Guild Wars 2

Chobiko.9182:

Fenda.1398:

-snip-
Thus, ArenaNet, PLEASE. Bring back the old interactions between all movement skills and speed increases / decreases. Not just for the sake of jumping, but also for combat healthiness – you basicly removed counterplay from those skills when talking WvW / PvP, and its not like classes like Warrior have been overly harmed by Cripple and Chill in the first place. But if we were to talking jumping and mountain goating… fix it where it harms the game, e.g. Dungeons, and – the most important part – fix it properly. Not meant as an insult at all, but if someone finds kitten in the map, allowing this person to execute a void jump, then you should close the hole instead of drawing even more invisible barriers all over the place if you really really really dislike people taking exploration to the absolute limit. Is it really that bad if people want to climb the highest mountain? Is it so harmful to have people standing on top of various otherwise unreachable places, where the only real advantage is that these people have an incredibly splendid, panoramic view over your beautiful cities and valleys? Yes there are a lot of graphical bugs involved, but there are just as many outlooks which are worth the hassle. Just as an example: Having a view over Lion`s Arch from the big concrete walls or the ray-shaped airport thingy is worth it over 9000 times. Even if you see that the interior of the airport is just a big, ugly hole. But thats because, you know, you normally don´t get to see it. Thus it cannot be a bad thing. Anyone who breaks out of maps knows what he is doing and thus shouldnt be disturbed by breaking his or hers immersion

Just as Purple Miku said… the change didnt do anything but excluding poor sad asuran lady thief (alias “me”) from natural goating. And it harmed combat situations more than it helped imo.

There are a few problems with people breaking out of maps. First off, there are a lot of places in Tyria where you can break out of a map, they tried to fix as many as they could without having to redraw the assets affected (i.e. using invisible walls), but still people find ways to break out. Most of these were related to movement speed’s interaction with leaps. No matter how many times they fix a broken place someone will find another way. Of course they could have played the cat and mouse game, but to what end? It takes up a lot of dev time patching exploit holes.

Now you ask how can it be so harmful? As you mention there are dungeon exploits, then there are jp exploits. Then you have WvW exploits, which are arguably the worst.

In PvP we saw another issue with movement speed. With swiftness anyone could reach certain places where they could not be targeted but still wreak havoc with ranged attacks.

In HoT we will most likely see map design that is a bit fragile, because they intend to have gliders access certain areas not accessible otherwise. These areas could potentially be reached through speed affected leaps.

Then you have the introduction of slow. Since they stack with swiftness and superspeed they could have removed the movement effect on either, but then there would be no uniformity. So they decided to remove all influence on movement abilities to make it easier to predict and understand.

I can understand people disagree with the change, and feel like it’s a bad change, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was needed to fix a lot of existing and potential loopholes in the game.

Sure you can’t move as fast accross a map as you once did. And in PvP you have to adapt by using interrupts or immobilizes when someone is using a movement skill.

Btb. I also believe they’ll fix the teleport gun at some point soon (they might just remove or nerf the distance traveled with it.

Fenda.1398:

-snip-
Thus, ArenaNet, PLEASE. Bring back the old interactions between all movement skills and speed increases / decreases. Not just for the sake of jumping, but also for combat healthiness – you basicly removed counterplay from those skills when talking WvW / PvP, and its not like classes like Warrior have been overly harmed by Cripple and Chill in the first place. But if we were to talking jumping and mountain goating… fix it where it harms the game, e.g. Dungeons, and – the most important part – fix it properly. Not meant as an insult at all, but if someone finds kitten in the map, allowing this person to execute a void jump, then you should close the hole instead of drawing even more invisible barriers all over the place if you really really really dislike people taking exploration to the absolute limit. Is it really that bad if people want to climb the highest mountain? Is it so harmful to have people standing on top of various otherwise unreachable places, where the only real advantage is that these people have an incredibly splendid, panoramic view over your beautiful cities and valleys? Yes there are a lot of graphical bugs involved, but there are just as many outlooks which are worth the hassle. Just as an example: Having a view over Lion`s Arch from the big concrete walls or the ray-shaped airport thingy is worth it over 9000 times. Even if you see that the interior of the airport is just a big, ugly hole. But thats because, you know, you normally don´t get to see it. Thus it cannot be a bad thing. Anyone who breaks out of maps knows what he is doing and thus shouldnt be disturbed by breaking his or hers immersion

Just as Purple Miku said… the change didnt do anything but excluding poor sad asuran lady thief (alias “me”) from natural goating. And it harmed combat situations more than it helped imo.

There are two problems with people breaking out of maps. 1. There are a lot of breakouts possible, they tried to fix as many as they could without having to redraw the assets affected (i.e. using invisible walls), but still people find ways to break out. Most of these were related to movement speed’s interaction with leaps. No matter how many times they fix a broken place someone will find another way. Of course they could have played the cat and mouse game, but to what end? It takes up a lot of dev time patching exploit holes.

Now you ask how can it be so harmful? As you mention there are dungeon exploits, then there are jp exploits. Then you have WvW exploits, which are arguably the worst.

In PvP we saw another issue with movement speed. With swiftness anyone could reach certain places where they could not be targeted but still wreak havoc with ranged attacks.

In HoT we will most likely see map design that is a bit fragile, because they intend to have gliders access certain areas not accessible otherwise. These areas could potentially be reached through speed affected leaps.

Then you have the introduction of slow. Since they stack with swiftness and superspeed they could have removed the movement effect on either, but then there would be no uniformity. So they decided to remove all influence on movement abilities to make it easier to predict and understand.

I can understand people disagree with the change, and feel like it’s a bad change, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was needed to fix a lot of existing and potential loopholes in the game.

Sure you can’t move as fast accross a map as you once did. And in PvP you have to adapt by using interrupts or immobilizes when someone is using a movement skill.

Btb. I also believe they’ll fix the teleport gun at some point soon (they might just remove or nerf the distance traveled with it.

First off: Why isn’t the mesmer using harmonious mantras with mantra of recovery? Second: Why go chaos when you can go inspiration and have so much heals from shatters? With Dom/Duel/Insp you are literally a walking tank with high burst.

Thief is the only stealth class that is OP partly because of stealth, partly because of mobility. I think 4s revealed is good, seeing a lot more counterplay against thieves in sPvP. However, good thieves are still able to reliably and without fail extract themselves from every bad situation they end up in (few other classes can do this and do the damage thieves do). There’s a reason they are still essential in any team comp, and there’s a reason they are still hard counters to all the other offensive zerk classes: Stealth has little counterplay from other offensive zerk builds. Sure, you can predict thieves, but that doesn’t make it any easier to target them (many offensive zerk builds require targets, by the by).

