Guild Wars 2

This was one of the last elite specs to be done (implied by leaks and confirmed by devs), it was rushed out, and it completely shows.

The Renegade is the result of when a designer is under pressure to create and implement a workable concept in such a tiny amount of time. The spec is full of generic, “safe” ideas thrown together into the same cooking pot.

F skills? Generic utilities not unlike what you’d expect from skills in the utility bar.
Shorbow? Generic skill effects (condi AA, rapid fire v2, inverted cone arrows, barrage with fire field, and mesmer’s gs 5 skill with a knockdown instead of a knockback).
Summons? A somewhat interesting/ somewhat problematic mechanic that was copy-pasted five times with different passives tacked on it.

There’s almost nothing interesting going on about it. The summon mechanic is interesting, but you only needed 1-2 skills devoted to it, not your entire utility bar. The shortbow has some unique ideas, like the inverted cone or portal arrows, but there’s no specific playstyle to it. F3 is good looking, but it could very well have been a shortbow skill. F2 and F4 are generic AoE support effects.

What is this elite spec about? Is it a condition spec? Is it a support spec? What is this elite spec’s playstyle? Summoning Ai buff bots while you shoot arrows at range? That’s it?

zell.3051:

If they turn gw2 into yet another korean anime fanboy game I am out of here.

Because having flying swords in a fantasy setting automatically turns it into korean anime, right?

Xegrilt.9426:

GW2 capture the essence of gear without giving you the illusion of content and progression. Other game will bring you higher level cap, better and stronger gear that will then be mandatory, illusion of progress and content. Illusion of content because the better gear will make older content meaningless and obsolete, and illusion of progress because you were strong enough to do the end-game content, but then you need to re-grind your gear every new update just to actually reach your previous capacity as end-game toon. GW2 doesn’t provide such illusion and let you keep your power level, and doesn’t let old content become obsolete. The point for those hard to get item is in the rarity itself, not illusion of progression.

Nothing in your post explains why you think that sense of progression is an illusion. If older content is becoming easier, then the sense of vertical progression exists, and thus it cannot be an illusion because it’s real and has real gameplay impact.

I would say it is the exact opposite. It is GW2 that is giving us an illusion of a different sense of progression, when it truly isn’t. Grinding the best DPS stat sets available whenever a new expansion comes is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a less exciting and more convoluted version of the classic gear treadmill from other MMORPGs. The game gives you the illusion of choice (“that’s horizontal progression! you simply pick the stats you want!”), but flawed balance and flawed game design dictate that specific stat combinations are mathematically the superior option, and you end up having a “stat treadmill” that makes you stronger and old content easier anyways.

That being said, vertical progression can be very exciting when it feels very organic, and that excitement is the heart and soul of RPG mechanics. A RPG without vertical progression will always have a smaller audience, and that’s just normal. GW2 is an anti-RPG RPG, and not everyone will enjoy an experimental product like that.

As a Revenant main, I think that the Renegade feels somewhat like an after-thought, or an half-finished spec. It clearly didn’t have as much effort put into it as some other specs. I believe the devs have said it was one of the last specs to be finalized/ thought-out? If so, that is quite clear here.

First things first: animations. I think the Shortbow animations (and the bombardment F skill) are -or could be – really good looking, but they lack something that would make them truly satisfying: duration. Especially Shortbow skill #2 and the bombardment F skill. Give them an extra second or so of animation, and they would be far more satisfying. The Ranger’s Rapid Fire and Barrage gives off a bigger impression exactly because of that: because they last long enough to fully appreciate them.

Orange arrows aside, if we look at Kalla’s utilities, then it’s a whole different thing. Their animations are bland. So our ENTIRE utility set is about spawning semi-transparent phantasm charrs? That’s it? I mean, it’s a cool idea when you do it once or twice (like mesmer’s phantasms), but when all our 5 utility skills are tied to it, it’s not. If we’re going to be stuck to non-customisable effects, then diversity is important. When we look at, say, Mallyx, with leaping dark fields, avatar transformations and cone-shapped utility skills, or at Jalis, with roads, chains, stone transformations and flying hammers, having the entire Kalla kit being “invoke phantasms” is a boring concept. And I do enjoy the charr spawns, individually. Just yawn at the idea that there’s nothing else to it.

