Guild Wars 2

I would like a horse that can engineer some kind of real class balance.

I use Hounds of Balthazar and Prayer to Kormir all the time.

Since Unload’s nerf killed P/P thieves (or at least made them less fun to play), I’ve been hoping for another P/P class to capture that game play style and sense of satisfaction of racing onto a point and blasting like a madman.

I think eles would be the obvious choice to go P/P. It would be fun, fast, magey, and fit very well into guild wars. An elemental gun mage makes so much innate sense to be that I’m not really sure why we got the warhorn spec at all, but what’s past is past. I think they could spice the ele’s mechanics up by letting you attune your right hand and left hand to two separate elements letting you mix and match fun combinations in your number 3 skill slot.

People seems committed to getting swords though. Not sure why. Melee mages would mess with the gear balancing, and we already have several poppy, evasive sword classes. Flash jumping like a lightning bolt and slashing with your sword is exactly like a guardian. Doing a basic attack combo that applies whatever predictable condition on the 3rd swing is exactly like the everything-else in the rest of the game.

What are the great ideas boiling up under the community that would make sword eles fun?

I think this wreck of a thread could be favorably translated as, “Horizontal character progression is a bad game mechanic, because new options only serve to add work I have to put in my character to NOT become more powerful. After grinding up hero points to fully unlock the elite spec, a new expansion promises to come along and force me to do it all over again—nullifying the sense of accomplishment I got from doing it the first time—because…again…the progression is horizontal. But we all know that’s only one likely outcome and it will or won’t be true depending on how the expansion shapes up. Some classes will be better implemented than others. We can say that it adds more choices, but we all know that new expansions will mean new mechanics and a new set of assumptions about game play, and HoT has, with certain classes, shown us that ‘more options’ rarely stay that optional. Rather, the newest, shiniest thing quickly becomes mandatory, or at the least players who don’t adopt it are penalized with a sense of not feeling ‘fully’ included in the new content.”

I get that the armor model makers have to be given a job to do. And they can’t just be swapped out for new staff when Anet thinks their job is done for an expansion.

People are just not that fungible. You can’t hired them on a per item basis and expect them to make themselves available instead of finding full time jobs or moving on to other projects.

But given how few new weapon and gear models came with HoT (and how ugly they were), seeing these legendaries doesn’t answer the questions “What have they been doing this whole time?”

I guess just cranking out gem store skins?

I think what you start off describing is not an overhaul, just a way to look at doing the next elite spec for some classes.

I think elites are broken; in order to fix them, they need elite specs for classes core functions to make their primary game play viable again. E.g. Rangers need a ranged-DPS-with-a-longbow elite spec; Guardians and Warriors need greatsword elites.

But when it’s time to go crazy again, your Skinwalker would be a fun idea.

As for elementalists, I’ll say again, if the next elite spec doesn’t give them a P/P gun-mage build, I’ll be 100% convinced that everyone who works for Anet is an idiot. Why would you do anything else? People are fixed on them getting swords, and I can’t even fathom why. Sounds like another boring set of scepter skills for focus off-hand.

Maybe someone committed to sword wielding mages can tell me what they have in mind that would actually add to the game.

What you describe for Elementalists feels very similar to how air attunement already works. WHat you’re asking for is just a weapons with earth skills that don’t suck.

The heavy set actually looks okay to me.

Ayrilana.1396:

zealex.9410:

Ayrilana.1396:

zealex.9410:

Ardid.7203:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If community request since 2012 are the requirement for features in the next expansion (which surely already has been finalized), then housing, mounts, Open World PvP and a plethora of other things must be included, as well.

Jus’ saying….

AFAIK Build Templates seems to be the only one of those without vocal detractors. Maybe housing too?
Mounts are despised by a very vehement group, through good arguments, insulting shouts and horse beating gifs; and I’m sure I don’t have to point the classic reaction to proposals of Open World PvP…

i dont understand whats so bad about mounts?

