Guild Wars 2

A Norn walks out of a bar.

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

So, it’s confirmed that the Feature Pack will be out on the 15th April.

The first blog post shows the changes they’re making to Traits.

TL:DR

• Players will no longer require a manual to unlock trait tiers; they’ll be unlocked automatically at the appropriate level.
• New characters will now unlock Adept at 30, Master at 60 and Grandmaster at 80.
• They’re reducing the amount of points from 70 to 14, but each point will be worth 5 points.
• Players start earning points at 30, at a rate of one point every 6 levels until level 66, where this is increased to 2 points.

• Players can now reset their traits in the world providing they’re not in combat.
• Resetting traits is free!
• A minus button has been added, so you don’t have to reset if you mess up.

• All major traits will be locked on new characters.
• Players now have to hunt for Major Traits in the world (a la Skill Hunting in GW1).
• Players also have theoption of buying these traits from a guide.

• All professions will be getting new Grandmaster Traits for each line.

I for one welcome the changes to how Traits are aquired, as well as the ease in how they’ll be reset.

kittena.3809:

Yet you feel entitled to difficult content that others can’t complete (including their rewards). Hypocrite much?

I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all.

When it comes to challenging content people can’t complete, the most entitled think that they deserve the rewards even though they couldn’t do it, because the content ‘excludes casual players’ (well, that’s the most common excuse I’ve heard).

As a casual gamer myself, I simply accept if something is beyond my grasp, whether I lack the skill or the time to complete it. I don’t come to the forums asking Anet to change the rules because I’m excluded.

At the end of the day, I’m not excluded from the content. I can access the content, and I can try my best to complete said content. What I’m excluded from is the achievement and rewards if I don’t complete that content, and rightly so.

Otherwise, Anet might as well just give the achievement on the first try of the content, regardless of being able to do it or not, and be done with it.

Skan.5301:

So, basically, negative criticism isn’t allowed anymore? Because when you get down to it, NC is a jab at the people who made it, who are part of the ANet staff. And since the post is very broad in it’s description, this could very well fall under it. Even if the poster didn’t mean for it to be that way, any moderator could take it as such and dish out undeserving punishment.

Not to mention the end part makes it seem like it’s a no rules barred dictator style moderation in effect here.

You see negative criticism as a personal jab. I personally see it as an opportunity to improve. Since that article by Raph seems to be pretty popular at the moment:

You are not your work.

Above all, don’t forget this. Oh, be personally invested, of course. Your art will be poorer if you are not. But every little ship we launch is just our imperfect crafting of the moment. And we move on. We create again, and again. Each can only ever express a fragment, a tiny fraction of ourselves. And if you are trying to always improve in your craft and your art, then every old fragment, everything out there in the world already, that’s old news. You are on the next thing. Your next work, that’s who you are. Not the work that exists, but the work that does not yet.

So if someone savages it, who cares? That was yesterday. It’s not who you are now.

Hold on to that, because a lot of people can’t separate the work from the artist. Including a lot of artists.

It’s entirely possible to give negative criticism without saying things like ‘Anet don’t know what they’re doing’.

For example:

“I feel that dungeons at the moment feel like a grind because they’re just re-skinned versions of the same thing; go in, beat the big boss.

Dungeons could be improved greatly if:

• They had a more open layout – something akin to an open world map.
• Mobs had packs and roamed – purposely introduce disadvantageous places for people to fight, so players pay attention to location.
• Introduce a variety of goals other than ‘beat the big baddy’; acquire intel / artifacts, maybe have a dungeon that doesn’t focus on combat so much as exploration and puzzle solving."

Criticism without attacking.

Quite the opposite, actually.

Exclusivity through RNG or high cost on the TP isn’t something I’d really call hard; more like tedious.

Now, however, gaining a Legendary – and precursor – will have a story behind it. The weapon has a place in the world and lore, whereas before they were just random weapons with the Legendary title.

Morena.9604:

*If you like gear progression… this game isn’t for you
*If you like playing a certain role in trinity… this game isn’t for you
*If you like raids… this game isn’t for you
*If you like real open world pvp… this game isn’t for you

I’m not seeing the problem, since ANet said well before launch the game wouldn’t have any of these things.

Morena.9604:

*Most importantly if you like to have a goal… this game isn’t for you

This is entirely subjective, and in no way true.