From a gameplay point of view, I actually enjoy the simplicity and elegance of the design. As a former elementalist, I gave up on that profession because I got bored of playing keyboard piano. The complexity creep only went further with tempest and weaver, and I’m sad that my favourite archetype (offensive spellcaster) is always stuck to a mechanically-demanding profession system. Sadly, this is not something that can be fixed without overhauling the entire profession, so I had to give up on it.

Then HoT was announced, and the revenant promised a more tactical and a less button-mashing approach. Emphasis on energy management over skill mashing. Unfortunately, in PvE, the concept of energy management has been a failure, and the only time it worked as intended was with Glint/ Herald – and that one works differently and is balanced differently. Skill rotations outside of Herald are terribly boring, and the number 1 reason why I don’t log in and enjoy playing the game anymore. And it happens that the Renegade does not seems to fix it at all, at least based on what I saw. It follows the exact same formula of base revenant, which tells me that we’ll have yet another upkeep + AA-spam spec. And I don’t want that. No one wants that.

My suggestions to fix the revenant’s core issues are two (for PvE): either remove energy from weapon skills, so that we can do more interesting rotations, or have our starting energy be at 100 instead of 50, so that we are forced to use energy skills other than the upkeep one before the legend cooldown is over and we can reset it back to 100 again. If 100 was the base value, then our upkeep skills wouldn’t be enough to put it at 0 before legend swapping becomes available again, which means that using MORE skills would actually lead to a DPS boost, instead of a DPS nerf. If you are worried about PvP and WvW balance, then just make this a PvE only change.

The revenant is clearly a very unfinished spec. The energy mechanic has not been working as intended in PvE since ever, the underwater gameplay has been incomplete since ever, and many bugs have run rampant for too long. The renegade is yet another half-complete addition to an half-complete package, I feel.

If I was the game designer behind the Renegade, my thought on it would be this one: “I haven’t done enough”.

Vehn.8317:

DevisedDemise.2608:

the healing is actually still bugged, at least it heals decently now but it is unfortunately still bugged, it’s healing for 53 per hit rather than the mention amount of 80 in the ’’new’’ tooltip, in the previous prepatch tooltip the value or number is ’’56’’. so it’s even healing less now than what it would have if it wasn’t bugged before. reason i bring this now is that i play on EU we only managed to get in now. so it may seem like a nice buff but until the skill it self is fixed it’s not really a buff.

posted a picture with a recent combat log and both new and old tooltips for comparison.

Well at least it’s 15 times more. It’s something to be thankful for.

Maybe they wrote the tooltip wrong, since they un-split it with PvP skill, then there should be no mistake.

edit:
Now that i count it, 66% of 80 are 52.8.

I think they also reduce the healing by 33%

We should ask Anet if it’s intended to have the healing also reduced by 33%

It would probably be too big of a coincidence to be a bug.

Ithilwen.1529:

Deliberately exploiting a bug like that is “less-than-ethical.” I think that people who do it should be banned.. though that almost certainly won’t happen.

I just came from a game against elements of an old ESL team farming unranked with a premade.. I don’t think that’s ethical either, but it’s been going on from season 1.

My friend’s not deliberately exploiting it, though. She just wants to play with her normal ranger build and get done with the pvp dailies, as she usually does every day.

Revenant is and always was a throwback to GW1’s energy + cooldown system. It’s not meant to be Thief v2.0.

My friend has been playing pvp with her ranger lately, and she just told me that her longbow 4 skill is making opponents getting stuck in walls. Apparently, people started to report her and she’s afraid she’s going to get banned.

Just to have some assurance, longbow’s 4 skill is part of the issue people are talking in this thread, and it’s not ban-worthy, right?

Yes, this is clearly Anet learning from their own mistakes.

They were sticking to the $50 price idea back then, so future expansions would probably come with older stuff at that price. Now, we’re still getting a bundle for $50, but they’re giving us the option to only buy the new expansion at a cheaper cost.

Ultimately, this is better fo us players.

