Guild Wars 2

I was searching online to see, in the years since I and others have asked for this simple option, if anything had been done about it. Doesn’t look like it. I’ve found several other threads expressing much more pronounced exasperation about this issue, some older than this one, some new.

Seriously, Anet, people have been asking for this for YEARS. Can you make this simple change already? It is immersion breaking, annoying, cluttering, pointless and silly that I have to look at the names and guild affiliation of my OWN PETS as they swarm around me.

Add the option to turn off pet names already!!

OK, thanks for the tips, I’ll use my amazing Chronomancer skills to skip forward in time for a bit to unlock Masteries.

Anet – WTH? This kitten is confusing, and I shouldn’t be wasting XP because I’m not at exactly the stage you want me to be at expansion launch.

Am I storing XP for some future Mastery blowout once I start the HOT storyline and complete Torn from the Sky, or should I pause Season 2 and prioritize unlocking Masteries right now? Does that question make sense? Am I wasting / losing the XP?

OK, thanks. That sounds reasonable.

Follow up question: I keep getting XP. Killing things, discovering new locations.

Where is this XP going? Is it being applied to anything?

Still trying to feel my way around the new way of doing things.

So I’m Level 80 but currently on Season 2. I want to do that one first before going on to the HOT stories.

I notice I have no experience bar now, cool. At 80, I guess it’s all about Masteries now, or something. Which won’t unlock until a specific HOT story. OK.

But my Elite Specialization still says I need Hero Points. Used to be, every post 80 “level” generated a HP, if I recall, thus allowing players to build them up steadily even without doing skill challenges.

So question: how do I build up my HP to unlock the 200 points (or whatever) need to complete my Elite Specialization? It can’t just be through skill challenges alone can it?

I’m missing something right? I’m sure I am.

Also, respectfully to those forum users who feel some kind of compulsion to reply with point-by-point rebuttals to OP postings: seriously, just stop and post your own ideas. Me posting my suggestions isn’t going to overtake the game and make it something you can’t stand. If you get kitten over other’s ideas and opinions and have to contradict every single idea someone else puts forth its probably time to get off the computer and get some fresh air.

thehipone.6812:

Asks for long term player feedback, still calls the bow and pet class Hunters…hmmm…

Who cares? I don’t play one, I don’t pay attention to them, they have bows and run around with pets. What does this have to do with providing feedback to the developers? This is exactly why gamers are so reviled. Stop being a kitten.

starlinvf.1358:

A lot of these complaints seem to be geared toward “single player RPG game” mentality. BThe personal story was ill-conceived from the get-go, just because of the MMO rule of hero dynamics. Simply put, choices can’t be meaningful if everyone gets to make different ones.

I’m not following you. I’m not suggesting choices that have world impact, but personal impact. I don’t see how, for example, “I select Lyssa as my god and get a Lyssa-based skill, I select Balthazzar as my god and get a Balthazzar skill” impacts anything except my own skill bar.

Sounds like you don’t like the “chosen one” style MMO, but that’s GW2 and most others.

Have you played GW2 for a long, long time? Do you have one or more level 80 characters? Then you’ve probably have opinions about things that could be added, improved or fixed. What are they?

This shouldn’t be complaining for its own sake or demanding the flavor of the month. These should be things you’d really, really like to see, after playing for many, many hours.

Note: some of these things may be coming in the expansion, that’s fine.

Here are mine:

1. I want Anet to circle around and do something meaningful with various character story decisions. As a human, I selected Lyssa as my God. I joined the Priory. I selected Charm as my primary attribute. I chose the Circus goal. None of these things really seem to matter in any big way. The Circus option resulting in a couple early living story missions. Charm maybe impacts some dialog? If it’s doing something else for me I’m not noticing. The selection of my god doesn’t seem to mean anything. The Priory again resulted in a couple story missions and then seems to have been forgotten.

Selecting a God should grant a unique god-related power (if I choose Lyssa, I can’t get Grenth, Balthazar, etc.). Choosing a faction (Priory, Order of Whispers, etc.) should give you your own quarters in their HQ, the ability to call in faction reinforcements, etc. I’m using the human examples here but you get the picture.