Erick Alastor.3917:

TheDaiBish.9735:

snip

I like the idea of RP the thing, but at the same time I believe that it would be better if taken in a classic manner, mainly because players need to understand clearly what they are facing.
Metaphors, roundabout expression, all these things can be quite misleading, even in a traditional form a survey can be misleading, so I’m for a standard format.
But I lolled

Yeah. I just had the urge for a bit of creativity lol.

Convenience should also be taken into consideration, since players are more likely to be inclined to fill a survey out if they don’t have to go out of their way to do it.

Cosmetic armour skins =/= P2W.

For starters, when it comes to cosmetics, that’s going to vary from person to person. Does that mean if I don’t like the armour in the gemstore, I’ll never win?

Focus on developing the core of the game further, focusing on the open-world:

• Weapon Skills 2 – 5 can now be chosen from a select pool (this is to facilitate balancing). Skills, however, will have to be ‘captured’ from mobs before they’re unlocked. Skill 5 will be able to house an Elite Weapon skill, which is only obtainable from the toughest foes.

• The buff / debuff system will be improved upon to give skills additional effects. This may lead to the introduction of Profession-Specific debuffs and buffs, such as Deep Wound for Warrior to take advantage of.

• We’ll continue to develop the Dynamic Event system. Our main aim is to not have events confined our as separate entities, but different events working in tandem to provide a challenge for players. We’ll also use our Fractals system to develop a system where Events get progressively harder a) the more times you complete them and b) the more players that get involved. The Centaurs weren’t successful last time, so this time they brought Shaman’s to attack from a distance. If you fail to stop this event, then this raiding party will also meet up with another, adding difficulty to that event. The higher the difficulty of the events, the more you are rewarded.

• Dailies will no longer be Account Bound.

• The Legendary process will be improved. This will include: Adding lore to weapons with is unfolded in Questlines reducing the Resource Grind required, add achievement requirements in their place. In order to keep the process as player-unique as possible, some aspects will be randomised (such as the location of certain items) so the player can’t follow a walkthrough. Implemented with this will be the pre-cursor hunt involving materials that the player cannot buy on the TP.

• While the Dragons still pose a threat, each of the races still have their own problems to contend with. As such, a notice board with Job Offers will be placed in each of the Racial Cities for their races. These tasks will be limited to that cities Race, and will allow the player to earn a bit of extra gold on the side.

• Blim the Bard is also looking for heroes to tell tales of their adventures for him to sing about. He’s handing out books for you to fill in with tales of epic battles and dangerous delving, which can be exchanged for some rare items. The more adventures you bring him, the more he’ll give you in return and the rarer the items available.

• Amaranth the Traveler is on her journeys across Tyria. As such, she’s always in need of supplies, and always questing for curious objects. Speak to her, and she’ll give you a (player-unique) list of items. In exchange for your troubles for hunting these items down, she’ll give you a bag of items she has collected from all across Tyria. Be quick though, while she’s here this week, she’ll be somewhere else the next!

• The Orders are also busy. So much so, they’ll be sending you Missions as and when they arrive. Completing these Missions will raise your Rank with the order, giving you access to cheaper armour, weapons and materials used for crafting. Missions will be in keeping with the theme of the Order.

• Crafting Professions will now have the ability to swap out one stat for another on the appropriate piece of equipment. A system will also be put in place for players to be able to offer this as a service to players who don’t have that particular crafting profession. Also, more unique skin recipes, including named weapons, will also be added to the World for you to hunt down.

• Mercenaries will be available for hire for Story Mode dungeons only. While we aim to have Explorable modes for organised groups, we don’t believe anyone should miss out on lore simply because they can’t get a group together.

They should go back and look at the Black Moa Chick hunt:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick

While the process wouldn’t be that short (so to speak), it had some interesting parts in it that took you across all campaigns.

Question: Why not log in for the content you enjoy?

LordByron.8369:

further proof anet doesn t care AT ALL of players feedback….unless you tell hwat they want to hear of course.

Usual pattern of MINIMAL gameplay updates opposed to a lot of grinding and nerfs.

making all exotics skins useless and i bet they won t add as much ascended skins.

• Specific way of getting the precursor
• More skills and traits as progression
• Improvement on rewards
• Doing something about MF

Nope, ANet doesn’t listen at all.