Rym.1469:

As for the weapon it looks fairly generic from a mechanical standpoint. Zoning tool, a CC, two standard damage dealing abilities, one which is basically Ranger’s Rapid Fire, but with Torment added. Plus for cleaving AA. Doesn’t seem to have any bigger gameplay theme or mechanics that stand out. The portal thing sounds like a purely visual thing.

The portal flavor allows some unusual behaviour for the arrow skills. For example, revenant’s version of rapid fire does not shoot in a straight line like ranger’s, but instead spreads from multiple directions for area damage. And there’s also that reverted cone skill, which is interesting.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the 5th’s skill “wave” animation didn’t cancel itself once it hit a rock. Instead, the animation continued itself above the wall. Makes me wonder if that’s some new technology and if Anet is panning to retroactively change all ground skills that are cancelled by ground shape.

The portal-arrow animation is actually quite cool. It pretty much bombards an entire area.

The warband summoning is clearly like mesmer’s phantasms. One of them even has the same animation (the whirlwind axe).

4 pages in, and people still don’t realize that PoF relates to the third expansion (not the next one). The thread title is wrong.

We’re one expansion and one living story away from PoF.

1. PoF is a codename.
2. PoF is the expansion 3’s codename.
3. The codename for expansion 2 (the next one) is, according to leaks, Papaya.

For piles of silky sand, that some people have mentioned, I have a better solution: give us the ability to consume less than 10 of them, with lower odds of obtaining items. For example, consuming 3 would have 30% chance of giving us an item, and 7 would be 70%. Then add in a Consume All option, if there isn’t one already, and the issue will be fixed.

Piles of Sand need a QoL improvement, not storage space.

I’m popping here just to add that the hot potato mechanic and Mai Trin’s cannon phase are mechanics that I enjoy a lot. They also make me use some skills in unusual ways (especially leaps, swiftness, and the like during the cannons).

I don’t usually write in this section of the forums, and I got to this thread through Dev Tracker, but reading some of the comments about how “boring” the hammer is or how “boring” the cannon phase is gave me incentive to post this comment.

That being said, I agree that the hammer’s skills are lame and feel lame. I wouldn’t mind something stronger and more epic, perhaps even slightly overpowered. Put some high cooldowns on them, so that players who get to use those skills won’t feel bad for dropping the hammer when they have to, and keep them simple/ visually expressive so that no one needs to spend much time reading massive walls of skill description for a temporary, time-sensitive mechanic.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

Exactly what are you suggesting to change in their functionality? Because I can’t see any effective change, just a rename to potion

Currently, writs of experience can’t be used on lv80 characters.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Ah, and another inconvenience item that drops multiple times daily and is incredibly annoying to deal with, especially since like 95-99% of those who get it play on lvl 80 characters:

Writ of Experience

And along with it, Tomes of Knowledge.

Also, agreeing with Xalugami up there: Indigo Mushrooms as well as Bauxite Ore and other precursor collection node-drops should go into material storage. They do not sell with trash – I would’ve never started these collections had I known they would spam and clog my inventory on all characters

Writs of experience have been annoying ever since they came out. they should simply be replaced by potions that you can consume anytime, with the option to still convert 20 of them into tomes.

For Tomes, I feel that there are much better solutions for it. Starting with a “Consume All” option and ending with more incentives for players to actually spend their spirit shards often.

Spirit Shards can be a good source of gold, but crafting stacks of items in the mystic Forge is so slow, so painful, so boring compared to normal crafting stations that only rich players bother doing it by crafting rare, expensive items instead.

A feature patch focused on streamlining and improving the mystic toilet would go a long way to make spirit shards more appealing, and thus tomes.

Interesting note: I have absolutely no idea how many spirit shards I have. I haven’t cared about them for years. And I don’t think most people do, neither. It’s that currency where you are consistently obtaining it through the game but rarely have a use for it.

There’s definitely not much need to storage some of the mystic forge items, especially the costlier ones, but I’m fine with that. With the possible excetion of mystic forge stone: oh god, yes, that one needs storage space.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

• No sigils and runes. I believe there are WAY better solutions to this problem.

The community thinks too, but will that ever happen?

