Guild Wars 2

So, to contrast and counterbalance the walls of vile suspicion up above. Here’s what I LIKED about the Feature Pack:

Indicator gestures to your heal skill when you reach low health

• An excellent minor nudge, the kind that should have been used for unlocking weapon skills, using utilities, teaching dodging, downed state, etc..

Collections, and their rewards.

• Truly a magnificent feature that compromises the need for thematic-rewards and generically available achievements
• It’s very similar to Dry Top’s reward system. If it were up to me, the people who worked on the collections, Dry Top, and the Aetherpath dungeon would be in charge of EVERYTHING gameplay-related.

The ‘concept’ of the compass

• If this were polished to not lead players to their doom and only appeared occasionally (randomly or manually, but with a cooldown), it’d be an excellent guidance tool for those genuinely lost without stealing away the game’s atmosphere of exploration.

Auto-unlocking level-gated weapon skills

• Weapon skill gating, as it is now, is a massive damper on the experience; however, what was also sometimes a damper is unlocking your 4 or 5 slot skills… They always took so long compared to the others. It drove me mad whenever I decided I wanted to remake my Elementalist as a different race.
• If skill-gating were less spread out and applied more sparingly, I wouldn’t mind those some skills being gated.
• Example: Skill 1/2/3 unlocked by default. Skill 4/5 unlock at 3 and 4 (but only if you already unlocked skill 2 and 3). Utilities, 5, 10, and 20 like before.

UI updates to Minis, Finishers, Trading Post, etc..

• Long awaited changes. It was what saved the slew of teasers, that most felt were underwhelming, from being a complete bust. Shame the patch felt like a complete U-turn.
• Now if only you would do the same for the Gem Store’s style section, so we can preview them however we’d like and purchase sets of skins in individual pieces. (You’d make more money for it.)

Gear / other useful item rewards upon leveling

• If this was the extent of leveling changes; none of the zone-differences, skill/content gating, and arbitrary attribute shuffling – I’d be stoked.
• You could have made these chests that fell out of the sky, instead of arbitrary fancy graphics, and play them up as “Supply Drops”. That’d be so cool.

Guild upgrades unification

• I was never affected by this, but nice to see the game be more cross-server- and alt- friendly with every patch.

Balance changes

• Always exciting to see these, both for professions and WvW mechanics.
• So many buffs (Guardian and Mesmer specifically come to mind) that rekindled build ideas in my heart

How easy this patch makes it for a loyal player to consider leaving.

• Dailies? Not worth it anymore.
• The ongoing farming/crafting projects? They can wait.
• Alts we wanted to leveled up? AH-HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

• Me and my friends have decided to retreat from GW2 for a weeks out of disgust. Maybe more! Depends on the mood of things around here by the time we’re sick of whatever else we’re find to fill the time.

This is the best part of GW2’s model! We can leave and come back any time after the initial purchase – But only when we are interested.

I cannot, in good conscious, recommend this game to myself anymore, let alone to my friends. Taking leave is the only way I can truly vote and it is what I shall do.

Post 3/3 – Bye!!

EDIT: Curses… This would have been the perfect opportunity to use my tunneling toy as an exiting gif, but my editing software is dead.

To quote my friend:

“I feel like we’ve been nexon’d”

And you know what? My lizard brain thinks my friend’s sarcastic dread might be onto something.

ArcheAge’s launch is literally next week. Maybe Trion is bitter about Rift tanking while GW2 is somewhat steady. Maybe they planted staff over in ArenaNet a year ago, staff with devilish charisma to push for questionable feature and slowly twist the perspectives of developers.

It was all a brilliant plan that sprouted from the sign of weakness – Allowing staff who were former Nexon join the company. Okay, now I’m really starting to sound crazy.

Well, whatever the case may be… This patch bombed, if the forums are to be considered at all representative of GW2’s most passionate.

For the first time since the start of Season One, I am unhappy with the direction the game is going – And I am one to fight tooth-and-nail for the developers when they try new things; I firmly advocate that every update between August 2013 to this August 2014 was pure gold. I ate up every bit of it. No regrets.

But today, there is evidently too much weight being placed upon play-testers discomfort compared to the game’s overarching goals or community feedback.

At least, that’s how I’ve interpreted things. My reasoning to why we’re here is far-fetched, my gut suggests I’m merely being swept up by everyone else’s negativity…

But the level-gating and removals to the starting zones… Objectively, knocks all my GW2 enthusiasm right out of me.

Post 2/3 – Sleep deprivation might be involved.

When I read the explanation for why Downed State was being moved to level5 on reddit, I was open-minded and found it understandable.

• Mainly because I personally view the Downed State as a flawed mechanic, but that’s a lengthy armchair-game-design post for another day.

I read that the Personal Story was being compressed into chapters unlocking at intervals.

• Alright… Given my recent venture into key-farming, that also seemed reasonable and I didn’t take issue as it was undesirable player behavior anyway.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when on patch day, I went into reddit and these forums to find that, for the starting zones, they had:

• Locked gathering nodes? Well, that was sort of expected from the potato debacle.
• Level-gated weapon / utilities even further Eww…?
• Removed bundles? Huh…?
• Level-gated skill points and vistas. WHAT?! -You can even hear the camel’s final yelp in agony-
• Shuffled or removed various parts of the Personal Story. YOU DID WHAT NOW?! -The camel’s body does not bend that way-

I’m not an expert at this. I know some stuff, but I can’t begin to fathom the mindset of someone who does this for a living, so maybe I’m missing granular nuances that makes this all fit together.