2. Skills. I’m glad GW2 doesn’t have the 747 airplane dashboard of skills that WOW does. On the other hand, after hitting 1-5 several hundred thousand times, the skills begin to lose their novelty. So longterm I’d like to see Anet do something to give more life to the same old weapon skills. Talismans you can find in the world that can be switched out to change the nature of a skill or add unique effects? The ability to switch out skills entirely? Something. Personally, I’d like to see each weapon have it’s own XP bar, and gain strength against different targets over time (I’ve killed 1,000 centaurs with my sword and it now gained 1% damage against centaurs, etc.)

3. Move speed. Characters are too slow without boosts. Movement feels sluggish compared to many other MMOs. Having to assign a signet to increase speed means less space for other skills and the rotation is already tired and static after one or two characters. I’d like to see base move speed bumped up a bit, just to feel more active and responsive if nothing else.

4. Summoned minion nameplates. This is my personal major pet peeve. After all these years I still can’t figure out if there’s a way to turn off the floating nameplates and health bars over summoned minions. I have it turned off for every other asset in the game, except this one. It looks sloppy and breaks immersion. I’m told it has something to do with the minions being “close” to me which causes the nameplates to show up, or something. Whatever the issue, its irritating and silly and needs to be fixed.

5. Transmutation charges. Make money some other way. Having to pay to get charges to update my visual appearance is irritating because most progression in the game ultimately ends up being about appearance. I’d even be find with keeping the paywall in place up to level 80; but once we reach 80 we should be able to use the wardrobe feature fully without real money.

6. More class-specific options. I want more things in game designed to make me feel more like whatever class I’m playing. Hunters should have a hunting lodge only they can go to. Mesmers should have their own butterfly-infested castle. There should be class-specific missions. I’m playing a Mesmer right now; I should be able to go on Mesmer quests to get Mesmer weapons and armor and pets. I want class-specific weapon and armor skins in the store.

$50 is WAY overpriced for the features I’ve seen listed so far. And the special editions ($99??) are just insulting.

I feel like I’ve stuck with you through a lot of fumbling, sloppiness and amateur-hour design decisions, and my reward it to get nickle-and-dimed on the first major new content release?

The pre-order bonus is a title and the opportunity to help you beta test? Wow, generous!

You know, there’s a LOT of competition out there these days. Just sayin’.

I’m stuck on the Cornered mission, anyone know the trick to beating this one? I’m fine up until Saboteur Aerin turtles up in his shield. Nothing I’ve been able to throw at him breaks it or stops his ridiculous rapid-fire bomb-throwing. I should mention I play a Thief – what can I do to open him up to attack again?

Rift just released its second expansion and is getting buzz again. Tera, a game many people had forgotten even existed despite the fact it’s pretty good, just announced it’s first expansion and is starting to get buzz. In fact, I think the first commenter on the Massively article announcing the expansion said something along the lines of “I’ll have to go check it out again.”

Buzz is vital. People still argue about WOW Cata; but the important thing is, they’re still talking about it. WOW keeps getting brought up, while GW2 has gone sleepy time.

Personally, I just want GW2 to realize it’s potential, I don’t care if that’s through meaty, substantial living world updates or through a formal expansion.

But it seems like expansions are good ways to announce to the world that your game is still relevant; that it really does have a serious design team behind it, working; that it is growing; and that it is a good long-term investment.

I’m not sure that devs fully appreciate just how much gamers need to have that reassurance: yes, we (the devs/publishers) haven’t abandoned the game. No, it’s not on maintenance mode. Yes, we are thinking of ways to serve the customer and not just milk them for quick gem store cash.

After all, why should I give my time and money to a game that isn’t taking it’s own development seriously, and may not be around long-term?

The Living World is nice and all but as a means to grow the game and maintain player interest it’s a disaster. It’s time to abandon the Living World strategy and go with the traditional method of paid expansions, like GW1 and countless other MMOs.

GW2 is a great game but it is stagnant. The Living World doesn’t mix up the game enough. There are no new classes, weapons, weapon skills, zones, game modes, races, or anything else of significance. What you’ve done thus far with new content is insufficient.

So go big and start charging box prices.

Having big releases creates milestones in a game that generates press and gets new and current players excited. Even if the expansions generate controversy (OMG, how could they introduce mounts??!), that’s still excitement and buzz and is better than the sleepytime atmosphere you have going on in-game now.

Add digital deluxe editions to each expansion with worthwhile incentives and make some more money. I’ll buy them if the incentives aren’t insulting.

Use the expansions as an excuse to perform back-end optimizations and bug fixes so you can release massive patch notes showing how active and engaged your dev team is. Revisit current classes and freshen them up, fix long-standing complaints and bugs.

