Guild Wars 2

I won’t say where I am from, but through many MMORPGs my experience with people from the same country I live in was terrible, everywhere. In general I can say the overall attitude is destructive, overly negative and selfish and I – I’m more sorry and sad to say this than you can imagine – in general try to avoid any contact with everyone from my country.

I love international play, I love speaking english, and of course meeting and playing with people from all across Europe.

Needless to say I hate the new changes to the megaserver’s behind the scenes mechanisms that tries to lock you up with people from the same region or country, and I demand a feature to be able to make myself an exception out of this system or manually change the preffered language (just like LFG system but with all EU countries listed) and be placed on a map according to that.

In any MMO, I hate and despise those people who do not care / don’t show any respect to their surroundings and spam the mapchat with any other language than english (which is considered the international, shared language in general all over the world, but most certainly in EU and US). And I feel ashamed because of those people when I see my language there. And that’s constantly happening in MMOs where a specific server is famous about being the XY country’s choosen server. I love GW2 because never had to feel bad because of others and I want to keep it that way, and I hate being helplessly tossed around on a path I’m not willing to follow.

WHY THELL IS EVERYONE STUCK WITH THAT REVIEW. STOP IT.

THE THREAD HAD A CLEARLY HIGHLIGHTED QUESTION IT IS ABOUT.

And for all those who seem to be more concerned about my review than you should be, my attitude and overall opinion is VERY far from negative.

@Bone:
I think I’ve seen some stuff in the last 10 years of MMO history to know what counts as a real change or not, and I’m more than sure I know what and how to look at when I write a review – something I’m doing for 6+ years now almost every week. Just because I QUESTIONED the real effect of some changes on the game, that’s a brutally negative attitude and feedback on something you haven’t even seen yet, and even if I’d write it in english you propably wouldn’t even consider to read. What I just did wrong now? Predicting if you will or will not do something, while I know nothing about you. Fact. You did the same, I hope you get the picture now.

@Vayne:
*I wonder how the wardrobe changed the game for you. It’s a nice thing to have to plan your looks, but we already had that via itemcodes on 3rd party sites.
*We already had that armor skins, they just added a new way to unlock them. Literally ONE backpiece was added.
*How did the Megaserver changed your game? It was: check a site with a timer, get there and kill it. Now it’s the same, just with set timers a day, and for the same events you still need to get there early enough make it to “main mirror” where it doesn’t fails (Tequatl, 3 headed wurm). The champ trains are the same. For newcomers it’s nice that it brings people together.
*They changed the way you unlock traits. It’s much better this way, but yet again it’s a change better for newcomers.
*New traits. Finally something that matters.

Did I cover everything?

… and I reached the part where I wanted to discuss how character progression is different in this game compared to most others. To be specific I just wanted to describe the way main skills and weapons work in GW2 compared to other MMO’s set in stone skillsets, and I just wanted to praise ANet for this great system. But….

I also wanted to add this short sentence (well, I’m writing it in hungarian language so not “exactly” this ^^): “the best thing about this skill system is that is allows the developers to easily add new skills and mechanisms by simply opening up more weapon options for each class later, or design completely new ones.”

I know this has been a “thing” around all GW2 forums, and knowing that the game is getting closer to it’s second birthday, the fact that ANet still seems to ignore to expand the game in this particular section got me worried. There is a new feature patch coming now, but I actually don’t have any hope left to see an update with weapons content inside – especially after the letdown of Feature Patch 1, because if I look back all it did was adding a new traits (so the devs played around with existing numbers and mechanims, same for PvP tracks. It’s not that I don’t like these, but it’s a minor, cheap thing) and redesigned some UI elements to fix the broken transmution system.

My question is: how will you react, if this second Feature Patch will be as lacking of real change as the first one?

I know there is a long way until they reveal everything, but so far it seems the same, new UI elements and some fixes….

@2nd post in topic: are you nuts?
From point to point:
1. A more reasonable time of immobilize, it would get removed anyway by condi cleanse, 33% faster cooldown. BUFF.
2. Healing buff for PvE, increased survivability.
3. Richocet: a good buff to pistol main hand, makes pvp and wvw thieves happy, adds build diversity.

4. I don’t see what this trait is good for, but still it got buffed.

5. Venom Share buff, now your teammates will do a lot more damage and heal back a lot more with your shared venoms if you have a healing / condi build. Buff.

6. Dagger autoattack is not singletarget anymore, helps in pvp, insanely good buff for PvE for more dps, DOUBLE amount of heal from heal signet and the (just getting buffed) heal on crit trait. Even poison stacks from it.

7. Slight nerf so you can’t or have to work a bit more for PERMA AoE blind in PvE. Like… now you actually need to… you know, dodge! Position yourself! You know, core thief gameplay. Survavibility nerf? Just look at point 2, 5, 6.

8. Straight simple dps buff. Offhand pistol could use a rework to be more viable in any game mode, but a good start. Again, a buff.

9. Well, this may hurt WvW, if you are a fan of “let’s join a zerg and shortbow autoattack, then just stealth and run if there is a problem”. It was a fun feature to have, I’m a bit sad this gets taken away, but I’d hardly consider this as a nerf, since now you actually can’t run away playing braindead. Oh you still can, just not stealthed. Oh you still can, even stealthed, you just don’t have to shoot behind your back while doing so.

10. So instead of overall 5 initative cost, now you pay… oh wait it’s still 5, you’ll just need to manage your resources a bit better. Definitly not a nerf.

