Guild Wars 2

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Voxdeus.1034:

As a former player who’s tried to return to the game several times lately, the “ruined” version of Lion’s Arch makes the game unappealing and not worth playing.

If the only reason you played the game was to stand in Lion’s Arch, then I don’t think MMOs are for you.

Perhaps Skyrim is a better fit for your personality.

Sorry friend, I have played one MMO or another nonstop since Ultima Online. I could probably teach a course on MMO design at this point. I think I understand if MMOs are “for me.” I don’t play an MMO for the specific purpose of standing in a social hub, but it’s a good launching pad. Of course if I did just want to stand around in a social hub looking pretty, I’m not sure how that would harm you.

I don’t know if you are trying to be genuinely helpful or just trolling so I won’t say any more about it. If you read my other posts I think you can understand why having a familiar social hub to come back to matters to a (potentially) returning player like me.

P.S.— Skyrim is also an excellent game, which I also enjoyed and will probably play again at some point.

zenleto.6179:

Have you had a run around in there and had a look? I had my first proper look at the place in a couple weeks yesterday and the rebuilding is going on. Looks like the portals have found a new home. I’d say eventually it’ll be back to its original function. How long it will take who knows? There may actually be an answer for this in a sub-forum somewhere. The search function here is a little ordinary.

Why you wouldn’t play a game because a map has changed is beyond me but I’ll leave that alone. Each to their own.

If I had been playing constantly since release maybe I wouldn’t care, but coming back to an MMO after you’ve been away for a long time you really want a familiar social hub in which to meet new people, see some zone chatter, etc in order to get a “feel” for where the game is at. Plus, with all of the changes to class balance, traits, gear, etc there’s enough to re learn without having to figure out where the banks, crafters, auction house, trainers, etc are located.

For me, this is not a game I’m going to play more than 10 hours a week, so if the barrier to re entry is too high then it’s just not worth it.

This is not a complaint. If the players who have been playing for the past six months like the game this way, if they demand that the world be shaken to this degree, then so be it. It’s Anet’s game, I just play it some times.

I just wantd to know if I should keep checking back, and it sounds like the answer is that players believe it’s going to be rebuilt in some fashion but Anet hasn’t actually said so.

As a former player who’s tried to return to the game several times lately, the “ruined” version of Lion’s Arch makes the game unappealing and not worth playing. I thought it was silly enough when the Mad King destroyed the statue, but entirely destroying the central hub/social area of the game makes it so that I have no familiar frame of reference, no place to lurk general chat to feel the pulse of the game or get a sense of what people are doing, etc.

I know the people who have been playing constantly from release will probably just think this is whining because to them the game world, character traits, items, etc have changed gradually, and they don’t need a “familiar” area the way some one like me does, but for me this is enough of an issue that I simply won’t play the game until Lion’s Arch exists in a form similar to what it was at launch.

Does any one know if this is even planned, and if so, what the timeline for that might be? If it’s six months or something then so be it, but I don’t want to waste my time checking back from time to time hoping for progress if Lion’s Arch has become a permanent casualty of a “dynamic” vision of the world.

I apologize if this answer exists some place and I have overlooked it. I did some Google and scanned the forums but didn’t see any one asking this question.

Lexandro.1456:

Perhaps you failed to read the part where I said getting the money is not an issue. Its justifying the cost of the armor

If you can’t justify the cost, then don’t buy it. They exist exclusively in order to look good/different. If that’s not sufficient reason to spend the gold then don’t spend the gold.

You’ve already identified the fact that the stats don’t justify the gold cost, so what’s your confusion?

IMO they ought to simply limit how many of these events you can do per day, and guesting should NOT allow you to get around that limit.

I don’t mind if some one’s causing lag on my server because they’re legitimately there to chill with their friends, but when people are just hopping from server to server in order to get around the one per day limit for these event chests and that’s lagging the event to the point where I’m only able to take an action every 5-10 seconds, that’s a problem.

Exploiters shouldn’t be rewarded for this behavior and they darn sure shouldn’t be making the game worse for every one else by exploiting.

If Anet wants people to be able to do 3 of these events a day instead of one, then so be it. Raise the per character limit to 3, and make it a flag on the character and not on the server.

TL;DR: I don’t care that the loot is “too good.” I just care about the fact that I can’t do an event any more without it being a slide show, and that those who benefit the most are those who are willing to abuse the guesting system just to get more phat loot.

Leave the loot tables how they are if you want, but please remove the ability to increase your daily quota by guesting to a different server.

I believe I know what is happening to you. You’re straddling a portion of the zone where the dynamic level range changes and being forced to a lower level than the mobs you’re fighting. It has happened to me a few times in very specific spots.

What you basically have to do is speed past those mobs Into the higher level area of the zone and then fight them once you’ve been dynamically boosted to theintended level.