Screen clutter and how ridiculous (imo) it would be to see them in the open world. They’re also largely unnecessary as we have WP’s and speed buffs.

they dont create screen cluter in other mmos who would they here?

They do by taking up more of the screen.

Yea, but they would also sell a kitten-load of gems. If you’re thinking from a “How can we keep this game alive perspective?” mounts would be a good idea. People pay good money for pretty, pretty ponies.

zealex.9410:

I find it offensive to tell to the devs “nobody will buy your game if this really good feature isnt there” I would buy the game regardless because im invested in the story i loved what elite specs did and it generally gave me alot of hours of fun.

With that being said having the ability to buy build templates for all gamemodes from the gemstore and have 1 gifted to us with the expac would be an amazing thing. But still i will buy the expac regardless.

Yea but no one cares that you find it offensive because of the 4.5M people who bought GW2, less than a million of them have bought HoT. If Anet just keeps making you happy by continuing to dole out story, they won’t survive. You want your story? Tell Anet to listen to the 3.5M people who quit playing there game between GW2 and HoT.

There’s nothing particularly offensive about saying, “This is the feature that would convince me to give you more money, and without it I’m likely to play other games instead.”

Like…I’m about to go play Overwatch right now instead of GW2, because i find that the character classes in that game are actually balanced, and I’m enjoying the minimal progression system. If GW2 wants me to reinvest in their game instead of just play Overwatch till Crowfall or Ashes of Creation come out, they need to have balanced classes and make the game more casual and solo friendly—or promise as much in an x-pac.

They’re obviously running out of money and most people top 10 items won’t ever make it into the game. Right now, they need to ID the players actually making gem store purchasing and make sure they keep playing. Legendary armor is probably a good start even though it doesn’t appeal to me at all. They just MIGHT be starting to learn something after 4 years.

For me personally, traits are broken and need to be fixed, and…if you’re never going to add a new race or revamp the 1-80 experience…why are you even bothering with an MMO? I doubt we’ll see any of that in the new x-pac though.

Xillllix.3485:

lukejoe.1592:

Innumerable games have tried to make hyrib builds work, to little success. There’s no way around the fixed build puzzle because they have to scale difficulty in some standard way. The real problem with the HoT trait changes is ranged dps is suddenly ranger-non-viable?! The elites kittened some classes HARD! I’m not even playing right now, just checking in periodically to see if their next expansion (the one that has taken as long for them to even announce as some WoW expansions and is still promising to be a “smaller but faster” business model) will make the game interesting again. And hate to say it, but I’m not optimistic. It only makes sense to go “smaller but faster” if you’re burning cash and running out of money. The writing for GW2 may be on the wall.

I’m not playing either because it became a frustrating experience, having a blast playing other games while waiting to see what will be announced for GW2. I was really surprised lately to learn that GW2 still doesn’t have legendary armors… That’s something I paid for way back when I preordered HoT.

I also feel your pain. Even though I have no interest in legendary armors. I have no interest in crafting anything ever. Remember when GW2 was supposed to be the anti-grind MMO?

And I know…every new MMO says they will be the anti-grind MMO and then there’s always grind. So jokes on us if we ever actually expect an MMO to follow through. And killing monsters is what I pay for for all the monster killing grind doesn’t phase me…

But crafting is where i draw the line. So what turned me from ambivalent to HoT to “I won’t play this” is the crafting grind they somehow managed to cram in. New armor prefixes being bind on acquire? No thanks. I’m not going to craft grind to be viable on HoT maps that—frankly—are poorly scaled, buggy, and not much fun.

I wouldn’t be at all mad if most of the new expansion was undoing incredibly short sighted errors like that.

Until then, doesn’t it just seem like Crowfall is taking FOREVER to develop?

Wow, talk about the thread that just won’t die. I think it’s safe to say that HoT hasn’t been a success, but you can draw that conclusion from the sales numbers…this thread that WON’T DIE is just further proof what a massive unforced error their marketing and release were. You can’t spin crap into gold, Anet! That lesson seems to be on the verge of costing them a company.