YOUR REACTION TO ALL THIS, copied again:

Wow nothing but nerfs on a class that didn’t need it.

PVE thieves are getting kittened bad

S/D thieves just got kitten d bad too

The worst of all was how bad D/P trickery thieves just got hit.

Wow I’m shocked at how off they are

I feel like I wasted my time explaining this to you.

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that the devs said there won’t be new heart events, so the requirements for “been there, done that” and the legendary crafting material coming with it won’t change.

This, however seals the fate of the new content forever, because unless they figure out something to fill the (FINALLY) expanding world with life, it’s all going to be like the karka island. A boring, lifeless pile of sand and rocks nobody cares about at all, unless the boss timer is about to reach zero.

A quick hint for ANet: we have golden colored hearts for “heart events”, right? How about add green colored hearts? That’s it. Works exactly the same way as it always worked, just independent from world completition.

I must very strongly disagree with OP.

Jeremy Soule’s work usually isn’t something considered as medicore / forgettable / grey / boring music. He does his job very well by adding another layer to the very image of the thing he writes music for.
A few examples are Icewind Dale, Giants: Citized Kabuto, Baldur’s Gate, Dungeon Siege 1-2, Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind AND Oblivion AND Skyrim, even Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games (both), Unreal 2, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, the whole Company of Heroes series, and… Guild Wars Prophecies, Nightfall and EotN, and the list goes on.

He did a fantasic job with all of them, and I’ll tell you why. It’s not just that these games had actually really memorable music, but many of them became an icon. A symbol. Skyrim, is the best example here, and Guild Wars 2’s music is closely following it. Of course Skyrim had a much bigger market waiting for it, plus the modding made it very popular and long lasting, so it’s iconic music too did benefit from all that obviously.

With Guild Wars 2, it’s the same thing, just with a smaller community. But for real, put your hand on your heart, and listen to the “Battle of the Vanguard”, “The Stars Shine on Kryta” and most importantly: “Saga of the Norn”. We can say this last one creates the whole image of Guild Wars 2 in trailers etc. Someone’s taste of music is not something to argue about, but if you consider these as “not memorable”, there is a problem and not with the music.

And know listen what we got after ANet and Soule.. well, let’s say just left each other’s hand, and not in a good way.
This is the very end of Season 1, a battle that was planned the biggest, most epic thing for GW2 since it’s relase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC1xopc4TXs
I’m not going to say my honest opinion about it because I respect everyone’s efforts put into this, but I think that it’s not only boring, but almost isn’t feel related at all to the content it was made for. It’s far too generic. That’s my opinion, you don’t have to agree.

Now, I must say I’m very happy for that the current music composer(s?) of Guild Wars 2, possibly those who made the one linked just above, can evolve and make such great music we can hear in the preview of Season 2, really, I’m one of those who want them to succeed and overcome even Soule’s masterpieces. That’s a success for them, and fantastic beauty for everyone in the world they share their work with.

!!!!! carefully read this please !!!!!
BUT. The way to express your feelings is NOT the way of degrading, or looking down on someone else’s work, especially not if that is done as marvelously as Guild Wars 2 original OST genius is. If you like the new one more, hey, that’s great, enjoy it! No, I know even better, let’s enjoy it together while playing. You want to put it above the original? Fine, I happy you like it and we have another satisfied player with us. But instead of saying “I like this, the other sucks”, try to say “This is even better than what we had”.

You log in during the living world event: you get it for free, permanently, acc-wide.

You don’t log in for half a year, skip a lot content: each one costs 200 gems (VERY cheap).

Fair enough.

It fills in a LOT holes GW2 was bleeding from and got me excited about the game again! Perma content 4president!

Well I’m playing Diablo III again instead of GW2 since the expansion is out, and I can tell you I played it too much when someone faint (like, real blackout) in the crowd at a hot day during a festivity, and I expected an orange pillar of light to rise to the skies.

Some will get it, some will not.

Honestly OP, do you hear yourself when you write down something like the title of this thread?

I have over 1000 hours in this game, and it NEVER. EVER. felt grindy. What do you want to accomplish? Play through a fun story that lasts pretty long and can be either enjoyed as a singleplayer or coop experience? Check, no need to grind. Sure, there are level requirements for each story step, but you know, we have a huge world that rewards for exploration and is full of fantastic content and lore. That’s your own (very sad) problem if you only see red names to hit from all this.

But let’s see it from a different perspective, what else you want to achieve, beyond spending 100 and 100 hours with world completition and story. PvP? Everybody equally buffed to max level, has ZERO cost or “possible to screw up” decisions, and just as powerful as anyone else having access to the same high level item sets. What else? WvW? Buffed to max level, uses PvE gear. Unless you want to roam alone or in a small group, your gear doesn’t even matter in zergs. I had fun an got 20 WvW ranks with leveling up a guardian there from lv20 to 80.

But let’s go even futher, what else you want to do? Get the desired armor set of your choice? Well, you have dungeons for that. It is indeed sad that people see them only as a “skip everything, even videos I’ve never seen, stack up in a corner and nuke everything to hell”, but you can get your complete armor set pretty fast. Fast? Compared to what? It is endgame gear. Something you can also buy with a different skin from the trading post. With the money you make with playing PvP or PvE. Did I mentioned you can now also get that armor set by playing PvP? You know, that PvP I mentioned ^above? Is that grind, like red names you hit and that’s it? Poor you.

