Guild Wars 2

Hi Tetra! I just wanted to add some responses to the concerns you mentioned.

As Poitus said, we use Mumble for voice comms and it sees varying amounts of use outside of guild mission and raid times. But it’s there for any guild members who wish to use it.

In regards to pronouns, I think you will find it should not be a problem. It may take time for people to learn and remember the pronoun you prefer, but I don’t expect any ill intent in our chat. Everyone is welcome in O:U, and there should not be any disrespectful questions or conduct attached to that.

If you would like to know more, you can check out the Code of Conduct in the About Us section of our website, linked in my signature. That sets the expectations, which apply equally to Mumble as to any other guild chat.

Finally, if any conflicts do arise the guild officers are there to try and help resolve them in the best way possible. So please don’t hesitate to contact us directly should that happen.

Hopefully that was a lot of explaining about something which won’t come up. Welcome back to Legion!

I think there is certainly a number of very good points to be made here, if people can avoid casting this argument as some sort of black and white, casual vs hardcore thing.

Rather obviously, how accessible content is, how difficult it is and how long it takes to achieve a certain reward are all sliding scales. Sure, you can have “long term goals,” which players can choose to try and get to as fast as possible or work on casually. But there is also a point where the requirements are so high they become a practical impossibility for players with a casual time allotment to play.

I can think of a few changes over the life of GW2 which really does feel like ANet is turning the screws on the players who enjoyed the more free roaming, non-linear aspect of progression in GW2, because that is pretty much gone.

Note, I am not going to talk about how challenging content is, because I absolutely think varying levels of challenge across the game is a very good thing. That and doing the same task over and over for 100 hours is not challenging, but clearing a single difficult instance over 30 minutes can be.

1. Death of Multiple Ways to get Nice Things
The first is a sharp move away from being able to get the best gear in just about any way. Ascended brought in the age of crafting, where crafting is the only reliable way to ever get anything it seems. Yes, there are the boxes which can drop and for a while were for some unknown reason much nicer when dropped from Fractals (more stat choices) than anything else. But the only sure way is crafting. New guild skins even need 450 crafting.

It doesn’t matter if 450-500 crafting is hard or easy, before ascended I could do what I enjoyed and work my way to BiS gear. Now if I absolutely detest crafting, I force myself to do it or go without. And while there are some skins exclusive to other areas of the game (Glorious comes to mind), crafting has basically become ANet’s catch all way to make something “exclusive” or “hard to get.” Which is silly.

2 The Mighty Zerg Event of Raining Gold
This one started with the first Queen’s Jubilee. Before that was a time where getting the Golden achievement for having 100g was actually something. I made 100g inside a week that event, playing maybe a couple hours a night.

After that, periodically and then repeatedly with places like EotM, SW and so on ANet managed to thow some zerg train into the game that gave far and away better gold return than doing anything else. As in not even remotely close to what you would get doing any other thing.

That lead to a greater wealth gap between those who could and enjoyed surfing a zerg for 8 hours against those who preferred free roaming, taking on harder dungeon paths because they were more interesting and so on. Of course, this meant all the really nice things got more and more expensive on the TP. So you became a TP wizard, joined the zerg surfing, farmed another way or got left behind.

Surfing a zerg is far from hard, but it’s mind numbingly boring after more than 30 minutes for a lot of players.

3 HoT and its love of Checklisting
I call this “checklisting” and it’s something HoT abuses so much.

Masteries, though often complained about, are actually okay. There’s an argument that the XP values might be a bit ridiculous (see above about the zerg trains, that applies to XP too), but at least I can go about doing whatever it is I enjoy and make progress. Much like it was getting to 80 in core GW2. This is a good thing.

Many of the other things in HoT however, you either actively do right now or you get nowhere. Hero Points are the most heinous example. Unlocking a specialization is in no way part of the HoT experience. You don’t just play and explore the content and slowly work your way up to it. You either seek out and complete a list of very specific challenges or you don’t. It’s a checklist of which the only purpose is to delay the player from playing with the elite specialization.

Masteries, though set up well in terms of gaining XP, are guilty in that rather than being something which adds to the experience in HoT are instead a series of locks which gate off content. It’s another checklist of do this before that before that.

There’s nothing to discover, explore or free roam in that. It’s here’s the list with a bucket of XP or HPs to get, now go do it or don’t and get nowhere.

No, getting the HPs isn’t hard. But it is dull, boring and after the first set repetitive to the point of banality (which is a shame because some of the HP fights are pretty fun, at least once). Checklisting and gating this way is a cardinal sin of game design, whether your audience is casual or hardcore.

Conclusions and TL:DR
And I think that is where some of this backlash against HoT comes from. It is not all “it’s too hard” or “it’s too time consuming.” It’s much more this is far too repetitive and uninteresting. Please, absolutely send me on a grand quest which will take 6 months to get my Cool Item 27, by all means. But make it a quest with interesting things to see and do, and not just a list of grind. If you make it fun and engaging to do, the complaints tend to go away even if it still takes a long time.

Core GW2 got around this problem by allowing us to explore a very large world with many different maps, themes and enemy types. Sure leveling was all events and hearts from 0-80, but it felt different being in Snowden compared to Bloodtide; it stayed engaging. HoT does not have that with only 4 maps and honestly, the only reason I can think of for the gates, checklists and general sense of grind is because someone at Anet was acutely aware of the lack of content and decided padding it for launch was the best solution.

The thing is, a change like this is shady. It is underhanded. It is questionable business practice.

Think for a moment. A non-MMO game which did something like this, pulling a feature out of the original game and then shoving it behind a DLC or expansion, would become a laughing stock and be ridiculed into either reversing the decision or death. There’s a good reason very few games I can recall ever attempt such a move, and I’ve never seen it turn out well for the game.

To be clear, I am not accusing ANet of being underhanded, shady or intending to swindle their players. They had a lot of development work to do, a lot of decisions to make and also needed to implement all of them in a way that worked. There could be any number of reasons why the system landed in the form it did. That does not alter the fact that the change to the system itself is a shady one, even if it was never intended that way.