This is the only reason ive ever seen for non champ mobs to hit that hard regardless of your profession.

GW2 has some great innovations, or at least areas where it deviates from the norm.

Postive:

1) Dynamic/World events are better (IMO) than Rift or WAR dynamic events. Anything can get stale after you’ve seen it a million times, but RIFT and WAR made it feel like I’d seen it all a million times after the first 10 times. Much better variety and character to the dynamic events in GW2.
2) Basic game design encourages grouping by making nodes and mob kill credit shared.
3) Combat system feels pretty fluid and active. Hardly the first MMO with a good combat system but this is a very necessary ingredient. You definitely feel it in games that lack it.
4) Balance is surprisingly good for the short time the game has been out (although you wouldn’t know it by the volume of complaints on the forums).

Negative:

1) Devs seem trapped between giving people lots of stuff to do and not having the game be the typical MMO gear treadmill. They seem to be leaning towards the more mainstream model of treadmill. Total shame since that market is already well served by World of Warcraft and its various clones. The game is becoming incredibly unrewarding for those who have alts or like to experiment with different gear types, thanks to the slow drip pace of ascended gear acquisition. It was bad enough with the way dyes were designed, but this takes it to a whole ’nother level.

2) Still trapped in a lot of unnecessary “Traditional MMO” ideas, like dedicating the majority of the game world to leveling. Level grinding isn’t fun once you have a grasp on the game’s mechanics, and this is a very inefficient way of using development resources since those areas are poorly suited for use by the majority of the player base. Devs seem satisfied to continue this poor trend by raising the level cap in future content.

3) A surprising number of bugs or half finished features which are obvious, but don’t get fixed for some apparent reason. Example: Pets/Minions/Turrets/Spirit weapons don’t have any way to avoid very common AoE damage, don’t get their owner’s Agony resistance, etc. The lesson that “pets are stupid, they stand in fire, so they must be naturally resistant to environmental damage” has been taught in every MMO that has included pets (including GW1 !), yet this seems lost on GW2 dev team. Result: Lots of players complaining and feeling sorry for themselves over an easily tackled issue.

Reaver.9256:

Voxdeus.1034:

Reaver.9256:

Voxdeus.1034:

Reaver.9256:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Reaver.9256:

That’s the major problem they face. You think it’s getting worse and worse while I think it’s getting better and better. They have to figure out a way to please us both.

That’s the problem though. I bought the game based on the manifesto. You obviously didn’t.

Nope I didn’t. They’ve also never lied to me. I knew vertical progression was in the day the game was announced in pc gamer years and years ago.

You “knew” it, even though they claimed otherwise?

Where did they claim otherwise? Is there more than one manifesto video?

“We have never said there would be no vertical progression.”

Chris Whiteside

“Any quote you see on the internet is true”

—Abraham Lincoln.

In any case, what they did say, in fact, is that characters could reach maximum stats/power level very shortly after hitting max level, and that any grind would be strictly for cosmetic items.

Whether or not Chris Whiteside or any one else now claims otherwise does not change the fact that this is what they promised and talked about on more than one occasion. I don’t want to characterize Mr Whiteside or his comments except to say that they run counter to what other people at Anet talked about.

I’m in the middle of several things right now, but I’ll track it down for you in a short while.

If you won’t take my quote seriously then why would I ever take yours? I don’t know though because I’ve read 1000000 of these progression threads and have never seen them saying the game would be strictly a horizontal game.

I’m accepting for the sake of argument that he said what you claim. It would be nice if you provided an actual link so that I don’t have to take your word for it, but really it doesn’t matter, because an after the fact denial doesn’t change anything if it’s not true.

Reaver.9256:

Voxdeus.1034:

Reaver.9256:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Reaver.9256:

That’s the major problem they face. You think it’s getting worse and worse while I think it’s getting better and better. They have to figure out a way to please us both.

That’s the problem though. I bought the game based on the manifesto. You obviously didn’t.

Nope I didn’t. They’ve also never lied to me. I knew vertical progression was in the day the game was announced in pc gamer years and years ago.

You “knew” it, even though they claimed otherwise?

Where did they claim otherwise? Is there more than one manifesto video?

“We have never said there would be no vertical progression.”

Chris Whiteside

“Any quote you see on the internet is true”

—Abraham Lincoln.

In any case, what they did say, in fact, is that characters could reach maximum stats/power level very shortly after hitting max level, and that any grind would be strictly for cosmetic items.

Whether or not Chris Whiteside or any one else now claims otherwise does not change the fact that this is what they promised and talked about on more than one occasion. I don’t want to characterize Mr Whiteside or his comments except to say that they run counter to what other people at Anet talked about.

I’m in the middle of several things right now, but I’ll track it down for you in a short while.

