Guild Wars 2

This release (and many before it) demonstrates a lack of a clear vision of where ArenaNet wants to head with PVE content. The game was billed as epic battles and no trinity, casual friendly, etc, etc, etc. As new content has arrived you have consistently wavered from this with things like FoTM, Teq and the latest boss fights and the more aggressive usage of time gating.

I know coordination can defeat these events but the overflow system (Lornar is capped before you can even have a full 25×5 zerg for the Marionette fight…) , massive lag due to new content, and most of your player base being more in the casual category puts everyone in a bad situation. The coordinated guilds now are sitting in maps for 1-2 hours to wait for content (how you did not see this coming and why you think it is OK is beyond me when Teq is basically still affected by this syndrome) so they have a chance to not have randoms interrupt them. All these things add up to being the exact opposite behaviors the overall game design promotes and why so many casuals are so confused about the endgame.

Suggestion: Make the hard events easier for the general anonymous Zerg to clear but greater rewards for faster clears or doing bonus events. A proper tiered reward system (not the current bronze, silver, gold mechanism which is effectively useless in the game) would solve your problems. This would still allow the best PVE guilds to strive for bragging rights and do things like posting videos of how they now kill Lupi in 20 secs that 99% of your player base does not care about. It would actually reward them for improving and getting better but not punish the general game system you have setup that is tailored to the casual population. This would even allow you to take other existing “normal” fights and add extra events or speed clear timers to them to make them harder for the coordinated groups. Some bonuses could even encourage build diversity. IE: No players downed during the entire fight or a fight that can only be done via condition damage.

For example: What if when doing the Shatterer, a second group of players could break off to a side event that required coordination. Lets say they have to defend a big cannon in a area that capped at ~20-25 players from waves of champions that have different fight mechanics (now you can go crazy with the stuff the general population does not want to deal with). If this team succeeds for X minutes, the cannon would kill the shatter and the whole event would finish early and everyone gets a greater reward. If they fail, the Shatterer still dies to the main zerg outside (probably slower since 20-25 people are now doing the other event and adding a slightly higher risk of not completing at all). This would create better end game progression by equating difficulty and progression with coordination & skill (and if done right, build/gear diversity as well, which is better for the economy too) rather than artificially with something like AR.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Don’t nerf zerk gear, make other builds more viable like so many have said here! Sure zerk will still be the fastest, but other builds will no longer be a drag on the group. That is the biggest problem right now; Condi, CC, Support builds offer 0 advantages to the group because of Defiance and Condi limits and thus are just making everything slower for everyone and increasing the risk of getting hit by the 1 shot mechanics of bosses. Also, make most support skills (blast finisher effects, heals, buffs) have way larger range (~1200-1500 in dungeons only (to prevent abuse in other content) so that ranged players and their groups are not punished for them not stacking. This would help reduce the stack on X and face-roll meta as well. Sure some mobs stacking would still be beneficial (like Alpha, when he traps you in a crystal), but it would make it so stacking is not the default option for every encounter.

The player base has clearly shown (via what is popular in LFG tool and the fact that people pay for Arah bosses) that it is annoyed that so many paths of dungeons take 45+ minutes with a decent groups (think of your avg. casual player), not to mention bad ones just end up quitting after an hour of frustration. People love bite sized entertainment. I’ve run COF 1/2, hundreds of times because it is fun, different mechanics along the way and it fits in the perfect amount of time. Good group is ~20-30 mins total for 2 paths, even bad groups can even succeed after an hour.

Get rid of trash mobs, no one likes to do them, they just waste time for you to implement and us to skip. Unless the trash mobs (like burrows in AC) have a interesting sequence or mechanic, get rid of them. For the interesting ones that are kept, make them mandatory. Alternatively, make them drop the dungeon reward (tokens) and better money/gear/mats than non-dungeon mobs. This would encourage groups to clear them for the rewards. To offset the increase in loot, marginally reduce the end reward for dungeons (further penalizing skipping content). And to prevent excess dungeon runs for farming, reduce rewards back to normal for doing the path more than once per day (just like now by not getting bonus chests).

The hardcore people can have the high level fractals, I’m sure they would appreciate build diversity as well but whatever you do, it should not be about making the base content of the game more PITA for the casual player.

A simple fix for the longbow would be to make Rapid Fire a single shot skill that did the similar (probably slightly less) damage as rapid fire full sequence. Make it take 2-3 seconds to cast that roots you so it is not instant and can be interrupted. Increase the cool down for the remaining gap in cast time compared to the current rapid fire. The long bow and marksmanship trait line is about single large powerful shots with things like opening strike, long range shot with the exception of barrage for AoE.

Thoughts?

It is very interesting that you all say the ranger is defined as the pet class by ANet. Here is the official description from their ranger profession page:

“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”

Notice how the fact that rangers are unparalleled archers first and how all the other functions are described to help adapt the class. No where does it say the class is a beast master first, archer second.

Secondly, there are many classes that CAN ignore their F1-F4 skills most of the time and succeed. Let me list them as I have 5 lvl 80s worth of experience to speak from.

Elementalist: Every trait line has one trait that cools down that attunement skills faster. So most pure DPS people will stay in fire and sometimes jump to another attunement. Heck this with staff, fire DPS is so much higher than the other 3 when traited that switching is a huge hit to DPS most cases. In group situations, if you play smart and have a good group, you mostly won’t need the utility of the other 3 attunements.

Warrior: someone already mentioned this but, there are 2 traits that increase your damage for not using your burst skills. Not to mention some are just flat terrible.

Mesmer: 1 trait that boosts DPS and another that reduces damage for keeping your illusions up. Also many traits that apply affects when illusions are killed and not forced to shatter. Plus a staff condition build does not rely on shatters for damage but the massive dot stacks from clones. Thus you can avoid shattering most times.

Thief: well let’s not even go here….stealing lol. Thiefs have the opposite problem, their class mechanic does not really add value consistently because it so freaking unpredictable.

Guardian: there are so many builds that do not require active use of virtues, plus many traits make passive effects better, or you can spec into using them more often.

Engineer: depends on the build but many of the tool belt skills are oh kitten buttons so not required to be used often.

Necro: cannot comment as I have not played one extensively.

The point I’m making is most classes CAN benefit DPS/survivabilty wise by choosing to not use their f1-f4 skills. The ranger is the only classy that is actually penalized for not using them. Many of you have pointed out the nice just in case skills that many pets have as their F2 but that would not go away if there was some stat (stat over DPS because that would always benefit the build the player is in rather than just DPS) buff for the pet being in passive mode.