Guild Wars 2

I wonder if their interviews with players who quit, actually revealed how displeased mostly everyone is with the rewards in this game. Blues and Greens, are not rewarding. On top of that, we are prevented from doing something more than once in a 24-hour period, if we want any type of reward out of anyways, or rather the chance at a decent reward. There’s a distinct lack of rewards for harder encounters as well. Nobody really does Tequatl after it was made more challenging. And don’t get anyone started on the Triple Trouble of wurms, as practically nobody does that anymore at all. It’s encounters designed wrong, encounters who requires way too many players and that takes far too long a time to complete over any other world event that may be up at the time. At least there are a few unique drops in these encounters, but you can’t sell Ascended, nor do they look good, so the interest is dampened. They’re also extremely static. Take Shatterer as an example of how terrible most of these encounters really are; we are all, grouped up on its right hand side, with it pouncing and attacking straight ahead. It pays no attention to the hundred-man army killing it. It’s not dynamic, and it isn’t engaging. It’s ridiculous. Why isn’t it turning around, attacking us at its side? Why doesn’t it fly and land somewhere else nearby? Why is it so blatantly scripted? (That’s not to say you should kill off anyone doing anything by making it too complicated, or too difficult, but at least make it fun, and put some fun rewards in all these encounters who are practically Guild Wars 2’s version of raiding.)

This is where ArenaNet needs to work on things. Rewards. Not trying to make leveling into a reward by slowly unlocking things. Pretty much nobody has ever enjoyed leveling in a game because it unlocked more and more skills, or the ability to dye something… They endure it because they want to reach the highest level and expect the fun to be there, the end-game. I will give ArenaNet the compliment again of saying this was the first MMO game in which I found leveling to not be a drag, I actually really enjoyed it. But I never felt rewarded and I still don’t to this day. I got blues and greens, and this is what I mostly get to this day. Fun.. There’s also an excessive amount of Account Bound things that are either worth a few silver to a vendor and/or that I can’t even salvage. They take up space, so you’re given the choice of deleting your reward or simply having it take up space. I’ll ask as I have before, who wants to delete their reward, for nothing. Drag it out of their inventory, click confirm and poof, it’s gone. That is not rewarding, that’s discouraging. And who wants to sell their top tier items for a silver.. a silver! If it was because players deemed their value to be a silver, that’s different, over the game saying you can’t even try sell them to other players and the vendors are willing to grant you a measly silver for it, that’s just.. annoying. It doesn’t feel rewarding.

Again, Karma. Used to feel rewarding, you could buy Exotics, armor as you leveled up, you could salvage and vendor these things. Then we have one incident, of some group of lame players exploiting one little mistake you make with the cost of some Karma reward. And you go bonkers and make it impossible to sell and salvage them. Why is it that you have kept it like this for nearly two years now. Why is this not “fixed” yet? I have not purchased Karma gear as I leveled up since that day. I don’t like destroying my rewards with nothing in return.

Also, why do we have a single sPvP map with a new game mode added? One TDM map. One! Why is the Borderlands of World vs. World still a copy-paste. We have two maps, Eternal Battlegrounds and Borderlands. Edge of the Mist was and is a great map, but it’s not included in the matchup, so that hardly counts. It’s not like players PvP there anyways.. they run in circles avoiding each other to farm it like a PvE map. Why do we have only two new PvE maps (three if you count EotM), which aren’t even the size of the original maps, combined, added over the course of two years. You have a massive world to take from. It exists in Guild Wars: Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. We get one map that’s barely used, Southsun Cove, and one that is, well actually quite awesome, Dry Top, but that’s it though.

Over the course of two years, you have given us content, I’m not saying you haven’t. But where is all the content from the Living Story, Season 1. It’s gone, poof, it’s nowhere. You haven’t expanded your game. There’s hardly more content for a new player today, than there was a year ago. There is the problem. The game is stalling, it’s not rewarding, and you can only have fun for so long with the same toys provided to you. Player retention comes with rewards and new things to do. Players play for rewards. “Fun” is only rewarding for so long.

No communication from developer(s).

Felt like checking how rare, “rare”, was this time. After roughly 100 Black Lion Chests opened and 100 Euro spending money spent (I ain’t fuzzed about the money, it was meant for supporting the game at any rate), I had a total of 0 Fused Weapon Skin tokens to show for it.

Now, as I wrote, I ain’t mad about the money involved, they were always set aside to spend on the Gem Store (as my incentive to not take up smoking again), however, I do get more and more annoyed at how rare they need to make certain things, Account Bound things at that, from random chance boxes. They’re basically pushing, at least me, further and further away from wanting to spend any more money on their game to support it.

I did get a Name Change Contract though! That’s always great, considering I don’t want to rename any of the 8 characters. Also got 3 Total Makeover Kits, although I don’t want to change my appearance. And I got a Self-Style Hair Kit, which was the only decent not-so-common item that I feel I can have some use for, maybe. Personally I don’t find it helpful/exciting to get these types of items in a random chance box either, as I would much rather buy them as I want them, if I want them. As-is, they are just taking up precious Bank slots.

If I didn’t luck out on the Unidentified Dyes that I got, where one turned out to be a Abyss Dye, the whole 100 Euro spent would be for more or less complete junk (personal opinion I guess, as I really don’t care for Boosters or one-use Mystic Tonics).

It’s a shame that their Gem Store team insists on milking the player base. Instead of additionally providing a direct Gem cost purchase for the weapon skins, though at a slightly “higher cost”. I wouldn’t mind spending 2000 Gems (25 Euro) on a weapon skin, if I really want it. I do mind spending 8000 Gems not getting what I want however. But, as others would say, it’s the players own fault for hoping ArenaNet stops these cheap business tactics in order to make money. On the bright side, we’re not forced to spend money in the Gem Store, though if everyone simply stops doing that and only convert their in-game Gold to Gems, I wonder how long they can keep the game development going.

PS: I honestly ain’t mad about it, I went in not expecting it to be too good of a chance when they worded it as “rare”. I am disappointed (in ArenaNet) yes, but not mad.

Lucyfer.9517:

It’s like whispering in presence of others, it is rude.

It’s like you walking past two foreigners, which you don’t know, discussing something between each other in their own language, and then you go up to them and ask them to speak English, because you can’t understand. It is rude.

Riya.2678:

Was it not the intention of league divisions to be a visual representation of someone’s actual PvP skill in comparison to the rest of the PvP community […]

It will never be this. You are 1 out of 5 players. You rely on 4 players beside you being relatively decent. In no way can Leagues or even the MMR, in parts, truly measure how good you are as a PvP player, because you rely on four other players to not be completely garbage and actually play to the objective(s).

E.g., there are so many people who neglect to help a bunker when they call out that opponents are invading their space (I’ve been on points barely juggling 2-3 players for up to four-five minutes on occasion.. while some of my team fights off point with someone else and others are at least trying to cap something but failing). There are so many people who fight off point. There are so many people who when “camping” close with no opposition, don’t do simple things such as rotating to mid/far/objective when applicable, if someone else on the team has just died (as they will respawn soon, and can rotate into close if needed). There are so many people who seem allergic to using /team chat. There are so many people who will run one by one into a team and just feed them kills. And these are the kinds of people who causes you to lose. Which in no way is your fault truth be told. No matter how good a player is, they can not carry four bad ones. It won’t happen in most scenarios. Unless perhaps if the opponent team is really bad.