1. I think we should look at the reasons why Ascended – and vertical progression – was introduced, and the mistakes made in their implementation.

After this, then look at potential solutions to these reasons and mistakes, and apply the lessons to possible fixes to the current system of vertical progression, and the implementation of more horizontal progression systems.

2. Horizontal progression tends to be the progression system that adds depth. A number going up on a build you’ve used for a few months isn’t as ‘deep’ as gaining a skill / trait ect that changes your build and the way it’s played.

3. Depth in builds and choices (the ‘progression’ part of character development) is pointless if the content doesn’t utilise that depth either through lack of mechanics, mechanics being able to be brute-forced through sheer damage, or having to use a specific set of skills (although the last one isn’t as bad, since going from the fight being incredibly difficult to slightly easier because you use a different skill you found, and using that skill properly, shows progression).

“You can please some of the people some of the time all of the people some of the time some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time” – Abraham Lincoln

If you’re going to try to cater to different player demographs, it’s a case of trying to find a balance in putting out content for them demographs. Unfortunately, there’s never enough hours in the day to put out content for all groups.

Without going into too much, PvE could use some fundamental improvements to mechanics and behind the scenes (AI, for example), WvW could use some new maps, SPvP could use some game-modes.

I think ‘skill-based’ is a misnomer.

Every game is ‘skill-based’. They just require different skills.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Safari.3021:

In game Polls:

Barmen.

You talk to a barman in a tavern, they chat yto you, ask you questions, you give your responses.

Anet get their poll.
Player recieves tankard of ale for their time.

Encourage participation by making “visit tavern for a drink” a daily achievement when a poll is needed

haha this makes ingame polls actually immersive, nice idea Only problem I can think of: how do you make the connection between the things you want to ask about (a specific event etc.) and the dialogue?

NPC: “Grab a seat, I’ll pull up a drink for you. Heard news at the Splintered Coast is pretty bad. One of the Dragon’s lieutenants seems to be getting stronger”

Player: “Yep, you wouldn’t catch me there” [didn’t participate] / “I was actually there in the fight” [participated].

NPC [if participated]: “Really?! I bet it was a close fight.”

Player: “Psh. A walk in the park for someone like me” [easy] / “Well, it was a sight more difficult than the usual fights I get into” [medium] / “You have no idea. Bodies. Bodies everywhere” [hard].

NPC: “Really…Fancy talking about it?”

Player: “Sure” [brings up a text box] / “Not really, it’d probably bore you” [if answer was easy] / “I’m trying to forget it, why do you think I’m here?” [hard]

NPC: “Truly a thrilling tale” [text box filled] / “No problem, I understand” [text box not filled]

NPC: “Here you go. This drink is on the house.”

Or something along those lines.

Lankybrit.4598:

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

Non-existent and non-enforced encounter mechanics.

Simple as that.

Fixed for you

I think the main problem with the open-world events is the fact that the events don’t really accommodate larger groups as it scales up in terms of the mechanics of the fight.

Look at the Shatterer: No matter how many people arrive, mechanics such as the healing crystals and imprisoning players doesn’t really scale up, meaning the majority of players can ignore the mechanics of the fight without the success being really affected.

Now, if each of these boss fight had its own scaling formula that caused the scaling to make the fight equally challenging on all levels (and not simple ‘more adds and more health’), you’d find less of a problem, because the mechanics couldn’t be ignored by 50% of the players there.

So taking the Shatterer as an example again:

• For every 5 players, an additional healing crystal spawns in a random place in the area of the event.
• For every 10 players, the Shatterer will also do an AoE imprisonment aimed at the largest congregation of players.

Another change I’d personally make is, as well as scaling mechanics, don’t simply have one mechanic happen at a time.

For example, when you’re breaking the healing crystals, nothing else is going on. Now, imagine at certain intervals that two mechanics happened at once. For example, the Shatterer does his healing crystals, and as an additional effect, the next mechanic immediately after / any mechanics done while the healing crystals are in effect are boosted. Imprisonment crystals also emit a Static Field, for example.

I_________O_________I

This big.

Congratulations.

You’ve just described every game with a leaderboard ever.

TSW? You aren’t going to be getting as many kills / missions ect done than someone who played at launch.
CoD? You aren’t going to be racking up as many kills as someone who played at launch.

Would it have changed if they introduced the leaderboard at launch? Nope.

