Guild Wars 2

What happened to player choice? What happened to giving us more options? This is REMOVING choice and REMOVING options.

I think it’s pretty clear, with this new trait system and the masteries, that all of the “benefits” from this new expansion were just buzzwords and double talk.

Taking away options from players is NOT giving them more “choices”. Forcing them to go down certain paths is NOT giving them more “customization”. All of these changes are doing the exact opposite of what they said they were doing.

Frankly, I’m tired of all the false hype. I’m tired of the facade. I’m tired of them breaking things that worked and calling it an upgrade.

I voted for neutral (read: non-personal) names. Lion’s Arch is a gathering place for all people, regardless of race and homeland, so I find individualized tributes to be a bit tacky.

For instance, despite its history, LA is no longer just a human settlement, so naming a major area after King Doric—a human king—seems a bit jingoistic. So for that reason I voted for Commodore’s Quarter, as it’s merely a reference to the hierarchy of Lion’s Arch itself.

Likewise, I voted to name the memorial Field of the Fallen, as naming a memorial to many fallen people after one individual is kind of rude. No one individual should be elevated above the rest.

I voted for Beacon Point, as the lighthouse was exactly that: a beacon, both literally and metaphorically. Naming the replacement of the iconic Lion’s Arch lighthouse “Graidy’s Lighthouse” would be like naming the Statue of Liberty “Graidy’s Statue of Liberty”. It wasn’t any one single person’s lighthouse and it wasn’t just a beacon of strength for one single person, it was a symbol to all who come to Lion’s Arch.

And I voted to keep the Lion fountain because of course I did! You’d have to be crazy to want to get rid of it!

I am very disappointed and upset by the change in the clothing systems!

I was very excited about the new wardrobe system. One of the most important aspects of the game for me is being able to customize the look of my character. I’ve spent just as much time mixing armor styles and dyes as I have fighting monsters. Looks are very important to me. After all, I’ll be spending all my time looking at my character, so it’s important that I enjoy what I’m looking at.

So as I said, I was very excited about the wardrobe system. But instead of a new, highly functional, easy to use wardrobe system, we got a muddled, confusing mess that breaks functionality and ruins the perfectly working Town Clothes system!

I loved my Town clothes and I enjoyed putting them on whenever I wasn’t in combat. But now that’s ruined. I’m OK with the idea of being able to wear Town clothes as armor, but to ruin the Town clothes system as a whole just to do that is ridiculous and unacceptable. The Town clothes were some of my favorite styles in the game, especially as my character is supposed to be a Noble. But now we have crappy tonics and broken functionality!

We don’t want refunds! We want our perfectly functional Town Clothes system back!

The game usually runs wonderfully on my machine, but after the most recent updates I’ve had a noticeable dip in performance.

I covered every inch of Southsun Cove weeks ago, but now the framerate has dropped. It’s not unplayable, but like I said, it’s definitely noticeable. It seems to hover around 30-40 fps. I’m so used to the game being more fluid, it almost feels like I’m playing something else now. I haven’t been out of Southsun, so I don’t know if it’s just a problem with the map or the whole game.

And a dip in graphical performance isn’t the only change I’ve noticed. Now it seems that right-clicking in order to pan the camera only seems to work about 3 out of every 5 times. It seems to not work especially when I’m moving the character at the same time. It’s really annoying when taking corners or trying to avoid enemies. It’s almost as if my right mouse button is weak (which I know it is not, because it works fine otherwise).

Another thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes NPC context boxes will load blank on first click and then close.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

bastien.7961:

Well, to be fair, the White Mantle were the head of Kryta at the time and they betrayed the Ascalonians and the Krytan monarchy.

That didn’t matter to him. Krytan was Krytan and no one at the time thought ill of the White Mantle. If anything, the change in government would have made Adelbern kinder to the Krytans, not unchanged.

Exactly. No one else was wary of them but Adelbern, and he proved to be right.

