Guild Wars 2

So, as a player who drops back into this game every so often (in other words I’m playing GW2 like a dirty casual), I cannot help but wonder how much better everything could have been if the raid development resources were put into something more than what a very small percentage of your audience plays.

I completely fail to see the logic in making what are essentially private-club PvE maps, when those maps could be "open world raids" similar to Dragon’s Stand. You’d also be able to reveal more of the story to your entire PvE audience and not just the smaller raiding sub-culture. I hope thought is being given to opening up raid content to the entire playerbase, as you’re just not spending development resources efficiently right now, in my opinion.

As for the content I do have access too, it was average. It had a lot of filler, not much lore progression, and only really raised more questions than that it provided answers. The design for the final boss environment was quite solid though, even if the rest of the content was made up of re-used assets.

Edit: "Less than 50 words TLDR": Put more development resources into content all players got access too, so I feel encouraged to play your game more often and longer, and therefore increase the likelihood I spend more money.

No comment on arena PvP, since I don’t play it due to it not being my cup of tea.

But people not playing WvW, I can explain; The WvW community can be extremely elitist and non-inclusive. I’ve seen countless cases where newer players hop into WvW and instinctively follow the shiny tag, only to then get shouted at due to not being on coms/bad spec/rally bot/guild raid/ you name it. When this happens to YOU, would you consider returning? I wouldn’t.

This is probably why EotM (the "fake WvW") is more popular, anyone can hop on in there and follow the tag, and experience larger scale PvP without being shouted at.

WvW was extremely crowded at launch, remember that? Those were the days where commanders simply focused on leading their group, rather than micromanaging every individual player and having high demands. Naturally I am aware that the "meta" evolved since those days, but if you’re asking why less people play WvW compared to PvE, then here is (a notable part of) your answer.

Peppel.9736:

Raap.9065:

But server names isn’t exactly something I’d call a priority...

Sure, for you ... because you are on a host server. We, the peeps from a gast server, miss our server, we lost to much since the linkings.

We are fighting in the name form the host server, not for us/our name. An alliance consists of several servers not just one. We have become mercenaries ... which are sent every 2 months to a host server. WE have lost our server .. *our home in WvW*.

*For the most from us, has it a high priority ... to get our identitary back, sry.*

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Slow-death-of-the-forgotten-Guest-server/first#post6299696

Then change the names from:

[host server]
[other servers listed below on mouse over]

To:

[host server + linked server + linked server + ...]

Lower the font size slightly and/or cut the names short, or abbreviate them where it makes sense. Names consisting of 6 or less characters can be written in full. So you would get:

Deso and Vabbi have captured XXX.

This is something more people already mentioned, but shouldn’t take any significant development time.

A final alternative? Leave it up to the community to name their clusters, and officially merge those servers based on polling the playerbase of those servers. Taking Desolation and Vabbi as an example again, according to chat and some forums (I’ve not played in a long while so I’m only just checking back in on things), the name "Vabbilation" seems like a popular reference to this particular alliance of servers, which has apparently persisted for a while now.

Naturally not all server links have such an option, which probably makes this alternative not a viable solution.

I still think there are bigger issues to solve, though.

I recently started playing a little again, and noticed quite a few problems (some ancient, some new). But server names isn’t exactly something I’d call a priority... Invest your development time into real problems or content.

Edit: To be clear, I actually prefer the current naming system to the three proposed alternatives. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. In this case, "fixing" the names may only lead to undesired side effects, such as a further loss of server/team identity.

I’m tempted to give the game another shot myself. I quit shortly after the HoT trainwreck and after my friends stopped playing (briefly transferred to Vabbi [EU] with them but that didn’t work out).

I suppose my concern is... Is the game FUN again? HoT stripped away so much that was good about the game and judging by the patch notes, we’re still not all back to where we were yet (small guilds still got the finger and remain unable to contribute to WvW via things like +5 supply).

Just not sure how I feel about giving the game another chance, especially seeing that so many people have quit.

The interviews were interesting to listen to.

I haven’t played the game in a while. I was hoping HoT would re-spark my interest in the game, especially WvW, but all the changes made to WvW in HoT (this includes the changes to guild upgrades) have simply resulted in myself and my friends quitting entirely. Our last attempt to play the game was a few months ago when we transferred to a lower tier server, but most of us saw the coming storm from HoT in the distance, and we lost interest.