As long as they don’t add any advantage over other players, it’s fine.

Slowburn.5319:

Housing…. an absolute waste of time that could be spent implimenting open world dueling and mounts.

Dueling and Mounts…an absolute waste of time that could be spent implementing Guild Halls.

ThanatosAngel.8024:

Only ANet can save this game. But they need to listen to us to do that.

What group of ‘us’ should they listen to? After all, the entire community will never agree on what is the best way to address an issue.

randomfightfan.4091:

ColinJohanson.2394:

randomfightfan.4091:

I’ll pit my Galic Gun against your Kamehameha any day.

YOUR POWER LEVEL IS AMAZING!!! IT’S OVER 9000!!!

WHAT?! 9000! NO WAY IT CAN BE THAT HIGH!

It’s not. It’s actually 1006. Colin has his scouter on the wrong way.

I don’t get it.

I got a lot of them mats playing around 6 hours a week, and I’ve already got half of the Bloodstone from 10 bags. Hardly a full time job :/

I can imagine your character there, shaking his / her walking stick, muttering ‘kids these days…’

No Walking.6349:

Who cares, TESO will come out before the next dragon does, so it’s not like any of us will still be playing GW2

Everyone except those who will still be playing GW2 because they don’t care about TESO?

Nerelith.7360:

1. Elite Skill capture off Boss Mobs.

2. Hundreds of skills that are not Locked to a weapon, so that all players can use any skills they wish, and not be limited By weapon choice.

If 2 is not possible.( not sure why, other MMO’s do it)…then more weapons.

3. Sub-classes.

To each i got the same response from players defending the current Gw2. " It’s too hard for the devs"

1. We have this in the form of unlocking Traits (except it isn’t restricted to simply find boss > kill boss > use SoC, which, IMO, is an improvement), though they could have branched out with the requirements a bit and not lumped every professions’ traits to a single task.

2. I personally like that each weapon has it’s own individual skills (although I wouldn’t say no to more skills tied to the weapon and the ability to swap skills out). It makes the weapon something more than simply a stat-stick and adds a bit of depth to the character customisation. Not only that, in GW1, there were quite a few skills that were tied to a weapon that you couldn’t use with any other weapon type.

3. I honestly don’t see the point in adding sub-classes. IMO, the amount of time it would take them to implement the system and balance all of the existing Skills and Traits to follow this would be time better spent fleshing out the professions more (skills, traits, weapons ect). Not only that, players would simply choose the most wanted professions and pick and choose bits from other, less desirable professions. It wouldn’t improve anything while consuming a lot of resources to implement.

I wouldn’t say it’s “too hard” for them, but I think in terms of resources and time, it’s a smarter choice to do what they’ve done.

They simply learnt from the all of the trouble they had in GW1.

They shouldn’t close when…

C’mon, the suspense is killing me.

PvE

AI

• Is there any way you could improve AI so that mobs act more like players and mobs work together? (Possible suggestion: Give mobs the exact same tools players have (utilities, traits, combo fields and finishers ect)

Open World Fights

• Improving the scaling? (Suggestion: would it be possible to tie the scaling to the mechanics for each of these fights, instead of just damage and health? For example, with 18 players, Shatterer has 6 healing Crystals, with 24 he’ll have 9 crystals. I feel this could allow revamped fights like Tequatl to not require as many players, but still become challenging when there are more players)
• More revamps like Tequatl? (I may be in the minority with this, but these types of fights that require some form of organisation and communication are good for the community)

Instanced content

• Possible to make instanced content less linear and predictable? (patrolling mobs and bosses, a more open layout [something akin to a mini open-world map] end goals other than beat the big baddy, puzzle solving ect)

New skills and traits

• How will these be unlocked? (Hunting them out vs just gaining skill points and unlocking them)

Community

Player Generated Content

• Player competitions a la GW1? (Armour, Weapons ect)
• Map building tools (for WvW, mini-dungeons ect)

Polish and Friendly UX

• More comprehensive search function in the TP? (Armour type, for example)
• Adjustable UI?
• Dual Trait setups, savable templates ect

So the lack of content is the reason for the lack of Trinity?

No, the reason for the lack of traditional Trinity is two-fold:

• The classes weren’t designed with the Trinity in mind (no dedicated, sustainable threat skills, no dedicated healing).
• The content wasn’t designed with the Trinity in mind.

