Guild Wars 2

I doubt the game can be fixed. I read the dev update posts every time, and see nothing that addresses actual problems with the game —- instead we get balance tweaks and more junk content.

ANet spouts “Living World” – I played MUDS 20+ years ago that were more persistent and “alive” than GW2 is.
A few examples:

1. You cannot drop anything, if you do it ceases to exist.
2. Respawns occur in minutes, Corpses decay in seconds, and Area-Events reset immediately upon completion. None of that is remotely a “living world”
3. Value of Items – almost everything is valued at a couple coppers – selling it at a vendor is nearly pointless… oh yeah and if you do, the item ceases to exist.

• You have to pay to list on Black Lion Trading post, nothing ever expires. Most things are flooded to the point where everything is a mere copper (or 2) above base price. Or so expensive that you would have to spend real $$ to buy it.
• Value of an item should at least be (at a minimum, sell value) what it costs to Craft it.

1. NPC’s: Stand (or sit) around doing the same thing day in night out.

• Shop vendors usually don’t even have a shop, or a cart, or any indicator whatsoever that they are a vendor aside from a floating icon on their head or map.
• Amusingly, there is an apple cart in the human town – and you can’t buy apples.

1. PC’s don’t sleep, or eat, and no reason to rest as regeneration is almost instantaneously when not in combat.
2. You can’t interact with anything in the game.

Cannot open doors, steal, pick locks.

1. Unless you own GW1+ you don’t even have a domicle/residence of any sort.

Nothing exists in the world, beyond the Players themselves.

1. You can walk right through non-aggressive mobs/enemies.

I could be mistaken, but AFAIK ANet has refused to fix the targetting issue with the mouse, when you want to use “RButton+LButton” as movement.

Most updates I have seen come down the pipe are pretty-things for level 80’s, or even more virtual types of currency to spend on more virtual items. I expect in another 6 months we’ll get yet another currency in game, and all “normal items” will still be worth ~10 copper.

The world looks pretty though. And some of the “jumping quests” (points of interest) were interesting.

Obviously, there should be a white-list functionality for mail. Or no limitation if the “person (account)” you are sending to has added You as a contact/friend.

On the other note, the devs could pretty easily set up a spam filter based on the actual-content of the mail and not the lowest-common-denominator amount-of-mail limit.
Heck such a filter wouldn’t even need to alert the spam-sender that the mail wasn’t sent.

;;
; AutoHotkey ::
;;
;; .... guildWars2_Hotkeys.ahk
;;
#ifWinActive ahk_class Guild Wars 2 ahk_class ArenaNet_Dx_Window_Class
;;
;; Remap LShift and LCtrl to other keys, e.g. p and k
;;
LShift::p
LCtrl::k

#ifWinActive

Use a transformation stone. Soul-Bound becomes account bound when it is transformed.

The windows based limitation generally only applies to keyboards – as far as how many consecutive keys can be pressed and be recognized. Even the crappiest keyboards can do up to 3 keys. The best keyboards can do up to 5 (or more) consecutive keypresses – and that usually doesn’t include Ctrl/Alt/Shift – just regular keys. And this limitation is due to how keyboard “circuit-boards” are mapped – a really good keyboard wont have shared circuits for keys whereas a crappy keyboard wont usually be able to recognize multiple keys that are in the same general vicinity to one another when multiple keys are pressed as they will be sending an overlapping signal.

Even X-Mouse without a logitech driver can change the Forward/Back buttons on a mouse, but any mouse with more than 5 buttons would need the driver to handle buttons 6,7 and 8 (or more).

Yet if all the buttons on the mouse are recognized already, the driver wont do anything apart from allow buttons to be re-assigned – which AHK or GW2 aliases can already do. And mice don’t suffer the same type of circuit-board-overlap that keyboards do.

AutoHotkey ::
[pre]
;;;
;;; guildWars2keys.ahk
;;;

;;;
;;; Usage of the * asterix, will allow any [modifier] keys (shift, ctrl, alt) to be down and
;;; Still trigger the Hotkey in question
;;;
#ifWinActive ahk_class ArenaNet_Dx_Window_Class
*XButton1::Send, {TAB}
*XButton2::Send, !{i} ; equivalent to alt+i, or whatever show/hide UI is set to.
;;;; if it was ctrl+h then:
; *XButton2::Send, ^{h}
;;;;; if it was shift+h then:
; *XButton2::Send, +{h}
#ifWinActive
[/pre]

Anet is quoted in the reddit thread, as far as their stance regarding mods go.