But I do appreciate the community efforts such as this interview with Ins from Reyana, to try and fix this dying game mode. Perhaps this game can have another chance if ArenaNet acts quickly. Nothing short of a complete "relaunch" of the WvW game mode will be enough to get my friends back, but I think that with enough development attention, ArenaNet can retain their remaining WvW population.

It was the only well developed NPC character in the entire game, and it felt like they killed him off because a certain crowd didn’t like him.

GW2 already lacks NPC character depth, it needed more story and character development, not less.

I wanted to play HoT, I really did, but too many things just stop me.

It’s not the difficulty for me (I’m actually not finding it that hard, just grindy, like mobs being unkillable until you grinded the hell out of some mastery line, like wtf?).

What stops me is... Completely empty HoT maps with map mechanics that require coordinated zergs. Even hero challenges require 2-3 people. HoT maps are just too much of a ghost town for the player quantity requirements they have. They need to stop making so many map copies and just dump everyone in one map like they do in the old Tyria maps... Been to Cursed Shore recently? I got zero problems finding large numbers of people in the old maps, it’s just HoT maps that are dead.

And to add as icing on the tasteless cake, just when you finally managed to get into a populated map that manages to progress a meta event... Boom, crash or disconnect, play slot denied and you lost all progress and re-join in a dead map. Crashes and disconnects are a daily occurrence in GW2 (and only in GW2, nothing else), you’d think that by now some slot reservation system would have been implemented, but no.

The mastery system is indeed too grindy, but so are the maps in general. In ArenaNet they seem to have the same definition for the words "replayable" and "repetitive"... A darn shame too, as the new maps are certainly the best looking in the game, and gliding does add to the gameplay a lot more than just being a gimmick.

My final significant issue lies with how terribly rushed the personal story is, it’s clear that they cut out a lot of missions especially during the second half of the story (let’s not waste words about the ending). They even dropped multi-path choices down to only offering it in the very first mission and it had no real significance unlike how they hyped it to be.

Here is to hoping the next expansion will do better on these fronts.

I unfortunately find myself in a similar position now that most of my friends quit this game (and I personally only play casually). We could probably make an effort and get a hall, but gating progression behind a minimum player requirement for guild mission credit for favor is a bit of a kick in the sensitive parts.

Considering past efforts with influence (not to mention gold spent on it), the lack of any return for the effort now that HoT has launched is unfortunate. We can actually do less with the guild now than we could with the influence system, because with influence we could at least progress at things at a steady pace, while also doing +5 WvW supply upgrades pretty much constantly.

TLDR: For small and casual guilds, guild functionality was lost with HoT’s arrival.

I send in a ticket, thanks for letting me know they do restore these, I wouldn’t have tried otherwise (support typically doesn’t restore items).

As for the upgrades not working, I guess it’s better to have the base item rather than nothing at all, until they fix it at least.

So, it turns out I’m a bit of a kitten and deleted the back piece reward from the last Verdant Brink mission, thinking I no longer needed it after unlocking the ’skin’.

Well then, so it appears that in the very next mission it upgrades, but that’s not working for me anymore seeing as I deleted it. So my question is, does this back item turn into anything significant later on? And if so, did I just kitten my character or is there a way to get it back (afaik, running missions a second time gives different, lesser rewards)?

Thanks for any helpful responses... And note to ArenaNet: If mission or one-time items serve additional purposes, perhaps mention this in-game...

Maps are pretty dead in my experience. Doing the legendary mordrem wyvern with 10 people max seems the standard.

ArenaNet being cheap and setting map population caps too low, is my guess, since there are several map copies running.

With disconnects and lag spikes happening extremely frequently now on EU servers, this has started to become a real quit-point for my small guild.

This week, every time we want to do something in WvW, in each fight we’ll have at least one person lag out or DC. This is a GW2-only issue, our connections are fine (We’re all on TS), it’s just the game.

ArenaNet has shrugged this off as a routing issue for over a year now, but when so many people got problems only with GW2, from all over Europe, then this ’routing’ issue must be 5 meters outside the EU server office.