As for some of the other issues:

• Farming is prevalent in dungeons in other games too. You farm for tokens, rare drops, xp etc.
• Selling dungeon runs happens in other games too (ever heard of ‘boosting’?).

Sebastian.4610:

And im saying it needs to be harder. Read the entire post, not a few words.

How can you make the claim it needs to be harder when you don’t even know what it entails yet?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the OP isn’t all that business-minded.

Playing the game?

Pretty much everything you do nets you XP:

• Killing stuff
• DE’s and Hearts
• Map Completion
• Crafting
• Gathering
• Daily and Monthly

No Walking.6349:

They are not interested in meeting the expectations of their customers my expectations…

Fixed.

You can’t speak for everyone, since there are people who are happy with what they are doing.

It’s also impossible for ANet to meet every customers expectations, since a) customer expectations vary and b) customer expectations might go against their vision for the game.

Is the extra white ok? I put it at the edge so you don’t notice where the picture ends.

I’d say remove it as a stat from armour, and make it a stat you gain through exploration.

Say a small percentage gets added on when you discover:

• Waypoints
• PoI
• Vistas
• Jumping Puzzles
• Mini-dungeons
• Dungeons

And then add other little content tasks such as:

• Treasure Hunts (Get a clue that leads to another clue until you find the location. Maybe add it as a daily reward / buyable with Karma)
• Scavenger Hunts (Nic the Traveller-esque)

Since when have world bosses been immune to conditions?

Another suggestion for increasing the amount of skins:

Create a place that allows us to design our own gear in the boundaries of what’s available.

Weapons

The UI would have 4 slots: One for the “handle”; one for the “hilt”; one for the “blade” and; one for “additional”. Each slot would have a limited selection of colors you could apply to the parts.

The “handle” slot would contain options to customize what the character holds onto. So while one person might choose a plain handle, another might choose one with a guard.

The “hilt” slot would contain options for the handguard, or in the case of Artificer style weapons the “Staff / Scepter / Focus head”. So while one person might choose to have a round handguard, another might choose to have a V styled one.

The “blade” slot would hold the “blade”, or in the case of Artificer-style weapons, the “core”. So while one might choose to have a long, slender blade, like a rapier, another might choose a more thick styled blade.

Finally, the “Additional” would be the little details, such as patterns, faint auras, small particle effects and decorations. While one sword might look like it’s made of glass, another might have a faint light, and another might have filigree etching on the blade.

Armour

The UI would have 3 slots (which would represent the dye channels): One for the “Body”; One for the “Banding” and; one for “Additional”.

The “Body” slot would contain the bulk of the armour. So while one person might choose a full-plate chest piece, another might choose one such as the Barbaric gear.

The “Banding” slot would contain the parts that reinforce the “body”, so to speak. So while one person might choose to make the “banding” form an X, another might choose to have a single “banding” going down the middle.

Finally, as with weapons, the “Additional” would be the little details. So one might choose to have a faint aura, while another might want their “banding” etched with runes.

The reasoning behind this is to give players more freedom in the designing of their gear. Of course, the skins available for these wouldn’t be anything like the Rare, Exotic, Legendary, Dungeon, WvW, Order or Named skins, and would be pretty plain in comparison, but would give players a certain degree of freedom in picking a look that matches their taste.

Of course, this wouldn’t be an OMG WE NEED IT NAO!!!1! suggestion. Maybe just something to put into a future content update or expac, with different components added as time goes on?

Test.8734:

AESOkami.1072:

Is pre-purchasing HoT right away a good idea or not?
Please let me know as soon as you can. It could save me alot of money.

LOL, no.

Wait a few months and you’ll be able to buy it at a discount, as soon as the bad reviews start pouring in.

Save your money. This isn’t going anywhere but down.

You know, you could put them psychic powers of yours to better use. Like predicting natural disasters, or maybe telling me what tonight’s lotto numbers will be.

I mean, of course there’ll be some bad reviews – like most games – and no doubt the price will drop in the future – like most games. But until we know the entirety of the expansion and how well things are implemented, it’s a bit premature to go spouting off about how the expansion is going to suck.

OP:

Only you can really decide that.

Is the character slot, title and beta access worth taking the risk that the expansion may not contain much of the content you enjoy?

Personally I’m waiting until I know the full contents of the expansion.

