Guild Wars 2

Herald and Revenant in general have few condi cleanses and stunbreaks (with the exception of Demon Stance of course). However this seems to follow a theme of how each Legend is specific to a different playstyle i.e. Shiro is outright physical damage, Ventari is active heals, Glint is group support, etc. You are right though that as of now, Mallyx is almost a must have if you want to be able to deal with condis and even then it is a risk when using his skills. Herald is probably just going to be the boon sharer which is always useful no matter what. Some condi cleanses could be tied into the utilities though….maybe the elite being like necro lich 5 where Glints wings would remove boons from enemies and condis from allies.

true but if i remember correctly, vulnerability lasted for only 2 seconds and Rev has few, if any, stun breaks. switching legends and getting locked out of that legend for 10 (?) seconds just to cleanse one condi that lasted 2 seconds is pretty unbeneficial. Also, by the time you stunbreak and cleanse, the 2 seconds are almost up and you would have wasted that stunbreak/cleanse. I don’t know. It just feels like shield isn’t fluid and very situational especially with the high risk and low reward. I do agree with you about movement lock depending on how condis work though.

Overall I really liked the Glint specialization because of how the energy bar is used concerning the utility skills. I was looking forward to seeing the shield skills when it was announced because I had hoped that shield would finally find a use in all three game modes. I like the look and feel of sword and board and have sought to use those weapons in all the MMOs that I have played. Sadly the Warrior and Guardian don’t exactly give that good feeling when it came to the board. Half the time the shield hangs loose by my character’s side, not actually functioning as how a shield should.
With the introduction of Revenant and the energy bar, I was ecstatic because I thought that the shield could finally be used through the energy upkeep mechanic. After seeing the livestream, I’m going to be honest and say that I was pretty disappointed.
I was hoping it would be somewhere along the lines of:
Crystal Hibernation
no cooldown
25 Energy Cost
Energy decreases by 10 every second
Energy decreases by 1 every time you block an attack while the skill is active. The amount of energy depleted per attack scales up according to how much damage that attack does. The larger the damage, the more energy is depleted per attack
Heal for a fixed amount per second
Block all physical and projectile attacks in a 225 degree angle in front of your character, gaining a Break Bar. Susceptible to attacks from behind. Susceptible to damage from ground-targetted attacks. Susceptible to crowd-control effects. Can move while casting. Cast skill again to cancel skill early. 3 Crowd Control skills to break the Break Bar. If enemies break you, you are stunned for 2 seconds and gain 25 stacks of Vulnerability for those two seconds.

In this way, I would think that there would be a more active role in using the shield. However, players cannot abuse its use by constantly having it up. This also makes it so that players have to watch their energy bar and Break Bar in order to avoid the negatives of using the skill for too long and at the wrong time. This means there has to be a lot of timing involved when using the skill. Leaving the shield up for too long will deplete a large amount of energy, leaving the Revenant unable to perform any other skill. Raising the shield at the wrong time in the middle of a lot of CC will mean that the Revenant will be stunned and suffer a large opening in defenses. This provides a risk vs reward situation while allowing players to have that “uh oh” button that is powerful, but doesn’t make players entirely invulnerable. In this way, a shield can still be useful and act more like a shield while not being entirely overpowered. I just thought this up on the spot so I’m sure there are those who would find some balance issues wrong with this (if this idea really sucks please spare my feelings ) In general, I just want to see a use for the shield and for it to feel more like a shield instead of what the Warrior and Guardian has.

Does anyone else feel that shield should be a bit more active in terms of using it more frequently in play?

Edit: I forgot to add in the heal. It would probably be a lot less than the original heal considering the stuff I added

Rieselle.5079:

snip

I guess this means that WvW will always be an unhappy balance between all of these opposing desires, and thus it will always be somwhat flawed?

Just from reading some posts on the WvW section, I can see what you’re getting at. Though I find what you say to be somewhat true, nothing can really be done about it. I’m sure there have been attempts to tackle these problems but no solution can make EVERYONE happy. WvW isn’t quite flawed. It just has a bit of everything that complicates the game mode. It is open to interpretation and the amount of ways to play WvW just doesn’t allow for “true balance” (if there really is such a thing).

@coglin You’re derailing the conversation. I understand where you’re coming from when you say that the OP shouldn’t use “we” as his/her views may not represent the whole community. Nonetheless, I doubt that the OP intentionally wanted to use “we” in that way. If so, then you have my apologies. (I still highly doubt it.) Please stay on topic and at least contribute to the OP’s discussion.

Johje Holan.4607:

An anti-finisher. Been suggested before but I’ll add it here.

This would be awesome. It wouldn’t have any actual efffect on gameplay – its just a visual effect.