To summarize:

So long as it’s not automation (i.e. botting) they have no issue with mods so long as the mod in question doesn’t take GW assets and distribute them.

You can bind scroll to whatever you want with AutoHotkey – now while that may not be “in-game” it still doesn’t negate the fact.
E.g. Shift + Wheel, to send Tab and Shift+Tab

+WheelUp::Send, {Tab}
+WheelDown::Send, +{Tab}

There’s even a Combat-Mode for mouse or controllers: Combat Mode 1.1: GW2 which allows for toggling RButton among many other things.

Example Usage of Combat-Mode on YouTube.

Also perhaps people should +1 the Original Post in this thread:
An option to disable right click targeting

I didn’t claim it “makes no sense” due to real world considerations or even logical considerations.

It makes no sense within the context of a fantasy RPG. I don’t think I’ve played any RPG that cut all the classes from the same cloth like this.

DnD: Movement based on Race and Armour.
Gurps: Movement based on your Speed stat, which is modified by DEX and skills.
Heroes: Movement based on your Speed stat, modified by DEX-like stats and skills.
Arcanum: I can’t recall off the top of my head, but it had numerous Acrobatic Skills.
Warhammer: Movement based on your Race & Armour; profession-skills.
etc.
Dodge in all those games would be based on class-like skills and rooted in DEX.
Parry/Riposte/Block/Shield-Bash all skills, based primarily from your key combat/weapon skills and class-like specialties.

Even leaving “sense” or “balance” aside, it would be more fun from a player’s perspective if the various classes played and felt differently beyond a cut and dried weapon-type restriction.

I’ve been thinking about the ideas presented here, and I realize now what seemed wrong with it. Which aren’t the ideas themselves (other ways to utilize endurance).

1) All Races have the same Walk/Run speed.
2) All Classes regardless of Armour worn have the same Walk/Run speed.
3) All Classes regardless of Armour worn are extremely agile and can dodge.

It would be very cool to have Shield Block/Bash and Weapon Parry/Riposte but it should go hand-in-hand with a rebalancing of Speed/Dodge.

It makes absolutely no sense, and looks kinda ludicrous that Full-Plate warriors and “Mages/Engineers” are bouncing around like jackrabbits.

Rangers & Thieves: Fast (10), Agile (10), effective Dodge (10).
Mages & Engineers: Speed (7), Agile (7), Dodge (7)
Warriors/Heavy Armour: Speed (5), Agile (4), Dodge (4)

Mages/Engineers would/should have some other type of defense than dodge.
Warrior-types should have some kind of stationary defense, and not be very good at dodge at all. Likewise there should very well be speed reductions for Heavy-Armor and possibly Mages and Engineers.

Acrobatic type maneuvers, including effective dodge/roll should be the primary domain of classes that would learn those types of skills.

E.g. a mage/or even warrior attempting to dodge might look like an awkward leap in a given direction, and you may not even land on your feet.

For those classes that aren’t skilled at dodge, it might even require using up some Initiative when a dodge is performed.

Interesting ideas, but I don’t see how they could just be added as mechanics without overhauling the whole combat system (or lack-thereof).

There is no defense in GW2 – at all. The only option is to move out of the way.

You never miss, unless your ranged attack is out of range.
There is no back and forth, attack/block/parry/riposte/counterattack -
There is attack/hit/get hit if you haven’t moved out of the way.
There is no crouch/duck. There is no actual “strafe” – instead it is run left or right.

An actual strafe in combat would be a quick one-two-three+ step in a given direction.
Shields would be able to block arrows/projectiles, bash things, parry attacks.
Currently, everyone can dual wield – regardless of class. It isn’t even a skill. There isn’t even a penalty for off-handed attacks. Quarterstaves don’t exist.

I think perhaps a combat-style could work, but even that would still require a major change to the all-out-offensive-only combat of GW2.

E.g. Certain styles would have default settings for Offensive/Defensive split.
Sword & Shield might be 50/50, if you learn certain skills/or ranks in S&S style you could change the settings up/down.

Parry would be a skill, not every class would have it. It could easily be passive, and dependent on your characters skill and how much emphasis you placed on defense.

Dodge would be a skill, not a simple action that anyone can do.

To me tumble sounds like a side effect of dodge, as opposed to a entirely new ability — and certain classes would be better at it than others.

Running in a circle and attacking would (if things made sense) be more difficult than standing in place, “strafing” and tactically moving around – within melee range.