Blackmoon.6837:

A well deserved infraction.

The more these threads appear, the more disturbing it becomes. Anet is a group of people just like you and me. They play the same games we play (including the obvious affinity for guild wars 2). Point being is they’re bound to pick up on some of the issues without our opinions. The problem, of course, is that a lot of our ‘suggested issues’ are irate, arrogant and thus stupid. Anet can’t actually cater to them without sacrificing their own efforts or belittling other players.

Learn to rationalize better and have a little more respect. Arena Net is doing a fantastic job on their side…

now it’s your turn.

For what it’s worth, the infraction was for using “ANET” in the title, which I didn’t previously know was taboo.

The title you see now is not the original title.

If voicing a concern in a constructive and thoughtful manner ever becomes an infract-able offense, the forums will be pretty empty. Keep on dreaming though!

Reaver.9256:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

Reaver.9256:

That’s the major problem they face. You think it’s getting worse and worse while I think it’s getting better and better. They have to figure out a way to please us both.

That’s the problem though. I bought the game based on the manifesto. You obviously didn’t.

Nope I didn’t. They’ve also never lied to me. I knew vertical progression was in the day the game was announced in pc gamer years and years ago.

You “knew” it, even though they claimed otherwise?

Reaver.9256:

Chuo.4238:

Reaver.9256:

They will be releasing more levels and more gear to go with those levels. Does that answer your question?

I don’t really want to spend the next year grinding out tier gear. It really looks like this is as bad as everyone thought it would be when they announced Ascended gear.

I just want to do what I want to do, and not have to worry about gear. If I want to grind gear, there are much better games out there for that.

I dunno what’s going on at ArenaNet, but this is just getting worse and worse.

That’s the major problem they face. You think it’s getting worse and worse while I think it’s getting better and better. They have to figure out a way to please us both.

They really can’t. The two models are diametrically opposed. A lot of people picked up this game because they believed what now turns out to be BS: that the game would not have a gear treadmill, that characters would reach “max power” very quickly after reaching the level cap, and any “grind” after that would be purely for the purpose of getting cool cosmetic items.

Obviously that model isn’t satisfying to those who have the more mainstream expectation of some kind of ongoing gear progression and “end game” content.

I’m not saying one group or the other is wrong; I think they’re both right to like what they like and want the developers to give them what they like, it’s just that a LOT of people would have given no notice at all to GW2 if they’d been told the truth about it.

I already have a personal nemesis. His name is Trahearne.

Reaver.9256:

They created GW2 as an mmo(unlike GW1) with more levels and loot expansion in mind. I don’t see why they would ever go backwards when they have stated that they were very limited in what they could do in the first one. I don’t see having an expanded level cap as a core problem at all. All mmos have problems throughout there whole lifespan.

None of which addresses what I am talking about.

They’re clearly not going to go backwards and undo the existence of having 80 levels, so that’s a decision they’re simply going to have to work around and make the best they can of.

However, that sort of thinking (more levels = better) or even worse (More levels = proper MMO) is deficient, and I hope it’s something they’ve figured out by now.

The fact that certain ideas have become a convention in the MMO world doesn’t mean those are good ideas, and it’s lazy to use those ideas without having a clear reason why.

There’s a clear reason to have some levels in a game— to prevent new players from being overwhelmed by having every feature or difficult content dumped on their heads immediately after entering the game.

The model of dedicating most of the game world to leveling though is very inefficient and results in a mostly dead/empty world. This isn’t something which started with GW2 and it’s sad that they thought their world would be somehow immune to it.

Look at where virtually all of the development energy is right now: providing incentives (carrots and sticks) for players to actually go out into the majority of the world, even though the majority of the world was designed not to be experienced at max level.

How much of that energy could be going towards providing new and interesting systems of advancement or new places to explore, or simply tuning those areas better, if the design from day one had been for 25% of the world as leveling/learning areas and 75% had been for max level play?

Again though, I know the existing world can’t be changed. What concerns me is whether or not ANET has learned from this experience, or whether they will repeat it in the future, and (related) whether they’re going to fall into the same traps that other level gated games fall into, needing to reset gear and create new treadmills to facilitate a level cap increase.

Some of the growing pains this game is experiencing (A large portion I would say) stem from the decision to make the majority of the game world gated by character levels.

That is, by asking players to progress through 80 levels to reach “end game,” Developers were forced to dedicate almost the entire game world to the the levels from 1-80, rather than making the majority of the world dedicated to max level players. Which resulted in the rather predicable complaint that there’s nothing to do at max level, yadda yadda yadda, even though in most cases players hadn’t consumed even a portion of the overall content in the game.

So now we get these efforts to herd players back into lower level zones through various sticks and carrots, and all of the issues that come with that design (dilemma over what loot should drop for a high level player in a low level zone, resentment at being “pushed out” of higher level zones by design, etc).

