Guild Wars 2

Please please please, yes, please change it. Charr/asura anatomy does not work that way.

Bladicus.9078:

Is it really cheating though? You can’t blame a player for wanting the highest league. If that player then looks how he can reach the highest league in the easiest way he’ll see it’s by losing matches to bunk his MMR. Is that the fault of the player?

You can’t blame a student for wanting the highest grade. If that student then looks how they can reach the highest grade in the easiest way, they’ll see it’s by copying off the smart kid next to them. Is that the fault of the student? Is that cheating?

BLOODY WELL YES.

So, after having alternating mouse and keyboard issues recently (keyboard with a loose connection stopping working midgame, mouse with a partially-obstructed sensor needing to be moved several feet to move the cursor a handful of pixels… Blow on your mouse bottoms, kids!), I have come to a few conclusions. First, it is pretty doable to play with mouse-only, if you bind a mouse button to jump. You will get stuck if you do not. It’s certainly not ideal or something you wanna do in pvp/wvw/fractals/dungeons, but you can get your dailies done. Movement, attacking, interacts, partying, inventory management, map travel are all basically covered. About the only thing you just can’t do is chat.

Can’t really say the same for keyboard-only. Combat is better (though camera management is awkward at best), but inventory management of any sort is impossible, and dialogue and confirmation boxes are a killer. With all of that in mind, I have some suggestions to reduce some of the reliance on the mouse. While these won’t make a mouse unnecessary, they will make it a bit less of a headache for someone who has a spotty mouse, who has a wireless mouse whose batteries die in the middle of playing, who has any sort of physical impairment that makes heavy mouse usage difficult, or just plain people who consider keyboard shortcuts convenient.

1. Arrow keys to navigate the character select screen. Fairly obvious one. While enter can be used to load the currently-selected character, the only way to change the selection currently is with the mouse

2. Bindable keys! Many common actions could easily be made bindable keys, unbound by default but in the options for those who want them:
2a. Dialogue 1, Dialogue 2, and Dialogue 3: To respond to NPC dialogue, counting from top to bottom, and can pull double-duty to also respond to confirmation boxes, counting from left to right.
2b. Deposit collectibles and compact inventory: Obviously doesn’t solve keyboard-only inventory management, but it’s about the only readily doable step I can think of.
2c. Open bonus chest: Those little pop-up chests above the mini-map. Pressing the key once opens it (or the first one if there are multiple), pressing it again accepts. Simple and straightforward.

3. Related to 2c, double-clicking an opened bonus chest should really just accept the items inside without needing to go back and forth between the chests in the corner and the accept dialogue in the middle of the screen. I realize that distance doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you get 4 bonus chests from Teq and you have to move your mouse a full arm motion to go about 10 pixels on a 1920×1080 monitor, you feel the distance.

First, an explanation of where we are. I created a new character after the feature patch, used a level 20 scroll in the starter instance, and proceeded with all available story. The experience from this (including opening up some sections of map and nabbing some waypoints along the way, along with credit for 1 or 2 events) got me from 20 to 23. Between a variety of events, a lot of exploring Queensdale and Metrica, and actually fully map-completing Kessex, I managed to get to level 30 (60% of the way to 31). Again I proceeded with all the story available to me. I am now level 32 (21% to 33). That’s 2 levels. Not even 2 full levels.

For story-focused players, it could always be a little bit of a slog for that level or two between personal story missions, but it was spread out enough to be not -too- bad. Now I need 8 levels before I can continue the story. 8 straight levels of something I don’t want to be doing. I’ve already map-completed on two characters, I have 0 interest in EotM train, already have all 8 crafting professions maxed on other chars, etc etc, and even if I hadn’t already done it all, story is what I’m interested in when I make a new character in the first place. Play the way you want to play, yes?

So, what I propose is that each personal story mission reward a full level’s worth of xp, so that each set of missions gets you about halfway to the next set (some sets are 4 and some are 6 iirc, but it balances out on the average). Not only does this significantly reduce the gap, but the predictability of it also means that a player who knows what he/she is doing can readily plan out exactly where they need to get to to be able to go through the entire story uninterrupted. It also means personal story can be changed to start at level 6 with subsequent requirements of 7, 8, 9, and 10 to take away some of the initial gap people have been complaining about but still maintain the chunk of story intended by the current design.

tl;dr: Each personal story step should give one full level of xp.

So the season’s complete, the rewards have been handed out and have been found lacking. Half of that equation is what the rewards are, and there are plenty of threads on that, but I’m here to talk about the achievements needed to get the rewards.

As far as individual achievements go, the vast majority of them achieved a fair balance between needing to put in work over the course of the season vs becoming tedious. The two glaring exceptions to this were Supplies Severed (dolyaks) and Sentry Capturer. I get the reasoning behind the increased numbers vs, say, towers. There are quite a number of dolyaks falling per day compared to the number of tower captures per day. The problem is that the window to get credit for a dolyak kill or a sentry point capture is infinitesemally small by comparison. With a zerg coming up on one? Better hope you’re in the front 10 and you have a 1200 range weapon if you wanna get a hit in. Out on your own? Better hope no zerg rolls straight over it in the time it takes you to see it on the map and run over there. With dolyaks in particular, it actually provides a disincentive to take supply camps rather than just waiting for the next 2 dolyaks to spawn, or to defend them rather than just letting it turn into a dolyak-producing machine. Personally I would not recommend either of these achievements go beyond 150, maybe even scaled back a bit further to 125. Something that’s possible to get through focused play without having to drop everything else to grind.