Innumerable games have tried to make hyrib builds work, to little success. There’s no way around the fixed build puzzle because they have to scale difficulty in some standard way. The real problem with the HoT trait changes is ranged dps is suddenly ranger-non-viable?! The elites kittened some classes HARD! I’m not even playing right now, just checking in periodically to see if their next expansion (the one that has taken as long for them to even announce as some WoW expansions and is still promising to be a “smaller but faster” business model) will make the game interesting again. And hate to say it, but I’m not optimistic. It only makes sense to go “smaller but faster” if you’re burning cash and running out of money. The writing for GW2 may be on the wall.

Specializations are fatally broken. Because they are straight up grades, they also push classes out of there core combat roles. Want to play a Ranger? Congrats, here’s a mandatory build with no synergies for doing ranged DPS or even using a bow. Want to play ele? Well I hope you like their weak-sauce scepter skills, because we’ve done everything possible to force you out of staff builds. Adding new elite specializations, if they continue over playing the new weapons and roles in the trait lines, won’t fix that fundamental problem. I mostly solo play, and can luckily completely ignore elite specs.

Crinn.7864:

Ya’ll do realize that HoT had a prepurchase option available months before HoT launched and the sales from those prepurchases would have been on the pre-HoT quarter.

Nope that is not true. GAAP rules don’t allow companies to recognize revenue at PoS unless it’s also the same date a delivery or the date a customer actually takes possession of the goods.

I feel the same way about HoT maps.

Sigmoid.7082:

The main point of elite specs was to change how the class plays not make it better at something it already does which for the most part they actually do. Necro more melee cleave, engi more melee, ranger support and healing etc etc

Yea, exactly. When is it ever going to work to have Rangers, for example, forced into specs that have no synergy with back line damage? That’s bull. It flat out doesn’t work. Keep liking the game if you want, but as a system it’s a flop.

So I have to wait for them to churn through specter and focus wielding elite specs for Rangers before we get an elite build that supports low/shortbow play? Doesn’t work. Won’t ever work.

Been playing around with HoT since it went on sale. I wish I could find a game with GW2’s fun combat and elevated art style that was actually well thought out as a system. My impression of elites specs, is that they are (as is) fatally flawed and adding additional elite specs won’t fix them. The biggest flaw (besides the crushing effect on build diversity that has been hashed out over and over again) is the weapon scheme. I resent that the mechanic upgrades are mandatory while the specs traits are so tuned to the added weapon or function.

And having each elite spec add a new weapon is never going to work, because professions were built with their trademark or archetypal weapons from launch.

So when are we ever going to get the longbow elite spec for Rangers? The greatsword elite for Guardians? Or the daggers elite spec for thieves? These are the weapons I want to use when I play these classes. They are WHY I play these classes, but now mandatory specs come out that…don’t make my Ranger any better with a bow or offer anything of value to that playstyle.

And it’s only going to get worse. If they add (let’s just spitball and say…) and off hand pistol to a ranger elite… Great…now I have two choices and both of them nerf my longbow!

They should have thought this through more. They should have built a game that was expandable.

My advice for fixing it? Make all the new weapons, utilities, and mechanic options baseline. And instead of adding new weapons in elites…add new options to existing weapons. Let me swap out the GS 5 skill with something else when a play a Guard with no real interest in CC. Evolve the playstyles I come to a Guardian to play instead of nerfing them.

Eh…you’re seeing them scale Wintersday to just one city and asking why there are only 3 holidays?

It’s kind of obvious. HoT was a bust and they are running out of money. Vanilla GW2 sold something like 4.5M copies and HoT has yet to crack 750K. Right? They’re transitioning to smaller, faster expansions with less content. That’s a sign that they can’t finance major development—i.e. they can’t survive without new sales revenue for the time it would take to produce another HoT sized expansion. Doubtful they have extra for non-revenue-generating development like Chaar-Kwanza.

I’m having fun with the content I have, but the expansion is not good—by the standards of the industry! Seriously.

GW2 had potential. It’s lasted 4 years**. It might last 4 more.