So while I queued solo the entire way to Sapphire (and that feels like an “entire way” when facing premade after premade, for the most part—Please, implement the Solo Queue again, Anet!), that was not because I was a great player. That was because I had good/great random team mates, I had on occasion great teams, that actually played the objectives instead of having some of us kittening around off points and not supporting where needed. So all in all, my [III] badge, and while it’s not the biggest accomplishment ever, is not a testament to me having gained Sapphire as a PvP player. It’s a testament to every random individual that has been a part of each of the wins I experienced as I climbed my Tiers, lost and gained Pips. I would like to think I contributed a small part on my own of course, but I was 1 out of 5.

PS: I would very much like to Group Queue, ArenaNet, but I refuse to do so without you separating Solo- and Group Queue (—you should be able to queue solo into Group Queue to fill 4+1 scenarios mind you, otherwise matching 2+3 and/or 5 together, but Solo Queue should only match 1+1+1+1+1 teams). There has been so many nice players who has asked me to join up for premades, which I have felt I have to decline, because I feel like I’d be a rotten hypocrite if I complain about the lack of Solo Queue, but then go ahead and play with good PvP players in a premade, so we indirectly end up with matches where we just stomp randoms. Please reinstate the Solo Queue so I can actually have some grouped fun too, without feeling like I earn pips for little effort (every so often).

I’ve felt all my alts are dead ever since they implemented WXP. Forcing me to stick to one character in order to rank up has basically killed off all my alts in the primary content I like to play, World vs. World. My Guardian got the bulk of my ranks, so now I can’t really play any of my other 7 characters, without feeling like I am taking steps backwards instead of advancing. If it weren’t for the occasional fun in PvE, I’d almost wish I could get a refund for all the extra character slots I purchased, as well as the time, real money (Gem Store stuff, bag slots) and Gold I invested in them.

Luckily I still like playing my Guardian the most, at least for the time being.. Still, it has dampened my excitement for WvW. Not even sure I’ve set a foot in there for the past 2 months, and I am primarily interested in WvW. I barely even play lately with all the things they have been doing to the game. These bi-weekly updates are simply killing it for me. Too little time to do anything else. So I burn out, and stop playing between the content updates. Rinse-repeat. Not even sure I enjoy the game that much anymore.

I do think they should re-work that spell effect. To me, it pretty much ruins shields with how it clips into them, and for a Guardian, that means pretty much that their shields are visually ruined, constantly, when out of combat.

Sure, I can agree on the fact that it is a visual cue, but when an effect pretty much ruins shield-appearances while active, that to me at least, says it is a terrible design. It’s also one of the most obvious cues in the game, with other boons not being as “in your face” as this one. It blocks one attack after all, and it is possible to activate at will as well, meaning your high damage attack can still be blocked even if you were looking for cues.

I’d be fine with the effect being as it is while there’s no shield equipped to the character. But I think it could use an alternative for when there is a shield in place, that isn’t so blatantly clipping and ruining the shield models. It’s one of the things I hate the most about the game. Silly as that may sound to those not sharing my point of view.

I’ll just go ahead and quote myself from the initial installment of SAB back in April.

Absconditus.6804:

I would really like to see this superb addition of content added to the game permanently instead of being something that only occurs for a short time/month each year. This game mode alone, can draw in more players. Been showing my friends screenshots of this, and they’re all saying they want to buy the game asap. to try it for themselves, as it looks amazing. Some say they worry that they won’t be able to do so early enough though, as they need a paycheck first.

ArenaNet, this is some of the finest new content you’ve done so far for GW2, although your past event additions has been very entertaining as well, this deserves to be permanent for all new and old players to enjoy as it’s hopefully expanded upon. I’m sure you can find something else to do for Easter/April each year instead.

I still would like to see SAB permanent, instead of it being yet another give and take away again event, only being around for periods of time, before going into hibernation until the next time it appears.

Jólnir Langbardr is from time to time popping into Aurora Glade’s cities, giving away Giant Wintersday Gifts and/or Lumps of Coal, depending on if he deems you naughty or nice, if not something in between. Festivoo the Merry is a excellent helper, re-stocking his gifts and coal when needed.

Fun fact: He’s a Thief.

Not sure who it is that places these nodes that we can buy, but again, it’s just a quick dump somewhere, with seemingly no care for how it looks. They even float.. so it’s not enough that they are growing out from slabs of stone, they float above them too. How about putting a tiny bit of effort into the things we are giving you real money for, designers/devs/whoever it was that did these placements? Come on, shape up a bit, this looks like a quick sloppy job with little to no effort placed behind it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I doubt very much that the complaints of players who left the game after a very short time playing centered on rewards, at least the way you mean them.

A good chunk of my friends stopped playing around Lv.15-40. They felt like they didn’t get rewards early on. They asked, so I honestly answered how it functions at end-game. You are restricted to getting rewards from encounters once per day, with it resetting at 2 a.m. CET, and you are honestly mostly looking at greens and blues, with one guaranteed better reward.

When they asked about expansions, I explained how the Living Story worked (at the time), how it’s a good chunk of content churned out, but how it disappears and are gone. They liked the idea of frequent content updates, but not that it went away and couldn’t be played again. They also asked about the rewards from them, and I showcased a lot of the rewards I had gotten. Some of them they liked, most they discarded as stuff they didn’t care much for.

They complained about the Achievement Point rewards, how the weapon skins were just horrible. They saw the prices of precursors after seeing my collection of Legendary weapons, and were simply discouraged at even thinking about the idea of getting those.

Some I convinced to stay a bit longer, to give it a bit more time, but once they got to dungeons and felt the rewards being terrible, they just handed in the towel. In the broad picture, they looked at rewards and the content available, and just stopped, moving back to other MMO games. I’m about the only player left out of my circle of friends, who is still playing (not counting friends I’ve gotten through playing this specific game, that are perhaps still playing, although a lot has recently quit due to lack of content updates in areas such as World vs. World).

I still enjoy the game, but understand how the game can feel unrewarding. I perhaps have a extra bit of love for the game, because I played Guild Wars. It could be that which is keeping me around, the nostalgia. Although if they’re planning to destroy all evidence of the previous game, such as Old Lion’s Arch under the waters of Lion’s Arch.. I dunno, stuff like that really got me annoyed. (As a side-note: Why in the world did you destroy that? It was my first “Oh my gawd! Skweeee— It’s Lion’s Arch! I know this place! Wooooooo~ excitement!” in Guild Wars 2, and now it’s obliterated because you couldn’t put that darn machine a bit further to the other side of the map. You destroyed a landmark people can recognize from the old game and get excited over. Just.. why?)

Everyone has said that the combat was fun though. It just wasn’t rewarding, nor did it seem like it would get any more rewarding. Legit concerns which are somewhat true.