But here’s where I connected the dots.

China’s GW2 launches with restructured content
-> Dev states playtesters took issue with learning mechanics
-> We can deduce that such playtesting occurred before the China launch
-> They must have had a healthy number of of Chinese play-testers (That’s just smart game development, right?)
-> A quick glance at China’s MMO market suggests a lot of copying and scarce creativity
-> Playtesters with MMO preconceptions is to be expected, leaning towards traditional WoW-type games
-> Confusion and/or aversion to Guild Wars 2 mechanics is to be expected

Neither playtesting data or community feedback is not suppose to directly influence development. The developers should be matching the feedback with their design goals and figuring out a way to bridge gaps where needed and avoiding features that contradict the goals (despite player-pleas).

But, instead of developing tutorials and features that further encourage embracing the points that fulfill GW2’s marketed goals for the player experience…

…they went and developed away from the game’s points of uniqueness and catered directly to the preferences of the play-testers?

• A compass should be not available/visible 90% of the time, leading players by their noses, and discouraging exploration. (And that’s ignoring the atrocity of its clearly poor designed coding that’s leading players to inappropriate level zones)
• The Personal Story, as silly or poorly written as some portions may be, should have had parts shuffled or removed for the sake of theme… Continuity and consistency in story-telling always reigns supreme.
• A player should not be level-gated from picking potatoes or attempting a skill challenge!

There is a blatantly obvious divide/disconnect between certain choices in game design here and the game’s marketed goals and appeal. I would go as far as to say incompetence among some staff for choosing lazier responses in how they dealt with player feedback.

Post 1/3 – Facts, opinions, and resulting reckless accusation. Check, check, and check.

Cactus Brawler.7415:

You actually think they playtested this and didn’t just port the China coding over?

There’s legitimate posts on reddit from Arena Net staff about that.

Can we cut out the childish mockery and focus on the valid points that will get devs to take us seriously?

Anecdotal this may be, but it is one drop in a moderately filled bucket that clearly dumps onArenaNet the fact they most likely had too many playtesters who had preconceptions about how MMOs should work, leading them to cater far too much to traditional MMO fans.

Why do I get the feeling that half of their playtesters were probably in China where MMO originality simply does not exist?

Proposal Overview
Guild HQ marker

Goal of Proposal
In lieu of guild halls, allow the guild leader to designate a marker on the mini-map as the guild’s main hangout to nurture internal community.

Proposal Functionality
Guild leader will have a “Designate HQ” button in Guild UI that, upon being clicked, will prompt a confirm message and, when confirmed, place their guild emblem on the mini-map and world map, just like a personal waypoint marker.

Emblem will have a generic house or castle sketch as a backdrop to both symbolize a pseudo-home and differentiate itself from my previous Guild commander tag idea.

Cannot be placed inside instances (due to current party-related restrictions). Cannot be placed in WvW or PvP. Cooldown restricted to encourage serious designations.

Associated Risks

• Conflict with multi-level areas may confuse players – If adjusted for height, it should be fine.
• Hangouts in higher level areas can endanger members, may need level-restriction on visibility.

Proposal Overview
Guild Recruitment board

Goal of Proposal

• Allow new players to seek out guilds that suit their needs.
• Give veteran recruiters an easy method of attracting new members
• Relief map chat players who often view guild-recruitment statements as spam due to common size of text.

Proposal Functionality
Stationary notice boards appropriately placed in every city (and possibly large villages) similar to a banking NPC where recruiters may register their guild, type in a short message about their guilds appealing traits, and have their guild’s member total, content-focus, upgrade-tier-levels, etc..

• New players will be directed to these boards when they open their guild window or if they ask a guide NPC for directions and select “Guild Recruitment Board” as their desired destination.

• Creating or modifying one’s guild’s listing requires authorization, such rights are controlled by guild leader(s) similar to guild bank access.

Limit 1 listing per guild. Listings will display registrations made from anywhere in the game and across servers. Search functionality with category-refinement is a given.

Associated Risks

• Misuse of notice board; requires “report listing” function; may require occasional moderating and guild tier-level restriction.

Proposal Overview
Individual guild chat channels

Goal of Proposal
To remedy the social gap resulting from the multi-guild system letting players casually stand down.

• Allow players to interact with all guilds they have joined, representing or not.
• Somewhat relieve guilds from requiring guild-rep policies due to increased chat-activity and ability to more easily rally players for major events.

Proposal Functionality
In chat tab settings, rather than simply ‘Guild Chat", every relevant guild will have a check box. In actual chat, players in guild chat will have a mini-version of their guild’s emblem displayed before their name, allowing players to discern who is from where.

In choosing which guild to type to, players will have to target the desired channel by /g1, /g2, and so on, possibly with a prompt as to which guild is represented by what number.

Example: Guilds listed in players’ UI are "Guild of Guildies, Cocoa Pandas, and Starlight Crusaders

• /g1 displays “guild 1 – Guild of Guildies”
• /g3 displays “guild 3 – Starlight Crusaders”

Associated Risks

• Increase in channels may make chat navigation cumbersome. (The current limit to 5 guilds should minimize this)
• Members sharing multiple guilds may find conversations fragmented – Time required for community to adjust and learn to form a party or Represent the same guild to resolve issue.
• Spam – Can be regulated on player-side with tab-management.

Proposal Overview
Guild Commander Tag

Goal of Proposal
Allow leaders of successful PvE and WvW guilds to differentiate themselves on the map, allow members to quickly recognize and join allies in activities, and create a more visible sense of community within guilds.

