Guild Wars 2

I too got DC’d during the event. I died during the later stages of the defense mission of the demolitioners and went to resurrect at the nearest waypoint and sat on the loading screen for Southsun Cove for about 5 minutes before I finally killed the client. Couldn’t get back in, not for lack of trying. Kind of upset I missed the tail end of the event, especially given the rewards and all.

As a developer myself, it astounds me that when it was realized the fix for this quest was made on a branch of the code that included other changes that would not be pushed out as quickly, that the fix was not then also made on a branch of the code that could be pushed out prior to the audio fixes. This is just bad management.

Here’s to it being fixed (finally) in the next content update.

Please allow for chat from unrepresented guilds to be shown.

Why? Because it is a hassle to switch representation just to check-in on another Guild’s chat. Guilds are primarily a social constructs; as such this artificial restriction inhibits a player’s participation in the social elements of more than one guild and actually prevents players from being good citizens of more than one guild.

E.g. A friend from another guild you are not currently representing would like to play with friends. Because no one responds to him within Guild Chat he decides to try again later and logs off.

In the above example, if you were able to see an unrepresented guild’s chat, you would have known he was looking for someone to play with and you both could have enjoyed playing the game together.

Why not? A few people have expressed dissatisfaction with this suggestion, among them the following reasons have been enumerated:

• Guild exclusivity.
  While some guilds desire exclusivity as part of their game play, not all guilds are designed like this. Some are simply formalized social circles. For guilds wanting to be exclusive, I would suggest that the guild leaders and members make recommendations on how ArenaNET could support guild exclusivity as a management option within the guild interface.
• Fear that guild members will only take away from the guild and not give anything back to it. E.g. Guildmates who are not active in my guild are leeches.
  It is not ArenaNET’s responsibility to moderate and manage your membership, if you have a bad player who does not contribute in your Guild, demote or kick them.
• Other changes to the way guilds are managed are more important.
  yes, there are other suggestions out there that have merit, but as long as tenancy in multiple guilds is allowed, this suggestion has merit.

Related Suggestions
Sometimes a suggestion gets lost in a sea of other suggestions; the search feature will show that guild chat is a popular topic for one reason or another (custom channels, anyone?) however I feel that this request is important enough of a feature to be called out on its own. That being said, there are plenty of predecessors to this that are worth your perusal:

1. Chat Improvement Omnibus
2. Enable chat with multiple guilds
3. Guild Suggestions
4. Guild Chat and Group Notifications

NB: My previous thread on this subject has since been removed. If you are, or were, in support of this suggestion, or against it, I would request that you express your opinions once again in this thread. If you do support this feature, please show your support on this or other related threads.

AlexanderFaust.4518:

Can purchase “Vista Volumes” from certain NPC’s that are useable at your character select screen or in game via a “theater” like the one in FFX. http://finalfantasy.neoseeker.com/wiki/Luca_Sphere_Theater

It’s not clear to me what these would give you, just access to the short vista cinematic?

Luisedgm.2375:

Good suggestion, but use less obnoxious thread title next time please.

Thread title can always be changed after the fact, and honestly I agree with Luisegm, I would recommend changing the thread topic title to be a little more pertinent to your suggestions.

@Warp: Kitten is the language filter that ArenaNET uses to replace perceived (sometimes incorrectly) profane or vulgar words.

As a tangent to this—but related—one of the things most shouted in the zones where these bosses are seems to be “When is XYZ up?” and “How long until XYZ?” It would be kind of nice if there was an NPC in the area related to the event that could give players a rough estimate to the timing. For instance in Sparkfly Fen, one of the Asura could report “strange readings getting stronger” from their instruments.

This may already be being done, but I haven’t noticed it. If not however, it could be a nice extra element to those events that at least gives the savvy players a way to check when the event is going to happen next.

Frvwfr.4307:

Side effect of mounts:

GW2 becomes WoW

Mounts are not unique to Warcraft, you know.

I think that mounts could add something to the world (dolyaks are clearly used as pack animals, and its not hard to imagine a Norn riding one of them… as silly an image as that does conjure up). However, as much as I’ve wanted a more reliable speed boost when running around a zone, I’ve never felt that mounts were of critical importance primarily due to the Waypoint system and teleporting.

