Guild Wars 2

Greener.6204:

I may be an example of what’s hurting the economy and not allowing prices to match the real supply coming into the game with the demand from players.

Everything I get, I salvage, and then auto-deposit into my bank. Out of sight; out of mind. My materials and goods rarely get evaluated against the Trading Post. I don’t give things to people who are willing to buy them. The supply given to me doesn’t help balance the players’ demand.

A few anecdotes:

1. Mithril: I had hoards of it. I didn’t sell it on the trading post. When guild halls demanded it, I tossed it there (didn’t participate in the economy). When I get too much now, I convert it to an ascended mat and store it (not participating in the economy).
2. Mystic Coins: I had 500 of them. When I heard guildies needing them, I gave them away (not participating in the economy). I saw a legendary I wanted and burnt through my supply (not participating…). I get them from dailies and I auto-deposit them (not participating…)
3. Leather: I had full stacks of refined and sections of all types. Guildies needed some, and so did the new halls. I sank them there. (yada yada)
4. Silk: I currently have many stacks because I’m too lazy to get rid of it. (yada yada).

I figure you can be an active speculator which is hoping that hoarding will pay off, or you can be a tacit non-complier like me and throw off the actual supply to demand equation.

I guess my only question is, what could change my habits? I really don’t have an answer to that one.

It isn’t your responsibility to change for no reason, it is ANet’s responsibility to either give you an incentive to change, or to make an economy that works in response to many other people doing the same thing as you.

Honestly, in-game economies should be an optional activity for those who enjoy them. Players should be able to be self-sufficient. I have absolutely no interest in playing markets, I want to do Fractals or SPVP (generally). But everyone is forced to deal with whatever nonsense the economy throws their way, as huge amounts of content is locked behind participating in the market system, or hours and hours and hours of mindless grinding.

People vastly overestimate what premades alone are capable of.

Back in the day, me and two friends were super seriously into SPVP. We all were top 1000 NA ranked, always played our best characters, were always on voice, etc. That would have been terrible for anyone who wasn’t premade or super high skilled to play against.

Flash forward to today: I generally premake with PVE guildies. We may or may not be on voice depending on time of day (and not everyone has a mic), people may just be playing their level 2 class for the daily, may still be rabbit ranked, and may just not be that good. Anything but an almost zero adjustment for being premade is just going to screw up the game for everyone, and it will lead to people being forced to choose between discriminating against who they play with, or not having fun.

Only a portion of premades are actually a balance problem, and the MMR system is a better tool to deal with that.

So, I’m mostly new to fractals as of HOT, having mostly done dungeons for PVE group content in vanilla.

I think fractals are pretty good (except the dolphin section, which is boring and terrible), but I agree with people who say HP vs. damage needs to be tuned on fractal bosses (and maybe in general). Decreasing hit points and increasing some damage sources would be a pleasant change.

The other major criticism is fractals basically don’t give rewards. If you buy a key, there’s a good chance, depending on your mastery level, you outright lose gold, and that’s simply unacceptable. The dungeon rewards were supposedly removed to fractals, but even with 4/4 fractal mastery, we still don’t see it.

I don’t mind converting from liquid rewards to, say, ascended gear (my preference), but I feel like with the exception of the daily rewards, fractals offer so little, I’m basically paying to play them not only in terms of negative value lockboxes, but in terms of opportunity costs.

Azure.8670:

Wicked Demiurge.3107:

Chobits.2430:

I’m sick of the people complaining about having to actually play the game to play the game. Why would you buy a game and then not play it? I think most of these people are just trolls.

I’ve played all of the content in GW2 (personal story done, LS1, LS2, dungeons, fractals, WvWvW, sPVP), and I don’t have full ascended yet, because I haven’t grinded out the hundreds of gold it takes to make even a single full set, especially since my favorite game mode, sPVP, doesn’t generate kitten for gold. This is doubly worse, because before HOT, my favorite class was considered worthless in PVE, so I didn’t focus on gearing a character I mostly use for solo / PVP content.

Also, if everyone takes this advice, it will only further inflate the costs for things, as TP prices will increase.

I think people who enjoy grinding in MMOs have no clue how most people feel about it. And make no mistake, ascended gear is a long grind that takes lots of time, but no real skill.

its not a grind. this is such a lie. Again, I have 2 F2P in MY GUILD that have LESS than 1000 achi points, that play for fun, and have half their gear ascended. such cry babies

Farming hundreds of gold (or equivalent in materials), which requires them to play content that is easy, but not what they would prefer to play, is the dictionary definition of grind.