Add content that allows classes to feel MORE like their class. Glowing holy armor for Guardians, cemeteries for Necros, thieves guilds for Thieves.

And on and on…

The game is great, it’s actually survived many attempts to de-throne it for myself personally (I’m looking at you, Wildstar), but it needs a LOT of care and watering if it’s to grow.

joshc.3129:

Again Anet would have to make new content for every race on this choice. Not happening.

Dude. Seriously. Lay off the weed. They need to make something happen.

They can program things. It’s what they do for a living.

Tao.5096:

google different game please

Go back to China please.

I love this game, I’ve been playing it since it launched and GW1 before that.

However, the sense I’m left with at the moment is of a game frozen in amber. Far too much time has gone by now without launch systems being fully realized, or new content being added.

I know there has been development – but it seems to have been focused on Living World with no real impact to character development, or reshuffling of systems already in place, like the trait system. I think both of these things are fine, but without content that is truly new and that helps players build and grow their characters, something is missing.

I’m writing the rest of this from the perspective of my current character, a human female Thief. Switch out the following with whatever race and profession you prefer.

It’s been two years, and:

-I still have no idea why it was important to select Lyssa as my god.
-Aside from a couple sections of the story, I see no impact from choosing that my parents died when I was young.
-I see no importance to selecting Noble as my origin.
-I haven’t noticed any real impact to selecting the Order of Whispers as my organization.
-The weapons available to me are the same.
-The skills, aside from a couple additions, are the same.
-While the world has changed in really cool ways, the game play aspect of navigating it is basically the same.
-There are no new races to choose from.
-There are no new professions.
-Quality of life annoyances, like being unable to turn off the name plates hovering over summoned pets, linger.
-And so on, and on.

As a human female Thief, I wish that:

-I gained access to a new skill by choosing Lyssa as my goddess.
-Gained access to a swanky nobles-only mansion with special costume options appropriate to my status.
-I had some permanent impact to selecting the “parents dead” story option.
-I had more benefits from joining the Order of Whispers – access to special weapons, skills, missions, costumes, etc.
-I had access to new weapons. Personally, I want Great Sword so I can use the katana skin (once it’s back up on the trading post).
-I had new skills to choose from, to mix things up.
-That there was more benefit to exploring, like more random treasure chests, or the chance to stumble across secret doors leading to randomly-generated mini dungeons.
-That there were costume options specific to each class, so I could create the ultimate look.

And going beyond that: we just need new stuff. Weapons that gain XP and level. New lands. New ways of advancing characters post level cap. Heck, I’d even welcome mounts or housing at this point.

Maybe an expansion is coming that will add new content. I don’t know. But if the last update was Anet’s attempt to attract new players, I think the real issue isn’t leveling but lack of any kind of significant development on the game. The Living Story stuff was cool but just didn’t cut it in terms of keeping things fresh. At this point I’ve swung my knives the same way 10 billion times. I think the core of this game is solid, it’s time to start building on this foundation.

Whether its the NPE or something else, something feels very off to me.

I ran into the same thing in Champions Online. If I recall, you got to select a new super power every three levels or something like that. The other two offered “boring” things like incremental stat increases. So in effect the “fun” rewards only occurred after three levels and it felt sloooooooooow.

That’s how GW2 feels to me now. I’m getting next to no rewards to keep me motivated to get to 80, where the real character building has been shuffled.

Add on top of that other design choices: limited weapons, fixed skills per weapon. So quickly you grow familiar with it all. Very few interesting gear and weapon drops during the normal course of leveling. No real impact or importance to starting character story choices.

Anet needs to stop worrying about the stupid Living World for a moment and start worrying about helping players build Living Characters.

“God selection” – sorry, I play and think in terms of humans. You get the point.

I have two level 80s, a Necro and a Guardian. I remember thinking getting them to max was some of the smoothest leveling I’d ever done in an MMO. I can’t remember ever wanting to speed things up, I just played the game and my characters got better as I played. Easy.

I’m working on a Thief now. She’s level 37. She’s as beautiful and awesome as my other toons, and I love most of the Thief mechanics. But the NPE hit soon after I started her, and this leveling experience is much different than before. It’s worse, much worse.

At 37, I’m finding myself just wanting to push to 80 just so I can start opening things up for my toon. Levels come and go with very little impact. It’s a drag.

Apparently you don’t get skill points every level now, but in bunches every few levels. Or something. Trait points are only awarded after multiple levels, but then you have to unlock the traits through events or… skill points. Which now come primarily from skill challenges?

