Guild Wars 2

I wish I could come meet all of you one of these days! I think it’s great you’re doing things like this. Thanks Gaile! Maybe one day I’ll get to say that in person.

Edit: This turned out to be a hardware issue. The modem was old and crapping out. Swapping it out with a newer model appears to have resolved the issue. Also, Adam who used to help with setting up your booths at PAX says hi!

If anyone out there is in a giving spirit, I could use a few black lion keys to help me open a few of these (300~) chests floating around my inv.

Just reporting back in to confirm whatever the issue is it is not the Crusader set. Even in full Viper set, I am seeing similar numbers to what I get while wearing Crusader (and in some cases lower numbers)

Was this an accidental nerf to the power contributions for Reaper?

When clicking on the Reaper’s Auric Sharpening Stones (Collection Item), the client crashes. Other sharpening stones that are part of this collection might be affected by this as well. This is the only stone my wife has in her inventory to test.

She states that the ones that were in a single stack worked fine, but the reaper one is a stack of 3 and when attempting to right click on it the game crashes.

We do know that the Reaper’s Auric Sharpening Stone consistently causes this crash (be it in the bank or in the inventory).

That was one of the first things I did. The only thing I can think of is that maybe there was a change to the Crusader set. I don’t know what the stats were prior to this patch, and I didn’t see anything in the patch notes. What I am noticing though is that a drop in damage isn’t the only issue I’m seeing. Toughness doesn’t seem to help as much as it used to either.

After todays patch my damage with reaper skills is half, at best!

Example! I went from hitting for 10k on the low end, sometimes close to 20k with Soul Spiral. Now? Top end I’m seeing is 6k. What happened?

Palador.2170:

Vyriis.6258:

Getting kinda tired of pointing this out to people. Rangers are people of the land. “Range” is not meant as in distance but rather range as in land. Rangers are people who watch over and protect land. Look at park and forest rangers in real life.

Even the official description from GW2 site states: “Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled survivalists with traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.” They are not your rifle toting hunters. They are the protectors and tenders of nature. Stop trying to put rifles in their hands; it’s never going to happen (or at least I hope not).

Rifles will happen eventually. Rangers may try to rely on the powers of earth, air, fire, water, and and fluffy bunnies, but there comes a point when they’ll want to say say “Eff this” and combine it all to summon Captain Hollowpoint through some jerk’s skull.

Until then, enjoy the nature themes.

Rifles will probably eventually happen, but they won’t be a sniper spec. We got that with Thief. It will be something that makes more sense to the Ranger class and theme. Melee rifle? lol who knows. Stranger things have happened.

Doll Mistress.9267:

Ashley.3408:

i really dont understand what your asking them too do apart from keep expansions at same price and never drop, because thats pretty much all your post seems to imply your annoyed at.

no game will be bug free thats impossible something gets fixed something else gets bugged.

if they spent 6 months fixing bugs youd then moan as a veteran that theres no content for you veteran players. if they spent time revamping older zones youd moan you have done that zone 50times already wheres mah new content.

Not even close. I understand discounts to a point, but, make free what people paid a lot of money for, isn’t acceptable.

With the amount of money that many people have paid to play just GW2, we should be able to expect a bit more. GW1 was set up for Veterans better than Gw2 is.

Birthday gifts are cool and all, but, who needs tomes of knowledge, and gifts to level characters to lvl 20, 30, and 40, after all that time, really? They’re useless. If in this many years you need help leveling a character to that level, this isn’t the game for you.

Do yourself a favor… go in the game and type /age. Look at the number of hours played in total, then divide the cost of the game that you paid by that number.

Your cost over time per hour of entertainment is likely in the fractions of cents. You paid money to enjoy that entertainment earlier than those who didn’t. Just like you can pay $20 to go to the movies on release day, or watch it for ‘free’ when HBO picks it up or it airs on public TV.

Likewise, anytime you paid them additional money you already received what you paid that money for. Gems for gold, or store items, etc. If you gave them more money you got something back every time.

This sense of feeling like you’re owed something because you’ve played a game for thousands of hours doesn’t make sense. They gave you thousands of hours of entertainment for a very low entry fee considering what other forms of entertainment cost, and you feel like they owe you more?

Ayrilana.1396:

Sondergaard.8469:

Ayrilana.1396:

Raine.1394:

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s the point of progression if it’s done passively?

It’s not done passively if done through XP. Progression will then occur through playing the game. Playing the game is never passive. Progression, and reward itself, should always come through playing the game. The benefit with using XP is that it allows the player to largely play the game their way and still progress along the horizontal scale.

I know “play it your way” sounds foreign to many ears, but it didn’t to the original developers of GW2.

Earning XP from just playing the game is doing so passively. It’s the difference between farming gold in SW or Fractal 40 vs earning gold from monsters/events as they do whatever. It’d be like Anet removing all farms and increasing that players earned from just playing the game. Earning that gold becomes a passive effect just as earning progressing masteries if they only needed XP.

