theres nothing new. Id love to see new weapons very soon but i dont believe we will get them anytime in the near future. :<

Liewec.2896:

Aberrant.6749:

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

this, i’d prefer them to balance the existing content when they get back from their 8 month holiday.
what? they’re not on holiday? so honestly, what do they do?…

The problem with this is that balance will never be perfect and people will always think the game is way out of balance even if it was almost perfect. Saying they should work on balance before anything else is effectively saying they should never produce new content because balance will never be perfect or anywhere close to it in such a diverse game. As someone with real world programming experience, I can tell you that bug fixes aren’t always something you just devote time to. Sometimes you don’t know how to fix a bug, it isn’t as simple as just fixing it. New content on the other hand can doesn’t have either of these two drawbacks, and keeps the game fresh an entertaining.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

snip

Your making an assumption new content will be bug ridden. Even if it is the major bugs get patched within a week, so that isn’t a good argument. The new content that is coming probably won’t be any different from the old content. It is going to be open world PVE with 500 people where I can afk if I want. That or another 5 man dungeon which will be fun, but only provides at most a few runs of entertainment. I have an engi so I realize they have kits, but they also have gadgets, turrets, and elixirs.

I realize it would take a lot of time, thus why it should be top priority. I also realize what would go into balance. You probably wouldn’t need to add that many new traits at most 3-4 and at the least edit 1-2 and add a new one. Again, this just adds to the reasoning of why it needs to be top priority.

Making choosable weapon skills would require way more development time then making a new weapon or two for every class. Your asking for something that isn’t going to happen. 4 new weapon skills for every two handed combination is 4*5*8=160 new skills, 5*2*8=80. So your looking at adding about twice as many skills. Also, bifrost looks terrible on necros. Your also introducing even more balancing issues by adding choosable skills because you could pick the 4 strongest skills.

I realize this probably won’t happen soon, but realistically they haven’t released any kind of new skills since the beginning of the game way back when. This needs to change.

Lace.9472:

I’m sorry that rangers aren’t the class that they should be, but your argument doesn’t hold. No where does it say “play how you want and be assured it will be as useful as playing other ways.” It has always been play how you want unless you want the best set up then play a very specific way. This won’t change anytime soon (maybe rangers could get a buff, but something will be weaker somewhere). I’ve already explained the balance and bug fix, and why the dev team can’t just put infinite time into those things.

None of your arguments provide a compelling reason to work on balance, the dev team clearly thinks this game is decently well balanced because they aren’t dedicating all their time to balance. Bug fixes could probably spend more time, but new weapons add something to the game. Players with 5000 hours played need that to keep them interested.

1. Bugfix existing skills/weapons/traits
2. Balance them after they’re fixed
3. Introduce new stuff.

I totally agree on new weapons, but the existing ones should get fixed first. And that should have already happened. A year ago :0

Necro necro
Hammer
#1.1: Swing your hammer
#1.2: Slam your hammer into the ground releasing dark energy that damages foes in a small radius.
#2: Leap with your hammer to your enemy weakening them (600range)
#3: Send out a cone wave dazing enemies
#4: Whirl your hammer damaging near foes and gaining life force for each hit
#5: Slam your hammer into the ground, cracking the ground open and unleasing souls from the death. Each soul that rises damages your foe. (Think about an ice storm but then the projectiles come out of the ground :P)

My worry with new weapons is that they seem to be so concerned with adding broken or OP content that much of it is so weak that classes don’t change. They add things that could address a weakness, but it’s all so weak that it never matters.

So I’m for weapons if they take the risk that something may be OP and that they are willing to address that quickly if it were a problem.

I am so bored of pressing 1 on every single weapon I don’t care if we get the Signet of Vampirism of weapons. I’m tired of pressing 1 on dagger, I’m tired of pressing 1 on scepter, and I’m tired of having two other weapons that are only included in my builds because I have no other option, even though they are badly designed and mind numbingly boring (its pretty sad when pressing 1 is more enjoyable than using an entire other weapon set). It doesn’t matter to me at this point how much awesome new content they add for me to press 1 in, I’m still pressing 1.

Its been two years and the only thing that’s been added are 5 new traits, 4 of which I’ll never use, a new healing skill which I will also never use, and a new ability on deathshroud (which is awesome, I’ll give them that, and why I think they are capable of adding new content without it being overbearing). At this point in guild wars 1 they had added hundreds and hundreds of new skills. And while I understand that adding too much is an issue, the direct opposite of adding nothing is just as bad (if not worse, I’d rather have the rotating FotM troll builds than what I’m doing now, at least those kept me mildly entertained).

If we are just brainstorming new weapon ideas, I’d give Mesmers a Spear Gun, focused around producing clones quickly and raw damage output (spear is adept at controlling the battlefield, trident is very support-y).

Yeah, an underwater weapon, I know. I happen to quite like underwater combat, it’s unbalanced but the 3D environment adds a lot of fun and tactics to it.

I think the next best step is making underwater weapons available on land. The skins are there, the skills are there on some level. Make the switch!

But yeah agreed with Bhawb. New weapons would be nice.