I can see some of these changes being designed to keep level 80 players engaged longer. I guess you get skill points every “level” after 80, like all levels used to get before. But this is really sucking for leveling up a toon. Leveling is simply boring. Too many levels come and go without being able to add new skills or traits.

These games are about carrots on sticks, and the carrots were minimal before. Now they’re wilted. I can’t even play ahead in my personal story, because those missions now only unlock when Anet decides I should be “ready.”

Ugh, I love this game but I think Anet has really gone off the deep end and needs to do some serious thinking about how to make leveling up a character fun again.

We need to be able to make a significant improvement to our toons EVERY LEVEL.

And while we’re at it: it’s time for new weapons, the ability to add new skills to weapons, some kind of meaningful impact on our toons related to personal story choice and god selection…

I should mention: the toon in question is not 80 yet.

JBDanger.2603:

I believe they come every 7 levles now… kittened up, right?

Seriously?? Is this really working as intended?

I leveled twice today and then noticed: I’m not getting any skill points upon doing so. Is this intended as part of the NPE, or is it a (serious) bug??

I have a question. The trait Blinding Powder in the Shadow Arts line. How does it work?

Is it an automatic proc when I do something else? If so, what? Combat? Dodging?

Or am I supposed to activate it like a skill? No new buttons have appeared on my UI. Do I need to turn something on?

I’m sure the answer will be very obvious… once I know the answer.

I just figured it out. It’s if you have an outfit activated. No outfit and you get the re-breather again. At least with the pirate outfit, on a female human thief.

That was REALLY confusing. I don’t think we should be able to swim until level 40.

Vayne.8563:

It’s always been this way. You’ve never needed an aquabreather.

I’ve had an aqua breather on my characters for the entire life of the game, up until this patch. Big ’ol breathing things. On the face.

Yup.

I’ve been swimming with my level 27 thief and noticed that she isn’t wearing a breathing apparatus anymore. A bug?

Or is this level gated now too? Maybe because I might get confused and scared if I don’t have enough hours in the game?

“Wait… whaaaaaat… hold on, I…. out of water I could see my character’s face but now… somethings on her… mouth, I— TOO MUCH, TOO SOON!!!”

Glory.1493:

its unfair to others who likes the feature patch.u made it seems game gonna die tomorrow while majority have no problem with this patch.it is just unhappy guys speak more.u can just delete the game and leave if u dont like it,but whats the point to post it here.nothing changed on every map. ppl still enjoy this game.could u just leave it alone and play someting else if it bothered u so much.

Oh good, it’s one of the Chinese users this abomination of a patch was intended for.

So we get this wonderful leveling update that no one asked for, and yet little annoyances still persist. I still can’t find an option to turn off the floating nameplates above my pets.

Even though you can perform this action for your own character, NPCs and other players.

So you can literally turn this off for everything in game… except your summons.

Even though I and others have been asking for this for two years now.

Ugh.

It’s such a little thing, but it’s like a splinter that can’t be dug out. The fact that this stupid problem persists aftr all this time is just… embarrassing at this point. It like a symbol of the disconnect the devs have on this game. Focus your efforts on big dumb sweeping projects that go over like lead balloons, and ignore the small details that add up to make or break a game.

Anet: add the old animations back.

And then go make some new ones and add those too.

For kitten’s sake, what are you guys freebasing over there? Get your kitten together!

So I wrote my provocative “Alpha Male” response above just to make a point: I made a simple suggestion, only to be met with responses that just assumed it was because I didn’t know how to play the class. That’s pretty obnoxious, about as obnoxious as me calling the rest of you who don’t play MY way a bunch of little girls. My suggestions come FROM playing the class, and commenting on how the gameplay feels.

My point being, my approach to the bow is no less relevant than yours. Read my OP again. The suggestion I made would enable the bow to be equally effective for my play style and yours. Really, except for skill 5 which I still think sucks, my suggestion would offer you MORE flexibility.

If you want to see how “strategy” based GAOE is done, play a necro with staff. It makes sense there. You can lay out your AOEs in a horizontal line to catch multiple enemies. You can lay them vertically between yourself and whatever is trying to reach you. You can layer them on top of a single target for burst damage and conditions.

With thief, you use GAOE to launch projectiles that are going to… explode on target anyway. The mechanics with bow don’t justify the GAOE. A lot of skills in GW2 fit this description, but we’re talking bow here.

