Guild Wars 2

Interesting. I would not have expected that. I’ve always thought the game could be played by the people playing the game. It’s good that some people were okay with it, though.

To the OP: You handled some negative comments very wisely. Good job!

About reporting: There’s a standing rule, “Be Civil”, which applies both to the forums and the game. When someone breaks that rule, report them. It doesn’t matter if ANet ‘does something’ about them, that’s not the point. Reporting them is the proper thing to do because they did something improper—they don’t own the game or the events. Hopefully they were just having a bad day or something and won’t do that next time (even more hopefully there won’t be a next time).

The original box does say, “No Subscription Fee: Get the game and play. It’s that simple!” (Yes I still have my original box from when I bought it.)

Though there is no subscription fee even now, there is a charge for HoT and every subsequent expansion that comes out. (Assuming there are further expansions.)

So…does that mean ANet went back on its word? Or should we look at it as ANet “saving the game” by making more money off it rather than shutting down from lack of income?

To be honest, I don’t keep up with ANet’s finances. So I don’t know if the game was making money or losing money or what before they decided to do paid expansions. All I know is that I bought a game that was supposed to be buy once, play forever. Except now someone else can get what I got for free, and if they pay once, they get more content than I do.

I don’t think that was the best decision, but without knowing more about the specific reasons prompting it, I’d rather not express too strong an opinion. I’ve got the game I paid for, I’ll be satisfied with that for now.

I’ve never liked ground targeting all that much, though I don’t really hate it or anything. Mainly, my reason is that I map movement to the right side of my keyboard (number pad) and skills to the left (letters). A lot of ground-targeting doesn’t really fit my playstyle, which is, I admit, likely not the “best way to play”.

I do know about the option of “snapping” ground reticles to current target. I mapped that to my keyboard like everything else. It doesn’t completely remove the need to reach for my mouse every now and then, but it helps.

One change I would really like is a self-cast option, i.e., the option of casting your heal or attack centered on yourself. It could be useful for staff elementalist’s water heals at times, but still wouldn’t eliminate totally the need to use the mouse to place them.

Rauderi.8706:

EvilTwin.4125:

One-hit kills should be banned from the game. It’s frustrating to an unnecessary degree.

Sure Great Big Bad Guys should be challenging, but if you die in one hit….

…it ruins the point of a defensive build. If characters’ fates are the same regardless of ‘zerker or soldier gear, then just go ’zerker. That’s how it’s been the past 3 years, and it chokes build diversity.

Nice finish. Very nice.

One-hit kills should be banned from the game. It’s frustrating to an unnecessary degree.

Sure Great Big Bad Guys should be challenging, but if you die in one hit….

I play one of each original profession except Necro (because no matter what I tell myself, I still don’t want stinky dead things following me around).

My 1st character was a female Human Elementalist. During points when I was frustrated, I remade her as a mesmer, then remade her again as an elementalist. My 1st thief was a human female; now that character name & appearance are my mesmer. Another female human character is my thief now. I have male humans, an Engineer and a Guardian. Human racial skills are so-so compared to profession skills. I don’t use them.

I have 1 Norn Warrior, but I don’t see any point in having a Norn because they are basically enlarged humans, and their racial skills seem to be next to useless; I may abandon that character and make a human warrior. (Boring, right?) My Norn was originally a Guardian, though I’ve also tried a Ranger version, which seems intuitive because of their association with animals.

I tried an Asura Engineer, which seems like ‘two great tastes that taste great together’, and I may retry that at some point; the Asura racials have their uses, at least in PVE, though profession skills are almost always superior. My current Asura is a Ranger because I wanted to see if that combination was interesting. Unfortunately, I’ve already noticed that I want mechanical animals…it’s an Asura, after all. I’m still interested, of course, in running a golem and pet at the same time when I get high enough level.

The Charr are not my favorite race. Their racial skills are solid enough, but my distaste for overly militaristic societies (real life) hampers my efforts to play one, along with my annoying insistence on recognizing things like “Charr would never be able to actually speak because their mouths aren’t shaped right”. These are silly limitations because the race isn’t real, and it’s just a video game. Nevertheless, I currently have no Charr characters. I believe I’ve only tried one, an Engineer.