The Krytans in power—i.e. the only Krytans who mattered at the time—were corrupt and killed anyone who could stand in their way, including their own people and Ascalonian refugees. Adelbern was correct in distrusting the White Mantle. No, they didn’t represent all Krytans, but they were the only ones that could have meant anything to Ascalon and its people at the time. Xenophobic maybe, but also prescient.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Tuomir.1830:

King Adelbern was a benevolent ruler who would do anything to protect his kingdom.

No, he wasn’t. He was a racist, stubborn, prideful, a war hero, and a good leader. But not benevolent. His immense hatred of Krytans speaks for itself in his “benevolency.”

Well, to be fair, the White Mantle were the head of Kryta at the time and they betrayed the Ascalonians and the Krytan monarchy.

He was benevolent for a time, if only to Ascalonians, but his anger and desire to win the war with the charr essentially drove him mad. He thus caused the foefire not to protect his people, but to take as many charr out with him as he could, and dooming the souls of his own people to walk the ruins in the process.

I’m really only interested in one mystery and that’s the mystery of Isgarren and his Wizard’s Tower.
Who is he?
Where does he come from?
How is his magic so powerful?
Why do his elementals serve Garrenhoff?
Is he simply the hermetic benefactor he’s made out to be, or is there something more sinister at work?
Will we ever get to visit Wizard’s Tower? And if so, will we be guests or foes?

I see people making comparisons between the charr and Native Americans, but I think the more direct parallel is Israel/Palestine. One group was there for a long time, another group came in later, and then the first group eventually came back in and the second group was forced out to the edges.

Now, obviously it’s more complicated than that, but when you boil it down to the basics the charr are the Israelis and the humans are the Palestinians. The charr were there, then the humans came in, then the charr came back and the humans have been pushed to the edges. All of this happened over centuries, the real life situation and its in-game corollary.

Now, I won’t speak on the real life history, because that’s above my pay grade.

In terms of the game’s history, though, if the question is “Who deserves to be here more?”, the answer is no one. Neither race asked to come into existence, so neither can be held accountable for simply wanting to survive. The problem arises when the sides start warring over what they other side has.

They could have co-existed just fine, but individuals became jealous and power-mad. You can’t blame an entire race for the acts of individuals. In the charr’s case, blame falls squarely on the power-mad shamans of Flame Legion. They went so far in the quest for power that they even subjugated their own people, as well as waging war on the humans. And the humans waged war on the charr.

But it took the cooperation of the other legions and the humans, like Pyre Fierceshot and Gwen Thackeray, and the assistance of other races (Dwarves, Norn, & Asura) to finally bring the Flame Legion’s true guilt to light and remove them from power.

The battles between humans and charr since have been less about all out war and more about skirmishing for survival, with both races having to rebuild after the damage caused by Flame Legion. And with threats to the entire world looming in the form of the Elder Dragons, Smodur of Iron Legion and Jennah of Kryta understand that the races are each stronger together than they are separately—just as with Destiny’s Edge; and Gwen, Pyre, Jora, Ogden, & Vekk before them.

So do I hate the charr? No. Do I think either side is more right and more entitled to the land than the other? No. The time for war between humans and charr is over. The time for unity and cooperation is now. So my human fights by their side as equals, as his Ascalonian ancestor did before him.

Oddly enough, it tastes like snozzberries.

I noticed a minor text error while defending one of the settlements in Southsun Cove.

A Veteran Crazed Reef Skelk was showing the name Veteran Crazed Hermit Crab instead.

deviller.9135:

Suggestion to Anet:
Anet should make transmutation stone can be forged to fine transmutation stone by mystic forge. Let say:
10 transmutation stone + 5 mystic coin + 1 elonian wine + 5 something which you can buy with skill point = 1 fine transmutation stone

I like this. Maybe not necessarily that recipe, but something similar. Because I’m sure there are loads of level 80 players with piles of Transmutation Stones they have nothing to do with. Or Black Lion Chests (granted I don’t play a lot, but I’ve got 30+ and haven’t seen a key in months).