So, now is ANet’s time to show their quality. The problem has been seen and posted about here, and as Jigain above posted it is on ANet to show compassion and understanding and fix what is a broken system. Right now, we get to see ANet’s intentions towards their players based on their response (or lack of).

On the purely business side, a paywall of this type is more likely to disgust and push players away than incentivize HoT. A reputation for suddenly dropping paywalls over previously purchased content is not something to be regarded lightly, no matter how small that content.

As a guild officer with HoT purchased, there is only one judgement I can pass on this type of “feature.”

Irredeemably Disgusting.

Ignoring how HoT is a complete reverse of “play your way” and the very free roaming feeling that made GW2 successful into a linear series of content gates and largely linear maps (seriously, getting to most anywhere is a case of find that one specific path, not explore around and jump/climb/glide/fall along some intuitive or freeform route), removing features from GW2 Core and placing them behind HoT is business practice of the worst kind.

I hope ANet sees this thread and puts this right. Nothing should have been taken from GW2 Core and made HoT exclusive, even if there were changes to how it worked. Anything gated off in such a way needs to be fixed so that it is again accessible to customers who own GW2 Core but not HoT. That is in fact the definition of ANet’s vaunted buy to play – once bought the customer has it. Putting it behind a second paywall is…oh…very much like that thing called a subscription, at least to a certain degree.

There is a short time window for ANet to get this fixed, and avoid being an example of “how not to encourage sales of any further expansions.”

Dante.1763:

I want the ability to have a separate key for the “Lean”

Actually yes, this is true too. I haven’t unlocked leaning yet. But in general, any new commands should have separate keybinds.

I’ve used google and it did not come up with anything recent about this on these forums.

Gliding is a lot of fun, and I love it. However, as I recall, GW2 is a PC game. And a PC game from a AAA dev with a AAA price tag. Deploying and furling the glider needs to be a rebindable key we can adjust to our preference. If the reasons aren’t obvious, I’ll explain:

Updating what I said about Elite Spec unlocks in the Hero Points thread to address this blog post directly:

The change is a step in the right direction and will probably work out. But the way Hero Points work in general is still concerning as a design choice, and actually contradicts the message in the blog. Let me explain:

400 Hero Points took a long time to gather, but that’s not the main issue IMHO. The main issue was it was a long time, spent doing exactly ONE THING. There is only one way to get Hero Points, which is go to set points on the map and do their thing.

Compare this to leveling a class and unlocking the non-elite lines. Hero Points can accelerate the process, but in general playing the game, going where the player wants and taking in content along their own path all nets XP and all contributes to unlocking more skills and traits. This makes unlocking these things enjoyable, as I can do it a number of different ways and I’m never locked into one particular thing.

Same thing with Masteries which have been much better received. I run around the maps doing my thing, gather XP, train up the Masteries then quickly gather some points to unlock them. It’s fun and open.

10 hours of playing is pretty much 10 hours of gaining XP or Mastery training. I may not be 100% efficient if I wander aimlessly, but I can explore and enjoy the content and know I’m still making progress towards my end goal.

In contrast, getting Hero Points require single minded farming of a single thing. If I really want to make progress towards Chronomancer, 10 hours of this play feels like 10 hours of checking boxes off on a list, it isn’t particularly fun or engaging and it becomes an outright chore, not a game. Which is a shame, because some of the challenges are themselves fun to overcome.

The blog seems to want us to see unlocking our Elites as part of the progression of playing through HoT, slowly discovering new things. That’s an awesome concept, but the problem is it doesn’t work in HoT. I could play thousands of hours of HoT and never unlock an Elite, because I didn’t hit those single specific things on each map. Right now, I don’t play HoT and slowly unlock my spec. I have to choose to either play HoT’s greater content, or take time away from that to hunt Hero Points to unlock the Elite. They aren’t parallel occurrences in a normal run of play, Hero Points are a separate laundry list of checkboxes which gate content in an artificial way.

So my sincere feedback and challenge to the designers is this – don’t just tinker with numbers to get the amount of grind right. Give us a system that isn’t just checkboxing/ farming one thing with our imagination turned off. Let us unlock our specializations as we play and explore HoT as a whole – that’s how you get people to engage with and explore the world instead of flocking to specific points in a mindless train, and also the system which originally made leveling in GW2 fun and open.

The change is a step in the right direction and will probably work out. But the way Hero Points work in general is still concerning as a design choice. Let me explain:

400 Hero Points took a long time to gather, but that’s not the main issue IMHO. The main issue was it was a long time, spent doing exactly ONE THING. There is only one way to get Hero Points, which is go to set points on the map and do their thing.

Compare this to leveling a class and unlocking the non-elite lines. Hero Points can accelerate the process, but in general playing the game, going where the player wants and taking in content along their own path all nets XP and all contributes to unlocking more skills and traits. This makes unlocking these things enjoyable, as I can do it a number of different ways and I’m never locked into one particular thing.

Same thing with Masteries which have been much better received. I run around the maps doing my thing, gather XP, train up the Masteries then quickly gather some points to unlock them. It’s fun and open.

10 hours of playing is pretty much 10 hours of gaining XP or Mastery training. I may not be 100% efficient if I wander aimlessly, but I can just enjoy the content and know I’m still making progress towards my end goal.

In contrast, getting Hero Points require single minded farming of a single thing. If I really want to make progress towards Chronomancer, 10 hours of this play feels like 10 hours of checking boxes off on a list, it isn’t particularly fun or engaging and it becomes an outright chore, not a game. Which is a shame, because some of the challenges are themselves fun to overcome.

So my sincere feedback and challenge to the designers is this – don’t just tinker with numbers to get the amount of grind right. Give us a system that isn’t just checkboxing/ farming one thing with our imagination turned off. Let us unlock our specializations as we play and explore the game – that’s how you get people to engage with and explore the world instead of flocking to specific points in a mindless train.

Welcome Pheno!

Definitely no pressure to be chatty or commit to a schedule. So feel free to jump in when the mood catches you, and do your own thing when you like. You’ll find an invite in game in your guild panel (G).