Oh, I misunderstood you, my apologies. You want ascended armors? Something, that was introduced to the game because ANet did admit they made endgame gear too easy to get for everyone? Something that is more like a prestige thing, barely (max 5%) better than the just mentioned exotic sets? Even their skins are ugly as hell. Well, prestige is called prestige for a good reason, because it’s not meant to be for everyone. Because it means something, and if you want shortcuts and easy to get backdoors, you don’t deserve it. Same goes for legendary items, that are called legendary for a very good reason – something I’ll never manage to get even close to, but you know what? I respect the time and effort, work and wealth invested to those weapons. And that my friend, is something you earn, not something you cry for on forums and be happy for a day or two if you get it for almost free (thanks god this isn’t that kind of place), while not even realizing you just destroyed something much bigger than you. But who cares, you have your shiny sword, right?

The game doesn’t have too many spiders. A specific Twilight Arbor path, and some caves, and a very few in some forests.

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

Shadowbane.7109:

It’s almost noon here…
sucks to be in Europe right now :/

These topics happen every patch day. I don’t understand it. You guys know Anet is based in the western US, this should be nothing new.

According to the said ANet, one of them posted the exact time when the patch should go live, and that time passed ~20 minutes ago. Maybe not for you / those in the US, but for us in EU that’s a very long delay, because right now it’s 20:21 here and I have to get up 4:30 (lucky with that) because of my job. So yeah, we know being in EU sucks when a patch comes out, please save these “oh I don’t understand what’s your problem and why you mention it with every patch day” posts. People won’t stop it anyway (especially with ANet too often being even hours late with their too often broken patches), but posts like yours annoy even those who normally stay silent and wait. Like me.

And yes, I know this isn’t just a hotfix. But if someone says an exact time, I expect them to keep that promise. And yes, I know they try to, and work hard for it, and ofc. we all appriciate that. Still it causes frustration for those who were waiting for it all day just to get a sneak-peak at evening before the next day’s work starts, and even that flies away. And then comes the golden post like the one quoted.

As said above.
1. I have no item to use in those slots. You can’t transmute an existing skin to an empty slot.
2. If I create a new character that will have it’s own town clothes soulbound to it. In case if I don’t get the full skin set from the remaining parts of the old one on my main character, creating a new character will only grant me the skins, not giving me an item I can transmute them to and equip on my main character.

As the title says. I deleted them in the first days of GW2, beliving “oh there will be plenty of others in towns”. WRONG.

So I still have some parts of it (basic town clothes), and I guess that will unlock the whole skin set for me, according to last QnA (notes on dulfy: http://dulfy.net/2014/04/08/gw2-developer-qa-livestream-on-april-feature-pack/ ). Still I have no town cloth items to equip in these slots, so I can’t do anything with the skins. These items are soulbound by default so I cannot transfer one from a new character.

Only my main character is missing them.

Any ideas?

• Started as a Thief. It is so much fun to play compared to other classes (due to mechanisms of weapons) that no other class is fun to play anymore, yet the Thieves are always getting nerfed with EVERY_SINGLE_UPDATE just because some idiots don’t know the matchup in WvW, PvE-wise Thieves are simply obselate in terms of damage compared to a Warrior / Ele, and isn’t good for anything except skipping content which breaks unwritten rules of “how to play GW2”. I hate to be a thief, and I hate how I can’t get detached from the class, and I regret the most that I was such a loyal fan of the class that I did not dropped it hundreds of hours before. It’s not easy when that’s the first character you’ve seen everything with…

• Wasted tons of gold (well, it’s relative, 2×70g is a lot for me) on 2 Breath of Jormags.
• Actually using one of those, and now that I got bored of the skin I can’t do anything with it, since it’s soulbound and would feel even more of a waste if I’d replace it.

• Actually listened to the toxic part of the forum and felt bad for being poor compared to those keyboard heroes who say “getting a legendary is nothing nowadays”. Just burn, thank you.

• Started a ranger as an alt. Good for nothing but safe distance autoattack and n5 longbow on WvW. Invested far too much time and gold into T3 skins, full exotic sets and laurels for accessories.
• Started a guardian as an alt. The most boring class I played so far. Invested far too much time and gold into T3 skins, full exotic sets and laurels for accessories.
• Because of the written above, I don’t have the spirit or streinght to struggle with leveling once again, so I’ll propably never get to play an Ele or Mesmer. Oh gosh all those important waypoints…. never again.

• Completed the the PvE content. Now I don’t even play because I hate PvP and don’t like WvW too much either (a bit better than PvP however). And there is nothing left, except 2 days of achievement farming. Dulfy says hi.

• Bought the Grenth Hoods because it looks cool, and fits non of my characters (2 sylvari, thief and guardian, and a norn ranger, all 3 women).

• Wasted ~100-120g to get Leatherworking to 500, while I never craft anything. I did it because I actually wanted to get into crafting to make myself ascended berserker gear. Only after reaching 500 I realized I’ll need a 50-60g inc. PER ITEM to actually create something. Currently I have around 120g again and it’s a fortune in my eyes, not going to waste more than I already did.

• Accidently choosing the Vigil over the Order of Whispers with my first character. It turned out to be a good decision because the story and it’s characters were nice, and I was like “hey, that’s what life brought me, let’s flow with the water!”. It was a great experience at the end of the day, especially Mr. Tough Dunnothename Norn yelling at me after all the peaceful sylvari things. Dragged me out from that little world, still I always think of the Caledon Forest as home. So I don’t regret it, but those armors really suck.