I give you: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stat_changing
You are welcome.
Also all you need for raids is exotic if you can pull your weight. Hardly a gear treadmill when you can get a full set of decent gear in aproximately 3 hours or less.

Stat swapping is a bandaid solution.

If I need berserker for X content and viper for Y content, how much would a daily or a weekly swap swap cost me, taking into account the price of upgrades too?

Obtena.7952:

No, that is not what people typically refer to as gear treadmill. So no, you are incorrect. People kicking you because of gear they think you should have is not the same as obtaining higher levels of gear to advance to the next level of raid or content.

If your DPS gear gets outdated by new gear that offers superior DPS, then you have a case of higher level gear being released over time. People will kick because you’re having mathematically inferior stats than you should have.

Obtena.7952:

Anet has successfully decoupled gear treadmill (the reason I don’t like other games) from the ability to be successful and rewarded. They have done that by recognizing that the pablum of gear treadmill linked to progression that other MMO’s give you is NOT the only way to provide players an engaging MMO experience.

That is also wrong.

GW2 has gear treadmill because of poor balance and design. When you grind to get a full set of berserker gear, and then get into raids or high level fractals and you find yourself get kicked because you don’t have condition gear, what is that? Is that not gear treadmill?

If, in a future expansion, your next elite spec happens to rely on tank stats, or heal stats, or boon duration stats, and becoems the only meta pick for your entire profession, what can you do to not get yourself kicked, outside of grinding for a new set of stats?

Thing is, this is going to be incredibly hard for Anet to balance right, because many stat combinations overlap to achieve the same purpose. So players will simply pick whichever stat set is mathematically the best one for that given role.

In order to avoid gear treadmill in GW2, stat sets must become stagnant so that players will never need to replace them for superior combinations in the future. Alternatively, Anet can also make stat swapping free and convenient, but the fact that Anet has been willing to sacrifice game design and reward satisfaction for the sake of their economy, and the fact that they decided stat swapping should have been a privilege behind legendary grind instead of a core game mechanic, show that GW2 will very likely continue to be a gear treadmill game.

That’s not exactly successful game design.

Obtena.7952:

If successful completion of the content and having fun with people you team with isn’t enough of an incentive to do the content, then you need to evaluate why you even play MMO’s in the first place, especially GW2.

GW2, yes. MMOs in general, no way.

The entire RPG genre’s gameplay is built around a reward-driven structure. RPGs are all about progression. Stats, items, collectibles, skills, levels, etc. This genre exists EXACTLY to attract the kind of players that enjoy a reward-driven structure.

It makes absolutely no sense for people to come and demand other to evaluate the RPG genre for not having the strong points of a RPG.

That’s like criticizing readers of horror novels that dislike a particular book because it had underwhelming horror elements in it. You can’t simply say “if you can’t enjoy a book simply because it’s fun, then you need to evaluate why you buy horror books”, which their reply will simply be “dude, I bought a horror book because I wanted a horror experience, and the book failed at that”. As simple as that.

The concept may seem alie too, but yes, rewards also contribute to how fun gameplay can be, and yes, there are players who enjoy reward-driven gameplay more, and yes, there are gaming genres that exist specifically for those kind of people: the RPG genre, which GW2 happens to be as well.

But even assuming the concept of a rewardless RPG that would be wonderfully fun, GW2 wouldn’t be it. We’re talking about a game with little to no difficulty in the open world. We’re talking about a game where most skills are useless, clumsy or balanced for pvp, which makes them feel underwhelming and unsatisfying to use in PvE. We’re talking about a game that still has repetitive grinds just as much as any other MMO, just with cosmetics instead of more powerful items. We’re talking about a game that forces you to go into jumping puzzles to complete map achievements, and then had a kitten bad game engine that puts invisible barriers and invisible ground everywhere you jump into.

I can go on, but GW2 isn’t exactly the champion of “fun” games. It has a lot of flaws in combat and exploration, and, for that reason, rewards are a wonderful tool the developers have (and need) to keep players interesting in the game.

GW2 had wonderful front-loaded sales, and then Anet went completely silent about their game’s popularity state after that, outside of developers admitting the game was bad at keeping players interesting and NCSoft expressing disappointment about HoT’s sales. Meanwhile, a game like FFXIV had a disastrous launch, it was rebuilt, and now it has surpassed GW2.