If you are testing out classes, using the PvP Lobby (sometimes called the Mists) will allow you to test out each class. Even if you are level 1 in PVE, the Mists lets you try all the traits and skills as if you were at level 80. There’s also a merchant cheap versions of all the weapons to try out. There are some practice target dummies and NPCs to try things out on. It’s a great way to get a good preview of what a class can do.

Hope to see you around soon!

Welcome Solid Gold and Thunder!

Gold, hope you find some like minded players to connect with in this thread. I certainly understand not wanting guild pressures, which is exactly why the original O:U thread started.

Thunder, I’ve sent you an invite to the Legion guild. Feel free to join in the guild chat the next time you are online and see who’s around.

Iyeru, so sorry a reply took so long! I have been out of town with limited internet.

I’ve sent you an invite to the Legion of Honour guild. There’s no rep requirement, so you can hang out with us sometimes and guild hop as much as you like. Think of it as a relaxed, social place where you can hop in when you just want other players to chat with or to find a group for some content. We do guild missions and other events as well, and there are people in the guild who take part in everything GW2 has on offer from PvE, PvP, WvW and RP.

Hope to see you around soon, and again apologies for the much delayed reply.

Linken, I have looked through the retailer list in detail.

For example, check the US retailers. Amazon and Game Tap are both listed as distributors of Digital Download copies. As of right now, neither site turns up anything of the sort when searched for “Heart of Thorns” or “Guild Wars.” On the other hand, Best Buy is not listed at all, and yet turns up a HoT purchase option immediately when searching the US site.

So forgive me for not fully trusting the list of retailers, since it appears outright wrong on incomplete in a number of cases.

I’m also trying to figure out why the heck buying HoT from Amazon UK in pounds sterling is cheaper than paying the exchange to ANet as a direct purchase, including shipping a box across the Atlantic Ocean and all of Canada to the west coast here. If ANet wants me to purchase directly from them, they’re doing a good job ensuring it makes absolutely no sense to.

Thanks for the suggestion, it was a good idea. Unfortunately my reply from CS amounted to a very polite “We don’t know anything, please read the website and contact your local retailers.”

It’s almost laughable how pathetic this situation is. I love the game enough to keep looking for a copy locally, but its frustrating in the extreme to have to deal with this when it is not usual practice for the industry at all. I’d have no trouble walking into EB Games or Best Buy and getting my hands on pretty much any other AAA title, and even Steam has local currency options.

Yes, I have used the search function. No I didn’t find anything remotely recent, and the few back posts I did find were through Google, not the forum search.

In any case, I have been trying to find a local retailer who will be selling HoT in Canada on release. I’m old fashioned, I like having a box for games even if there’s no disc in it. Beyond that, I’d rather not pay exchange fees to the bank on top of buying the game, which has never been an issue with any AAA game release I can recall.

It seems pretty logical that there would be local support here considering EB Games is just Game Stop’s Canadian version and Best Buy is still Best Buy, but neither of these retailers know anything about this when I called them or check their websites. Canada is also not listed as having any local retailer support via the GW2 website (but then, neither is US Best Buy who appears to have it so not sure how reliable that is).

In short I’m confused. Is there a place where I can buy this in Canada come Oct 23rd?

We’re still here, and still always happy to help newcomers get settled into the game!

If you’re on a free account I know you cannot reply here, so instead feel free to whisper myself or any of the other officers listed on the front page.

Giving this a bump for August! We are as ever still going, and have open invite guild missions on Friday evenings (8:30pm Pacific).

Hope those who had the holiday yesterday enjoyed it!

I’ll be honest in that I don’t find it surprising or a very large lack of thought that there isn’t a CAD pre-purchase option directly with ANet. I was expecting to go through EBgames or some other local retailer.

To have our local retailers not supported, and apparently falling out over negotiations is a bit more worrying, but also nothing new. I understand exchange rates and that CAD is particularly weak right now, although gaming industry precedent has never really seen CAD game prices stray far from USD prices.

At the point where Malta has local support (so it’s not a question of market size) and Canada doesn’t with no reasons given, it’s an outright insult. Heck, ANet is in Seattle even and can probably see Canada from a high enough spot before they take a weekend vacation over the ferry straight to Vancouver Island. For them to pretty much just forget about us without a word is extremely disheartening.

HotHit.6783:

Expertise training I can’t really justify, as I’m still mad about our loss of malicious training and don’t really like any Wilderness Survival adepts. But the others are somewhat simple.

Two-Handed Training is the trait for the Greatsword and the Greatsword is a suprisingly good beastmaster’s weapon. Cripple, stun, attack of opportunity for your pet, vulnerability and the defensive prowess to survive while your partner does the heavy hitting. Sure, there’s an argument for sword being the better beastmaster weapon, but eh. I guess Beastmastery just got dumped it because they couldn’t fit the weapon trait somewhere else.

Mainhand axe is the ranged weapon of choice for Beastmaster builds that take Nature Magic. With three targets you can quickly rack up might stacks on your cat/bird/drake/dog and start dishing out tons of pain. The chill and off-hand cripple with dagger help immensely. It makes perfect sense for the axe trait to be in Beastmastery. It’d just help if the axe trait helped the axe do what it wants to do.

Shared Anguish and Empathic Bond are the easiest of these traits to explain their placement though. Just because the mechanics involve our pets, does not mean it synergises with investing our hopes and dreams on our pets. A Beastmaster who cripples, chills and launches their own beast probably won’t get very far. They can’t go in nature magic, because as the support line it runs into the same problems as Beastmaster. That leaves Marksmanship and Skirmishing, neither of which are particularly great choices when compared to our defensive specialisation.

All great points, and well considered.

I don’t like “makes a good BM weapon” now means that if you use that weapon and want the trait for it you must play BM, only a watered down BM because you took weapon traits. Like Shared Anguish, these traits would benefit a BM ranger better in another line.

Shared Anguish makes sense to not disable the buffed pet, although you could argue the way traits work it would make sense to have a defensively buffed pet take the disable for you. But overall you’re right on this one.