*Sold tons of mats to the NPCs in the first 2 months. Since I wanted to ignore “builds and meta” stuff on the internet, somehow I didn’t met the traing post at all.

*Bought a total makeover kit, but I feel too attached to my first (main) character to change anything to her.

• Used 2 total makeover kits on a norn I don’t even like to play anymore.
• The ranger I started was the said norn, I’d choose sylvari instead. Starting another of the same class is really depressing.

• I still want to get back to the beautiful world of Guild Wars 2, but ANet keeps screwing it up with the Living World , instead of giving actual expansions to cover that 80% rest of the world we can’t even set foot on, they destroy the existing one little by little.

I did, but that was a long ago. I just can’t find a reason to come back. Yeah I have a guild and I keep in touch with them on facebook, but I’m not going to spend precious time doing content I’ve done far more than enough times. That’s something I like in Diablo, and hate in games that should be the very opposite.

So I’ve played the game for quite a while now (since day1), and I feel like I have nothing left to do, at least nothing I like.

What I did already:
*Collected and perfected all the skins I wanted
*Completed the personal story, twice.
*Obviously reached 80, got my full set of ascended accessories and berserker item set (exotic).
*Reached 100% world completition.
*Defeated all world bosses several times
*Reached the highest reasonable achievement chest without grindind dailies ~5500-ish if I remember well, haven’t played for a while now.
*Reached 80 with all other classes I’m interested in and got the gear for them (Thief main, Guardian / Ranger alts). Including perfecting the imagined looks aswell.
*Except a few, all jumping puzzles are completed, along with visiting the secret areas.
*Completed the dungeons I was interested in. Those I don’t even like is definitly not something I’d like to spend my time with.

What I’m not interested in:
*Brainless grinding for ascended gear crafting. Already wasted tons of gold to reach 500 just to realize I’ll need a recipe that costs another 50-60g. PER ITEM. I’m happy to have this ~120 gold I have now.
*Same goes for everything that counts as brainless farm, including money making, legendary crafting.
*PvP is simply not for me. I’m interested in PvE only.
*WvW. Tried to get involved so many times, so much, I can’t help it but I hate it.

Feels like the game has nothing left to offer (curse you wasted year of Living World bs!). I’d like to play, just to be there in the world and everything, but there is nothing left.

First and more important: it’s not only about the stat combos themselves, but making it aviable to use in the first place. Various stat combos are much harder to get, and I belive restrictions and walls created by the market isn’t something that should be allowed.

This just came into my mind when I started my guardian (3rd “serious” character) and wanted to get a set (not sure about it’s name) that was only aviable during a specific Living World event, and each armor piece was over 100g in the trading post. I remember it had vitality as main stat, and power / toughness I think as secondary stats, not sure about it.

ALL stat combos should be equally be in a realistic, possible reach for everyone.

So for example, I have some shoulder skins that isn’t aviable in PvE at all for some weird reason, only in PvP. I’ll get those in PvE aswell post-patch?

Lankybrit.4598:

Facilitating Friendly Play.

I wonder what that is? Aren’t we friendly enough already?

It means dumb down things even more.

The soundless want to live free from everything, including the tablet, but in peace. The court exists to spread their faith which is based on hate against others, trying to set their own on fire. It’s more like, soundless are simply introverted while the court burns with hate against all sylvari who refuses to join them – even if they say so it’s not true, and they want to “set everyone free from the tablet’s false teachings”, that’s just a lie, an excuse for themselves to justify their terror. There is a huge difference, even if both factions started their journey with the same idea. Sylvari are all about life, love, piece and balance. The soundless is harmless and peaceful, the court isn’t that much.

bob.5680:

Wow. Why are people always so negative? It hasn’t even arrived yet (the actual changes) and people are already whining about it. Why do people play a game that they find such faults with? I sure wouldn’t. I’d go play a game that I enjoyed and forget about the one I didn’t (I’ve done that with several of them).

Who says I do play? I don’t. For me GW2 is like this, for the last half year:
log in every 2 weeks, check the new story worth of 2 hours content TOP. Maybe log in the next day for some achievements if I’m interested in the reward. Wait two weeks.

Point is, if you look at an MMO (in general) at relase, and let’s say ~1.5 years later again, you’ll see the content HEAVILY increased, if not doubled or above. If you look at GW2 at relase, it’s a fantastic game with fantastic content… that won’t last forever, and 1.5 years later minimal fixes called as “features” definitly won’t keep me playing. It’s a nice change for those who are new to the game, or didn’t joined yet. Personally, if I’ve seen everything more than 10 times / thing, collected all the skins and transmuted them to good stats, I don’t have any motivation to play because a wardrobe is added.

Sirendor.1394:

The “big” changes are fixes to things most people see as bugs and problems. The feature patch does not introduce anything new or especially good, it just fixes what needed fixing.

Then don’t call it a feature patch.

… for mediocore changes. The “big and great” feature patch so far is, removing the most minimal ever appearing costs in the game, repairs, that didn’t hurt even the every time dying newbies (not like traveling costs, that noone really cares about later). Free trait resets are mentioned TWICE in 2 separate blogposts, once it says you can do it for free anywhere, and the other says again you can do it for free. WvW exp and highend items being account wide is also represented as the most glorious thing ever done, but let’s face it, it’s just a “fix” that should have been done ages ago and takes minimal effort. I’m not a programmer, but I imagine it’s a swich on some devkit UI if an item is soulbound or account bound. The new traits are a nice addition, that’s for sure, but won’t make an impact on the game, not on their own. I expected many more changes (especially under title “removing restrictions”), like weapons that can be used in only main hand, can be used in offhand or something. That would have been the very minimal of my expectations. The wardrobe is also nice.