+1 on this. I have some alts which have unlocked skills and traits which are a completely bonkers mix (and 0 points to spare). My mesmer was worst. Ended up with toming it to 80 since I didn’t realize the hero points come with the level up rewards and not automatically upon level up.

For all we know it could be working as intended and ANet simply missed adding a tooltip saying grenades pierce on hit with no limit. Kinda ridiculous idea, but it still could be the case. While nade barrage one-shots low health pools it also requires the engi to sacrifice almost all survivability (through heals at least). Comparatively Mes and Thief can one shot the same health pools and has lots of survivability. So I wouldn’t say it’s way too op, I killed lots of nade engis on ele, mes, necro, thief, and war. 1v1 they aren’t very good. In a team fight you just focus them down before they do too much damage.

Listen, No. You don’t. Nobody in their right mind bought the $75 or $100 “only” to get the charslot. It’s just, no. It doesn’t add up. A char slot is $10. That’s $60 for HoT + char slot. The deluxe was $75. It means you paid $25 only to get that char slot? I don’t believe that. You bought it for the glider, the statue, and the mini (and the gems) else you could have simply bought the char slot in game.

Here’s the thing: A game has install costs. I.e. for every install (new account) there is an associated cost to the developer. You can assume this cost is close to the sale ANet held at $10, going much lower they would sell at a loss if they weren’t already.

The “core” game cannot be thrown in a bundle as an added bonus for “free”. To ANet there will be a cost associated with every new account registered. Someone must be absorbing these costs. So we can expect the expansion pre-order price to reflect not only dev cost, but this “free incentive” as well. When you upgrade your account instead of opening a new one after buying HoT you essentially relinquish this “free incentive” in favor of playing on your own account. In other words you don’t incur the “install cost” on ANet. Instead part of the $ you spent on the HoT bundle are absorbing the costs of someone else’s new account.

Many people in the last few days have held arguments bordering on, or being blatantly ignorant and entitled. It’s even gone as far as people demanding that ANet give us “vets” a better incentive to pre-purchase because we already sunk money into the game.

I can understand that people disagree with such an argument since it barely holds water.

The issue I outlined above is, however, a concern that ANet is making veteran players absorb the costs of new player acquisition, at no added incentive. It amounts to turning all the vet players into philanthropists donating dollars to help ANet build their playerbase. Sure that is part of what we are doing when buying gems, and new accounts. But this expansion makes it such an obvious 1 for 1 trade it’s uncomfortable to see them decide this was the best direction to take it.

I hope ANet decides to throw in some added incentive for “upgrading” your account since we don’t incur any “install costs” to them. An added incentive might simply diminish potential profit.

I don’t hope for any apology or a reduction in price, but I’d rather they treat existing customers who are potential buyers of their content with more respect in the future. (I am not about to absorb costs they could have just as well put on the new players). I know $5 ain’t much, but it’s the principle of it that is painful.

What it should say on pre-purchase page is that the “core” game is an added bonus when registering HoT as a new account. That would be more accurate. I still don’t agree with such a marketing gimmick however. Someone is absorbing the costs of that “core” game, and I suspect it’s the people who register HoT on top of an existing account.

Brian Ponder.9017:

Thank god.

I mean, I myself am one of the people who display a bit of…dislike of the way new players (Myself included, but there are plenty others whom I feel for, as I generally have little money and making the most of what I have is the reason WHY I bought a lengthy game like an MMO…) are getting stabbed for the game twice, or in my case, I’d be paying $100 for the expansion pack and game with none of the legendary pre-purchase goodies, but sometimes if I just TALK about it, people go into full on rampage mode and it’s…kind of offputting.

Thanks for letting me know that it’s not the majority that’s like that though, that’s a HUGE relief.

Outrage fuels outrage. Look at any issue that went public in the world and you’ll see that overreacting is actually quite normal. For reference: Coca Cola Scare or the more recent MH371 Debacle

The only way to stop it from spreading is for ANet to exercise good communication with the public. They would also need to find a way to remedy the issue either with reasonable counter-argument, or admitting a mistake. I think in this case they would need to admit a mistake and seek to rectify it as soon as possible.

Outrage will die down eventually, but it usually fuels very fast within the first few days of the issue going public. The problem is if ANet doesn’t respond to the outrage before it dies down they will potentially lose a not significant amount of players and their reputation will be tarnished for a long period of time most likely affecting launch sales of the expansion.

What the unfortunate OP has experienced is simply outrage, people want outlet for their feelings and find anything to latch onto.

This is why I don’t purchase the expac. I don’t want to play HoT on a new acc., then again I cannot justify throwing away a free account key just to upgrade my current acc. with HoT. I would purchase for $50 if it only gave me an upgrade key. Price is not the problem it’s that with every upgrade I do, I throw away a potential account.

People who don’t agree with what ANet threw at them don’t buy the expansion, show them what you think with your wallet. The other side who don’t care do whatever they want. Let’s hope a large part of the player population see the mistake ANet made, and punish them for it by not buying.

Yeah giving you a free acc with the option to upgrade to HoT on another would be alright, I would be down with that.

Here’s my (and I guess at least a few other players’) predicament:

This is my main account, I’ve played it since launch. I have 8 characters on it, thus all 8 character slots filled. I have two other accounts as well with 5 characters, and thus all 5 character slots filled.

If I buy the expansion I have to buy an extra character slot to play the Revenant on my main account, or other two accounts (but I most likely won’t buy the expansion immediately there considering the price point).

Total cost to upgrade my main account would be $60 ($50 plus $10 for char slot).

However, since buying the expansion gives me the option of a free account I might as well just make a new account and get more “value” at a lower cost.

What do you suggest I do? On one hand I’d really like to play the revenant on my main account and experience HoT with my favorite chars. On the other hand it’s hard to justify $60 when I can enjoy HoT albeit without my favorite chars for $50.

I’m really looking forward to this: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMB2AJcBlg~ Or this: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgMFaAJcBlg~ Shatter Build.

The new continuum burst will be insane. Doubt I’ll be using a shield though.

So, of the arguments in this thread, the only one that actually makes sense is “I simply don’t like the name”; and that’s fine because nobody requires you to like it.