The Sylvari racial skills have their uses, though again, profession skills end up outshining them. My 1st lvl 80 was a Sylvari thief. I lost that thief because I got frustrated with the game and erased all my characters. (Good Lord, me, overreact much?!!) When I came back to give it another try, my name was taken by another player. I have tried Ranger (start with a ready-made dog/plant partner!), Warrior, and Engineer (temporary extra turret!). I currently have no Sylvari characters.

I probably would have more combinations if I had more than 7 character slots.

Doam.8305:

The game lacked flying and mounts which was completely fine and it was fine because when GW2 launched it offered up something different and rather unique.

That being underwater combat and many people were initially sold on this game for that one aspect alone. However instead of balancing it they removed the water from PvP Lobby and the the entire map, instead of adding new underwater weapons including BL ticket weaps they stopped working on them all together.

Legendary weapons may have stopped now but the legendary underwater weapons were canned way earlier than the rest. We have a so called expansion with only a few underwater caves that lack combat for the most part.

We got an extra weapon for a paid expansion but I don’t think anyone truly expects to get the third missing water weapon for their class.

Anet has had from launch until now to polish one if it’s main and unique draws to pull people into this game and instead they have disowned it as well as many other things all in the name of esports.

So yes I like underwater and yes it was a part of my decision process to get this very game. However I just can’t see Anet spending time on it Bubbles the magical water dragon or not. It’s a major en-devour and so little has been done to expand other easier aspects of this game.

I, too, thought the underwater stuff was interesting. Then they redid things so you couldn’t even go underwater for combat until you’d gained several levels. I’ve never understood that (or why allowing you to open your weapons the old way was changed). I was used to starting underwater combat at low level. Gone are the days, I guess. But to be fair, it doesn’t take an extreme amount of time/levels to get UW combat now, I just still prefer the old way.

Press Escape key. Select “Options”. Then “Control Options” (the mouse icon on the left side of the Options menu). “Swim Down” is in the first panel “Movement”. (I believe it is blank by default.)

That reeks. I think you put this in a good place, hopefully anyone who needs to will see it.

MithranArkanere.8957:

For now, I want mainly 4 things to improve underwater combat.

1. ALL healing, utility, elite and profession skills should work underwater. If the skill is ground-targeted, it’ll simply lock on target when underwater instead. If it summons a creature or a turret or anything like that, the creature will either still work underwater, or have an underwater counterpart, and transform into its counterpart when entering or leaving water. Traps would create nets like those nets krait use. The nets would be visible to the enemy, but visible to allies as if they had Stealth.
2. Swim down needs to be bound to a key by default.
3. Breathers should stop being gear. They should be mere skins. While underwater, the helm stats would still be used, but the appearance of the breather would be used. The recipes from fractals would be replaced by recipes for new Breather skins made out of existing skins. For example, the Soldier recipes would produce items that unlock Sorrow’s Embrace armor helmet skins as breather skins instead ascended Soldier breathers. Other recipes for breathers like those bough with karma, and other breathers found as rewards as drops, bought with karma or during festivals would also be replaced by skins, using as many already existing skins as possible that could look like breathers, like the Gas Mask skin.
4. The traits selected underwater may need to be saved separately and switch when entering and leaving water, unless all weapons and skills are also allowed underwater, or all weapon traits affect also an underwater weapon.

#1: Yes. Yes. Yes!!
#2: You actually can go thru the options and map a key to make your character swim down. You go down w/o changing direction. I would list it, but it’s nearly midnight and the game wants to update. If I can think about it, I’ll come back and list where it is tomorrow or something.
#3: I’ve never really liked having to use a separate helm and mask either.
#4: That might also be a good idea.

Glad you posted this.

I like the idea of underwater combat, but definitely agree it needs some polishing. Whether it ever will be depends on the devs’ priorities; UW combat works as intended, so it isn’t “broken”, I guess, but I would like to have more options. And frankly, too many skills are land-only.

