Guild Wars 2

I like your approach (concept vs what it does), and I love your idea for the Mirage, very thematic!

Do try to keep your tone constructive as well (your feedback itself already was), feedback is perceived better that way.

Tried out the Mirage a bit, mostly worried about its fluidity of play. The new dodge feels somewhat lackluster (could be helped by increasing Superspeed time), and the Mirage Mirrors regularly require suboptimal movement. I’m not sure if the benefits outweigh the sacrifices on dodge and movement patterns.

Also, it feels like some Elite Specs got a LOT more attention than others. I appreciate you picking a concept and going all out on it (Weaver, Holosmith), but I can’t help but think that a Mesmer Elite Spec could’ve had a concept of similar scope.

Also, keep up the good work!

It has been very specifically designed to accommodate one Elite Spec at a time. Like perilisk said, it was just conjured weapons/animations as they play around with light and holograms. I agree that meshing Elite Specs together would be absolutely bonkers

I haven’t played this episode’s story yet beyond the first instance. I mostly want to thank you for yet another jumping puzzle and for the Legendary Trinket collection! Mastering hard to navigate environments (Jumping Puzzles, many of the HoT maps and their achievements, etc) is by far my favorite thing in GW2. They provide me with a true challenge of skill, where ‘muscle memory’ and practice pay off. I enjoy these same aspects in raids, but due to the group requirement there the barrier to entry is a lot higher. By incorporating the requirement of mastering all six LS3 maps in the Legendary Trinket you have for the very first time truly motivated me to pursue my first legendary.

I do want to ask if it’s possible to retain checkpoint status in JPs when jumping to another instance of the map. This would have saved me a small 15 minutes of annoyance when I discovered this was not possible…

Since there’s so much dislike present for the poor Quaggan, I wanna tell him he’ll be my first legendary to craft

Yes, it is. I absolutely love the playstyle, it’s fun enough to solo, and you’re always valuable in groups. Plus, they have unique utility.

Give it a go!

Good: backwards integration of expansionis elements. Implementing gliding is a great first step towards upgrading the appeal of core tyria.

Bad: the severity of nerfs being implemented. Let me take the mesmer as an example here. The nerf from 66% to 33% is huge, and I expect the results are very predictable: the disappearance of the chronobunker playstyle. I would recommend nerfing in increments, where you try to approach a feasible state for a playstyle rather than annihilating it. This way unique playstyles that players enjoy get balanced rather than removed (which is what generally happens with the current "balancing" strategy).

I absolutely love how everyone picks a race and sort of supports it with arguments, except those who recommend Asura

Oh, pick Asura btw #asuramasterrace

What you describe would be power creep, and I feel that that isn’t too bad overall. If anything, the way masteries are designed prevent power creep, as it is progressing in horizontally rather than vertically. Yes, some things are being ‘locked’ for you as it requires a group effort, but at the same time that group content satisfies players that have been asking for it. The only things I have not been able to do are; Raids, and I have to admit that without significant effort I will not be able to in the near future either; some Guild activities, as this requires a significant effort in communication and planning.

With the LFG function doing a dungeon with randoms (even casual randoms) is easier than ever, a Champion can be beat with exotic gear just fine (yes it’s a challenge, but come on, it’s a CHAMPION), and I manage running solo in VB and the second map just fine (admittedly, I haven’t progressed much further than that, and I imagine it to be hard but not unimaginably difficult).

Prime Greek.1092:

The ANET Developers have lost touch with their true audience.

They keep insisting on designing / adding content for themselves and the 5% hardcore players, forgetting the 95% of casual players are who sustain the game and pay their salaries.

You don’t keep biting the hand that feeds you.

I stopped playing HoT because its just too hard, too annoying and too un-rewarding.

Oh boy.

Enlighten me then, how much have you spent on the game APART FROM the initial purchase? How much revenue do you believe casual players that already own the entire game will bring in? In reality, it is exactly that 5% that brings in most revenue after purchase. It is therefore not surprising that Anet caters to their needs. Now, there is a case to be made that their earning model involves increasing the player base, but arguably they have worked on that by making the game free and locking only the expansion behind a paywall. This way players that otherwise wouldn’t have considered GW2 enter the game, and might be persuaded to go all the way and try ana…uh…HoT.

Also, just because they added stuff that doesn’t fit you doesn’t mean you should dislike them for it, the world doesn’t revolve around your wishes and needs, you know. Now that I think about it…there’s a good chance you grew up believing exactly that…. Forget what I just said

Signed, a casual player that thoroughly enjoys HoT

Grim West.3194:

HoT is a very very poor expansion. It decimated WvW, dungeons and many other parts of the game.

I’ve seen this statement a couple of times, and I’d like to know: How did they do that exactly? I’m not saying I agree/disagree, I just want an objective (!) explanation on what changes that came with HoT caused this. Thanks in advance

Coyote.7031:

The average “fun”, with some posts omitted because I’m lazy, is 5.12008 with 251 entries. Unless people gave a very clear short answer, I skipped the post. I didn’t want to average out the multi-score posts unless they listed a clear answer. If it was just two numbers, I averaged it out. So don’t beat me if it’s off, I did it just for kicks.

