Guild Wars 2

Ashen.2907:

Have to say, the OP really seems to have a solid grasp of the problems with condition damage in GW2.

Sarcasm?
I do hope so, because he obviously doesn’t.

@hybrid
Sorry if this sounds harsh, we all appreciate that (again) somebody is trying to tackle the problem (never worked in the past, but maybe this time) – however, most of what you say is either wrong or very short-sighted.

The most important thing that you don’t seem to understand is how toughness works. Calling PvE enemy health reduction and toughness increase “idiotic” because it is a “nerf” to physical damage builds and calling someone that tells you that conditions are viable in PvP “ignorant” proves that.

So let me try to explain: Toughness decreases incoming physical damage (maths here).
Increasing toughness and reducing vitality therefore is equivalent to increasing condition damage because less damage overall is necessary to kill the mob, but more physical damage is absorbed.
The same applies to PvP. You can’t compare PvE and PvP DPS directly because players can have a lot of armor, therefore mitigating more physical damage than PvE mobs. Also, defensive conditions are a lot stronger in PvP.

Most of your points would completely break sPvP and WvW, so what can be done instead?
I’m happy to say that ArenaNet already started doing something in the new area, Silverwastes.

• Husk Smashers have a lot of armor, which makes condition damage more viable against them.
• Some other enemies (Teragriffs for example) have more mobility, decreasing the time that pure melee physical damage can be applied and increasing the viability of defensive conditions (chill, cripple and immobilize).
• There are healers that increase the viability of poison.

Sadly, we will most likely never see such changes in dungeons.
What remains is the condition cap. I didn’t write the engine, but if increasing the cap is more complex than your suggestions (not considering server load), then their software design is seriously screwed up.
Have fun,

Addi!

Hi everyone.
Short summary of myself: I have GWAMM in Guild Wars 1, I have almost 13k achievements points, I stopped playing actively about three weeks ago and I am really glad that I did.
I agree with most people in this thread, you all know why – no need to repeat what’s already been said so many times.

However, there are also some posts here that say something like “well it’s not the game’s fault that you burned out, just stop playing it.” What those guys don’t seem to understand is that being a completitionist (and I assume that most posters in this thread are completitionists, I’ll refer to them as “we”, please don’t be offended) is not something that you just lay off like underwear. It’s a personal attitude, a way of living. Saying “just quit the game” to us while we don’t have everything completed is like saying “stop eating bananas” to someone who really likes bananas. It’s not impossible, but it’s against our will. It’s against our attitude. We want to complete everything and the temporary, fast paced content (which is a very bad combination as stated several times) is making that goal very hard and very time consuming to reach. And that’s why we are burning out. Not because we have played the game too much and not because we are addicted. The same applies for taking a break for some weeks. We would miss something and we know that we won’t ever get the chance to catch up. That sucks.
I don’t expect that people who do not share this opinion understand it, but at least I tried explaining it to them.
Have fun,

Addi

errant.9843:

A spam war is about the only way to get the designer’s attention anymore. And if it works, if we stir up enough trouble to get some REAL attention, then are the means we used such a bad thing?

I disagree. You are right that we need to get some real attention, but a spam war will only bring us the attention of the moderators, not the developers.
Take a look at this for example. This is a good initiative and will propably get the developers attention while still having the potential to bring up solutions for important problems.

Lighter.5631:

because they are not going to implant/ improve it anyway?

Propably. They know the problems, they have tons of solutions posted by the community (although most of those are very basic and need more details). If ArenaNet doesn’t want to spend time and resources on implementing them we can’t change it by spamming the forums.

€dit: Just skimmed the whole page again and I want to clear one thing up: There seems to be a problem with the definition of solutions and details here. Let me give you an example:
Bad:

PvP needs PvE rewards.

Good:

PvP needs rewards that are worth playing for. Those could come in the form of X and/or Y, which would have these advantages and/or disadvantages.