My main complaint/confusion still lies on seeing both of our condition management traits piled into WS, then the rest of our choices in WS gutted except for some condi builds.

Looking through the new traits, there is a lot of nice stuff for Rangers to test, try and have fun with. But one seeming oddity has caught my attention.

Beast Mastery now has Two Handed Training (master) and Honed Axes (grand master). Meanwhile, Wilderness Survival has Expertise Training (adept), Shared Anguish (master) and Empathic Bond (Grand Master).

In a strict thematic sense, that seems a little strange. I didn’t realize GS skills were essential to pet training, especially with pet-centric traits throughout WS.

In a more game oriented sense, why has Ranger’s only two real reliable condition management traits been moved to the WS grandmaster position (again)? I thought part of the reason for creating the survival skill condi clear in NM was to end the huge reliance rangers had on WS to deal with conditions.

It feels like we have just been kicked back to a point where a Ranger needs to use WS, build bunker or die when conditions come their way.

In the past that wasn’t even so bad because WS had some nice traits for any build. But now the Master traits are all but useless for any power based build with the move of Two Handed Training and disappearance of Off-Hand training. Oakheart Salve looks okay in the adept slot, but that’s it.

Moreover, I just can’t see any synergy between Two-handed training or Axe Mastery and the rest of BM.

It’s very early after the patch, and there are probably things I am missing. What thoughts have you had on this?

Another question: what about people who in anticipation of HoT went to their local retailer to purchase base GW2 after Jan 23rd, 2015 instead of this website? Are they just out of luck?

I think it is a very good idea that ANet does sell through retailers, but if they want the advantages that comes with in terms of distribution, they need to support it properly. Especially in this case, in light of confusing and poor choice of wording on the HoT FAQ.

Question:

The blog post says the HoT Pre-purchase must be applied before launch, not just purchased before launch.

Does this mean pre-purchasing through local retailers will not gain this benefit? As a Canadian customer, having to pay exchange + exchange fee on the already high end price for an expansion which we on the whole know very little about content wise is rather concerning (as I’m sure it is for any players without local currency pre-order options from ANet).

Second Question:
Will we get clear notice, along with time to buy in, before the pre-purchase phase ends or is it going to just suddenly be taken down?

Threads on the price of HoT are all over, but I wanted to start a new one mainly with a question about the price for NA customers outside the US.

I’m in Canada, where GW2 on release was $60 CAD. The HoT offerings can only be purchased in USD, and given the published exchange rate that puts it at ~$61 CAD for the basic package. Of course, no one ever gets the published exchange rate so the credit company or bank takes a cut, further raising costs for Canadian (and I’m assuming Mexican or South American) customers.

I get it. ANet is a US based company who prices their stuff in USD and exchange rates fluctuate. I understand that CAD is currently weak. That said, effectively asking a price higher than the base game for an expansion is a bit rich. Okay, it’s ridiculously silly.

So my main question is will we see more localized purchasing options for HoT before physical box sales? If so, should I expect a price hike from USD to CAD?

Proposed before or not, this idea is brilliant. It’s a really smart way to appeal to both the people who have many alts/builds (let’s not forget some weapon combinations can mean a player needing 3 Ascended crafts just to outfit that one build, like Staff and Sword/Pistol Mesmer) and those who would rather invest more time and resources towards a single project.

It also deals with the huge time and resources invested in Ascended gear, only to have to restart given a balance change.

A final boon, it ensures ANet only has to balance the game for one end game gear level. Right now they have to consider whether to balance new areas on Level 80 Ascended or Level 80 Exotics, with the risk of driving away one crowd or another if it is all too easy or too hard.

I can’t emphasize enough that this proposal is likely the way Ascended gear always should have been

And even though I really dislike GW2 crafting, this sort of system would actually tempt me towards making Ascended gear. The current, purely stat based system only serves to drive me away from crafting at all and the game areas where Ascended is a tangible benefit (generally WvW roaming and high level fractals).

There may need to be some work in terms of making sure Legendaries are still Legendary, but being able to freely swap Sigils is a pretty awesome way to do it.

I’m sure infusions would remain Ascended only, but that’s fine considering the Fractals only nature of it.

Ayrilana.1396:

A large percentage of the increase comes from trinkets which are incredibly easy to get. Ascended weapons provide the next largest gain and are relatively cheap to make compared to ascended armor. These provided about a 10.40% damage increase based on calculation someone did in April. Ascended armor was less than 2%.

The vast majority of the damage increase one would get from ascended is still easily accessible to the average player.

Exactly right about the weapons. The numbers I give above hinge on the fact that Ascended gear not only increase stats, but the actual weapon damage too. I treated the stats in a blanket form to keep it simple, but the problem is the stats compound on each other, making the in-game effect change a much larger amount than the small stat increase.

So yes, right now full Ascended gear gives something like a 12% damage buff. But because of how weapon damage, ferocity and power all multiply together increasing the gap has a much sharper effect than it says on the label. A current 5% gap is more like 12% damage increase, and a 10% gap would be more like 25-28%. This also means that by increasing the gap, the armour stats become more significant and it’s not as easy to get by with just a weapon.

As for easily achievable, that I will have to dispute. Trinkets are dead easy, no question. And yeah, maybe to get a weapon set is just fine. But leveling 500 crafting is an expensive endeavour, difficult for any player who isn’t in the game just to grind gold (or the mats) every time they play, or is still fairly new to it.

It is also a question of play style, not everyone uses the same 2 weapons all day every day. My main regularly uses 9 different weapons and has 4 armour sets. I have another 3-4 toons I also run things with quite regularly. Outfitting them all would take an utterly ridiculous amount of resources. I certainly don’t want everything in the game to be easy and free to get, but there are players who enjoy tinkering with a large variety of stuff more than they do the quest to get one set, and I don’t feel that this method of play should be punished. There’s plenty of other ways to have exclusive stuff with much higher difficulties to obtain (skins, legendaries and so on).

