Guild Wars 2

Aint played in months but raids really interest me. I think for raids to be successful in the game like gw2, you have to take the lessons learnt from current mmos, what sucks and what is awesome. Pros and cons are numerous and contentious and i dont want to derail the thread.

AI in this game is about as standard as most games, it appears to be a finite state machine with seek, attack, avoid flee etc. commands, the more commands the ‘smarter’ the AI seems. This is great for fodder but not really for big raids, and i really do not enjoy some of the bigger world bosses in this game, move here, dodge this omg red circle u noob.. its boring now and everyone does it. This is a wish but for real challenging content id like to see some basic genetic algorithms; an example would be, several enemy archetypes, they have different strengths and weaknesses but have to be downed several times before being killed, after each down 2 combine to counter the strengths of the team, evolving the battle and making it harder for the players while reducing the number of enemies. There’s a lot more you can do, that is just an easy idea. What i’m trying to say is, make the fights interesting by making the AI more interesting

I think raiding should be rare skins, pref crafted skins that take awhile to unlock/make and maybe some rare named items like in GW1, i don’t think we need any more gear creep or levels and to fit the game. Make the rewards rare and hard to get, it is something this game lacks. It has to be scalable, but i don’t think this is a worry, the tech is there, its refined and it works, why change/not use it.

Gonna stockpile aload of these and start randomly porting myself all over tyria!! heres to hoping for some nice secret areas =D

Oh man some good info in here, like i said ive only just started getting into the lore properly so i knew i would miss a few things :p I think theres alot more to the nightmare and dragon thing, or even really just with the forest dragon (i hope that this is the next dragon), ive spent the last few days hunting through the world for clues :p Ill def be reading through your theories/research Konig =)

Edit:
Just read through, i missed the oakheart stuff, i would like to think the forest dragons minions where that nightmare court/oakhearts and other nature things, corrupted by his power but thats a massive assumption with no real facts… yet.

Ive solod a couple champions and got no loot no experience… actually happens more times when i solo them, the few times ive been in the gauntlet or frostforge zerg ive always got loot cept for a few times, and i play guardian(hammer and staff in zergs) so i know tht im doing enough damage

Ive only just started catching up on the gw2 lore (massive gw fan just never looked deeper into the gw2 plot) and i noticed something. Im probably wrong but when you create a sylvari you fight a dragon in the dream(which is it trying to corrupt the dream to make a nightmare) however that dragon is nature based. I assumed that it was nature based because it was the sylvari and that’s what it manifested as, but what if that dragon is actually a manifestation of the forest dragon? it makes sense to me. And what if the nightmare court are actually servants to the forest dragon? In the dream the dragon used the hounds, the same as the nightmare court do, and they both want similar things so its entirely possible Cadeyrn aligned himself with the forest dragon to free the slyvari from Ventari’s tablet. Remember Colin mentioned the forest dragon is in maguuma and when asked about who the next dragon we fight could be said the forest dragon(as well are others :p)…

Anyway just a wild theory that sounds less plausible now i have wrote it down

I think everyone complaining about the champ trains and T6 mats are forgetting something, the crafting level is getting increased(most likely soon imo) so anet needed to add in a way to easily obtain t6 mats, if t6 mats where as hard to get as prepatch then leveling crafting to 500 would be a nightmare esp with the timegated materials. And the skins, id rather their drop rate was decreased slightly but again, it doesnt matter too much, i think they will still be pretty rare sitting in between exotics like mjonir and normal crafted ones.

0/0/30/30/10 guardian, specced to remove conditions with shouts and for extra retaliation. Took about 104 tickets but i eventually done it with greatsword and specter and focus. Tried alot of builds and learnt a kitten ton about this class(only just got it to 80). My tactics was simple, phase 1 is super easy takes a few runs to figure out the route, phase 2 was a pain, i often got screwed by the orbs spawning in the aoe and dragging me before i could do anything.. but as long as a enter phase 2 i drag her to me with sword 5 lay down sword 4 and then sword 2, keeps me condition clean and the aoe+retal takes 1/3 of her health if u get it right, the its just the standard kite with scepter, keep her burning by rotating virtue and purging flames.

While our overlord game director said in another thread that this event is going to be a yearly one, i still have hope. LIke in two weeks primordus’ minions could start appearing around queensdale and such then in one month when the next patch hits, when you log in you get a super awesome cutscene of the dragon bursting through the collapse and destroying kitten. I just get the feeling that there’s of a reason for this content being temporary and this would be crazy epic.