Furthermore, achievements have nothing to do with it. Doing SW chest runs from dawn till dusk may be the fastest way to get more ascended gear, depending on what your bank looks like, but you won’t earn any achievements points that way.

This is a game, not a Herculean trial. Calling people “cry babies” for not wanting to play parts of GW2 they don’t enjoy as much before raiding is not only a toxic attitude, but a dumb attitude.

Erindriel.2351:

Seems like most of the people happy with current meta play necros.

Like, at least 9/10.

I made a reaper during beta weekend. It made me bitter about my warrior / (power) guardian being at least 200% less faceroll-friendly.

I’m talking about vanilla Necro, to be clear.

Besides, I take exception to complaining about lack of facerolling on Warrior. Rampage was ultra easy mode for a long time, and even now is about the same, just with worse up-time.

Chobits.2430:

I’m sick of the people complaining about having to actually play the game to play the game. Why would you buy a game and then not play it? I think most of these people are just trolls.

I’ve played all of the content in GW2 (personal story done, LS1, LS2, dungeons, fractals, WvWvW, sPVP), and I don’t have full ascended yet, because I haven’t grinded out the hundreds of gold it takes to make even a single full set, especially since my favorite game mode, sPVP, doesn’t generate kitten for gold. This is doubly worse, because before HOT, my favorite class was considered worthless in PVE, so I didn’t focus on gearing a character I mostly use for solo / PVP content.

Also, if everyone takes this advice, it will only further inflate the costs for things, as TP prices will increase.

I think people who enjoy grinding in MMOs have no clue how most people feel about it. And make no mistake, ascended gear is a long grind that takes lots of time, but no real skill.

I’ve been pretty happy continuing to play Marauder power (as Necro), myself. I down enemies and/or get downed reasonably quickly, and run over .500 win rate.

Though I do have my doubts when Chronomancers come in. Holding final decision after more practice, but it seems like they spend more time invulnerable than being able to take damage.

Skyhammer isn’t sPVP, it’s a minigame in the wrong queue. You either CC people off the edges, or kill them with the hammer with no real counterplay.

It really needs to be removed from the queue. I consider it one of the worst maps not only in GW2, but in the genre.

The OP is perhaps a little dramatic.

That said, I’ve never in my entire time in the MMO genre been able to get a group with the correct composition of tanks, healers, and DPS without substantial work. Usually it is healers that lag behind, though it depends on the specific game and even which patch or expansion it is on.

So, with the announcement of the Druid as what can more or less be called a main healer, and the declaration that “berserker meta is over” and “you can’t dodge everything,” is Guild Wars 2 group content, particularly raids, going to go down the same bad path of all trinity MMO design, where many people aren’t allowed to play content because no one wants to heal and the content mandates X number of healers?

This was a constant struggle in World of Warcraft, particularly as a guild officer, where you had a raid come up, realized you needed 1 more healer, asked for volunteers, waited 20 minutes past the scheduled start time, and then finally had to twist the arm of a RL friend to respec into healing even though they don’t enjoy it and would rather be playing Shadow Priest in PVP.

I see similar problems cropping up here, as the community realizes 95% of players don’t enjoy healing, so there is a constant struggle to find enough people to go, particularly as all non-druid PVE healing is a supplement and not meant to be a MMO trinity healer. This goes doubly as the content will be too hard to heal in existing equipment (say, a Ranger’s zerker or condi set), so they will have to farm up and carry around a Healing Power set.

I’m reserving final judgment, of course, but certainly comments said seem to reflect a new, bad direction that loses a lot of GW2’s strengths, and will run into problems other MMOs see with mandatory 1 class only slots, problems finding healers, etc.

What are other people’s opinions?

Great find, Evan. Good matchmaking is super hard (and super interesting!), and it’s cool to see you make improvements.

As thehipone noted, Condi necro’s power is all in epidemic. Epidemic is one of the highest damage skills in the game in a perfect scenario (fully loaded large monster hitting many adds). On the other hand, Condi necro in general is somewhat anemic damage, as the ramp time is too long. Unfortunately, burning is much better than every other condition right now, and it is the one condition that Necromancers don’t get (Dhuumfire is in the wrong trait line for condi).

It’s decent, but not great. Rumor has it sceptre is getting buffed eventually, so it may improve.

Regarding Necromancers:

Can we get a, say, 1.5 second “double tap protection” built into the F1 command to go into Death Shroud. It’s not as big an issue in PVE, but in SPVP entire battles or even matches get be lost if you double tap F1 and essentially waste your Deathshroud.

This would be my single most requested class change for Necros, personally.

Edit to add: To the best of my recollection, a few similar abilities have gotten similar changes fairly recently as well, so it should be easy from a programming POV, and improve consistency across classes as well.