As for the other arguments they fall short:

- No, it’s not a generic poster title anymore than tempest, or druid, (or some other upcoming elite spec name).
- No, none of the other elite spec names feel mutually exclusive to that class. A Guardian could totally become a Tempest. An Elementalist could totally become a chronomancer; so could a necromancer, and we’ll most likely see more non-exclusive names.
- No, we are not all dragonhunters. Some might feel like they are a dragonhunter because they are hunting mordremoth, but you are still a pact commander and “your class”, not a dragonhunter (a person specialising in hunting dragons). If you still say you are then I could run the same line of logic, and say, “but my Guardian is already a self-stylized Tempest why does Elementalists get that name? QQ.”

Tbh, the name doesn’t evoke any more awe than the other elite spec names I have seen, but that’s me. Dragonhunter seems a valid name for a Guardian, and I don’t think any of the other names that people have come up with fit any better.

Get you Tinfoil Hats on m8s we’re in for a bumpy ride along conspiracy road.

Though, seriously. There’s notion, and opinion; and then there’s facts. I have yet to see any facts backed by evidence here. The only evidence anyone provides is their notions and hearsay.

GW2 uses an RNG system. This system is completely random, and every roll happens server side to prevent cheating. Your MF only gives you a better chance at rolling in rarer categories in the loot tables you roll on when killing mobs, opening lost bandit chests, or opening PvP reward chests. When you have rolled for amount of loot / loot tables /categories (affected by MF), then you roll for actual loot and this process is not at all affected by MF.

The reason you might feel more lucky on some account compared another is pure happenstance. In fact this is more likely a notion, a psychological phenomena, than realistic (both your accounts are almost equally as lucky).

If there is indeed a bug affecting some accounts (and there might be), then you can only hope it is found and fixed, but the likelihood of such a bug is so minuscule it doesn’t warrant speculating.

I have more than two accounts, and I have not noticed any particular difference between any of them. I have never had a precursor drop anywhere (always bought them). Though I have had my share of ascended chests, fractal skins, rare exotics, lodestones, and so on.

If RNG has a large enough sample size then you will see people in either end of the “luck” distribution. Some will never be lucky, some will be lots of lucky. When a guild mate seems to constantly be lucky that guild mate might belong to the “luckier” part of the distribution. While someone else in your guild might belong to the “less lucky” part of the distribution.

If you head over to the RNG discussion on this forum you can see, and contribute with, some ideas on how to reduce/counter/reward the lower side of the distribution.

I believe ANet would want to have the distribution skewed so that the average player is “lucky”, still some will always fall below the average player in RNG and you want to concern yourselves with how to help these people feel better about the game.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Usually when GW2 feels grindy to me, it’s because I get frustrated sometimes at how slowly gold trickles in for me. On other games I play, I make money very easily. GW2 was culture shock for me in this regard. I’ve been told the absolute fastest ways to make money are 1. Buy low/sell high on the TP and 2. Dungeon running. People tell me that if I run every single dungeon path every day and get the daily for it, I’ll have tons of money.

But I really can’t stomach that. I do dungeons once in a while, not every day. And not all the available paths. That would be too much of a time commitment for me. I wish there was a way to make the same amount of money as I would dungeon running doing something that I actually enjoy. But the things I enjoy don’t really pay out well. In the end, I just had to be okay with the fact that this problem isn’t going to be solved and not worry about getting much money.

This is the biggest problem with money making in GW2, imho – the wild disparity in how much money you get for different L80 activities – dungeons are disproportionately rewarding, for starters.

And what in YOUR opinion should be equally as rewarding as dungeons?

Basically you don’t want any build that looks like your 2,2,2,2,2. They don’t have the potential to be anything because you become a jack of all trades with no specialised usefulness. What with how we can change traits on the fly now, it makes such builds even more useless.

With the new system ANet will (given time) make almost every choice you can do regarding your traits be viable. Adding the coming elite specialisations, that means 6 choose 3 combinations. I.e. 20 viable builds, just from the combination of specialisations alone. And that doesn’t account for the combination of traits within those specialisations. Expect the number of “viable” builds to be somewhat smaller than 20, but with even 10 builds being used by a significant amount of players in game that is greatly improving on the situation we have today.

Gibson.4036:

TL;DR: The grindy feeling comes from ArenaNet changing their philosophy from “Play how you want” to “We want to make rewards draw people into all parts of the game”.

I define “grind” as “repeatedly doing content for the extrinsic reward with little intrinsic reward”. Extrinsic reward is something you are given for doing an activity. Intrinsic reward is the enjoyment you get from doing the activity itself.

One place that GW2 does not feel grindy, where they got “Play how you want” right, is in leveling. The game gives me experience points no matter what I do. I can do zone exploration and level, WvW, EotM, Dungeons, Personal Story, or even sit around crafting in order to level my character. I don’t have to focus on the extrinsic reward of XP at all. I just go out and play the game how I want, and the levels roll in.

At endgame, however, the philosophy shifts. It is clear that ArenaNet is structuring rewards to try and guide people into playing all parts of the game. That means if I want a reward, unless I enjoy every part of the game, I’m guaranteed to be lead into an area that will feel “grindy”. I’m there, in spite of the fact I don’t enjoy it, because of the shiny at the end.

Theoretically, the fact that so many things can also be achieved, or at least shortcut with gold, should alleviate this problem. Don’t like a particular part of the game? Get gold and buy it from people who do.

Unfortunately, in order to maintain a stable, open economy, ArenaNet has to keep a tight rein on gold. That means there is wide disparity in how much gold various activities generate for the same amount of effort. This is put into sharp relief by the effect of any open market system, which is going to pay the best return not to people who labor, but to those who trade on the market.

So gold, which should be the work around that lets you play the game how you want, and trade with other players who are playing how they want, actually makes it feel more grindy because it draws people into doing the content that has the greatest gold return, rather than what they enjoy.

A good analysis of the issue the OP is presenting (a better presentation of the same fact). Most people’s goals are driven by extrinsic motivation (which is powered by the intrinsic motivation that vanity/fame/glory/amicability gives you). GW2s PvE element, more aptly called Fashion Wars 2, will be about external looks. The PvP community cares little if you run with Eternity or some 20g skin from the gem store; there it’s about skill.

Where your analysis falls short is where you assume everyone falls into the Fashion Wars category, and to be sure you are not explicitly wrong in this, but it’s not a good assumption because it doesn’t account for everybody.

Moreover, you argue that people take the shortest route for gold, because certain areas of the game provide more gold than other. Sure enough, but this is also true for leveling. The issue is similar when leveling. Many choose to maximise their utility by choosing the shortest/cheapest route to level 80 which means EOTM, Tomes of Knowledge, or Powerleveling. In that way there is actually little difference between the “xp”-grind and the “gold”-grind. Mind you, most areas of the game DO provide gold.