These issues would not exist if the game had a basic design much closer to guild wars 1, where you reached max level (20) very quickly, and then the majority of your character progression was essentially hunting for upgrades in a wide variety of equally leveled zones and/or unlocking new areas by progressing through core story zones.

The reason I bring it up is not to cry over spilled milk, but because I wonder whether ANET has really learned their lesson. There’s been some talk in the past that future expansions/paid content might involve an increase in character levels, which would again create the sorts of issues we’re seeing now, with more zones dedicated to intermediate leveling, and not for max level characters, a greater spread between max and min level characters, and more clutter in terms of level specific item drops that just replace the previous tier.

I’m curious if ANET devs have given any clues that they understand that having an expanded level cap is a core problem with the design of the game, and whether they would avoid or repeat that in the future.

AnonEMouse.7932:

Emperor.1360:

Rares drop all of the time if you have even a tiny percentage of Magic Find (just what an omnomberry bar gives). It’s pretty common to get around 5 rares an hour purely soloing.

Wow, I really SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY, want your account. I’m EXTREMELY lucky if I get 1 rare during an entire evenings playtime.. and that’s with running about +30% magic find. 5 rares in an hour is fairy tale land as far as I’m concerned.

Same. I run with between 40 and 100% additional MF at all times, and getting 1 rare a day is a fortunate occurrence for me.

drkn.3429:

If you’re not getting the daily dodges by standard playing, and need to look for specific mobs to get your practiced dodges on, you’re doing something really wrong and might want to take a different approach at dodging, aka use it ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE.
Not aiming to be rude, but you really will have a hard time in both PvP and higher PvE if you can’t dodge properly, it’s the very basic mechanic of this game.

You’re not rude, you’re just wrong.

Some times I get the dodging daily without effort, some times it requires 2-3 minutes of specific effort. I’m not doing something “wrong.” Dodging around like an idiot when I don’t need it to survive and I DO need mobs to stand still so I can hit them with ground targeted abilities like grenades is not smart play. Not to mention that the best time to dodge a ground effect or slow melee attack is usually as soon as it starts, not at the very last second, and if you do that, you don’t get credit.

As I posted above, dodging isn’t hard for me, finding mobs that can be used to get credit isn’t hard. Doing the above on a timeline with some one actively trying to prevent it is aggravating.

I see a lot of responses to this thread which are essentially along the lines of “LOL DODGING IS EASY!!” which is totally missing the point.

Yes, there are MANY mobs in the game with AoE attacks, but that point is irrelevant if there happens to be some one where you are who is deliberately killing those mobs specifically to prevent you from getting the achievement.

At no point have I complained that the dodging achieve is too hard or too time consuming. All I posted about is a story of how another player deliberately made this more frustrating than it ever needs to be. If the title of the thread is confusing, it’s because a Mod decided to change it for no apparent reason.

Just to reiterate, I KNOW that dodging is easy. If the server hadn’t shut down or I didn’t have griefing stalker or my 3+ usually spots were actually spawned, it would have been done like cake. The fact that I could have gone some place else is not helpful advice given that the server was coming down shortly and that I had no reason to expect to be griefed until it was too late to do something about it.

It’s not a matter of communication. A normal person doesn’t follow another player across an entire zone, waiting to kill the same mobs, which are well away from any resource nodes or waypoints.

BelowAverage.8349:

how did you play 2 1/2 hours and not get the dodge chevo…

Didn’t fight anything with long attack animations or ground target abilities, or very few such mobs.

Dodging attacks is easy, but getting credit for dodging requires “Evade” which is very difficult to time on instant, melee range attacks.

I don’t usually worry about going after Dodge specifically, because it’s one of the easiest to pick up after the fact, and depending on what events are up and what I’m fighting, I sometimes complete it without any special effort at all. I’d have had it in ~3 minutes if I didn’t have a stalker killing my mobs on purpose.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

After the first time, you whisper to the thief that you’re trying to get your daily dodges done, odds are he’d leave your targets alone

I did after the second one, got no response. Had no reason to think after the first one he’d follow me halfway across the zone. It’s pretty obvious in this case it was deliberate.

I’ve accidentally killed some one’s mob before when they were going for Dodging. I felt bad about it, but certainly kept my distance from them after that.

Joey.3928:

Go to WvW. Your server can use your help and you will get your dodge daily quick. You shouldn’t have to seek out your dodge daily. It should happen just by playing. Nonetheless, WvW is my suggestion for you.

I play on JQ. WvW queues are long, and my server dominates T1. In any case, I normally get the daily knocked out in 30-45 minutes, and the dodging part takes about 2 minutes of that since I have 3 different locations with mobs that use ground target effects.