And I also maintain that the bow is intended just as much as a fast-paced weapon as it is for a strategic one. Hence skill #3 for kiting. #2, #4 and #5 do not work effectively for fast-paced kiting because you have to pause to aim.

And skill 5 just blows chunks. The range sucks. It’s crap for vertical use because it trips up at every kitten rocky outcrop. It’s bunk for fast escape because again, you have to pause to aim. So it’s really only good for chasing down other players in PVP. Too situational. I’m glad it works for the rest of you posting here, but to me it’s just taking up space on my skill bar that could be used for something better. Or at least add a better secondary effect, like AOE damage or vulnerability or something.

Runewolf.8456:

Also if your taking bow for “frantic” action, wrong weapon. Bow is mostly utility on thieves to make you more durable for those kind of thieves it is their off hand weapon set. If you want to main Bow then you can still do damage but it’s mostly for teamfight support and escaping at that point.

Aaah, now I’m seeing the disconnect. See, I use bow in a very active manner, sometimes engaging at very close range, using skill #2 to kite enemies. You know, as opposed to standing on the sidelines and plinking away from safety like a big wuss.

So you all are correct, if you use the bow by methodically lining up your shots with all the care of a little girl arranging her Barbie dolls, then I agree, it works great!

For the rest of us, it would be improved by the suggestions in my OP.

If I want to catch up with someone there are much better ways to do it. Just catching up with someone in WvW is too specialized of a situation to take up such prime real estate in the skill bar.

I mean, you can’t choose which skills to use, so EVERY skill on the bar has to be firing on all cylinders.

Also, not all GAOE sucks. It works perfectly fine as is for Necro staff.

I like two out of the five bow skills. Two could stand improvement, and one I think needs to go and be replaced with something else.

My issues are with skills 2, 4 and 5.

2 and 4: my problem with these has to do with the ground targeting. For me, when I use the bow it’s because I want frenzied action, but at a distance. Game play is much more interactive than, say Necro with staff. I dodge and move around a lot more. Having to target the GAOEs takes me out of the action.

I understand the value of a GAOE, but there doesn’t seem to be much purpose with the bow. The toxic cloud #4, for example, doesn’t linger long enough to be a trap or a deterrent, and the #2 explosion just goes boom upon impact. There isn’t much purpose to the aiming.

So here’s my suggestion for #2 and #4: upgrade these to be a contextual mix of tab targeting and GAOE.

If I have an enemy targeted, then hitting 2 or 4 should launch the attack immediately, no ground targeting. The effects should be the same as they are now, just centered on the target.

If no target is selected, then hitting 2 or 4 should bring up the ground targeting. But upon launch, these attacks should land as traps, and linger for about as long as necro staff GAOEs.

Best of both worlds. You can play fast and furious, or be more strategic and lay down some more traps.

Skill #5: just replace. I don’t get this. The range isn’t enough to actually get me anywhere interesting. As an escape mechanism it sucks because if I’m running for my life the last thing I’m going to do is center the GAOE correctly. As an attack it does nothing but add a blind (though I haven’t even noticed it’s gone so fast); if I want to close on an enemy I have much better ways to do so with other weapon combos. There are only five bow skills available, this one wastes a slot. I’d like to see it gone and replaced with something worthwhile, like a charge up power attack.

:)

I like to create hot female toons, and the hottest ones I’ve ever been able to create are in this game (except maybe for the avatar creator in Eve Online, of all things). Unlike, say, The Secret World, which took five trips to the plastic surgeon to get my character looking halfway decent (Funcom has a thing for huge hooked noses on female characters, for some reason).

So I can turn off the “nameplates” for NPCs. And I can turn them off for players.

But I can’t do the same for my summoned pets (I have a Necromancer and a Guardian).

PLEASE add the ability to turn these off – it’s very annoying when I have floating names off for every other character in the game, except the critters who surround me, cluttering up my screen with blue text.

I’m glad you’re finally starting to pay attention to improvements… so how about this one???

I don’t know game design, but I do know what I like when I play, and my personal manifesto is “do what you enjoy, and advance your character doing it.” Unfortunately, few MMOs follow this idea. Therefore, here are my ideas based on leveling two characters in Gw2 to 80, as well as countless hours in practically every other MMO since SW Galaxies:

Weapons and Equipment:

—Evolving weapons and armor. What I’d love to see is a system that eliminates the need to replace one weapon or armor piece in a class with another, and instead worked more like Skyrim and similar games. In other words, I’d love to see stats or passives unlock in certain areas by doing certain things.