An anti-finisher of a jack in the box, or a butt farting at you, or a great big middle finger would be sweet to throw up at someone when you get stomped.

And even I would buy that in the Gem Store!

I’d buy that for all the times that I got surprise-runned-over by a zerg while roaming, just for laughs haha.

Altie.4571:

To OP:
I believe your opinion is biased and wrong and here’s why:

First off, NCsoft does not make the decisions about GW2. It’s solely in the hands of ANET. So your continuous use of their publishers name as basis for your argument completely invalidates your post.

However, I do think there is some merit in the argument. The more a department (in this case WvW) generates in revenue, the better the chance that particular department will have a team of developers devoted to it. Right now, it seems that the indications are the WvW team consists of 2-3 people who are not solely focused on it. If there is a larger playerbase participating in WvW and providing the company (ANET) with revenue, then they would look into increasing the support for that game type.

In any case it’s a chicken before the egg conundrum. Would the players sacrifice more for better support later? Would ANET sacrifice more resources now for more players later? I don’t think either would do so at this point in time. It’s starting to look like we should wait for an expansion before we see meaningful changes to the WvW system.

However income from the games they publish is held by them (NCSoft). Where that revenue is allotted would possibly be determined by them as well, would it not? The basis of my argument and what my whole post is trying to get at is that WvW is largely ignored because it generates almost no revenue. Or at least none that blatantly indicates that WvW players are the ones spending.

Because there is no way that makes a clear line stating WvW players are buying gems for the sake of playing WvW, it could be seen that the gems are being bought by people who wish to use them in PvE or in any other game mode that isn’t WvW. If I failed to make it clear earlier, you have my humble apologies but I will say this again, the point of this topic/post is to ask the community what items would they be interested in buying from the gem store that is obviously meant to be used in WvW but would not break the “balance” that is established in game (basically not pay-to-win).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Elithion.3761:

I’ve seen in a lot of topics recently that state that the reason WvW is largely ignored is due to the fact that it generates almost no revenue for NCSoft

Not sure why this idea has spread. Players that are primarily WvW still buy skins, new hairstyles, and spend gems to get Legendaries. WvW players have, in addition, finishers to buy (at the very least, these used to sell very well).

In fact, my guess is that they spend more real money on gems than the average PvE player since WvW doesn’t net you nearly as much gold per hour as PvE so WvW players can’t convert as much gold to gems.

In fact, I think one can argue that WvW can make _more_money (relative to number of players) than PvE because it demands less dev attention. After two years of no new content, there are still people in WvW — would that be true of PvE? (Of course, there’s a limit to how far one can go in terms of giving zero support — WvW is currently in massive decline).

I am willing to bet that what you say about WvW players buying more gems than PvE players is 100% correct but the fact is that it may not be so obvious. I doubt the company can see where those finishers are being used. They could think that the skins are used in PvE by RPers or by people wanting to just look cool and matching in the open world. And by looking at how they really want sPvP to become the next new cool e-sport, it seems that they would think finishers are used more by sPvPers. All those items are very generalized and they only see the amount of money that they make as people buy them (yes you could say the same for WvW too which is why “exclusive” WvW items can be done to differentiate where the playerbase’s interests are in). Items in the gem store that are obviously meant only for WvW may change that.

Ropechef.6192:

random thoughts….

Personally I think that it would be very, VERY tricky to add items in the gem store that would be exclusive to WvW that would not be pay to win. However thinking on it a little… perhaps not…

I think having a “Keep” or “tower” skin would cause alot of issues technically. HOWEVER….

Siege skins… now we have something. 4 to 800 gems or so. for a Permenant skin that when you drop an arrow cart, It looks like a confetti cannon. will all the poof and stuff. (( think Quip )) Arrows themselves are the same. but send them all with a little oompa.

Catapults… water balloon launcher??

Flame ram… an actual Flaming Ram you tell to head butt the door?

Treb…. a Big giant that stand there and throws rocks and cows?

you get the idea.

Skinning keeps would be tough, But skinning Siege might be a far better way to go about it.

Personally i would also tend to agree that there needs to be some WvW EXCLUSIVE skins via either a metric crap ton of Badges. or Specific rank or.. whatever. Make them hard to get. so that when you see some one with it you know they have put in their time.

If you want to make money, personally i think the siege skins are the way to go. If you want to be more invested and have others be more invested. Give something that you can ONLY get in WvW.

