Showing Posts For fluffdragon.1523:

Unidentified gear - Please No, No, No, Nooooo

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Identifying gear made sense in GW1 when we could salvage upgrades off items.

That no longer exists, so unless they’re tacking on prefix/suffix upgrades to all gear in the manner of GW1 and conveniently didn’t tell us about it, then having random unidentified stuff thrown in seems like a total waste of time and bag space.

(edited by fluffdragon.1523)

Not looking forward to deadeye

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Having seen BogOtter’s video of a demo/beta of Deadeye in the mists lobby (or what looked like it), I really have to say that the new Deadeye elite feels like the antithesis of what I’m looking for in thief.

So it has more stealth, but … to really synergize with the skills, we have to immobilize ourselves, thus crippling our potential and our mobility, on a class that already has way too few means to avoid harm via damage or conditions (or cleanse them) without moving.

I also feel that the use of “apply vulnerability on hit” for the rifle auto-attack just sounds like Daredevil all over again. Bleeding would be too much like pistol, and I would almost prefer to see torment applied to really build on their admittedly lackluster lore of being scary gunslingers who shoot stuff that we don’t want to face in battle. That and it’d give us some interesting shutdown potential by dealing greater damage when targets attempt to close with the sitting duck with a rifle.

In fact, the whole elite just feels like a hodgepodge of suggestions taken from the forums, slapped together, and turned into something very, very disagreeable with what was the original style and gameplay of thief. None of the skills seem terribly new or unique (one is just another shadowstep, another is a revamped version of the escape from pistol/dagger #3, and another is just a lighter version of Unload), and I cannot bring myself to feel that it’s anything different from rifle warrior in aesthetics. It just doesn’t feel like something that came out of thief at all.

Looking through (proposed) skill data, the 1200 / 1500 range toggle with kneeling is going to be a pain, too, since there’s no easy way to tell if you’re in range before you pop Sniper’s Cover.

tl;dr: I picked up thief on a whim back in August 2012 and fell in love with its fast and adaptable gameplay, and Deadeye feels like the opposite of that. It does not appeal to me and I don’t foresee myself using the elite or even trying to unlock it on my thief.

For the curious, the video referenced is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOv-ZxfON7w

Does ANet Have a Middle Ground?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I think a lot of their more “extreme” things are the little reworks people forget about. Like how certain builds were completely lost when Traits became Specializations and certain major traits were cut, moved, or merged. Or how some runes were reworked and their uses altered. In a few cases it might have been warranted, but for those of us with silly fringe synergies, it feels pretty bad.

Other “extreme” measures might be the change to the leveling system, or how Heart of Thorns and Living Story kind of defies the original manifesto of the game (“no end game” being one of these major points).

Or going free to play and kittening new players. But that’s more opinion now, given how many MMOs have similar policies these days.

I do agree that ArenaNet needs to try to remember some of the leftovers and things that haven’t been addressed in years, like cleaning up areas with useless Living Story content, fixing skills that have had poor performance or reliability since launch, and other areas where it feels like they’ve moved on too quickly. There’s still tons of polish that keeps getting overlooked because a new content patch went out or we’re back in the eSports cycle of “must balance everything for PvP.”

But overall, I think the most extreme change is the new direction of the game as a whole. It’s not what the vanilla 2012 Guild Wars 2 used to be and is becoming more and more of a generic MMO full of farming, grinding, unlocks, raids, end-game, loot progressions, and abandoned side-content that feels the need to hold our hand rather than let us have fun and learn and explore at our own pace.

Don’t get me wrong, though; a lot of the quality of life updates up until about 2014 were fantastic and I think Q1~Q2 of that year were some of the highlights of Guild Wars 2. It’s just a shame that everything has changed so much that, from a perspective reaching back all the way to the head start, it does feel like a very “extreme” change from where we started.

(Oh, and Seaworld Tyria.)

Rifle Thief: how does it make you feel?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Well, now that we know it’s on the horizon what do you WvW players think about this?

you know, seeing as it will effect y’all primarily

Logging in to disrupt the thread and say it makes me feel like ArenaNet is going back on their word. Again. Like last time.

Remember waaaaaaay back shortly after release or even during the beta phase when the devs said something along the lines of “Thief will never have greater than 900 weapon range”? And how pretty much until Specializations happened, the only way to get to 1,200 on steal was to take the Trickery line for a specific trait (which was 30 / 6 points), which drastically reduced your options elsewhere?

Other than the harpoon gun for underwater content, this has held true.

So what I’m honestly foreseeing with rifle is we get the same old condition-based Harpoon Gun weapon skills as a terrestrial rehash to balance against the purely physical Staff on Daredevil. Because what better way to repackage content than to phase it out months beforehand and give it back to us under a different name (like Acrobatics)?

And considering the leaked graphic, we can assume traits will include such amazing mechanics as:

  • The Goggles Do Nothing (Crossed-eye icon)
  • Precision -> Toughness Converter (Crosshair-on-shield icon)
  • Ammunition (Initiative replacement?) (Stack-of-bullets icon)
  • High Noon (The one that looks like McCree)
  • General Villainy (Bandito icon)
  • Discovery that Pockets Exist and are Useful for Holding Things (Pocket-with-star icon)
  • YMCA (That other one that looks like McCree)

Snipe mechanic prediction

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Request: separate EXP & Mastery bars

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I know, I know, it’s been asked for a million times, but I feel it needs to be asked for yet again. If the admins have responded to it already, I’m having a heck of a time finding that, so apologies if that’s the case.

Simply put: please change the EXP / Mastery progress bar on the bottom of the screen to either be two separate bars or a toggled display!