Gamers aren’t some unintelligent drivel that are unable to get information about how things are going to turn out later on. They may start to feel a certain way early on, maybe around Lv.15? Where are my rewards? Does my rewards get better later on? How much is a precursor, these legendaries look awesome. What content is there to do? They’ll ask fellow gamers, friends or strangers, they’ll read articles, forum posts, comments on websites about the game. They’ll watch videos on YouTube, they’ll look at streams over at Twitch. They are able to get the information, and will be able to make up their minds on if they find this to be worth their time. Sadly, for me, my friends went with “Why bother?” and quit. They just didn’t see the reason in leveling to end-game when there were practically no end-game for them to be had. There weren’t any rewards and the content available wasn’t really all that much to shout hoorah over. At least for them.

Recently I’m losing more and more of my in-game GW2 friends who enjoy WvW as their main venue, to other games. There’s hardly been any updates to WvW over the course of two years. I mean more in the sense of freshness, new maps. We got Edge of the Mists, but it’s.. a PvE map. At least it’s turned into one, with it not being a part of the match-ups. They’ve always felt their rewards are rather.. meager. And there not really being a incentive to win. Why bother? What do you get? Pride? What is pride going to get you in the long run of playing a video game? You want rewards. It all boils down to rewards.

Going forwards is for hipsters anyways. We like going backwards, e.g., Portal, Phase Retreat, nerfs to our profession.

I’ll just leave three little words here;
Super — Adventure — Box

I’m fine with Unidentified drops that stack, I’m fine with needing to identify said gear, as long as this is free. It needs to function like Repairs, no costs involved. I can waltz over to a NPC to have things identified, that won’t bother me too much, but if you add a freaking cost to the process, loot becomes unrewarding (again), since you are spending more for identification and salvage than you are likely to earn from a whole lot of the things that shows up in your bags through the process.

Simple explanation, they messed up, it was poorly written.

Basically it goes bla-bla, “dragon”, “Mordremoth”, “don’t know what or who” over the course of two-three dialogue trees. First we out of the blue know and state it’s a dragon, we know it’s Mordremoth and call it by name, then suddenly we don’t know what or who it is that did this and that. It’s a bit of a mess, a bit out of nowhere, and it honestly ruined the story for me. I enjoy the new area expansion (plus the one we can get to which is not supposed to be accessed yet (I guess)), but the way this episode started off, I just couldn’t enjoy it for the story progression. That sudden it’s a dragon and it’s Mordremoth completely ruined it for me.

It doesn’t matter if there are hints to Mordremoth’s existence in the game, that we are all aware that this must be the next dragon we’re ramping up towards. My PC and the NPC heroes has not mentioned it once in the first episode, things are a mystery at the end of it, then suddenly, start the second episode and.. slap, it’s this and that. I know this.. just because. It doesn’t matter if I shouldn’t be certain about it, I am.. because I was poorly written.

I hope the team can go back and do a little bit of altering to either episode 1 or 2, so future players don’t get this inconsistent slap in the face. Perhaps just edit out the whole dragon/Mordremoth part altogether until they actually know what’s going on..

I’m all for hard achievements, if you have endless time to complete them.

When you are given pretty challenging achievements, on top of a decently challenging dungeon (when focusing on these achievements anyways), with a rather limited time to complete them, you just create a recipe for stress, and that ultimately means you are most likely not enjoying the content you’re playing.

I sure did not enjoy hunting these achievements and was borderline ready to quit the game if I didn’t get them. (That may of course seem silly to some people, but as a completionist, having a hole in your achievements will irk you endlessly for the future, and I figured it’d be better to quit than to be in a sour mood every day I log in to play.)

I also really hate the fact that they are saying they’ll pump out these Living Story updates every two weeks, since to me it feels like that’ll just make it a large headache, at least when combined with hard achievements like this.

It leaves nearly no time to do anything else in the game, when you got to focus so much on these updates, that on the bright side will keep you busy, but on the downside, way too much. I applaud that they want to give us things to do, I do and I appreciate that, but every two weeks seems like it’ll be a bit too much. If each segment starts every 2 weeks and last for a month, overlapping eachother, that’s something else, but it doesn’t sound like that from what they’re saying.

Nevermore IV;

The Friend of Rabbits required event was disabled (as far as I know) when bundles were deemed too confusing to new players, as the New Player Experience (NPE) were introduced back in September 2014’s Feature Pack. This event has in other words not been active for over a year, and you chose to include that in the Nevermore IV collection? That quite simply blows my mind.

Danador also does no sell the Friend of the Pups trophy, but rather the Friend of the Hounds one, which is said to be given from doing the event that occurs. I assume it gives the Friend of the Hounds if you don’t purchase it from Danador before doing the event, as I have seen someone link having 2 Friend of the Hounds. I purchased mine before doing the event, and the event rewarded me with nothing for the Collection. This should have been a easy hotfix to replace the wrongful item on the Heart vendor btw.—not sure what’s taking so long.
_

Not progress blocking bugs, but worth mentioning;

Friend of the Owl Spirit requires you to fail up to two events, before you can start on a four-event chain that will grant this item. For one, the description is wrong and the two Owl trophies are switched around. Secondly, you don’t get the item on defeating the Svanir Hunters (after failing the Beast event, then the Shaman event), but rather after going through defeating the Hunters, then escorting Ulgadis as she mends snow owls, then escorting her again to defeat the Shaman, then helping her destroy the totem, at which point you finally get the trophy.

The bigger problem is the need to fail an event, in a rather heavily traffic’ed lower level zone. Not forgetting that it needs the first event, to be completed, in order to get the other trophy. That creates problems with players needing the event to fail for one trophy, and players wanting to do the event to get the other trophy (besides the numerous people just going through doing the event, because it’s an event). You are creating toxicity and animosity among players when one side just does what the game has been teaching them, to complete events, and another side doesn’t want it to be completed. Those who needs the event(s) to fail, get overly frustrated with the players who come through and won’t listen to any sort of plead for letting the current event fail. I had to wait until 4:45-5:00 AM in the morning to be able to do it. That’s a ridiculous requirement. And then there’s the direct grievers. The “trolls”. Like some, admittedly slightly funny in name, “Never Getting More” character that camped the events last night and completed them just out of spite to the 10-12 players standing there wanting and asking for players to let it fail so that a four-chain event can start.

You really need to rework these stages of the Collection(s). It takes the “in Guild Wars 2, you are happy to see other players” (which is not really always the case with poor scaling on some events, but anyways—) and turns it into the complete opposite. You start resenting other players and want them to go away. Some people deal with it better than others. I tried to ask nicely. Other players got really frustrated and started cursing out the players who didn’t want to listen when asked to stop. I don’t want to see that in Guild Wars 2. Don’t make the “friendliest MMO Community” do a 180 because of a poor design decision, please. It should be obvious how easy it is for people to be destructive and for them to grief on a setup like that as well.