—Example: let’s say I have a great sword, and I kill 100 centaurs. I’d like the greatsword to then get a slight bonus against centaurs. The more centaurs I kill with my greatsword, the greater my proficiency in killing centaurs with greatswords should be.

—Or, maybe I use my greatsword mostly in WvW. So the greatsword would add proficiency in killing other player sin WvW. And so on.

—I’d love to see the same thing for armor; maybe each piece contributes to an overall armor rating that improves the more damage is blocked from this enemy or that. So the more I defend against centaurs, the better my defense proficiency against them should rise over time.

—I’d be fine if this kind of “evolving” weapon was only available at level cap. I wouldn’t want the process of obtaining them to be locked behind a dungeon or jumping puzzle or anything like that though. That’s the mistake The Secret World is making with its end game gear, and I think it’s a really bad design decision.

—Evolving weapons should still be fully transfigurable, so the skins can be changed to whatever suits the player’s fancy.

—I’d like to be able to collect weapon glow/particle effects, and be able to add them to any weapon using the transfiguration stones.

“Living Character”

—To me character progression isn’t just about improving stats. I want to have many more options to develop my avatar as an actual character. Think more like a movie character or a novel. How do I develop her personality? What is her background? What does she like to do in her spare time when she isn’t killing centaurs?

—I want my choice of god to matter, and to have gameplay options around that.

—I want more personal story.

—The Living World is great, but ultimately an MMO is about building a character. So I’d like to see “Living Character” added to the GW2 manifesto along with Living World. Give us options to make our little warriors more real.

Class Progression:

—My character is a Guardian. I want more options to be even more of a Guardian. I want Guardian-specific quests, Guardian-specific gear, Guardian-specific pets. I want to visit some distant guild hall that is the headquarters of the Guardian order.

Oh, and please also add an option to turn off the name tags for summoned pets.

Thanks!!

I like GW2. I works pretty well for my play style and the amount of time I have to invest in games at this stage of my life.

I know that’s not a popular thing to say. But then that raise the question of why there are so many people loitering around on the forums of a game they dislike.

Behellagh.1468:

Maybe because I don’t sell things at 900MPH but I never get this. It’s like trying to open a combination lock quickly. Too easy to overshoot forcing you to start again making it take just as long or longer than if you simply took your time.

So if you know selling item after item quickly will eventually cause that message, slow down. A little time versus what looks like a lot of annoyance and frustration.

OK, that is really silly. I’m not trying to be antagonistic. But if the solution is “don’t sell massive stacks of stuff too quickly,” that’s no solution at all.

I love the concept of “The Living World,” things changing and not always knowing what to expect when I venture out into the land.

But a while back I was stuck and blase about the game and couldn’t figure out why. I loved the graphics, the setting, the skills, etc. But I just couldn’t get excited and went to play The Secret World instead.

Then it hit me: my lovely Necromancer had gone as far as she could (interestingly) go. I had hit max level, had all my skills unlocked and had some cool equipment. There really wasn’t anything else compelling to do.

I could have chased down more skill points – but for what? I’m not insane enough to try to craft a legendary. I could have explored more of the world – but why? What would that do for me, aside from harder-core pursuits that I wasn’t interested in?

Then it occurred to me: the issue was that my character was essentially stuck in a rut. She had nothing else to achieve, and her personal story was just window-dressing. She had no personality, really, aside from the surface-level voice acting and diary entries from her story mission. Her choice of God didn’t seem to mean anything, nor did her “decision choices.”

When I dumped the Necro and switched to Guardian, I suddenly was interested in the game again. It wasn’t the Living World that brought me back, it was the fun of building a character again.

I would love to see the GW team continue to innovate by turning their attention to the avatars themselves. Haven’t these little digital people been stuck in the same place for too long in MMO history? My Guardian, as cool as she is, is basically just a doll, an action figure.

What if instead GW2 gave players a platform to create characters like other media do, like books or movies?

What if there was a game system – not just a silly diary that no one else would read – but a game system that allowed players to explore their characters’ pasts, make choices that impact their personalities? What if you could “unlock,” like you can today with skills or weapons, pieces of your character’s past, with real consequences? Maybe if I discovered my parents, for instance, I could actually go visit them, and perhaps inherit their house as a base of operations? Or if I met my long-lost sister, and discovered she was evil, and she became a nemesis to stalk me throughout the game, as in Champions Online?