There’s stuff rotting in our banks that we can’t do anything with, but we’re forced to hang on to because we feel like we’re missing out on something if we don’t.

So it’s agreed that literally the only reason for the arbitrary level difference is to force specific people to spend money on it.

And out of that specific group of people, it’s an even more specific group who want to use Transmutation: level 80 players who want their level 80 armor to look like armor from lower levels.

Because if you wanted your level 80 armor to look like different level 80 armor, you would have just bought the second armor instead.

And the reason can’t be to keep people from making their lower level armor look like level 80 armor, because it doesn’t actually prevent that. And all they’d need to do was limit its use to only armor up to your current level (it might already do that).

So they’ve essentially singled out level 80 players who want -80 armor aesthetics--a fraction of a fraction—to pay more gold/gems/cash for an item than any other player group. It’s like charging a little girl 99 cents for a bag of chips that everyone else got for 50. How is that fair, exactly?

Even taking into consideration that it’s all about money, it still doesn’t make sense. How does that one level make them more money than 2 levels? 5 levels? 10, 20…?

Windwalker.2047:

Roll a Warrior.
15chars

Oh, why didn’t I think of it before? They should just take out all the other classes and make everyone a warrior! Then the game will be perfectly balanced!

And utterly boring. :P

The point is to give the classes options, to make them special while still keeping the game balanced—like Rock, Paper, Scissors. You’re just as likely to win throwing one as you are throwing another, but each requires the right circumstance.

But that’s not what we have. What we have is a game where throwing Scissors beats Paper, throwing Rock beats Scissors AND Paper, and throwing Paper just has to hope the opponent eventually bleeds to death from a paper cut while you pretend your Paper is actually Rock.

Tonight I spent about 40 minutes with my Dye, Trading, and Preview panes open, switching back and forth over and over again, dying and re-dying my armor, clicking and re-clicking “Preview”, looking for just the right fashion choices for my character.

Oh, how excited I was when I finally stumbled upon just the right outfit, a combination of several different sets of light armor. I’d just gotten 3 more Transmutation Stones the other day, for a total of 4 in my possession (my only source is map completion, and I don’t achieve that quickly). I was excited to get rid of the messy, pretentious look of my mixed high level armor and get back to a subtler, more classic look. I bought a couple new pieces from the trading house, then raced towards the bank to grab my shiny new Transmutation Stones.

But I stopped halfway there. My excitement completely diminished. I just hit level 80 a few days ago. My armor was now a boring mishmash of level 80 sets because I couldn’t afford anything that looked better.

But Transmutation Stones only work on armor up to level 79.

Why?!

What can be gained by separating a level 80 item from an identical item that works exactly the same way for the 79 other levels? What possible reason could there be for separating identically functioning items by 1 measly level out of 80 total levels?

That is to say, what possible reason other than a cash grab from a desperate fraction of members of an already specific minority of players (i.e. level 80 players who prefer the design of sub-80 armor sets)?

No gameplay would be unbalanced by having a single aesthetic item that worked on all 80 levels. No mechanics would be broken. It would simply provide one small group of players the same functionality to which the other 98% of players already have ready access.

Imagine if there were two aesthetic items in the game that only worked based on the hair color of your character…

Item A works on all characters with hair that is blonde, brown, black, blue, green, purple, or pink. Item A is readily available in game, or for a small cash fee.

Item B works on characters with red hair, but otherwise has exactly the same functionality as Item A. Item B is much rarer in game and costs a larger cash fee.

Tell me why that makes sense. Explain to me how that is fair. Give me a reason that is something other than so the company can charge a specific group of players more money than the rest.

Is it that big of a deal to the vast majority of players? No, it’s not. Is it that big of a deal to the vast majority of the gameplay? No, it’s not.