Would I embrace another mode of travel to Waypoints and running? Certainly. options are always nice, but I think it would have to fit ArenaNET’s vision for their world.

“wasn’t” + “it” = kitten (here)

and…

“one” + “group” = kitten (here)

Vox.7310:

A 10% listing fee seems incredibly harsh to me. Like insanely harsh.

Your idea was to deter undercutting, wasn’ kitten

EDIT: Seriously? “wasn’t” and “it” is getting read as part of the female anatomy? ArenaNET needs to seriously look at their filter… re-written to appease the ArenaNET filter gods:

Your idea was to deter undercutting, was it not?

Vox.7310:

That was another idea I had, I was thinking like a minimum of a 1% difference in price.

But, I knew at the time of having the idea that not everyone would take advantage of it, and it is those people that undercut others, which set off the chain of players that post for the price that undercutter priced his item at. Thus, less undercutting, and the price stabilizes (somewhat)

I guess I see where you were going with it; but I guess what I would say is for the undercutter don’t charge them what they are charged now already—charge them more. For instance a 10% listing fee instead of the 5% or whatever it is now. Any way, market stabilization certainly would be nice. I’m honestly not sure why people are selling copper ore for less than 20c when its proven that people will actually buy it for 20c (or more)… seems to me like you’re just hurting your own profits…

Vox.7310:

Well, I quickly came up with the idea of having a discounted listing price if the price you’re posting for already has an item at that price.

Instead of a 5% posting price, drop it down to a 2.5% posting price.

The only thing about this logic is that it is not a real deterrent as it only affects the first person to post something at the new price on the Trading Post and then, subsequently everyone else benefits from a lower listing price.

To make it viable, especially for highly volume commodities, you’d have to add more complexity to it; such as comparing the price you are listing at to the volume and price of other entries.

I think the other suggestions of having a minimum increment is a good idea; you could base the increment on the value of the object for sale, for instance ~10c items might have an increment of 1c, where as ~1s items might have an increment of 5c.

I find it strange that seeing chat channels, from unrepresented guilds, would negatively impact anyone’s experience. If you only want to be involved with one guild, choose one guild and no others.

I posted a similar suggestion at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Make-guild-chat-visible-even-for-unrepresented-guilds/first#post156224

I’m hoping that with two or three threads floating around about this topic, ArenaNET takes notice that there is a legitimate desire for this feature.

Cheers! I posted a related suggestion, regarding chat from other guilds being shown regardless of whether you are representing them or not at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Make-guild-chat-visible-even-for-unrepresented-guilds/first#post156224

It looks like there are a couple of topics on this particular issue floating around.

I would just like to say that there have been a lot of great points made against the inclusion of a longer duration stealth ability. Particularly for PvP game play. ArenaNET has likely evaluated this as an option as posts earlier suggest and purposefully removed it. Hopefully, if this is the case, they did so after considering and evaluating all possible options regarding it. If they did not however, this suggestion may still have merit in being discussed.

I’ve updated the initial post to hopefully be a little less objectionable from a PvP stand point. I also still think that it should possible to balance the skill against other classes and make it work, but that may just be misguided optimism.

Regardless, everyone who has posted in support of or in objection to the idea have provided a lot of critical responses; especially in objection to how the skill could be abused in PvP. I hope you all continue to provide valuable feedback to other ideas and suggestions throughout the forums!

Thanks!

Daenji.5280:

…

Sorry, didn’t want to quote the entire post.

That being said, I did read it; admittedly I began skimming toward the end. Regardless of that disclaimer, I think you’re right in your assessment. The majority of the negative reactions appear to be from the view point of PvP. Like your previous post suggested, making this an Elite skill instead of a professional skill for PvE environments would give more flexibility to its implementation and the balancing.

I’ll go through the original post and edit it, taking into consideration your suggestions (and others that I have not yet caught up with).

Thanks for the feedback, Daenji!

I think upon death, the closest waypoint should be free (the eventual repair cost makes up for this). This is reasonable.

I wouldn’t be opposed that travel to city waypoints—from within or without—being free though. Seeing as (A) they are already free within the city, and (B) they are free as long as you are willing to go through a few extra steps to navigate to them (via WvW or the Mists).