The main point however, isn’t even the resources required for Ascended, it’s that Anet is making Ascended even more exclusively the top level gear, and there’s only one way to reliably get those weapons and armour.

For me, and certainly others, crafting in GW2 is about as engaging as watching a spreadsheet run automated formulae, because actually writing a spreadsheet or watching paint dry has more interest and variation than GW2 crafting does. I’m happy some people enjoy crafting and for that reason it should definitely stay, but there has to be viable, alternate ways to get best in slot gear with roughly equal effort.

And that’s the choice I feel ANet needs to make here. Either make Ascended better BiS gear but add multiple ways to get it in a reasonable time period for people who play with more than one or two gear sets or keep Ascended at its current level where full Exotics are still close enough to play along just fine, if at a small but noticeable disadvantage.

So, we’ve now heard the gap in stats between Exotic and Ascended gear will be increasing from about 5% to 10%. Opinions on the boards are everything from it doesn’t matter it’s still a tiny difference to this is the worst move ANet can make and will push anyone not inclined towards crafting and grind out of the game (or WvW at least). Well, let’s take a look at how this will actually change, then make a more informed decision.

Fist of all, the 5% and 10% figures are a bit misleading. Currently, yes Ascended gear gives about an additional 5% in stats. However, Ascended weapons also give 5% extra damage from the weapon itself. An Exotic sword can roll 905-1000, while an Ascended sword can roll 950-1050.

GW2 Damage Formula
Damage in GW2 is a simple multiplication formula of: (Skill Coefficient x Power x Rolled Weapon Damage) / Target’s Armour.

If a critical hit is landed, the above damage is multiplied by Ferocity. What this means is the 5% gap in stats is multiplied through 2x for a normal hit and 3x for a crit.

Quick Numerical Gear Comparison
Let’s assume Exotic gear is our baseline. It has 1 for Power, Ferocity and Weapon damage (the real numbers for any actual build can be put in for the 1 values, but I’m doing this just to show proportion. Ascended gear just multiplies the upgraded value with the extra 5 or 10%). Current Ascended would give 1.05 for each, while skill coefficient and target armour are the same for both.

This means a normal hit currently does 1.05*1.05 = 1.1025 or 10.25% more damage in Ascended gear vs Exotic. A critical hit currently does 1.05*1.05*1.05 = 1.1576 or 15.76% more damage. That’s pretty significant.

If we take the Ascended numbers and make the gap 10% instead of 5%, well I’m sure you can see this coming:

Normal hits 1.10*1.10 = 1.21 or 21% more damage for upcoming Ascended
Critical hits 1.10*1.10*1.10 = 1.331 or 33% more damage for upcoming Ascended

Thoughts
Now granted, Ascended gear only gives the flat percentage increase to survivability, but at the point where it means damage focused gear specs can put out 20-33% more damage, that is a huge difference and honestly completely ridiculous.

It is possible weapon damage won’t change, in which case new Ascended would be:
Normal: 1.05*1.10 = 1.152 or 15.2% more damage
Crit: 1.05*1.10*1.10 = 1.2705 or 27.05% more damage.

It’s also true I haven’t accounted for the base attribute scores on any level 80 (recall traits won’t give stats any more), since I’m not 100% certain where these base 80 stats will land with all the coming changes. However, the examples above still show the main point, that the gear difference is already certainly noticeable and with the proposed changes it will become near mandatory for any damage focused build.

Challenge to ANet
So, my main question and challenge to ANet is this. What is the driving reason to make Ascended such an exclusively superior gear set, when places like WvW already have trouble attracting newer players who have no hope of having this gear? Is this really a smart move with how restricted ascended armour and weapons are, since these are both time gated and only realistically attainable through crafting, which not all players enjoy or want to pursue (yes, ascended does drop rarely in certain places, but it’s no way to get a matching set)?

What happened to “play your own way” and there “will definitely be multiple ways to gain ascended gear?” Why have I, as a player who is constantly changing gear and builds because I love tinkering with things, been consistently punished for doing so verses just making one exclusive gear set and never changing it?

Finally, in a meta that is already all about the glass cannons in a lot of places, why reinforce this even more with higher Ascended stats? The damage stats multiply quickly, the survivability stats not as much (though yes having more toughness over healing power or vitality will have a joint effect).

TL:DR
New ascended gear will have a 20-33% damage boost over exotics, based on gear alone verses the current 10-15%. That looks to be a very, very sharp difference in tiers.

My questions really revolve around trying to understand what the design team is aiming for here, because unfortunately today’s news is the first which has made me think HoT might be the point where I actually walk away from the game entirely.

Question:
What is the design goal for locking players down into only 3 trait lines? In a game that is without a trinity (and better for it IMHO), why are you now driving players towards specialized builds, and giving us less choices in how we craft out play style?

I ask this because that change alone kills 4 out of the 5 builds I use frequently. I prefer playing a generalist role, I like to have my builds balanced with perhaps a bit of lean to one role or another, but I rarely spec full bunker, full DPS and so on.

In an action game, I see nothing wrong with building an all-rounder toon. My builds aren’t “using 2 points to cover a fundamental weakness,” they are speccing into 4 or 5 lines very deliberately to support my own play style to good effect. Furthermore, in some of the more popular builds those few extra points that can go to different trait lines are how players make the build fit their own play style and give it a bit of a personal touch. Isn’t the lock down on trait lines removing this personal touch?

Question 2:
I have often felt the lack of build variety in PVE has nothing to do with the traits, as I have used very odd traits with very good results in differing situations and we see more build variety in PvP areas where things are less predictable and where not everything can be dodged. Instance design drives the Zerk or nothing meta, not trait and gear selection IMHO.

So, will the instance design in HoT be varied from the base game to actually encourage different builds in PVE?

If not, my biggest concern is predictable, completely dodgable instances combined with a lock down on trait lines results in players using even less builds, not more for dungeons. I mean, if the only goal is DPS and players can only select 3 trait lines, most of the builds become glaringly obvious.

Look, separating stats from traits is a good thing. This will help with build diversity.