There is one other achievement I’d say was a little excessive, but certainly not to the level of dolyaks and sentries, and that’s camps. Just tone it back a little. Maybe 80.

World ranker wasn’t too bad with a bunch of low-rank alts that could be brought up quickly, but given the upcoming world rank changes for that to be made accountwide, that might need a little massaging.

The other thing I’d like to see is the WvW-specific dailies count for something for the seasonal meta. Obviously making them count directly would be an utter mess for scaling the meta, so instead I would suggest making a new seasonal achievement that tracks WvW-specific dailies, and have that achievement count toward the meta once you reach, say, 25 (there are 3 WvW-specific dailies per day, so that shouldn’t be too arduous), while maintaining the meta at 15 needed. It makes it a little easier on those who don’t really want to spend all their time in WvW, it encourages people to keep coming back regularly, and it gives the dailies a little more meaning, without throwing the whole thing out of whack.

Sounds like changes are being worked on, and it’s possibly my specific points are already addressed (skimmed over significant portions of the thread), but I’m saying them anyway

If I could change just one thing about world 2 it would be to quite simply make the darts in normal mode (and infantile) damage instead of instakill. Does this mean people can just facetank the darts for a “shortcut”? Yup. And that’s fine. Same way people can bunnyhop through poison water. They’re sacrificing hearts for not doing it right, that’s all.

Honestly, normal mode shouldn’t have a single instakill other than missing jumps over bottomless pits. Why the heck is the water of the koi ponds instakill in normal mode? That doesn’t even… Some other things to reduce the general “That’s BS!” feel from normal mode would be to make sure all icy edges in normal mode that would drop you to either a bottomless pit or a significantly earlier part of the level have a snow perimeter. On the big icy slope in w2z3, in normal mode either those bears need to go or those ledges need to be big enough to actually fight on.

You might notice that I keep saying “in normal mode”. What about tribulation mode? Change nothing, it’s wonderful just as it is, love it. Fully endorsed.

(for reference on my perspective, I’ve beaten all zones in normal mode, beaten all of world 1 and world 2 zone 1 in tribulation mode, working on the last 2)

EDIT: Having now beaten world 2 zone 2 in tribulation mode and spent a bit of time on world 2 zone 3, I now take back my “don’t change a thing about tribulation mode” comment. Change the (lack of) lighting in 2-3. I’m sure you think it adds atmosphere, but what it does is make me crank my monitor’s contrast to eyeburn-max to be able to remotely see anything before finally having to just give up. Not cool.

Two more

You know how if you have a stack of something in your inventory or in the regular bank it will say “250 Jute Scraps” in the hovering tooltip/popup/whatever you want to call the thing, for people who have trouble reading the tiny number on the icon. Both of these are related to that.

1. For some reason it isn’t on items in crafting storage, when it really really should be. It’s not on items in the discovery pane of the crafting window either, which is less crucial, but worth making consistent.

2. This really needs to be extended to things with uses, e.g. salvage kits and gathering tools. Nothing fancy, just a simple “Basic Salvage Kit (9 uses)”

In my time playing, I’ve come across a couple of small, niggling little issues I’ll refer to as quality of life issues. None of these are really headliner problems in their own right, but they’re things that come up time and time again that make the overall experience not as good as it could be:

Sorting guild roster by status should subsort by representation (so available representing, then available not representing, then away representing, then away not representing, then offline)

A bindable key to switch to the next interactable (e.g. Search, Revive, Greet, etc) in range. I’d probably put it on Z or possibly J myself, but unbound by default works fine. Some sort of indication what or who you are searching/reviving/greeting/etc would be nice too.

Anything that comes out of the Mystic Forge should never be soulbound-on-acquire. Similarly, anything that comes out of a Black Lion Chest should be accountbound, not soulbound. I’m looking at you, gathering tools.

Speaking of gathering tools, how about an NPC that will, for a nominal copper/silver fee, combine remaining uses on any same-type gathering tools you have, up to a maximum of 125 for picks and axes, and 60 for sickles? This helps with the problem of having your inventory flooded with Black Lion tools, and reduces clutter if your current gathering tool is running low and you want to have another one ready. Perhaps this service could be added to either merchants that sell gathering tools, or repair NPCs.

You should be able to use any upgrade you meet the required level for on any piece of armor/jewelry/weapon, even if the required level of the upgrade is higher than the required level of the equipment. Last I checked, applying an upgrade soulbound the equipment anyway, so there’s no worries about selling/trading to lower-level characters, and it leads to serious oddities with things like backpieces.

Do not touch my camera when I am dead. If I’m dead more than a few seconds, chances are I’m looking at something, and I do not want to have to fight my camera to do so.

For me, my first two WvW maps (level 50-60ish) got me cotton and coarse leather, and the final two (level 80) copper and green logs. My current theory is that it’s based on the level of the last zone you were in before entering WvW, or possibly the last zone you completed, since both times I got low end stuff I was back doing the newbie zones immediately beforehand (Queensdale and Metrica, respectively). Another possibility might be the tools you have equipped. Rather difficult to test comprehensively. Just some theories.