So what becomes of your analysis then? That you gained levels quick enough, but gold doesn’t come as fast as you’d like? Most likely that is your issue, or even, most people’s issue.

Again, it whittles down to whether or not you enjoy what you can do in GW2 and the content the game offers. Because (mostly) everything gives you the means to get what you want. It’s just that some activities give you the means faster than others. In the end it’s about what you want, and that’s where most people fall into the same fallacy of “value”, they do in real life.

I get what you are trying to say, but I think you might be a bit disconnected.

If Guild Wars 2 feels like a grind to you then you are either spending too much playing it, or the game just doesn’t suit your tastes.

The game is hugely successful, and for a reason. The complaints you hear on the forums are mostly vocal minority who speaks some truth, but hyperbole it to the point of hilarity. Like you speak some truth, but makes it sound like it’s the end of the world for the devs and the game, and that the player base has turned into a mass of robots just grinding away.

There is definitely individuality in the game. You can pick and choose from your favorite playstyle. Gearing and builds are yours to choose despite there being a meta (every game has a meta, heck even pillars of eternity got a meta). The meta is player created. Usually it’s the top guilds/teams who theorycraft on efficiency and they collectively suggest and promote metas.

In pvp you might feel every class is restricted, but in actuality it’s not. A good thief can take a medi-guard, but it’s not advised since a medi-guard is meant to sustain and counter thieves. Currently there’s a thief build in testing (condition) which is meant to counter medi-guards. And that is how the meta works, it’s ever-changing. Builds come that dominate because of some skill or sustain, then a build comes that counters it and makes it unusable. Similarly, you have flavor of the month (currently it’s pew pew ranger), and they die quite quickly as people learn to counter them. Though I have seen some good deviations of the pew pew ranger build which might make it into the meta.

As for PvE there’s so much content you can do that you don’t need to see the same content in weeks if you care. And you can choose exactly what you want to do. Of course if you are looking to maximize your gold gain then certain activities are more profitable than others (the most profitable being playing the tradepost, but there’s not an awful lot of people doing that). People who just play to maximize gold gain do, however, not understand the gist of games (it’s the same fallacy that exists in real life). As John Lennon so eloquently put it. “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. So, don’t make gold the end in-and-of itself, instead make it one of the means to an end.

Just remove all weapon-specific traits. Done. ANet already removed all weapon-specific traits for elementalists, so why not other classes as well.

Instead make some traits focus on melee/ranged, otherwise make the traits specific to attack types/skill types.

A thing which often caused a player to choose a certain traitline was that it contained "x weapon gets 10% dmg boost " or “x weapon gets larger damage radius”. Those traits became the go to traits along with “general 10% damage boost” in PvE.

The issue is that the above traits aren’t interesting as choices, because they often leave the other choices in the dust when it comes to value added to build. You also have to use said weapon to benefit from them and so if you aren’t going to use said weapon you have only subpar choices.

It seems like you are moving away from weapon-specific traits, and that’s a VERY good thing; because it promotes variation. I am seeing that some professions still have suggested weapon-specific traits and that’s a shame because moving away from them completely would be the best thing.

Without them there’s the possibility of seeing people with different weapons but the same builds, or with different builds but the same weapons.

Similarly, I would advocate for moving away from the x% damage increases, or make them uniform across certain specialisations for every class and make them minor traits.

That said, having melee specific traits or ranged specific traits could be interesting.

TL;DR: Weapon-specific traits are bad. “X% dps increase” traits are not very cool either.

Basically you don’t want to use SP, and you might want to do as many skill challenges as possible before the patch because A: you’ll get more hero points, and B: you’ll get the skill points from the skill challenges converted into the new currency. It’s win-win.

I’m halfway with the crowd here. I have played enough solo queues as a thief to know when it works and when it doesn’t. First off you should not use a dp/sb build, instead go for something like the sd/sb meta. Secondly, you do “class math” at the beginning of the fight. You see which classes counter which and how the overall picture looks for your team vs. their team (this is guesswork, but you’ll find that it’s often spot on). Thirdly, have a counter class at handy. If you play a thief, always have a medi guardian ready to swap in matches where you see your thief is not gonna do it. You can swap classes during the 1 minute 30s before the match starts. I also recommend having a shoutbow war, cele ele, or cele engi/turret engi whichever you prefer at hand for those matchups where it looks really bad (although personally I never go wrong with my medi guard unless there’s already 2 guards on the team, in which case you are usually safe to run as a thief anyway).

In the end, thief is hard to solo queue because you rely on team play. But if you have maps like khylo, temple, skyhammer, and sometimes niflhel then playing as a thief doing far decap can work quite well. Remember, only decap unless it’s safe to cap and your team doesn’t need you in a fight.

People who know what’s going on, stop attacking in downed state if they are sr’ed (unless there’s a specific reason for attacking). The same people don’t try to heal themselves unless there’s a decent chance they’ll get ressed. Oterwise you attack your opponent because any damage done can possibly help an ally coming a bit late to the rescue.

Burning damage on wooden objects sounds cool. Turrets aren’t wooden though. I don’t personally have an issue with turret engis either. Being that I play cele ele, shoutbow war, and medi guard most often, cele engi is the only build that really irritates me. The insane damage output on those rifles along with the cc is painful. Turret engi’s are really only useful when they have their turrets up, and even then you can lay waste to them if you have a power aoe build.

Just curious, because there is going to be quite a few frogs ingame once HoT releases.

MrRuin.9740:

Nezia.8154:

• Questing is easier with the heart system compared to old-school questing system where you have to backtrack everything.

• No Trinity! You are independent! No more having to search for healers or tankers. And as for me, I’ve always been forced to play a healer because of this, and I hated being a healer. Now I can be anything I want to be!

• Gain exp/loot/quest credit on enemy tag. Other MMO’s have the first-hit or last-hit reward system in killing mobs. It’s annoying! In GW2, just tag it and you can get rewards.

• Can only bring 10skills at a time. Unlike other mmo’s where the sky is the limit on your skillbar! No thinking required. Just fill that skillbar!

*Questing is easier, but its still the same system with a fresh coat of paint. It’ll be nice when an MMO comes out that actually changes this system.

*No trinity, but the game is lending to meta builds being required (by the playerbase) for instances, which just as bad. Yes, this can be avoided, but its still a tendency that this game has not figured out how to avoid – though they have lessened it from the trinity problems.

*Gains on tagging…..blessing and a curse. Leads to a lot of tag-and-go-afk gameplay on bosses and events. Lends itself to leeching players who lets others do the work as long as they tag it, they get the same reward for nothing. Better than in most other MMO’s, but still has its share of problems.