KrisHQ.4719:

People have literally been spamming solutions for 8 months now.
A lot of detailed feedback has even been said in Helseth’s rants, and a lot of people have kept posting them over and over because they agreed.
Without any responds to those threads there can really only be two conclusions.

1. ArenaNet does not want to change how the game is played (spam, too much dmg, too many dodges, tide-changing elite skills) or more correctly, does not want to use ressources for that purpose. They ignore all those posts because they are simply not relevant to ArenaNet’s own goals.
2. ArenaNet wants to keep PvP as a secondary activity to PvE, and will therefore continue to support it with features that draw more PvE players into PvP. They will not make any major changes to how the game is played, and only make slight balance changes to adjust the meta once in a while.

ArenaNet are not transparent in what they want to achieve with PvP in this game, and the only feedback we get from them is “We are listening”, and then suddenly a patch drops that nobody would have ever accepted.
They advertised this game as a potential e-sport, and the core mechanics really support it, but without a gameplay that rewards skilled play it will NEVER be an e-sport.

Yes. But again, that is not the topic here. We all know that, there is no need to post it again.

Ok, got me there. Maybe “agreeing” was not the right word – “understanding” would have been better. I personally wouldn’t have removed Xeph’s post, but I understand why it was removed.

Also, yes, the community did post solutions about almost everything and I never said that ArenaNet is doing everything right and the community is doing everything wrong. My initial post of this thread is for those who kept spamming that Jon Peters is comparing game development to rocket science (in very negative ways).

You are correct, it is a problem that ArenaNet is not allocating nearly enough resources for sPvP and is not communicating with the sPvP community at all. However, pointing out that problem is not the purpose of this thread as it has been done countless times already.

Lighter.5631:

Its up to the players to find the problem and find a solution to fix this crap, we are not going to anything but coding which is another team’s job, that’s what you are saying?

Not at all. It is not up to the player to find and implement solutions, but it is pointless to post lists of existing problems again and again and again. Instead, try thinking of ways how to solve those problems, because that would actually help.

Hey everyone.
Since most of the spammers seem to have vanished to where they came from I want to grab this opportunity to (partially) take side with Jon Peters, who is getting blamed for comparing GW2 development to rocket science – which he did literally, but let’s take a look at that statement again:

1) details. It is easy to say to fix all this stuff but the devil is in the details. There are lots of problems with how these details need to be addressed so saying “solve difficult situation X” is essentially like saying, “solve long distance manned space flight” to NASA.

Basically, what most of you (the community) are reading is: Solving a Guild Wars 2 Problem is like solving long distance manned space flight. That is not the correct conclusion.

The important part is the rest: What Jon is essentially saying is that it is pointless to list all those problems (like Xeph did) over and over again. ArenaNet knows about these problems already. What ArenaNet actually needs are not lists of existing problems, they need solutions – or, in Jon’s words, details. The game needs solutions or at least suggestions, not “I quit”-posts that don’t have any productive content. Therefore, I fully understand the removal of Xeph’s thread.
Have fun,

Addi

Hey everyone.
Just a quick question here… why are (almost) all of the players you want to have in the show still active professionals? Toad mentioned that there will be three representatives from every region (EU and NA) so why not one active professional, one inactive professional (somebody that quit a while ago but still watches the game’s progress and would want to come back) and one active casual player? Wouldn’t that encourage much more interesting dicussions?
Have fun,

Addi

Hey there.
First of all no, I don’t think that adding more fractals is more important than fixing the old ones – ArenaNet should really focus on improving the existing content instead of pumping more problems into the game.

As I don’t agree with many of your points Hamartia I’ll just explain it step by step.