Reducing the available trait choices may be good, might be bad. I would rather see a balancing pass on the existing traits than a cull, as there are definitely times I have found some of those odd, never used traits exceptionally useful. Reducing choices for players is usually a bad thing, and it’s not like GW2 in its current form has an unreasonably high number of skills or traits.

Third, streamlining choice between which trait lines to invest in is just a horrible call. There is no reason this is a good thing. It reduces player choice, reduces player investment in creating their build, and lowers build variety. Yes, I’m biased since this is going to kill my current Ele, Engi, Mesmer and Guard builds. But I see all of those builds as fun, very viable and not really meta following. Telling me I can no longer play my style is a good way to get me to leave the game, and I don’t think that is an uncommon view.

The reason we see a lack of builds being used right now is not trait design. It’s dungeon and PvE design. The meta builds are all one way because dungeons are predictable and rely on spike damage for difficulty. This lends everyone to try and go glass cannon, since defences have to be stacked to an absurd level to really help any, and it’s better just to kill faster. If you look at PvP or WvW, suddenly there are a lot more different builds being used successfully. Present players with varied situations, and a lot of the “useless” traits actually do have a place and a use. The main problem is every dungeon has only one scenario: kill it before it one or two shots you.

Keeping in mind this is about Pugs and not organized runs:

One of my most hated builds are people who follow a meta (or any) build with a glass cannon setup, have no idea how to keep themselves alive and spend the dungeon on the floor. I have a full Cleric’s Necro (yeah it’s a kitten y build just for fun with friends) that is more useful than these players. Bonus points if the ever dead glass cannon is using a Legendary and then berates the team for “letting them die.”

Next is Spirit Rangers, excepting those who are actually skilled with them. In the chaos that can be a pug run, the Spirits die in seconds or the Ranger never has them near the fight at the right time. And the much hailed Frost Spirit isn’t very good when compared to just generating more might stacks. Frost Spirit is awesome when a team has might stacks near capped out, but in my experience this never happens in a pug. At that point, I’d rather the Ranger bring a fire trap for more blasts, more might and just altogether being more consistently useful than fiddling with their Spirits in a corner because it’s popular for organized runs.

But perhaps my single most hated build of any and all kinds isn’t about performing in the dungeon. It’s the player who walks in and berates everyone on the team for not using their own favoured setup on each class because clearly they know best. Sometimes they are actually a skilled player, sometimes they aren’t. But universally, these people cause more stress than any terrible build ever does and they never once look around them to see just how effective other viable approaches can be.

I pretty much agree with everyone.

@Tex – yeah that’s the other way to approach this problem. Give each game mode its own way to achieve things, get Legendaries, all of it without going to any of the others. I’m okay with either approach, making end game stuff encompass all modes or letting each mode get there individually, as long as ANet picks one and actually acknowledges different player game preferences.

@Blockhead: I’m well aware. My two least favourite things in the entire game are crafting and mindlessly filling in heart quests after hitting 80. That effectively locks me out of ever having cohesive ascended weapons/armour or a legendary, no matter how well I master Dungeons, PvP or WvW (other than just grinding gold and buying a legendary).

It all seems silly considering the “design ethos” ANet plastered all over around the first ascended releases, where there would be multiple routes to things, especially BiS gear. Instead, everything seems to be crafting based.

So, WvW is getting removed from World Completion. And there are already a couple threads on this for general discussion. The announcement did however give me a more specific idea on how to handle world completion outside PvE.

On the surface, this is a good move. Waiting for the colours to rotate to get that random vista or POI was silly, and it brought players into WvW who had no interest in helping the team, instead taking up map spots at all times.

However, the idea here is WORLD completion. Why can purely PvE players get access to the Legendary crafting requirements but pure WvW, pure PvP or mostly Dungeon runner players can’t? In fact, how can anyone claim World Completion by only ever seeing 1/4 areas of the game? Either make things separate so everyone can get everything in each area of the game or don’t and make it a game-wide goal.

Now, Dungeons, PvP and WvW aren’t exactly conducive to “map completing” with POIs and vistas. What I would suggest instead is adding a token achievements for each of these 3 areas and make them a required part of World Completion.

How onerous these would be and the actual numbers would be ANet’s call. But taking a small % of the world completion score and tying it to an achievement in each of these 3 other game areas is the idea. Something like:

-5 keep/tower captures, 5 defences, 50 player kills (EotM does not count)
-Win 5 sPvP matches (hotjoins or Q)
-Complete 50% of all dungeon paths.

Now, those numbers are pretty low, just as an example. The idea is to gain the benefit of having people who want world completion to have at least seen and tried all areas of the game, maybe even unexpectedly finding something they liked other than PvE. As well, when the map completers jump into a dungeon, WvW or PvP the idea is to have them come and actually play the game mode, rather than running around for little squares on the map.

At the same time, the idea is to make these goals very achievable so they aren’t the huge drag that WvW map completion could be, which would actually drive people away.

It’s a pretty random musing I know, but figure I may as well post it anyway.

The more I hear about this the more this sounds like a straight nerf to stability, without anything else changing to support that. This has me VERY worried.

I agree, making Stability more skillful is a good thing, and this change is probably the best for pre-made PvP where teams almost always have good stability uptime when it matters.

However, unless other control skills are reworked around this (which I am still hoping they will be), this will be a complete disaster in WvW and random Q PvP.

Both of those modes are already often “pop your stability at the right time or die horribly to the stun/knockdown/knockback/fear chain.” A straight nerf to Stability will only make this even worse.

For WvW, the Warrior Hammer train at the front of a Zerg with support from the other classes is already way too effective. Adding limited uses on stability only makes this AOE Stun spam on a 10s CD even better. This isn’t even considering a zerg tossing out a whole bunch of “soft” CCs first to strip stacks away as the range closes to make sure the Hammers can lay into the enemy with reduced stability stacks.

Crowd control is fun, I agree! Disabling effects and conditions add tactical depth and options to a fight. Outright lockdown however is incredibly banal to play as or against. There’s a balance to walk here, and last I checked GW2 wasn’t lacking for lockdown as is and certainly doesn’t need more of it.

