Guild Wars 2

This is meant as a thread where you can point out what you think is wrong with this update, so as to give clear feedback to the developers and create a basis for further discussion. Please refrain from just complaining, rather explain exactly what it is which makes you frustrated while keeping a neutral attitude.
Also reflecting on the strong points of this update is welcome too, of course.

To start off, the opening ceremony is great. The character’s dialogues are well in place with a good sense of humor as well as story consistence so far. The players involvment, although is a little too less. in my opinion. Of course it’s very hard to involve the player directly storywise and not just make him a “bystander who just happened to be there” since you can’t really take a player into the voice dialogues. If, however a way would be found to do jsut this – involve a player trough dialogues like for example “hey you good-for-nothing, don’t just stand around and give me a hand here”, the immersion of the players should rise drastically.
Otherwise, I think the introduction of watchwork knights and the arrival of aetherblades is well done.

Now regarding the Crown Pavillon: Making it exhibition-like to have different areas with all the different enemies the human race had and has to face off against and being able to experience it firsthand through fighting watchwork illusions by itself is not a bad idea. However, how it is instanced and the events are set up, it is just one huge zerg farmfest (and thus lagfest for many players). Of course farming is not always bad as it allows you to get good stuff and I myself do it every now and then. It’s nothing especially good, but it’s there and nothings wrong with it being there as you don’t have to farm, but can if you want and through those new reward bags and spawning chests have a chance on good loot.

However – and that leads to the next point – it is affecting the Queen’s Gauntlet. This content is great per se. You have all those different mechanics, it’s starting easy and getting harder at a good pace, you can repeat fights if you want and you have the Gambit system. It is fun to fight in those encounters, as you have to adapt your way of fighting, your skillset and even your traits (which is really thoughtfull that you can retrain in the very area). I think this is just how boss encounters should be.
But it impossible to do with lag through culling caused by the farming zerg. You just can’t dodge when you don’t see it coming, or when the order is just delayed.
Furthermore if you die, you have to port back and walk all the way up again, which ends being really frustrating. Not to mention porting means getting a loadscreen.

This could be evaded if Queen’s Gauntlet were instanced. It isn’t even necessary do instance it for everyone, just splitting it from the farmin Zerg would be enough. Since also the idea of being able to see how others fight is not bad at all.

To come to an end, the emissaries are nice too. Giving you buffs for fighting and furthermore making them different depending on whom you represent is a nice gimmick. Great also it affects the Queen’s Gauntlet encounters. Not so great you have to retake them everytime after dying. But as for the buffs ties to achievements, personally I would’ve preferred if the buffs were to start weak, and then ranking up in connection on how many kills you have. It wouldn’t have hurt to raise the cap then also, concerning the farming nature of this achievements.

Those are entirely my own opinions. Feel free to comment and add your own thoughts.

Y u mad its vydia.6324:

Good luck getting those groups killed without at least 2 people in full zerker gear. You can pull them together all you want they have so much HP zerker is basically required.

If you have 2 zerkers it then is no full zerker group. So you actually said nothing which goes against my argument xD. Of course you need DPS, but not alone.
If you have someone keeping them alive zerkers can starting dealing damage. If you only have damage, you will be dead before you could even start attacking.

skullmount.1758:

You can make it really difficult and still not make it impossible for pugs. Some of us don’t have friends to play with or guilds, so we have to only do pugs.

Then at least you could try get the PUG together in teamspeak or similar ;D
I did it for high level fractals all the time and it worked out mostly.
The thing is, you need something to challenge good teams who enjoy playing together.
If it’s doable with your everyday pug, it will be way to easy for a good team.

skullmount.1758:

Weren’t people getting to those high levels of fractals in the beginning by using an exploit, or gaming the system?

They used revive orbs. Nothing to say against this, they are intended to be used when you are dead. No exploit involved here.

Y u mad its vydia.6324:

Such bullkitten. 4 zerker team, else the DPS is too low. This is not challenging, this is a pathetic gear check. Challenging would have been fun mechanics, not something you can avoid with 100% projectile reflect / absorb uptime.

How fun, I get to change gear to berserker!

“Bullkitten” is going in with zerkers. You wont ever get it done with zerkers, they will die like flies to the first few mobs (already tried multiple times with zerker groups).