Things to consider when reading this:
- People who don’t like HoT are more likely to complain on the forums
- People who don’t like HoT are more likely to rate 0 instead of an actual considered value (due to being sour about not getting their money’s worth)
- All the people that put in incredibly low numbers, yet still play several hours a day grinding the new content are kittening liars

No idea how this thread progressed over the past 10 pages, but I’ll just add my $0.02

Score: Solid 8

I had little playtime thus far, yet (i) I’m enjoying being a Chronomancer; (ii) I love the increased difficulty both in mobs and in pathfinding; (iii) the changes to guild chat and guild members being visible on map are just awesome; (iv) despite my reservations the mastery system does feel like horizontal progression to me (yes it’s sort of grinding, but I get to choose my direction).

I’m guessing there’s still a lot I haven’t seen, but just being able to enjoy the above is already pretty good. I like the way Anet is going with this (especially with regards to the difficulty) and I hope they keep up the good work

I was considering replying elaborately and appeal to your common sense. I gave up halfway. You want Anet to cater to your needs only, and get mad when they also cater to other types of players. If you can’t see the selfishness in this, then any discussion on this topic is hopeless.

These are exactly the things that make me love the new HoT expansion! Difficult mobs, narrow spaces, not a bland flat map, but actual platforming, they might not generate the same returns as would something like SW, but they bring a challenge, new elements to the game. I hope this is the direction they keep moving in for future expansions, as we already have plenty of flat and bland maps to go around. By all means, enjoy them, but I support the variation.

I’m not sure how this would work out, but it’s at least an interesting proposal. I especially like the idea of your one-shot phantasm skills leaving behind an afterimage. This could maintain the unique feeling a mesmer has now.

Though as mentioned, there are a number of concerns with this playstyle as well. Tobasco da gama makes a good point on group fights where phantasms are sustainable right now.

The trinkets are easy enough indeed, those were not my concern

The other advice is solid, thanks mate! Guess I won’t be crafting Ascended armor after all.

Fellow butterfly-spewing comrades!

So, I’ve been playing my Mesmer with Zerker Exotic set for a while, and have decided to go for Ascended gear. Thing is, I’m not sure what to make. In general I play PvE casual enough to not let gear matter that much, and for WvW I like both Power and Condition builds, depending on my mood.

How do you guys do this? Do you craft multiple sets of Ascended gear? Do you have one set of Ascended for one playstyle, and some Exotics for another? Have you designed a hybrid gear build? Do you simply not bother with Ascended stuff at all and stick with Exotics? What advice would you have for me?

Cheers~
Thornum

(oh btw, I realise waiting for HoT with this might be a smart thing, no need to remind me)

While it is rather easy to step onto this hypetrain for a guy I hadn’t heard of before this post (not a really active player and TERRIBLE at remembering names), I am sure that random acts of appreciation like this can truly make someone’s day.

So, Robert, for shaping and maintaining the sole reason I keep playing GW2 (my Mesmer):

Thank you

Edit: Oh, and Chaos, you leave that Unicorn alone! There’s no such thing as too much fabulousness in the toolkit of a Mesmer

Baldrick.8967:

A much better design would be for each event mob to drop a token, and for the number of tokens you collect to reflect your final reward from the whole chain as well as from each event. Applying this to SW would stop the lazy taxis and encourage people to actually help build the bar rather than just jump in a reap rewards before taxing to the next map that’s need almost done by others.

You make an excellent proposal, but note that it is similar to what other people have said about ‘improved participation checks’. It doesn’t matter if you’d actually loot the tokens or if they’d be rewarded invisibly. Completing different objectives could also up your token count, improving your event participation. In the end you’ll have events with unique participation checks reflecting your efforts in the event or chain. The result would still be no loot from mobs while preventing event tagging to be more lucrative than putting in effort. (note that my personal preference is that rewards increase exponentially with tiers rather than linearly. This further rewards players helping out from the start and to their fullest capacity)

• To the open-world roaming/skipping issue: non-event mobs could still be dropping loot.
• To the dungeon issue: dungeon mobs could still be dropping loot, and add a dungeon specific MF buff for non-boss enemies or smth to demote skipping.

I feel this would improve how events and maps are handled in general… Is Anet reading this?

It’s late, and I didn’t take time to read EVERY reply, so forgive me if this has been said.

For me, what is most rewarding, is CHALLENGE. Actually, not so much challenge, moreso overcoming challenge. Jumping Puzzles without guides or w/e are challenging to me. SAB first release was a challenge; I played this through with 4 friends, without a single guide, and we completed all of it. We discovered everything ourselves. The ‘reward’ was a title mostly, but the challenge is what made it worth its while.

This is what the game lacks for me. A challenge. A sense of accomplishment. It’s too easy to get somewhere due to waypoints. It’s often too easy to clear a mob or an event (not always, I know).

I know the game has been designed to be casual, but I still think that you can add a lot more challenging content in the game. Stuff that takes actual teamwork, coordination, a keen eye, a little experience, rather than just a zerg large enough to overcome whatever is ahead.

Gnight everyone

Same question here. Will me friend be able to upgrade after the trial period?