But then isn’t that all the more reason why the unfairness is so arbitrary?

Don’t get me wrong, I want the game to make money. I know the reason for selling rare items for cash, I know where the logic is in that.

But where is the logic in separating the potential sources of that cash by 1 measly level? If it’s not to disenfranchise a fraction of an already fractional group of players, then what is it? And “because it makes more money” is not an acceptable answer.

Perhaps there could be a 31st trait for each element that would then open up an elemental specialization path.

Maybe selecting that trait would also lock out all the other elements’ traits aside from their base stat bonuses (+power & +con dur, +prec & +crit, etc). So you could then spend points for stronger, more elementally specialized traits. And while you could still get the base benefit from speccing the other elements, you wouldn’t get their special abilities, so you’d be more inclined to continue specializing in the one element*.

*and that it would be strong enough to be worthwhile

PearlGore.7419:

More medium armor please, almost all of it looks terrible on all but Humans.

Psh, have you seen the light armor? Most of it makes us look like outrageous clowns, hippies, or some kind of voodoo medicine man. :P

BlackBeard.2873:

Swim.6830:

When my fire attunement does 4k damage, my water dazes, my air confuses people and earth makes me immune, I will be happy (all this considering NOTHING else changes).

That actually is a very interesting idea. It would be cool to see individual elements really specialize well, rather than just kind-of blend together like they do now. Fire should have some offensive teeth (need more damage). Water should have some chilling and good healing (is in a pretty good place right now). Air should have more speed and single-person damage, but only single-target damage. Earth should have high defense and condition damage, but much lower base-damage. That would be very cool to see. Unfortunately, we have 3 attunements with various flavors of similar skills, and then water.

THIS

BlackBeard.2873:

I am convinced there isn’t really a way to “fix” the ele. We are squishies with high healing as our only survivability. The only way you don’t immediately implode would be to:

1.) Nuke everything quickly so it dies faster – this is not an option, Anet wants to decrease burst, not increase it. Also, they want thieves to do this.
2.) Evade like crazy – this won’t happen b/c that is already one of the many thief tropes, and Anet doesn’t want to invade on their pet class
3.) Actually give us some better base vitality/tougness – this could be an option, but it would also help the bunker, which is a good spec in spvp
4.) War of attrition – this is the bunker, and it means embracing our strength (healing) and running with it. This is the only viable option for the ele given the way they want classes to be structured. We aren’t the jack of all trades, we are the master-healers who do some other things o.k. too.
5.) Control – give more ways to CC (in utilities and skills), making condition builds possible. This will not be viable in PvE as bosses cannot be controlled at all, but it could work in PvP. Unfortunately, being stunned/controlled isn’t very fun for opponents, so this isn’t happening.
6.) Speed – I am not even talking about being as fast as thieves, but increasing the maneuverability of ranged options (more inherent displacement built into skills) so that ranged playstyles have a way to juke close-range or maintain distance. Again, won’t happen b/c eles should be slow according to Anet.

Eles will never be given the offense to be an effective glass cannon, and balanced builds don’t work when everything kills you so easily. Bunker is the only way the class can play. I am not sure traits will fix it, it will only change the flavor of bunkers you see.

Well, see, therein lies the problem. Elementalists are essentially forced to just be monks with added flavor. We’re supposed to be squishy, with high damage output to compensate/high damaging, while squishy to compensate.

Elementalists are the true mages of the Guild Wars world. We bend the world to our will. No other class does that. Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Heart…er, Arcana. So why are we so darn weak?

What’s the point of forcing us to use squishy armor if we have no other choice but to compensate by putting all of our power towards maintaining our defenses ourselves? We’re just turtles, then. Why even fight? Why even go into battle? If they’re not going to make the Elementalist what it’s supposed to be, which is walking artillery, then what’s the point of making an Elementalist at all?