But it didn’t become what it set out to be (parts of it are irreparably broken or unbalanced), and I doubt there is an ActiVision out there, flush with cash and willing to input millions into Anet.

We play a low budget MMO, and it will stay a low budget MMO until Crowfall or something else comes along and kills it or it finally bleeds to death.

**Put into perspective; it’s lasted 4 times as long as Firefly, and Firefly was 1,000x better.

Kelly.7019:

Ashantara.8731:

The game is in desperate need of new fun content besides LW and add-ons. I assume ArenaNet is majorly understaffed if they can’t even fix severe bugs in vital content right away nor provide some variety in the already existing annual festivities.

They could be working on next xpack. Though that would be sad to move people from HoT upkeep to solely new Xpack stuff. But that might be the greed train running strong on most mmos these days.

They might be. I’ll tell you what they aren’t doing; they’re not fixing the bugs that stop Renewed Justice from working properly in a half dozen Personal Story missions.

No really, you probably haven’t leveled a guardian in a while, but go make one and play through. They have core mechanics that straight up don’t work in multiple personal story missions for more than 4 years ago.

So yea, I’d say they are both understaffed and misallocating resources.

I don’t know, they seem to have the resources to churn out fey new armor sets and impractical looking weapons.

Oh well that helps. I was always double tapping space to deploy the glider. Maybe I’ll be able to finish Mordremoth now that I know I can just hold it down.

Well this might be a way out of left field suggestion for Anet, but the game could just have end game content that is fun to play for its own sake!

I can certainly understand why anet would be hesitant to create new weapon classes now. They’d almost certainly have to create new weapons in pairs (a caster weapon and a martial weapon) as every class player would feel slighted if their class didn’t get a new weapon.

Maybe a better idea would be to create new skills for the weapons we have. Not all of them are equally great, and I know that I have struggled on some classes to find a weapon where all 5 abilities are winners. If we could swap out the ones we don’t like with new ones like we swap out utilities, it’d add depth to the game while being substantially less work on their part.

Plus it would solve another problem I have with the current system. You can’t reorder the abilities! You should be able to. When I get into a habit of opening with one ability, i want it mapped to my 1 button. 1 is actually the worst button to have your auto attack on. It’s the one you don’t actually need to hit, it should be 5.

Haleydawn.3764:

Achievements and skins/weapons are an entirely optional part of gameplay.

Think of these that are too expensive for you as long term goals if you’re that determined to have them.

Why do people insist on giving this response? The OP wants to have fun playing a game and feels, very understandably, that having to invest too much time and energy into getting new weapon skins makes the game less fun. It’s an entirely legit viewpoint that isn’t addressed by these facile rebuttals.

Recently bought on sale and I agree with the general tone that it missed the mark. I’m not even going to get as far as trying raids, but I’ll play the story. I’ve made peace with the fact that I am just going to through a lot of ascended mats and map specific quest items in the garbage. NOT. WORTH. THE. EFFORT.

What really irks me though…the things that might stop from even bothering to finish the story on one character is just the absolute cluster-kitten of grinding tossed onto a game originally sold as grind-free.

I die in Verdant Brink because the game doesn’t think I’ve grind-ed enough to stay alive by using a updraft.

I can’t progress in the story because the game doesn’t think I’ve grind-ed enough to use a bounce-shroom.

I can’t walk 5 kitten steps without passing something literally exploding with over the top particle effects without a literal POPUP popping up and telling me I haven’t grind-ed enough!!!

I can’t really play the game because the Elite Specs are mandatory for all classes, but I haven’t grind-ed enough to have them fully unlocked! I can go on and on and on and on and on…

Meanwhile…really simple UI fixes…really kitten freshman-year design crap (You could very easily make it so that after repairing my armor, I don’t need to close the dialog box and reopen it to vend items…like really really really easily!!!!) that any dummy should be able to spot are STILL in the game.

It’s really the lack of professionalism and next-level polish that are going to kill this thing off. Things that make it clear that Anet has never hired a competent UX designer to work on this game a probably never will.