*Only 10 skills at a time, making no-thinking required is probably quite a ranged preference. No-thinking required isn’t something I look for in an MMO…or any game, really.

GW2 has honed and put a fresh coat of paint on many aspects of the MMO-genre and does it well, though many of their solutions are still carrying some forms of the same flaws inherent to the genre.

This is PoV and semantics more than anything:

• Heart system is a complete re-design of the questing system, it’s not a fresh coat of paint. If you are looking for new types of content then you’d have to look elsewhere. “Kill 10 rats” is still there, but in a fresh coat of paint.
• The trinity is gone gone. Meta will be in any game always, there’s no avoiding meta since it’s player created and not a problem made by devs. ANet removed the trinity, now everyone is dps. Sure, some don’t like that, and I agree ANet should make support roles more effective to warrant more build diversity.
• Leeching players also exist in any game, and they are a definitive improvement on kill steals. Still I don’t find leeches very often in gw2; admittedly, I don’t play SW that often where most of the leeches are said to be camping nowadays.
  * 10 skills can require less or more thinking depending on the strategy with which those skills are chosen. You can have 60 castbars and press the same macro over and over, or skill click every single one in perfect timing, or you can have 10 skills and only press auto-attack, or execute them in perfect timing. It’s really what you, and the devs make of it. In my opinion gw2 ranges from easy (war), to more complex (mes-ele) skill combos.

Finally the tropes of the genre are still apparent in gw2 for a reason: Playability. Some tropes aren’t that easy to get rid of when making an mmo. Like the “ever-evolving” world. I was admittedly disappointed when I learned that gw2 wasn’t going to be as dynamic as I dreamt it would be. Still, realise how hard it would be to implement such a game design. Eve is quite dynamic, but it’s a completely different game. The only game offers an “ever-changing”-world is Crowfall, and even there the world isn’t persistent because it’s simply not possible yet.

Thing is they’d need to tap into Japanese, and Korean market to justify the servers (and both those markets are saturated in their own way). I also doubt NCsoft would like the competition GW2 would provide its Korean titles. As for Japan the PC-market is a niche market with so few players that you’d probably not sell more than 100,000 copies (and most of those are probably already sold). You have Singapore and Oceania, but I doubt you’d increase sales there. If you could market in India, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia then you’d have a fair chance of increasing player-base, the issue is that buying-power is still relatively low in those markets, and so I think they’d want to wait a few more years at least for those markets to grow a bit more. India alone could be a market in itself, but I am not sure about the popularity of mmos over there or how a viable business model would look like.

That said, costs and profits aside, the NA/EU population would dwindle by about 10-20% provided most got free server transfers. While on the SEA servers PvP and WvW would not see enough players to have proper mmr for matches (considering mmr is not working very well on NA servers either).

FinalPatriot.8034:

Last question, I swear! (well… for now).

I ran across this “tanky” build below and was wondering if you all have played something like this or seen it used before. The armor and resistance to conditions looks to be pretty nice for WvW.

Tank Roaming

Like the others said, it seems mediocre. Plus there’s not a lot of synergy going. If you wanna run around like a tank, with 6 in both lines then I’d suggest switching Grandmaster Stone to XIII, and Adept Water to III, and Master Water to IX to have a reliable regen proc. That way you switch to earth when you expect burst, and water to cleanse condis after. Remember that you have to switch out of both attunements quickly, expecially water since you want to have water available again as quickly as possible for using skill 2.

Still I wouldn’t recommend running that build. I tried similar 20660 in sPvP, but it was crap.

Leo G.4501:

sorudo.9054:

it’s just that, ppl need to know the difference, sexy isn’t always skimpy, skimpy isn’t always sexy.
also, for male characters, sexy isn’t always cool and cool doesn’t have to be sexy.
the whole point of male characters is not to be a ken to barbie, the point is to make the male character look touch as nails to the point that he impresses not by sexyness but by showing of his experience.

Chobiko.9182:

I completely agree that ANet is being sexist when it comes to male/female armour diversity. It’s extremely easy to dress “skimpy” for females, and extremely easy to dress “power fantasy” for males. I wish they would make both skimpy, and sexy for males (we have enough droll and power fantasy). And I wish they made more “power fantasy” and droll for females… enough skimpy (never enough sexy for either sex).

If I could dress my male like I have dressed my female I’d be happy.

I like where you guy’s hearts are at and somewhat agree but please just realize what you describe is YOUR OPINION and doesn’t describe the spectrum of preference or intent.

I’d stick to describing what it is you’d look for in armor diversity, perhaps with a picture description then leave the generalizing labels and commentary to a minimum;

I don’t see where I generalized or did any unnecessary commentary. The “sexist” part? That’s not opinion really, that’s accusation based on values that ANet displays in other areas, but doesn’t hold to when it comes to player outfitting. Sure there are some female armors that look a bit “power fantasy”, but none of the female bodies are especially muscular. Look at the midriff of every single female armor (the hour-glass shape is strong in them characters).

Otherwise, I prefaced all my wishes, with “I wish”-which is expressively stating that it is indeed my opinion.

Ankushp.7245:

maddoctor.2738:

Ankushp.7245:

maddoctor.2738:

Ankushp.7245:

maddoctor.2738:

A mechanic that allows skilled players to defeat content is a good mechanic for an action based game. This is by design to allow actual skill to play an important role in fights instead of relying on gear.

But then from what we see here Skill in playing is overpowering the effect of gears (which is something people want i guess) BUT the skill needed isnt much. Hence any player with limited skill in dodging and using his other skills well is currently able to nullify effects of wearing pure zerker gear.

Limited skill in dodging? Are we talking about general PVE now, world bosses, or actual content that requires intelligence? I guess it’s because of the limited skill in dodging why so many people that do Arah in full zerker gear go in a group with someone that will solo Lupi when they get there because they will be on the floor there.

I would like to think that many people have improved over the years
Neway its peoole who have good gameplay skills that set the trend……they use the dodge mechanic and their other skills well and are hence able to use play well with the zerker gear. The remaining population emulates these good players (who tend to post builds on websites and stuff) and hence use zerker gear too (irrespective of their success in using the same)

And then they fail, so they use more defensive sets to adapt to their skills. How is that a problem with dodging or zerker?

There is no ‘problem’. Am giving you all, a reason for the zerker meta. It exists because through skill in playing and utilising the dodge mechanic you can make the zerker build perfectly viable in almost every existing scenario.