You also forget that the masteries of HoT tended to be spread out to get players do to a wide range of content to experience more of HoT. Otherwise, players would have done the AB farm only and have all of their masteries maxed. It makes the masteries kind of pointless as a progression system at that point.

I see where you’re coming from on this but I feel that the Mastery point system is two concepts that don’t mesh well with the rest of progression in the game. I think the Mastery Skills and trait lines are one concept, and the points earned for special achievements are another entirely and should be treated as such.

If you are willing to go above and beyond to achieve special goals and complete specific content, GREAT! You absolutely should be rewarded for that. I do not feel that continued lateral progression should be directly tied to these feats. They are two different concepts, achievements vs continued progress after cap.

I personally have no issues if the entire thing was scrapped as progression was instead done by using those masteries. Kind of like what Elder Scrolls does with its skills. One difference being that you have to meaningfully use them instead of something like AFK stealth walking into a corner like in those games.

That’s a rather interesting concept, and one I would find enjoyable compared to the current point gated system. Either way, I do feel that there needs to be a change that allows a sense of progression that isn’t gated by ‘achievements’. I’m hesitant to get fully behind the Skryim concept though, because I get the sense it would end up being implemented in a way that still felt like achievement grind, just with a different label.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raine.1394:

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s the point of progression if it’s done passively?

It’s not done passively if done through XP. Progression will then occur through playing the game. Playing the game is never passive. Progression, and reward itself, should always come through playing the game. The benefit with using XP is that it allows the player to largely play the game their way and still progress along the horizontal scale.

I know “play it your way” sounds foreign to many ears, but it didn’t to the original developers of GW2.

Earning XP from just playing the game is doing so passively. It’s the difference between farming gold in SW or Fractal 40 vs earning gold from monsters/events as they do whatever. It’d be like Anet removing all farms and increasing that players earned from just playing the game. Earning that gold becomes a passive effect just as earning progressing masteries if they only needed XP.

You also forget that the masteries of HoT tended to be spread out to get players do to a wide range of content to experience more of HoT. Otherwise, players would have done the AB farm only and have all of their masteries maxed. It makes the masteries kind of pointless as a progression system at that point.

I see where you’re coming from on this but I feel that the Mastery point system is two concepts that don’t mesh well with the rest of progression in the game. I think the Mastery Skills and trait lines are one concept, and the points earned for special achievements are another entirely and should be treated as such.

If you are willing to go above and beyond to achieve special goals and complete specific content, GREAT! You absolutely should be rewarded for that. I do not feel that continued lateral progression should be directly tied to these feats. They are two different concepts, achievements vs continued progress after cap.

starlinvf.1358:

You’re focusing on the wrong problem. The point system they use ultimately isn’t a problem compared to how things are obtained, and how mastery points are expressly used as a gating mechanism for each relevant mechanic, and region of the game that uses them. Trivialize it, and the gating mechanism falls apart….. but we have nothing to replace it with, because GW2 doesn’t use level caps and gear checks as a universal system. More importantly, if they were made map specific nodes (like Gliding was originally going be for HOT), it ends up disrupting the exploration aspect of the game, and forces it to behave more like a puzzle. Think Zephyerite aspects in Drytop, and how Gliding completely circumvented every major restriction on that map. That difference in application is SIGNIFICANT in ways you aren’t even bothering to consider.

I respect your opinion, but I strongly disagree. Early progression is not the issue I have with the system. Early progression is fairly easy to earn enough mastery points in a variety of ‘play it your way’ methods. Though once all of those are used up, progression comes to a grinding halt and the player is then left either attempting content that may be well above their skill level (which leads to frustration), grinding content they do not enjoy, or giving up on any future lateral progress completely. That doesn’t seem all that fun to me.

starlinvf.1358:

HOT mobility masteries, and nearly all the initial complaints with the mastery system, can easily be boiled down to the design of Verdant Brink, and how it had to condense several hours of early progress (more or less a soft tutorial) into a space the size of Drytop. Once you had Updraft Gliding and Bouncing mushroom (a whole 4 Mastery points total) nearly all of those problems go away. The reason was simple….. VB is an extremely vertical map, with a lot of vertical access ways. AB doesn’t have that problem, because all the transit zones are ground level, and the map is circular (easy to get around by converging on the central ring of Tarir’s outer gates). TD problems were the exact opposite, because there were very few vertical path ways, but each Meta region (the space above each lane) is its own vertical map.

Again, not my complaint. Early progression offers a wide variety of ways to earn mastery points. Story, event achievements, exploration, etc. Those are all available for early progress. It’s when you get into later levels of progression that this really becomes an issue for me. I understand we don’t agree on that, but it is one of the major factors in why my personal play time tapered off significantly once I hit that wall.

starlinvf.1358:

All they really needed to do different in the early section of HOT was to define a clearer pathway for how to spend points, and being more cognizant of map signalling in Metroidvania map design methodology. And if you look back…. that was the big problem with figuring out to navigate VB.