Unskippable cut scenes for kittens sake!

Meanwhile, they’ve got a whole narrative TEAM giving me fan-fic after fan-fic after fan-fic. Ugh…

¹ This is a good post including new information, I’m glad I have.

² It is insanely annoying, especially considering that this games strength is not PvP and it’s definitely not end game so if they botch the narrative up with something like this…what exactly is the strength of this game?

³ I’d hold off on debating the ins and outs of the Anet’s expac policy concerning what will happen to HoT content and living world. They have certainly been willing to change these things in the past. I wouldn’t assume what they are saying now is what’s going to happen, so you don’t really need to jump on each other over it.

Vayne.8563:

It’s only bad because you haven’t really figured out how to do it. But lots of people have and many say it’s not as bad as the naysayers make it out to be.

This could be the new marketing slogan for HoT.

“It’s not as bad as the nay-sayers make it out to be!”

….that would be more convincing than a free trip to lvl 80 for that character I have to pay an extra $10 to create.

Good. I’m glad they are already working on the next expansion, because most of HoT was done wrong. I’ve logged into GW2 to knock some baddies around from time to time when I’m bored, but in it’s current half-kittened state it feels wrong and it’s boring!

No one thinks HoT will vanish and never be heard from again, but the expansion was a flop. Many choices they made for HoT will have to be un-made if they want to make the game fun to play again.

Right now ALL classes are broken because ALL classes’ “elite spec” are required. And the worst thing was that in cases like the warrior it was just unforgivably lazy ideation to blame. How can I get excited for a development team that basically says, “We were out of ideas, so warriors’ new utility is the same as warriors’ old utility BUT MORE.”

History really ended to GW2 with that one.

And if the next expansion is also “just like HoT but more so” I probably won’t buy or play that one either.

I’ll just pitch in real quick to say there should be at least some gliders that you can earn in game. If not 1 for every weapon set, at least 1 for each of the racial weapon sets and the major craftable sets…

…which reminders me…

…there should be some gliders that are craftable. I suggest by huntsman or tailors depending on the design.

This is really one of those things where it’s obvious Anet just cheaped out and decided to just not work. They’re decoratives, but so are weapons. If the game launched with 1 sword…and then they were just a bunch of swords to buy with MORE real money…no one would play this game.

Generally, if you’re going to launch features, they should be fully developed and publicly consumable at launch.

And and you should get a free character slot with the expansion all the time!

I think it’s kind of awesome that this thread is still chugging along. I still haven’t bought HoT. There’s too many other good games to play to shell out money for this without getting the free character slot STANDARD and AFTER RELEASE.

Also, they butchered most of the classes…that took it’s toll on my excitement.

Still a valid question!

Ug, I can’t even read all 6 pages of this thread. See what is going to happen is…people who don’t want to spend 6 months creating ascended gear and legendary weapons will just leave GW2 (Hi, that’s me!) and go play something with an end-game they can actually enjoy. The exodus will leave these threads totally devoid of people except the MMO-Darwinist like the OP, until GW2 becomes an insular boring game full of kitten-hats pretending that min-maxing a dumbed down build and throwing months of time into ascended gear equals “skill.” Bye, Felicias!

1. Scrapper (Out of 10: 8 ) Interesting skill set as seen in POI, adds new game play
2. Reaper (Out of 10: 7) Should make necros a little less boring, Good!
3. Chronomancer (Out of 10: 7) Looks like they thought it through
4. Dragon Hunter (Out of 10: 5) I always liked it more than the community did
5. Herald (Out of 10: 5) Hate the class in general so far; not it’s most interesting spec
6. Tempest (Out of 10: 4) It’s not dual pistols!
7. Daredevil (Out of 10: 3) Lame
8. Berserker (Out of 10: 2) Lame & guardian copy-cat & not really a berserker
9. Druid (Out of 10: 1) Lame & and a total kitten-show

On balance: negative

Standing still and mashing a rotation is exactly what you get with the trinity.