And no they don’t adapt. Most people keep trying to use the zerker build hence all the fail pug squads….. As long as people know that with skill you can bypass the need for defensive gear stats, there will be no variation in good gear builds in this game.

Now whether you want variation in gear builds is upto you…..am just highlighting the fact that being heavily skill based is what has made all other gear stats in this game less attractive than zerker.

Actually, no, it’s not skill at dodging that has made it so. It is the lack of added value of other stats/builds to a fight. The reason the zerker meta persists is because “why sustain when you can kill”? If you take a cue from pvp you can see that zerker is not meta there and there’s a reason to it. It’s because you cannot reliably kill with zerker (partly because enemy expects that burst, partly because the enemy can counter/sustain that burst).

How can you emulate that in pve? Well, first off you need to make fights slightly more unpredictable (faster attacks, random patterns, less exploitation possibility, shorter leashes, etc.)

Secondly, you can make other stats/builds more viable through increasing the added value they provide in fights. The warrior meta sacrifices some personal dps for partywide dps with phalanx strength and empower allies. <- Still, they are running a zerker meta.

I suggest changing the way gear affects your stats as the best way to make viable other stats than the zerker meta. The way healing power, boons, and condition damage affects encounters also needs to be carefully tweaked to make them more viable.

No, like many stated above, dodging doesn’t hurt the game in terms of the zerker meta.

What hurts the game in terms of zerker-meta is that content is either:

A. Not-punishing squishy builds enough
B. Not providing viable alternatives

If we went for A. then we would see the zerker meta morph slightly to become a hybrid zerker/tank/condi-cleanse meta, so we can ask ourselves, is that what we want? No.

If we went for B. then we would need to improve the viability of support/alternative dps builds. Would that change the way zerker meta is played? No. Would it still be viable? Yes. Would it be viable with the newly improved build types? Hopefully.

So what is the actual problem here? Other build types just aren’t as viable for the majority of content. ANet is looking at ways to change that, I just hope they are looking in the right places. At this point I believe the right places would be:

• Increasing the need for timing heals.
• Nerfing support functionality of powerful dps builds (staff ele, guardian)
• Increasing the viability of sacrificing personal dps for party dps or sustained cc or heals.

This brings us into the whole holy trinity debate, but realise that I am not advocating that horrible strategy. Instead I believe that if you want to play full glass-cannon you should. Similarly, if you want to heal the party then you should not be frowned upon for doing that either.

The issue is reaching a compromise. If a party needs a healer to do a certain type of content, then someone is forced to take that role. However, if a party can run full glass cannon through the same type of content, then there is absolutely no need for healers. You need to meet in the middle, make the zerker meta a bit less of a glass-cannon, and healing/support a bit more needed.

Ideally, the only people who would run full glass-cannon would be pro-guilds communicating through ts, and they would still run that build type at a risk of wiping. While most pugs would see some communication done at the beginning of a run to decide who watches out for the party’s health, and who sacrifices some personal dps for ccs/party dps.

Finally, to provide for this the ability to change builds according to the situation should be made more accessible. That means you should either be able to switch gear stats, or gear should not affect direct combat stats, but other factors instead. E.g. Say your helmet gives you a shorter cooldown on a utility skill, while your armor gives you longer boon durations etc. Similarly, runes could be unlocked on a per character basis to give the necessary stat boosts, which could be changed on the fly, and of course, trait points would play the biggest role in deciding your chars health and dps.

TL;DR: ANet needs to look at how to make support builds more viable, and possibly change how armor/weapons affect stats.

I completely agree that ANet is being sexist when it comes to male/female armour diversity. It’s extremely easy to dress “skimpy” for females, and extremely easy to dress “power fantasy” for males. I wish they would make both skimpy, and sexy for males (we have enough droll and power fantasy). And I wish they made more “power fantasy” and droll for females… enough skimpy (never enough sexy for either sex).

If I could dress my male like I have dressed my female I’d be happy.

I play with roughly the same ping 230ms, from Europe on an NA server. I PvP a lot. I also have an EU account (50ms ping). The difference is extremely noticeable. So much so I often dominate in 1v1 on my EU account because I have learned to play with a higher ping and the ability to anticipate moves, as well as being able to react to surprises gives a huge advantage.

That said. If you are going to look at this mathematically take an ability you want to interrupt, like an enemy heal. Most healing skills have roughly a 1 sec. cast time.

First off Ping should be explained: Ping is the time it takes for one packet of data sent from point A to return to point A after reaching point B.

If you live in NA and play on an NA server then the common optimal is 80ms ping. A computer has a mean 30ms of display/input lag. The human brain is able to react to an image in 15ms, and a skilled human is able to react with a click in 70-100ms. Add all these factors together and you’ll see that the difference between 80ms ping and 230ms are actually quite massive:
- Player A casts Heal (~15ms for computer to process, 40ms for command to reach server).
- 1 second heal starts on server
- Player A receives visual on heal roughly 55ms later (40ms from server to computer, 15ms for computer to display): Heal has 945ms cast time left
- Player B receives visual on heal 130ms later (115ms from server to computer, 15ms for computer to display): Heal has 870ms cast time left
- Player B processes and reacts to heal 85ms later (15 for brain to recognise visual input, 70ms for brain to react and send command to finger): Heal has 785ms cast time left
- Player B’s command is received by server 130ms later (same as above): Heal is interrupted with 655ms cast time left
- Player A receives and reacts to visual feedback of interrupted cast roughly 140ms later
- Player B receives and reacts to visual feedback of interrupted cast roughly 215 ms later

This scenario is on the assumption that both players have lightning-fast reaction times. The average human is much slower. If, however Player B was very skilled, and Player A had mediocre skills then the playing field would be level as far as ping goes. What is also not taken into account is frame rate; anywhere below 60 fps is detrimental to Player B, while it will be less of an issue for Player A in this situation.

Unfortunately there are few ways to remedy ping. Opening an Oceanic server would lead to too much fragmentation of player base. While the other options are trying a gaming proxy for ~30ms ping decrease, or relocating.

People who have high ping just have to learn to live with it. In most cases you’ll be a bit worse off in SPvP and WvW, but it also requires you to adapt, which has the potential of improving your skill to anticipate, and decrease reaction times even more than any low-ping player would need.

To those that argue for the space issue. Most people who swap between builds will usually swap weapons as well. At best one weapon will be used in two, max. 3 builds. So at worst one legendary would equal three ascended weapons. That’s when you can talk about space and price, but the improvement with a legendary would still be marginal.

So many complaint posts, and so much QQ in this sub.

I thought I’d share a video phantaram recently posted which gives a good overview of the current meta game and different class mechanics.