I had this exact issue recently at a random moment on a random PvE map. Sound was hanging at the ’waypoint’ noise and my FPS was dropping rapidly. Could not alt+F4, could not alt-tab because the in-game cursor would ’overlap’ on the task manager and prevent me from clicking anything... I had to force a reboot.

Windows 10 as well. This exact problem never occurred for me on Windows 7.

On a likely related note, GW2 doesn’t alt-tab properly on Windows 10.

I’ve had connection issues with GW2 exclusively starting about a year ago. The past few days it’s only been getting worse, and everyone in my small ~10 man guild also suffers from it, and we’re located all over Europe.

Back when I got properly annoyed with it during the Silverwastes releases, I went through the whole email ticket process, send them the ping plotting info and everything. All support told me was that it’s a routing issue and they can’t do anything about it... Fast forward to today and that still appears to be the same response.

Clearly, something is wrong with the GW2 game servers, be they NA or EU servers... Surely we’d have issues with other applications if it was a routing issue on this large a scale.

Pick up your game ArenaNet, this has been going on long enough. I heard throwing money at problems fixes them, try it.

One could write or read a book on this subject, but the most straight forward tip I can give you is: Follow a different commander for a while, and learn from him/her. Higher tier servers have quite a few good commanders that one could learn from by simply following.

Bonus tip: When you’re leading pugs, never stop talking.

A problem a lot of us suffer from all too commonly with GW2’s game servers.

They really need to add a map slot reservation system, that keeps your slot for 2 minutes after disconnecting, and also make map-specific buffs not expire right away either.

I’m not looking forward to HoT map mechanics if they don’t solve the random disconnect issues by implementing such a system... or, by fixing the disconnects in the first place (how is it a routing issue if people from all over Europe keep disconnecting randomly for over a year now?).

Hello folks,

I’ll start off by saying that I’ve had disconnection issues exclusive to GW2 (EU servers) starting over a year ago. Back then I wrote a support email and the response I got was that it was a routing issue between my location and the GW2 EU server. The routing issue was supposedly a unique issue, but it was not resolvable... It ended up in me essentially stopping to play the game, as the map mechanics did not tolerate random disconnects (getting kicked from WvW or a PvE boss fight would then reward you with a queue or a dead map, because GW2 does not have a slot reservation system). Back then I used to play on the Desolation server.

Fast forward to today, and recently myself and a few friends decided to pick up GW2 again, and moved to Vabbi, not giving the disconnecting issues much thought because it has been over a year... Surely they would have been resolved by now? Well, apparently not.

Today myself and all my friends are still suffering from random disconnects regardless of what GW2 content we do. A routing issue seems unlikely since we are all from different parts of Europe. Clearly something else must be wrong with the GW2 EU servers, as none of us are having any issues with our Internet connections.

And just to spice up the problem with some additional headache, some of us get booted to the middle of Lion’s Arch upon re-logging on our disconnected characters, even if were in a different PvE map. (Edit: Actually, I personally appear inside LA even if I just re-log without disconnecting.)

Right now this is clearly affecting our ability and motivation to play GW2, and I’d appreciate a workable solution, or an acknowledgement of EU server technical issues.

Thanks for any assistance!

I am in agreement with the overall thought that Omega’s are too powerful and lack counters in the siege game. This problem became significantly worse with the introduction of golem mastery, which I believe might need a nerf regardless.

Now, with that said, I do prefer creative solutions over straight up easy nerfs. So here is my suggestion:

New Siege: Lightning Coil
Standard Blueprint Cost: 1g / 100 Badges
Supply Cost: 150
Functionality: A tower-like structure the height of a trebuchet, with direct-targeting lightning based abilities that deal high damage to golems. Abilities coming from the Lightning Coil originate from the top of the tower to allow firing over various terrain, but require line of sight.

Ability 1: Lightning Strike - Fire a bolt of lightning from the Lightning Coil at the target, dealing 3000 damage and 25% extra damage to golems. Casting time: 1 second. Cooldown: 5 seconds. Range: 2500.

Ability 2a: Attract Magnetic Storm - Fire a charge at a hostile golem, causing it to attract a Magnetic Storm. Target golem affected by Magnetic Storm periodically deals 8000 damage to itself and nearby golems in a 1200 degree radius. Does not damage non-golems. Casting time: 1 second. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Duration: 15 seconds. Range: 2500.