The lore doesn’t super bother me, except that I think the OP is right that they went way to close to a guardian thematically. I think its a horrible design for a spec though because…wow…so many heals going off it’s a little ridiculous to keep track of them all. And there class mechanic wasn’t so much adjusted and made more exciting than it was just supplemented by a completely new and independent class mechanic. I guess they just couldn’t think of anything else to do with pets. It’s one final disappointment in a long string of HoT disappointments.

[redacted]

IndigoSundown.5419:

Perhaps it’s still an issue because the core game attached to HoT is the full version, whereas F2P gets a truncated version. I don’t think that way, myself, but I do sort of understand the point of view. It’s pretty obvious that Anet believes they will gain more financial benefit from sales of HoT to new players without the (however small) pay wall of core price. So, what we have is posters ascribing a greater value to core than Anet is.

Well I think it’s still an issue because people are cognizant of the fact that the F2P conversion is a response to complaints that the expansion was overpriced and that it was overpriced partly because of ANETs scheme offer new players the core game free. Now I know you and I have personally unpacked this issue so I won’t go into in detail. I’ll just restate what I think are reasonably concluded based on their pricing.

1. ANET expects the majority of their HoT buyers to be existing customers who would not have repurchased the core game anyway.
2. ANET raised the price of the expansion when they decided to offer new players the core game free.

Nothing about those statement has changed. ANET is still on a strategy to collect the bulk of their money from charging existing customers for the expansion. So it’s pretty normal for people to feel that the sudden F2P conversion is a marketing tactic meant to “outsmart” them and their complaints. It’s normal for them to be annoyed by it, because that kind of behavior is annoying.

Now…they actually have resolved some issues for me. One salient point I heard vets making was that they were paying for the core game, but not getting a copy of it that they could give to someone else and maybe gain a new playmate. That issue is resolved. By making GW2 F2P (at least sort of), it is easier to get new friends to try the game and that does raise the value of owning HoT.

Like I said, the price issue is over for me. I don’t think HoT is worth $50 based on the amount of content it’s offering. And since I am not in the business of loaning my money to for profit corporations in exchange for NOTHING, I don’t see the value in pre-purchasing HoT or buying it on the vague promise of content in the future.

Not when Skyforge is actually free for example, and a dozen other games are coming out that look way more interesting than what ANET is doing with GW2. They need to take some of the sadistic cleverness they are plugging into marketing and plug it into their actual game!

I’m sure no one has written an angry screed about the Berserker yet….right?! Oh well I’ll re-kick us off anyway.

I think it’s ironic that after all the “Dragon Puncher” jokes that’s essentially what we got. The Berserker is a played out archtype that GW was supposed to be beyond on a conceptual level. But it’s even a poor example of the archetype. There’s zero component of sacrificing defense for improved attack in the game play, taking an interesting mechanics out and replacing them with a straight (and mandatory) buff for burst skills.

The torch is stupid…The abilities feel like duplications of the Guardians and I don’t think adding a torch to the warrior makes him feel like much of a berserkers, because I would assume that someone “going berserker” would prefer to hold an actual weapon! A torch is more befitting for an Explorer or a Dungeoneer—and as luck would have it both exploring and dungeoneering are integral aspects of HoT!

The new utilities are stupid…They completely replace physical skills, meaning functionally Warriors have fewer utilities than other classes. The distinguishing feature between physicals and “rage skills” (which is a stupid name) could have easily just been a grandmaster trait. I think that’s a recipe for feeling super, super lame.

Anet is a company without ideas!

And there were better ideas available. If they had even bothered to read the wikipedia article on legendary berserkers of norse myth, they would have had a pretty quick recipe for a berserker concept that far outstrips what they came up with. Berserkers were recognizable by their wolf skin armor and spears, warrior who fought in a rage like trance.

If you read that thought…melee staves and mantras…then congratulations you have more common sense and better associative powers that anyone at Anet!