I don’t buy the idea that the Thief should be the high damage machine. Not even from a genre standpoint. Rogues are about precision strikes, circumventing defenses to take out an enemy, finding the weakness. They’re essentially assassins or special ops.

Our role as Elementalists is to be the airstrike. We’re supposed to be the volley of arrows, the gattling gun that culls the enemy heard while the foot soldiers charge in.

But we’re not. We’re turtles. And not even snapping turtles.

So if they’re not going to build the Elementalist traits so that we aren’t a pointless class, they should at least let us wear the better shell so we can afford to go out and make something of ourselves other than forcing us to just be Monks and Clerics with a different name. Or is that simply their way of circumventing their “no Holy Trinity” rule?

I had this idea while posting about Ele spec problems in another thread, but before I explain I’ll explain where I’m coming from in terms of game balance.

I’ve been a fire nuke since before Guild Wars had a secondary title. I found the GW2 staff to be boring for me, though, so I went D/D. I love it. The play style required for D/D is so in-your-face and speedy. But we don’t have henchmen and heroes anymore, so the squishiness of an Elementalist is more evident than ever. And our ability to nuke just doesn’t seem as powerful any more.

So like a lot of people, I’ve been forced to adapt. And the only real way to adapt is to pump points and gear stats into defense and survivability, like 30 Water. And it’s nice, actually. I can hold my own more than ever, I like some of the new things I’m able to pull off (Evasive Arcana), and I still feel agile. But I don’t feel powerful. Sure, I can solo a Champion now, but it takes forever. I just do not feel that strong. It’s just slow attrition, like bleeding to death from a paper cut.

Imagine if rather than Mohammad Ali’s rope-a-dope technique involved hanging in there as his opponent tired and then coming out swinging in full force later, but rather that it meant that he just waited until his opponent died of hunger.

That’s what it feels like for a defensive Elementalist. I believe the term is Bunker?

But we don’t have much choice, do we? Because going the Power/Prec route with traits and stats means giving up our survivability for pretty minimal offensive return.

So here’s my idea for a solution that doesn’t involve nerfing Eles into the ground, or buffing them into gods, and I want to hear people’s thoughts on it:

Remove armor class restrictions

The classic trope is that spellcasters wear cloth, rangers/rogues wear leather, and warriors wear chain and plate. But that doesn’t really make sense, does it? Wouldn’t you want the best armor possible no matter what your class is? It makes sense for rangers, rogues, and warriors, but it doesn’t make sense for spellcasters.

And it certainly doesn’t make sense with the current state of Elementalists. We’re forced wear cloth armor, but we’re also forced to pump all points into defensive and supporting traits.

Think about it: What is Vitality and Toughness if not invisible armor? So we’re still forced to wear cloth armor, but then we just put on invisible plate armor over top of it?

Why not just let us wear medium or heavy armor? Then we wouldn’t have to pump so many stats & points into defense. Then they could potentially afford to buff us offensively and/or nerf us defensively.

And before you anyone says, “But then what’s to keep Elementalists from still pumping all their points into defense/support and becoming an unstoppable tank?”

Add a caveat to wearing the wrong armor for your class that makes something slightly less effective the greater the disparity is between class and armor. For instance, the higher the armor, the weaker the Water and Earth benefits (or the class equivalent).

In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, if someone wore an armor type they weren’t skilled in, their magic was less effective.

So we could get better armor, which would allow us to survive more easily without speccing for Bunker, and we could finally afford to put points into Fire/Air.

Not only would it open up a lot of options for customization in terms of gear styles, but I think it would finally allow the Elementalist to the the jack-of-all-trades they’re meant to be and open up a lot of specialization options.

It’s not perfect and would take some tweaking. And maybe it would just be easier to buff Power/Prec. But I think it could work

So, is it a good idea, or am I just crazy?

When you boil it all down, I think it comes down to one thing: DPS vs. Defense/Support

The problem lies in the fact that the disparity between the efficiency and effectiveness of the DPS path vs the Defense/Support path is huge.