To tell the truth, it would have been easy in this case too except some guy decided to be a kitten (just took a long time because of events not spawning when I needed them).

Vazkro.1762:

ya that sounds quite funny, someone should reward that thief for his mission being accomplished

Being a jerk is easy. Doesn’t really merit any praise.

ASB.4295:

Mungrul.9358:

Gah, 50 ectos as well as 40 laurels?
Sure, no grind here.

The whole ascended set has to last people until at least Jan 2014, thanks to the overreaction of some fraction of the player base. That the ascended items are a lot grindier is basically their fault. Had they not complained so much, we could have had much quicker releases of gear at lower costs, and a completely new tier by summer. ANet did the best they could while staying true to their “no new gear tier in 2013” statement. :/

But most of us don’t WANT a whole new tier by summer, and if there was, then that too would be a grind.

I personally don’t find Ascended items to be a grind, and the reason for that is partially because they have introduced them so slowly (although I must admit that when/if I ever start trying to get ascended items on my alts I’ll start getting annoyed).

What I DO find to be a grind is a terrible system like WoW, where gear is just a coat of paint that gets swapped out for a new color every 6 months or so.

There are plenty of treadmill games. After playing MUDs and MMOs for 20 years, the gear treadmill is a horribly boring cliche.

So far, ascended gear doesn’t feel like a treadmill to me, but it also feels totally un necessary.

Need to finish “Dodging” for my daily and my usual spots for embers and earth elementals aren’t spawned because of dynamic events.

So I find a nice Abom that’s way off the beaten path and start dodging the slow attacks. Along comes some thief and two shots it. WTF?

Okay, search around more, find an abom, same thing happens again, same thief.

“A new build is available, Server will restart in 3 minutes.”

Quickly manage to group up some mobs, get to 93%, and the SAME thief comes in and kills them all. “Server is now shutting down.”

Spent 2 1/2 hours trying to get the daily done today because I was having bad luck with timing on events, and now the daily will reset because of the patch, and meanwhile some d-bag thief kept me from getting a laurel just because he thinks it’s funny.

My meteor shower has always had a high chance to miss any particular target. It’s more of an anti zerg/zone denial ability than anything, and has been since launch.

kailin.4905:

The simple truth is that until class balance take priority the community is going to keep getting worse.

The simple truth is that class balance is already a priority, but they’re not going to make radical changes unless they’re absolutely necessary. That kind of balancing leads to wild swings in the meta and no true sense of what is or isn’t imbalanced.

MOST of the people complaining about their class being too weak are either talking about very specific issues (pets/minions not getting agony resist of their master, for example, or passive necro minions, etc), or are simply whining about their own inability to be creative and adapt. The idea that there are radical class imbalances simply isn’t true, and to the extent that they do exist, they’re mainly bugs/quality of life issues, not true balance issues. They still need to be fixed, but there’s little point in trying to “balance” something that already doesn’t work as intended.

You can go on literally every profession forum and find at least some people who are absolutely sure that their profession is the worst, that ANET hates them, etc. It’s just typical MMO issues of a game which must be balanced for every one from the most hard core min maxer to the laziest and most stupid person who can manage to click a mouse. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is just a matter of certain bugs or functionality being fixed, and some of it is pure L2P.

I think it’s normal for some engineers to target other engineers simply because it’s a matchup they ought to understand better than most. If I think I am a superior to the “average” player (and studies show that most people believe they are above average at everything, even though that can’t be true) then the last thing I want is an asynchronous rock/paper/scissors type match up.

I don’t have to think that engineers are objectively worse than any other profession, I just have to believe that some match ups are worse for me specifically. If I really want to measure my skill against the general population of players, the best way is an even match up with another player of my profession.

marnick.4305:

Random elements are disastrous in PVP based scenarios because they take away skill in favor of luck. Whatever you’re doing yourself should be 100% predictable.

At the very least, if it’s not predictable, it is a disadvantage, and the possible outcomes should all be better than what would be fair in a non random scenario.

If it’s balanced for a utility skill to give me 5 seconds of quickness with a known drawback, it’s probably not balanced with a random drawback pulled from a list of known drawbacks. Either the drawbacks should be slightly less, or the benefit should be slightly greater.

His take on randomness is far from the mark, unfortunately.

Randomness by itself does not encourage skill, it dilutes it. It’s why “family” games like Candyland and Monopoly tend to be so heavily based on randomness, so mom and dad can play with junior and still have a reasonably competitive game.

On the other far side of the spectrum is Chess, which is totally lacking in randomness, or a more modern example of Starcraft 2, in which randomness doesn’t exist beyond determining starting points in a map.

A truly skill based game has little room for randomness.