Why is this necessary? Opinion, really, but there are a few hiccups I’ve found in the game that are mild frustrations:

  • Can’t see my level: probably the most frustrating, because now I have to check my Hero tab every time I wander into a new zone in a map (or change maps) to see what level I’m scaled to. Not a huge problem as a Lv. 80 in full exotics, but sometimes it’s nice to know that you’re actually at the level you think you are by simply glancing down in the corner where my Mastery Rank now shows instead.
  • No sense of EXP: I’m still earning EXP, obviously, but I’ve no way to track that any more. I still earn Spirit Shards when I level up (instead of skill points, which is a separate rant), but I have no idea when that is. If there’s another way to check my EXP progression, I’ve yet to find it.
  • Maxed out bar gives illusion of no progress: furthermore, I’m stuck in that awful state of not having enough Tyrian Mastery Points to finish up the ranks I’ve maxed out, so it honestly looks like I’m making absolutely no progress whatsoever unless I’m in an expansion map. And while this is really just preference, it does make it hard for me too feel like anything I do is worthwhile. That little EXP bar gave me a nice little visual indicator to show that something as simple as logging or mining or punching a cliff bat in the face was working me steadily towards something.

Both myself and a few friends have expressed similar feelings about that last point there — it really does feel like we’re “stuck” in the game unless we go to the Heart of Thorns maps and grind. None of us particularly enjoy them (and I don’t have the points to finish my Fractals line anyway, so that feels moot too), and don’t have enough chances to play together to make the greater challenge feel worthwhile, especially now that everyone has moved on to LS3 content.

As a result, we’ve all kind of drifted away from the game because there’s really nothing left to say that we’re making progress beyond grinding in Hearth of Thorns or crafting, neither of which I (and others) have much like for.

So … yeah.

I get why it’s the way it is, and it does work — I just want to be vain about my own take on grinding and seeing a little meter progress across the bottom of my screen over and over to validate why I’m still playing the game. That’s literally it.

What if pistol 5 stealthed without combos?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Unless you were going to do something where comboing in a smoke field didn’t grant stealth (thus eliminating the loophole altogether) or required that said combo struck a target to “activate” it (thus closing the loophole), I’d say this would just make everything worse.

Staff thief removal vs build diversity

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

apart from now you can keep moving while using vault where as before you was locked in postion for 1/4 second before vault “jumped”

Wait, for real? UGH, I had thought it was doing that before and it drove me nuts and made me avoid using Vault half the time!

Thanks for the heads up. I really need to test this out and see, could make Staff way more enjoyable.

Condi bomb trapper thief: what just happened?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Not really a PvP player or WvW’er here, but I have a feeling you probably got hit with all the traps and quite likely a few weapon sigils as well to proc additional conditions as buffers against cleansing (old GW1 mentality, that). Something like Sinister gear or the more damaging Viper prefix would explain the intense damage, as well as condition-spec runes for Bleeding or Poison, which would stack nicely with a Venom or two and Needle Trap and Caltrops (this one I believe applies constantly over the duration, which could ramp damage if you were immobilized on it). Basilisk could MAYBE explain the funky immobilized, too? Not sure, I almost never use it and haven’t seen it that often in the wild (thanks mostly to everything being covered in fire or cool effects from other classes).

I’d say there’s not really a solid counter, especially with the cleansing reworks, since it’s kind of a draw for what gets removed rather than being a “pop” of the last applied every time. At least that’s sort of what I recall from when they redid conditions for the millionth time. I myself and rather curious to hear more about this build, though, since it sounds both incredibly counter-intuitive to use and potentially intriguing to research for other applications when I faff around in PvE-land.

REALLY?! more condi removel...

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

blatant trolling

Thief in the support role

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

There is a possible ninja nurse build that i ran into someone using in WvW, but I’m not sure what the build actually is.

Venom shares for life steal in the party, the new Signet of Agility possibly, and likely running Trickery to max out Steal usage to throw boons to your buddies. Pack Runes could help with that in a less restorative role as well, by tossing Rage, Might, and Swiftness on nearby allies when struck (which is rather reliable) and lets the thief also supplement melee.

As for anything beside Shadow Arts and Trickery, I don’t know. You’d likely want more abilities that can stealth allies for that little bit of Regeneration as well.

Your opinion about today´s update

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

it’s funny to see the different points of view. thieves think they got the shaft again, other classes think thief got even more powerful, mesmers think that now with revenants, they’re not wanted anymore, revenants think they’re stil useless and no one will want them, eles think they got the shaft too, other classes think that the ele is top of the game and got mostly buffs and a couple of well earned nerfs…. opinions, right?

This guy gets it.

As a primary thief player, I’m … indifferent. PvP only changes that don’t affect me, so no big deal, but stuff is being improved for better versatility. Nice to see. Maybe next round we might get some 2013/2014 era features back, even.

Mesmer changes sound awesome for making illusion builds more powerful beyond shatter spamming (yay!) and I might have reason to use a primary sword again, so yay for that, too. Otherwise it seems fair.

Not sure what revenant is doing with alacrity, but I didn’t do much with that side of chronomancer, so … no comment other than how weird a choice that is for a healing stance.

Happy to see better mace, banner, and shout stuff on warrior, personally. Been using builds focused around them in one form or another for years, so it’s exciting to hear they’ll be more prominent now.

Overall it seems … weirdly neutral. Some improvements, some reductions, the long awaited PvP split of everything is upon us, and nothing too good or bad. Just better.

Skill Balance coming!

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Considering this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5uupy0/wing_4_boss_1_daredevil_solo_5700/

The community won’t allow for a thief buff.

who cares about pve?
in PvE everything is possible when u fight brainless npc’s if ur going to boost or nerf classes based on PvE then anet is beyond horrible.

Your outrage is all the more reason for them to have split the game modes in the first place, rather than balacing the entire game around one singular mode of play that has no bearing on anything else.

It’s why so much of the game is screwed up right now.

Thief and Pulmonary Impact

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

You’re right, it isn’t just pi but the whole dd line that has pushed d/p far beyond any other weapon set in the pvp scene as well as wvw. They nerfed a lot of sword skills, gutted acro and made the dd line. S/d pretty much lost its trait line since then because now d/p has the same number as evades as old acro s/d, they gave it a trait that synergies so well with head shot and they gave it a dodge skill which pretty much is immune to all soft cc and a dash range of 1350 range if used all 3 dodges in a row, it’s no wonder d/p is so strong.