I must say, I’m happy to see the game changing and upgrading, but this is very very far from enough, to keep me playing. Most of the changes are aimed for newcomers.

Wardrobe? Great! I already have all the skins I wanted, I had 1.5 years to collect them. 0 new armor added.

Trait resets? Great! Now it saves me 30 seconds when I change between PvE and WvW. New traits added, this is done well – speaking in general, not about how good / bad those traits are.

WvW EXP and high end gear acc wide? Great! It’s a minor fix and changes nothing for those who already had this kind of stuffs. Those who have a legendary on a character are certainly very dedicated to that character, and it’s a welcome addition to allow item transfer between alts. But I can’t say it enough times this is a change so minimal, it is simply impossible to match the expactations that are based on the hype ANet built up, via speaking so highly about this patch, plus the lacking communication when people went to theorycrafting and wishes about new weapon skills etc. that should have been in a patch presented a way like this one.

More detailed LFG tool? Seriously? This is worth an entire day’s blogpost? I was propably hard to write more than 2 lines about it. A change that should have been mentioned as a sidenote somewhere, not as a “look at our hard hard work!”. I could appriciate it, if it would not be – again – presented as something fantastic. This is a minor fix.

Reworked runes, sigils. This is the big one, something I say easily lived up to the hype. I cannot say much until I tried the new system, but it definitly sounds like a great, fundamental change that REALLY required hard work and balancing, and has a big impact on everyday gameplay. Something I don’t really do, since the content didn’t really expanded since relase. But that’s another topic, about why changes to gameplay doesn’t matter to those who don’t play at all because they’ve seen everything already, many times.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I’d say link this to progression as an unlock before being able to buy them, rather than simply being able to buy them outright:

PvE: Unlock all traits and skills for that profession.
WvW: Get to Rank X.
SPvP: Get the Champion [Profession] title.

^
This. Plus the skin set would work like the achievement skins, reclaimable anytime.

Still I doubt this will happen, I belive the exotic unique sets (for medium: Nika, Zho, etc. I don’t know more names at this moment) fill this role already. I’d prefer to have a new cultural set.

Thief – Main. Everything. Well, I would do everything if GW2 wouldn’t be on a break until the new patch lands. I’m really the kind of player who belives that the first and main character is holy above everything, especially with the GW2 design in mind that every class has a place no matter what the group does. Also she was the first I explored the world with, lived through the story with, I just CAN’T leave her being, tho I tried many times because of the frustration of class balance.

Ranger – Got really really boring, since I’m stubborn to follow the design I imagined when I started her, and I only use longbow. Rarely I play her in WvW and regret every gold and laurel spent on her.

Guardian – Started her at a point where I could not stand the thief being unable to remove spammed long lasting dot conditions in certain pve content I’m interested in, so I made a guardian, “she’ll survive everything even if she does nothing else” in mind. Yeah, she works that way now, and went even more boring than the ranger, if possible. Blocking the doors and speedbuffing allies in WvW zergs are fun tho, but not for long. Also wanted a heavy armor class, and I’m really not into warriors. I never played her again after I finalized her looks.

ImagoX.4718:

Apologies if this is covered in a different thread; if so, I couldn’t find it.

Most of my characters are already leveled to 80 and so have full Trait unlocks (even if I’m not currently using them). I’ve read the developer post re: changes to the traits and see that they want to change things back to a more GW1-type system where some specific and desirable Traits can only be “unlocked” by either completing specific in-game content (a la GW1), or by spending gold with trainers in towns.

But what about those of us who have already spent gold on each of our existing Lvl80s for training manuals? It sounds from the dev preview article that existing Lvl80s will have ALL traits available after the April patch, even the ones you have to seek out in the world to unlock – perhaps I’m mis-reading it?

Can anyone confirm that all traits will be unlocked for current Lvl80s?

Again, apologies if there’s an existing thread where this is clarified – please feel free to link if so. Thanks!

Without offensive tone, I must ask you: did you even read the whole blogpost thing?

I don’t feel the need for new utility skills, instead I’d like to see more weapon skills to open up new playstyles for each profession. Either an expanded weapon usage (means: existing weapons for existing classes in combinations that are not aviable now) or an alternative skillset for the already existing cominbations.

duka.1704:

Simple YES/NO answers please. No need to explain your thoughts.

What’s the point of it then, you draw a line on your wall and count how many people decided to say no or yes? This isn’t a question that can be viewed as black and white as you want it. Futhermore, it’s not helping anyone, nor the fellow forumers neither the developers to see things they may didn’t think of before at all, thus understand the way of thinking and the needs it lead to, of an average / pro player. Which is, this place is under DISCUSSIONS category, and not voting. Misplacing your thread, is what happend here.