Or maybe the Living Character system could unlock emotes, dialogue options, armor sets, costume sets, pets.

Just some thoughts as I wait out “Error attempting to sell!”

GW2, I love ya, but for the love of all that is holy, please come up with a better solution than this “Error attempting to sell!” crap!!!!

Aaaarggh.

Look, I’m not a bot or a gold seller. I just gather mats as I come across them, stash them in my bank, and then sell them off when they’ve accumulated to make some gold, which then goes into my bank.

“Error attempting to sell” is a sloppy, inelegant solution to gold selling. If that is indeed the purpose. Whatever the purpose, it’s annoying as kitten!!

Also, while I’m here: for kitten sake, PLEASE add an option to the UI to turn off the stupid name plates on summoned pets!! WHY is this taking so long to implement??

Aside from these two things I really love the game; it’s my go-to MMO. And I’m enjoying Halloween very much, keep up the good work.

P.S. Bleeaaaaaaarrrgghh!!!!

Hi, I’m a level 80 necro and I’m looking for a guild on Maguuma.

I’m interested in running dungeons, even the early ones as I could never find anyone to form a group with when I was low level.

However, anything that involves beating up on some helpless monster, or attempting to beat on another player in WvW, is fine too!

I’m not hardcore, so a friendly, casual guild would be the best fit for me – and probably a guild with fairly active membership so we can do things together when the mood takes us.

Thanks for reading!

Oh and to expand on my original thought about Jagged Horrors: this idea of necros having an innate “health vampire” ability basically fixes Jagged Horrors without having to do anything to them. Because now it’s actually good that they die so fast; what you really want them for is the health bonus. If they spawn close enough to an enemy to get a swipe in, good for them; but their real value would be life force and now health.

I strongly disagree that the solution is merely to fix our traits and leave it at that. Yes, that should be done, but I’d like to see a setup more similar to Guardians.

For example, Guardians have three abilities that are innate to their class: one that scrubs conditions, one that sets enemies on fire and one that forms a shield. This is part of the Guardian class; they get these just by being Guardians, walking around, doing their thing. For lack of a better term, call these base abilities.

Of course, they can then activate these abilities by clicking on an F key, or upgrade them via traits. Call those upgraded abilities.

So Guardians can choose to leave their base abilities as they are and focus on other areas via traits. They can activate their base abilities in a pinch via F keys.

Compare now to Necros. DS is sort of the equivalent of the guardian F-keys. Life steal is our “base” or innate ability. I argue that it’s not enough; Guardians get three, we get one. We need at least two. One: DS. Two: health steal.

We can health steal, yes: but really only through traits, and that’s still not effective. So in other words, we have the “upgrade” option, but not the “base.”

Necros should be stealing a little bit of health with every death that occurs around them, just like Necros in GW1. It doesn’t have to be so much as to be overpowered; just enough to live up to this “hard to kill/hard to escape” design philosophy.

So what I’d love to see is another F key being added; keep DS as F1 and F2 is a passive that is always sucking up a little bit of health from any deaths in the vicinity; then if you click F-2, maybe you sacrifice a chunk of health to do some extra damage or something.

In the traits: still offer the options to really boost the health leeching abilities with the objective being a really tanky necro that is simply hard to put down. The counterbalance, of course, is that to do so you sacrifice offensive or other useful abilities.

I’ve said it before: Necros are just missing that “one other thing” to flesh them out. I personally think it’s another one or two F abilities, and one of these should be an innate ability to be a health vampire.

Talset.1456:

DS reduces damage taken. Reducing incoming damage taken is no different from having a more effective heal because the point of both is to more easily recover from damage received. Apparently the Gluttony trait does nothing which hinders effective regeneration of lifeforce, but an increase in healing seems to be the least effective solution to your problem, assuming that it is a problem.

Yeah I know how DS works. Problem is, and maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see it as enough to meet this “hard to kill” design philosophy. DS gets burned down, and then I’m left with the same sliver of health that I started with. I have other tricks to stay alive, but that’s just me. It’s nothing that’s built into the class as a core mechanic.

Also, and I may be remembering GW1 wrong – but wasn’t schlorping up health a necro “thing?” I seem to recall being a health sponge back in the day. I’d kill something, I’d take some of their health – I know there’s a trait for that, but it works for crap.