This would not address the main point of concern for me, since it is not early progression that I found unenjoyable.

starlinvf.1358:

As for utilizing content…. technically you only need to unlock all the materies if you plan to do achievements and/or legendary weapons. You only “need” Gliding 3 to complete the expansion (the Modremoth battle), and they took out the requirement for Itzel Poison… which was the only other “requirement” for the story.
But the reason they chained content into requisites was to lessen the amount of compartmentalization required of the maps. Because what you’re asking is effectively removing mastery points as a gating system for general progress, and replacing it with the ever growing trivialness that is Spirit Shards, and its Predecessor the Skill point system. This would force those mechanics to be map specific elements, rather then general abilities of the character, if there was any hope to control how they progressed through the map.

Since when has progression ever been solely about what you need? That’s not entirely the point of progression. Certainly some things are needed for later content, but progression gives players a sense of moving forward. When you hit a wall where progress stops and all the goals are out of your reach, then what? It gets boring, because you have nothing to strive for, no sense of character growth or development, and the fun stops pretty quick.

I want to preface this by stating, I love the concept of the mastery system. What I don’t love is the current implementation.

From the beginning Guild Wars has sort of embodied this “Play it your way” kind of mentality. If you don’t feel like doing a specific aspect of the game, your progress is not stunted as a result. For example, I don’t have to play WvW in order to enjoy the full extent of the PvE offerings. Likewise, I don’t have to play PvE in order to enjoy PvP or WvW.

These are just some very broad/big picture examples but there are numerous other examples throughout the game regarding progression to 80. Then you hit 80 and lateral progression changes the entire way you approach the game. This is the part I don’t like.

Now, in order to progress beyond a certain point, the only way to do so is to perform very specific achievements to be awarded points. With the upcoming expansion and many exciting features being tied to it, this issue is only going to be highlighted tenfold.

How I wish this system worked is to get rid of the points entirely (for progression purpose). Or re-purpose them as a currency to award the diligent players who’ve sought them out with some cool custom gear or something.

Rather, you already have to put in the time and effort earning the experience to unlock each mastery, but this is far more flexible in how you go about achieving that experience. What I hope to see would be to remove that barrier of points from lateral progression, to have the barrier be reliant just upon earning the xp for each mastery.

Put the points towards some other form of award, like being able to buy a precursor for a legendary, or legendary armor (since they’re a very limited resource you can’t buy all the legendary precursors so it would work! And you still need the other 75% of the work for the legendary)

Offering a different kind of reward for Mastery points would hopefully avoid the feeling of players who have put in so much effort into the current system from feeling jaded. Their hard work would have a different kind of payoff, and everyone wins. (Hopefully)

A system like this would open up the lateral progression to everyone in a way that would allow people to gradually earn the Mastery rewards at their own pace, doing the content they enjoy, as opposed to being forced into specific types of content.

Outside I does has shadow.. inside, I does not has shadow.

I suppose this is just a side effect of being an awesomely creepy reaper? Also on GTX 1080

I wanted to report back after the latest rounds of updates.

It looks like for the most part this issue has seen significant improvements. When on the airship on the bow and looking back towards the airship I still experience frame drops into the low 60s (down from 100+) BUT I believe this is less of an issue with changes in the code and more a natural consequence of trying to render so many high quality characters (NPCS and Players) at once. Still way better than dropping below 20s, and there are no more noticeable jitters or stutters so the experience remains smooth.

Overall, performance has significantly improved with the latest patches. Thank you ArenaNet!

Bug was reported in game, but figured I would add a thread in case anyone else is experiencing the issue.

System Specs
GPU: 1080 (Overclocked 15%)
CPU: i7-7700k (Overclocked to 4.8ghz)
RAM: 32gb
Motherboard: Maximus IX Hero (Not sure it matters but including it for thorough..)
Drive: NVMe M.2 Raid Samsung Evo (3k read/write)

Today’s patch has created a new issue with frame rates. Normally the game runs well above 130~ FPS and rarely dips below 90 FPS in intense situations. After today’s patch, I am seeing a solid 130~ FPS when standing idle, but when moving the camera (even up on the airship) I am seeing frame drops down into the low 20’s and below. This creates a very ugly stutter effect.

Please note, this issue did not exist prior to today’s patch and there were no driver changes on my system prior to the last time I played GW2 and updating experiencing this issue in the latest version of the game. (Unless windows ninja’d something again.)

Michael Henninger.7451:

“it’s best to be careful while AFKing”

There’s no need to be careful. The criteria between game mechanics and automation are very clear and we can easily tell the difference.

I imagine it’s not as easy as you make it sound.

My friend’s 70+ yr old mother is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and when she plays GW2 she tends to run in a continuous loop farming resources and killing random critters. It looks very much like botting because of the memory issue. Point in case, she was banned permanently, until he appealed the case and provided medical records proving that she was ill and not botting.

But in your defense, when things like this happen, customer service does at least try to do right by their customers. Not to mention it’s hard, if not impossible, to get it right every time.

I did a little more research on this issue, and I found this…
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t9x04ed2(v=vs.110).aspx

I thought I’d share, since this sounds like a much better solution than my initial suggestion.