S/x used acro before and d/p either used crit strikes or shadow arts so they were on even footings, now d/p is God mode compare to other sets and you can’t deny this.

Actually seeing it all spelled out … you make a very strong point.

Thief’s synergy is completely broken from what it used to be pre-Specializations, and it allows sets like d/p to “double dip” whereas other builds are too spread out to — or plain can’t — match its potential.

If anything, I think what we’re seeing is the results of poor planning and foresight by the design team which resulted in an unintentional loophole / meta that, like a lot of recent bad decisions, won’t be undone or corrected. As for why, I’d say it’s like what people have pointed out elsewhere in the forums: too much of the class has been left untouched and inconsistent to the point where the only real solution is to rewrite it from the ground up.

Skill Balance Coming

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Every class will get nerfed except Thieves. (As usual)

What do you expect, the developers love their thieves. If you were a developer and you love to play with thieves, you most likely improve their class to have advantage over others. You most likely give the thief lots of dodges, lots of evade skills, lots of blinds, lots of blocks, lots of stun breakers, and lots of stealth, oh and lots of DPS.

Changes for thief:

  • Shadow shot:*
  • This skill now insta-kills on hit and gives 6 initiative.
  • If missed, this skill now applies 10 seconds of blind
  • If blocked, the skill applies 5 seconds of blind and shadow steps to the enemy to hit them for a dagger strike, then immediately gain stealth. The skill remains unblock-able!

Don’t mind me, but sounds like someone lost some matches recently … though this level of tail-troubled sustains me more than this omnomberry pie.

Health System 2.0

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

What if we just said that everyone gets 15,000 HP at Lv.80 and then the only real adjustment is armor type (Light, Medium, or Heavy) and stat spreads?

It worked pretty well in GW1 when ~500 was max and your only real adjustments were from what level (and weight) of armor you used and how many runes you had. In theory it would work about as well here, where it would reinforce investing in certain stats to create a build over trying to compensate for the absence of them for several professions as is presently the case.

Skill Balance coming!

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Prediction:

Thief will be largely passed over like usually it is with some very minor in otherwise inconsequential “adjustments” that don’t change or solve anything in the long run, followed by the usual percentile changes to things in the name of balance.

Like giving us better Healing Power scaling on heals (but not health restoration, like Signet of Malice’s passive or Invigorating Precision), because clearly we’re all running Seraph’s gear or something …

Your opinion on GW2 after HoT (2017)

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I guess I’ll put it simply:

If you liked WoW, you’ll love HoT. If you disliked WoW, you’ll want to rethink the expansion.

Basically it provides a massive shift away from Core Tyria gameplay with brand new mechanics, features, and significant changes to the feel of the game that are anything but what you were doing before the expansion. Yes, they might have fixed some of the grinding and even made the content a bit “more” rewarding (despite that all new maps basically have chests of loot everywhere in some capacity), but it isn’t the same game anymore in the content added since the expansion.

And it’s better to think of it as a $60 USD “season pass,” since it appears that a lot of content released with and since Heart of Thorns require it on your account to access. So for new players it might be more attractive since it means access to all current and future content (up to the next one).

A lot of us who are upset with the expansion and the changes to the game are veteran players from as far back as 2012 when the game launched, so dropping $60 for 4 maps (at the time) and elite specs and a lot of rushed content felt … bad. Most of us haven’t really gotten over that or how much it deviates from the game we had spent four years or more playing.

But that’s that, and it really all comes down to the kind of content you like.

Raids, huge-scale chained events, various big fights, and “unlocking” your progression throughout the maps — those can be quite attractive if you like classic action-RPG style gameplay.

However, keep in mind that a lot of points regarding changes to professions and other game modes are still quite valid. Things are not the same anymore, but for those who like the changes, it’s a lot better.

Please let us vote when we buy stuff

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

That’s all very well, but isn’t it the players who buy things that ANet needs to keep most of all?

ANet needs to keep players playing the game. That includes those who can’t afford to buy gems.

Now if it was a poll to see what to add to the gem store, then that may be a good way to get a good sample.

But for what to add to the game for gameplay, it’s not. There are too many reasons why people don’t buy gems with money and only polling players who choose to buy gems isn’t a good sampling of players who play the game. It would skew the data.

Kind of like how “outfits are taking off really well and people seem to really like weapon skins!” has resulted in the same tired parade of … outfits and weapon skins for a quick buck, because most other things are either one-time purchases or pointless to buy more than once unless you’ve got a lot of money to get rid of.

I’ve not really been buying things lately (or much at all for that matter) because I just don’t feel that they’re providing items of good value or worth, or which fulfill a need for me.

Your sentiments are correct; a lot of us are essentially being ignored because ANet is only looking at a few money-maker groups: PvP / eSports, and microtransactions specifically. And since going free-to-play, they’ve lost a fair bit of revenue as well. Would have been smarter to make HoT come with a discount on the core game for new accounts or the like.

But either way the result is the same, and ANet isn’t really paying attention to the wishes of many players who inevitably end up playing whatever content they roll out because there’s not much else left to do.

Why would you put important lore in a Raid?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Well considering how at this point ANet has gone back on just about every promise they have made and the Manifesto (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY) is absolutely dead …?

Yeah, I just … I’ve honestly stopped playing story things anymore, because I missed it all and cannot be kittened to go grind through a slog of nonsense to figure out stuff. And even LS3 has been a remarkable dearth of anything but a drawn out recap.

Make s/d great again

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

All Matter Fecal, D/P has more utility than S/D due to the reliable Blind, Daze/Stun and out-of-combat stealth, easy enough. It also allows for much bigger plays because of these differences.