Proposal Functionality
Unlocked from upper tiers of EITHER Art of War or Politics upgrades via Influence, Guild Commendations, AND Badges of Honor or Karma, respectively. Authorized members will have a mini Guild Emblem selectable as their commander tag.

Details:

• Only be visible to guild members.
• Cap on number of tags per members online and per zone to prevent abuse.

Associated Risks

• Inconsistency in visibility from other commander tags – Will require time for players to adjust.
• Improper balance of unlocking cost may undermine cost of default commander tags.

They are not right.

The problem we have here is a conflict between playtesting data and the goals of the game design.

GW2 was meant to be a little daunting, meant to encourage exploration, and meant to be rich with interactive content near every step (with gathering nodes, bundles, dynamic events, etc..)

The statements from devs showed their playtesters were daunted more than expected, and that can be a problem, but outright reducing content is NOT what an game designer, aware of GW2’s original intended goals, would do.

• Nothing about bundles is different to understand. You clicked F to interact with a bucket, and picked it up; what’s not to get?
• Gathering nodes were only ever frustrating if you did not have the right tools (due to being on a new character). Introducing earlier gathering tool rewards would have sufficed to negate the frustration players get from trying to gather without tools on new characters.
• Skill points and Vistas were never in the way, only challenges that encouraged exploration.

They are catering to people who never played MMOs or are used to WoW-type traditional MMO mechanics and working BACKWARDS from the beloved gem of the original leveling experience.

The initial instance only needed a few tooltips to nudge players in the right direction in regards to basic mechanics such as Personal Story, Dodging, and other basic mechanics that scared off some players:

Example:

• The arrow that appears and points to your heal skill when your life is low was a good addition to the game.

GW2 gave me the most engaging and freeing leveling experience I ever had. I’ve played MU Online, MapleStory, Mabinogi, World of Warcraft, Grand Fantasia, and Dragon Nest. None compared to the fun I had here.

I wholehearted agree with the first post in that the leveling experience now is pitiful.

I can understand Downed State being daunting, as it is a flawed mechanic and you need more time to fix it properly.
I can understand concentrating the personal story into chapters.
I can understand adding a guidance compass to fill in the resulting gaps.

What I cannot tolerate is the severe level-gating of weapon skills, utilities, skill points, vistas, gathering nodes, etc..
What I cannot accept is parts of the Personal Story being shuffled or removed.
What I detest is how the guidance compass is always present rather then optional or time-restricted, discouraging exploration.

Any “confusion” devs observed that could lead to such changes feel far too much like the conflict of having habits from other MMOs, and catering to these habits goes against the ideals of GW2 differentiating from traditional MMOs.

If you wanted to make mechanics easier to learn and leveling more exciting, do know that you have not succeeded. You have only made both sides weaker by gouging them to add to the other.

GW2 originally succeeded in making a game that encouraged exploration. This Feature Pack has undone that hard work.

Arena Net, you have decided to “remove” or “delay” in far too many places where “adding” would have been the superior game design decision.

I have also been getting the same error message (“Unfortunately an error has occurred. Please try again later!”) for the past number of days.

I have contacted support, receiving a response stating I triggered a “Risk Management security feature”? Request #: 856689

Hope this gets resolved before the sale ends.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

This is a great idea. I hope Anet finally addresses this long standing issue.

Thanks for your support!

tigirius.9014:

Good post but here’s the thing -snip-

How dejected you feel should not be a reason for others to cease their own voices.

Personally, I think they have listened to many player suggestions for other issues and improved greatly since launch, so there’s no reason to stop. You have sympathy for being on the disappointed end of the spectrum.

Vayne.8563:

OP, as a PvE only change, I really like this idea. I think it has a lot of merit.

Thanks!

Agent Noun.7350:

converting full stacks of a condition into a different condition (like Bleeding into Hemorrhaging, like someone suggested) would be a pretty elegant solution.

Before making this thread, I had considered higher-tier conditions (Hemorrhaging being super-obvious), but I decided against it because in the case of zergs, the stack cap would still be present. Betting against the hordes of GW2 players reaching 25 hemorrhaging seems unintelligent.

There’s also the matter that the core issue is conditions take up bandwidth. Higher tier conditions would still occupy bandwidth, so I went with instant damage to minimize it.

Maybe ArenaNet will deem these points negligible.

Agent Noun.7350:

In regards to PvE and WvW balance being the same: ArenaNet already has several items that work differently in PvE and WvW, or don’t work at all in WvW

This, is very true!

chemiclord.3978:

See, the problem is that I don’t think it CAN be fixed without a complete overhaul.

That line of thinking rarely flies in developer circles.

Iteration is a big part of design, not just in video games, but majority of industries. Your suggestion disregards the existing work and views it as fundamentally broken, but I would bet on Arena Net feeling it’s more than salvageable.

That’s why I make this suggestion. It takes into account common design principles.

Also – If the stack is cleared, the server load is drastically reduced. That’s not a band-aid solution, it can be game-changing. There’s nothing wrong with creating a new mechanic if it reduces the complications of the mechanics before it.

Xenon.4537:

My idea would be to remove conditions from all passive sources.
…
Essentially you remove passive conditions and make them only available if you specifically build for them. That way a zerker war won’t accidentally apply bleeds on crit when he has no intention to be a condi build.

That sounds nice, but if the devs didn’t want conditions being mixed with direct damage, I would think they would have done so from the beginning.