You might also look into using a combination of Knockout and JQuery. It makes receiving and using the data received a lot easier.

Naturally you can do this without either, but using them makes life a whole heck of a lot easier in the long run and requires a lot less code. I also recommend them because the documentation is pretty awesome for both, and there are tons of tutorials available which makes learning how to use them even easier.

knockout

jquery <- this specifically links to the documentation on ajax requests.

Note, in the success property you can put a function that will execute once the request is complete. Inside that function you can catch the data coming back from the server and bind it to your knockout view model.

Knockout isn’t really necessary if your data is static and there aren’t any dynamic values, but I still like using it over other options.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

To get the data immediately, the API components would have to talk directly to the map instance servers — we don’t do this because the API is intentionally decoupled from all the game systems so that the API can independently catch fire and burn down without affecting anything else. (additionally, this is one of the main reasons why the API will ever only be read-only, for the most part).

I’m making some sweeping generalizations here, but that’s the rough explanation.

Could something like this work? push/pull sync

It would allow for push notifications to the api backend when the server backend is ready for a pull request. This would allow for synchronized timing and maintain the decoupling. It would also reduce unnecessary calls, as the API would only make a call when the server has fresh data available.

It sounds like you have 4 layers here, the server, server cache, api cache, and api frontend. So the server cache would send the request when updated, the api cache would be receiving and trigger the sync request when new data is available. This also eliminates a need for constant polling. You’re talking through an expected channel, when a message is received action is triggered. For security you can use an encrypted application/database key that exists in the server db, and without said key a request to either cache would be denied. You can also setup acceptable domain keys, so anything outside of your local domain would be rejected for such a request (security sucks…) much like how OAuth2 works with .NET WebAPI

DGraves.3720:

Sondergaard.8469:

Another alternative could be something akin to the LFG, but an LFM (looking for mentor) system, where it would show a list of online/available mentors in categories that players could then directly message for their questions. Or vice versa, a list of players seeking help that mentors could then pick up and start helping. (Almost like a support ticketing system, yay! Only using group mechanics…)

You still have the opinion problem. Do you remember back when the game first came out and everyone thought necromancer was the worst thing to ever hit the Earth? That was actually the result of something like this where a few high profile nimrods decided that their opinion meant something and unfortunately so did the rest of the community. Whether it’s a channel or a specifikittentle set-up so long as one mentor gains popularity over another it becomes a platform for all kinds of in-game politics such as stat choice, roles in certain places, how or who you should listen to (and avoid) and so forth and so on.

It isn’t a matter of self-policing so much as it is a matter of just being human. You believe things others disagree with and this is normal and healthy, there’s nothing to police there, but that doesn’t mean your opinion is fact nor does it mean that your opinion is understood as just an opinion by your listeners no matter how clearly you say it. It’s a risk of leadership.

That system seems a bit more advanced, however, and new players might be shy of taking advantage of it. It’s a bit harder to dive into than a chat window that’s a staple in just about every MMO these days.

You’ve got other problems too. Even with some form of in-game downvoting system you’ve got the issue of liars who just mislead for fun, you’ve got the issue of the unpopular voice existing no matter how correct they are (think: “Necromancers aren’t terrible.” from yesteryear which got drown out for over a year and a half.) being ignored, and then you’ve got the issue of the newbie being naive and at times dumb so they downvote things inappropriately because they didn’t understand instructions. Easiest way to envision that is to take a build submitted, see that it actually is good, but uses unpopular mechanics and is deemed “bad” for no reason.

This system is just too prone to human error and heuristics.

I don’t disagree that some people will cause problems, but all the problems you’re stating now exist in regular map chat. Sure they might exist in a mentor system too, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have one just because a few people might have a heated debate.

Those debates exist daily in map, if the argument is that it would be more confusing for a new player, I don’t see how it would be any worse than the system already is. In a lot of ways, I think it would be better. At least with a mentor program they would have a better chance of connecting with someone who actually wants to help.

DGraves.3720:

The problem here is that misinformation and opinion exists. A mentor channel “argument” breaking out would cause more chaos and confusion than not and I’ve seen mentors, commanders, and even general populace get into it pretty fiercely over opinionated or unsubstantiated elements in the game such as “how to do something” or “how to build something”.

Mentors aren’t a bad idea but by no means is it is a good one to promote players as being experts unless they can only be sworn to speak in a manner that is actually 100% verifiable such as how mechanic X works instead of which stat is better for whatever.

Very true, and while differing opinions could result in conflict I would hope that there would be enough self-policing present especially among players who are actively interested in giving back to the community and helping others.

Another alternative could be something akin to the LFG, but an LFM (looking for mentor) system, where it would show a list of online/available mentors in categories that players could then directly message for their questions. Or vice versa, a list of players seeking help that mentors could then pick up and start helping. (Almost like a support ticketing system, yay! Only using group mechanics…)

That system seems a bit more advanced, however, and new players might be shy of taking advantage of it. It’s a bit harder to dive into than a chat window that’s a staple in just about every MMO these days.