But literally there were much better ideas available outside of the whole berserker archetype. Remember in FF1 how after you get that rat tail the dragon king will transform your fighter into a knight letting him learn protective white magic?! There is just 1 far better idea that would have been a much better fit for GW2 lore. And i say that because presumably the Pact, having just come together in a large coordinated effort of magic and strategy, has little obvious use for individual warrior who freak the kitten out and light themselves on fire!

I picture the Pact meeting going like this:
Trehearne: “Ok, moving onto continuing business. Let’s get updates on adapting our tactics to better confront the dragons. Guardians what have you got?”
Guardian: “Well Marshall, based on that last fight where we spent most of our time on that airship no where near the actual dragon, we’ve been training our members to use long bows and have developed some interesting backline support skills that will really come in handy!”
Trehearne: “Excellent! Warriors, how about you guys?”
Warriors: ….{crickets}

It’s actually come to the point for me where the price is not the biggest sticking point. Though I think their convenient F2P conversion is schizophrenic and too cute by half (it functions as an acknowledgment that their original pricing structure was kittened-up and a middle finger to the people to pointed that out).

The biggest issue for me is that I just think ANET is a company with very few and very poor ideas for where this game is going…looking at you Berzerker spec!

Random.4691:

You have 2 ranged sets, maybe it needs improvement but Thieves certainly don’t need a 3rd ranged set. Why would you need more ranged than melee ? Also the staff provides AoE, something the thief was lacking.

What are you talking about? The shortbow is so loaded with AOE that it’s functionally useless!

Though yes, I guess the thief has less AOE than they used to and was due for getting a little more, but that’s only because of the incredibly stupid decision to bounce richotte.

Signed. The whole OP post is spot on. I can’t believe that they are committing to a dodge build after nerfing thieves only pure damage ranged weapon to the point of uselessness—while giving guardians a backline weapon. More to the point, thieves typify the problem I have seen with every elite spec to date, and that’s that they are “elite” and by that I mean non-optional.

This is a just a straight buff to all thief builds that makes any thief not spec’s into this trait non-viable. The staff may be optional, but the Daredevil won’t, and we don’t understand yet right now what synergies will make other specs effectively non-viable as well. My instinct is that shortbow mains are a thing of the past since this OP (the other kind of OP) dodge buff is wasted on a ranged utility player.

I’m just soooo disappointed with HoT (and I’m very unexciting about the Revs), and so far that isn’t manifesting as switching from Thief to Guardian, it’s manifesting as switching from GW to other games.

Heylel.2109:

To be more precise, the part where he says that including the new Class doesn’t makes mandatory for ANet to give us a free slot. The Core Game comes with 8 Professions and 5 Races, for a grand total of 40 possible combinations. We’re given 5 slots, so yeah, it has already made clear that people needs to make choices. If people has already filled these slots, it’s because they so choose to do, they’re not entitled to it.

Well they aren’t getting my money without giving me a character slot, so what backwards way do you define “entitled.” I’m absolutely entitled.

It really doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get a legendary. If your favorite weapon isn’t one of the three you’ve got to wait an unspecified amount of time to find out if it’s going to be awesome or is it’s going to be another lame joke pistol. This is crazy!

They make weapon sets all the time; a legendary could not be that much more work after all the foot steps and what not are included. ANET is either going to be a company with a game that can pump out awesome content, or it’s going to be a company that takes 3+ years to come up with a new legendary [insert weapon].

This is just the latest thing to fracture my confidence in GW2. I’m basically just playing Skyforge now and having a blast with it. Just checking in to see if they ever tell us the Warrior elite spec.

What the warhorn really need is to be dual pistols.

Brostrodon.1657:

Well i don’t now about you guys, but after seeing that ele elite spec, and warhorn skills i pre purchased HoT for myself and my girlfriend.

No, that was definitely not my reaction. I’m hoping Warrior elite spec will be exciting, but the Ele elite doesn’t interest me. And honestly, it does a lot to make the elite specs seem mandatory because they are straight buffing class mechanics instead of altering them. Makes the whole thing crazy awkward until each class has at least 2 elite specs.