You can reach them on Asura, but you need to jump very close to the very edge of the platform to reach it. Alternatively, you could try to do the dodge-jump by rolling your fingers over V and Space using your thumb, as you move forwards. That will get you a tiny bit further and make the jump a slight bit “easier” (once you master the dodge-jumping).

Did we forget that Mesmer has been consistently decent at 1v1, prior to anything that Chronomancer gives us? The game is not balanced around 1v1..

Anyways, want to deny some Alacrity generation for the Chronomancer? Well, you got Chill to semi-counter it for a while, so that’s one way to potentially balance it out of the picture for a bit. Some professions are more proficient at this than others, e.g., they’ll be our hard counters. Or, kill off the clones, again, some professions are better at than others when it comes to AoE-melting our illusions. Pulling/pushing us off our Well before it can do its final pulse is another tactic to use, or to area denial the location it’s dropped at, the same way anyone mildly decent will try to get a Thief out of their Shadow Refuge and punish them as they get Revealed.

Alacrity is nice, sure, but let’s be fair, it’s not why we are winning in any 1v1 scenarios. Mesmer was never bad at 1v1. The people who complain, are the ones with less experience in PvP, the not-so-good (yet) players. Everyone needs to learn. The same players that still gets confused about who is the real Mesmer amidst the clones, still trying to pick them out, as they’re downed on the floor.

For Alacrity to be truly useful, you need to build into it. If you do that, you are forfeiting other strong choices. And even so, there’s counters to its generation.

I would really like to see this superb addition of content added to the game permanently instead of being something that only occurs for a short time/month each year. This game mode alone, can draw in more players. Been showing my friends screenshots of this, and they’re all saying they want to buy the game asap. to try it for themselves, as it looks amazing. Some say they worry that they won’t be able to do so early enough though, as they need a paycheck first.

ArenaNet, this is some of the finest new content you’ve done so far for GW2, although your past event additions has been very entertaining as well, this deserves to be permanent for all new and old players to enjoy as it’s hopefully expanded upon. I’m sure you can find something else to do for Easter/April each year instead.

For those bringing up WvW zerg clashes and how this is such a detriment to that kind of play style, I promise you, that kind of fighting will get stale for you too, just like it does for mostly anyone who has done it for a good long time. It may be fun and exciting when you are still a (relatively) new player (e.g., if you’ve done it for less than 1000 hours), but be fair to yourselves, it is not much skill involved in it. And saying otherwise is fooling yourself and somewhat deceiving others.

Try doing it for about 4000 hours without getting ridiculously tired of the lack of thought process to the actual combat there is in these big large clashes.—Everyone balls up, stacks up Stability, Might and Swiftness.. then they run in a combined blob into the other enemy blob, throwing down fields and pressing mainly 1. It boils down to pressing a few random skills with very little thought behind it. Oh, maybe there’s a “tactical” Veil used before the clash, as if that actually fools anyone.. nobody has any idea where that blob disappeared to, it’s not predictable at all. Nope. Genius play there.

If anything, these changes should be an incentive to shake things up a bit in WvW, which has gotten so dreadfully stale with its main venue being blob vs blob vs blob. The use of Stability, is not skilled play. Skilled play is to use your dodges and skills to avoid damage and crowd control, to use your Stun Breaks and Condition removal, to spread out to avoid the damage and force the enemy to spread out as well, to use your skills effectively—not blob as to make it so that the AoE cap is in effect and only a few is being hit by damage at a time. Seriously, how can you even try to say a thing such as that is skilled gameplay? Taking advantage of a flaw in the game mechanics is a show of skill now?

Why aren’t these clashes more spread out? Why do players blob up in the 40+ zergs that just roams mindlessly around, following that one guy/girl who actually pays attention to what is going on (read: “Commander”)? Why are they just balls of players running through other balls of players when they actually fight? Why are there practically no tactical thought to these clashes? Why aren’t we using all our skills? Because it’s the easy way out. Stability and exploiting the AoE cap. If anything, I hope these changes can revitalize the WvW scene. It’s gotten terrible.

The only skilled play in WvW (as I see it), comes from roamers (that does it solo or at most as a group of five), and/or the harass/focus squads in the clashes who tactically select individual targets to take out, as they are seen as a threat, and who plays together as a team to accomplish this goal. The otherwise large majority of WvW players are rather terrible at PvP, and gets destroyed as soon as they are without their huge blob fortress of bodies. A roamer knows that, as do anyone from sPvP. You should rather ask yourself this; Why are you having issues with your Stability being stripped so quickly? Has it occured to you, that you may be doing something wrong?

Edit: Stability has been a cheap Boon for way too long. In all game modes. Just look at how MAGpie below me (Note: I am sorry if it feels like I am picking on you, I am not doing that, but I am using your complaint as an example. My apologies if you find this provocative.) are complaining about a spinning golem stripping Stability in a short time. Instead of moving out of its way when it does that, he seemingly just stands there and takes it. I mean, he has to be doing that. A golem’s spinning attack has a fairly obvious, albeit short, windup animation. And people complain about PvE being too easy. As soon as they do something to make it require a wee bit more skill, people cry bloody murder. I applaud ArenaNet for this change. Good job on whoever finally sorted out this ridiculous easy mode Boon.

All Guilds are seemingly facing this issue on any progress level. My personal solo-Guild is also capped with 3550/3550 as Lv.17.

I’d rate the support for Guild Wars 2 among the best, if not the best in the industry. I accidentally skinned my Sunrise way back when, after having purchased a weapon skin from the Gem Store and being in the middle of dying my armor. I didn’t notice I had double clicked the GS skin item which then skinned my Sunrise when I accepted my dye colors. I quickly got help with restoring it to its “pristine” condition by Support replacing the “ruined” one with a new one and destroying the old one. Absolutely love them for this to this day. (I don’t like seeing “Transmuted” on my Legendary items. I’m weird, sure, but they helped me fix what was otherwise quite frustrating to me.) Every time I’ve been in need of help, I have gotten support within 24 hours.

It may be worth pointing out that all levels can’t perhaps reasonably afford the 50 Silver cost that’s been slapped on bets for the Moa Racing activity. That part of the event seems a bit more tailored to the rich/higher levels.

@blitzkrieg, Just because some guilds use Mesmers doesn’t mean its optimal. E.g., our damage is terrible compared to that of a roaming Warrior/Thief, who has way more reliable gap closing/Shadowstep abilities and CC, than our iLeap and Blink mechanics. And no, a Shatter build isn’t necessarily a team-spec, get your head out of the sand, it can be just as much a 1-on-1 build. And no again, it doesn’t need more sustain in terms of condition removal, we can do that plenty on our own through our various Utility Skills that is about removing conditions.

Portal is practically useless outside of s/tPvP, besides of course porting people who are terrible at jumping. In some situations you can use it after hiding inside enemy structures in WvW, but that’s a lot of fun, right? Running in and standing around, waiting for several minutes, while your friends run around actually.. you know.. having fun fighting people. Stop touting it as this amazing thing over and over. I wish it was, but it is impossible to find fun/good use for a skill with a 90s CD and a really short 10s window once activated, in anything but s/tPvP to control the points (yawn.. boring PvP game mode is seriously boring).

