Guild Wars 2

I’d like to see the Wide-Rim Glasses make a comeback! I missed out on this one ages ago and given the return of the Aviators in recent times, I’d love to have these, too.

As soon as the patch went live, I got a mail from the Black Lion Trading Post in my inbox, but it was empty. I know I’m not the only one who had this happen. Does anyone know why these are popping up and what for? Does it have to do with “refunded” infusions?

The staff animations and weight feels worlds better from the previous beta weekend. Last beta weekend, I was certain I would not be playing daredevil when HoT released. After this one, I changed my mind. The skill fixes, too, are fantastic. Thank you for listening, Anet!

One thing I would point out is that the dagger models for the Distracting Daggers skill actually clips quite deeply into asura player models. It’s not the end of the world, but resizing these daggers to be just a bit smaller would be nice.

I also agree on Impairing Dagger- a straight trajectory would feel much more powerful than the current arc in regards to visuals.

Here’s my feedback for the lovely devs after playing scrapper this beta weekend—

First off, I really really enjoyed playing scrapper. One of my two mains is an engineer and I was happy to see how fluid and natural things felt in his hands. I initially thought I wouldn’t go the way of scrapper in HoT, but playing scrapper in BWE3 convinced me that I actually could switch it up and enjoy it immensely, if not run that by default now.

There is one very important thing I would like to point out though, and that’s that, to me, it felt like one very important thing (and only this one glaring thing) was missing: weapon swap. I expect a negative response but honestly, it’s big enough I wanted to come here after playing and point it out, and leave the rest up to the devs. I normally play pistolxpistol engie, with rocket boot, radiation field, and flamethrower kit skills. I love this build. It may be a little unorthodox for an engie build but I don’t care for picking up turrets all the time, and it’s been fantastic for me (I play mostly PvE). Though the downside is that it felt like there was nothing that felt “right” in smacking something up close and having it feel damaging or rewarding enough.

Now with the hammer, smacking things up close feels fantastic. However as soon as there’s AoE all over the ground and I can’t get anywhere near my target, suddenly I’m really missing my pistols again. I found myself having to wait around to attack when the ground was saturated, and it was disappointing. You could argue it’s give and take, but it really is a shame when every other profession I’ve played felt like it had solutions for both at the push of a button, without using kits. The gyros aren’t a sound enough ranged solution in my opinion- I don’t like relying on the AI. The grenade kit has never been my cup of tea (I like to run on the go without aoe aiming) and the flamethrower kit doesn’t have the range my pistols have. Elixir gun has never felt particularly fun, either. So that’s my one big thing, Anet: /please/ let me keep my pistols, too, without having to constantly un/re-equip. <3

Other feedback on scrapper: The animations, weight, and up close and personal damage all felt good, assuming others are better at pointing out specific number tweaks. I do encounter an issue where my asura “snaps backward” when jumping with the hammer wielded (latency issue?), but other than that, it’s very sound. I enjoyed the gyros, but overall felt that they weren’t useful enough (both in AI and damage) to replace my existing skills. The trait line, I was happy to discover, did not negate my previous build as I worried it might.

I did find that the rocket charge (3) skill was inconsistent in movement, especially when playing in the Silverwastes- I would easily get stuck on very low rocks I could normally run right over, and I would also launch and fall right off fort walls when attacking up top, even with a target if the target was close to the edge. I do love the attack and its movement+animation, though. But the issues pointed out above could use a little refinement.

Overall it played fantastic and is easily up near the top of new favorite class specialization.

What exactly can a Follower see? More specifically, can someone who follows you view the name of the character you’re playing?

Koomaster.9176:

’Don’t hate the player, hate the game.’ fits perfectly well here. This event was poorly thought out; pretty much everyone agrees, even Anet agrees they messed up here. But there’s no reason to be salty because others decided to work hard within this system to get what they wanted. And trust me it was HARD work, it’s a lot of pressure to tag-n-run 20 events in half an hour.

I feel bad that not everyone can come in first place; but that doesn’t mean I should drop out of the race. You can be proud you helped up the fallen runners, but don’t pretend that you don’t also want the gold medal. But don’t blame the other racers that you didn’t get it, blame the race coordinators who placed traps all over the track.