This is an interesting question to bring up at this time. If you ask me the same in the past half year, my answer would have been definitly a NO. While the Living World concept started as a genius idea, it quickly became a cancer that spread wildly, making me worry it will leave behind a dead game that is only worth to check on every 2 weeks for a couple of hours until you get all the horribly communicated achievements / tasks via dulfy guides, and zergfarm pve content for a new backpiece. It happend too many times. As the end of the living world s1 drew closer, we started to get more lore, story and interaction with characters and the universe they live in, which was a good change – yet, far from enough. The game was (and propably is, as naming something as season 1 pretty much confirms there is a season 2 on the way) struggling. It did not expand at all, most of the new content that could have been kept was taken away for no reason, even if it was only QoL fun content, like the Bazaar of the Four Winds, and the Super Adventure Boxes (personally, I hated all SABs, down to the very core concept, but I find it even worse that it’s not a permanent content accessible from somewhere Rata Sum), the Karka Island is dead except when the queen spawns. Literally dead, there are no heart events, no vistas, no lore NPCs to talk to, no NOTHING.

The more LW content arrived, the more I started to realize that Guild Wars 2’s world is very very locked down, and it’s features work against itself. You can’t bind legendary crafting materials to world completition, it’s very unfair for those who join later after the world (should have been…) expanded to double it’s original size. The other end is, the world isn’t expanding at all. Even if it was amazing and stunning in the first weeks, fun to discover later, and challanging to find hidden places later, it ran out of time and there is nothing else we can do (speaking strictly PvE). No new dungeons, no new areas, no new questlines, no new factions, nothing.

Let’s turn back to the original question – is it going to the right direction? With the upcoming features patch changes, I must say we are making a huge step the right direction to reach the right path what the game and it’s community really needs. Still, all the experience I gathered in LW S1 and all stubbornness we saw from the developers following the path that is most liked by them instead of the audience, I fear we’ll walk away from that path even futher very soon, when Season 2 starts. There are rumours based on some interviews that theoretically leave an open chance for a real, big expansion, but knowing Season 2 of LW comes first no matter what, I must say I doubt I’ll be the loyal player I was since relase.

CureForLiving.5360:

Gnat.9405:

I think Tuesday’s post is going to reveal the wardrobe

Oh I’m so hoping for that. My bank is full of skins ready to be wardrobed!

Healix.5819:

It will probably be about PvE and PvP gear no longer being separated.

They did already announce that they were doing that. So possible. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/

Kumu Honua.2751:

My guesses:

Removal of the loss of guild vaults when moving/guesting servers (a la China.)
Removal of soulbound/accountbound nonsense.
Removing character bound dye.
Removing the inability to sell/salvage/do anything with items such as fractal rings.

I’m sure I will think of more right after I post this, but good enough.

All likely except for dyes. Since ANet has been selling dye packs for a while now, and since players have been buying multiple dye packs for multiple characters this would A) probably not be the financially-speaking best move make a lot of players very unhappy.

Dyes will be account bound in the shortly upcoming chinese version, and since the community of US/EU asked for the same for a very long time now (as also mentioned in an ANet interview, found the link in some other topic last week), it is very likely to happen. However, the chinese version also gets a terrible new system, that will require a dye identifier (gem store item) to identify a dye you find. The only other source is crafting.

I have high hopes for this one, as according to the known titles of upcoming blogposts, this is the only one where we have a chance to get:

*expanded weapon usage for existing classes. I want that offhand sword badly for my thief. Also a rifle / longbow, or both three.

*PvP and PvE skin system gets united via introducing a new global locker system. How PvE armor stats will work then, I have no idea. But I’d definitly welcome to change of once you get an skin, it’s forever yours without the need of transmution stones. In exchange, more armor skins appears in the gem store.

*I doubt it will happen, but crossing the armor weight lines would also create fantastic new options for everyone, especially with the global locker added at the same time. It would bring back so much life to dungeon running and PvE content in general.

*PvE and PvP exclusive armor separation finally gone to the abyss. It’s the most nonsense lame thing they ever came up with, like you can get some part of the Commando armor set in PvE, but some parts are only aviable for PvP. What’s the point of this?!

I have around 110g now (120 was the top I ever had, spent it all on 400-500 leatherworking just to realize each berserker gear will cost me another 50+g just because I have to get the inscription, so I dropped this topic. Then made myself an ascended backpiece (quiver) with ~40g, and came back to the mentioned 110g from ~20g.

Still, I feel like I’m walking in the same shoes. Droprates made player controlled markets operate with ridicolously high prices. The money I have now is enough to buy a whole T3 cultural set for skins, but isn’t enough to buy a pair of nice looking daggers, to be specific we are talking about aetherpath dark-sylvari themed daggers here which is PERMANENT content and exists for months now.

Thing is about GW2 gold, it’s useless for anything except cultural armor, yet you’ll always feel like you don’t have enough.

alchemyst.2165:

I was excited about the trait in SA where we could take 50% less damage while in stealth…but then I realized…
First off you would have to give up the heal while in stealth. Plus, this trait wont really be useful unless ur immobilized and multiple people are on u and u save yourself with a CnD or blinding powder. That’s one of the FEW scenarios this would be useful in. People wont really attack you while you’re in stealth, they would be more worried about preventing a backstab. Even if they could hit you its most likely a low hitter.
Imo they should have made this into the Last Refuge trait. Blinding powder and take 50% less damage for 3 (4) seconds…that sounds nice.

“Entering stealth grants you 5 second Protection”

Travlane.5948:

Zacchary.6183:

Holy kitten…..

They actually made took my idea and gave bonuses to reveal.