Because I know that some one will bring up Poker, I’ll point out that the true skill in Poker is not in playing a hand but in betting a hand, and that aspect of the game is not random. It comes down to well established mathematical principles and psychology, neither of which are random. It’s also recognized by players of all skill levels that the most skilled player often doesn’t win the hand, and even a skilled player can be beaten by a total neophyte, given sufficient luck. Overcoming poor draws is an indicator of skill, but not an aspect of skill.

Randomness is largely a handicap when using an ability, and needs to be compensated in the form of each possible outcome being more powerful than what would be justified if it were not random.

In other words, the tool belt version of Elixir B would be balanced in its current form if it always provided the same buff, but given the fact that a player is expected to use it, then recognize the effect, and THEN utilize it to proper effect, those effects should be much greater than they are currently.

When a thief steals, he can know exactly what he’s going to steal, and yet most stolen abilities are actually more powerful than the corresponding abilities they’re meant to mimic. An engineer often has no idea what he’s going to get when he uses an elixir, and even if he gets the effect he planned for or wants most, it’s still going to be a fairly weak effect or have a large drawback of some kind.

HoM was an incentive to buy EOTN back when people thought GW2 was right around the corner, and to keep people playing GW1 while they finished GW2. Since you didnt do either one, why would you get the rewards?

If you want the skins and titles, pay the 20 bucks, and if not then dont whine about it.

Victory.2879:

Until ANet wake up and deal with the issue, the prices will continue to be driven higher by a combination of stupidly low supply, no method of making them, and market manipulators.

The only “issue” is that people are confused about what a prestige item is. The only reason they want it is because it’s unique and hard to get, but they want it to be easier to get, so that… wait for it… it will be less prestigious, and thus, less valuable.

A legendary is the biggest “box” to check off in the game, apart from maybe hitting max PvP rank. Once you get it, the game is “over” in the sense of having no new mountain to climb, unless you do it all over again.

Of course, precursors could drop like candy, and all that would happen as a result is that all of the other items to make legendaries would become even more expensive. Legendaries would become more common, making them less special, and encouraging the dedicated or bored to simply work on acquiring multiple or all legendaries.

And people would still be on the forum complaining that they’re “forced” to grind for items which give no tangible advantage.

Brvtvs.1572:

Voxdeus.1034:

Brvtvs.1572:

From a pvp point of view i would hate grenades to be auto attacking, they work great as they are. Switching targets is a ball ache as it with all the AI flying around , mesmer clones, necro minions, rangers pets hell even that rock dog annoys the crap out of me ! I like to put my greandes exactly where i want them and be able to place them at different locations ( i use my mouse pointer to dictate).
for example a poison grenade on a downed enemy while still nuking someone who is running to him without having to switch targets and just hover my mouse over screen is perfect imo

Of course you realize that the behavior you’re talking about, saturating an area with AoE to prevent rez’ing, is actually something that the devs believe is too strong or needs to be toned down. So it’s probably not the best argument.

Grenades actually take a bit more skill than most other aoe attacks , timing and targeting is far harder , so i am not worried about my statement

No.

Xae.7204:

Grackleflint.4956:

I was also really disheartened that they seem focused on skill capped players. That’s a VERY small minority of players who I wouldn’t be concerned about balancing for if I were concerned with the financial success of my company.

ArenaNet is obsessed with turning GW2 into an Esport. They are pretty much writing off the majority of their playerbase in favor of it.

Obsessed? The “state of the game” chat was not actually a state of the game chat, it’s a cast that’s done specifically for and by PvPers, so that’s mainly what was talked about.

The majority of the comments in this thread seem to be from people who either didn’t watch the cast, or watched it with no real interest in what was being said, by whom, or in response to what. A lot of you are basically looking for reasons to be offended, even when they don’t exist.

There’s a remarkable amount of whining on this forum. Guess engineers don’t want to lose the “my profession is the worst” competition to literally every other profession , who believes they are the worst.

Players would be better served to discuss specific aspects of the profession which could be improved, and why, and waste less time writing manifestos about how the devs are ignoring or trolling engineers, don’t communicate enough, blah blah blah.

To the best of my knowledge, condition duration for any specific condition can’t go above +100%. So the increased bleed duration is wasted any time you’re using pizza, so I’d probably reconfigure the runes.

As to the “lolwut” comment above, 850 condition damage is more than sufficient to make conditions dangerous, and taking it higher would require either changing spec and losing boon duration (bad idea) or drastically weakening other stats.

Any build that involves concentrating on a single stat is probably going to be a poor build. This balanced build is much better than a build which maxes out condition damage.