Roe.3679:

My worry with new weapons is that they seem to be so concerned with adding broken or OP content that much of it is so weak that classes don’t change. They add things that could address a weakness, but it’s all so weak that it never matters.

So I’m for weapons if they take the risk that something may be OP and that they are willing to address that quickly if it were a problem.

This is a really good point. Anet in general plays to much of the “I’m scared of kittening people off by making something overpowered” and not enough of the “I’m putting this in the game cause it is awesome.” People need to stop worrying about balance, so much. Games are for fun make all the classes fun first worry about everything else afterwards.

Bhawb.7408:

At this point in guild wars 1 they had added hundreds and hundreds of new skills. And while I understand that adding too much is an issue, the direct opposite of adding nothing is just as bad (if not worse).

zapv.8051:

Lace.9472:

I’m sorry that rangers aren’t the class that they should be, but your argument doesn’t hold. No where does it say “play how you want and be assured it will be as useful as playing other ways.” It has always been play how you want unless you want the best set up then play a very specific way. This won’t change anytime soon (maybe rangers could get a buff, but something will be weaker somewhere). I’ve already explained the balance and bug fix, and why the dev team can’t just put infinite time into those things.

None of your arguments provide a compelling reason to work on balance, the dev team clearly thinks this game is decently well balanced because they aren’t dedicating all their time to balance. Bug fixes could probably spend more time, but new weapons add something to the game. Players with 5000 hours played need that to keep them interested.

My arguments do provide a compelling reason to work on balance. And even if they didn’t (they do) I shouldn’t have to ARGUE to get balance for the class I play O_O
See: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

If we take the above as AN’s design mechanics for the Ranger I will explain why I feel the reality falls short of them:

1. “Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself” – this is true enough. We have some “nature skills” and I rely on some of them.

2. “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” No. We aren’t. The only place bows are in the meta are in SPVP and only is a very select specific builds. That means, in PVE, WvW whether it’s dungeons, zergs, fractals or otherwise we fall short. The bows are not balanced enough in these (the vast majority of the game) areas. Also, outright the class does not compete with other classes range in the majority of scenarios.

3. “With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command” while it’s true we have traps and spirits and have access to pets. What’s not mentioned in the inherent decrease in DPS subjected to the rangers damage for having a pet. This means our DPS is offloaded and shared with an AI which has never been in an acceptable state. In SPVP top rank players have spoken out about the pets “delay”. Meanwhile in dungeons/fractals the pet a handicap due to poor uptime (doing damage) .. (the damage our weapons don’t do because the pet exists..) also very poor survivability. The only place I find value in my pet is in small groups or duels in WvW/PVP or in world exploration (champ/vets) …

4. “rangers can adapt to any situation.” … By going melee and treating the pet like a passive “f2” button. Which is AVOIDING both our pet and bow. Which are explicitly stated in the class summary as the Rangers design goals.

“the dev team clearly thinks this game is decently well balanced because they aren’t dedicating all their time to balance.” If you genuinely believe this then that’s worrying.

“Bug fixes could probably spend more time, but new weapons add something to the game. Players with 5000 hours played need that to keep them interested.” I agree completely that new weapons add to the game – that’s not a valid argument against my point. The issue is with priorities … and that’s what I obviously take issue with. Why on earth should priority be given to veteran players playing their OP classes/builds when there’s genuine areas where AN have yet to deliver their core design promises?

Why dont you go complain about the ranger on a different thread. I dont think anet will ever satisfy your wants so with that in mind we would never get any new weapons if they tried to perfect balance first. Its a poor arguement. Anyway in the recent stream they mentioned they wanted ranger to be the best at single target range dps so they will probably be tweaking things eventually. That doesnt mean they cant work on weapons at the same time. Dont be selfish just because you play one class and are happy playing 2 boring weapons for the forseeable future.

New weapons are “acceptable.” At the same time, what about rearranging some of the current weaponry for different classes. For example:

• Mesmer and MH Pistol
• Ranger with Staff (I’m thinking a kinda plant control vibe here)

Those are just a couple of fast examples, but I’m sure folk see the point in general.

Advent.6193:

New weapons are “acceptable.” At the same time, what about rearranging some of the current weaponry for different classes. For example:

• Mesmer and MH Pistol
• Ranger with Staff (I’m thinking a kinda plant control vibe here)

Those are just a couple of fast examples, but I’m sure folk see the point in general.

Thats what people meant by new weapons. :P

spoj.9672:

Why dont you go complain about the ranger on a different thread. I dont think anet will ever satisfy your wants so with that in mind we would never get any new weapons if they tried to perfect balance first. Its a poor arguement. Anyway in the recent stream they mentioned they wanted ranger to be the best at single target range dps so they will probably be tweaking things eventually. That doesnt mean they cant work on weapons at the same time. Dont be selfish just because you play one class and are happy playing 2 boring weapons for the forseeable future.

Nice tone guy.

