State of the Game and similar dev interactions are very disappointing, I wish there were actually some searching questions asked, not just suck up questions. Journalism, not Puff-piece.
Some ideas for tougher less fluffy questions: (with a mostly engineer bias, I’d expect other classes to make their own list of hot issues)
- Why no test server? It’s proved a good idea on every other MMO for the last 17years.
- You refer to s/t-PvP as being THE PVP like WVW doesn’t exist, and most balance decisions seem to have extremely poor WvW viability. Yet WvW is a far more successful game mode, and is far more likely to generate gems because WvW is (unfortunately) grind based, isn’t it time to add a WvW class balance team and separate skill balances?
- Elementalist downed skills as released were really subpar but were fixed in a few weeks, why are engineer downed skills still extremely subpar after 6months?
- Engineer released with a 20 page bug and QoL list, after 6 months they have a 19 page list, will this ever become a priority?
- Turrets survive less than a second in WvW, or are out of battle range and therefore useless, will you consider making turrets aoe immune?
- There are 60 points spending to get all turret traits, which are a mess and scattered illogically through the trees, all 60points of spend on all turrets gives less impact to the gameplay than many 5point passives let alone 10pointers.
- Minions including turrets are painfully dumb, any upgrades coming to their artificial intelligence to actually include any intelligence e.g. stopping them futilely shooting at some pet that left the area several minutes ago?
- The kit refinement changes were hated by the engineer community because it made all multi-kit builds worthless not just 100nades, will the kit refinement mistake be learnt from and replaced?
- Engineer is supposed to have options to control the distance of battle as the only ‘mid range’ class, yet it is trying to do it with basically just swiftness which is mostly worthless in battle (jump shot is slower than running etc). Will we see working gap opener/closers on aspects of the engineer that are actually workable?
- If HGH/might stack builds are going away, why is nothing coming in to replace it for engineer?
- If HGH/might stack builds are going away, and 100nades was entirely deleted from the game, why are so many of the other (many stronger) Apex builds from other classes that have been around for far longer being left untouched?
- Engineer has vastly less builds now than months ago, yet none of the “diversifying engineer builds” measures are anything but thinly veiled nerfs doing nothing worthwhile to open any new builds? What will happen to open some new builds up?
- Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, just how bad do they have to get before something useful and non-fluff happens?
- Gadgets… seriously where to start… Add traits that actually support them, overhaul all of them, add signet style passives to them etc etc
What topics would you like to build questions for the devs around? If you weren’t in fawning “OMG thanks for so much for speaking to a mere mortal, can I braid your hair?” mode, but actually approaching them from a current affairs interview/journalistic style.