Proeliator.8740:

You’re standing right in front of my character in daylight with no shadows or anything around you and I have to stand there because I can’t see you and wait (indefinitely) for you to decide you want to take action.

That was partly why the suggestion was changed to obfuscation instead of true invisibility, as well as counters put in place to make it based off of your endurance (or initiative as others have suggested). So that if you were near a hostile target, moving, or in some otherwise situation you would not be able to keep a long duration stealth active indefinitely.

That being said, you and the others are right—there are balancing issues, but I don’t think they are insurmountable to resolve. Maybe that’s just unfounded optimism though.

You’ve all more or less convinced me away from permanent stealth, but a longer duration stealth—with enough restrictions—I think is still feasible.

Proeliator.8740:

ZhangoSqu.5219:

Another possible option, and I can see this more as an Elite skill than a professional skill, would be a Flee or Withdraw skill that gives you swiftness and makes you invisible for somewhere on the order of 1 second per point of initiative you have. This would give the Thief slightly better survivability, at least.

Yeah because that wouldn’t be broken in PvP or anything

True, I’m not thinking about the Flee or Withdraw skill from a PvP stand point. You make a good point; though like they do with certain skills being unavailable underwater, they could do the same with this in PvP. It would mostly be effective for PvE and possibly WvW.

As people have pointed out, and I agree with, a Thief’s stealth skill does not last nearly long enough. Even if there is no chance of getting a long-duration stealth option added to the Thief (or other viable classes) repertoire, most of a Thief’s stealth skills need to be lengthened. A duration of 1-3 seconds is not enough.

Another possible option, and I can see this more as an Elite skill than a professional skill, would be a Flee or Withdraw skill that gives you swiftness and makes you invisible for somewhere on the order of 1 second per point of initiative you have. This would give the Thief slightly better survivability, at least.

A lot of great ideas, including just increasing the current stealth duration to making modifications for a long-duration stealth with respect to enemy proximity. I really like the suggestion that if you get too close to an enemy (NPC or Player) your stealth will be harder to maintain and break. This would give players in WvW a chance to potentially uncover the hiding location of a Thief who is scouting or to spot a group of thieves waiting to ambush them as they closed in on a Thief’s position.

Illushia.3721:

ANet has already said multiple times that Thieves will -never- get a long-lasting stealth skill. They don’t approve of the gameplay that it promotes.

I wasn’t aware of their stance on this (though given the omission of the skill, it isn’t surprising to hear it). Can you cite any references/sources where someone from ArenaNET has discussed this topic? I’d love to read what ArenaNET had to say and their reasoning behind their stance.

jovian.2805:

I did find it odd that GW2 thieves didn’t have a perma-stealth (I almost always roll thieves in MMOs), but I can see why they did away with it. with a more active combat system and PvP anyone can get into instantly, adding indefinite invisibility would need major balancing. I’m willing to bet they already tried it very early on and did away with it due to issues.

You’re absolutely right, but seeing as we have no way of knowing for certain—and the skill is a hallmark of the character type, I figured it was at least worth lobbying for. It seems like people are pretty evenly divided between “do want”, “do not want” and otherwise indifferent.

Just throwing my 2 cents in here: I had no problem running on an NVidia GeForce GTX 570 up until late last week sometime. It seems like with one of the patches a bug was introduced, because suddenly my video drivers kept failing when playing Guild Wars 2 in heavily populated areas, and in non-heavily populated areas I see graphics glitches constantly. I’ve even encountered one BSOD, shortly after updating my NVidia drivers thinking that might help.

Let me reiterate: I did not experience any of these problems during the beta weekend I played in, or during the first 3 weeks of the game’s release. They all began occurring sometime on-or-around September 15th/16th.

Furthermore it is not a load issue. During the first several weeks of the game I participated in WvW content and had just as many if not more active characters on the screen than in Lion’s Arch, never having a problem. Now, however, entering Lion’s Arch is almost sure to cause some sort of problem with my video.

In the spoiler are my specs.

Alexander Quess.1932:

Like “F2” 25 seconds stealth. Disabled on action, cannot be cast during combat.

Daenji.5280:

I would agree with this provided it could not be cast during combat, that it could be broken by AoE/environmental damage or incidental damage if a player or monster cast in the right spot, and if you added some limit on where it could be activated.