As for the suggestion of a limited air supply—hmm…I don’t think that’ll ever happen as it would place another limit and require a fix to something that isn’t “broken”. Would make things “challenging” but would also make people dislike UW combat even more.

Kodama.6453:

Very unlikely to happen. Mostly because weapon pool of professions are so much different.

Warrior has 10 different weapons available (profession with the most weapons), engineer just has 4. This would mean MUCH more traits are choosable for warriors than for engineers. And this means more versatile, so in strong advantage.

I know you already mentioned that engineer and elementalist would need some fixing in that regards… but still, they are not the only ones. Revenant has 6 weapons.
Since there is such a huge gap in number of weapons, I don’t want a system like this in game.

DEFINITELY won’t happen, but it’s fun to think about.

Stuff like this has occurred to me as well. ArenaNet took stats off when the traits became specializations (except for a few bonuses in the spec lines, like the added damage in Elementalist—>Fire, which is fine). If they separated the weapons from the specs, they would probably do a weapon line but not the ability line; separating things so you have to get reflect separately from the two focus abilities might be seen as taking a step backward since you could do it with one selection before.

Could be cool, but you might have to wait for Guild Wars 3. Definitely something I want to think more about though.

rebellion.2473:

Hello.
As i noticed,some use forums as a tool for negative speech,unconstructive “feedback”,and worst of all,political and ideological beliefs

Please try not to post such stuff,it hurts us as community and Anet devs.
I really want to see us as community evolve into more jolly and happy group,not a bitter group.
Like myself,there are probably a lot of people who want to help Anet in watching over boards and making sure we dont have bad repbas a community.
Thank you for your attention and i hope you wont turn this topic in another murder fest.

It’s awful when you make a comment on something then have five or six people jump all over you as though you initiated a personal attack on them. It’s happened to me, when I first started using the forums, and unfortunately I reacted rather badly (much to my shame). I even misinterpreted something someone said and started quite a growling match, though that person and I later apologized to each other.

As for the “political and ideological beliefs”, fortunately and unfortunately, people do that in real life. It comes up in conversation, and the forums ARE conversation. Though that doesn’t always necessitate it; some people just aren’t that good at gauging whether it’s appropriate at the time or not. Best thing to do is roll your eyes, forgive them and move on to something else.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only game I’ve had a mob “scraped off” on me. I definitely understand why you don’t like this—I don’t like it either.

However, I’m not so sure it would be fixable. Or if it is, if it would be worth the time and effort to do so. I’m not sure what else to say about it.

Interesting. My idea about this is that some weapons could be available to all classes. Pistol? Hmmm. But dagger, definitely. (Note: I’m not saying “no” to pistol, for the record.) I mean really, who couldn’t use a dagger? [Even underwater!]

And the warrior should be able to use any physical weapon, anyway, including pistols. Though I understand ANet set these limits to add “flavor” to the game.

graymouser.4698:

Torolan.5816:

If I had access to teleporters, I would probably only know what a horse is if I saw one in a book. Sturdy animals like an ox find a use in agriculture, and some horses of course too, so that use is still there, but this also screams “Job for a golem!” for me. And why take an unconvenient ride if you can just teleport, or feed a horse if the friendly Golem can do the job? The technic affirmity surely is someday a running buzzsaw falling into the lap of man, but it is how it is.^^

Riding a horse for the sake of reaching a place does simply not make sense for me in Tyria, sry.

Well such lore based arguments as this one have convinced me enough now to accept that Tyria is a successful, believable world WITHOUT mounts.

If they indeed discovered magic and magical driven mechanics and because of this taming and riding ride-able mounts became unpopular, then that’s a reasonably valid explanation for me.

Still it’s a bit strange then that they still rely on swords and such and not 100% on magic driven rifles, canons and rockets etc. And that they did not develop individual transport by magical means. But yeah maybe the government wants to control all distance travel, so they just prohibited individual controlled transport. They probably register every movement in and out a portal

If someone has an idea why primitive weaponry is still being used in Tyria, please add this to the discussion!

Cheers!

Gray

Well, the rifles and bows never run out of ammunition. Maybe they aren’t so primitive after all….