It’s a daunting 2 hours where he is teaching an ignorant guy (famous from wow or something), aside from the constant swearing from the latter guy phantaram has evoked his inner zen and goes through 2 hours of pvp explanation.

After seeing this you should stop bickering on which class is OP, cuz clearly if you fail to kill a class then you need to improve or change class because: Rock < Paper < Scissor < Rock.

To me it seems many people have little idea of what exactly the “holy trinity” brings to a game in terms of game play. Basically it puts a restraint on a player’s “ability” in combat. When you are the DPS, you can only do DPS, and when you are the Healer, you can only heal, and so on. With this trinity, like many are pointing out, it is possibly easier to design encounters that are “challenging” to the players. Mind you, the content is often only challenging the first few times until it is learned then put on “rotation”. If you go play WoW now and do raids, you’ll find that after the 10th time of doing a specific raid, it is no longer challenging. Moreover, the only way the content can be challenging is by making it hard to keep the trinity whole, i.e. if the healer dies the group is dead. To me, that is quite wrongly perceived as challenging, but to others it is the very definition of “challenge”.

Challenging, to me, is when the group doing the encounter has to work as a team to take down the boss, or wipe. Stacking and DPSing is not challenging. Mai Trin, is challenging.

At the end of the third fractal, many pray to the RNG gods for any fractal but Mai Trin. I also often see people moaning in chat when the loading screen takes them to the Mai Trin Boss Fractal. If the team can’t work together then when 2 people are down it’s usually over. Granted there are exploits you can use in that encounter, I hope ANet manages to close those exploits soon.

Similarly, the “ooze path” part of TA aether path is challenging. A good team does this on first try, an unorganised team will try and fail until they give up.

Still, there is one issue. No matter what challenging content in GW2, a good group can and will overcome it on first try. Thus what some are wanting is content that is challenging for a good group. The only way something like that can be challenging is by randomising the encounter to some extent. Challenging content stops being challenging once it is understood and can be predicted, which leaves randomness. Currently in GW2 I have yet to experience a boss fight which incorporates some element that makes it unpredictable to the extent that it is challenging. Mai Trin is close with the barrage segment being slightly unpredictable and punishing.

TL;DR: The “holy trinity” does not help make something challenging. Randomness does. Challenging content is content which has the player group responding to unforeseen events.

PS. Another way some say WoW was challenging was the need to remember and execute “challenging” skill combos. I.e. pressing 25 different skills at the correct timing to maximise damage output. Again, this is wrongly perceived as challenging since it is easily executed once trained.

PPS. Take a cue from pvp. Why is it that pvp is challenging (assuming you meet enemies of equal skill)? It is because of the unpredictability of humans. While you know the mechanics, and you can anticipate certain skills or combos from your enemies, there exists a large chance of unpredictability in such gameplay. That is what makes it challenging.

G… Go and do PvP and tell me there is one class you don’t see! Class balance is done really quite well. Sure there are meta builds, but that’s almost inevitable. Still I see lots of people running experimental or personal builds. Different classes are good at different things. Like Eles are great at on-point fighting. Thieves are great at interrupting points. Engis great at on-point defense. Guards are great at on-point defense. Wars are great at solo capping. Mesmers are great at interrupting. Rangers are great at solo capping and interrupting. Necros are great at on-point defense, and interrupting. There will always be some classes that are good at beating another class, but weak to a third class: Just like rock-scissor-paper; but that’s ok. With revenant it’ll take some time but eventually it will be balanced as well.

@Gibson. No, no and no. Idk what you play, but last time I played pvp I was ganked by a trap ranger. I have also seen very good power rangers, condi rangers, spirit rangers etc.

The only issue Anet should focus on is the zerker meta in pve. It’s been a big issue for pve with the whole stack and dps culture.

During the gameplay demo there are two events displayed in the GUI which aren’t currently in main game.

“Celebrate the New Year of the Ram”

“World Tournament Invitational Qualifier”

What do you think? Are these events telling us something about release dates, possible new events, or is it just placeholders?

Start rumorcrafting!

So, an Expansion (optional, purchasable) is coming. There will be ppl playing it, there might be people who don’t.

• The expansion might or might not be purchasable with gems. This is a big factor when considering how many may end up playing it.

• It is an optional expansion, so it should not touch sPVP/tPVP, nor WvW.

• There is a problem with that last point. If it is true then the new class would not have access to PVP. Similarly, traits/skills/weapon types introduced with HoT would also not be available for PVP.

So where does that leave us?

1. The expansion will be a patch: Free and required download.
2. The expansion is optional (paid): Classes/traits/skills/weapon types introduced by the expansion will be available in PvP (giving an unfair “possible” advantage to those buying the expansion).
3. The expansion is optional (paid): Classes/traits/skills/weapon types introduced by the expansion is available to all in a similar way to how the new healing skills were.
4. The expansion is optional (paid): Classes/traits/skills/weapon types introduced by the expansion are not accessible in PvP leaving the devs with a huge task in having to create different PVE / WvW builds, preventing a class in PvP, etc.

Still whether it is any of these options there are still a few issues.

• How is the new WvW map affect WvW rankings?

• How much more viable (if at all) will the specialisations be in dungeons? (i.e. Will we see these lfgs: “exp 80 zerk specialized specs only” ? )

• What about masteries? Will they provide any vertical progression outside the Heart of Maguuma?

Chobiko.9182:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

-snip-

how the hell does confusion application require you to change build? you literally just stick a condition removal utility on and remove a DPS one.

Isn’t that, by definition, changing the build though? Sure it’s easy, but I never said it would require big changes either. Just that it would require that change.

@other person. Yes, I forgot Ele condi cleanse. Still most metabuilds 6/10 does not have partywide condi cleanse.

The marionette event was difficult and often failed if not coordinated properly. Similarly was Teq.

The issue with both events is that they require a med-large amount of players. What ANet is still struggling with I think is to balance the scaling of events.

If they one day can make a boss that can be defeated by one person, but as more people join the harder it gets, then they have solved this issue. It is not easy mind, but I believe they can work it out.

Right now their biggest problem is scaling it as more people join the actual fight and not the vicinity. I suggest maybe they look into limiting the amount of damage a boss takes per sec or per min, when being attacked until the event has scaled properly.

Ex.:
→ Event starts → 1 player attacks boss → the event is adjusted for 1 player → that one player does reasonable damage to boss, and would complete within 10 min (with skill).
→ 5 players join → boss has damage ceiling buff and doesn’t take more damage than 2 players can deal at the same time → Event starts to morph to allow for up to 10 players (boss deals more damage, minions start to form etc.)
→ 5 minutes later 10 more join → boss is now halfway down ceiling buff is currently adjusted for 10 players → Event morphs to allow for more players (boss begins using special attacks, starts to move more, targets single players with insta-downs, etc.)

