Guild Wars 2

Do you guys think that there’s a middle ground between ultra hard and easy?

For example, I think we could clean up some of the issues with the Shatterer and just make it a more engaging experience. So rather than spending the entire fight hiding under his right paw he could, say, turn his head and attack that area? :] It doesn’t have to be hard, just a little more involved.

We tried to put in a few changes here and there when we added the new world boss timers. Reactions varied.

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Creatures gain an exploration XP bonus when they have not been killed recently. Try killing yellow creatures you find on the less traveled areas of the map; they don’t get killed very often.

Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

It’s true that certain professions have an easier time simply dealing with soaking up damage with larger HP pools, but it’s arguable that this is clearly better than the damage avoidance or support mechanics of others. Regardless, adding enemies with endlessly increasing damage output and health isn’t really a very interesting way to add difficulty. That’s why we reduced the HP/Damage scaling in Fractals somewhat and started replacing it with the Mistlock Instabilities that you’ll find starting at level 31.

Shall we give Kits to all other professions so they can properly utilize Rune of the Engineer?

Unfortunately the change doesn’t apply to items that have already been acquired. Ultimately that’s what I wanted but there was a pretty severe technical limitation on this, so we thought it would be better to make the newly items work this way rather than postpone the conversion any longer.

Also, at higher Fractal levels the weapon skins become more common, and also start dropping in a container that lets you pick the one you want.

Spoiler: there was always a rare chance to get them in the 10-20ish. The only change we made was to make them skins so you can apply them without spending a transmutation stone.

KazNaka.4718:

Just remember: higher hp doesn’t necessarily = more challenging content

I agree. Unfortunately damage and defense scaling reaches a point where it no longer conveys a sense of progression and challenge. For example, once creatures start one-shotting every player, it doesn’t matter how much extra damage they do. We’re also looking into how to meaningfully extend the scalability of FOTM.

There are some changes in the upcoming release to mitigate the severity of this problem. We’re also looking at making some long-term improvements to the Twisted Clockwork invasions.

We’re currently looking at a few things regarding individual fractal difficulty and length. A couple of options are reducing the length of unnecessarily long fractals (dredge) and modifying the possible sequence of randomly selected fractals so you don’t get the longest and most difficult ones all on the same run.

There will not be a one time event in the next release.

Queen’s Gauntlet will return, possibly as part of the activity rotation or even other events. In any case, you’ll be able to complete those achievements at a later date.

Those weapons are part of the new champion loot drops which include a bunch of new skins like the one in the picture. Also the rapier.

The Sovereign set is completely different, and available from the vendors inside the Crown Pavilion.

Braham and Rox are coming to the Jubilee.

Just ask yourselves if you really want to elect a fancy cat with a lead designer in his pocket. We’ll just have double up our support for Kiel on SATURDAY.

Brought to you by the people against smelly animals in office.

So, I’m not going to spoil anything but I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you guys that according to game lore, there was never a Canthan district. If you’ve done your research, you’ll know that the great collapse was formally an arts district.

It matters, but we all pretty much know exactly what happened at the Mouth of Torment.

Nobody knows what happened at Thaumanova…yet.

This almost didn’t make it into the game. The song, in particular, was a one of a few voiced-over lines that were recorded early on, before the map was fully designed. By the time I found out about it, Bloodtide Coast was already pretty far along. Needless to say, I felt it was a top-priority to get it in the game and in a place where you could definitely see it if you were paying attention. Henceforth, the friendly Penzan pirate faction was born and we designed a renown heart and a couple of events around it. Fortunately we even had a chance to have that actor come back in and deliver some additional lines to support the character.

Getting that stuff together was definitely some of the most fun I had working on the game. Devon gets a big shout out for his help there. He was building the Priory events around the same area. The tie-in with Penzan was an excellent feat of collaboration.

The latest case of “farming nerfs” was actually a bug fix. I’m aware of this because I was asked to help identify the issue. The area in question contained a spawn that was defined to have more creatures than spots for those creatures to spawn. So for example, 25 skelks spawning on 10 points. This is not intended. Not only does it just look absurd, it’s also leads to some extremely bizarre play conditions. This is one of those bugs that’s so buggy, the fact that our toolset even allowed this to happen is a bug. Another bug caused this bug. Bugception.

If we didn’t want players to be able to farm, we wouldn’t have put in the huge (and free) magic and gold find buffs for Southsun Cove. We wouldn’t drop loot from the giant mobs of creatures that appear in upscaled events. We certainly wouldn’t have put in chests that appear after events which cycle every 8 to 10 minutes. How quickly all of that content goes completely forgotten in the angered responses to a simple change to an area that was clearly bugged. :/

On farming in general, there’s a sweet spot that combines good loot with fun, engaging content. I think Southsun had that going for it, especially before certain aspects of the content were isolated as optimal. As someone who’s actively working on upcoming Living World releases, I’m aiming to find that sweet spot and hit it in a big way.

Glad it was worth the effort.