Wraith.4103:

They already got too much stealth, in combat -> sometimes <- I cant even see my oponent more than one second or less.
As a “outside” from combat I would agree.

Yeah the whole idea of this long duration stealth skill is an “out of combat” skill. I agree with Daenji that the stealth should be be broken by environmental damage, invidental damage, etc.

Really what it boils down to is, if the thief gets caught off guard while in stealth by an attack they get kicked out of the stealth skill. Another thing that could be done is to reduce a Thief’s armor rating while in stealth, such that if they do get caught in a field of combat while stealthed they are going to take more damage.

Daenji.5280:

For example, make it dynamic and a state that could only be entered if the Thief is not in direct view or full light. There was a mechanic in Age of Conan that kind of worked this way and forced stealth to be used more carefully and in the right places. That would make it a tactical skill and much more difficult to abuse. You might also look into something like having it be endurance dependent. As if moving while in this state would require unusual levels of care and concentration not allowing for it to be maintained indefinitely, only much longer. This especially makes sense if the state did not decrease movement speed.

I think as long as the Thief is out of combat mode than it might be enough to allow its activation (just like how we can’t change our healing, utility, and elite skills when we’re in combat). Though, that being said, I do like your idea of making it endurance dependent.

The mechanic could be that every time you move it uses a little bit of endurance, once your endurance reaches 0, your stealth ends. If you stand still your endurance will recharge. This allows you to have stealth as long as you are moving carefully. In addition you could further tie it to movement speed, if you are walking you use less endurance if you are moving at normal run speed you use more endurance.

Ikavan.2876:

I see this as being a really cool idea, but if implemented, how do you provide something similar for all professions? You could add stealth detection, but that would just become an annoyance. As seen in many other games, a permanent stealth option is just plain annoying. Though it is fun for the person using it, it is not fun for anyone else. The stealth is fine the way it is.

Ah, okay I see what was meant by a counter. Yeah, I actually like that, there are a couple of places where I’ve seen that throughout the game with enemies.

Ikavan.2876:

I see this as being a really cool idea, but if implemented, how do you provide something similar for all professions? You could add stealth detection, but that would just become an annoyance. As seen in many other games, a permanent stealth option is just plain annoying. Though it is fun for the person using it, it is not fun for anyone else. The stealth is fine the way it is.

Dark Savior.7589:

I like that the Thief in this game is much more balanced around misdirection and being evasive rather than perma-invisible literally ALL the time. It is refreshing that they stepped away from that concept IMO.

Misdirection and evasive is one thing, but I feel like the fact that evasion via stealth (the way the thief is currently done) is not unique enough seeing as there are other classes that have the same types of ability. If not perma-stealth, the thief still needs something that adds a little more uniqueness to their gameplay.

Igolbug.7295:

Give us a freaking counter to stealth and maybe I would agree to this, but as is with no counter to stealth it’s already stupid OP

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by a counter to stealth? I’m interested to hear your suggestion in how the original idea could be improved upon.

gwawer.9805:

… It’s just ruiining it for everyone else. Invites griefers, gankers, and immature players. Look at EVERY full stealth class in other games and the type of players that play them, especially in hotjoin random bg’s.

It would all depend on the skill’s viability for combat—which I don’t feel should be the main focus of the skill. If a character’s speed was reduced to that of walking while in stealth it would be harder for them to initiate an attack on a mobile opponent without planning or that opponent being idle. All of these are hallmarks of a thief (and/or assassin) in most high fantasy game settings.

Kal.2376:

… I think that full invisibility would be a major imbalancer for the game. I’m sure Anet analyzed the possibility, and still chose not to implement it (which is good in my opinion).

I’m not sure the sophistication of the mob intelligence in GW2, but other MMO’s have different triggers for hostile enemies: line of sight, proximity (e.g. sound and smell). If ArenaNET has these same factors, Stealth would online break line-of-sight. It is possible that Stealth would not be as effective (or at all effective) against smell-or-sound triggered enemies. Granted this does not exactly solve the PvP aspect of a long duration stealth but I think a reduction in movement speed would offset a lot of the benefit a long-duration stealth would give to a thief in combat.

Regardless, I appreciate both of your input on this suggestion. I do understand where both of you are coming from. Part of my feeling is that the thief just doesn’t feel… “thiefy” enough, there isn’t a lot of uniqueness to them that many of the other classes have.