JustTrogdor.7892:

Yeah I almost regret having HoT now because of the HoT daily that replaced some of the core game ones. I hate the HoT maps and don’t care to ever go there even though as another person pointed out apparently HoT is more fun after the patch. I just have not had the opportunity to play and find out.

It would be nice if HoT daily was a separate category and didn’t replace some of the core daily. That way people that enjoy the HoT maps have their daily and those that do not like HoT maps but own HoT do not feel like they are being funneled into HoT maps.

More options are always better. In a perfect world the daily would allow players that enjoy their prefered game mode be it PvE core, PvE HoT, PvP, and WvW can do so without feeling like they are being pushed into an area they do not care for. Or they can mix and match if they enjoy a bit of each. I know Anet wants people to try various game modes but let the player decide to do so on their own.

For example there have been times when I did a PvP daily. Not because I like PvP but because the PvE options I enjoy were limited that day. I join a daily “let win” arena get my credit, quick one and done and I don’t go back. It certainly doesn’t encourage me to play real competitive PvP. I think most competitive PvP players are happy for that. They don’t want me on their team.

tl;dr More daily options are better for everyone in all game modes. That way players can do the daily they enjoy instead of feeling like it is a chore. And yes I know there is no requirement to do daily.

It seems odd that these things weren’t taken into account to begin with. Some of them sound like standard MMORPG options. Maybe ANet is going a tad too far trying to make GW2 a non-standard MMORPG.

At any rate, I don’t PVP, I don’t WvW, and I rarely even team (which rules out dungeons; I really ought to try teaming more often, I guess—but with the recent complaints about dungeons….). Soooooooo…I guess I’m missing stuff and don’t even know about it. Hmm.

One note: My computer isn’t great; I can’t even join in open-world boss battles because my framerate drops to 1 frame every 4 seconds. By the time I move a little bit, I’m down, then I’m defeated, waypoint, return, repeat. It’s one of the reasons I don’t try some things—my comp probably can’t handle a lot of it (probably PvP, not sure about WvW).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm. I never use the ‘right-click to sell’ feature; I always open the Trading Post window to sell. Maybe that’s the difference. /shrug

No, unfortunately. I use the trading post window, and I get this all the time.

It’s true, this is more of an annoyance than anything else. It would be nice if it would go away, but it sounds like it would be complicated. And think, too, of what would happen if the fix turned out to be a break…. Guess I’ll just have to endure it. I have for this long, and it hasn’t buried me yet.

“How to Train Your Elder Dragon”—Hiccup would be appalled.

EvilTwin.4125:

Well this was another entertaining thread. My 2 cents:

Even as an adult male, I really don’t like certain female outfits. Some are overly revealing (like saying to all mobs, “stab here”); others look like kittentail attire that has no business in the jungle or even the town. A lot of outfits have “trenchcoat syndrome”, and look funny when they sprawl out on the ground while you’re trying to revive someone.

It’s nice that some outfits are “sexy”, but the characters aren’t real, so that kinda kills it for me; they aren’t especially well drawn anyway, in my opinion.

Frankly, I’d just like to put a reasonably covering outfit on my chars (male or female) and keep the same look without it changing every time I buy the next level of armor. I don’t really care for all that constant changing, though I recognize some people prefer it; maybe ANet should add an option to do one or the other.

And on a personal note, I used to play Golden Axe in the the arcades. I beat the game 6 or 8 times before I noticed Ax Battler and Tyris Flare weren’t wearing any armor. Dopey me. [Note: I’m not saying I didn’t see their duds before this, just that I didn’t think too much about it—they’re just video game characters, after all. My point being, I guess, that I personally don’t require abject realism, but I do prefer a certain level of realism…after I had the thought, “Tyris Flare went to a sword fight in a bikini…they didn’t even have bikinis in those days”, it bugged me every time I played GA until the arcades shut down. ":\ ]

“Kittentail”? Really? Just because that word for an alcoholic beverage starts with four letter that rhyme with “dock”? We must really be in a situation if that has to be edited. On the bright side, now I know why everyone talks about kittens so much.