Ability 2b: Magnetic Storm Implosion - Cause the Magnetic Storm to end early, pulling all hostile targets in a 900 degree radius towards the affected golem, and dealing 3000 damage to all targets caught in the blast.

Ability 3: Discharge - Unload accumulated energy in a 600 degree radius around the Lightning Coil, dealing 3000 damage and completely disabling golems for 30 seconds. After use, the Lightning Coil is also disabled for 10 seconds while it recharges. Casting time: 1 second. Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Mastery Rank 5 Ability: Chain Lightning - Fire a bolt of lightning from the Lightning Coil at the target, dealing 5000 damage to the first target and jumping to 10 additional targets, dealing 10% less damage with each jump. Golems are priority targets for Chain Lightning jumps. 50% extra damage to golems. Casting time: 2 seconds. Cooldown: 45 seconds. Range: 2500.

Rank points:
1- Increase damage done to golems using Lightning Coil abilities by an additional 20%.
2- Increase Lightning Coil ability range by 300.
3- Magnetic Storm Implosion now also disables affected golems for 10 seconds.
4- Increase the radius of Magnetic Storm and Discharge by 300.
5- Unlock ability 4.

This should slow down the golem march and force them to spread out and not stack too much (a direct nerf to time warped golems). Damage numbers could be tweaked but you get the idea. I think we lack a more defensive piece of siege equipment on the scale of a Trebuchet which is (intended to be) a mostly offensive weapon.

It helps out if you’re geared in full ascended, that’s not something anybody can deny.

The question you have to ask yourself is, can you be bothered to grind PvE of several weeks to get a gear set only viable for 1 character and 1 specialisation on that character? Can you be bothered with doing this grind all over again whenever a balance patch changes the meta (oh right, well okay, we don’t get those, but let’s pretend)?

If you can be bothered, then you will gain a ~13% statistical advantage vs. other players, and an even bigger advantage vs. NPC’s in WvW thanks to infusions (which helps you get the benefits from guard killer/defender abilities a little faster than others).

Personally, I cannot be bothered grinding PvE for one spec, especially with HoT coming later this year and I might find that either 1) Obtaining ascended gear becomes easier in HoT, 2) I need my gold for new and more important things in HoT, 3) HoT completely changes the meta, forcing me to get a brand new ascended set regardless.

Ultimately the choice is yours, it’s all about how much play time you have available to put up with the grind.

While I cannot comment on the state of your server, I can say that finding and joining a WvW guild is quite easy on the more populated WvW servers.

As for the state of the game, you’re mostly right, there has been very little development for this part of the game, and PvE seems to be the biggest drain of ArenaNet’s resources.

With that said, organised WvW is still enjoyable, but only as enjoyable as the people you play with. So take that with you when considering if changing server is worth it for you and your friend.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if ArenaNet released a brief ’LS1’ pack with re-used LS1 content before HoT releases to solve exactly this lore consistency issue.

They could probably package all the major elements of LS1 into 4 or 5 LS2-sized chapters. I mean, honestly, I actually think they should, they owe it to every new player hoping into GW2, who now are left fairly confused as to what it actually happening in LS2.

The only thing left out of such a repackaged LS1 chapter would be the open world content from the original LS1, but that still leaves a decent chunk of instanced content, in which most of the plot of LS1 occurred anyhow.

They could set it up sort of like this:
- Chapter one: Molten Alliance missions (cragstead, hatchery, factory), and introduction of characters.
- Chapter two: Aetherblade missions (murder investigation, hidden base), and introduction of additional characters.
- Chapter three: Clockwork stuff and fractals stuff.
- Chapter four: Toxic Alliance stuff (admittedly the tower of nightmares is problematic since its physical location is blown up, GW2 needs phasing technology)
- Chapter five: Defense of lions arch (will need some reworking as this was mostly open world content).

Edit: Writing about the alliances above reminded me of how terrible the story for LS1 was... Maybe axe the worst offenders, like the toxic alliance (which still plague PvE maps today).

Whenever some of you make a post about WvW world completion requirements and how annoying it is for you, please also consider how annoying it is for WvW players that have to do PvE they don’t enjoy doing.

It’s the same thing but in reverse.