I would think both are able to be done without much difficulty. Looking at how skins and other cosmetic changes are consistently placed into the gem store shows that both are very plausible. However one thing that does cause worry is that player vs player environments tend to contain people who care more about how useful an item is in how it can improve their ability in a fight rather than cosmetics. In that sense, after a while, maybe more “useful” items may need to be added in gem stores but it still cannot present a pay-to-sin situation. That in itself may seem to be the reason why it is so hard to create items for WvW for the gem store. But whether difficult or not, it should be done as others have posted above, WvW and sPvP is more or less the end game of GW2, being the last consistent game mode available by far while still able to provide a new experience each time. After discussing this a few minutes ago with guild mates and friends, a main reason why many would stick to the game is the player vs player aspect. I wish ANet and NCSoft would see that. Your ideas though makes me laugh just thinking about it because it would be very entertaining to see an actual flaming ram replacing the normal flame rams. It would stem some interesting jokes to say the least.

Prosecutor.1457:

Anet gives 2 kittens about WvW. WvW is about to be done. After 2 years of the same crap, might be time to move on to something better and fresh. Until we see solid commitment from Anet, WvW will be the same. Chances are, I will not buy their next product.

They don’t care because NCSoft doesn’t care. NCSoft doesn’t care because they don’t get money from it. What this topic addresses is how they can gain revenue from the game type so that the game mode can finally get some TLC that it so desperately needs.

Sanrio.1453:

Elithion.3761:

Sanrio.1453:

It isn’t easy to come up with an idea that isn’t game changing or game breaking, with all rewards tied to the game and everything in the store is strictly cosmetic what are peoples motivation? The only thing I see that would be the biggest influence or incentive is a lion key strictly for the biggest in game chest in WvW and the key is only available in the store and the chest only in WvW and the rewards would have to be insane for people to want to open it!

I agree with this as well. But the rewards from the chests may have to be weapons or back pieces because, as someone posted earlier, due to lag and a drop in fps, a lot of people lower their character model settings and the only things that aren’t affected by those settings are the back pieces and weapons.

Other things could be for levelling alts to specific levels, rare mini’s, incredible weapon skins… To keep in line with the store it would be like a Gigantor of a lions chest, and let’s face it people love Easter egg stuff :-D

In general, random but cool rewards for being dedicated to WvW would be interesting. Because of how unrestrictive WvW is in terms of appearances, it is a huge gold pot that can be easily tapped into :P I for one would buy the keys if it meant that it would give me access to exclusive WvW things.

Zaxares.5419:

Hmm… How about WvW Scoreboards? Since WvW is primarily a competitive environment, how about a weekly scoreboard that keeps track of whoever on a particular server has gotten:

1. Most Enemy Invader kills

2. Most Objectives Defended

3. Most Yaks killed/escorted

etc. etc. These scores are only visible to people on their own server. Every day, you could log on and see if you’re still the top Yakslapper on TC, for example, or whether your great rival “Beefy McYakslapper” has overtaken you during the night.

It would also be a way for individual players to gain fame and renown for doing things that match their playstyle. If you’re constantly in the Top 10 Camp Capturer and Yakslapper scoreboard, for example, you might gain a reputation as a good havoc player.

That would be good and provide another level in which players can get more invested into WvW, but what are the rewards? and how does that provide a service that is able to be bought from the gem store?

Sanrio.1453:

It isn’t easy to come up with an idea that isn’t game changing or game breaking, with all rewards tied to the game and everything in the store is strictly cosmetic what are peoples motivation? The only thing I see that would be the biggest influence or incentive is a lion key strictly for the biggest in game chest in WvW and the key is only available in the store and the chest only in WvW and the rewards would have to be insane for people to want to open it!

I agree with this as well. But the rewards from the chests may have to be weapons or back pieces because, as someone posted earlier, due to lag and a drop in fps, a lot of people lower their character model settings and the only things that aren’t affected by those settings are the back pieces and weapons.

Sanrio.1453:

Hmm solution tie in to gem store… Map packs, for Pugs/guilds, both different for the style of play where the smaller guilds/pugs get type A and larger well established guilds get Type B, and later add type X Hardcore… Just a suggestion though :-P

Map packs would be cool but I feel would be hard to implement to WvW. It sounds more like a PvP change but with GvG. If ANet wants to get into the e-sports scene, this would undoubtedly be a better idea that what they are trying to do with sPvP right now. I find GvG to be a better watch for e-sports considering it would require more strategizing and more focus on team movement, placement, maneuvers, and also the individual.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

I agree, wvw has become rather stale with the same matchups and the same places to build siege every week. Edge of the mists is a great fun addition but its getting a bit full of politics and people screaming about match fixing which is kind of impossible but a map full of people screaming is an annoyance. WvW needs some new maps on rotation but as stated – anet gets nothing from it. I feel that WvW is the real endgame though, its where you just sort of get drawn to and it is a hell of a lot of fun. It needs refreshing and a tie in to the gem store would be great but i’m stumped as to what to add – maybe keeps get a different look if owned by your guild? different wall textures etc.