Well this was another entertaining thread. My 2 cents:

Even as an adult male, I really don’t like certain female outfits. Some are overly revealing (like saying to all mobs, “stab here”); others look like kittentail attire that has no business in the jungle or even the town. A lot of outfits have “trenchcoat syndrome”, and look funny when they sprawl out on the ground while you’re trying to revive someone.

It’s nice that some outfits are “sexy”, but the characters aren’t real, so that kinda kills it for me; they aren’t especially well drawn anyway, in my opinion.

Frankly, I’d just like to put a reasonably covering outfit on my chars (male or female) and keep the same look without it changing every time I buy the next level of armor. I don’t really care for all that constant changing, though I recognize some people prefer it; maybe ANet should add an option to do one or the other.

And on a personal note, I used to play Golden Axe in the the arcades. I beat the game 6 or 8 times before I noticed Ax Battler and Tyris Flare weren’t wearing any armor. Dopey me. [Note: I’m not saying I didn’t see their duds before this, just that I didn’t think too much about it—they’re just video game characters, after all. My point being, I guess, that I personally don’t require abject realism, but I do prefer a certain level of realism…after I had the thought, “Tyris Flare went to a sword fight in a bikini…they didn’t even have bikinis in those days”, it bugged me every time I played GA until the arcades shut down. ":\ ]

Aidan Savage.2078:

EvilTwin.4125:

The only thing I can say about this is that I get it a lot. I have several bags, but bags fill up really fast sometimes. Then I get this message again. <sigh>

I have max bags on my character primarily used for events like SW and AB, and I NEVER have this issue. Not even when I open all the champ bags afterwards.

Are we talking about the same thing? I’m talking about selling items on the trading post. I don’t have max-sized bags but when I try to empty my bags, a message comes up (something like “you’ve put too many items up for sale”). If we are talking about the same thing, and you never get this message, then I wish it wouldn’t happen to me, either. Though it is annoying, I just stop selling for several seconds, then start again. In some instances, it happens a second time after I’ve sold 2-3 items.

The only thing I can say about this is that I get it a lot. I have several bags, but bags fill up really fast sometimes. Then I get this message again. <sigh>

Hahaha! This thread was fun to read. If I had to pick a biggest lie (though it’s more of a self-deception), I would pick the Windmill King’s desire to fight a dragon. Little dude can’t even handle being ‘betwitched’ by an ‘evil magpie’, so what in the world would he do with a dragon??

Some mobs can inflict 3 conditions on 1 hit. Others inflict 3-5 stack of torment or confusion every 2-3 seconds. And they can do this long before you have enough skills, specializations, or runes and sigils to do anything about it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but PVE mobs loading conditions on characters who have little or no way to keep removing them seems a little off to me….

And why exactly does burning work on an elementalist? Don’t elementalists generate fire from their hands? (Staff 1, guys!) Well, I guess it would be too much of an advantage if it didn’t.

Oh frogs, not only did I ramble like a professor in a rambling class, I forgot something. The glyph of healing has a 1.25 second cast time. In fact, lots of heals in the game have cast times of 1 second or longer. This is okay for, say, the Mesmer heal Mirror because it reflects projectiles during the cast, but the healing signet has no such effect. You can lose half your health in 1.25 seconds in the wrong circumstance…and there are a lot of them. And if you lose half you health when you’re already at 1/4…well you know what happens then. If anything about this game is outdated, heal skills that are too easily interrupted because of excruciating cast times are. If the cast times were shortened, the heals could actually save you, but there would still be the possibility that you get stunned or knocked down before you can get to your button.

Now this is an interesting discussion. I personally would say that all the current classes have their place and are not outdated per se, but the cooldown lengths mentioned (as well as cast times & other issues) do seem to indicate some fixes would be in order.

Take the elementalist for instance; I don’t want to say it’s “outdated” but it does have certain issues. From what I can see (my own exp, YouTube videos from people who’ve played a lot more than I have), the elementalist has only 3 or 4 truly viable builds, the most commonly mentioned being double dagger/triple cantrip (with some variations having 2 cantrips & something else) using healing signet.