Plus, there are many condi-builds that can reach 25 bleed on their own, making this sort of change not solve the cap problem.

chemiclord.3978:

What I would propose:

1) Taking conditions off ALL “1” skills. Your auto attack should not apply a condition. That’s the biggest part of the problem why the condition caps hit so quickly.

2) Rework traits so that they no longer apply conditions on auto attack, and instead add condition effects to specific skills.

3) Increase the damage per tick while at the same time reducing the maximum number of stacks one player can have at any given time… say a maximum of 5 (this would also allow multiple players to have their own poison, burning, etc).

4) Conditions are no longer effected by increases in stats “in real time”. The damage per tick is calculated once (when it is applied), and does not change until a condition is applied again.

1, 2, 3 That would require a massive undertaking of rebalancing weapon skills – Including but not limited to adjusting how much condition removal people had.

4 – The problem with this is the UI display of damage currently works because it only needs to worry about current condition damage.

Design simplicity needs to be considered, because developers have a workflow to manage. You suggestions would require an overhaul of existing mechanics – An extraordinary amount of time would be required to develop, test, and implement them, at great risk of undermining existing balancing and/or being overshadowed by new ideas without much net gain.

I feel my idea is more feasible (in being tested and implemented quickly) since it only adds on top of what exists, and does not change the current inner workings of the game.

Thank you for the contribution though. Nice to see other ideas.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I hate to break it to you but if it comes down to keeping PvP in balance and making your CD Necro awesome in the World Boss Train, PvP balance is gonna take priority……PERIOD. It has NOTHING to do with what “people here” are “concerned” about.

I hate to break it to you this way but: You ARE being overly concerned with PvP balance. You’re straight up not comprehending my suggestion to that issue.

Let me rephrase it: Have Condi-Crits only apply to NPCs/PvE-entites

That would affect things like Tequatl, Shatterer, Castle Lords, etc., but how would that affect PvP interactions, even in WvW? Answer: It won’t. PERIOD.

storiessave.3807:

DreamOfACure.4382:

Bothering PvP is not the goal here, so let’s just move away from that by saying this will only apply to PvE such as dungeons, champions, world bosses, etc..

The reason people are voicing concerns about WvW is because ANet balances WvW and PvE together.

My suggestion does not need ANet to differentiate between WvW and PvE. It’s really disappointing to see people on these forums so fixated on the problem when I’ve already provided a completely acceptable solution.

Have Condi-Crits will only affect NPCs (Guards or Castle Lords in WvW for example or World Bosses like Tequatl).
p. /Bellows out to the Eternal Alchemy – IS THAT INCOMPREHENSIBLE?! Brain Cramp Intensifies

Excuse me. I need to go punch something inanimate before I say/do something counterproductive to promoting the suggestion.

EDIT: http://i.imgur.com/m8QgN.jpg – I have found a happy place.

Xenon.4537:

The way the game calculates condition damage is by using the highest value. If player A has 500 condition damage and player B has 3000, then the game will use player B’s value for all stacks regardless of who applied them.

I feel that this could be easily resolved with an averaging formula that takes into account the amount of players attacking the target.

That current method is probably the compromise they chose for stacking back in beta, so it naturally has to be adjusted to a lower value.

And at the risk of sounding like a broken record:

No, it isn’t ideal – But it’s better than the present situation.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Since the ONLY real issue in PvE for conditions is Champs / World Bosses in Zerg situations -snip-

Yes.

Basically, all the complaints in regards to balance is irrelevant. ArenaNet can make it unique to the especially high HP PvE bosses. If it’s too dramatic for other content, they can isolate it to where the dampening of condition damage is most severe.

Fyrebrand.4859:

what you have done here is essentially given a HUGE buff to the damage output of zergs.

That’s the desired effect, so that’s not a problem.

storiessave.3807:

I’m not sure if WvW and PvE balance can be separated, as they’re treated as part of the same thing, unlike sPvP

Would it be so difficult to simply distinguish the buff between players and NPCs?

Example:

Is the target a player?
If Yes -> Disable Critical Conditions

It is now very clear to me that people here are more concerned about PvP balance than the fact that condition-damage is severely underpowered in PvE group events.

Bothering PvP is not the goal here, so let’s just move away from that by saying this will only apply to PvE such as dungeons, champions, world bosses, etc..

Wanze.8410:

Well, you still havent mentioned wvw a single time in your op.

I… do not feel equipped to… interpret… how it is I am reading… what I am reading. So, I am… just going to copy-and-paste the section you missed:

2. If Arena Net can’t balance conditions in PvP sooner than implementing this idea, then they can just disable Condi-Crits when attacking other players. Easy as 1-2-3.

I am sorry that if this does not adequately clarify your issue.

EDIT: I THINK… the problem might be… you think WvW is somehow not a part of PvP? Last I checked… PvP included BOTH sPvP and WvW.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Player_versus_Player

Reverence.6915:

I can maintain over 20 stacks of bleed from my necro without even trying, even if it gets cleansed

Wanze.8410:

Of course they do. WvW isnt PvP, where 25 stacks are hard to come by.

I’ve edited my response. Now maybe you BOTH could read the full post and see that your concern is FULLY accounted for instead of making hasty judgements?

Additionally – Whether or not you find conditions strong in WvW is irrelevant. That’s a balance issue. Fixing the PvE issue has nothing to do with it. In fact – I’m going to add that to the OP after thoughts.

Reverence.6915:

Conditions are already too strong in WvW. No need to make it directly stronger by any means. How the damage is calculated does need to change though.