Warriors that get a successful (passive) parry or shield block, might have a brief opportunity 0.5s to hit a key to launch a counter-attack/riposte.

Thief-like characters that successfully dodge/tumble might have a brief opportunity to launch an attack that would be more difficult to avoid.

All these things, and many of the suggestions here would for the most part require slowing combat down a little more to allow more tactical type of play

It would be more interesting if skills had ranks instead of have/don’t have.
There is also no skill tree progression. Have a pt – spend a pt. No prerequisites.
Instead we have a trait system that feels a bit tacked on.

Buffs/Spells could last longer. Instead of twitch-fest effects.

Longer Duration spells could use up initiative until the spell ends.
Lower-level spells/abilities might last longer than the initiative cost return:
e.g. a low-level ability/spell might last 5 or 10 minutes (or more) and the initiative might return in 1-5 minutes or less.

Picture a benevolent spell-caster that runs around buffing ppl – or healing (of which experience should be acquired for doing so).

The thing that has irked me since I first played the beta was that MOST shopkeepers/merchants are just some NPC standing around somewhere – and you only know they are a shopkeeper/merchant – because the map says they are.
There are almost no actual shops. There is nothing in the stores for sale. There is nothing on the walls. In most cases no building, donkey, cart, table or anything of the sort exists at all. Just some random dude standing there —- except the map says she is a merchant, therefore I can buy something here.

Ironically enough, the one place I saw what looks like an actual merchant was in the Human town, there’s an apple cart and a girl selling apples.

You can’t buy any. She’s not a merchant. She just looks like one.

I don’t see how it would be possible at this point for GW2 to live up to it’s claim of a “living, breathing world.”

Consider a game like Sacred, the in-town NPC’s (minimally) had day-time jobs/tasks and stopped at dusk, packed up – and went to their home at night. The townsfolk who were out-n-about during the evening brandished torches. It actually got dark.

In GuildWars 2:

• There are NO homes in most of the Racial-Cities.
• There are no lairs for beasts (animals) or mobs (intelligent races).
  —> Killable mobs spawn out of thin air.
  Instead of say from a habitable lair – and then walk to their look-out post.
• The only children that exist are neutral beasts/NPC’s that are required for Quests.
• You cannot open doors.
• Thieves can’t pick locks. on anything. Chests require you to buy ($) keys.
• The Actual NPC’s don’t have ‘day-time’ jobs or any purpose beyond:
  —> Giving players quests: although most are more like quest-token repositories.
  —> Selling an unlimited supply of “stuff”.
  —> Tell you things. But always the same things.
  —> Stand/Sit around and do nothing: take up space.
  —> Walk from point A to point B, or within a certain range.
  Possibly as fodder for some aggressive Mob.
• You can’t tell the difference between day or night.
• You never get hungry, thirsty or tired. You heal almost instantly.
• You have no impact on the world. At ALL.
  —> Anything you do is reset in minutes.
  —> If you drop something. It ceases to exist.
  —> If you sell something to a so-called Merchant: It ceases to exist.
  —> Corpses from your killing sprees disappear into thin air, quickly.

GW2 is pretty much the opposite of “living and breathing”. Nothing changes. You can have no lasting effect on the world. Other players can have no effect on you – aside from giving you an assisted resurrection, or an extremely brief “buff”. Day is the same as night. Cold is the same as warm. Your player never dies, ages, or requires anything that a living being might.

Aside from internal-code changes/bug fixes, the main world is pretty much exactly like it was when GW2 opened for business 4 months ago.

Not to say that GW2 isn’t a fun GAME, but I certainly don’t see any impetus of the dev’s to do any of the above. They can’t even agree that the respawn rate is too fast in many cases – in low-trafficked areas … instead of fixing that – they want to give high-levels a reason to go back to those areas. So you can get more stuff.

I find this quite odd. There are numerous stable/featureful free and paid-for Forum packages/software. Reinventing the wheel can be fun at times I suppose … but the wheel should probably still be round and actually roll.

Then again, I guess all the square-wheels need some place to go, wish it was somewhere else though.

Suggestion also here: Inventory Panel / User Interface
Balderstrom.5809 previously said:

I could see the addition of a new type of container, it could be either

1. Item-Type specific: e.g. FoodStuffs only
2. Group-able items only.

You should be able to equip a certain number of these for on-screen usage.

• Click on bag to display contents. Only one can be open at a given time.
• It should be smaller than the other types of containers: 3, 5 or maybe 8 at max.
• The contents shouldn’t show up when you go to a shop to sell stuff.