And why is that? Elementalists have other heals & utilities. Aside from a few specialized builds (burn build, for example, which I’ve never heard of being used in pvp but probably is at times), it’s full berserker equipment (or marauder now, I think the other one is called) + the stuff mentioned above.

The short reason is that the above build covers an elementalist’s weaknesses. I tried for a long time with glyph of healing & glyph of elemental power because they can cause regen (and thus remove a condition) just like the cantrips, assuming if they are specialized to do so. The problem is glyphs only do that in water attunement while cantrips can be used in any attunement, making them more versatile. Add to that the movement and stability from cantrips, and voila, why would you use a glyph build?

It’s a shame, a glyph build can have permanent swiftness & boons all over the place, but if you’ve just switched out of water, no regen & no clears from using glyphs. The cantrips are just easier to use.

So maybe something should be done to make the other options (glyphs and signets especially) more competitive with cantrips. [Note: I am aware a mix of cantrips and a signet or glyph can be used. I’m not looking for Guild Wars 3 yet.] It’s not that the other options are bad, it’s just they seem to get outdone. (If you could teleport around with frostbow….)

My ultimate point (if I have one) is that there’s a lot of options which don’t seem to be used so much, though of course I could be wrong, I don’t know everything. But being pushed into the same build as everyone else (more or less) doesn’t seem very dynamic. I’d like to use an all-glyph build and be just as survivable as a healing signet/triple cantrip build. Or maybe I just indulge in wishful thinking too much…

Okay wait a minute. Someone said that elementalists are the the strongest class. Really? Is that just in PvP (which I don’t do) or everything? I’m wondering about this because I have a Lvl 80 Ele, and I get clobbered in PvE regularly. It may be that I will have to use some of the ideas I’ve seen on YouTube rather than my own, which I’ve somewhat resisted doing up to now, or I may just not be that good at ele. What do you guys think: Is ele the strongest class?

Vayne.8563:

EvilTwin.4125:

Vayne.8563:

EvilTwin.4125:

Wow, such venom has been directed at me. I don’t like something you do, so you get mad at me and talk to me like I’m an unruly 6-year-old and you’re my parent. Well, I am not a child, and you’re not my parent. I can see right now posting things on the forums and expecting intelligent disagreement is expecting too much. Instead, every spoiled brat has something infantile to say.

Look, I don’t like how ArenaNet handled this, and I never will. Grow up and accept that.

To those of you who replied to this (pro or con) and did so with decency and respect: THANK YOU. I never expected everyone to agree with my statement. But wow I didn’t know I was going to get cyberbullied.

Oh, well. I guess I won’t be on the forums again. It was a mistake to express an honest opinion here, apparently.

Look, whether you like the way Anet handled this or not, doesn’t make your response to what Anet did a reasonable one.

Almost every game goes down in price over the years. People who played SWToR and Wildstar and ESO for example, paid a sub for a long time before the game went free to play. All those people spent over $100 over the price of the game, to play a game that everyone else was now going to get for free. Worst still many games offer “optional” subs that aren’t really optional anyway, while claiming to be free to play.

Both WoW and EQ don’t actually make you buy every expansion. It’s bad for business. Like it or not, Anet has to compete with other MMOs.

Over time, every MMO suffers natural attrition. People stop playing. They run out of things to do, or their friends stop playing or they play games less altogether, but eventually the playerbase is going to go down. Unless you replace players lost by natural attrition, you end up with a shrinking player base. This is terrible for people who bought the game at launch.

And I don’t know many games that stay the same price over three years anyway. The core game has already been on sale for $10 three times. So what we’re really arguing about here is $10.

Anet doesn’t have a pay to win cash shop, and it doesn’t charge a monthly fee. So it sells an expansion at a higher price than most people think is worth it. That’s fine.

But making it so people don’t have to buy two products, which means making sure more people enter the game? That’s good for everyone, even veteran players.

If no other company were doing something like this, you’d have a point. But the thing is, the two most popular MMOs next to Guild Wars 2 both charge monthly subs and the others have optional subs that are only theoretically optional. Or they have pay to win options that are not acceptable.