I’m inclined to agree here. A poorly designed event has created a bit of a rift in the community. The only way to get the highest tier rewards, especially if you didn’t have the time to invest, was to tag and run. I had to do it to get rewards I missed out on due to time schedule conflicts in the past (675 blossom total, ugh), and I hated how “GW2 morally wrong” it felt (if that makes sense). I don’t think anyone actually enjoyed tagging. And I don’t think Anet is going to think that the people who did it are supporting their system for this event, either, for the massive outcry from the community. I personally tried to balance it so I would end at about 20, and stay as long as possible at events while adhering to that. I’d pick up players, I’d leave explosive seeds, I’d speed buff, I’d stay and build catapults and I’d ping points for people struggling to get to events at all (I have a loading screen of 1 second and my guildie had 8-9 average, missing event after event..). A lot of others did the same. There’s always a grey zone and you make the best of a bad situation. And for all the negativity of the event I was happy to see how much players were of the same mindset in the map chats on how very un-GW2 it all was. Based on Anet’s responses it doesn’t sound like we’re going to see an event like this one again anytime soon.

If you’re going for the World Completion achievement, you don’t need to complete the WvW maps. However, if you’re completing them just because, you will need to complete each borderland individually.

Now that the weekend event is over and I’ve had more time to think on it, I wanted to come back and share my constructive post-event feedback. This is what I’d like to see if the event, or something similar to it, were ever to resurface. Some things are big, some not-so-much, but all are important in my book:

• “Next invasion starts in:” timer under Mordrem Assault.
  Reason: Many players seemed confused about the event times and often asked in the map chat.

• No one hour breaks between invasions. Make it a continuous event.
  Reason: The break seemed “too” structured for an Elder Dragon’s testing of Tyria’s defenses. A half hour break between events on a continuous cycle would have been fine in my book. While there may be concern about getting enough people into a map, I believe this is largely alleviated by the megaserver system. Even when I joined maps mid-invasion, having enough players wasn’t an issue.

• If it’s a weekend event, make it a multi-weekend event.
  Reason: This event was large/new enough that a single weekend felt a little gimmicky. This would give players more opportunities to play and gives players who might not have had a chance otherwise to give it a go. This also provides players more time to obtain rewards without making it “full living world content”.

• Remove waypoint costs during invasions.
  Reason: A map-wide event should promote easy access. I ended up forfeiting a gold or more per night for all the jumping around I had to do as a level 80 character (ouch). You could additionally make this immersive by including in the mail received by the player, “The asura have temporarily alleviated waypoint costs”, or something to that effect. Of course, this issue could also be minimized quite a bit if my later points are taken into consideration.

• Waypoints should become uncontested automatically during invasions.
  Reason: Contested waypoints made navigating the map during invasions extremely difficult, particularly in instances such as Brisban, when all Skrittsburgh points were contested, or Kessex, when all northern waypoints except Sojourner’s and Fort Salma were contested. On a similar note…

• All default dynamic events map-wide should cease upon start of the invasion.
  Reason: Not only did this contest waypoints, but there were numerous instances of these events overlapping with the invasion events, causing a great deal of chaos and excessive aggro for many. The area in which this got particularly ugly was when vine spawners overlapped with toxic offshoots in Kessex. The cliff spawner south of Cereboth Waypoint had a catapult that was actually inside the toxic offshoot’s poison ring. Many of these issues could be avoided entirely by the map-wide “shut down” of dynamic events during invasions.

• An NPC should be present at the catapult vine spawner events.
  Reason: Immersion. Having catapults and repair hammers magically spawn (and having to look for the repair hammer box) felt, to be blunt, gimmicky. Adding an NPC shouting “Quick, help me assemble the catapults!” from the repair box would have been great.

• Additional Priory members/NPCs talking about the event and/or present.
  Reason: Having one NPC per city, and only the merchant in the applicable maps present, felt underwhelming considering the fact map-wide invasions were happening.

• Targettable default map enemies should despawn within an event area during invasion.
  Reason: Players had difficulty targeting, and nobody wants to worry about ettins or Ascalonian ghosts when there’s Mordrem at hand. It wouldn’t be hard to believe the Mordrem simply “gobbled them up”, either.

• Rewards should be determined by participation, not stacks.
  Reason: Tag-and-run. One of the (beautiful, I might add) core gameplay qualities of GW2 is that it encourages players to stay and work together. I would divide participation into two categories: individual (per event) and map-wide (per invasion). More on those two in the next two points..