Rewards:

The first thing you do is comparing the Fractals of the Mists to the Citadel of Flames, path one. That is a bad thing to do as this path is just ridiculous in terms of money-making and it is that path that needs fixing, not the rest of the game.
Yes, the rewards for completing high level fractals should be slightly higher (after all, the fractals are the most difficult content that the game has to offer right now) but improving loot from monsters and chests is something that should be done very very carefully (for obvious reasons, e.g. “LFG Swampfarm 10+ runs”). The current system (that only gives players good rewards for killing the Jade Maw, not for everything else) is not bad because it forces players to complete four fractals to get good stuff, however the chance of getting something good from that final chest is still too low and there should be something similar for uneven levels (where you don’t get to fight the Jade Maw).

Now let’s see about the other five “fixes”.
1.) and 2.) aren’t really fixes, just workarounds – instead the prices of those fine infusions should just be reduced (they currently are way too expensive to be worth buying).
3.) is something that was mentioned countless times: We want a way to turn useless rings and fractal weapons into other rings and fractal weapons – the mystic forge is the most obvious alternative.
If ArenaNet wants to keep their hard-limited reward system with commendations and laurels – which I do not support by the way, but I understand the reasoning behind it – they won’t even consider implementing the 4th fix so it’s not worth being discussed here.
I kinda like the idea of having a way to turn useless fractal stuff into other exotics or even precursors, that would give this stuff a value if you just don’t need or want it for any of your characters. However, four ascended rings should just yield a random ascended ring as mentioned above.

Fractals:

Volcanic:
It is a good idea to add some other mob types instead of only elementals in order to reduce the need for projectile reflecting skills. That would be one of many necessary steps to make more classes viable in PvE.
But… no RNG here, please. Making such an encounter more easy with luck would enrage many players (including me).

Underground Facility (Dredge):
First of all yes, this fractal is way too long. Even so, adding a jumping puzzle would cause several problems, for example the fact that this puzzle would have to take at least as much time as the fight to open the gate – which means that on higher levels it’d have to be much longer. This and the fact that it’s a jumping puzzle would definitely encourage exploiting.
Completely removing the central area is propably too much, just remove one or two of the huge mob groups that are between the checkpoint and the next gate.
The one thing that takes the most time in this fractal is slaughtering the Dredge that come out of the carrier. Therefore, the amount of Dredge necessary to continue should be decreased, especially on higher levels.
Reducing the endboss health is ok, but not necessary in my opinion.

Cliffside:
Cliffside actually isn’t that long, the one big problem here is simply that the two arm seals can mess up a whole run if your group doesn’t pay attention. The obvious fix would be to reset the seals to their original state (removing all chanters and respawning only two of them) if the party wipes completely.
Also, it would be good to have the respawn system of the underwater fractal (party-wide checkpoints so everybody can respawn at the top once one player made it).
Your ideas for the boss are pretty good, that would definitely make the fight more interesting (and less exploitable).

Swamp:
Something that you should mention is that not just the long fractals could use some balance but also the super short ones, especially the swamp. This fractal definitely needs an additional stage (maybe a defense event for the whisps), otherwise the current “roll for swamp” will continue forever.

Aquatic Ruins (underwater):
Simply lowering the hitpoints of the jellyfish wouldn’t really improve anything as this fractal is already pretty short. Instead, this boss seriously needs a rework, it currently is one of the most boring encounters in the whole game. Even a normal trashmob is a bigger threat than this giant jellyfish.

So that’s my point of view, feel free to bash me.
Have fun,

Addi

I have to disagree here. I farmed events in Southsun Cove for 8 hours with a level 35 character (that is now level 40) and didn’t get a single Southsun supply crate. Then I switched to a level 80 character and got two within the first hour.
Have fun,

Addi

Weapon placement issues
Female human elementalist

I noticed that stowed scepters with a thin rod seem to be hovering next to the wielder’s waist and cutting the wielder’s hand.
Scepters that have this issue: Orrian Scepter, Tsunami (Storm), Lionguard Scepter

The screenshots were taken with Tsunami, Winged Pants and Winged Gloves.