For the topic S/D… Aside of it losing a lot of its mobility and potential with the “bugfix” to Infiltrators Strike. Which dumbed down the set, as well as heavily nerfed it. I think the real issue isn’t with Sword, but with the off-hand Dagger.
Poison on Dancing Dagger and a short Blind on Cloak and Dagger would go a long way for S/D, D/D and P/D. Both of these Conditions don’t need to be high in duration/stacks (4 second Poison for 1 or 2 stacks, 2 second Blind or something) but would be beneficial both to Power and Condi oriented builds due to their effects while still being in line with the Thief archetype.

I think for S/P, there’s way bigger issues. Ini management can be a kitten, but it’s manageable after some practice. Still, it’s a big thing that makes it far from in-line with D/P (S/D suffers from this to a lesser extent).
Headshot’s absolutely fine, but S/P doesn’t inherently get a lot of value out of Blinding Powder. Not much to do about it without probably harming D/P. If they’d let it pulse faster again, that’d be great but it would still be OP.

On a final note, don’t nerf D/P for the sake of S/D (or anything else, really). Rather put some effort into getting them both in line and viable for different playstyles.
You don’t stabilize by shooting yourself in the foot, you know… Try it some time if you got your doubts!

EDIT:
Oh right, the thing about skill queuing really is an ‘L2P’ issue. Try to keep your calm better, I’d say… It does happen to me that I get too trigger-happy on the Flanking Strike (especially against Blocks…), but I always feel like zn idiot then because I spammed my skill, when a single tap would suffice.

Well, poison on dagger attacks and a short blind on Cloak and Dagger can be obtained through traits in Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts, respectively.

Races and attack animations

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fluffdragon.1523

Ice Encasement Outfit Feedback [merged]

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Think of it not as a buttcape but as your towel.

A towel is just about the most massively useful thing any Dragon Watcher can carry. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold snow of Frostgorge Sound; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Southsun inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert landscape of Ember Bay; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy Elon River ; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Dragon Champion, Tequatl (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course you can dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non Dragon Watcher) discovers that a Dragon Watcher has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, WvW gear, latest gem store outfit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the Dragon Watcher any of these or a dozen other items that the Dragon Watcher might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of Tyria, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So wear your Buttcape Towel with pride. Everywhere you go people will see it and say, “Now that’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”

And that the truth. ^^

Thought I’d say I logged in for no more reason than to +1 this post.

Bravo, you magnificent injury, you.

a world with no transmutation charges?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Because I doubt ANet wants to redesign the equipment tab yet again to accommodate a set of “cosmetic” slots.

Remove Leather from Low Level Crafting

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fluffdragon.1523

To everyone going on how it’s “cheaper to buy from the TP,” don’t forget that to craft max-level or even ascended gear, you have to grind up to the rank necessary to do so, which requires many low-level components.

Crafting isn’t necessary for most gameplay, but for anyone interested in legendaries or ascended equipment, it’s an absolute must. And with most drops being scaled to your general level, it actually becomes harder and harder to maintain a flow of resources from armor (cloth and leather) which eventually become difficult to acquire at lower levels.

The “unstable” items may have helped that in the most tangential of senses, but they’ve become even worse of a coin and time sink than the stuff you’re trying to get from them.

All around feedback from a solo player

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

For the dungeon tokens, there are PvP daily rooms for PvE people. Go do your PvP dailies in them with the Arah reward track selected and you’ll get the dungeon tokens. (You’ll need to have done the story line dungeon first). If you go right after reset each day there is usually PvE hosts who will kick out anyone who breaks the PvE friendly rules. Find a room that says daily and ask what the rules are as they are a bit different for each arena.

Hey, good to know! This could probably really help me out and maybe give me reason to try out PvP.

Remove Leather from Low Level Crafting

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I think a solution to the OP’s problem would be if ANet would either:

  • Provide more sources of leather by increasing the drop-rate of hides, belts, and other salvageable items as per the old GW1 days, when we could salvage piles of enemy “armor” into materials. Good times.
  • Further increase the salvage rate of lower-tier leathers, which I swear I get almost nothing of — and yet I’m selling off thick leather like it’s going out of style.

Either one would provide greater quantities of a rather limited resource without substantially altering the existing methods of acquisition by simply making them more reliable.

Or better yet:

Stabilize the kittened economy by implementing material vendors using a similar quote-based system to what was used in GW1, thus ensuring an even platform and exchange. Yes, I’m aware this would undercut the trading post severely, but at this point, I’ve seen players overcharge for items that can be purchased from common vendors.

Let it be used to buy and sell equipment and consumables and similar items. Materials are too volatile right now to trust to the whims of the markets.

It should not be removed simply because you feel that it is too high….

No, they should remove it, because they broke their crafting system when they added all the high level recipes that use 250 of this, and 250 of that.

Bottom line is really thus:

Why even have hundreds of crafting recipes between level 1 and 450 if none of them make sense to craft, because it’s an order of magnitude cheaper to just buy the gear instead? To simply “give people something to do when leveling craft”? Yeah, that’s terrible game design and no fun at all.

The system isn’t broken. None of those recipes made sense before ascended crafting. It was always cheaper to buy the equipment off the TP.

Oh. And let’s not exaggerate the numbers. For leather, the T7 recipes which provide the largest demand for them, only require at most 40. It’s nowhere near the 250 that you claim.

This is in part because certain things (blank patches, maybe?) give 5x the output, which is incredibly easy to miss if you aren’t reading the recipes closely. I thought the Marauder set I wanted to make would need some 400+ bits of leather or whatever until I noticed that.

Still don’t have the resources to make it, though. Oh well.

Anyone else can't really feel environment?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’d say it’s the change in design aesthetic from Core Tyria to Heart of Thorns content.

The former made use of open space and sight lines to create sweeping vistas and the sense of vast space in what was arguably rather limited area. The latter exploits the Z-axis heavily and instead uses clutter and corridors to provide a sense of lots of content in what is ultimately a dungeon crawl environment.

A great example between the two design aesthetics and principles is to compare Rata Sum to Tarir.