If GW2 was this “oh so wonderfully fun game, who needs rewards when this game is fun, fun, fun?”, it would likely have been at a better state. But it isn’t.

I’m not a big fan of the gear treadmill, but GW2 just plainly isn’t a very rewarding game.

Skins are end-game rewards, yet most of them are highly flawed and ugly. The few ones which aren’t are usually gem store skins, legendary skins (which require a massive grind), or extremely rare skins that you’ll only realistically get from the TP.

Skill Progression didn’t exist for around 2 years until elite specs were introduced.

Mounts and player housing, two of the biggest and most popular systems of cosmetic progression, do not even exist in this game.

Guild building system took several years to be created, and is a massive grind to small guilds to work towards. Meanwhile, all big guilds should have gotten all the ugprades by now, so joining a big guild won’t give you any sense of progression in that regard.

Stat infusions are a massive grind for little gain, and they’re not even friendly to gear with different stats or to players with alts.

The upgrade system (runes and sigils) is underwhelming, as we all know very well. Other smaller systems get old really fast, like luck/ magic find.

Some masteries are wonderfully rewarding, but most are way too niche.

And acquiring gear with different stats is a massive, massive grind. Yay horizontal progression!

GW2 could have been a very rewarding game even without gear treadmill. But it’s just not a very rewarding game.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We are including this thread in a report to the studio, so please do feel free to add any additional thoughts on Episode 5 here.

Thanks for your feedback!

The Mercenaries Heart takes a bit too long and is a bit too repetitive compared to the other three. The bar fills slower, the wurm event barely fill it, and there’s less things to do besides killing guys or destroying turrets (which players usually skip).

Is Anet planning to do a polish pass over all S3 maps? Because if so, I also have some suggestions for previous maps.

Takoyakii.2146:

How an “optional” jumping puzzle killing the game?

By not being optional.

1. Jumping Puzzles are full of invisible obstacles, which makes them annoying, not challenging.

2. Jumping Puzzles are side content for players who love platforming, not for players who love RPGs (note: one does not exclude the other). RPG players may find JPs fun, but they may not be interested in challenging JPs, which is perfectly fine.

3. JPs are being forced into meta content. RPG gameplay, like exploration, collections, achievements, etc, needs JPs to complete, and RPG fans who don’t enjoy hard JPs are not fine with that.

No one wanted the death of zerker gear. People wanted/ want stat diversity.

If players find condition gameplay boring or not is a completely different matter.

Events have advantages and disadvantages compared to personal quests (less personal gameplay, much better multiplayer gameplay and sense of living world). They shouldn’t be seen as a replacement.

Instead, we should be looking at hearts, which are mostly generic quests without a decent narrative presentation. Or, alternatively, we should be looking at collections, which are also quests in everything but name, but with terrible UI support (why is such a quest system hidden beneath the achievements tab?)

I think GW2’s quests could be a lot more interesting if:

• Collection quests were more visible (give them their own tab, and additional UI support for future adventure-driven collections).
• Hearts had more interesting and unique gameplay scenarios, like the stealth mission in Lake Doric.

Events, ever since they Anet started expanding them from season 2 and on, are actually one of the most polished open world systems in this game.

Anet spent so much time building up Lazarus and the White Mantle, only to throw them away at the climax and introduce, without build up, Balzathar and a new fallen god subplot.

I’m enjoying the story, but I agree it’s spotty. The white mantle plot should have had a satisfying resolution, and the Balthazar plot should have been its own Living Season.

But the story hasn’t ended yet, so we’ll see what Anert will do with episode 6. Hopefully, the final resolution will feel satisfying and not something completely random.

Harper.4173:

He said challenging group content. Challenging.
If dungeons and fractals are challenging to you…well that’s just you. The hardcore players need something MORE challenging. Heck for the top tier raiders even the raids themselves aren’t that much of a challenge.

I’m not saying that dungeons and fractals are challenging. I’m saying that they could have been the most challenging content in this game. Hell, fractals have the perfect mechanics for that with its tiered structure.