Vinny.2547:

It needs meaningful endgame. Whether it be raids or dungeons with rewards that are not just aesthetically pleasing but also have better stats. The gear ladder is what keeps people playing MMOs. Im sorry but thats the only way it works.

That’s only a tool to cover up game-play that isn’t intrinsically satisfying. If a game has good content that the person enjoys, they don’t need a gear ladder to keep playing.

What does GW2 need IMO?

General

• A more, in-depth skill system, whether this be seeking new skills, or the ability to customize skills depending on play-style. Either way, skills should be under-powered unless used appropriately, thus encouraging smart play as opposed to spamming.
• A more in-depth trait system that focuses on strengthening and defining play-style through smart play, and not merely stat increases and cool-down reducing. Modify how Minor and Major works; slotting a trait into Major will increase the affect off the slotted trait.
• If new skills / traits / weapons get introduced, these should be earned as opposed to given straight away. Weapon masters, profession-specific activities and what not. Hell, maybe some skills that can be captured off of incredibly tough mobs that are aesthetically and named different but mechanically the same as its counterpart.

PvE

• More challenging open-world content where scaling is tailored to each fight to buff the mechanics of each fight, as opposed to just stats and how many adds spawn (I’d wager this is the reason mechanics can be powered through).
• More balance in terms of difficulty in dungeons OR have three tiers of difficulty (P1 being easiest) with appropriate rewards for each. Bonus objectives for each dungeon.
• More integration between the personal story choices and the open world on a day-to-day basis ( first organisation [warband / crewe ect] / order / pact missions [depending on how far along the story you are; not necessarily daily], working your way up the ranks to access more difficult missions, with some missions requiring members of your Order [on these days, players of the same Order will get the exact same mission] ect). As it is, the Orders we choose have no bearing on the experience outside of the personal story.
• Reworking Defiant to reward smart play and usage of CC (CC effect doubled if it interrupts, Defiant doesn’t trigger if you interrupt an attack ect).
• Positive RNG; content and location of items being randomised.
• Books to fill in and trade a la GW1 to encourage going to other areas / dungeons ect.

EpicBanHammer.7521:

Aedelric.1287:

Nah, I would prefer Tengu first, I have been wanting to play as an Avicara Brave since Guild Wars one.

But then you can’t rename all your toons really cheezy bear puns.

Oh gods. I can imagine it now…it’d be unbearable.

Max Lexandre.6279:

TheDaiBish.9735:

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

Give people one confirmation the team is aware and working to solve the problem is a step, will not fix the rage we see, but they can’t say we’re being simply ignored by the development team on our feedback. It can calm nerves down, something that is recently “up-scaling” on the forums.

Except it won’t, and it’s been proven.

Look at precursor crafting.

Right at the beginning, people were asking for a sure-fire way to get them. Time and time again they said that they had something in the conceptual stage, but not being actively worked on. People still, month after month asked when it would be implemented.

Then in the 2013 blog post. Despite the post saying that nothing was written in stone, and players being let know that it wouldn’t make it in before 2013 was over, and what happened? The forum erupted with cries of ‘broken promises’.

The fact is, people won’t be happy with ‘we are looking into it’. They say that, and people will still on a daily basis ask ‘what are you doing about x problem?’

Palador.2170:

No.

But what if they said “We’re open to ideas, but parts A, B, and C are not going to be open to change. What can we do to parts D and E to make this work better?”, they might get more useful feedback.

I suppose more focused questions could help.

I still can’t see a lot of people being happy being told ‘A, B and C isn’t subject to change’ though. That would be met with the same cries of ANet sucks / they don’t know what they’re doing / they don’t listen to the community ect ect that we have now.

Gah! Beat me to it!

Just two words: QUAGGAN BACKPACK!

the uprising.6317:

Anet finally added endgame vertical progression in the form of ascended gear, and all the casuals SCREAMED that this was adding a gear treadmill. So now Anet vows that there will be no further treadmill. So what is the hardcore endgame now?

a) Repeatedly getting better and better gear isn’t ‘hardcore’ if it isn’t difficult, just time-consuming and a cheap tactic called the Skinner box to keep people playing .

b) It wasn’t just the casuals that screamed. It was the GW1 players, and the players who feel that they lied in their manifesto.

the uprising.6317:

MMO’s are all about progression bro, self expression and growth via your character, the actual action you are doing is super boring, GW2 is no different not sure why you would think it would be different. Without progression or rewards you are just grinding for no reward, that’s like insanely weird.