EDIT – In response to SkylightMoon, I agree. Ranged pressure and DPS are big things in a Zerg, especially in an open field. But WvW is a lot more than open field fights, and things like keep assaults force close ranged fighting, or a smart commander can use terrain to do the same. I also think Hammer stun AOE is more of an example than the -only concern-. There are plenty of ranged CCs out there too.

And finally, I do believe ANet is trying to balance the game for all modes and servers, not just T1 WvW and pre-made PvP.

Hmmm, this plus the coming Taunt hints to me that we are going to see a rework of CCs, or at least of all the stability giving skills. Running 15 Hammer Warrs at the front of a WvW Zerg is too effective already, I can’t see ANet just tossing in Taunt for an additional CC, then nerfing stability on top so this tactic becomes even better (I still question the wisdom of giving any class an AOE stun on a 10s CD, but that’s another thing).

While control and debilitating effects are a great element for gameplay, outright stunlocking isn’t fun for anyone. Unfortunately, ANet seems to have some sort of great attraction to stunlock mechanics (Aetherblades, Teragriff charge spam).

Let’s hope we see some more details soon, I want to have faith in ANet that there is an overall plan here, but I also can’t help but worry some.

Lol, yeah Taunt and fear cast at the same moment would be hilarious.

As a “control effect” I get the impression that stun breaks should work against taunt. There’s just a lot of things to try and save those stun breaks for already. Again, this totally depends on who gets Taunt and how, and what the Taunt durations are.

As is Stun Breaks are definitely very useful, but against certain builds/teams/zergs even having 3 of them on the bar doesn’t make much difference from the sheer spam of Stun, Knockdown, Knockback, Pull, Fear and so on. So again, I just hope ANet really thinks through who gets Taunt and with what skills.

These are all good points. It’s why I wanted to post and say there needs to be care taken, but not start waving my arms manically to declare the sky is falling.

If they add a taunt to something like Warrior Hammer (just for one easy example), this could get problematic fast. This is a build that doesn’t need more hard CC, no matter how traditional Warriors and taunts are. In sPvP it would still be manageable, but in WvW Zergs hammer Warr already has a strong presence because of it’s low cooldown AOE stun. We don’t need more reasons to spam this build.

Another potential problematic example is Necro. Lots of fear already and if a taunt or two gets thrown in Necro’s could Yo-yo people using both.

On the other hand, Taunt could add some nice depth of play too. As Dranor mentioned, not every enemy will be a good candidate for Taunt. In addition, some classes could make some very interesting uses of it beyond just “lol you can’t control your toon while my stun/fear/knockdown is on CD.” Thieves using it as a “distraction” then stealthing, Ranger pulling someone into their GS Block or trap line, Guards pulling people into their block + retaliation – this sort of thing could bring really thoughtful play.

In the end, all I’m saying is any mechanic which completely removes control of a player’s character needs to be treated very carefully. Cooldowns and where Taunts are available will all play into how well or how badly it fits into the game.

So, the preview of the new status effect Taunt is very interesting. We of course have no idea how prevalent it will be, which class specializations will get it (though Mesmer with its trickery and knowing they are getting shield seems suggestive lol).

In PVE, I can’t really think of a bad side to this. Gives group defenders a way to potentially pull a mob off a friend (we’ll see how this works on bosses and defiance), and gives dungeon designers some more options to counter boring stack tactics.

In PVP and WvW however, I am pretty worried. GW2 combat is very movement centric, we all know how deadly a short Immobilize can be. Between knockdown, knockback, stun, immobilize, cripple, chill, fear, pulls and indirectly Torment, do we need yet another movement impeding skill?

I like control, don’t get me wrong. But there is a line between playing control/debuff/debilitator and outright lockdown “lol killed you before you could do anything.” The former adds tactical options and counterplay, the latter makes for painfully boring and frustrating combat.

There is of course Stability, but not every class can pop that on demand, without cast times. And as far as counter play goes, “pop this boon before the lock down train hits you or die” isn’t really all that interesting either.

I don’t want to sound alarm bells or start hysterics about how this will ruin the game. We don’t know much more than Taunt will exist in some form. But I do want to see what other players think about this, and perhaps put up a large and cautionary:

ANet really needs to be careful in which builds get Taunt and how prevalent it is to avoid even more lock-down.

Yeah, I definitely agree with all of you. Cure, I think you cut right to the heart of it – the dialogue trees need to be a bit more complex and deeper to really get an immersive feel. Race specific lines are one part of that, but not the whole.

For example, while race specific dialogue still does exist in LS2, most of it is quite minor. Things like calling Queen Jennah “Your Majesty,” as a human or a more generic title if not. This sort of thing is good, but only really a surface attempt to have things make sense based on who the PC is.

I also want to say again I don’t really have a problem with Sylvari being the feature in HoT, it makes sense given the plot. It was a bit weird that the stuff with Zhaitan also felt that way though, yes. However, even if featuring a certain race because of ties to a certain dragon, other PC races should not feel awkward progressing through the story.

Hmm, true. And I was aware that there are still some instances of specific dialogue based on race and/or personal story choices. I’ve played LS2 twice, once on Hael (norn) and once on a human.

I guess then I am asking for more, or for more intelligent use of it. And not just a line modified by a few words each time, but in some cases who is speaking and how should probably change (like when DE comes up to greet your character, every PC is probably most familiar with the one member they’ve known since level 1).

I’m not even certain race specific dialogue as a blanket solution is the exact answer, but the writing does need to flow more naturally considering the story of the player character so far.

I don’t want to harp on this, but the bottom line is playing out LS2 as a norn often felt awkward and like my toon was entirely out of place. That shouldn’t be happening, and is failure in the dialogue writing IMHO.

I did do a search, didn’t see any threads here with the PC Gamer interview at: http://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-interview/

The main part of that interview I want to look at is this answer from Colin (spoilers).

Now, it’s difficult to know exactly what Colin is getting at here, and I don’t believe he is saying “Re-roll your main as a Sylvari if you want to enjoy HoT.” If that is in any way the design ethos for HoT, there are more alarm bells going off than I can even describe. So, we’ll leave that theory aside.