• Events should behave as normal events, with completion bonus chest rewards (just like in the Silverwastes).
  Reason: This is a fantastic opportunity for a new or low level player to really level their character up and get excited about participating in events. Experience and karma should be rewarded, just like any other event. Additionally, a bonus chest appearing in the lower right per event completed, instead of the event stacks, would have made events feel more rewarding, encouraged players to stay, and have distributed rewards more evenly. Tagging would no longer be more efficient, or even necessary, and this would be a life-saver in the event of a disconnect. I would suggest this as an example:
  *Event completed, gold level reward= 3 blossoms
  *Event completed, silver level reward= 2 blossoms
  *Event completed, bronze level reward= 1 blossom

• A map-wide bonus should be in effect during an invasion, per number of events completed.
  Reason: Teamwork and rewards. This dynamic would work similarly to how “pacman” down in the Hidden Depths of the Silverwastes works when the vines blocking the passage have withdrawn. For every x number of events completed, players get a bonus chest or reward map-wide. They should probably participate in at least 1 event per stack to be eligible. Example:
  *10 events completed= players map-wide receive 5 blossom bonus.
  Number of player events required: 1
  *20 events completed= players map-wide receive 10 blossom bonus.
  Number of player events required: 3
  Etc. The numbers aren’t exact, but something to this effect. What you’d see are people saying “Need more at [waypoint]” instead of every man for himself. Completing events would benefit everyone and promote teamwork and communication.

• Events should be scaled (at least to a mild degree).
  Reason: Many events or enemies in the game are already scaled. This encourages success regardless of map size. The event over the weekend was the first time I ever experienced problems with anything remotely like “kill stealing” in GW2. A mild scaling would ensure people could get their hits in when an area is overrun with players. This in particular was what doomed one of my low level friends: their Level 18 character simply couldn’t do enough dps to qualify for participation in any of the events, regardless of landing their hits, or enemies would go down too fast.

• If a player disconnects, their rewards should be preserved for a limited time.
  Reason: One of my guildies got disconnected 3 times during the event at a 19 stack, only to have it wiped out despite being able to get back in game and to the same map within 1 minute. Unfortunately, the carry-over fix for disconnects didn’t work for them, so this is a general “would be good in future events”.

• Addition of Mordrem Guard champion(s).
  Reason: Not only was this promoted right in time for the event, but it would have been an excellent opportunity to show off the new enemies and systems of HoT. The Mordrem from the Silverwastes have been around for a while now, so the appearance of the “new guys” would have been something to look forward to. Now before someone shouts “champ train”, this is how I imagine their appearance would work:
  Prerequisite: Per (example) 30 events completed; or if the “max number of bonus stacks” (example, 50 events map-wide?) are reached within the invasion timeframe, a notification shows up: “Mordrem Guard will spawn at x location(s) in x minutes!” Or perhaps the champs simply spawn over the last current 5 event locations. Players can opt to just kill the champ where they’re at, or coordinate map-wide for everyone to get a shot at each of them. But if they fulfill the prerequisites and it’s once per invasion, why not? It’s something exciting to look forward to and a reason to stay for the duration of the invasion. Perhaps a player has to have x number of stacks from the map-wide bonus in order to qualify for the champs dropping loot (to discourage people idling or not participating/only camping). It’d be a fun “finale” to each invasion. A timer would indicate “Mordrem Guard will withdraw in:” so it could remain within the invasion window, and not interfere with normal map-wide events once the invasion stopped.

• Balance rewards so they’re obtainable moreso through participation, and less-so through grinding.
  Reason: Some people simply don’t have the time to participate in events over and over and over, but they should still be eligible for a good reward, while people who do have the time should be eligible for multiple good rewards. This is something I’ve enjoyed in past events. I’m of the mindset that if someone were to participate in all three map rotations per day, every day of the event, that alone should be enough for them to get a high-end reward. That’s still a minimum of an hour and a half a day. If someone wants to do multiple runs to earn more, let ’em, but quality over quantity when it comes to events participated in.

• If it’s a multi-weekend event (encouraged), add achievements.
  Reason: Who doesn’t enjoy achievements? It’s more to work toward and more reason to participate in the event multiple times. I personally would really enjoy, if the event went on for 4 weekends, that if a player participated in the event on each of those 4 weekends, they get a special achievement/bonus chest.

Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of this event for me, aside from how it felt very anti-GW2 community spirit in working and playing together, was the fact that it felt so very gimmicky in a game that has otherwise been wholly and beautifully immersive. At one point I realized that I had completely lost sight of the Mordrem being a threat during the invasion. They were nothing more than a currency, and their threat didn’t feel serious. It didn’t even feel “canon”.