That is to say, you get a lot more bang for your buck by going the Defense/Support route than you do the DPS route. In fact, the benefits of the Defense/Support route FAR exceed the benefits of the DPS route. The disparity between the usefulness of the two routes is so great that not only do you gain less from going the DPS route, but you also have to give up a lot of very important benefits from the Defensive/Support traits.

When you look at it from a solo perspective, DPS is meaningless if you cannot survive long enough to make use of it. So the whole point of DPS is to take out the enemy before they can take you out. But it’s often just not high enough to achieve this goal, especially with mobs.

So then the entire game of the Elementalist, no matter which path you choose, inherently becomes about attrition and maintaining your own survival. So to be at all effective without the help of tanks and healers to back us up, we must put our resources towards our own defense and support. The exchange rate for putting 30 into Water is far better than the exchange rate for putting 30 into Fire.

With the current state of the purely offensive trait paths, putting points into them is just like throwing money away. The other two or three trait paths are simply better investments and the poor return from the offensive traits makes it almost necessary to spend on Defense/Support. And likewise, this all applies to armor and weapon stats as well.

You have to give up so much for so little offensive power that it leaves us with no other choice than to go defensive. The poor return is pigeonholing us. It’s not like in GW1, where we had henchmen and heroes to cover for our shortcomings. We don’t have that option now. And without being in a party 24/7, it makes those shortcomings all the more glaring.

We just can not be the same Elementalist in this game that we were in GW1. The stats and traits won’t allow it. So unless the offensive path gets buffed to the point where we no longer need to have high vitality and toughness, we can never be the nukes we’re supposed to be.

And frankly, from a genre standpoint the current state of things just does not make any sense. Forcing us to put so much into support and defense while still trying to force the trope of mages as cloth-armor only?

Think about it: What is Vitality and Toughness if not invisible armor? So we’re still forced to wear cloth armor, but then we just put on invisible plate armor over top of it?

Why not just let us wear medium or heavy armor? Then we wouldn’t have to pump so many stats & points into defense. They could buff us offensively and could afford to nerf us defensively. They could even add a caveat to wearing the “wrong” armor for our class that makes it slightly less effective, like in TES:Oblivion. Say, the higher your armor, the less effective your magic is.

Wouldn’t that open up a lot of freedom of choice? And not just in what armor we wear, but in how we spend our points.

I try to go with a fantasy military theme. They’re a noble and I see them as sort of a military officer/JAG kind of character (especially after that early investigation and court room story).

I don’t like armor that’s too busy or flamboyant—which a lot of ele armor is, unfortunately. I try play up that he’s a noble and an officer, but also a capable warrior (hence the gauntlets)

I’m about to hit 80 and I just got around to using the Grandmaster manual. I’m a solo PvE D/D (frankly, I just find D/D to be the most fun).

I’ve been trying to take my setup a little more seriously, though, and I’ve been seeing all the talk here on the forums about nerfs to various things. Personally, it doesn’t effect me too much because I don’t really pay attention to builds and tactics, as I’m a solo PvE player.

I just like to pop off as many skills as possible on a mob and use glyphs for elemental backup/fodder. I was a fire Ele/Ranger back in GW where I liked to nuke and use my black bear as a bodyguard, so this suits me. Though I still wish we had dual classes now, because I miss my bear. :p

It sucks that they nerfed RtL, because I liked to use it for getting from point A to point B. But it hasn’t been much of a detriment to that, because it still mostly works that way and there are plenty of other speed buffs I can throw on to get around. You can generally outrun a mob with those anyway, so again, nothing has changed much for me.

But like I said, I’ve been trying to take my setup a little more seriously and really build around my play style, so I have yet to see how anything will effect me. Though from reading the posts, it seems I’m taking a bit of an unconventional path (I’m the only person I know of with 30 points in Fire/Power on a D/D elementalist with my other trait numbers, hehe).