You also need to understand that people are upset over the fact that we have complained about another issue with iLeap for over a year. The clone in most cases simply does not want to reach your requested target. Because it see a shiny pebble on the ground, or get winded as it see a slight elevation difference. It will either spawn stationary, staring your opponent down, before slowly running casually over, or it will zip about 1/3rds of the way before stopping, standing still and staring at your opponent (or perhaps that shiny pebble), before casually resuming to run slowly over. Nobody, has complained about Mesmers swapping to the location where a clone had been killed. I have never seen anyone complain about that. Plenty of complaints have been made over the terrible pathing of this skill however. And they don’t fix it. They fix something nobody has requested. Something so minor and hardly what I would consider to be a bug. It’s ridiculous, and insulting.

Personally, I don’t care about the change, in 90% of the cases where I use iLeap, or I mean the 5% of the times it actually works, the clone is still alive, it’s not a big deal in that sense for me. I do however find it really angering that they didn’t fix what is blatantly broken, but something nobody has ever cried about. I will still love my Mesmer, because I love the active gameplay I get out of it. But it’s frustrating to see ArenaNet do nothing about actually fixing our class-issues, and it sucks knowing that whatever I do, I am always going to be a weaker version of some other class. This game has no class identity, everyone can do everything and a few classes do everything really well, it’s a bit meh. I want the good old Hexes back. That’d be better than these paper health clones mechanics.

While doing homework, you should be doing your homework. When you’re done with your homework, you can do whatever you want. That or you could just continue to push out your hit songs and make so much money that you never need a degree to fall back on. You are Taylor Swift after all. Yup.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

I’m in agreement that the guy speaking in german was being rude, if you specifically set it so that you are in the english channel you should be speaking english

You haven’t set anything, anywhere, to say that you should be in a “English channel”. You have set your GAME User Interface and NPC dialogue, be that text and/or audio, to be English. What language players communicate with in chat is not a part of this, obviously. Servers are in small ways a part of this, but overall, with the Mega Server pooling players together in order to avoid empty maps, chances are you will get a few players of different languages on the same overflow. In what way is it RUDE to speak your own language? Why do you need to know what they are saying? I think it’s rude of anyone to expect people who wish to speak in their own language, to speak in a different language simply because some players have this obsessive compulsive need to know everything that’s being said. Things they 90% of the time don’t even care about and won’t engage in.

Why in the world do you need to understand it? There’s probably 40 other players on the map, that you can chat with, in English, if you want to chat with someone. Note that I am a English writing and speaking individual, I just get really annoyed at people saying nonsense such as it being rude to speak in a language other than your own. It’s the opposite, it’s rude to expect them to speak your language.

If they join your Party when you advertised it with the English language option and american flag (which doesn’t make sense, it should be the UK flag, but whatever), then proceed to speak in a different language, then sure, that is rude on their part. If they wrote something in the map chat, that’s hardly rude, that’s just them socializing and you not understanding what is being said. Boohoo, big deal. Why not just look at that as any other map chat which you don’t care to engage in.

I got to admit that it doesn’t really help when you are going to be needing that same Crystalline Ore, to make Ingots for a new Maguuma Legendary. It’s surely going to put a damper on several players desire to donate them to their Guild, leaving them barren of any sort of decorations. I invested 6 Crystalline Ore to get a table and two chairs, something which cost around 300 Gold to make into their Simple form I might add, but I am already thinking about how that is 6 Crystalline Ingots I could have used towards one of the Maguuma Legendary weapons coming on Tuesday. Plus it cost a lot of Gold for some basic furnishing. I don’t mind so much the upgrade paths taking time and/or Gold, but basic decorations I agree should perhaps be a bit more lenient with their prices.

I would also at least like some basic option for interacting with a chair to have characters sit in them, if they are going to cost around 100 Gold to make, besides the Ore needed for the Ingots, needed for new Legendary weapons.

As bored as I can get with Guild Wars 2, as tired as I can get with design choices, as frustrated I can get at certain balance. When it comes down to it. No other game feels like this one in the MMO market today. It feels fluid, smooth, well executed. There’s something about this MMO’s combat, that just aren’t there in the other ones. ArenaNet did it right. Now that’s not to say I wouldn’t like a few alternative choices for 1-5, a few more Elite skills, etc.—but gameplay wise, this game is years ahead of the competition. The aesthetics are also in a league of their own. The details gone into these maps are absolutely gorgeous.

I agree that we need more transparency on things to come though. No estimated windows for these things unless it’s more of a set in stone thing mind you, but still, more hype, more excitement. I don’t think an expansion is necessary. It would definitely help, but just some continuous tidbits of information would go a long way to keep players engaged and excited. Show us some samples of new sPvP maps. Discuss ideas you have of game modes, engage the community asking for feedback in a specific forum topic. Tease us with work in progress stuff. And let us know when there’s delays. Give us more in-depth information about what it is that is the design philosophy behind bigger (and smaller) changes. Let us see into your minds a bit. Show us the world from your side of the game. It’d be interesting besides exciting to hear about new things that is in the works. (Obviously some things, such as future story implementations, should be kept as spoiler free as possible, but a few teases here and there, perhaps a render of a dragon with no real explanation to it, such things, can really generate hype and excitement.)

I know we have people datamining already. The information and excitement in that sense is there. Sort of. But it’d be nice to get it through official channels. With an insight into what you’re planning ahead as well. Just try to avoid mentioning things you don’t see yourself feasibly doing within a years time, and even then, make it clear that this is work in progress, subject to change, or that it will potentially not to be implemented at all, at least in the form as shown in this sneak preview, etc.—Some players will always get frustrated, even rational ones will, but a lot of the players are understanding enough if you were to say something has been delayed/cancelled. The bigger frustration comes from not being told what’s going on. Especially on things you are highly passionate and excited for. You’re left questioning, wondering. Uncertainty is frustration.

It’s freaking idiotic, yes, idiotic to even consider that you may not be able to progress further based on your skill, and that Divisions is in any way, shape or form are supposed to actually reflect how good you are at playing the objectives. Matchmaking will pair you up with complete imbeciles at times, those losses counts into your MMR and further matchmaking. You are but 20% of the team, 1 out of 5. If the rest of the team is absolutely rubbish, you are not going to be able to carry them when/if the other team is anywhere near remotely decent. So no, it actually seriously matters a HUGE freaking deal that there is no Solo- and Group Queue separation. It also ruins my fun, and I am certain it ruins a whole lot of other players fun as well. I refuse to go premade, which I want to do mind you, unless I know I ain’t going to be on a team that steamrolls people who queued up Solo. I don’t want free pips, I want to actually earn them. I also hate facing premades when I queue Solo, so I ain’t going to be a hypocrite and do the same to others.