Believe me or not, but this game is actually NOT all about DPS. There is a reason Anet gave us all those other awesome mechanics like spreading conditions, pulling groups together, reflecting projectiles and so forth. Just like in the video above, they are not full zerkers, aren’t they?
Only because of CoF everyone thinks zerker is the best. But try going into fractals 40+ with only zerkers. Have fun.

skullmount.1758:

Then why even tie it to an achievement (which noone can even see that you completed it) if you want only a small number to get it?

It is an ACHIEVEMENT. Why the hell does everyone think this is what every so random casual player can get? I think it is actually better to give everyone the chance to get a few achievements easily (and you get enough for the miniatures without problems) and for getting more/ higher tiers it should be improvingly harder. The only thing wrong was to not make 4 tiers of this particular achievement but only 2.

skullmount.1758:

I’d like to see this as well. If its supposed to be doable, then why can’t they show us a video of them doing it (with everything shown, and not on their test/development server).

There is a video from players doing it a few posts above. This alone is proof enough it’s doable. Since from watching it once, I saw enough room for improvement for them.
And if you still dwell upon it is impossible to ever get gold for this:
When the fractals were still new there were people who got to fractals 80+.
It would be boring if everyone could do this easily. There were tons of people complainung about the whole Canach dungeon being a joke. But it seems you want jokes.

Here is the link for the Fractals thingy: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractals-cap-80/first#post1111885

SpeedFiend.4521:

So, if Kiel wants to research Inquest stuff because she’s buddies with them…
Evon Gnashblade is secretly a cultist of Abaddon? Just when I thought there was no way he could have my vote more. Vote Gnashblade, be on the right side when the coming darkness swallows us all.

Considering he might have ties with the Order of Whispers, then now think about how the OdW might have origninated…. I mean, the stuff with Abaddon being the God of Secrets….

It seems to me all people who complain over balancing issues, forget some crucial points. Firstly and most important of all: We should know through experience, after every patch regardless how much changes, there will always be people complaining. I believe there is not a single game outside there which is perfectly balanced.

The thing is, players will always find ways to exploit new changes, or at least develope new tactics which are OP in certain parts of the game.

My point is, I don’t see meta is broken anywhere. It just changes from patch to patch and some people like it, some not.
Playing Necro doesn’t give you any advantage in sPvP, I play a lot, even free tournaments and the team with necro/ more of them isn’t bound to win at all.
With the trait change for marks, I can still be as effective in WvW as before, since you have epidemic. Torment even gives you more survivability through its disable.
True is, of course, enemies without proper cleansing abilities will now go down faster, but they would anyways. Against enemies with those, like elementalists, its now at least a bit less frustrating
As for getting no disengages for necro, they don’t need to. They have this incerdible build of lifeforce, which gives them really heavy sustain in battles, making it hard enough to kill them. If they then could jump around like thieves or so, THAT would be OP, you would never get to kill just one.
All in all, you can still bring everything down on player skill, how he manages his class, how the team overall is composed, and how well you work together. This is true for dungeons as well as sPvP. While there may are certain parts of the game, which favor some builds/teamcombinations as far as time efficiancy goes, there is no need to always stick with those to actually do the content.

Lastly, I may remind you all that GW1 had major balancing updates even WITH splitting PvE/PvP skillsets after YEARS. SC2 had a lot balancing updates after Stephano found a way to do macro just like a AI would making Zerg nearly impossible to beat for a time. And this game was developed for about 12 years or so?
The current meta will change, if you want it to, or not. For some it will be for the worse, for some for the good. But you all can be certain Anet will ALWAYS work on it, it takes time, and people will find ways to use it for OP tactics. Thats how it goes. No developer ever could foresee just what players would use changes for which they were not intended.

tl;dr: People will always complain since meta will always change for the liking/disliking of somebody and Anet is still doing a great job, with all flaws they may bring to the game. In time, they will fix it for the better!

I think, after having read tons and tons of whining here: Where is the Problem? “Small Guilds have to dissolve into bigger ones”, “People have to chose between friendships and Guild Missions” The Heck is that coming from? If you didn’t notice as of yet, one can have more than one Guild If you are in a small Guild and want to do Guild Missions, represent the bigger one sometimes, have fun, and then switch back to your little family-like Guild. It’s not like you are forced to disband and scatter into few big Guilds leaving everything behind at all…