But it does bring up a central point. HoT will have an obvious focus on Sylvari lore. That’s fine, it makes sense given the plot we know of. But tbh, I’m getting sick of the all-Salad-all the time story. Let me try to give examples (beyond the obvious Trahearne, Scarlet, Caithe, Pale Tree why are all the most influential NPCs Sylvari while we see almost nothing of people like Whitebear, Smodur etcetera?):

ANet decided all races should be involved with HoT, so we had the World Summit. IMHO, it failed miserably because it turned out to be a 10 minute meeting with some pretty weak dialogue. While my character has reason to be coming after Mordremoth with the Pact via the PS and LS1, the Summit felt like a quickly made excuse, rather than a real reason to get everyone else in on Mordremoth, especially the Norn.

Now, I think there are a few reasons for this. Number 1, LS2 felt rushed, like it tried to cover too much story in too few instances. It’s like all the details which made the plot make sense were cut to save time. The World Summit would have benefited a lot from an extra 5 minutes of dialogue, a little back and forth between the assembled characters rather than near boiler plate responses from each of the 4 racial representatives.

Two, and the big one. My main, Hael, is a norn. When she goes to the Summit and Whitebear doesn’t recognize that she is norn, or when Eir won’t talk to her at all after the defence in Pact Assaulted while every one else does, it’s a complete immersion breaker. Why are Logan and the Pale Tree greeting Hael like long lost friends while Eir only gives a casual line? In Hael’s case, Eir is her oldest friend of the entire group, and the one who should naturally be greeting her most warmly.

To be honest, playing through the back half of LS2 felt like the game was constantly twatting me over the head with a stick because I was not playing a Sylvari or at other times a Human. This should absolutely not happen, no matter where the plot’s focus is going.

So my question is then – can we start to get some race separated dialogue back into the game with HoT? The PS before level 50 remains the most compelling bit of story telling in GW2 to date simply because the dialogue was written with each race in mind, rather than trying to make something work word-for-word across all 5.

I’m not talking sweeping changes, but the little details which make the characters and dialogue feel natural and like my main is a norn woman rather than a cardboard cut-out labelled hero.

TL:DR – NPCs need to react more naturally to the player character, and race specific dialogue with slight tweaks for each race is a big part of that (think PS pre level 50 verses after level 50, where your character suddenly talks differently so all races can use the same lines). Little details mean a lot in terms of immersion, and the player should never feel like they are being punished because they aren’t on a Sylvari or Human toon.

While I completely understand clipping between hair, armour pieces and things are very difficult and can never be completely fixed, there are some that really should be.

For example:

Banded Boots (Heavy) – Human Male – The human’s ankle bones clip through the side of the boot, even when the leg piece has no “sock.”

Vigil Headband (Medium) – Norn Female – On at least one head, the band disappears right into the middle of the forehead.

Clips like this, where armour pieces conflict with standard body models really should be fixed. (I realize the head can change a bit with sliders, so is more difficult).

I have to say, the state of LA is one of the biggest down falls of LS 2 for me since it kills the entire sense of having a Living Story. The whole season, the city was just sitting completely static for….it’s been months now. There are NPCs there, clearly hammering on something, there was talk of rebuilding and so on, and yet there are still holes in the bridges when trying to walk places.

LS2 basically didn’t live at all for me. The only things that moved were in the instances, and some of the vine stuff out in the open world. But LA just sat there. I didn’t expect it to be magically fixed or even for the rebuild to go smoothly, but small little updates like patches on the bridges or other things like this would have at least reminded us the world was still ticking on.

The sale weekend is over, with the potential of a lot of new players coming to Tyria, so time for a bump.

Also, we still do guild missions that are open invite to any who want to join us. You can find us at Cornucopian Fields Waypoint in Gendarran Fields, just north of Lion’s Arch. We usually start gathering around 8:10 PST / 11:10 EST and try to get started near to 8:30 PST.

Guild Missions are a bit random, and we can’t choose the level of some of the events. But the Puzzle is always less than level 25, so don’t feel you have to be at 80 to come take part.

Of course, you can always whisper an officer listed on the first post if you have questions.

Welcome Kenshin! I’ve just sent you an invite in game. Feel free to jump right into the chatter

Mad King season is here once again!

Also, our guild missions are wide open for guests to join! Just come meet us at the Durmand Priory a little before the start times for an invite, or whisper one of the officers listed in the OP. Times and the hosting guilds are below:

Friday: 8:30pm Pacific, hosted by the Legion of Honour [XIII]
Sunday: 11:30am Pacific, hosted by Vanquish [Vanq]

Jana, welcome! I’ve sent an invite along. Not sure if we have any other active members on Aurora Glade to help with WvW, but there are definitely some around the EU servers who should be able to help get you started on dungeons.

Welcome isagel and Jace!

Isagel, I really believe the best class set-up is the one that suits the player. I run Mace/Focus a lot on my guardian, even in dungeons. There are many people about who are happy to teach dungeons and get you started! Even fractals are nothing to be scared of, below level 10 they are really a lot like any other dungeon, and they are a great way to earn yourself some 20 slot bags, even if you have no interest in leveling them up.

I’ve sent you both invites, see you around

Hi Jigain! We actually have quite a few around who are from the EU but play on the NA servers, Lexy and Nicky included.

I’ve sent an invite along. And if your friends does like what she sees, a new post is best. Just easier for me to see at a glance. See you about and have fun!

LAN settings change in Win 7 64-bit has helped here too!

Hi Mimi and Gudy!

Sorry for the long delay, was ill and not as attentive as I should have been, but the invites are sent now. Welcome and have fun!

Hey there Sungak and Astro! I’ve sent you both invites, so welcome to the fun

Hi Corin and welcome!

Most of us play PvP as a pastime, but the Pugs plays at quite a high level in team queue. As for PvE, there are lots around who are willing to help and teach! It’s definitely a bit of different thing than PvE, including how to build up a character.