I was thinking more about this, and I was considering the idea that we have a players helping players forum. The idea of a ‘mentor’ channel in-game would be great for the new players, but I know there are just as many players who have been around who still have questions that could benefit from a setup like this.

So another idea is maybe instead of limiting the ‘mentors’ to new players only, it could be something that’s a benefit to the community as a whole.

Someone who hasn’t run a dungeon before, but would like to might want to join up with a mentor who’s patient enough to explain the mechanics and the fights, who isn’t going to bail on the first wipe, and willing to help people understand class mechanics and skills that will help them be a greater benefit to their group under different scenarios.

While a lot of this happens in forums, if these tools were more readily available in-game to players who genuinely enjoy helping make improvements to the community and player experiences, this could have some great cascading effects.

I think mentors are a great idea for this game. There’s a lot to learn, and a lot that can be overwhelming for a new player. Asking in map chat doesn’t always yield beneficial results, and can lead to frustration for a new player.

The problem is, the current implementation of Mentors is just a simplified version of a commander tag. That doesn’t really help new players, or provide them a method in-game for asking questions and getting answers from veteran players who enjoy helping new players.

My suggestion is change it up. Rename the current ‘mentor’ tag in the masteries to jr commander, since that’s all it is.

For the actual mentor role, require a player to have 80%-100% map completion, have a certain amount of hours played on their account, have a certain level of achievement points completed, and have opted in to be a mentor for new players.

Add a new chat channel for new players, and mentors. This channel would be for the purpose of connecting new players with veterans to help assist them in getting familiar with the game and answering questions, as well as having someone to adventure with who can show them around.

Mentors should have access to this channel whether or not they’ve set their status to available as a mentor.

Add a new LFG option for new players to seek out and find mentors who have turned their mentor status to available.

This is just a rough sketch of an idea with room for improvement. I’m sure our community and the team at ANet can come up with some great ideas on how to make something like this even better, but it would certainly go a long way to improving the new player experience to have access to the mentor channel.

In any RPG you look at you will find multiple layers of progression. Be it through character stats, gear, or other enhancements. All of these typically are broken up into short-term progression, and long-term progression tiers. What I mean by this is, you have a long term goal (reaching level 80), but every level along the way offers a short-term reward (bump to character stats, new skills, etc).

With Mastery, it’s an all or nothing reward system it feels like. I can spend weeks, or months in some cases, grinding for a single objective. I view these all as long-term goals.

It would help with the sense of ‘grind’ and be less daunting, if along the journey towards the long-term goal, there were more sprinkled gap-fill rewards for short-term.

Examples where this exists in the game beyond leveling… PvP reward tracks. To complete a full PvP reward track and achieve the end goal, it’s a long journey (long being relative here, but it’s not something you get for a handful of matches). Along the way though, there are several other rewards sprinkled throughout that make the grind a little less painful because you’re getting smaller incentives as you progress.

I don’t know what kind of things could be sprinkled along the journey for a Mastery track, but I do know it would be a nice middle-ground solution for those who feel Mastery grind burnout and those who enjoy the long-term goal aspect. Think of it as milestones.

Power.2957:

Personally I think people who bot should be permanently ip banned but at least something is being done.

IP ban would do next to nothing. That’s not how things work anymore. An IP can change like the weather in Texas. This includes mac address as it simply requires swapping out $10 worth of hardware. It’s is one of the least reliable ways of locking out a user, and since IPs are recycled it runs the risk of locking out someone who did nothing wrong.

I like the style, but this raises an old issue for a feature that I truly wish we had. The ability to dye weapons and tint weapon effects with dye colors.

Would it be hard to do? Of course. Would it take time to make that feature? Absolutely. Would it be worth it? Hell yes.

The Problem: there are many different types of players in every MMO but there are two that are in such direct opposition that in almost every situation making one happy disappoints the other. I’m speaking of your elite diehard players who seek hardest possible challenge they can get, and your casual gamers who don’t care for the extreme challenge but still want to experience content.

One of the struggles here is how to balance content to cater to both and still feel rewarding for both camps. Unfortunately there isn’t really a way to do this, or is there?

Proposal: a new class of buff that acts as a debuff I’m calling challenge mode. Enabled through the character panel, these would fall under four categories. Damage, defense, support, and gear.

Damage Example: Deal 30% less damage. Gain 30% Magic Find, Gold Find, and Xp.
Defense Example : Take 30% more damage from all sources. Gain 30% Magic Find, Gold Find, and XP
Support Example: Receive 30% less healing from all sources. Gain 30% Magic Find, Gold Find, and XP
Gear Examples:

• Runeless: Disable all bonuses from equipped runes. Gain 50% Magic Find, Gold Find, and XP
• Sigilless: Disable all bonuses from equipped sigils. Gain 30% Magic Find, Gold Find, and XP

Additionally these disable the use of any bonus stat consumables while active.

Each of these could be enabled or disabled individually for stacking bonuses. To avoid buff clutter, they could all show under a single buff icon and display the currently active debuffs in the mouse over tool tip.