Appearance changes sounds viable and refreshing but I’m just wondering, would it be just the skin of the structure being changed or would the layout too?

I’ve seen in a lot of topics recently that state that the reason WvW is largely ignored is due to the fact that it generates almost no revenue for NCSoft; so why would they invest time to satisfy the player base that enjoys that game mode? It is true that NCSoft is in it for the money as for every normal company, especially game publisher companies. So that reason alone may be exactly why WvW is being ignored, it truly produces absolutely no obvious and direct revenue for NCSoft. Yes I specifically blame NCSoft as they are the publishing company that dictates everything ANet does.

NCSoft has always shown that if they don’t generate any revenue from a game or more specifically, a game type, they’ll neglect it. WvW is more or less one of the major reasons why my friends and I decided to buy this game and it is a major reason why I still play this game and I believe this to be very true for many others. WvW is also a major reason for guilds to be formed.

(Sure there is PvE but there is only so much for a guild to do in PvE that provides them with a nonstop activity. And yes, I know some of you will also say that guilds are for camaraderie and that is awesome, great for you…you get to talk with friends for a while, then what? Most likely you will log off because the game is quite boring and standing in one place typing the whole time can be done at a social networking website. A game is meant to be played and the forming of guilds is for people to play together. If guilds have nothing to do together as a large group, its purpose is near nonexistent.)

Back on topic (above paragraph is a counterargument for those who like to put in useless arguments), but sadly in order for WvW to be given any attention by NCSoft so that they could allow ANet to begin production for WvW improvements, WvW must have something that players would really want to buy from the gem store that is completely exclusive to WvW. So now I ask the WvW community, what items could possibly be sold in the gem store that would be exclusive to WvW’s purpose and that players would want to buy but also isn’t pay-to-win?

TL;DR: Read the last sentence on the above paragraph…

Edit: In no way do I want NCSoft to gain money that they don’t deserve but for the sake of WvW getting some attention, I feel that this should be discussed.

The problem is that once a majority of the playerbase sees EoTM as a place to farm champ bags and get quick exp, it is hard to get them out of that mindset. Sure you can attempt to derail the Ktrains and defend but that would then force the Ktrain enemy players to leave instead of fight back because their mindset is focused on the made-up fact that EoTM is a ktrain. When they leave, your side’s personal Ktrain is now capping all other points. Once they attain all those points and no enemy is flipping them (because they left) your ktrain is now sitting in the water also not gaining anything and now you cannot farm bags either. (Yes you could farm bags in other overflows but what happens when people eventually catch on and just give up getting into EoTM? Say “bye” to those bags and while you’re at it, say “bye” to the players who could have potentially gotten into WvW once hitting 80 and turning into potentially useful allies/challenging and fun opponents.)

Currently with how EBG and WvWBLs are, if you aren’t a full level 80 with at least exotic gear, weapons, and ascended accessories, you are useless and just a rally bot. So how do players get to level 80? Can’t farm the Queens train anymore because ANet proved they were better at derailing trains. Doing PvE events and personal story is slow and gives horrible EXP. The next best thing to get to level 80 and actually participate in WvW and fill in the slots of players who left WvW is to run the EoTM Ktrain.

You could say that leveling should be done the right way through PvE events and Personal Story. But in today’s world, people only want instant gratification with the least amount of work. You could say “that isn’t my problem” and truly it isn’t. But when that happens and the EoTM gets nerfed to the ground or no one runs in there to get quick levels anymore, people with “Instant Gratification” in mind will only leave the game, lessening your player experience and your chance to “farm bags” as you say. The game’s slow bleed of players would only quicken. You could find another game as that is the most logical thing to do, but then again, what other game actually offers a decent blend of all game modes? ESO? Wildstar? Good luck.

ANet may have made EoTM to be a WvW map but the community turned it into something else. I fully agree that EoTM would be a really fun map if played as it should be and I am one of those people who enjoyed farming bags from enemy Ktrains but I noticed after wiping their Ktrain once or twice, they avoid the tower/keep that I am defending altogether. And this is because of their mindset that EoTM is a Ktrain/EXPtrain. With Queensdale gone, players who want to level quickly have no place left to go to level quickly. So sadly EoTM will remain the way most players make it to be until we players, that play it how it was meant to be, end up pushing players out of the game completely. It’s best to defend once or twice to get your good ol bags then just join the Ktrain for a while before doing it again. May I recommend farming enemy Ktrain bags once or twice every hour? Works for me everytime!