Between the Blah blah blah and the price, I’m just playing Skyforge now and following HoT news to see whats up.

Skyforge seems pretty great FYI. A little more grindy than GW2 upfront but fun.

The only point is to be a savvier consumer of MMOs. When we spend money, we rationalize the expense a number of ways and some of those rationalizations suck. “It’s on sale now, so I’d actually lose money if I don’t buy it and want it later,” is a famously bad rationalization for buying something. But people really do behave this way all the time. When purchasing an expansion, the fact that their is so subscription fee for GW2 is an equally bad rationalization that I see people using a lot.

“Yay expansion!” Or depending on where you are on the roller coaster of ANETs info dump, “Meh, expansion.”

One rebuttal some players have leveraged at players dissatisfied with ANETs marketing campaign is that they should quit complaining about money because GW2 famously has no subscription fee. But because people are still yo-yoing their enthusiasm for HoT because of pricing dissatisfaction, I thought I’d break that discussion out into a new thread so the community can discuss what a subscription (perhaps an OPTIONAL subscription) would mean for the game and could mean for the expansion.

The “no subscription” line is a shield thrown up over ANET and aimed at price dissatisfied (price sensitive) players. But it’s worth pointing out that not having a subscription is not ANET doing you a favor; it’s a business decision.

In fact, were it not for the fact that many of you would be less likely to play GW2 if it had a subscription, I bet many of you would actually prefer to be given that option. Yea, a subscription could meet your needs very nicely and appeal to you as a customer, even though you have an aversion to them and prefer not to pay them. (People are fickle.)

And when they step into expanding their game it would be a little remiss of ANET to not at least consider an optional subscription…not to mention smart given a lot of people HATE the price of HoT.

Consider this, at the cheapest gem store price a transfiguration charge costs $.30. So a monthly $15 would in theory get you 50/month. If—by handing over the subscription—ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you? How would your relationship to the game change if you could dress yourself each day to your heart’s desire?

Changing your hairstyle is going to cost you what in real $$$? How many more would be converted by endless make over kits thrown on?

Recovering your runes and sigils?

A black lion key (cheapest) is $1.05? If a $15 subscription got you one/day along with your other login rewards, you’d save a ton even if that was the only benefit of subscribing.

Each person might not be swayed to part with their money by any individual subscriber benefit, but would enjoy that benefit none the less as part of a persuasive package they were swayed by.

What’s more, because ANET probably doesn’t sell very many people 50 transfiguration charges a month, nor 30 markover kits, nor 30 black lion keys (every month) the large discount of the subscription would flatten out their revenue (good) without cannibalizing very many gem store purchases. What % of the play base consume gems that heavily?

And an EXPANSION is a great opportunity to add more creative benefits of subscribing, maybe some the community has been asking for for a while, like more kitten bank space!

I bet many of you would prefer that! We should be less quick to say “but there’s no subscription” when others say the price of HoT is too kitten high, because all we’re saying is “ANET has withheld an option for enjoying this game from us and given us fewer choices so they can sell overpriced gems.”

And it’s an option ANET should consider in this and future expansions, because what is the next expansion price plans going to be? Vets pay $60 for the expansion while newbies get vanilla AND HoT thrown in free at the same price? That’s not going to go over any better!

Given that we have no release date or even target date and the information is coming out so sporadically…I’m pretty sure that not even ANET knows all the elite specs yet. Don’t think they really have a clue. But my personal preference would be to give warriors dual pistols…if they are going to make P/P thieves into garbage after all it seems like some profession could get good use out of the weapon set.

Yeah it’s totally official. Getting rid of ricochet totally kills Thief P/P (which means for me it kills all GW2 PvP). Guess I can try giving the SB a shot, but doubt it will be the same. In this game, genuine snipe nests are pretty rare and pulling a thief out of one is pretty easy, so when you manage to stay up in one over the course of a gate fight, blasting away with pistols SHOULD be pretty effective! It no longer is. Done. I’m gonna take a break from GW2 PvP. I’ll retry with SB to see if I can get back into it in a couple weeks.