In terms of ambient design, however, it seems the team has forgotten that saturation is a bad decision. Just look at Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay, and the contrast-hell that is Bitterfrost. Red, orange, and off-white describe these areas perfectly, in order. Worse yet, there’s so much visual noise and clutter and effects going on all around you that it can be difficult to distinguish what’s a prop, what’s part of the environment, and what it is you’re actually looking for.

I’ve been playing with all nameplates disabled since probably a week or two after launch when I first found the option. I find I tend to have CTRL or ALT depressed half the time I’m walking around HoT content so I can tell what’s what anymore. No such problem in the rest of central Tyria, though!

Make s/d great again

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Dinked around with Sword again recently, as both S/D and S/P.

Sword feels nice and hefty in its hits, good impact and nice damage, but it feels like I’m swinging a slab of lead around, not a blade. Faster attacks or a tighter and shorter animation sequence might help improve it, for as it is, it looks like we’re flailing more than hacking and slashing at something.

(I need to drag my Guardian out of hiding again and see if the thief Sword AA sequence reminds me of the Guardian one with good reason or not ….)

In terms of generalized improvements:

  • Autoattack sequence: tighten up the animations and make the sequence a bit faster. It’s a hard-hitting weapon, yes, but it also looks lumbering and slow. That doesn’t befit thief, and the speed boost will more than make up for damage (like how Dagger can outclass Staff in a Power build through speed alone). However, the inflicted Weakness and Cripple are huge benefits to a low-HP class and, used right, can be great for kiting foes around and mitigating a fair bit of damage taken, so overall I’m OK with it.
  • Infiltrator’s Strike: perhaps in addition to shadow-stepping to the target, it should position us behind them. This would help exploit Crit builds, maybe some runes, and make more sense if someone wanted to quickly pop of Cloak and Dagger too, resulting in very nice synergy. Still don’t like the 15s window of it being unusable until Infiltrator’s Return is used, though, as I prefer to use this as a gap closer or to open a fight, which basically means either a 15s cool-down or a long walk. Can’t say we should remove the chained skill, but perhaps come up with a better implementation.
  • Flanking Strike (Sword/Dagger): honestly, the original version as a single attack was better and didn’t leave two of our attacks “on cool-down.” Sure we could save it for a time to use Larcenous Strike, but … now we no longer have an evade! It has already functionally been reverted to the pre-2013 version sans the attack split, so just re-combine it and keep the Evade, which is the only true addition.
  • Pistol Whip (Sword/Pistol): no real complaints here, and that long Evade is pretty nice. Still not a fan of attacks that effectively root you, though, but that’s just me.

(edited by fluffdragon.1523)

Add "GameMechanic"-Dailies (back) to the game

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

People who have been playing since the release of GW2 might remember some of the old Dailies – stuff like:

  • Daily Condition Applier
  • Daily Condition Remover
  • Daily Skill Interruptor
  • Daily Combo Killer
  • Daily Dodger
  • Daily Healer

I really liked those dailies as they forced people to understand how their classes (combo-fields, condition removel, etc.) and the general gameplay work (for example: reviving is (most of the time) a good thing).

Just look at how many players nowadays don’t understand break-bars. They complain about mobs being way too hard and if you go to help them you’ll notice that they totally ignore the BBs.

So why not add back the old dailies and add new ones like a “Daily Bar Breaker” daily which requires players to break 3 break-bars (and other game-mechanic related things).

That way, players would at least have a small reason/incentive to learn about how their classes and the game work without ANet having to create elaborate tutorials.

I have been waiting for a post like this for years.

Yes!! Bring back a system of dailies that was actually fun and helped me to learn my class!

This new tour of Tyria is boring and tends to force me to forgo all but the simplest of dailies be sure of the limited time I have to play duribg the week thanks to my professional life.

I actually miss Influence...

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

They took influence away to kill off micro guilds. A shame imo.

Not sure I agree. There were a lot of complaints about having to rep. It seems like influence was at odds with the multi-guild system, so they changed it. I think the micro-guild affect was a side affect. More like collateral damage, than something specifically intended.

I’m not sure how anyone can definitively say why they did it unless they were there when the decision to do it was made.

Basing my conclusions based off other things GW2 does, it does seem like they removed it to kill off personal guilds so people couldn’t use it as additional storage.

They have a 10 mail limit for mail from players so people can’t use it as additional storage.

They only have an option for take all in the auction house presumably for the same reason. It’s not difficult to add an option to take items individually, as other games do.

Personal guilds allowed for a lot of extra free storage, which goes against ANet’s goal, to get people to use the gem store to buy additional storage.

Talk about confirmation bias. People have complained about many things that Anet has changed. Surely there were easier ways to get rid of the personal banking thing than changing influence to something else.

They could have simply, if they wanted, made the minimum guild size 10.

Because everyone who had personal banks before still has them. The logic doesn’t really hold up.

Cause it’s not as simple as saying “Hey everyone, with the update of guild halls we’re deleting all guilds with only 1 member in them!” That’d kitten a ton of people off who store stuff in there. Additionally, locking everyone’s guild until they cleaned their guild bank out would have a similar reaction. The easiest way to handle it with little protest is to do what they did, make it more difficult going forward. It’s called grandfathering.

He’s right, you know.

Nobody necessarily LOST anything with this transformation, albeit there were a few setbacks because of the changed acquisition mechanics (our guild had to reacquire one or two middling upgrades).

The difference was, in a guild of 400 or so, it’s actually not that hard. Especially when you have a few “lifers” who crank out upgrades like they sleep, eat, and breathe the game.

But the rest of us? I used to have a personal guild just for the fun of having a guild (and so people would stop sending me invites for their guild). I barely got very far with it and yeah, it DID make a nice storehouse for the 10 or so things I’d kept in it back in the day before Experience Tomes / Scrolls were a thing and I had to hold onto claims tickets and scraps and a million other currency / key items that can’t be put into the wallet.