These should be allowed to be enabled and disabled under the same conditions as changing gear or traits.

These could be linked to special achievement that grant titles, loot, etc. to add further incentives for those daring enough to seek out the extra challenge.

• These achievements should not reward items or gear that could not be achieved through other means, but should provide an alternative method towards acquiring some of the more difficult to collect items.
• The rewards should not leave players feeling like these challenges are required, but that they offer alternative methods for progression. They should offer things like titles to acknowledge the effort by those who manage to succeed in completing the challenges.

This suggestion would allow players a variety of ways to spice up their game and create that challenge some desire, while not creating a wall for the less skilled, or those who simply do not enjoy difficult content.

Copestetic.5174:

Uh oh. HoT Meta events are about to get nerfed!

I doubt it, especially considering this line.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Has limited GW2 Experience: No characters over level 60; one character (or more) between levels 10 and 60.

Reading between the lines, and levels… it sounds like they want someone with SOME experience, but minor. This is likely not an end-game test.

It’s too bad it’s exclusive to the Seattle HQ… I know lots of people in the Dallas, TX area who would qualify for this and be happy to do it for free lunch.

holodoc.5748:

Even worse, last night I had a guy following me the whole nightfall cycle in Verdant Brink on purpose just because I commented how annoying it is.

At that point it’s harassment. Next time report them, we could use a few less trolls

On topic, I didn’t realize to mute the bow all I had to do was downgrade my sound drivers. I might have to do this as a temporary mute.

Give me invisible walls and broken gliding. It’s better than nothing!

Seriously though, I think people would be happy with a gradual rollout too. Just rework maps as part of a living story. Maybe only take on updating one or two every 3 months or so and work towards an eventual global update.

Some is better than none.

I don’t think anyone is arguing they don’t want to see this happen. However even without seeing the code involved to make this happen I’m pretty confident if it was easy to do they would have done so with the launch of HoT. I know at least a few of the devs would love to be able to glide in Tyria maps. I think it will come down to how much reworking will have to go into core maps to update them to allow gliding in a way that makes sense.

I would love to see this happen but I get the feeling it’s going to likely be a while before they can tackle this given all the other higher priority items for the immediate future.

Aytheist.9476:

Solo players cannot advance in the new content wearing only berserker gear.

Fixed this for you. It is not impossible but extremely difficult to zerker blast your way through HoT. You need more defensive stats if you want to progress solo. And dodging is an absolute must.

Initially I was frustrated too with the difficulty curve. However, instead of raging at Anet I chose to take a look at my build and play style to adapt and rise to the challenge. Now both HoT and old Tyria content is fairly easy. There are a few events in HoT and a few mob types that can overwhelm me still if I’m not careful but when that happens it’s typically because I made a mistake and missed a Dodge or went melee when I should have swapped to range.

It takes some getting used to, but believe me when I say it does get easier with a few tweaks for survival.

Thank you for putting my thoughts into words so perfectly. From the start of the Hero Point system I have struggled to figure out what exactly it was about them that didn’t sit right in contrast to the rest of the game. This is exactly it. I really and truly hope ArenaNet seriously considers this feedback and finds ways to offer alternative paths to progression for earning Hero Points. Especially considering that they have plans to give us new elite specs later. It doesn’t seem like an expandable system unless they are going to tie every new elite spec to a full expansion which also doesn’t seem all that great of a path.

Here’s to hoping for more freedom.

Helequin.2608:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They could make jumping puzzles use the new adventure mechanic which would then have the ability to set whatever restrictions they want on movement and skills…

I know that technically this would likely be very difficult to accomplish due to the maps not originally being designed for this, but in the spirit of not making old content obsolete… Tyria really sucks without gliding.

It’s like having food that’s five star quality, then trying to go back to the local one star restaurant and ‘enjoy’ your meal.

Gliding is so much fun, and I truly hope that ANet will consider bringing it over to the rest of the game because it’s such an amazing feature.

style.6173:

I hate PvE but enjoy PvP and WvW. What a lot of your PvE folks don’t understand is that you have to spend WAY more time in PvE to learn a legendary than you do in PvP or WvW.

Why should I be forced to map complete in the expansion? The answer is that a legendary should show progress across all game modes. Ascended gear (which has the same stats as legendary) should be available exclusively through your preferred game mode.

This isn’t really counter to my argument. It in fact supports it. My point is that you shouldn’t HAVE to play a game mode you don’t enjoy. There should be multiple paths, not a required ‘mastery of the whole game’ concept. I don’t like that. I don’t enjoy that, and to me it feels like it goes against ArenaNet’s philosophy of no grind, or a grind that at least doesn’t FEEL like a grind. Every moment I have to spend in pvp or wvw is a grind for me.

Likewise, as you pointed out, for non-pve’ers and people who are exclusive to pvp or wvw shouldn’t be forced to play through hundreds of hours of pve just to acquire a legendary weapon. Each game mode should have its own track towards providing progress on the whole legendary, so people have a choice of acquiring some parts, or all of them from their desired mode.

displacedTitan.6897:

So did the OP and other people miss the part where they said that the PvP and WvW portion could be purchased on the TP or did they just instantly kneejerk and post here?