I know one of the design philosophies for necros is that we are hard to kill. However, I feel pretty squishy actually. Certainly no harder to kill than my guardian or probably any other class.

One possible fix is to make us innately more adept at regaining health (not lifeforce – health) than we are now. Ideas:

Whenever a minion dies – for any reason — the necro master gets a health boost in addition to life force. This wouldn’t be a trait – it would be part and parcel of all necros. And Jagged Horrors would suddenly be useful.

All life force gains also provide a percentage increase to health.

Health regenerates some percentage while in DS OR get a regen boon whenever you exit DS.

Any or all of these would be in addition to fixing the vampire abilities in the traits.

Whatever the solution, I think we need to be able to regen enough health to be annoying, even if we aren’t speccing for it. This should just be a necro thing – one of the things we’re known for and a reason to choose our class.

Another thing that has occurred to me:

I’d love to see makeup effects get separated from head selection. I didn’t like the face that went with the “creepy drippy makeup” option when building my female human Necro, but it would be nice to give her some black lipstick or whatever later.

Of course, you’ll need a barber shop for that…

There’s plenty of threads outlining in exacting detail everyone’s complaints with Necromancers.

However, if the idea is to help Anet improve the class, then the complaints are only half of the picture. Its also important that they know what people like about the class — especially so these things don’t get thrown out with the bathwater. They have to know what is working well with Necros, to put the things that don’t work well into better context.

So what’s your list of things that you like about the Necro class, either actual things or concepts? If anything on your list is specific to a race and/or gender, say what that is.

I personally am not going to focus on stats and combat effectiveness, as my main interest is usually on visual art style, UI, quality of life type things. But feel free to hit anything of a technical nature that you actually enjoy.

My list is specific to a female human Necro.

1. I love the harajuku clothes. I think Anet was spot on with the style here – the goth lolita look is perfect. I love running around in a fantasy setting with ribbons and flouncy dresses and such. It’s cute without it being the traditional “mail bikini” look that females are typically assigned in these games. Not that I mind the occasional bared midriff.

2. I like not being just a caster. I see a lot of complaint posts that seem based on the misunderstanding that Necros are being a proper mage class. I like that Anet has expanded the concept to include melee.

3. I like the non-traditional, “meaty” look of the pets. I’m glad they aren’t just little skeletons or ghosts or whatever – the look is unique to GW, 1 & 2.

4. I like the CONCEPT of being the class that won’t go down and that you can’t get away from. Not sure the class is living up to the concept yet, but that’s 10,000 other threads.

5. I like the CONCEPT of DS. I like it so much, in fact, that I’d like to see three more for F2-4.

6. I love the shadowy scythe blade that appears at the top of my staff. Very nice touch.

7. I love the hand that comes out of the staff – glad it has character and isn’t just a blob of energy.

8. I love the “aura” attack effects – the swarming locust-things for example. Even this little detail has a “painted” style that is so cool.

9. I like being able to summon a swarm of undead fish under water.

10. I like the potential versatility of the class. Potential right now because some builds aren’t as fleshed out as others, and currently there is no way to switch trait builds without respeccing each time. However, I do like in concept that I could go from hard damage to condition DOTs to pets to life stealing.

I’m sure I’ll think of more as I play, but that’s a start for now…

Mackster.9726:

Firstly, Signet of Spite is one of those skills that looks awesome on paper, but in practice is pretty weak. The conditions only last for 5 seconds, are single target, and then you have to wait 90 seconds to use it again.

Well, the idea isn’t so much as to rely on the conditions themselves to do the damage. According to the various Wikis, the 2% damage increase of Target the Weak is direct damage, not condition. So I selected Signet of Spite because it adds six conditions. At 2% per condition, that’s an instant 12% jump in direct damage right there. Plus the three stacks of might from Signet Power.

If its true that an Epidemic spread also counts toward the 2%, then passing those six conditions to just one other target means you’re now up 24% in direct damage.

Playing around with this today, I was knocking Veterans down to 25% health or less in a few seconds. I couldn’t get them all the way dead before the conditions wore off, but still.

Like I said though: its kind of a one-shot and then done build. Not sure I’ll keep it, but it seems to have some promise. Honestly, with all their problems, a Minion Master build is still pretty powerful for PVE, which is mainly what I do, so I may switch.

Why wouldn’t they? I think the question of why certain things do and do not work with necros has been a common theme around here… lol

Now there’s an interesting question. Do conditions applied through Epidemic count toward the 2%-per-condition bonus of Target the Weak?