I’ll tell you what, you can have WvW removed from your PvE world completion, and in return, WvW players should be able to acquired their gold and Ascended gear completely - and reliably - from WvW. Deal?

We have absolutely no idea how large the expansion will be, at best we can only make an educated guess based of various facts we do know, such as the typical size of the zones and how many would fit into that area of the map.

ArenaNet named it an expansion and as with all expansions to any game ever, they don’t typically add more than 20% of the amount of content that the base game offered, and they also typically cost a little less to reflect upon this as well as the shorter development time...

Granted, HoT’s development time is greater than 2 years, which is about four times the development time of an average game expansion and twice the development time of a typical MMORPG expansion, this can mean 3 things: 1; Living story drained too much development resources and slowed down production of the expansion, 2; HoT is larger than a typical expansion, 3; ArenaNet mismanaged development resources.

HoT is not a completely new or stand-alone product like for example GW1’s Factions and Nightfall campaigns were, and ArenaNet also isn’t advertising HoT as anything other than an expansion. So with all this said, consider setting your expectations to a more reasonable 20% of the content we currently have in the base game... Anything exceeding that would be a bonus.

Finally, my prediction is that any competitive content (sPvP, WvW, abilities for existing classes) will be ’free’ the day the expansion launches, as adding a paywall that separates your competitive community is mostly unheard of and not very wise.

ColinJohanson.2394:

And now the post is up in the trait thread specifically to answer that point specifically. I’ll say by our definition of grind because you can purchase traits for skill points and gold which you can earn from different types of content and game modes OR play the content, this would not be considered a "grindy" system by our definition - but that doesn’t mean it’s right for Gw2’s future.

I wish you provided a similar option for the Ascended gear grind we have today. To get Ascended gear on a character (be that a main, an alt, or every single time you wish to change a spec of a character and therefore require entirely new gear), you currently HAVE to grind for gold or camp the trade post (or buy gold with gems at a terrible conversion rate), and you HAVE to put up with the grindy-by-nature crafting system.

You can NOT realistically attain Ascended gear by playing the game; There is no option to buy them with Karma, Badges of Honor, or dungeon tokens, the so-called fun alternatives. And then you also got the time-gated laurels. Together these systems really force grind upon players and also make them feel locked into a specific character and spec.

Will this be resolved in HoT?

They don’t look like Mursaat, they have more in common with their constructs than the actual floating humanoids we know from GW1.

The symbol on the door and the gold armor are the only signs pointing towards a potentially redesigned Mursaat, but the architecture surrounding them does not, since GW1 Mursaat had dark purple structure designs, and LS2 episode 8 even clearly stated the gold structures are made by the Forgotten... And given that they do appear semi-snake like in some of the screenshots, they could just as well be redesigned Forgotten.

I think a more likely possibility is that these creatures are simply just new ’friendly’ elementals of some sort. I know, I know, that really makes it sound a lot less exciting, doesnt it? Unfortunately I’m not quite ready to jump on the Mursaat band-wagon just yet, considering what we know so far.

... Either that or ArenaNet ret-coned a whole bunch of stuff and past lore is no longer relevant.

Edit: Apparantly the forum filter thinks "doesn’t it" is offensive and filters it.

The skill lag is unplayable for me at the moment. It’s matching pre-render change levels, ability cooldowns tripled.

Points per kill helped a good amount with this. I wish it was a permanent addition to the game.

While I love new maps, this one raises 3 concerns:

- Mechanics that will imbalance PvP battles similar to EotM.
- Annoying knockback battles near cliff edges similar to EotM.
- Anything else that makes it too similar to EoTM.

I will hold my final judgment until I playtest the map but right now I’m skeptical. I would have rather had PvE maps converted into standard WvW maps.

They stated that the new map*s* (read the HoT website) will have 3 layers; Underground, surface, and canopy. We also know they will support flying, suggesting that the size of these maps will be large (otherwise you’d fly into invisible map border walls all the time).

But for the exact number of maps, we can only speculate. My personal guess is that since they specifically mention the ’heart’ of the Maguuma jungle, that we will only have in-land zones and not coastal ones, and then looking at the world map, that realistically only leaves room for about 3 to 6 maps of Brisban size, with a small possibility of a few minor non-flying ’connector’ maps similar to GW1/Dry Top/Silverwastes.