This suggestion is unlikely to make conditions stronger in WvW PvP interactions, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be difficult to disable in WvW and sPvP.

See: “After Thoughts” in the OP

Ropechef.6192:

for every 25 stacks of bleeding, a stack of “hemorrhaging” is applied.
…
duration 5 seconds

The respective stacks of different players must be respected, since they likely have different levels of condition damage on their gear. Otherwise, we have artificial damage increases, and everyone starts building to stack bleeds.

And if we had individual stacks, we’d just smash our heads into the cap-limit problem again.

So, ideally for both the intended purpose AND balance, an instant-damage condi-crit is best.

Arewn.2368:

No, I think he means the stack kind of “explodes”… clearing the way for new bleeds to be applied.

That sums it up nicely. No new stack complications. Quick and simple, like a cut to a human’s femoral artery – Arguably equal to 30 bleed stacks.

Arewn.2368:

Torment is going to have a problem, unless the damage calculation just assumes the average. And I think duration stacking conditions would need a different solution.

I would say letting Torment simply use non-moving values would be fine since:

1) World Bosses, unfortunately, don’t “move” anyway
2) I don’t see Torment hit 25 stacks very often. It’s scarce in current gameplay. So, from a practical perspective, Torment will lose nothing from only calculating as if the enemy were stationary.

Arewn.2368:

Regardless, I don’t think the stack “criting” works for duration conditions because you really WANT them to stay on long. Wouldn’t want someone applying a 2 second burn/poison and causing the rest of the stack to crit and disappear.

This is already addressed.

Each type of condition-critical may have to be slightly different to accommodate the different facets of the condition

• Poison, which also operates as an anti-heal, may only have its first 8 stacks “go critical” to maintain its consistency as an anti-heal. (Poison and Burning are capped at 9 stacks/sources).

Another idea would be to only have half stacks expunged by a condi-crit, so the duration-functionality is maintained.

MiloSales.8560:

Maybe use something like Ropechef’s suggestion for confusion?
Like, @ 25 stacks of Confusion they clear and put a single stack of Panic.

Like I said with the Hemmorrhaging idea, that would not respect the different condition damage values of the contributors of the condition. Since the Perplexity Rune nerf, it’s nigh-impossible to solo-stack 25 Confusion on anything anyway.

Ropechef.6192:

the only problem i see is of it is not done carefully, conditions will exceed over powered
…
it would cause some serious over powered condi bombs in PvP and WvW.

That’s a balance issue. This is a solution for technology limitation.

Apples and Oranges. Plus, if ArenaNet won’t balance conditions there, they can always disable Condi-crits against other players.

The longstanding issue that irks both developers and players alike is that conditions are capped because servers have to track every single individual stack which takes up bandwidth and makes tracking the gargantuan numbers that could result from events such as world-boss zergs take unmanageable tolls on the servers.

I’m not sure how the limit functions exactly, but whether it blocks new stacks or cancels out old ones, it is severely dampening the damage-output of conditions in PvE.

The technological obstacle is fairly impassable, so I had a thought: What about introducing a way to “use” and reset the stacks, so removing the cap was unnecessary?

Condition Criticals (or Condi-Crits for short):

When a patient’s condition worsens to a potentially fatal point, staff will sometimes (or alway? I’m not in med) their condition is going critical.

Have a damage event occur whenever a condition reaches its cap.

This damage event would remove the condition, and deal condition-damage equal to what those stacks would have dealt.

* Suppose in the same time-frame, I apply 14 bleed stacks, and my friend applies 11 bleed stacks-snip-

Condition damage, according to supposedly more experienced players, is based on the attacker with the highest condition damage.

I think this could be fixed by using an averaging formula that results in a more balanced value, but alas, this is a balance issue for ArenaNet.

A different style for each one – Each type of condition-critical may have to be slightly different to accommodate the different facets of the condition

• Poison, which also operates as an anti-heal, may only have its first 8 stacks “go critical” to maintain its consistency as an anti-heal. (Poison and Burning are capped at 9 stacks/sources).
• Confusion is a special case, where I think it alone could be allowed to have its stack cap raised. It’s damage rate is unpredictable, so a “critical” version isn’t possible. If the suggested solution is implemented, there may be enough freed bandwidth to support this.

Essentially, each Condi-crit functions to reduce the number of stacks by front-loading the damage to reduce server load.

No, this isn’t ideal – One appeal is the damage-over-time aesthetic. It’d be preferable if we could simply each have our stacks and watch the damage tick away like normal, but if that were possible, I wouldn’t be making this suggestion.

The bright side is that Condition Criticals would only affect high-health enemies; elites, champions, and world bosses. Gameplay against normal and even most Veteran-level enemies would be largely unaffected outside of people abusing special consumables and other niche cases.

Personally, I think there would be enjoyment in stacking 25 bleed and watching an enemy “pop” from damage comparable to Warrior’s Hundred Blades.

Brainstorming icons to illustrate Condi-Crits:

Bleed-Crit:

• Blood splatter?
• Blood drop stream?
• Beating heart graphic? (Resembling the actual organ)

Critical-4th-degree-BURN or… Burn-Crit:

• More intense looking flame icon
• Blue/Black/White flame icon?

Torment-Crit:

• Animated laughing torment icon?
• A stereotypical cross-popping veins? To show we’re kittening it off. :P

Poison-Crit:

• More defined skull-and-crossbones?

New After-thoughts:

Why is the damage instant?