You do realize that one raider is equal to many casuals in terms of hours put in the game right?

“Casual” is an incredibly vague and generalist term that can apply to pretty much everyone that does not wants to dedicate on highly competitive game modes.

“Casuals” can be an audicence broad enough to include hardcore collectors, hardcore alt-char players, hardcore farmers, hardcore fashion-lovers, etc. I know of people that spend a massive amount of time creating alts and leveling them, or hunting achievement points, or spend their lives in silverwastes and similar maps. And many of those players are not even that good mechanically, but they’re no less invested in this game.

Participating in hard content is not the only condition necessary to make you invest many hours into it, and there’s plenty of “casuals” that are very dedicated.

I have a friend, for example, that almost exclusively soloed her guild’s level to 52, and she’s a “casual”. She’s proud of her work, and the huge amount of farming and dedication she needed to upgrade her guild almost by herself.

Fatalyz.7168:

Pretty sure that Anet isn’t attempt to compete with hard core raiding games. Rather I’m pretty sure that they aren’t competing with anyone, rather trying to do their own thing.

Raids were added to this game with the idea to fill one role: Challenging Group Content. Which is something that the base game sorely lacked. If you are someone who loves Guild Wars 2, and wanted more of a challenge, then raids are for you. If you aren’t that person, then raids weren’t for you.

It’s also pretty safe to say that Raids have been successful, in this game. At the very least, they have been very well received, by the people that they were intended for, and that’s all they needed to do.

We have dungeons and fractals for group content. Anet decided to abandon dungeons instead of adding new and more difficult ones, but there’s still fractals.

Fatalyz.7168:

It is far more likely that those players don’t fit Anet’s concept of the people that play this game or the type of player that they are trying to attract to this game.

Anet has a clear picture of the game that they are creating at this point, and sticking to it. Of course people are going to be left behind, maybe even people that considered themselves diehard fans. So the thing that ends up mattering, is the audience that Anet trying to reach satisfied? If the answer is yes or close enough (and only Anet will really have the answer to that, anything that we could provide would be anecdotal at best), then don’t expect many changes or if there are, they will be geared towards the audience that Anet wants. Even if it comes at the cost of current players.

I have a hard time believing that a game that wasn’t originally designed with raids in mind, that has scared away raiders for years, and that does not have good reward systems to support hardcore raiders, is suddenly going to find massive success through raids, to the point that hardcore raiders would rather leave MMOs entirely dedicated to that to get back to GW2, and to the point that it’s worth sacrificing the entire playerbase that has existed before raids were added.

But hey, I’m not Anet!

LSD.4673:

Not sure how people managed to be disappointed. GW2’s armour design as a whole is pretty awful.

That’s what I’ve been saying.

Anet’s never been that great at armor sets. By marketing and hyping legendary armors as much as they did, they only ended up exposing one of their biggest weaknesses.

It’s actually quite amusing to watch, in a sad way. I rarely see a company working so hard to structure an entire game’s reward system around something that they’re not very good at delivering. It’s sad to see that the very same game that is driven by cosmetics is also one of the games with the worst cosmetics in its genre.

But what truly annoys me as a fan is how Anet’s been dead silent on this, whilst repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Vagrant.7206:

What the heck is with ArenaNet’s armor design team? It’s like they have no conception of simplicity or elegance. Please bring back the Guild Wars 1 armor design team!

GW1 also had a LOT of terrible reskins with random, ugly details added in. That’s Anet’s armor design for you. They’ve already proven for years and years that they can rarely design a good armor set without overdesigning it with useless crap.

The thing that GW1 had for it, though, was that it was easier to create armor back then. This meant there was more diversity and that we would get more sets more frequently, so the chances of getting something that actually looks good were higher.

Even so, let me remind you that male elementalists had to wait until Factions to have a gray armor that did not look ridiculous, and they had to wait until Nightfall to get non-grey armor.

Ultimately, bad armor is merely a Guild Wars franchise tradition. To this day, I still ask myself how can a company with some of the greatest artists in the industry be so incredibly bad at designing armor sets.

Rednova.5283:

Statistically speaking, it is near impossible for ANET to create an armor style that caters to everybody.