Also bare in mind the context of this discussion is about the number one priority. That’s what we’re discussing here. Obviously everyone knows a business can do more than one thing at a time. But OP explicitly stated s/he wanted to discuss the priority. Having a priority on one thing doesn’t mean ignoring everything else. If that’s something you believe I don’t see us progressing with this talk.

Also in terms of being selfish, the OP made a suggestion. I gave an example of a counter argument to that. I believe I wrote:

AN delivering on core-design promises > Balance > bug fixes > new things.

not:

AN delivering on ranger core-design promises > Balance > bug fixes > new things.

Everything you wrote could have been addressed without me replying if you had just read properly.

+1 to the OP

We need new stuff, it’s getting so boring.

Lace.9472:

Also in terms of being selfish, the OP made a suggestion. I gave an example of a counter argument to that. I believe I wrote:

AN delivering on core-design promises > Balance > bug fixes > new things.

not:

AN delivering on ranger core-design promises > Balance > bug fixes > new things.

Everything you wrote could have been addressed without me replying if you had just read properly.

Nice tone. I did read everything properly actually.

You want balance changes and core design fixes to the class. Thats fine. Most of your issues seem to be the case of ranger actually fits its design but is not equal in efficiency to other methods. Its unreasonable to ask for this as it goes against the games core design (melee being superior to range but having increased risk).

There are issues with the ranger but you can play how you want and its still viable so there arent actually any core design flaws in the rangers case. Other than them having less single target range dps than an ele. Your points 3 & 4 seem more like lack of understanding and experience to me but I wont tell you how to play your class. :P

And anyway. The actual order should be this:

addressing SERIOUS core design flaws (within reason, not to the extent of making everything equal) > new content > bug fixes > balance

This is because there are always bugs and balance is never perfect. They should not be prioritizing these over content which would bring in new players and keep others playing the game. Balance and bug fixing should just be dealt with on a regular basis in the background. New content is what keeps people playing, not bug fixes and minor balance tweaks. Core gameplay changes can mostly be ignored as they are part of balance and are often already mostly delivered upon, at least to a certain extent. And its only in serious cases that they should take priority.

spoj.9672:

Its unreasonable to ask for this as it goes against the games core design (melee being superior to range but having increased risk). There are issues but you can play how you want and its still viable so there arent actually any core design flaws in the rangers case. Other than them having less single target range dps than an ele.

Disagree but that’s off topic and I’ve talked about this elsewhere. If you’re interested can point you in that direction.

spoj.9672:

And anyway. The actual order should be this:

addressing serious core design flaws (within reason, not to the extent of making everything equal) > new content > bug fixes > balance

This is because there is always bugs and balance is never perfect. They should not be priorities they should just be dealth with on a regular basis. New content is what keeps people playing,

Agreed. Think that’s the best compromise for now

The only thing I really wanna see some underwater weapons be able to be used on land, specifically spears. The models and skins are already in the game, and many of the attacks can be kept as is and slightly modified for land.

As a Warrior, I’d love to have a pull on my bar. The burst would have to be changed because another stun would be pointless. Maybe some sort of knockback or short blowback with some stacks of vulnerability. What would make it interesting for all classes that could use it is that the strikes have more range. I think 150 vs 130 is a bit low but if it was upped a bit more it would lead to some interesting tactics.

It’s mostly because I think the legendary looks fantastic and I’d love a reason to actually try and make it.

mainhand mesmer pistol. is this happening yet?

I would also love to see new content to shake up PvP and create some diversity.

I feel that the simple addition of some new utility skills could go along way, but I’m all for generally everything/anything mentioned above in this forum.

A fresh concept would be with the addition of:

Different weapon Skills for the same weapon.

By this I mean allowing professions to re-innovate a weapon, replacing its current 5 weapon skills wih 5 completely new weapon skills. This (I feel) would take care of a lot of issues involving “realism” of the specific weapons to each respective profession. I know this does not seem as fun as developing completely new weapons. ( like crossbows or claw based weapons) Or as desired as allowing professions to use other preexisting weapons previously not available to them. (Like a Sword for the Elementalist, or a Dagger for the Engineer.)

But allowing a profession to use the five reinvented Greatsword Weapon Skills with the ability to swap weapons to the current Grestsword Weapon Skills on the same weapon would open up pandors box of fun, And would aesthetically function, similar to changing your “fighting style” mid-fight. You would be useing the same weapon just in a different way.

By making the new Weapon Skills take the weapon in another direction the possibilities would be endless. Engineers could have condition based rifle builds, or power speced pistol/pistol builds. Necromancers could now use power based staffs! The possibilities would be endless and would shave some of the resources required for development.

Anyways, in conclusion: Just give us something fresh please!

Liewec.2896:

Aberrant.6749:

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

this, i’d prefer them to balance the existing content when they get back from their 8 month holiday.
what? they’re not on holiday? so honestly, what do they do?…

Except balance is neverending and iterative, so making it top priority at all times doesn’t work. The game just falls into stagnation while they endlessly spend all the resources rebalancing it. Balance and bug fixes should remain lower priority than new content outside of very major game breaking problems. Of course, the problem is that ‘low priority’ for Anet seems to often mean ‘never addressed’.