Charging $50 for an expansion makes up for the fact that so many people don’t use the gem store. Including the original game which was sold for $10 anyway, and is now free with restrictions? That’s just simple business logic.

I don’t love every decision Anet makes, but I do understand they’re a business, and they need money to move forward.

Well good for you. But why talk to me like I’m subhuman? Do you think I’m the first person ever to not like something like this? You have a point—I’ll get used to it; I’ll either buy the expansion or I won’t. I just can’t figure out why some people think it’s necessary to “correct” me. As I said, you’re not my parent.

Why did I come back here? Every time I do someone has something snarky to say. Goodbye forums, I get enough of this garbage in real life, I really don’t need it online from people who obviously look on the forums just to be annoying.

Translation: don’t bother “correcting” me again, “Mom”. I’ll never see it.

Even though you’ll never see this, I’m going to post anyway. My advice to you is don’t post on a public forum and not expect a response from people who disagree with you. Because you’re bound to be disappointed.

On topic: I think everything said above makes sense from a practical point of view, but for a person who never bought the original game, it doesn’t apply anyway. If you don’t already own the core game, HoT is a steal.

Just want everyone who sees this to know that Vayne & I worked this out. Vayne is actually very cool and took the time to explain things & even apologize, which I also did on another thread. A moderator removed that thread, but it’s okay, we’ll all live. Anyone else I offended, I’m sorry I let my anger get the better of me last week.

Picture this: You buy a season pass to a theme park, and afterward find out that they’re adding new stuff. You’re excited because you have a season pass. When you go to see the new stuff, they tell you that you can’t enter the new area until you pay for the season pass again.

That’s kind of what happened when GW2 went FTP, or in my opinion it did. I bought in, then the entry fee was moved to the new area, and anyone else who enters free but pays for the new area gets everything, while I’m stuck outside. The amount of the entry fee doesn’t matter; if you’ve paid, you’ve paid.

GW2 has always been a free-to-play game (or more accurately, a buy-to-play game which was free to play after you bought it). My thought was anyone who’d paid the entry fee, whether at the beginning or at HoT should get all current content so no one has to pay twice. Any succeeding expansions would, of course, have to be bought as normal. It’s just an opinion, and I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

But hey, maybe one day they’ll have a $10 sale on HoT. If so, I might consider that insignificant enough to give up on my position & just buy it.

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Redenaz.8631:

I’m all for giving Eles/Engis weapon swap outside of combat, but in-combat weapon swap would be nuts, and I main an Ele.

I agree, things should remain balanced. But that’s also one of my side points. If you have an ele, and you are dagger/dagger, then approach a wall and get attacked from it, you can’t return fire. Most ele stuff (incl. scepter) is 900 range or less, with only some staff skills have 1200 range. (I thing the fire signet has 1500, but it has a cooldown so it doesn’t count for what I’m talking about.) Other classes can swap b/t melee and ranged, and I have been annoyed the whole time I’ve been playing that ele’s can’t.

There is one alternative to giving ele’s weapon swap: allow them to have ranged attacks on melee weapons. This could be done by (a) using the unused weapon swap button as the ranged attack button; or (b) swapping ranged/melee but keeping the same weapon. Then scepter could have melee, which would benefit it as well. (Staff might be a problem, depending on how things work, but it has AoE’s that work close or far; fire auto & air auto, for example.) This would still leave them at -2 sigils…unless sigils were disassociated with weapons somehow. (But I haven’t figured out how I’d want that to work yet.)

RoseofGilead.8907:

Swapping attunements as an ele acts as a weapon swap. Same applies for engineer kits.

Um, you didn’t read what I said. I was specifically pointing out that Elementalists can only use 2 weapon sigils. And so what if they can change attunements? That still limits them to 2 sigils.

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Heart of Thorns is a rip for some of us. I paid $60 for the game back when it was buy-to-play, now new players can come in w/o paying, buy Heart of Thorns, and get stuff I can’t even though I’ve already paid. Why on earth would ArenaNet do that to people who’ve already bought the game? Shouldn’t we get HoT (at least the $50 version)? I feel like I’ve been cheated. Again.