Phaedryn.3698:

While I miss my stealth classes (played both Ranger and NS in DAoC) and I would love to see this, I’m not sure reviving should be on the list of activities that does not break stealth. That could be problematic in WvWvW.

Fair enough, I only mention reviving not breaking stealth because, as far as I can tell it doesn’t break Stealth now with Hide in Shadows or Shadow Refuge.

An item regarding chat that does not look to be on the original list:

• Allow players to see guild chat from Guilds they are not currently representing.

Also, I made a post regarding the addition of a Stealth profession skill to the Thief class (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Add-Longer-Duration-Stealth-Profession-Skill/first#post140769), which I think would be a nice improvement to the Thief.

There has been a lot of discussion around this proposed feature. I had not expected it to be quite as polarizing as it was. After some really good discussion, and suggestions that people have made in the thread as well as pointing out potential flaws in game imbalance if the skill were allowed to be used in Player-vs.-Player or World-vs.-World scenarios, I’ve decided to re-write and present the idea in a different way. Thank you to Daenji for the suggestion.

There are several classes, Thief and Mesmer come to mind, that have stealth and invisibility-based skills and who could both benefit in a PvE environment from a longer duration stealth skill; similarly I’m sure there are other classes for which this would fit as well (some people have suggested the Ranger). The majority of these skills are combat-centric lasting 3-5 seconds. In addition to these skills I would really like to see a longer duration Stealth ability, for use in Player-vs.-Environment gameplay only. If it could be balanced properly, it would be nice to see it in World-vs.-World as well, but that is not the focus of this suggestion.

Usage of the skill immediately stealths a character, abiding by all of the same restrictions of current stealth mechanics, e.g. attacking instantly breaks stealth. Most non-combative actions would not affect state of stealth (i.e. gathering, reviving, etc.), including the usage of [some] tactical skills (e.g. traps). This skill would be unusable during combat. This skill would not be available during PvP matches. The duration of this skill would be controlled by a character’s endurance, moving while stealthed would deplete endurance and when endurance reaches 0 the stealth would be broken.

I imagine it being used in the following way(s): exploration, uninterrupted gathering, the ability to steal (no-damage) outside of combat in PvE, and the ability to start combat off with a backstab in PvE.

Bullet Point List of a Longer Duration Stealth Skill:

• Cannot be activated when in combat, can only be used outside of combat. Follows the same rules as the ability for a player to change their healing, utility, and elite skills. Also adheres to existing stealth ability rules and what will cause stealth to be broken.
• Unavailable for usage in WvW or PvP; similar to how certain skills are made unavailable for underwater content.
• Stealth skill does not begin recharging until after stealth is broken.
• A reasonable cool down, so that Thieves cannot execute the stealth skill back-to-back-to-back (30 seconds? 45 seconds? 60 seconds? More?).
• Stealthed characters would have two different states to their stealth, fully hidden and obfuscated. Obfuscated thieves would be visible in the same way that stealthed mobs and NPCs are where they refract light but they can still be seen. The difference between these two states is determined by proximity to hostile enemies. An obfuscated character is visible to perceptive players and has a harder time maintaining their stealth. In addition, a character who is actively moving around is easier to spot than one standing still in a good hiding spot.
  • If a character is not near any hostile enemies (e.g. 1200 units or further away from any hostile enemy) the character remains invisible.
  • Within N units the character becomes obfuscated and their endurance slowly drains as they try to maintain their hidden state.
• Not a combat skill, though might have some application in tactical positioning for an initial strike.
• A character’s armor rating would be reduced while in stealth, making it less attractive in combat, even in first-strike usage.
• Stealth would be broken when: the stealthed character takes damage, enters combat (e.g. attacks a target), dodges, and, possibly, begins reviving a target (pending a review as to whether this currently breaks existing stealth or not).
• Stealth would be tied to endurance; moving while in stealth uses a little bit of endurance with different amounts being used depending on whether you are walking (less endurance used) or running (normal endurance amount used). Standing still would slowly regenerate endurance. When your endurance reaches 0 your stealth ends.

NB: There are other ideas that complement the above in various posts throughout this thread, not all are listed here and many have merit.