Having a new condition stack applied would lead to the same problem. Cap-limit. And if the condition has a short enough duration to not be overwhelmed by a 100-man zerg at a world-boss, then we may as well make it instant and save the visual space

Won’t this be overpowered in PvP?

1. That’s a balance issue, and not the focus of this idea.
2. If Arena Net can’t balance conditions in PvP sooner than implementing this idea, then they can just disable Condi-Crits when attacking other players. Easy as 1-2-3.

Further thoughts on how this will work for duration-based conditions like Poison / Burning?

a) Only half stacks will go critical
b) Higher duration stacks take priority making short stacks go critical

Won’t this be overpowered in PvP?

…

Won’t this be overpowered in PvP?

…

Good Sir! Will this concept not be overwhelming in damage values in the valiant modes of Player Versus Player?!

… Sorry. I forgot, people like to skim. Reading’s for noobs and casuals.

If balancing is too unrealistic – Make Condi-Crits only affect PvE enemies. Simple.

• That includes the hostile NPCs in WvW
• Zergs, duels, and anything PvP-related is left alone

My “number one” would have to be Role Diversification.

While Housing and Alliances are nice, and can be tied into the development of new dynamic events or ways to introduce more player-traffic into quieter zones, the problem lies in the fact Housing-content would be dependent on player-driven content.

It’s like how some servers do very poorly at night in WvW. The action is great during the day, but completely flops at night. It’s not consistent – That sucks.

Sub-classes, such as letting a Thief delve deeper as an “Assassin” or “Caretaker”, -like the way Path of Exile allows you to unlock game-changing passives- offer consistently game-changing mechanics that are fun for 100% of players 100% of the time.

ADDITIONALLY:

I feel that Housing / Guild Hall focused content should be designed with Role diversification in mind.

Role Diversification should be top-priority so that future content can utilize existing deeper roles as a foundation for developing richer experiences.

Example: Being able to hide your escort NPC with Thief/Mesmer stealth to avoid an ambush.
Example: Engineers whom have unlocked hammers can repair siege weapons in 2s instead of 10s.

Outside of the slimmest of chances, Mounts will never happen.

The game was designed without mounts in mind.
They would a) add load on servers, b) hurt the experience as the maps are made to be traveled on foot, c) be an unhelpful addition due to WayPoints.

This has been discussed many times. The answer from the Devs is “No”. :P

EDIT:

Capes are also a no, because the Devs find Charr tails are a pain to design around.
There’s no clear answer to whether or not this will change in the future.

Physically and culturally, Kodan cannot be customized very well.
(Fur is always white, markings are tied to lore/culture)

They would be unpopular if ArenaNet were to stand by their creation’s solidified principles.

The ones most likely to be playable are the Tengu and Largos, as we know the least about them while they still maintain an equal footing to the other sentient races.

Both also have homes which are viable starting areas.
Tengu’s Dominion of Winds for a later patch and the Largos’ “Houses” somewhere in the sea, likely for the Leviathan patch.

“Zerker only” listings are made by players seeking to perform speed-runs (and elitists who are too emotionally invested in “performance”).

It has nothing to do with armor-value.

What “Zerker” really means is Power/Crit-focused Warrior. Warriors have access to both a high base health and heavy armor, which means they have the highest base-defense of any profession.
That means their risk with pure-damage builds is minimized.

Couple 4 zerkers with a Mesmer sporting “Time Warp”, and you have the highest potential damage output of any 5-man group. Damage is all people really need to focus on in the easier dungeons like CoF P1/2.
That is why “Zerker only” is a common listing LFG phrase.

Berserker stats are further encouraged due to the technical limits of the game, forcing ArenaNet to cap conditions at 25 stacks.
Hopefully, they will fix that to some degree, and we’ll see condition-builds become more popular too; but “Zerker” will probably still be more reliable.

The restriction is there to prevent players, such as you who are joining without discerning how open the party is, from wasting other players’ time.

Every single account-hacking, legendary-selling, gold-farming company CEO is drooling at your idea.

Yes, let’s just make it so every hacking business can just steal our Legendary items for a pittance of what we put in for them.

Appling “in addition” would be nonsensical. That’s just a pointless buff.

If you mean have it apply at all, it already does this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Breathing_apparatus

Excluding Helmet, have slots in the Hero Equipment window beside each respective body armor slot (Shoulder, Chest, Hand, Leg, Foot).

In these slots, upgrades may be placed that lies dormant until you go underwater – Suppressing the normal slot upgrade in your equipment.
If nothing is in the Underwater slot, the normal slot remains active.

Once underwater, play-styles change – We swap weapons and utilities (we’re forced to)… Why aren’t we at least given the option to swap Upgrades as well?

There’s a lot about GW2’s Underwater combat that needs work. Weapon variety… Utility-options… The sluggish feel of combat…
Having some semblance of game design knowledge, I figured the Upgrade-slots would be the easiest to tackle first.
- Most people don’t even bother to purchase a Rune for their Breather item
- Virtually no one would bother creating a second set of gear for underwater combat
- The Superior Krait Rune is currently worth less than 1 silver… Cmon… That’s just sad

I think making customization with underwater runes easier would help people enjoy it more deeply – At least until more fundamental change can be hashed out.
It’s the change with the least unpredictable implications, both for gameplay and programming.

Thought-in-progress:
Allow upgrades to be extracted from the Underwater slots without cost?

Instead of having the slot linked to each individual equipment, have them be character-specific AND non-binding. This way, the thought of wasting a rune in Water-slots is left behind, and people may more freely experiment on underwater ideas.