I will never take this game seriously as a e-sports game, unless they have such basic things taken care of and covered. At the end of the day, I am simply kittenized off, and I sure as a kitten is fluffy don’t feel like watching more Guild Wars 2 at that point. I often loathe the game as I calmly log out, until the next day where the cycle repeats. It seems as if this really straight forward principle, flies straight over ArenaNet’s heads. You need to please the average player, so that they want to see more, when they are not playing. That is how you get your “e-sports” badge. If Leagues is supposed to be a way to reflect on a players skill level outwards, then you sure shouldn’t give premades practically free wins against randoms. That only serves to make the Solo player feel like their only purpose is to feed premades, and this makes the Solo player salty, and rightfully so. 1+1+1+1+1 should face 1+1+1+1+1, and otherwise people can queue solo into Group Queue to fill 4+1, which then face other 4+1, 3+2 or 5 player teams. Simple—fair.

Fact is; Being able to communicate with voice chat, knowing how your team plays and having a tailored set of professions and builds to compliment one another, is a massive freaking advantage over those who wish to roll the dice and just queue up with randoms.

The circle is really jarring and stands out within the GW2 world, in a bad way. The dragon graphic on it is terrible. Sorry to whomever designed it, but it is absolutely appalling to look at, within Guild Wars 2. It looks like the kind of thing a beginner with Photoshop would draw and it stretches on different surfaces.. ugh.. no, please ArenaNet, re-design that hideous monstrosity. I liked the idea of floating 3D crystals of some sort.

No, Vayne, they are not fine. They are a good idea, but poorly implemented, like pretty much all rewards in this game currently. It feels unrewarding to get a reward. Once in a blue moon you may feel a tiny bit lucky, you see an Ascended drop in there, but then it’s of the completely wrong stats compared to what you may want. I’m not saying Ascended should be rewarded like raining candy, but would it be that much to ask to let players select what they want, when they do once in a very rare case get one as a reward? I don’t think it is at least. Exotics are overly rare. Rare’s are even excessively rare from these Rank Up reward chests. You get Greens, mostly Greens. Salvage-fodder. I rarely get excited about the rewards in this game. Some event ones have been fun to work for, collecting the halo and devil horns was fun, it was something I could spend tokens on and work towards. Perhaps that’s something they should do more. Tokens. Vendors with rewards.

They can keep some things random, but if you at least always get a token out of a reward chest, you can feel like after so and so many ranks, you can get this and that which you are interested in. This could be a system that is used everywhere for that matter.

Dungeons does this right at least. Laurels do it right as well. They just need more things to select from.

All I got from this initially, and it caused me to stop reading, something I rarely do, is; “I like to use Hammer, please buff Hammer so that I don’t need to consider anything but Hammer, because I like Hammer and Hammer is the greatestest thing since Stop, Hammer-time! Hammer!”

Yes, fix terrain issue with a number of our skills, please.

I am extremely disappointed in how they’ve basically trivialized the amount of Gold I invested in getting the Cultural Tier 3 Human Light armor. Not to mention how they trivialize how it is a Cultural armor set that was supposed to be for Humans only, but now any race can use. Lazy, ArenaNet, lazy.

The Herald hymn constantly chugging along is way worse. It overlaps with the in-game music, which is just messy. Exciting battle music mixed with a serene hymn clashes so bad my ears starts to bleed.

I’ve soloed all the content so far, just fine. All Story missions can be soloed. You can go to events solo perfectly fine, there’s bound to be people there, or they will come eventually. You can explore the maps solo just fine. Certain Hero Points can be grabbed solo, but it’s not harder than to use /map and say “Doing the Hero Points <insert direction> of <insert Waypoint> in a short bit, gather up if you need it or just want the XP.”—if nobody shows up, do a different one, chances are people will show though, because you said you are doing it. That’s just basic psychology, as you are stating you are doing something, not asking if anyone wants to do it. You take charge, and people follow. Most people are content with being followers of those that dare lead. As long as you’re not being overly controlling, people have no problems with that.

So.. that’s one single aspect of the expansion that you can’t play through solo. And it’s rather easy to get people to come for those too. If you can’t solo the other content, it’s time to look at your own build. Chances are, you need to update it to be a bit more defensive. There’s nothing wrong with asking you to do that.

How about.. let’s not ask for that? I can’t achieve my ice and frost theme with just one aura effect, I need 3 to achieve my current look (posted the screenshot below a few times, but I guess it can show what I mean here as well). Sure, some people look like someone threw up effects on them, but if they think that’s cool, who am I to say they can’t walk around like that. It’s overall very few players in the playerbase who looks that way. I think it looks ugly too, don’t get me wrong, but I can perfectly co-exist with these players being around, without the need to request limitations being put in place just because I think it’s a bit too much to just load up on every single aura one can get. I prefer creating certain looks with a combination of a few, they prefer to just show all of them for whatever reason. Maybe you find my appearance appalling as well, but chances are we are unlikely to meet in game anyways.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

Marketing hogwash. Absolute nonsense. You say that you included the core game as a “free” bonus.. or how about we flip it around and say the expansion is “free” with the purchase of the core game?—Spin it any way you like, it’s still going to be nonsense.. a load of “cow pie” marketing. What about those of us that has been with you for about three years now. Those of us who has as consistently as you were releasing content updates, been purchasing Gems to support your arguably fine work. You don’t care about the people that has been helping you get your salaries, at all? It never occurred to ArenaNet to provide means of purchasing the expansion alone, at a lower price than the forced bundle, as a gesture of thanks to all of those who has been supporting you through these past years—some since Guild Wars’ days?

It’s only natural that people get upset about the price tag, and the fact that you are basically giving the veteran players the middle finger, indirectly saying you don’t care about them, and that it’s all about these new players that gets the core game for “free”. As a marketing lead, that should be blatantly obvious to you. Myself, I’m now upset because you (as-in ArenaNet) are trying to spin it into some hogwash “the core game is free”. How is that helpful to those of us who’s owned it for about three years already? We don’t even get a extra account out of the deal. But sure, those who hasn’t supported you, the new players, they of course get something. Wait.. what? The people who has not helped fund the further development and survival of the game, are getting something extra, but not your veterans? You have to see how absolutely ridiculous that is.

Don’t worry though, as upset as I am now with how ArenaNet responds to the subject brought up, I already went and bought the Ultimate option immediately as I heard Colin say it was available during the PC Gaming Show at E3, because I wanted to support you. Even if there were a slightly cheaper expansion-only option, I very well may have done the same. After all, it’s because I like the game and wanted to support it that I’ve spent thousands of US Dollars on Gem Store purchases throughout these years, for my characters, on Gifts, etc. But you guys are making me oh-so irritated and annoyed with your marketing and responses right now.

People have a right to be upset. You are not acknowledging that we have all contributed in one way or another to making Guild Wars 2 a marketable game. Without the players, you would have nothing, Gem Store purchases aside, as nobody wants to play a MMO with no players. The least you could have done was provide a expansion only option for the veterans of your game.
____

Note: I am not mad at Regina, I use words such as “you” in my response. I am frustrated with ArenaNet. Regina is simply doing a job, and are likely told what to respond by some suits even higher up.

You may like the Luminescent equipment set. You could also look up Caparace which you will unlock in-game while gaining Luminescent, Ambrite weapons or any of the dungeon armor and/or weapon skins for that matter (and don’t forget the Fractals ones). While there’s not too many things limited to being earned from things done in-game, there are things you can unlock. It’s not completely void of that.