That was also before wallets were unified, so it let me mule items between my alts nice and easily. But, you know … a lot of what they did to make life easier and discourage a need for that kind of stuff turned moot once we needed ridiculous amounts of resources to upgrade thereafter.

Needless to say I no longer have a personal guild.

Please don't make DR similar to Lion's Arch

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’d just prefer for it (and mostly Shaemoor) to just not be Kryta #2 where the dumb LS mechanics and monsters stayed and stayed for no reason.

LA is very generic and soulless now, but the other Human-area-invasion actually left broken game mechanics there.

Agreed. We went from something that, while not being well laid out OR utilized, actually FELT like a city. Now it’s just a mess.

And oh gods do I sure hate going into Kessex Hills / Peaks / Whatever nowadays thanks to all the mucked up leftovers in it.

The main problem with LA is that the parts people spend most of their time are the theme park bits. If those had followed the character of the terraces it’d be fine.

Agreed, but the biggest problem is that, post overhaul, the “other areas” except the Skritt Pile thing (because Triforge Amulet stuff or whatever it was) and the Sharkmaw jumping puzzle are all GONE.

There’s really nothing to go bumble into or explore anymore unless you count some ogres or ettins (which I’ve really not gone over to recently, now that I think about it).

Yeah, LA now is an absolute joke. I make new toons in an empty slot every now and then to play up to the story that takes place in old LA then leave them there so I can see the old map after having to visit the new one.

That being said, I wouldn’t mind seeing some damage spread out over parts of DR that later get fixed a bit.

While I hope ANet wouldn’t be so bankrupt on concepts to start recycling stuff … again, I would find it interesting if there was a siege of some description that caused overworld damage in the city. Nothing major, but perhaps some portions turned into hostile instances or the like (so the city is still USABLE). Could be fun to work to rebuild and secure things over time.

Though the last thing we should be doing is kittening over some newbies just leaving Shaemoor.

The Dreamer: Sound complaint

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

We can reduce NPC chatter frequency, we can manipulate individual sound channels, turn down instruments, change frequency of BGM, modify rendering density and quality of other players …

… but gods forfend that we not hear that whinny in the midst of a fight every time some ranger does literally anything.

(At least it’s not a longbow …)

(Feedback) Rox's Pathfinder Outfit

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Don’t forget:

You can’t charge money for armor unless it’s in the next expansion, but you can charge ~$8.75 USD for a single outfit you can barely customize that requires far less time and effort to produce!

I actually miss Influence...

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Agreed. This and he obscene drain on the market for resources has very negatively impacted the community more than it “fixed” anything or made it more approachable to new players.

I feel like Anet is abandoning Guild Wars...

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I disagree. I’m a believer in rotation. Old staff leaving the company means new people joining the team. New people = new ideas. I think we’re in for a treat.

I agree with this. To build on it, staff at Anet, indeed staff at most companies, are people working for a living. I would hope that most love their job and are engaged and excited with it. But people move on. Companies, products, and games should (hopefully) outlive the people who work on them at any given time. Jobs are components of careers and people make moves not just because they are worn out on a product but because they have career opportunities, family situations, or simply want to do something else for a bit. GW2 has been active going on five years now but those who worked on it started long before that. So, six, seven, eight years in a job…that’s a long time.

And…I agree with zomgbuffalo. Getting some new blood, new ideas, new energy in…these are good things. I am also confident.

I’d say the down-side to this idea is its counterpart: that successful concepts may fall to the wayside as their proponents leave or are ousted (whether by “new blood” banding together or simply moving on to other positions within the company).

And for some veteran players that’s a very big concern. Because the more the game changes, the less it’s the game we got hooked on 4 years ago.

I won’t discount that some of the new people have really helped revitalize the concepts in the new Living Story and Heart of Thorns, but the execution of them is flawed and doesn’t feel like Guild Wars. It’s more like any other MMO to me — listen to dialog, fetch a thing to progress a chain of events, farm some more, then move on.

And I agree with a prior poster on the previous page; LS3 and LS2 just aren’t doing it for me. LS1 was a kittened mess, but at least it felt like an action-filled adventure where things were evolving as they went, rather than “Here comes the Commander of the Pact; let us have a nice conversation with them before we close this chapter.” — because that has been kind of … it, so far in LS3, at least as far as I’ve progressed. And that included getting revenge on Jade constructs for how big a pain in the kitten they were back in the day. I found more engagement in Firewatch (that walking simulator).

Honestly, it feels more like ANet is trying to find a new “platform” by which to appease players. HoT drew in lots but upset many when they learned it was an Orr Temple Run zerg on steroids, so we got HoT-lite maps in LS3, which isn’t quite working either. If anything, I’m worried that they’re going to continually change things to the point that we’ll end up with sections of the game that no longer resemble the game. And we’re getting pretty close to that with how disparate LS2/3 and HoT content are to the entire rest of Tyria.

I feel like Anet is abandoning Guild Wars...

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’d love to see more focus on lore. I had the luck of a good guildie who told me the story behind most parts of ascalon. But it would be nice to give the lore more importance. And I don’t mean only books are plates around the world.

I cannot say THIS hard enough. Seeing similar places after the Searing and really experiencing what Ascalon became and realizing I was standing in the ruins of a place I once fought for my life in …? That was awesome.

But it’s meaningless to so many players because nothing’s there to say “Hey look! This is significant and important enough that we kept pieces of it lying around!”

Heck, there were players who spent time overlaying the GW1 and GW2 maps and realizing they matched up quite well. Clearly the development team put a ton of effort into presenting us Tyria 200 years later — and yet there’s so very little inside the world itself to make that known unless you were there.

Make s/d great again

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

You’re going about it all wrong, OP.

First we have to ban all maces and hammers from PvP, since they’re a threat to our security and our integrity. Then we need to systematically dismantle the the unfair status quo against thieves by lowering the number of wins required to advance in the ranking — and to triple how much is needed if someone rerolls, because Thief First.