Skill points aren’t suppose to reset.

The main function is the Quartz recharging or whatever.

Remember how you get skill points by leveling (even after hitting 80) and from scrolls which drop regularly off Champions and World Bosses?

That means 25 SP isn’t a big deal…

But… the Spores…

They are the Spores that shall pollute the heavens!

All day?

At 4~5 Spores per Offshoot, you should achieve 20 within an hour, casually even.

Because if those clumps of nodes had a 100% output rate, people would stop doing Offshoot events and collect Spores far more quickly than intended?

Try stopping and thinking about something besides your own gains and you might see the reason why next time. Balance, player-motivation, etc.. So many factors besides how easy you want the content to be.

ITT:

We learn that friends can be overprotective / jealous as much as any romantic partner.
And that if they are in a lesbian relationship, there’s nothing odd about it.

If we’re lucky, that thing behind her in the picture eats her.

I love a good cartoony catch-me-if-you-can villian as much as the next guy, but she’s been around far too long for an MMO villian. Something needs to happen to conclude her story.

Rhialto.8423:

Victory.2879:

Yes, it wasn’t tedious enough before killing brainless mobs that spam conditions, now you get to run over and finish them whilst the other 5 spam aoe conditions at the spot you are now standing on…

Don’t forget knockbacks, knockdowns, etc.

This means they can afford to reduce the HP of these mobs and tune them in more ways, whereas before, their main answer to making PvE more challenging is:

GIVE THEM MORE HEALTH

Hope that helps you see this topic from a new perspective.

1. Yes, it is somewhat of a move to sell more Finishers.

But I don’t see a problem with this. You have a default finisher, you don’t need to buy Finishers. Store-bought finishers are purely cosmetic, making it 100% acceptable unless you’re a picky prick.

Tyrannus Blade.3408:

I don’t see what’s so good about it. So far I’ve found it more annoying than anything else when you sit there smacking away the large downed health pools of a group of sylvari or plopping a banner on them one by one.

2. This is only because currently, most people are at Kessex Hills and the zergs render the downed-state fairly moot, just like in WvW.

But in other zones where the people handling Offshoots are smaller, the experience is different, which is why I am enjoying it. If a Toxic assassin in downed while you have a vet/elite/champ targetting you, it can severely affect the way the game feels.

3. It’s an extra layer to the combat, and which makes it fun (even if only marginally so)
Those of you who dislike it are saying you prefer we stick to the same DPS-zerg style of play that we’ve been doing for over a year now – Please think about how boring that sounds.

Quickly, people.

Before it gets Hot-fixed!

Personally, I don’t see why PvE creatures didn’t have downed-states to begin with.

They made a huge deal about it, yet their PvE wasn’t build around it. Why not?!
If (sentient?) creatures had downed states, their basic AI could have been made more interesting – Like more frequent auto-attacks (letting us make use of confuse/retaliation), or shorter aggro + longer leashing, etc..

OP, like with many previous content releases, if you don’t like it, DON’T PARTICIPCATE.

People who don’t care about large-scale raids steer clear of Tequatl. People who dislike Dungeons don’t be trekking into the Aetherblades path. Etcetera, etcetera…

I, for one, am glad they are introducing Downed-states and “Finishing” to PvE.

Rhialto.8423:

Victory.2879:

Yes, it wasn’t tedious enough before killing brainless mobs that spam conditions, now you get to run over and finish them whilst the other 5 spam aoe conditions at the spot you are now standing on…

Don’t forget knockbacks, knockdowns, etc.

This means they can afford to reduce the HP of these mobs and tune them in more ways, whereas before, their main answer to making PvE more challenging is:

GIVE THEM MORE HEALTH

Hope that helps you see this topic from a new perspective.

Jeff.4680:

Larkir.6502:

Jeff.4680:

…until I found out that it’s been confirmed that it’s Scarlet again.

No it hasn’t. :O

I just saw on other threads that people discovered that it is Scarlet through datamining. I’m not certain, it’s just what I heard. /dissapointed

It’s possible ANet left random files in the client as bait for data-miners, a red-herring of sorts.

Developers are smart like that, they can actually use data-mining against the community.

I remember a few years ago, Nexon had files in their game that suggested certain upcoming RNG-ish cash-shop items would produce in-game items that would lead to great profit/benefit; week of the event, people quickly realize the item wasn’t dropping the items as foretold by the data-mining and that they had been duped into invest loads of their money into a useless cash-shop item.
That’s the extreme side of the spectrum of course – Nothing quite that obvious ever occurred again.

Most data-mine bait is used to mislead players or tease players.

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Gulesave.5073:

My thought is that toxin will be contained to the new tower, like agony is tied to fractals. Enemies and environmental fields there will surely have it, thus the connection, but the I would wager the condition will be tied to the content and not (initially) spread beyond it.

This condition is not even in the same category as agony you cant remove or deal with agony directly like conditions

Where does it say Toxin can be dealt with the same way normal conditions can be?

They are introducing a new heal-skill that removes it, which probably means it can’t be cleansed normally – Just like Agony.

My bet is the Tower of Nightmares is a group Jumping Puzzle that requires players to coordinate well-timed uses of the new “Antitoxin Spray” in order to reach the peak.

It will probably be around the same level as racial skills – making it mediocre but with the poison/torment/confusion removal, still adequate for PvE and WvW if you’re expecting those conditions.

She’s poorly written.

And I must agree with those who (more or less) said the Short Stories shouldn’t be taken as canon.

Guild Wars 2 is a game, NOT a multimedia installation.