What in the world. So actual useful uses of it, such as tagging up to show where a world event is, where to gather for a portal to help with Jumping Puzzles, having people gather to a point, etc., would be detrimental to the player who wishes to be helpful? Why? I hardly see it being overused, it was only excessive just as the patch went live and everyone ran around with their Skittles tags. After that I haven’t seen it being used annoyingly.

From what I heard some F2P players complain about, one very valid concern, should it be a genuine limitation, is how they are not able to Join friends in their various overflows. Playing the game with friends is obviously more fun than being frustrated from being separated because maps puts them in different instances. If it legit is a limitation to the F2P accounts, hotfix that asap., ArenaNet—they need to be allowed to play with friends, and grouping up through the ability to Join on one other is critical with the game’s underlying Megaserver and overflow system. I think the /map restriction is fine. They can whisper people who do talk in /map, or if they spot a Commander, and so on forth.

I got a bit irked off at how we suddenly know it’s a dragon for sure, and specifically which one, and the name of it. Then suddenly we don’t know what or who it is in the same dialogue tree. This LS release feels like a proper mess story wise. I love the area and all, but it’s like nobody paid attention to the story this time.

Identified all drops I received during the stress test. The majority were blue (item value 99 copper), some were green (value from 1 silver to aprox. 1 silver 60 copper) — every single item identified was in itself a negative impact on the wallet. Salvaging items that yielded Mithril Ore, loss of money. Salvaging items that had some profit tied to the material, very low profits. The system is horrible with the cost attached to it. Loot is not rewarding at all in Path of Fire with this being how things are, you lose money from getting loot. I hate it.

I really dislike these bundles as well, and hope they will put a stop to them. I will buy the Outfits, I will buy the Gliders (as I somewhat collect them)—I’d even potentially buy Immortal Weapons (though probably not, as I’m not a huge fan of their appearance)—but I don’t want to be forced into buying these frustrating customer unfriendly bundles, just to get the Outfit and Glider I want. At the very least, the first Shadow Dye I opened turned out to be a Shadow Abyss Dye.

Please, ArenaNet, stop with these bundles. Be a bit more customer friendly. Don’t make it so that there’s yet another thing I stop collecting (Minis, Finishers), meaning even less incentive for me to spend money regularly in the Gem Store.

PS: Why would you make the final raid boss a Gem Store-purchasable Miniature? All the other raid bosses has Account Bound Miniatures tied to the raid itself, meaning they are a way of showcasing that you have at least once, been a part of taking down that boss. This was a good kind of “prestige” item. One that is forever obtainable, but that must be earned. And one that you can get without needing to pray for Lyssa to keep her chaos away from your RNG, thanks to Magnetite Shards. You just made that aspect of the raids pointless. What’s next? Going to Gem Store off some Infusions with similar effects?

One of my goals since the launch of the game has been to collect every miniature. I’ve done what others would consider stupid, like spending 50€ on Gems, just for their seriously annoying Wintersday RNG boxes, in order to not have a broken collection. Something I honestly wouldn’t do again granted, nor will I touch anything else they put in the Gem Store that’s RNG and a chance-based cash-milking machine, but I did it that time around, unhappily so.

Sure, there are some Special miniatures that I do not have from the Karka event as well, but all of those are obtainable through the Trading Post, so I don’t consider my collection to be broken and impossible to complete because of these. I’ll just have to spend a little extra Gold in order to get them down the line.

Now they’ve gone ahead and done this however, and my collection is seemingly going to be broken, unless they make it available to everyone through other means as well (Gem Store?). What is my incentive to keep collecting if they don’t make it available though? Where’s my incentive to keep supporting the game with real money spent on Gems in order to buy these miniatures? My collection’s broken, and what collector would want a broken collection? There’s always going to be a visible hole in the Collectibles tab when viewing them in the Bank.

I see doing things like this, being somewhat like shooting yourself in the foot.. on purpose. Pretty darn stupid in other words. For all I know, they may of course have a proper way for everyone that seriously collects, to obtain this miniature, but I somewhat get a feeling they don’t even consider what they are doing at times, before they’ve done it and the damage is done (like killing Seafarer Rest’s WvW community with making free transfers to Medium populated servers available, while SFR was a Medium populated server, in Tier 1 and on a win-streak). I sure won’t spend more money on the game for miniatures, when I can’t have a complete collection. But then again, that’s their loss, not mine. I save money, money they don’t get from me (and probably other collectors as well).

I do understand that it is nice to be able to have something within the game that you can flaunt and show as a “I was there” thing. But I think it’d be a far better idea to give them some town clothes (again), even though that would also make people unhappy, like with the white GW2 t-shirt town clothes. To be honest, I think it’d be better to just give them real life goods to enjoy, over virtual stuff like this where you just end up creating a lot of dissatisfaction.

Honestly, it’s not that overly hardcore. You just need to keep in mind that certain enemies are more dangerous than others and take those out first. If you ever played Guild Wars, you are well aware of that concept. You want to take out Snipers, Tormentors and such first as an example. Smokescales, you make sure you kite them out of their mist and don’t stupidly stand in it whacking away at something that evades everything you do. Interrupts are invaluable, and everyone has some form of interrupts, use them. Control makes things far more easier. The Breakbar can often be broken by one person in most cases (still can’t trigger my Traits, Sigils and Runes though, ArenaNet!)—so interrupt when you can and/or when the Breakbar unlocks.

And just change your build already, if you’re dying over and over. This is like my friend who I even offered to make a build for, as she doesn’t enjoy/understand how to do so herself, who refused to change anything and just kept dying, saying the new areas were kitten and too hard. Then she finally let me make her a build (after guilt tripping her as I had bought her HoT) which takes into consideration the dangers of the jungle, and she’s far more capable of traversing on her own now. It’s fine to not be full glass cannon you know. You can use cheap Exotics to bolster your defenses a bit and make yourself all the more capable of survival. I rarely die, it’s extremely rare. Sure, I don’t consider myself casual either, but that is besides the point. The content is just right when it comes to challenge. Casual or not, you should be able to deal with it just fine if you can just adapt a bit on how you play. You want interrupt(s). Optionally you want reflects. Blocks/Evades are good. To name a few things.

I don’t quite see why the Ranks needs to go, just because a seasonal ladder system is getting implemented. They can both co-exist nicely, can’t they? What’s wrong with having players earning their ranks and finishers within Structured as it is currently, but also competing in the seasonal ladders if they are interested in that? Those not all that interested in the ladders, can still have their goals within earning their Ranks as they casually keep playing.

“… to give PvP players ways to set goals and work towards them …”

Why remove/replace something that was already a goal for both hardcore and casual PvP players, instead of adding additional goals through the seasonal ladder system? I don’t quite get what you’re thinking here.

I like the idea of titles, but those could be implemented while still keeping the Ranks system around. That’d just be a little icing on the cake when working towards your next animal. The game sorely needs more titles anyways.