The important part to remember here is that ArenaNet claims the new maps will have 3 different layers, compared to the core GW2 maps which are all flat planes and where underground parts rarely have a surface playable area on top of them.

I’m happy it’s an expansion you need to buy, I enjoy paying for a solid chunk of quality content much more so that getting slivers of free ’content’, it’s why I never enjoyed the living story much.

Taygus.4571:

dc’s happen...it’s not that big a deal.

Unfortunately, it IS a big deal when GW2 has no reservation system and has implemented mechanics such as buffs that you lose upon leaving the map - this includes a disconnect.

I’m in a bad position myself for GW2, between my ISP and GW2’s EU server is a faulty route that drops me every so often, and as you can understand, having that happen in a map like Silverwastes is extremely frustrating.

Now ArenaNet cannot solve disconnects, they are an unfortunate reality. But what they CAN do is implement a reservation system and prevent buffs and such things from being removed upon disconnects.

I would have preferred double WXP, but then I suppose it would be a queue nightmare.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Rentapest.6503:

I hope they put character expansion slots on offer!

I also do. And bag slots, and copper-fed. But AFAIK it will be -15% on all boosters (anyone actually buys that stuff?).

I know people used to buy WXP boosters, at least they did until the candy corn eater thing arrived which basically meant permanent WXP bonus if you stocked up some alts with cheap candy corn (I know I did).

I couldn’t really guess if the other boosters are sold much, maybe 50% Experience for alts? Frankly I find boosters annoying, they last too short and you are therefore are not always guaranteed that you gain optimal results within the limited time frame... And for what they are, they cost too much gems for my taste.

PPK was rewarding good combat performance, it had a significant effect on the score, more so than the lack of white swords had.

From my relatively casual WvWer perspective, it made the fights more meaningful and intense. It meant there was more to WvW than rubbing doors and then holding on to said doors.

So yeah, I’d like to see it return. But I’d also look a lot of other things, such as the removal of rally, the introduction of new mechanics, new maps, new siege, new classes and abilities to break up the meta, more use for badges (ascended gear)... Here is to hoping the expansion delivers some of it.

The forum won’t let me edit my post to fix grammar mistakes... Please fix this forum, it’s getting annoying.

This map hopping has to end, not forcefully (people should continue being able to play where they want), but with stronger incentives to stay.

The major issue right now is that this map appears to be dead to most players unaware of, or unwilling to deal with map hopping. As a result it makes people think the game is in bad shape (new content + no players playing it only leads to few possible conclusions).

Recommended changes:
- All persistent buffs should continue worked when disconnected from the game, and should only be removed if a different map is loaded willingly by the player. It’s annoying to lose the buffs because of a random disconnect and it makes them meaningless.
- Encourage participation in the pre-vinewrath events by making the existing stacking event buff go to 15 stacks and at every 3 stacks you earn a bonus item for defeating the vinewrath.
- The vinewrath kill buff should much more noticeably raise the bandit crest rewards and the buff should stack up to 3 times in addition to that.
- Reduce the bandit crest cost for bags of rare gear slightly.
- Reduce the ’time out’ period by 10 minutes, but allow people to stay in the labyrinth until 10 minutes after the initial fort defence phase begins again.
- Raise the map population slightly to compensate for a recurring problem; Leechers. The silverwastes and dry top have lower map populations than other PvE maps.

I think that these changes would solve the majority of the shortcomings of this zone and make it more enjoyable for everyone.

I’d be ok if they added 20 tiers, so long as they solve the problems many people complained about with the introduction of Ascended gear.

Problem 1: The problem that it is only acquired by grinding PvE and the trade post in order to get the materials and gold required to craft one set of ascended gear.

Possible solution: Make ascended gear available by regularly playing the game and without being tied to the game’s economy so much (in other words, ditch the suggestive association to the gem-to-gold conversion). Basic examples: Ascended gear purchasable by Karma or Badges of Honor.

Problem 2: The bane of alts and people who enjoy having the option to change spec. Obtaining one ascended set is bad enough for many people who just want to play the game their way. Ascended gear is too expensive, and too exclusive, yet still meaningful enough that it is almost required in competitive WvW and higher tier dungeon runs (and likely raids when they arrive).