Brvtvs.1572:

From a pvp point of view i would hate grenades to be auto attacking, they work great as they are. Switching targets is a ball ache as it with all the AI flying around , mesmer clones, necro minions, rangers pets hell even that rock dog annoys the crap out of me ! I like to put my greandes exactly where i want them and be able to place them at different locations ( i use my mouse pointer to dictate).
for example a poison grenade on a downed enemy while still nuking someone who is running to him without having to switch targets and just hover my mouse over screen is perfect imo

Of course you realize that the behavior you’re talking about, saturating an area with AoE to prevent rez’ing, is actually something that the devs believe is too strong or needs to be toned down. So it’s probably not the best argument.

Grenade #1 should be auto target/auto attack, the way grenades work under water. The other attacks should continue to be ground targeted.

Engineer suffers from a barrier to entry, which I think is part of why it’s less played and perceived (wrongly, IMO) as being a weak profession. The fact that the strongest kit also requires the most effort and attention to use contributes to this, IMO.

One need only use the grenade kit under water to understand the difference in usability between “sticky” version of Grenade 1 and ground target version. If that offends the sensibilities of certain players, oh well. If you’re half as skillful as you think you are, you’ll learn to overcome only being able to ground target 4 of 5 abilities.

Especially in light of the fact that certain kits like elixir gun and tool kit will probably be buffed or at least streamlined in function, and other issues addressed. Engineers are not in danger of going backwards in power in the near future.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Vayne.8563:

Star Ace.5207:

I have actually NEVER gotten an Exotic from anything OTHER than a Risen Chicken at Malchor’s Leap, last September, 2012 (been playing since 3-day headstart). All my other exotics have come through map completion (which I can no longer achieve, of course, since I am done mapping.) It’s kind of ironic than not even the biggest bosses yield better treasure than a putrid chicken (this is not a complaint… I find it rather funny instead.)

Actually it makes sense. The chicken doesn’t really drop loot more often. You might kill a big boss 20-50 times. During that time you might have killed hundreds of other things. So it seems those things give you a better drop rate. But you’re always killing more of them.

If you killed as many bosses as normal mobs, would you have more or less exotics? I’m pretty sure no one can answer that question.

The point the time & effort it takes to take down an event Champ “especially if your trying to solo buck” against the rewards you drop from that champ is probably nothing better than what a few chicken might drop you… except the fact that in the same timeframe you could of dropped 20, 30, 50+ chickens… the reward system begins to feel somewhat disfuntional.

The Chicken farm in Orr (as one example) easily yileds me 1-2 Rares in a 15min farming session (when I remember to put some MF stuff on or eat a chew bar), plus countless mats, trash gear/items and of course garbage bones…the Gold returns are very noticeable to me. Then again most Champs/Vets are dropping next to nothing nowadays and many times nothing at all, so farming Champs, especially with DR seems more pointless than ever to me… aside from the occasional need for your Daily completion.

Pretty much this. I don’t see any reason why an event champ shouldn’t drop a rare or several greens every time, plus coin. On a typical “swarm” event I’ll get 5-10 blues and 2-3 greens, maybe a rare. A bunch of coin, maybe some bags, some coin, a bunch of XP, some whites for salvage, etc. On a champ I’ll get some coin and a guaranteed blue. The swarm event is just as fast, and less dangerous.

Orr is much more enjoyable now, for certain.

I’m not an expert on thief, so I don’t know if there are other, better ways to stack up vulnerability, but condition duration is a big part of being able to stack conditions.

Look into runes that extend condition duration, especially if there are any that apply to vulnerability (can’t recall off hand) and consider using “Giver” weapons (+10% condition duration each) and/or using condition duration foods.

Also keep in mind though that no matter what, those ICDs really hamper the ability to apply vuln quickly.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Hello, I’m here to crush your dreams.

There will be no mounts coming with the Flame and Frost story arc.

Also, to address further speculation we’ve seen about the concept art for Flame and Frost (and what it may portend): there will be no Cantha and no dragons coming with the Flame and Frost story arc, either.

Thank you.

But you haven’t ruled out unicorns.

ANET SAYS WE’RE GETTING UNICORNS!

I can’t wait to see how quickly people transition from “I saw concept art of a dude on a horse” to “ARENANET U PROMISED ME A PONY!!”

You know what is actualy in game, right now, and not just in concept art? Krait.

That doesn’t mean Krait are going to be a playable race.

So calm down.

I actually find quite a few people around, just don’t find them all that eager or willing to group up and tackle content together. I’m guilty of being anti social myself. Unless some one makes a direct appeal to group together I don’t make any effort myself.

Ganzo.5079:

It’s all intresting, but all this wait around a full release of the ascended items is kinda frustrating.
I hope for the next month patch, but for now this little article is not revamping my wish to play.

I don’t think there’s ever going to be a “full release,” I think they’re going to be rolled out gradually throughout the year. I could be wrong, that’s just what it sounds like.

ophidic.1279:

…but what’s the point in a rare lvl 55 armor that looks like every other blue armor?! That’s completely illogical. Isn’t it?