After that we’ll add some nice damage breakers for Sword users, designed to help bolster the weapon’s usability — which the other players in PvP will pay for, of course, because we’ll impose a 20% buff on Thief players when decapping enemy points.

We’ll also just plain buff everything a sword can do because we said so.

(This response is made as an entirely sarcastic reply to the OP’s choice of thread title)

I think I prefer Core Thief

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

This thread quickly escalated into the freakish love-child of Trahearne.jpg and the didn’t read lol meme.

I play a core p/d thief as well and find it very successful in pve and wvw and a lot of fun. I am actually thinking of a power build core build. The one I liked best on paper was all but identical to yours but used Staff. Unfortunately you can not use staff in core.

Glad to hear it! Hopefully you manage to come up with something, though I found that between the effects of Executioner and Exposed Weakness combined with Dagger’s faster auto-attack sequence, general damage came out to be almost identical.

I’d honestly been keeping acrobatics around to synergize with the various on-dodge and on-evade features of Daredevil, until I found I wasn’t making much use of the latter. I’ve held onto it for the extra Vigor, condition removal, and mild healing from Assassin’s Reward, which I’ve found plays nicely with Invigorating Precision. Still miss the old version of the trait-line, though. Those were good times.

My god, what have you done to thief?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Haha, I take it that OP doesn’t know about our invulnerability frames, our unlimited dodges (but only if you have the right tempo to your keystrokes!), or our ability to cancel skills into other skills to make truly insane combos!

Just wait till they realize our tension bar constantly refills and can be traited to do so faster and better than any other class! We’re nearly unstoppable as we teleport around the field!


Oh, wait, this isn’t a fitan gaem and thief can’t do any of that. Though I sure would like a Hyper Combo ability to get a 100-hit combo on a boss if I have my Initiative at full …

I think I prefer Core Thief

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’ve been running Daredevil since I was able to get the last points needed post map-complete to unlock it all. It was great fun to whip a staff around and whomp things with crazy leaps and stuff. The utility wasn’t perfect, but it was there and it suited me.

… and then I got bored of it.

No easy access to stealth, good damage but poor speed, and overall it just didn’t feel like Thief so much as I was playing Warrior Lite. Or maybe a weird kind of Ranger that wanted to go Two-Weapon Fighting but rolled poorly on their initial assets and could only afford a quarterstaff (… wait, wrong game).

So I swapped out Daredevil and its delicious healing skill for Deadly Arts — and oh my kitten am I having far more fun than I’ve had since HoT went live!

I’m still playing some silly heal-crit-blob (Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes, and Acrobatics) to get by on my pathetic 12k HP average, and yet it’s going great. Awesome damage, Backstabs left and right, Heartseeker brings back the good feels, and I honestly enjoy playing Thief again.

Heck, yesterday I decided to roam around in the (quite underpopulated) Silverwastes after having some good fun romping in Orr to play poorly as I relearned daggers. Had the Legendary Bloodstone-Crazed Devourer spawn literally on top of me, and after calling in reinforcements, enjoyed one of the most fun fights I’ve had in months. Big thank you to everyone who came to assist! You guys were awesome.

That’s really the point of this post. To say that I’ve decided I don’t really need nor want Daredevil, and that Core Thief is good enough for me.

(For those curious, I play strictly PvE and the infrequent fractal, though you can find me in the Heart of the Mists experimenting with builds on occasion. My current setup is here: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZIQRAoY6KlsMxOnghTg/JOoJq9DMcVYvvCimQHATYEA-TxSAABG8AAU4gAYlyvdU/RCzf4oH4FNDzqEEgjAwFnAAk2fAA-e)

I feel like Anet is abandoning Guild Wars...

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’d say the OP has some legitimate concerns.

MANY of the original founders of ANet and instrumental members who helped develop the original game and its lore — and helped craft the oft-neglected manifesto of the game — are now gone. We’re operating on a whole new frequency that changes with every update, it seems. Core Tyria, HoT, even portions of Living Story content are completely divergent in style and play. It’s very troubling because, as a veteran player, it means that everything I’ve already worked for might be moot or change entirely all over again on a whim. Like specializations did.

And that’s something we were promised wouldn’t happen, but it did once already.

They’re also correct in asserting that it feels very much as though a huge portion of the original lore of Tyria has been turned into half-finished lore books scattered around maps rather than the deep and vibrant portion it served in Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. I can understand wanting to separate from the original trilogy of campaigns to lower the bar of entry and ensure a more approachable narrative for players who did not play the original Guild Wars — and I can attest to knowing several friends who did not and greatly enjoy Guild Wars 2 nonetheless, so clearly this worked in ANet’s favor — but for those of us who have been around since Prophecies, it feels like much of what kept us here is gone.

There’s no more Elona, no more Cantha, not even Palawa Joko except as flavor-text on an item. If anything, we have to look to skills and themes carried over (and inevitably changed) to find nostalgia.

And there is a definite concern over the lack of balance updates instead of feature and cosmetic additions. Yes having new outfits and skins is great, and I’ve gotten a few of them myself, but there are dozens of skills in the game — player skills, not monsters! — which have not be redressed in years. I myself ran a survey of Ranger and Thief (before work hours prevented me from crafting others) and found that many skills were completely overlooked for a very long time because they were simply inferior to their counterparts.

And with the introduction of Elite Specializations, that disparity has only gotten to be even more unhinged, where I’ve heard and read countless players saying that, in many cases and game modes, not running these specs is to one’s detriment. And in a lot of cases, they’re right.

The power creep is indeed real, and while ANet is taking pains to smooth it out and bring everything up to speed, it feels like some teams are being neglected or undercut, and unable to deliver for very long periods at a time. And that speaks of internal strife which none of us would want to see in the company that not only brought us Guild Wars 2, but also keeps it alive.

I think that this is what the OP was trying to capture — a worry that what we’re seeing is what we’re being allowed to see, and that things might be on a steady decline. And as for someone who has been around since launch and tracked many of the changes and developments since Beta, I’d say yes. Yes there really is a strange change in direction going on.