LMAO! Resilience of Shadows is a big middle finger to the people who keep complaining about the thief profession. Now every thief and their guild is going to be running it, even the part of the thief community that refuses to use stealth.

giddy all over the place

I 10% forgive you anet. Keep it up!

buuuuuuuuuut its useless :/ who would take that over shadow rejuvenation. 450hp per sec stealthed 100% guaranteed vs 50% less dmg if u may or may not get hit.

I would. Because that 450hp garanteed / sec also strictly lowers your damage done exactly to 0. Except for condition builds ofc, but the crit-heal trait isn’t for them anyway.

As you can see, it’s early concept, and there is a good reason these didn’t make it to the game the way they were. Armor that becomes part of your body is a design far more better.

Taku.6352:

Something like this?

Head: T3 Firstborn helm (but I never have it toggled on)
Shoulder: Twilight Arbor
Chest: T3 Firstborn coat
Gloves: Twilight Arbor
Pants: T3 Firstborn pants
Boots: T3 Firstborn boots
Back item: Rox’s quiver

Dyes are Deep Glacial Sky, Glacial Sky, Shiver Sky and Violite

Thank you for sharing this beauty with us. And now, let me be disappointed how ridicolously overpriced these dyes are! BRB.

125g
55g
cheap normal price
35g

No thanks. I’ll never ever pay this much for some colors. Better saving that money for Cultural T4, even if it is years away.

Personally, I don’t like the new hairs. All of them feel like a cheap re-skin of already existing hairstyles. 2 of them is clearly a minor modification of sylvari heavy cultural armor’s head piece. And two, almost identical looking slots wasted on it? The one with the flowers actually look pretty, but the other one should have been replaced with something else instead. The “on the side emo” style hair was already aviable for female sylvari, just slightly different. It’s bad, but definitly feels cheap and should be a party of the hairstyles aviable at start.Then the last is Scarlet’s hair which was there for months already, and got minimal modifications. If I like it or not, doesn’t matters at this one. It’s feels cheap, but some people really wanted to have it so I don’t complain. On the male side, it’s the same plus already aviable hairstyles done again 1:1 copy style, just with a different material / kind of leaf.

This, after the “greys” alien exclusive faces… god knows I’m all in for sylvari, love everything about them, the whole culture, philosohpy, their enviroments, the grove, the way they glove, everything. But I definitly start to hate the direction they seem to progress to. So far they got 1 new good looking face and hair (in the previous update, the long hair… and the one with the giant flower would be awesome too if from the front it’s color wasn’t identical to skin color).

With all respect, I must say you need to return to the… roots. Not literally. I wonder if we’ll ever get a hairstyle that welcomes every single GW2 player when they start the GW2 launcher.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

^ 30 30 0 0 10 new pve kitten. And regarding PvE enviroment being deadly, it’s a skill issue, you can get used to tells, then it becomes cakewalk.

Trust me when I say, that my over 1000h of playtime since day one, is 99% spent in PvE. I know when and how to dodge in which situation. I also trust that you know these very well too – you can’t deny there are situations where it’s stay ranged and deal minimal damage, or go in and possibly die from 1 hit you often can’t see coming because it’s starting animation instantly deals damage, before the actual “hit” happens. Spinning, channeling stuffs mostly work this way. I hope this issue is resolved and my dps effectiveness increases by increasing my sustain, this way.

RedSpectrum.1975:

SaltyDave.7346:

Tao.5096:

crit immunity – it’s funny if it’s against thief.

Question is, which trait has higher priority.
Thief 100% crit chance while in stealth, or elementalist’s u can’t crit me.

Garanteed crit doesn’t work on invulerable targets either, so it’s pretty garanteed it won’t work on Eles.

Well actually if you mean invulnerable by taking 0 dmg ala endure pain, you actually still crit, you just crit for 0 damage. Regardless Im upset to say I too think the ele will nullify it.

It’s important to know that this crit immunity will work only as long as the ele stays in Earth attunement, and has to use 30 points of traits in that line too, plus Earth weapon skills are not made for damage as a primary role. We are really far from the extreme people seem to think this will work, like we won’t be able to crit eles anymore.

Tao.5096:

crit immunity – it’s funny if it’s against thief.

Question is, which trait has higher priority.
Thief 100% crit chance while in stealth, or elementalist’s u can’t crit me.

Garanteed crit doesn’t work on invulerable targets either, so it’s pretty garanteed it won’t work on Eles.

I don’t get it what’s all the hate about that crit’s 5% is given back as health. It’s just the sustain I wanted for PvE, so I can invest those points I needed previously for the 3rd dodge, to something else. I understand that when it comes to PvE builds everyone blindly throws “25/30/0/0/15 + full berserk” at me, but that’s just soooo kittening bs (yeah I typed in kitten). Many, MANY PvE enviroments apply burning / poison to you like in every 2 seconds, something you can’t do much about, especially not with 13.5k health. Yeah, you remove it via Hide in Shadows. A second later you get it again. Gets removed by trait if you stay in stealth. Then gets applied again. You are propably revealed by now (if not, staying idle in stealth to prevent more conditions, wasting time you could use to dps). After that, there goes your precision signet, and if you are not using a sword (yes, I said it, not using a s/p setup for PvE, because I play with the set I like, not the one “follow the meta or don’t even speak” people suggest), that’s it, you have a burn / posion on you that will take 1/3 or more of your health down, slowly. The reason I’m not mentioning stealth via weapon skills is that you’ll spend valuable time to apply stealth and stay in it, compared to instant removes that doesn’t interrupt your damage dealing (smoke bomb, precision trait). Now if you deal damage good enough, something you can achieve by using those trait points somewhere else, you can heal at least as much as those conditions hurt you, or even more. You don’t even sacrifice crit chance for it. Then we have those zerg mobs you can’t stay in the middle of, because 2-3 AoEs catch you and you are instantly dead, or 2 hits catch you and you are instantly dead. 5% of crit damage given back as health solves just… everything. Especially paired up with the heal / hit signet. Sure it comes with a prize of dropping Executioner for it, but what I get in comparsion is just as good because it boosts the thief in every situation. And don’t tell me it matters that much to kill a boss ~10 seconds faster in 3-4 minute long battles. If you are good enough as a player, maybe you can even drop those 30 points you invested for defense in WvW, and do something else with it. Add more utility or offense. We’d invest 30 to precision anyway, don’t we?