RPG’s (not MMO’s) are (originally) about role-playing a character, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it needs stat progression.

For example, if you started out as a grunt for one of the Orders, and you done missions for them, working your way up the ranks. As you get higher in rank, you get access to more dangerous missions. Maybe these missions could branch out, have a sort of scoring system, in which you’re given missions that play to your strengths (i.e. someone who managed to avoid most enemies would get assassination missions, while someone who just plowed their way through would get front line missions).

That’s a form of progression for your character based on the world you’re engaged in (on a personal note, I feel they missed out on interjecting the Personal Story into the open world here, as well as to help with the pacing.)

As for the ‘just grinding for no reward’ comment, intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards; if a player finds the activity in itself rewarding, they don’t need to a carrot on a stick to do it. This is a case of ‘different strokes for different folks’, so you can’t flat out say ‘it is boring’. It’s just boring for you, in which case, why would you play the game anyway?

cletiscake.9173:

b) Not stacking in corners is simply not feasible.

This is wrong. When I used to dungeon run with friends, we never used to stack.

cletiscake.9173:

Here’s the thing. Our characters are balanced around the fact that skills have a recharge time, we have only 2 dodges available to us, and we have a single Heal on a long cooldown. By design, we are a closed system.

What about things such as:

• Protection?
• Aegis?
• Blind?
• Weakness?
• Interrupts?
• Reflects?

cletiscake.9173:

Anet really needs to communicate to us how they want us to play the game. They need to talk about it openly. IF they truly don’t intend for us to stack in corners, they need to describe to us how we are supposed to cope without a Trinity. And if they want to lessen reliance on DPS, how will they go about doing that?

You cope without the Trinity by not frontloading everything you have into damage if you’re not sure what your team is bringing.

Back when I first run the dungeons before we knew what was going on, I’d sacrifice some DPS for control – I’d take a Hammer and the Leg Specialist trait on my Warrior. That way if SHTF, I’d have a backup that allowed me to get the boss away from a team-mate that was down and Immobilise him for a second while others got them back up.

You can’t really lessen reliance on DPS, since DPS is how you win the fight.

Also, in reference to your title, gear stats =/= builds. Builds are the totality of what you bring to a fight. The way to mix this up isn’t to make the fights numerically harder, but:

• give the fights mechanics players haven’t played against before.
• make sure that you have to pay attention to the boss mechanics.

Hehe. Here’s a souvenir.

Devata.6589:

I mean put in a boss that damages all enemies in the room and he does huge damage but the damage does get spread over all enemies. Then a class with minions becomes required. There is also no content that requires portals or invisibility. Adding such mechanics and AI tactics would already help a lot.

If you give rangers more control over pets (stay) then you can have a 5 man dungeon with 6 levers you need to stand on requiring a ranger that puts his pet on the 6th lever.

While this is a cheap example. Putting in AI tactics and attacks that requires roles is more interesting. (like the damage spread out over enemies). Or an enemy that teleports everybody to one place and then traps everybody there and then drop a hammer on them killing everybody instantly. How to get out of that situation? Memsmer drops a portal before the attacks comes and when being teleportet by the boss people can teleport to safety. So there are for sure many content improvements that could help a lot. But then still I do find roles are not defined specific enough.

Sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. While you might feel it’s interesting, I’d find it quite boring if I only had one way of doing content with no room for experimentation. The only way this could possibly be a good idea is if the dungeon had adaptable mechanics based on group composition.

Having mechanics that require you to bring a specific profession and a specific skill? That just removes all depth. Why? Because the player can’t choose how to approach and tackle the content. It removes all player agency. You want to run the piece of content with 5 friends and no-one has a Mesmer or Ranger? Well, can’t run the content then.

However, what you’re saying – having enemies that require roles – is exactly what I’m saying. I’m just saying the role isn’t dependant on class, but on build, since the role is provided by the encounter, and not a pre-defined [class] is a [role].

Taking your levers example. As well as a Ranger pet being able to trigger it, Blast Finishers can also trigger it. Or maybe you passed some rocks that you could place on it.

What I honestly got from this was ‘stop having fun’.

Who’s forcing you to use it? I personally got a great laugh from seeing someone pelted with stampeding rainbow unicorns.