Any content ArenaNet wants us to experience, should be found somewhere within the game. The website is for news, discussion, client-support, and merchandise.

We should never have to come here to experience actual content.

At minimal, they should have edited NPCs around Tyria (and a few Personal Story instances) to mention her. If they couldn’t be bothered to do that, it means she truly is no better than Kudu or Gaheron.

To me, she’s merely the excuse ArenaNet needed to drop their good ideas into the game with any level of context.
- Got amazing molten-models to show off, but no context? Scarlet
- Want to orchestrate a political assassination, but no context? Scarlet
- Have great dungeon design/mechanics to use, but no context? Scarlet

They need to retroactively etch her into the original chunks of the game if they really want her to shine as a character. I sincerely doubt that will happen… I expect them to layer *2~3 more releases about Scarlet, then her plot-presence will drop like a brick, and she becomes Tyria’s “Carmen Sandiego”:

• Her purpose of existence is to give ArenaNet an “in” on how to introduce good content and mechanics into the game without seeming random.

Hilariously enjoyable? Of course
Enriching for the game? Absolutely
Well-written? Nuh-uh

Arena Net’s shortcoming has always been their story-telling.
Their lore, top-notch. Their game-design, excellent. Their aesthetic style, pleasing to say the least. But their story-telling… Ref: Trahearne.

Jett.1239:

I meant more so do they have any substantive data that RNG earns more money than just listing the item at a fixed price?

Substantive data?

The data is MapleStory.
Nexon’s cash-cow of America, which has cosmetic clothes that expire in 3 months, a cash-currency-operated random-item-generator, and an item-shop run entirely on their cash-currency.
(And in case you didn’t know, a former-Nexon-marketing-staff is working at ArenaNet; I’m surprised Dyes haven’t weren’t restricted to gems-only)

I remember this one event where friends bought over $200 for an equivalent of the Black Lion Chest, to try to get this limited-edition pet modeled after a cute boss (mind you, pets in Maple are way more engaging than Minis in GW2).
People were coughing up money like they had lung cancer.

MapleStory practically pioneered Free2Play and how it could be a viable MMO business model.

When anyone argues that RNG is bad, they’re basically saying MapleStory was a fluke (which it wasn’t), and all MMO marketing staff laugh at such thoughts.
RNG is only “bad” for players, it’s a license to print money for the developers (assuming the game itself is popular).

I have never even encountered DR in regular zones. Only dungeons.

How exactly were you guys playing?

TexZero.7910:

There’s 0 good reasons to have DR in this game to begin with-snip-

Actually, the point is to make playing in an area more realistic.
If you play in an area for X amount of time, then the rewards SHOULD reduce because the area’s resources deplete.

Disagree all you want as a player, but it’s a good DESIGN reason.
Design trumps Player-whims every time (especially since the Designers are the ones in control).

Fix that and you’ll fix open world PvE and Potentially WvW as well.

Removing DR would only cause people to flock to specific areas with the easiest/highest reward:effort ratio. (Orr-frenzy all over again)
It would not improve PvE, just cause it to drop further

• popular zones will be constantly full
• other zones would become more desolate than they are already.

ArenaNet has already started progressing in “fixing” PvE

Example 1:
Twilight Arbor’s new path has chests that require Aether Keys. The pieces that make those keys will only be available from 2 specific zones now.
Those Aether Key pieces creates a niche reason for players to go to that zone – And equally so, get players in the zone to visit the TA dungeon area.

Love the changes so far. The improvements to support are superb.

Has there been any progress in allowing conditions stack over 25?
Particularly on champions and World Bosses, where the cap is hit quite easily by a zerg of players. This is so important for condition builds which are falling short due to the limit.

Letting players crit against world bosses would be nice too.
If you gave World bosses a temp-buff that reduced crit-damage (similar to Tequatl’s scales), I’m sure it would work out fine.

Will we see more additions of Torment?
Preferably to Mesmers and Thieves, cause I would love to incorporate more Torment into my builds.

Hoping Ele’s focus’ Fire and Water skills will be improved.
Air and Earth are amazing, but Fire and Water feel very lackluster.

—

Other things I’d like to see include:

Hammer-weapon option for Engineers.

• Let Engineers go full-melee! I think that would be so fun. A Hammer + Wrench-Kit build sounds amazingly fun for PvE or PvP.

-

A little AoE damage OR taunt (new cond?) for Mesmers?

• On every other profession (except Ranger cause I don’t play Ranger due to the pet), I have no problem dealing with multiple mobs as I have effective AoE. But on Mesmers, there’s an immediately noticed difficulty dealing with multiple mobs.
• If reasonable (and it’s not an intentional balance thing), the obvious answer is to let Mesmers have more AoE.
• But in my opinion, a more interesting thing to do is give them a way to grant their clones the aggro, making PvE easier (as most mobs ignore clones in favor of the user).
• Maybe a Grandmaster trait that made Clones “taunt” every time you stealthed, would be amazing. Just more options for multi-mob fights is all I’m asking

-

Lastly, please take another swing at improving the lesser-used Elites

• Mortar pales in comparison to Crate, and there are other Elites on other professions which could really use improving.
• The only profession with Elites that are all genuinely good is Mesmer (although the AoE stealth seems a bit outclassed by Moa Morph and Time Warp).

Sounds like your own fault for not paying attention.

I’ve accidentally sold an exotic to a vendor once. Felt terrible. XD
Didn’t go blaming the game though, my own fault for spam-selling my junk with reckless abandon.