OT: Name Any Bag
You also should be able to name your bags, and whenever you hover over them in either inventory, or on-screen for “quick-use” bags, the ToolTip should display the name.

I doubt the devs would even consider this. I’d probably quit if the play-style of Thief was changed. I don’t really care if thieves or any other class vs class isn’t 100% balanced. Or that a thief can’t stand toe-2-toe with a mob like a warrior can.

Most of the class-complaints/boost-requests I’ve read on the boards are pretty pointless.

I have a blast with my thief, and I die frequently at times too. C’est la vie.

Dyes in general need improvement. Most armour has enough room for 4 or 5 colours/dyes to be applied – except there is only 3 which is really restrictive overall.

Makes sense, that you should be able to name your pet, and it keep that name, until you change it again.
+1

I don’t see why there couldn’t be a new mechanic – in which a necromancer could have direct control of his minions when not engaged in H2H combat. It makes little sense that a summoned (somewhat mindless) entity can’t be controlled at all.

Necromancers/Evil Clerics in pretty much any RPG I’ve ever played had the ability to control their minions.

I think the difference between Necro/Ranger should be:

• Ranger Pets: Intelligent AI
  → Flees (wimpy’s) when it is below a percentage of it’s HP that the ranger can set.
  → Defaults to attacking what the Ranger is attacking.
  → Can be directed/suggested/controlled to flee/change target/regroup/etc.
  → Will defend itself on the way to a different target.

• Necromancer Minions: Mindless, Little AI
  → Attack whatever aggressive mob is within range.
  → Can be called back to the Necromancer. (May fail if the Necro is too far away).
  → Can be directed to attack another target. (May fail if the target is too far away).
  → Does not defend itself when it is attacked on it’s way to a different target.
  → May randomly change targets. Regardless of Necro’s previous command.

I suggested in another thread a calculation like:

(Your MF) + (All other group-members MF)/GroupSize

A straight up average would penalize the person with the highest MF, and give too much of a bonus to those that don’t care about it either way.

I could see the addition of a new type of container, it could be either

1. Item-Type specific: e.g. FoodStuffs only
2. Group-able items only.

You should be able to equip a certain number of these for on-screen usage.

• Click on bag to display contents. Only one can be open at a given time.
• It should be smaller than the other types of containers: 3, 5 or maybe 8 at max.
• The contents shouldn’t show up when you go to a shop to sell stuff.

OT: Name Any Bag
You also should be able to name your bags, and whenever you hover over them in either inventory, or on-screen for “quick-use” bags, the ToolTip should display the name.

In Dungeon Siege II (maybe DS1 too) Magic Find applied to everyone in your group. I’ve likewise seen that suggestion here.

Out of the box perhaps it couldn’t work exactly like that since there are “treasure nodes” per player – which doesn’t make much sense especially in a group/party – though outside of a group it certainly reduces griefing.

In a group of 2:
Player A has +30% MF; Player B has +0% MF
—> Player A gets +30%; Player B gets +15%

In a group of 3:
Player A has +40% MF; Player B has +20% MF; Player C has +0%
—> Player A gets +46% MF; Player B gets +39% MF; Player C gets +20% MF

Calculation: Your Current MF + (All other memebers MF)/GroupSize.

Note, it could also provide a path for a new game-feature, wherein
There could be up to 3 or 4 (at higher levels) sheath’s per group, that you can select between in the Hero screen.

Why not just let us indicate we are AFK ::
Alt+A : Sets a string after your name in Red
Balderstrom [AFK]

The AFK notifier is cleared when you press a key, or move (mouse), and no one is ABLE to revive/res you while you are AFK.

Sure, it makes sense – since the point of the current limit of 2 weapon sets IMHO is how many logistical sheaths you could have for weapons, not necessarily what you could wield.

So you should be able to “sheath” (not in a backpack) up to 4 weapons (when you’ve unlocked quick-switch) – regardless whether they are 2H or 1H – so long as you can use them (not level or class restricted).

In the case of two 2H weapons sheathed in one group, or a 2H and 1H – only the main weapon (primary) gets wielded, the other remains sheathed.

OT:
Unfortunately there is absolutely no difference between the races. As it would certainly make much more sense for the Large Races to be able to wield 2H weapons in one hand.

WASD assigned to a “joystick” is really inaccurate. It doesn’t take into consideration finer tuned turns.
E → Run Right (90 degree)
WE → Run right, 45 degree angle
ED → Run at a sharper angle (I might have ED, WED, reversed, I don’t recall)
WED → Run at the sharpest/most inner angle.