Possible solution: Ascended gear cost and time requirements should be brought down dramatically so that it is realistic for more people to even consider levelling an alt or change spec. It wouldn’t take someone two months to acquire a set, only to be forced to respect for specific content or worse - a balance update. And if making it cheaper is not an option, then make it possible to change the stats on Ascended gear like with Legendary weapons, either for free or for a small cost.

If those issues are solved, then someone like me who plays this game slightly more casual and primarily in WvW, would be able to obtain a full set of Ascended gear and stay competitive, on one or even more characters and specs. Being able to play the game the way you enjoy it while still progressing on the gear treadmill should be the goal here, as players should never feel forced to do things they don’t enjoy, like Ascended gear currently does.

wulfheart.8206:

Anyways, it’s either ANet gives more options for people or remove area restrictions, i.e. Daily Events Completer instead of Daily Cursed Shore Events Completer.

Opinions will differ on this. I personally think that the area-specific dailies are the best part of the new dailies, as it makes old and forgotten maps become alive for a day.

Now, the WvW dailies on the other hand, very badly needs more variation.

This would be solved if they added an ingame auto-click solution to stacked ’consumables’ and containers.

Got a stack of 250 containers or essence of luck? Shift+right click the stack and let the game automatically use one item every 0.1 seconds, cancelled by pressing escape (closing inventory).

So many fingers and mice would be spared...

The only real surprise would be that this expansion would end up not containing any significant additions to WvW. They have been spending most of their time since launch on this expansion, with only a relatively small team working on updates for the live game (which have been mostly PvE focussed).

Wishful thinking would be the much-requested weekly map rotation system using PvE maps with WvW objectives on them.

Ashen.2907:

Raap.9065:

They spawn on a timer, but I couldn’t tell you how long it is (who camps these things?). I’m guessing its somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes, otherwise people would farm them.

More importantly, why is this daily in the game at all? It’s WvW, not PvE.

I could think of plenty more interesting WvW dailies to spice up it’s rather weak rotation:
- Kill 3 players with an Arrow Cart.
- Kill 1 player with a Cannon.
- Kill 1 player with a Ballista.
- Kill 1 player with a Catapult or Trebuchet.
- Kill 1 player with a Mortar or Burning Oil.
(Probably shouldn’t do Flame Rams for it’s unlikeliness or Golems for the supply drainage it’d promote.)
- Successfully escort 1 Dolyak supply carrier to it’s destination.
- Throw a Ballista finish-- build site on a defeated enemy player.
- Kill 1 enemy player in a one versus one with no other player damaging your target or supporting you during the fight.
- Destroy 1 wall or gate from a Tower, Keep or Castle owned by an enemy team.
- [Rare daily] Steal Bloodlust in a borderland from an enemy team while it is not already under your team’s control.
- [Rare daily] Capture Stonemist Castle from an enemy team while it has at least 500 supply in the depot.
- [Rare daily] Complete the Obsidian Sanctum jumping puzzle.

And I could name a fair few more, but sadly, we currently only have a limited and boring selection of dailies, while PvE has a wide list of different ones... Oh, and then there is this daily that shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

This daily exists precisely because the game mode is WvW. WvW is a combination of PvP and PvE elements.

To be fair, other than some wild mobs, some gathering nodes, and some guards/lords as part of the PvP focussed holding capturing mechanic, what exactly exists in WvW that makes it a combination of PvP and PvE? Don’t mention EotM here, that’s a different game mode entirely.

Then the next question, what do you think the majority of players primarily considers WvW to be? A PvP focussed gameplay or a PvE one?

Quite honestly I don’t see the reason to have this daily when so many alternatives exist. It was an uninspired addition to the already weak selection of possible WvW dailies, which only serves to highlight the lack of attention WvW received since the game launched.

That’s a good tip, that boss was always the biggest pain to deal with... This explains why.

They spawn on a timer, but I couldn’t tell you how long it is (who camps these things?). I’m guessing its somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes, otherwise people would farm them.

More importantly, why is this daily in the game at all? It’s WvW, not PvE.