You’ve all seen them on YouTube. Those builds which have different weapon sigils on, say a Greatsword/Rifle Warrior. Example, a player may have sigil of air and sigil of fire on the GS, then sigil of energy and sigil of leeching on Rifle.

Something bugged me about that, but I didn’t figure out what it was until recently. It was that Elementalists (and Engineers, now that I think about it) can’t swap weapons. That means their access to sigils is more restricted that that of other professions.

I’ve always thought it was silly to restrict professions that way, and now I think it’s even worse. The fix is simple: allow all professions to weapon swap. That will also fix those times when an elementalist is in combat and needs range but can’t use it because they can’t switch out daggers until they leave combat.

Not too long ago, the traits were shifted from starting at level 11 to a later level. That made me mad. I felt I needed those traits to survive since GW2 characters are far too easy to defeat. It annoyed me that my chars were supposed to be significant enough to have a heroic story told of them, but any one of them (including “heavy armor” chars) could get their butts kicked by 1 or 2 basic enemies.

This was most noticeable with my human elementalist, Kiria Nal. I lost count of the times I had been slapped around like a noob past lvl 30. I erased her, remade her, erased her again, recreated her as a mesmer, erased her and recreated her as an ellie. (I really wanted to like elementalists, can you tell??) At any rate, I felt I needed her traits just to survived. I had my latest version built around glyphs & attunement buffs—I had near-permanent swiftness any time I wanted it, which made getting around much less annoying. Then the traits got nerfed, and I lost survivability. I quit playing the game for several months.

Well, I’m not going to lie. I did have some fun with GW2. So I eventually talked myself into giving it another try. (I had done this about 4 times prior to this, or maybe this was the 4th time I’d come back.) I played on, and recently got Kiria built back up to where she was before. I noticed, however, that the char I finally got to 80, my Sylvari thief, didn’t get her last two trait point until she actually reached 80. That puzzled me, because I’ve always wanted to have my traits done by 70, as originally done, so I could spend the last 10 levels honing my gameplay without worrying about anything else. I still felt I needed traits—esp. the ones that removed conditions—at lower levels. If those toxic snake-guys around the blooms were any indication, I wasn’t wrong.

The freely refundable traits got my attention. I really liked the idea, tho I still felt I wanted the traits earlier. (Nagging little pet peave there.) At any rate, I kept playing, even creating a couple of new chars. But after the last major update this past week, when I created my last char, a Sylvari engineer, I thought my game had glitched. Usually, I had all three of my starting-weapon attacks before I got out of the intro story, but this time I was limited to my #1 attack only until the shadow of the dragon was done and I got out and leveled. (It didn’t bother me that I didn’t have to look for some clothes afterward; I always thought that was unnecessary, tho it didn’t bother me too much because the chars were still covered.)

So now it takes until level 7 to get your #3 attack slot open. (Hope I got that right, I only did this one char on the current set-up.) Not only that, Black Lion was deleted from their previous locations so I couldn’t dump the stupid, useless starting weapons for a better crafted one immediately, as I usually did. And to top it all off, I couldn’t even start an off-hand weapon, and my first utility slot was shunted to lvl 13 and the second to 28 (or something a lot later than 13). I checked my other new char, the guardian I’d made just before these changes, and sure enough, I’d lost a lot of my abilities—I didn’t even have but one of my virtues!!

Now I’m completely confused, and mad enough to quit, AGAIN. I feel like I’m being punished for playing the game! Why would the devs keep taking stuff away from us?? I don’t understand.

I got back into playing the game (for the umpteenth time) because I thought it over and felt that maybe it wasn’t so bad, and I could adjust. However, I feel that the latest changes are just stupid. With a game that is already unnecessarily frustrating (that is, in my opinion, feel free to disagree), I just don’t think I can handle this. I wanted to like this game—why else would I buy it?—but every time I turn around, I’m losing something. Should I endure it again, only to have something else nerfed on top of my head next time? <sigh> This time, I don’t think so.