Buying parts is certainly an option but it takes a lot of the fun out of the adventure. If I wanted to just buy the parts, I’d settle for an ascended which is far easier to obtain and the same stats.

I want the adventure and the journey, but I want to be able to seek that in my desired game mode and not be forced to just drop some cash on the TP and cheat half the journey.

I just got done reading about the plans for the new legendaries. Yes I agree they should be difficult to acquire, but one thing that stood out to me was that you are taking away the option of earning a legendary through a variety of paths.

What I read is that if I want one of the new legendaries I have no choice but to participate in content that I don’t enjoy, and have no desire to play. Examples, World vs World and PvP.

I am not a competitive gamer, and I enjoy playing in PvE environments. When I had heard you were reworking the legendary path to put more focus on an epic journey I was initially excited for this.

Now that I’ve read that that epic journey means I have to go through areas that I would otherwise avoid like the plague (and yes I have tried them many times and never enjoyed it any of the times I did) this is just a huge turn off for me.

I want the ability to have a choice in my journey, and how I acquire my weapon. I do not want a requirement to have to spend hours, even months in content grinding away at something I absolutely do not enjoy for a weapon skin that I would really enjoy having.

Please reconsider this decision.

I didn’t get to try raids, but I’m really in love with the new Reaper… I hope it survives post beta ‘polish’ and doesn’t get nerfed Right now it just feels good to play it… its right where it needs to be.

I really enjoyed Reaper this time around. The changes made significantly improved the playability of the class. I will say that I felt a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to use one of the core aspects of the new elite, shouts, while in reaper shroud. Especially considering there are descriptions that suggest alternate functionality while in shroud for some of the shouts.

It’s odd to me to have to leave shroud to use my utility skills, but I suppose it’s always been that way with necro. I was just hoping this would not be the case with reaper.

hackks.3687:

Why would you use Shroud out of combat? That’s ridiculous.

Look at the functionality in a practical context, like IN combat. Stacking Might regardless of whether you make contact or not is a big deal. Specially when the duration allows you to accumulate as many as 20 stacks through the simple action of spamming a hard-hitting self-sustaining, no CD skill. Not to mention you’re enjoying the defensive benefit of being in the shroud itself. It’s extremely strong, and out of balance with how the rest of might stacking functions.

I think you’re too focused on the fact that we can stack might out of combat and not looking at the actual numbers for what that translates to. With the 20+ stacks of might, in full berserker gear with supporting runes for dps, we still don’t hit as hard as a warrior in the same setup, even with our hardest hitting shroud attack.

The stacks only help to bring us on par with other classes, and even then we’re still UNDER what others can do.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Soooooo…. I wanted to throw out an idea I had about a new GM trait for retribution to place it and see what you all think. The trait would be more dwarf stance focused since we don’t have a dwarf stance specific trait.

• It would give you some way to proc Rite of the Great Dwarf like at some percent health trigger or something and then make Rite of the Great Dwarf (both proc and the skill) have reduced condition damage taken as well while allies have the buff.

Let me know what you think.

Personally I’m not a fan of any of the % health cast ability traits. If I want to cast a skill it’s on my hotbar and I can push the button myself. These often lack any degree of excitement for me when I see them in the trait line. I would much rather see something that gives % bonuses to toughness for the dwarf line than auto proc skill stuff…

This view likely comes from how I handle traits as a whole. I want passive bonuses, that improve my overall potential strength, but I look for the always on traits as opposed to the long cooldown proc skill traits.

vince.5937:

• Death’s Charge is the rotten apple that spoils the bunch here. The mobility on this skill is so incredibly high for a zone like Verdant Brink. In other parts of the game I’m sure this skill would shine and be real fun to use, but on the precarious perches of the Brink using this skill is basically asking to take a dive off a cliff. I found more often than not that if I wasn’t facing down my attacker eye-to-eye, the projectile deflection would not work. I had to be dead-center, 12-o-clock on my target. This skill feels clunky, unpredictable, and not up to snuff with the rest of Reaper’s Shroud.

This was my only complaint about the Reaper spec. This skill seems like it would be much better off being a shadow step. It accomplishes the same goal of closing the gap, but alleviates a lot of the pain points that spiraling recklessly through the air causes.

I would love to see it changed to shadowstep to the target and apply chill to the foe and nearby foes. Even if it doesn’t do much damage, this would make a lot more sense with the reaper spec being built around chills and vulnerability and it would be a hell of a lot easier to use than the current design.

Love the new reaper elite spec for Necro. It plays well and gives Necro a build that can go full zerker, or build it a bit more tanky and rock some Minion Master style play and go toe to toe with some baddies.

The only thing I don’t like about it is the number 2 “Death’s Charge” in shroud. This ability more often than not ends up getting in the way than helping out. I realize it is meant as a gap closer, but in its current design a B-line charge in whatever direction I happen to be facing more often takes me OUT of a fight than puts me back in one.