It’s just really good, from my point of view at least.

The rest I must agree, is crap. Especially compred to other classes’ new stuff.

Problem is, even if they create the holy trinity balance between classes, as long as the game doesn’t wants anything else from the playerbase but pure damage, there will be no need for the trinity. WvW is an exception.

A Warrior can easily ignore a casual Thief and most other classes too. I myself play as a Thief since Day1, and barely do any WvW. Even when I do, I meet this situation far more often than I should: fully stacked power sigils, garanteed crit backstab from stealth, full berserk items, 20 stacks of might via signet activation, BAAAM there goes the epic backstab crit on a warrior…

… who just doesn’t even cares most of the time, because the said crit damage is barely visible on his healthbar and regens it back in a matter of seconds. Then turns back, and if I did not go to stealth to run away, be CCs me to death under 3-5 seconds. You have hilariously huge health pool as a warrior, tons of armor and immunity / invulerable utility skills and traits. I’m not even going to mention ridicolously high crit chances given away like candy in traits. No class in GW2 is suppsed to be designed for dumb play, yet the Warrior gets many things for free, things other classes need a skilled player for. If you get to low health with a health pool that big, you deserve to stay that way, and the one who managed to get you there deserves that kill even more. And here we are, a warrior who cries about a 8% health regen nerf. EIGHT PERCENT. That regen should have been nerfed by 30% minimum, up to a 45-50% max, with revisited traits that require the warrior to drop some offensive traits in order to achieve the godlike regen. Still, that class gets all of it for free, as “built in”.

Mega Messiah.1734:

No.

Patch was known to be coming for months now.

No.

You are right. However you skipped the part where ANet accounced crit changes weeks after implementing ascended armor craft.

It won’t change much. The reason berserker gear is mandatory for PvE content is not that it deals outstanding damage. The core game, including boss / mob AI, “stacking”, the “one hit or you are dead no matter what” mechanisms, everything together just doesn’t makes a NEED for other builds. 5 crit based players will always overcome any other party composition. Condition users are simply in a different league here, thanks to the cap on how much condition can be stacked on a target. They are out. Tanks? Who need a tank if most dungeon and bosses can be exploited via stacking or another way, those that are excluded (aetherpath endboss for example) will take down everyone the same 1 hit way, no matter if you are a tank or a papermade dps role in your party. Self sustain is always more important than supporting others – if you are dead, no you support noone. Since every class can achieve self sustain, there is no need for healers either. Yep, that’s what we used to call holy trinity, and it was entitled as holy for a good reason, IMHO. Guild Wars 2 choose to deny it by design, which I have nothing against – but reducing a specific build’s effectiveness for the sake of build diversity won’t change anything as long as the content we fight against requires no other builds. Everyone will keep going on with berserker for PvE, with a twist thanks to the new runes and traits. But that’s it. We told this to ANet countless times the moment they announced crit build changes, but they didn’t seem to listen. They’ll see it from the statistics anyway.

Blizzard used to do the same, took them a year of burning hate against them to realize balance is NEVER about hurting a build, but increasing the effectiveness of all the others to match in value, and rebalancing the PvE enviroment to match the new possible builds, creating a confortable enviroment that makes you feel like your build (if done well, no matter what purpose it serves) is viable and NEEDED as a part of a team. As long as there is no need for others, everyone will go berserk. Now it will take 10 more seconds to deal with the targets, that’s all.

Normally I’d support this. But knowing how much they took away from us, things we propably won’t ever get back, I must disagree with this mechanism. It is a great idea and I could support it, if we would get back everything they nerfed / deleted from our class in the past year. All those heartseeker nerfs, everything.

According to many hinted information plus the direct evidence (her journal put together), she has seen something horrible in her dreams that was talking to her, driving her mad.

Is there something to explore here lorewise, or the answer is as dumb as I expect it, and is “you know, the dragon that wasn’t even awake to do anything. Not even dumb explanation telepathy”.

It was such a big letdown at the end animation before we kill her.

Scarlet: You want to know why I did it?
HELL YES I want to know we’ve been struggling with this post-forced-to-story annoying character for a very long time now, what motivates her? Can she be an interesting character, trying to save us from the dragons and killing everyone who stands in her way? Or she is just plain simple evil one liner spammer? Either way, what motivated her?

Braham: Doesn’t matters now! We’ll put an end to this!

Really? I mean, REALLY!? After all that teasing, and even the facebook short stories and secrets behind Scarlet, at the final moment ANet even writes her words to make her tell those motivations, and we don’t get ANYTHING?!