It is doable and I believe ANet has a lot of the groundwork done to do something in this vein.

What I want to see from ANet is more versatility in such events. I want to singlehandedly be able to defeat Teq. if necessary (by necessary I mean when nobody else cares to defeat it, but I sorely want the ascended skin or an achievement, or when a group of five are the only ones there to do the job). It should by all means be harder and maybe a bit more longwinded for a smaller group or a single player, but not impossible as it currently is.

Look at many champions for example they are quite doable in a small group, singlehandedly it takes a lot more time, but it isn’t impossible. They are no match for champ trains however and that could be fixed.

@ John Smith (or whoever knows this).

I realised I assumed something in my previous post, and so I would like to confirm whether I was wrong in assuming or not.

The RNG system implemented in GW2 is it truly random, or does it rely on an underlying probability distribution?

The items are obviously tied to a probability distribution (else there would be no rarity), but are player’s rolls based on a probability distribution or are their rolls truly random (because of magic find I would assume that you need either a distribution or add a constant/variable to the roll)?

Artemis Thuras.8795:

If you cant watch animations for confusion applying skills ( or at least keep an eye on the effect bar) in pve ( when most of the time you should know to expect confusion) then you have a problem with the zerker meta in so much as, you’re not using active skills (be it aegis, condi clear etc correctly.

Lesson here: zerker meta has to know how to condi cleanse – or have a party member who can ( and knows how to) group cleanse. You could also simply dodge the confusion applying attack. PvE incoming confusion is a L2P issue.

Most zerker metas nowadays, however, do not have condition cleanse. Usually only mes, thief or guards have them. So that would require some change to the builds.

While it is easier said than done. Yes it is possible to avoid many confusion attacks.
That said many players live far away from the servers, and believe it or not, dodging hardly helps due to a 0.5 second latency (most attacks have a ~1 second telegraph, and by the time you have registered that and dodged it’s already too late server-side). It’s not an excuse by which to increase or nerf anything, but the handicap is there, nonetheless.

I think the might nerf and the confusion buff is going to be the two single most hilarious changes to come simultaneously.

With the might nerf we’ll now see a significant move to the zerker meta (less tanks and hybrids).

Not only that but we’ll also see a significant increase of damage to the only op condition (besides poison), leading to zerker metas dropping like flies in pve.

Imagine that. ANet basically tells us: “Here now, glass cannons are going to be much more viable now if you don’t want three hour dungeon runs. Still being glass a glass cannon shouldn’t be fun, guess we’ll just increase confusion dmg. so you’ll have a harder time being one.”

I think we’ll see a lot of condi removal zerkers from now on in pve.

John Smith.4610:

-snip-

[Theorietical Solutions]

1. Use a specifically non-random NG. The NRNG functions similarly to a RNG, but has characteristics that either squish the distribution so that outliers exist much less or specifically manipulate a player’s experience for loot in a more complicated way that makes it feel rewarding.

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”

Obviously these are hyper-simplified descriptions, but I don’t want this to get too long.

edit: added 2.5

I am sure one can come up with better solutions than these 3 John. Off the top of my head there’s one solution similar to nr. 2 here, but less gimmicky (not outright saying “you have had bad luck lately; here’s a band-aid”).

3. RNG feedback. a.k.a. RNG “karma”. Whenever a player rolls >0.01 (or whatever is the “rare” threshold), i.e. whenever the player doesn’t get the rare, the player builds “invisible” karma, when this karma reaches a threshold the next RNG roll by a player is a guaranteed win, and the karma resets. The karma threshold or the karma amount given on each non-winning roll should be related to the magic find of the player to accurately mirror the player’s “luck”.

This solution is invisible and so the player is unaware of when they are actually lucky or when they are given a 100% win chance.

RNG in games using a bell curve or any curve with tails will by design have extremes with an amount of players either winning more than everyone else and others losing more than everyone else. The solution I presented aims to feed the losing players back into the body of the curve. Thus the solution requires that the amount of karma awarded per non-winning throw and the threshold be carefully set so as not to completely negate the RNG.

Similarly a “negative” karma approach can be taken to prevent “extremely” lucky players.

Mind that such approaches will not “flatten” out the rewards. Instead it will make sure that the same player doesn’t stay long in one of the tails of the curve used. You want to feed these extremely lucky or unlucky players back into the body of the curve keeping a constant movement of players between the extremes.

This ensures that no player feels “unlucky” over the long haul, but instead might feel “unlucky” for a period of play then “extremely lucky” for another.

I like the new dailies: They are quick. You do need to play some specific content, however, which may not suit some.

I think the devs are already aware of certain flaws in the PVE dailies like: “complete x events in specific map” or “kill this event champ/leg.”; these do not work because of the sheer amount of people attempting to do them at once often breaking or making it all but impossible to complete the events. There’s also the PvP “win once with specific class”-daily which sees way too many players in pvp of either of two classes gathering in hot join.

That said I enjoy the zone specific dailies like “zone miner/lumberer/gatherer” or “zone vista viewer”, the rank rewards daily and others similar for wvw.

Make more of the pve ones less zerg prone. E.g. “zone jumping puzzle” or “kill this many of specific creature” or “daily dungeon path”, “diving spot”, “heart completer”, etc.

That is all.

I have posted before about the economy, and I frequently disagree with the game’s economist.

[For the interested] The game is based, like the real (western) world, on the neo-classical idea. An approach so flawed it’s ridiculous we still hold on to it (even the classical approach is better, while you either love or hate Keyne’s modification to the approach).

Since the game imitates the real world system it’s already flawed. I think John finds it a great opportunity to model the neo-classical utopia (since we have virtually unlimited resources). He (John) has since acceded that the main issue of the game is the “players”; we simply aren’t economic, and so he wish to attempt teaching us to become more economic through the game by making the system more understandable (read previous posts by him and you’ll see he often mentions educating players).

(And sorry for being cynical.)

[For the uninterested] The game economy is terrible because players are too lazy or too dumb.

[Solution] John should read the article. Instead of being lazy and applying a neo-classical approach to the game, he should attempt to use some of his academic skills and develop his own approach which could possibly fix the game economy, and maybe also be applicable to real world economy. It’s hard, I know (I like tinkering with the issue myself). But for a guy like John that should be his job, and not what he currently does; helping devs patching leaks here and there when new resources and currencies are introduced.