Maybe it’s my mentality that’s flawed here, but when I pop shroud it’s because I’m ready to go hulk on some baddies and whoop kittens all over the place. Zipping halfway across the fight area to maybe hit one or two enemies as I fly past with little control, isn’t ideal. If the idea is that it’s a gap closer I’d rather it be something that does a shadow step and drops an aoe chill bomb.

As for Revenant, I love the design of the class, but I have a few concerns with it currently. It doesn’t seem to inherit from stats anywhere remotely as much as other classes. I can fully deck out in healing gear and not see much gain in output healing. Likewise I can go full zerker and not really notice a difference in damage enough to justify wearing that over something that will bulk up defensive stats.

Overall, the class diversity when gear comes into play feels very flat. Maybe this is by design so that you can swap legends without having to worry about being specifically geared for each legend, but what ends up being the result is that each legend ends up feeling lackluster with no way to really push those limits and focus on two primaries.

That’s the other part that I find could be improved. You can gear for a specific legend, as each has its clearly preferred stat set, but you are always bound to two. It would be really neat if the legends had a stat conversion you could spec into through their specific trait line. For example, Shiro could convert Clerics healing power to something like bonus power or crit while no longer receiving the benefit of healing power. This would allow for more build diversity in the class and gear stats as opposed to the only real option currently being celestial to account for every legend needing different stats.

Lastly, level design. Love love love it. No feedback here other than keep doing more of this!

draugris.9872:

if you are really interested in player feedback and in game data why don´t you open a test- or beta server like any other game developer to let people test classes / balance / content on a longer time frame ?

This beta weekend sounds more a marketing than a test event.

My guess is that the answer to this is two part. Time, and focus. In an ambiguous open beta, there’s not much focus which can be good for finding general bugs, glitches, hiccups, exploits, etc. but the sheer volume of information returned can be overwhelming and not entirely productive. Throw in that the level of interest and amount of testers providing feedback significantly drops after the first 3 days of new content dropped on a test server, there’s not a lot of benefit to a longer test cycle.

They can get a focused test group with focused feedback on areas of the game they are trying to get more information about in a shorter window and hold peoples attention longer by ensuring that window has a time limit. Yes, that is a marketing strategy often used in sales for example. The psychology of only having a few days to test and play through new content will drive a large population of players to explore as much as possible in that time frame.

That provides a significant amount of data, low cost, and much more efficient use of time for the developers and players both. They can then take the data retrieved from the test, prioritize the feedback, and start iterating development based on that. That last part would be significantly harder to accomplish with an open-ended test.

I remember reading in article about someone else’s experiences with windows 10. They had a similar problem and discovered it wasn’t related to the application in question but rather something getting messed up in the windows 10 installation. They mentioned reinstalling the applications that were having trouble fixed the issue for the most part. In the case of GW2, try right clicking the shortcut and going to properties. Where it shows Target and a file path add a -repair at the end. For me it would look like this: “D:\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -repair

Once you’ve done that, launch the game via the shortcut and let it run through the repair process. There’s no guarantee this will fix the problem, but it certainly won’t hurt it to try. After you’ve completed a full repair cycle, make sure that you go back into the shortcut and remove the -repair or it will run a repair every time you try to launch the game.

The other thing you might want to try is doing a clean install of your graphics card driver. Depending on whether your graphics card is AMD or NVidia the process is different, so google is your friend on this one.

Weapon swap is a welcome addition and a temporary fix. I would still prefer to see swap eventually swapped out for a mechanic similar to Elementalist. Where changing legends will change the primary skill functions much like utility skills swap with each legend.. So I can equip a staff and depending on which legend I am using it changes the play-style of the skills for the staff.

Orion Templar.4589:

2. Have the core weapons change their skills under different legends – for example under dwarf stance hammer is melee but under centaur stance hammer is ranged

This would be awesome! I would love it if they figured something like this out and it would make so much more sense than the current system. It would flow really well with the current design, since all your utility skills are dependent on legend, why aren’t the primary skills somehow effected by them? That was one thing that I found confusing in my experience with it.

I really hope ANet takes this suggestion, because it would be a huge leap forward for the class.

Terissimo.6852:

“A lot of bad players asked for mentoring "
" for everyone who wants to learn doing dungeons"

isnt it clear?

I’m glad others were able to help you get this fixed. For clarification I wanted to explain briefly what the difference was.

“Many bad players asked for mentoring” – When phrased this way mentoring implies the student as the subject because you are referencing the action of mentoring. A student seeks mentoring, a mentor provides it.

“Many bad players asked to be a mentor” – This case refers directly to the player seeking to become a mentor, rather than a student seeking to be taught. This is because you are referring to mentor as a thing, not an action in this sentence. They seek to become the thing, not do the action.

I hope this helps. Again, I meant no harm in my post, I really love what you’re doing and was trying to help out.

Can’t really abuse this one. All the ventari skills base off the tablet and without the tablet actually present they are just a waste of class resource.