I was able to simulate that movement to a controller stick, with Joy2Key and AHK but its not as easy, or as accurate as RMB+Mouse Movement.

I’ve found quite a few threads discussing respawn rates and/or too many Mobs in general – especially for single players.

People are seeing almost immediate respawns, or respawns that happen far sooner than the claimed 90s-120s for a given zone :: because the respawn is not related to the mob dying, it appears to be a static timer otherwise it would never occur so fast.

And I certainly don’t agree with Jeffrey Vaughn in regards fixing the respawn rate to NOT be a static TICK timer. A simple “message system/notify/listeners” would do the trick; it wouldn’t be overly complex nor cause any significant server load. Neither would the server need to track every player by ID or any other additional system in that regards.

E.G.
Player “A” enters a Zone; the Zone is notified of entrance.
Player “A” engages in combat; the Zone is notified of aggression initiation.
—> Zone determines a reset rate, perhaps 10, 20 or even 30 minutes or more.
Player “B” enters the same Zone; the Zone is notified of entrance.
Player “B” engages in combat; the Zone is notified of aggression initiation.
—> Zone updates the reset rate to be shorter than it was initialized at.
Rinse and Repeat, with certain min/maxes for respawns.

With even just a little more code, the first killed mob in a zone could be tracked/stored, when the reset timer elapses, the zone starts to reset/respawn any missing mobs – perhaps 1 or 2 every 90-120s until it has been repopulated.

Zones could likewise cause more mobs to be spawned when a given area has too many players engaging in combat.

Other annoyances have been mentioned, corpses that disappear in less than a minute – preventing you from getting drops if there even was one.

Many of these things severely impact immersion into the game, and makes it all feel like a really poorly implemented mechanic.

Looks like GW2 is using a TICK for a given area/zone – and even though it may very well be 90s-120s like the Dev’s suggest it has no bearing on when the mob has died —- instead it’s a constant: so when a mob dies it is respawned when the next tick occurs – be that 1s or 120s.

The best idea’s I’ve seen in various threads discussing Respawn issues were:
1) Stop making corpses disappear almost immediately.
2) Allow looting of corpses until the whole zone (or section of said zone) resets.
3) Variable respawn rates, dependant on number of players fighting in said zone.

Variable respawn rates could be accomplished in a number of different ways:

• The respawn rate/timer could be as large as 30 to 60 minutes, which is reduced exponentially, logarithmically, or even a simple polynomial based on how many players are in a zone, and how long they stay in the zone.
  —- Thus, players that just run through a zone would have little impact on the respawn timer.

• Number of and density of mobs should be based from the standpoint of a single-player. The more players in a given zone, and the longer they are there and fighting. The more mobs that get called (instantiated/generated/created) for support.
  —- Thus if a zone was balanced to 10-20 mobs for a single player – it would likewise start at that many for larger numbers of players in a given zone, but those 10-20 mobs would call for assistance (and more mobs would spawn) as the number of players in the zone increases.

These general ideas/changes would allow the world to feel more persistent – mobs stay dead longer; zones stay empty longer —- while still algorithmically being able to support multiple players killing in a given zone (quicker, shorter respawn rates). Which would also lend weight to making players explore a little more and not camp out in a single zone to kill ad-nauseum.

I’ve been using a Wii Pro-Stick controller with Joy2Key and AutoHotkey. Was somewhat of a PITA to setup due to how movement is done in GW2 – and the need to constantly manually adjust the camera so you can actually see where you are going.

Assigning the attacks et-al to the buttons was pretty straight forward, when you use some (or all) of the shoulder buttons as modifier keys.

The respawn timer is too short. It’s so short that even in a TINY area that might only have 8 or 9 mobs and a handful of “objects” to erase/destroy, that by the time you take out 2 or 3 mobs (a few minutes tops) – the whole area has reset. Likewise all the surrounding zones have reset as well.

Even in those mini-area/zones you are unable to do a simple retreat due to respawns popping up at your back.

I’ve been away a while now, but I don’t recall the respawn timer being so brief during the first month or so of GW2’s initial launch.

It really is unfortunate, as this clearly takes away from the beauty of the game and any sense of immersion into the GW2 world — which is already hindered by non-aggro NPC’s that sit/stand around doing nothing, or spouting the same phrases day in and day out. The worst offenders in my mind are shopkeepers, craftsmen, etc that don’t even have a shop – they just stand there with a floaty icon above their head, or a notch on the map indicating they allow you to do “X” here.