I could think of plenty more interesting WvW dailies to spice up it’s rather weak rotation:
- Kill 3 players with an Arrow Cart.
- Kill 1 player with a Cannon.
- Kill 1 player with a Ballista.
- Kill 1 player with a Catapult or Trebuchet.
- Kill 1 player with a Mortar or Burning Oil.
(Probably shouldn’t do Flame Rams for it’s unlikeliness or Golems for the supply drainage it’d promote.)
- Successfully escort 1 Dolyak supply carrier to it’s destination.
- Throw a Ballista finish-- build site on a defeated enemy player.
- Kill 1 enemy player in a one versus one with no other player damaging your target or supporting you during the fight.
- Destroy 1 wall or gate from a Tower, Keep or Castle owned by an enemy team.
- [Rare daily] Steal Bloodlust in a borderland from an enemy team while it is not already under your team’s control.
- [Rare daily] Capture Stonemist Castle from an enemy team while it has at least 500 supply in the depot.
- [Rare daily] Complete the Obsidian Sanctum jumping puzzle.

And I could name a fair few more, but sadly, we currently only have a limited and boring selection of dailies, while PvE has a wide list of different ones... Oh, and then there is this daily that shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

I’m still annoyed ArenaNet took the easy way out with that one. I personally really liked the orbs as they added value beyond PPT to defending your keeps.

As others have mentioned, a return of orbs would be quite simple:
- Require a keep lord to be killed or the keep to be flipped entirely before the orb can be picked up.
- Change the buff to something along the lines of:
* 33/66/100% more WXP gain.
* 25/50/75% more Experience gain.
* 20/40/60% more Magic Find.
* 25/50/75% more Karma gain.
* 33/66/100% more Gold from WvW events, WvW Guard and Lord kills, and player kills.
* 10/20/30% reduction in Gold cost for activating Camp, Tower, Keep and Castle upgrades.

That’d make the orbs properly worthwhile but it wouldn’t upset the balance in any way. Hackers would be an issue, but they’d have to be several of them in order to kill a lord or capture a keep.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

I still am baffled at people’s terminology of scouting. What most people here consider scouting is actually role playing these guys….
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentry
Scouting means you’re out there on the move searching for potential threats. There is nothing stopping you from gathering or killing stuff around the zone you’re scouting to make it less dull and more profitable than standing in a tower, plus the goal is to spot potential threats BEFORE they attack anything to give an early warning, not shout the moment they’re throwing siege down.

While I’m personally aware that scouting is in fact not guarding the same spot for hours, I was just sticking to the known WvW terms.

In WvW there is limited use for actual scouting, most significant threats are easy to spot and not entirely without thanks to the still-existing orange combat swords. (Coming up next: Super Special Bonus Sneak Attack Event; No more orange swords!)

I don’t play much anymore, and I don’t lead in maps at all, but for what it’s worth I did seem to enjoy the lack of swords more so than when swords existed.

The very simple reason is that it rewards good scouting and sneak attacks. The only problem I have is that scouting needs to become rewarding... So I’m all in favour of returning yak escort rewards as it is a form of scouting. I’m also in favour of adding rewards for buying upgrades and staying in holdings while the upgrade event is in progress, these would be a good start with minimal ’AFK abuse’ potential.

Nice one. ;)

It’s a pretty PvE map with some WvW inspired functionality just like Silverwastes. The only difference is that occasionally you get a bit of PvP thrown in to break up the pace of the karma trains.

Quite honestly it does not deserve to be on the same page as the WvW maps, it only confuses new players into thinking it’s one and the same.

That being said, EotM is an okay game mode for (speed-) levelling alts and such, and I’m certainly not saying it should go unchanged, as it needs a few tweaks, particularly in up-level scaling, rewards, and terrain... But so does WvW, for over 2 years, so I guess I should say "Get in line, it’s a long line, as it has a hundred different PvE stuff still in front of you in the line".

On the EU side of things, Desolation is jumping between T1 and T2, but we hardly have any queue’s.

I’m actually surprised to hear queue’s are still an issue at all for so many servers, given the state of WvW and all that.

Mystic Forge bulk crafting. I’m tired of manually creating each superior siege blueprint.

Random Wax Orc.7695:

17) please add an option to make highlighting interactables always on, since endlessly holding the control key is a detriment to the player experience.

This and several other things being mentioned here are proper QoL changes the game should have received years ago. Why is this still not in yet?