Returned but serious disappointment

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Signing in just to post this:

The takeaway from this thread should be: a critical function of Guilds, like many recent changes, was not adequately communicated or made readily apparent.

That is a serious design flaw.

In the future, the Wiki (link above, or accessed in-game via typing /Wiki [topic of choice] in chat) is a great source for all things Guild Wars 2.

The wiki shouldn’t be used as the help-text removed from the game; it should provide detailed information and minutiae of Guild Wars 2, its lore, and various aspects of the game. There really does need to be better clarity within the game’s UI and various windows to adequately describe what can and cannot be done. Players should not be expected to sift through the wiki or google to find answers to very simple questions.

Kittens and censorship

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Are you dolyakking me? This is a load of dolyak. Everyone knows that when you say dolyak like dolyak, it dolyaks with your text and changes it all to dolyak!

Or are you from one of those regions where they replace it all with “dolyak” instead?

Wait …

Medium Armor That Looks Like a Skirt

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Hey, OP! That’s actually really cleverly done.

Why does Thief lack support / team-play?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Supposedly, the next Elite Specialization (whenever the blazes THAT comes out) will use a Rifle. I’ve been hoping that it’ll have some nice support abilities tied into it, primarily in the form of unique enemy debuffs tied in with the weapon skills. Like an anti-Might and/or a unique version of Vulnerability that stacks with the existing Condition.

inb4 we become Ana from Overwatch.

(Actually I’d be okay with that.)

(edited by fluffdragon.1523)

Post a pic of your character only if your armor is mix-n-match

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

My thief, Geppa. Her look has changed a lot over the years.

Attachments:

Why does Thief lack support / team-play?

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

Having been playing since early access in 2012, it has all the same taken me some time to really dive into all the different professions. And with Thief being my main (and one I enjoyed greatly until last year), I’d not given it much thought.

But then something occurred to me: Thief might well be the only profession that, at least in its current incarnation, lacks almost all team-play and support capacity.

With Venom Share builds all but nerfed from the face of Tyria and the only real support capacity we have being a few traits in the Trickery line (tied to Steal, placing us on a nasty single source with a modest cool-down), there doesn’t seem to be the same sort of passive team support like in other classes.

Ranger / Druid, Engineer / Scrapper, shout and banner Warriors, Guardians in general, Necromancer, Elementalist, and even Mesmer through a variety of simple weapon skills (and nearly all of their glamours) and especially as a Chronomancer can all quite handily support their allies in a fight. Even Revenant can via the Ventari stance, and it only gets better at it with Herald.

Yet Thief … can’t. Not even with Daredevil.

It makes me wonder if maybe part of the reason we’re so poorly received and viewed is because we’re the only profession in the game that has little to no ability to bolster the party or squad or even whomever we happen across.

Honestly speaking, it feels like Thief might just be missing an entire sphere of gameplay, and thus is barred from a rather critical role that would allow for not only more build and play diversity, but a much greater and more meaningful presence in the community. I mean, sure, nobody would run support in PvP, but think about WvW, PvE, Fractals, Dungeons, and Raids. We can’t just be “the selfish DPS with no durability” forever.

Is GW2 Worth Getting Into? (2017)

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

I’ve been on the lookout a while now for an MMO to invest my time into. I have played this game for a while now and enjoy it, however I am worried that in 2017 it might start to die, and i have wasted my time. I just want people’s opinions on whether I should stay or not. I looked into WOW and it looks reasonably fun and active, however it is far too expensive for what I’m looking for. Does anyone recommend waiting for a new MMO or perhaps transferring to a newer MMO such as BDO, which looked quite good?

If you’re a more recent player and enjoy the game as it currently is, then you’re unlikely to be disappointed with future content and expansions. The team at ArenaNet has made rather clear what they intend of the game — at least in terms of competitive play and high-level open world content.

As for what the new expansion will entail, that’s still unknown. If Living Story Season 3 is anything to go by, a lot of map-farming and cooperative meta-events, which … isn’t particularly quite like what the team had said following the reception of Heart of Thorns.

So we’ll see.

What made this game great

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Posted by: fluffdragon.1523

fluffdragon.1523

PvE:

I don’t play this one much other than when I needed a legendary from HoT, but back when I started the game it was really fun unlocking weapon skills by using the weapon in the world. Like…. I remember it wasn’t locked behind level progression, I would just use it enough and the skill would unlock itself.

Moreover, I don’t think they made an improvement with the way you acquired new utilities, it really took away a lot of the wow factor for newer players having to go all the way to level 11 ( I think) to unlock a new utility skill.

^^^^Those two changes killed the enjoyment for me when I had just picked up the game.

These two sentiments are probably the ones I agree with most. There was a more organic feel to the game when it was first released. It felt like I was actually progressing, rather than having a mysterious giant hand (or floating dialog, rather) opening doors for me along the way.

Was it harder? Yeah, sure, but it was INTUITIVE. Once you realized how things worked, it actually made a lot of sense and felt natural. “Of course I learn how to use a weapon by using it!” I told myself. Because it’s obvious.

And it actually made it really fun to try out weapons, too. I remember equipping a sword I found from a drop and jumping into an event (back when Plains of Ashford wasn’t a dead-zone) and learning the new skills as I went. It was actually very exciting and made it feel like my character was actually figuring things out as I went.

The new leveling mechanics have honestly made me greatly dislike leveling up characters now. Forcing my mesmer along was an absolute chore, and very frustrating to hit weird plateaus of power and have things artificially gated because I was “too inexperienced” or whatever to do things I remember figuring out before Level 3 back in the day (because I jumped in a lake and OH KITTEN FISH HAVE TEETH).

TL;DR: I miss the old leveling and skill unlock systems. They felt unique and more in touch with what Guild Wars 2 was all about at the start — a game that was our story and our journey towards greatness, whatever that might be.