I dunno, I’m getting the sense here that “yes it’s dumb but wtf are you gonna do…” so I guess there’s no point in repeating myself over and over.

ANET: Fix plox. It’s confusing and no one wants low level rare regular skinned armor. That’s like having a Porsche moped.

But lots of people DO want that armor, either because it’s level appropriate, or because it can be salvaged for mats.

ophidic.1279:

Jrunyon.3012:

ophidic.1279:

It’s misleading as hell. If this was a product from a store, I would be entitled to a lawsuit.

Do you sue Great Value brand every time you buy their corn flakes expecting it to taste like Kellog’s corn flakes?

No, but they also have their products labeled properly.

But it IS labelled properly. The stats you see are the stats you get when you equip it.

You previewed the way it looks, and it looks just like the preview.

You’re saying that they’re responsible because you didn’t expect that armor to be there, but why wouldn’t you?

Honestly, it sucks that you wasted transmute stones and tokens. It doesn’t make me happy to see that you got something other than what you expected, but that WAS your error.

The other day I accidentally bought diet dr pepper when I meant to buy regular dr pepper. I didn’t go ask for a refund, nor did I accuse the gas station of ripping me off. I was sad that I had a product I didn’t really want, but I took my sadness as a memory to help me learn to be more careful in the future.

Better that you learn to pay attention now, playing GW2, than some day when it’s actually important. At least, that’s one positive thing that can come from it.

Dee Jay.2460:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Nothing about ecto drop rates has changed what so ever, we’d make sure to call this out if it was changed.

The double RNG of finding a rare item only to get nothing out of it is really poor design. One lair of RNG…finding the actual rare…should be enough to ensure at least one Ectoplasm.

I’d much rather have rares give at least 1 Ecto 100% of the time than having a 10% chance to get 3 as well as a 20% chance to get nothing.

Then sell your rares and buy ectos. Or, just sell your rares.

Rikimeru Tokesbudz.3816:

i dont care what they do with aoe as long as they do something. the constant aoe spam in wvw is stupid and takes a lot of fun out of pvp .

Then stop zerging, and look for small groups to travel with. Or look for ways to flank and create a concave, instead of massing up on an easily AoE’d choke point.

To a large degree, it’s a L2P issue. The fact that people STILL think that zerging a choke is a viable play style kind of tells me that AoE isn’t strong enough.

So I followed this thread all the way through and it seems to have run its course.

Here are the big takeaways from what I can see:

1) Most players don’t think AoE is an issue
2) Some players feel very strongly that it is an issue, mainly mesmers and thieves, who incidentally, tend to have very little AoE compared to most other classes.
3) The biggest areas of concern seem to be WvW and world events.

Here’s my opinion:

1) The problem in both WvW and in world events is that rewards are given for “tagging” with no real incentive, and limited ability, to burst down individual targets.

2) AoE can be nerfed, across the board or on a case by case basis, but the underlying mechanics of the game reward AoE to the point that the equilibrium point between AoE and single target in these large group encounters would probably make AoE useless in any other aspect of the game.

3) Nerfing AoE would exacerbate other issues which already exist, like the tendency of players to want to zerg as much as possible in WvW. Good players should be spreading out and trying to flow around their enemies while holding strong points with inferior numbers. Bad players prefer to swarm their opponents without regard for strategic objectives or tactical positioning.

The game should reward and encourage good play, which if anything would point to a need for stronger AoE in WvW. At some point, players need to L2P rather than have WvW made into a bland meatgrinder. Without banging their heads against chokepoints defended with strong AoE, players will never learn how important it is to hold as opposed to just attack strategic points. They’ll never learn the importance of spreading out and flanking to create superior surface area in mass battles.

Good game design is presenting players with meaningful choices, not simply replacing one obvious choice (zerging and using AoE) with an even more obvious choice (zerging and employing single target abilities with no threat of punishment from AoE).

4) It would probably make more sense, though it would be unsatisfying to those who prefer single target DPS above all else, to simply ensure that mesmers and thieves have viable AoE capabilities, and going forward, look for ways to reward players that aren’t weighted towards tagging as many mobs or players as possible.

Maybe that means awarding loot bags and badges for capping and holding points in WvW rather than, or in addition to, simply tagging as many enemies as possible in the midst of gigantic zergs v zerg battles.

Maybe it means awarding a loot bag or a number of items based on one’s participation in an event, rather than how many mobs were tagged and killed.

Maybe it means designing dungeon encounters in such a way that killing individual mobs quickly matters more than taking down swarms, or simply beating up a gigantic sack of hit points (fewer mobs, much harder hitting, many fewer HP).

Maybe it means, in addition to making sure that mesmers and thieves have real AoE options, other professions have real single target options.