They can, however, design many different styles with strong, distinct themes that appeal to different player tastes.

Instead, we’re getting trenchcoat nº233 and “Let’s add skulls and spikes everywhere” nº177. (Except they’re shiny now…)

Remember the bladed kitten armor and the I-smell-bad armors from HoT? The incoherent mess that was carapace armor and its obnoxious blue-tinted version? The clown set that we have gotten for ascended? Now we get Arah Shiny Edition and Spiky Overload sets for legendaries.

Outside of revenant’s set, how many years have passed since we’ve gotten a good armor set in Guild Wars 2?

Khisanth.2948:

Somethings look much better in concept art than in 3D art. I guess knowing what would translate well and what won’t is a skill on to itself.

Some of it might be engine limitations as well like the weird looking cloth animation on the various dresses, skirts and buttcapes.

There’s some wonderful GW2 armor concept art floating on the internet that look terrible in-game. Especially male scholar armor.

Harper.4173:

So they made the sets ugly to not upset anyone who can’t get them?

I remember some white knights using that kind of arguments for ascended armor.

“It’s not supposed to look good, you’re getting it for the stats!”
“If you want to look good, you can always transmute your gear!”
“They’re ugly, but if you don’t do fractals, you don’t even need them, anyways!”

Good-looking armor sets in Guild Wars 2 is a rarity.

I’m not sure if it is either Anet’s artists who can’t design armor (most of the sets are over-designed, with no coherent theme and filled with random spikes or blades), or if it is the graphic engine that is greatly restricting the artists.

Nonetheless, GW2 is out for, what, 4 years? That is more than enough time to set your expectations right. Ascended armor was thrashed by the community. HoT’s armors (except revenant’s) were thrashed by the community. The legendary armor is being thrashed by the community. And you know what? Future sets will get the same fate as well, for as long as Anet keeps repeating the same mistakes.

Astralporing.1957:

Healix.5819:

Astralporing.1957:

Contrary to some eager voices on the forums, we’re unlikely to get the expac before Q3 2018 anyway, so…

Season 3 would have to run for another cycle in that case. One of their goals was to reduce the downtime, not increase it.

Possibly. On the other hand Anet’s usual launch times are in Q3, and if the expac was going to be in 2017 we’d have heard something about it already. They may simply not be ready for 2017 launch, no matter how beneficial from marketing point of view it would be.

It’s possible that they are waiting for LS3 to end so they don’t spoil it with the new expansion’s content.

If LS3 truly is meant to be smaller than LS2, then that means we’ll get 7 episodes at most, with common belief being that it’ll end at 6 (because it’s a round number). We’re also getting episode 5 possibly in 1-2 weeks, and we know that one is going to be bigger than normal.

So, we can get the expansion’s reveal as soon as in 2 weeks, or possibly in 2-3 months. Perhaps a christmas release?

Good luck asking Anet to update their old systems.

They either leave features to rot after their first implementation, or take years to further reiterate on them. Not to mention that, most of the times, their overhauled systems come of worse than they initially were to being with (hello, first trait overhaul, New Player Experience and black lion chest overhaul) or take away as much as they give (hiya, last daily system overhaul, or evne the ambitious, grand, expansion-worthy system guild hall system).

Anet should also make LS2+HoT bundles, especially as HoT price falls over the time.

I agree that the marketing for living season is too obscure. New and returning players don’t know what they should buy to stay updated. Anet is willing to keep things simple when it comes to expansions (buy the lastest one and get all previous expansions), but they aren’t doing the same thing with LS, which is really confusing.

A lot of people have just moved on. This happens when they lose faith in the game or get really burned.

Currently, GW2’s content patches are actually of high quality. But it took years until we got to this point, and newcomers and returning players can’t even enjoy the new story without paying (which they might not do before regaining their lost faith back, and they won’t regain it neither, if they can’t enjoy the new content before doing so).

At the same time, it’s clear to most of the community today that a lot of GW2’s fundamental flaws are not going to be fixed without revamping way too many things, something Anet clearly has not enough budget for. Boring enemy AI, repetitive and monotonous world exploration, dominance of zerker gear, boring dungeons, etc. may be things of the past (new content is much better at this), but that past is 90% of the base game, and it’s what new players will still experience today.