For those defending this category, why don’t we ask them to introduce a Legendary collection, where you’re tasked to obtain all 21 Legendary weapons. That would be fun, right? It’s even things you earn in-game!

No? Not fun? Oh, you don’t want to be put through the incredible task that would become, both through getting so many characters through World Completion, and the extensive cost of everything involved, or perhaps the excessive time sink it’d be to obtain materials, Karma, Skill Points, Badges and otherwise Gold needed? Perhaps you don’t actually like half the weapons, just a few. But so what? It doesn’t matter if you can’t even use all weapons on a single profession, right? It’s the collection that counts!

I think we should get a Legendary collection category. It’d be just as fun and fair as the Black Lion one. Let’s get their attention so they’ll go do that for you collectors that loves this Black Lion category. (Note: I have 8 legendaries, I can continue finishing a collection just fine, but I don’t want all.. so yeah. I wouldn’t want to see that as a collection.)

Really hope one of the developers can pipe in on this one soon. The response to other topics while questions such as this one seems completely ignored, is getting a tad annoying. At least let us know if it is bugged or not, let us know if you are looking into it. You don’t have to reveal anything in terms of tips on where to look (although they’d be appreciated), but at least re-assure us if we are in fact missing baubles and that we aren’t just all wasting our time because of a bug issue.

Totals: 41 blue baubles, 1 green bauble, 13 yellow baubles, 2 red baubles and 6 purple baubles.

If they match up, then it’s likely a bug, if not, great there’s more, so just tell us we’re missing some. I’m fine with a developer not giving us the slightest hint as to what areas to look around in, as long as I know it’s not bugged. But please, do make sure the area they’re stashed in, is actually reachable without, e.g., GM fly-mode and no-clip

It’s getting really frustrating to be “pixel-hunting” all over the place for invisible teleporters and ledges that may or may not have been spotted. Not even sure if the invisible teleporter we do know about is a bugged one or not. Seems a bit harsh to expect us to locate invisible stuff all over the place, especially since it’s not like the map is that tiny, and we’re talking about 3D space here, not 2D. One achievement to go..

There’s one secret room that we know about, but have found no way into. That’s the Gatekeeper wall on the right of the third chest in the zone. We can play the Gatekeeper’s Lullaby to open the opposite wall on the left, but doing so for the wall on the right, which has a clearly visible white emblem floating inside it’s mouth, does not work. This either means it is bugged, a mistake when re-using assets (that it was never supposed to show as being possible to open), or perhaps that it is supposed to be opened from the other side using the Glove. But then again, there seemingly is no way to reach the other side of it. Further along in the zone, there’s invisible walls when trying to backtrack on the outside, and going the other way, backwards in the zone, there’s nothing that seems to lead outside in that direction.

Please Vince, or someone else on the team, at least tell us if it is a bug or not, let us know if you are looking into it. There’s been a few bugs with this SAB release so far (some still active, like the Gatekeeper wall to the left right after checkpoint #6 (with the invisible teleporter) having an invisible wall after being opened once every so often, not allowing you to enter before you run far enough away from it and return a couple times), it’s not entirely out of the question that this is another one, is it?

SlimChance.6593:

Absconditus.6804:

…. Well, Halting Strike helps by including some damage upon preventing them from doing something we don’t want them to do, and our interrupts, especially our dazes will stop them in their tracks IF LANDED CORRECTLY …

I’m sorry but that’s misleading. Halting Strike ONLY hurts when there is an “Interrupt”. With their initiative system, very rarely, does a daze do ANYTHING to a thief.

Only hard control effects are reliable(push, pull, ,knockdowns, stuns, etc) That’s why they all “screamed bloody murder” with the initial Power Block.

Not sure what is misleading about it.

It’s not necessarily hard to daze out a Thief as they try to do an attack, which causes an interrupt. It can be especially easy to daze the highly popular D/P Thief on the HS animation to prevent the stealth and hurt them in the process. By stringing out your clones a bit you can chain those dazes to improve on the chance of the interrupt (Halting Strike) happening at least once, if not more as they potentially try to use some other skill(s). Not all of them are likely to cause an interrupt, but when landed correctly, as in you are interrupting a skill, it hurts them and locks them out of skill usage for a second. “Correctly” would also assume that you stringed them to some extent and not had all shatters occur at once. Anyways, a second is something you can capitalize on by dealing damage and using further CC. With IP you have up to 4 shots at dazing, yourself being a very reliable first daze, and it’s honestly somewhat hard to dodge all the remaining 3 of those clones if strung out “correctly”, once you’re initially dazed. But that requires some play from our side too of course, and it’s not like that’s easy-cheesy mode to pull off all the time with a 100% consistency. It’s pretty satisfying when you land it though.

And that’s of course not all the sources we have to interrupt with. E.g., I run Sw/Sw and GS, so I can throw another daze if I don’t want to try Block an attack (kinda ineffective against a Thief who attacks so fast that they hit you anyways right away after you blocked that one initial attack), or I can switch to GS and knock them back. I don’t run the Mantra granted, nor do I run the Signet, although that are obviously options too for even more of a lock down setup. I mainly play as a shatter would though, in a 4/4/0/0/6 build, with a bit of skill interrupts tied into it.

Obviously, while they are dazed, hopefully in succession, it’s about taking advantage of them being visible and bombing the best you can. E.g., as you set it up (and you better get used to playing up close and personal if you’re not) having created upwards to the 3 clones, shatter the strung out Diversion with your IP hitting first, Illusionary Leap, wait for a potential dodge/Shadow Step for a tiny second, Swap to Immobilize or wait until it will land, weapon swap to GS, Mirror Blade up close and personal for the instant bounces (I tend to run the +1 Bounce trait for some added damage as well), as you do a Mind Stab, follow with the Berserker, and knock them over with Illusionary Wave, perhaps the other way around, Mind Wrack, etc.—it’s not like I can sit here and write out what is to actually happen in combat, that’s dynamic, the IW could’ve interrupted something, they may have been interrupted by the chained dazes more than once, and so on forth, but that’s an example of how something can play out. It can completely backfire and go all in favor of the Thief too of course. That’s what’s fun about PvP right? It not being all predictable.

The very reason that Thief has Initiative, not CD’s, is what can make them prone to playing a bit.. more spammy than other professions. Their attacks are also rather fast, making the chance of a daze train to hit more than once and actually interrupting, at least with how it feels like to me, semi increased over someone who’s a bit of a slower attacker. But yeah, in the end, they are hard countering us rather hard. I would expect to get killed by thieves from time to time. They are the assassin’s, the single-out-and-kill-before-retreating profession. We are relatively squishy targets, very much their prey. It takes a whole lot of effort to fight back and actually defeat the decent ones, where as they can take it pretty easy while fighting not just us, but mostly anyone. I’ve played a Thief for about 1000 hours of the 5200 I’ve played in total since launch. I never found it to be a particularly difficult profession to play with all the stealth available and the really strong damage output. It got a bit more challenging when I gave myself rules of avoiding stealth unless it was for split seconds to use in-stealth skills (such as Tactical Strike) and relying more on evades though, but that’s just me being weird.