Unfortunately i think this song is relevant(in its name only) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WxPyUzWSPA

just hypothetically since its not gonna happen, the climax of the queens jubliee was primordus finally getting bored of being in the depths and emerging from the great collapse?

What if, in another alternate reality, abaddon was not defeated. What if the investigation leads to a story arch for his return?

I got sick of him as well, but you can use a box o’ fun to heal yourself (make sure its set for the transformation stuff)

New weapons skills would be amazing, i hope they add them as well as utility skills, more combo options would be great, also a nightmare to balance :p

Finally!! meaningful horizontal progression, i really hope this is implemented in a similar way to capturing elites, i.e going to hunt certain mobs or go to certain places to learn the skills. Either way the one thing that has always bugged me was how little choice we had on skills, while a lot for them wouldn’t have been used if there was more the illusion of choice is fantastic.

I always enjoy these reading these threads… DX11 support is needed, but the renderer needs optimization, in fact if it was possible i would have anet work on a deferred renderer and get some lovely dynamic lighting/image based lighting. That would make a massive difference to the visuals, but would be more expensive, however doing this would mean alot of new tech would be added which would counter the performance hit of a deferred renderer, so for people who couldnt run full dynamic the frame increase would be pretty big (cryengine runs fully dynamic lighting which is why most games look super sexy in it). My desktop pc runs gw2 at about 50-60 fps in eyefinity from 3 1080 screens with bevel offset (running a 6970) so the game is not that poorly optimized.

I agree with having a hard mode, i don’t have time to level another character nor do i want to but i would enjoy the challenge of doing the story again on a harder difficultly so i can try the priory/order.

It has been openly admitted that rangers have unimaginative traits, and widely known that pets currently are less than useful. So instead of listing what is broken, or what traits need buffed, i decided to list some changes that i think would lead to considerably more interesting game play and specs for rangers.

Firstly, as it has been requested in pretty much every thread on here, rangers need a lone ranger option. This should be in the marksmanship trait tree, ideally a second tier trait it will increase the damage dealt by the ranger by ~50% when the pet is stowed. However doing this brings up the question of balancing pets to fit this as with this trait, why would anyone not spec and use it.
Pet Revamp
So pets are bad, we all know this. I think it would be an idea to add a f bar ability to pets, this when pressed causes the ranger to shout at the pet, the pet will then attempt to avoid an attack and if hit takes massively reduced damage. This should fix the lack of AI for getting out of the red circle but makes it a micro managed skill, so if ur pet does die of an aoe, its your fault.
Next, the main change to pet/rangers (which would take some serious balance and trait tweaks) is what i like to call the Bond System.

Bond System

Like attunements and guardians virtues, these are passive abilities, that require the presence of a pet. The type of bond is purely dependent on the equipped pet.
A cat pet would increase the movement speed of the ranger and add a default bleed to all attacks(if your attack already causes a bleed, it is stacked so two bleeds would be applied),
Using a moa bird/fern hound would grant health regen to the group on every attack
A bear would grant improved vitality and toughness etc.

I’m not listing them all but you get the point, there should be 5-6 different bonds available from pets, imo this will lead to interesting mechanics/game play. The BM trait line would now be changed to improve the benefits of the bonds given by pets.
One of the more controversial/crappy ideas i have is it remove barrage from longbow and add it as a utility skill. Similar to eles Glyph of storms, what the skills does will depend on the weapon equipped, and its condition damage/other effect will depend on the pet bond available. This gives all ranger specs a viable and interesting aoe skill(i would remove sharpening stones). The replacement longbow skill should be targeted shot, it should take 1-2 seconds to charge, and when fully changed it negates armor leaving the opponent with vun stacks, it also does a decent amount of damage.
Obviously there’s more that could be changed, i just think instead of complaining about spirits and signets id add a new idea to the table

1) So, when i’m leveling/farming or crafting/salvaging, my inventory gets full fast with loads of different collectibles, and i have to go through them individually to deposit them to the bank. It would just be quicker and easy to have a button or option that deposits all collectibles to the bank—-forget this one

2) Id like to be able to rename my character, through the cash store. Changing your characters look would be nice as well

3) More town clothing options- some that can be crafted would be nice.

edit:
4) More emotes!!! and the option to macro emotes with the /em people use for roleplaying— this ofc would mean some form of option menu/bar so the custom emotes could be saved and used