On top of that, the game is entirely driven by the trading post, which has made the reward systems really poor and the loot tables unexciting. Anet’s attempts at improving rewards have made the game a better experience, but it’s far from what it could have been. GW2 is mediocre both at vertical and horizontal progression. Ascended gear was poorly implemented, stat swapping is for the rich players (which means that the zerker-dominated meta is also a bless for your average player), and most cosmetics are black lion weapons or non-customisable outfits. The wardrobe is restricting, there’s no build templates, the balance team does not have enough time to properly balance this game, and we very rarely get new armor sets. When we do, most of them are ugly and overly designed, but generally, the game only offers us a headpiece or a pair of gloves each story episode. And it has been like that for years.

As it is, GW2 is currently best enjoyed if you log in every few weeks for new content patches, because that’s where quality content comes from. The community has lost faith that Anet will ever improve the base game and make that wonderfully brilliant game that they wanted it to be after underdelivering so much in the past.

ArchonWing.9480:

The Charr one isn’t TOO bad except they for some reason hide the Wintersday Tree behind some corner.

I don’t think they like that holiday much. That actually either breaks or enhances my immersion.

The Wintersday tree being hidden by a random vehicle is one of the nicest touches about the charr home instance.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

We did at one point explore the possibility of account bound AR, but in the end decided on simplifying the agony system (back when we simplified infusions) rather than doing a huge system change.

A larger system change would have taken many resources away from actually building content, and would have caused other problems. Like.. what happens to agony infusions? All those infusions on the market suddenly either become worthless, or need some other reason to be consumed. Additionally, what would the effect be on ascended gear? Would you need ascended gear still? What happens to demand?

Ideally we would have designed the system as account bound in the first place, but that is not the reality we live in.

Unfortunately, at this point I do not see a switch to account bound AR any time in our future

The resource budget needed for an AR overhaul might not be worth it, I agree.

But what if Anet gathers a team to overhaul not only the AR system, but also the sigil/ rune systems? Many players have also expressed their problems and wishes with the more traditional means of upgrading (examples: demand for ascended runes/ sigils, the poor synergy between the rune system and the stat-swapping system for legendary armor, the useless minor and major ugrades that clutter the inventory whenever you mass salvage green items). So, unifying them all under a new, modern technology might be worthier of Anet’s resources, no?

In other words, kill 3 birds with 1 stone.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

The skills & balance team can make whatever changes to the PvE sigils they see fit without affecting PvP sigils.

Thanks for the reply. I asked this because it’s the first time we’ve gotten a massive split.

I know this is a pvp discussion, but I have a question for Anet. Are these changes going to hit PvE someday? Or, alternatively, considering the massive split between pvp and pve sigils that will come from this patch, will this open the opportunity for the skill & balance team to make PvE sigils stronger and more impactful without fear of pvp balance?

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

Fluffball.8307:

Does this mean sigils are going to do different things in different game modes? In WvW sigil of blood will be as is, and in PvP it will leech life on weapon swap or something?

We haven’t yet decided on whether we should create new sigils or revise the old ones in PvP only. All together new sigils brings some extra overhead. New icons, new names (editing, localization, etc.) But it makes things a lot more clear.

Is this update pvp only? Because if not, I’m sure other players would have wonderful sigil ideas at the general discussion board. Especially when the community is asking for an upgrade system overhaul for GW2, which might or might not be out of scope for this particular project.

Anet/ GW2 does not have a dedicated balance team. They have a skills team (the one in charge of elite specs) that also does some side balance work.

The reason why balance patches take too long and do not bring enough is because those devs are busy designing the next elite specs.

Those filthy time mage thieves!

Felahr.9830:

they have already stated that certain things are going to be depositable. its not hard to stop during a meta, between events, and sort your bags. if youre carrying along a bunch of kitten already, bank it. dont do a meta with 3 sets of RP armor kitten

It used to be worse before the salvage all feature was added.

Also, people have the right to bring the items and gear they want to bring. It’s the game that treats players as if they all had full free space and 2-3 bag slots bought from the gem store.