That being said, I think an event like this has a lot of potential. While this weekend was painful, I think this was a very good (albeit, again, painful) learning experience on what definitely doesn’t and won’t work. I hope you guys are able to take my feedback, and the feedback of others, and do something great with it. We’ve seen it before and for all the things you guys have done right, I’m sure you can do it again.

A handful of feedback from personal experience with this event, for future events:

-The “tag and run” doesn’t feel like fulfilling gameplay. It seems completely contrary to the idea of players working together. Instead of the amount of blossoms, or number of rewards being scaled to the number of events a player took part in (20+ for 15 blossoms in this instance), I would greatly prefer rewards being scaled to the rank you got upon event completion, gold resulting in the most rewards, bronze the least for participation, etc. It could even be a small number such as Gold= 3, Silver= 2, Bronze= 1 etc. Receiving a small reward per event not only makes a player’s time feel more valuable and gives them incentive to stay and see it through, but also gives them something in the event they are disconnected or have to leave early before (30 minute) event end. It wouldn’t be a complete loss.
>Counterpoint- One could argue that this could result in too many players at events preventing people from getting in hits (see some frustrations regarding daily events). However with the number of events spawning around the zones, the chance of this being a problem seems less likely.

-Promote a multi-weekend event or longer event when there are high-end rewards present. Many people have school and/or work and there simply isn’t enough time to earn the high-end rewards. Something I always enjoyed about the old limited time content updates (e.g.- Queen’s Gauntlet) is that there was always enough time, even if I could only get in game for 30-60 minutes a day after work, to earn at least one good high-end reward. Perhaps in the future, it’d be better to extend the event across multiple weekends, with a “participation bonus” for being present in 1-3 of the invasions per weekend. This would give people incentive to stop by and try it out for a larger/bonus reward at the end.

-Free waypoints for full zone content. I bring this up primarily for new players who may want to participate in the event, but have trouble getting to the actual events in time due to either not having explored the full zone, or the waypointing eventually taking a notable sum out of their wallets (removing the event stack to determine rewards would also minimize this issue).

-Potential reward cost reconsideration. This is referring specifically to the additional gold cost for reward items. Again, this is primarily for new(er) players. It would be difficult for most level 18 players to be able to afford an additional 10 gold toward a high end reward, which is a shame if they participated enough to earn it otherwise. Vendors being available long after the event is over is nice, however, that is still a lot of money for a new player, and it could be months before they could afford it. Reward content should be equally accessible to all players across all levels as players are investing their time moreso than their builds or experience.

-Possible implementation of a bonus event. By this, I mean if a certain number of events are completed within a given timeframe, players map-wide receive a bonus. Think of it a bit like “pacman” in the Hidden Depths of the Silverwastes. I’m fairly certain most players would be happy to work toward a “bonus event” for additional rewards, and this facilitates cooperative gameplay.

I hope you guys find some of this feedback helpful for future events.

I agree, the vertical level map display is essential. I’m assuming it hasn’t been implemented yet only because it’s “polish” before HoT releases, but it can’t hurt to mention it.

I personally feel that the staff 2 skill [Weakening Charge] was the most frustrating to play with. Much like the Reaper’s Death Charge skill in the previous beta weekend, I found myself overshooting enemies very frequently. I would much prefer it as a gap-closer that ended upon contact with enemies, and with greater range.

I also feel that some if not most of the animations on the Daredevil were clunky, particularly on the asura. Thief animations tend to be very fluid and graceful (shadow arts), but I found the actions often felt “too fast” and landed “too heavy” immediately after [staff skill 3 Debilitating Arc is a good example of this]. I think a shadowstep-type animation here would be much better. Visually it felt like the character’s weight was constantly shifting to extremes and it was very unpleasant visually, which made it less fun to play in all honesty. That being said, skill 5 Vault was pretty wonderful.

Suggestion: Goatee Facial Hair option for Human males.

This is the #1 thing I felt was missing when making my Human male Necromancer. I would happily purchase a hair kit for it if the option were made available. Facial hair option #3 (going from left to right on the wiki- none, Hulk Hogan, option #3) without the moustache would be perfectly suited in my opinion.

Please, and should it happen, thank you!

This seems to be an issue with all characters with a bow equipped. I have the same issue with my longbow on my Charr Ranger when switching to first person view.