Guild Wars 2

Chris.3290:

I’m not great at keeping count but will this be our 20th consecutive win against SBI, or only 19th?

Hmm… we’ve been tricked!

Chris.3290:

TL;DR Playing for second is for losers.

Stuff just posts itself, really.

When you make changes to a large degree, then yes there needs to be some recognition of input.

Yes, people will take your statements out of context, they will make unreasonable demands, and they may never be happy.

But it has to be done to reach out to the reasonable people that remain.

I hate even having to run the Black Lion trader, so I can’t really share the same sentiment. I go exploring in my own time when I’m not being sent on a chore— that’s “fun”.

There’s also 5 more cities other than Lion’s Arch, so….

Actually, I don’t think people got the point of Illconceived Was Na.9781’s post. It was more about how people went off on off-topic rants almost to the point where it just seems like excess baggage to be let off on sight of a red name.

Anyhow, I’d like a sticky about what constitutes a match up thread.

I believe such a post existed in the past but it’s gone and thus people don’t know if it’s allowed or not. Don’t forget the search function is broken.

It should be obvious, however I have seen people simply posting a video that happened to contain gameplay for the current week that get closed for being a matchup thread….

I think these things are nice, but some moderation is needed to not disrupt regular play that much but still allow “flavor”. For example, having say, -25% cost reduction to siege, or making Stonemist Castle worth 50 points, allow conditions that hinder/speed people up in certain areas, halve fall damage, or making 12 minute ticks, etc. These things would be enough to alter the matchup signifigantly but still allow people to do their thing.

So I say I wouldn’t be necessarily opposed to the golem event if it were more mild. So if it’s setting off something where they’ll do this on a semi-regular basis, I’m willing to take the chance of disruption.

Yea, honestly, I can’t see the value of a “competition” being something that can go on indefinitely like that. Instead, give the competitive types seasons. There will be no “omg I can’t catch up” or any of that crap. Just a contest to see who can get the most within a defined period of time. After it finishes, give kudos to the top ones and everyone can leave with some kind of token prize, so people can feel better about themselves, and everyone else can go on not caring about it.

Julischka Bean.7491:

IndigoSundown, I was a “complaining casual” because I bought the expansion only to find out it was too hard for me. A whole new beautiful jungle and I could not participate in it because I am a clutz.

When they made the Jungle easier, I was finally, finally, able to play it and marvel at all the work the artists put into it.

If they had not made the Jungle easier I would not have my elite specs , (happy grin, I have added a Tempest and a Scrapper to my stable of Elites now ) nor would I have my advanced gliding…let me tell you, to me, the ability to be able to glide through the Jungle without worrying about endurance is totally worth the required number of mastery points.

Not all of us casuals who cried about the difficulty of HOT have turned their back on it..some of us are deeply appreciative for this gift.

Lisa-Hoping that the next Living World story thingy has this level of difficulty.

I think you’re probably not giving yourself enough credit. The zones aren’t that much easier. The rewards are much better, but that really wouldn’t change the difficulty, although it makes it less frustrating. They did fix the wps so they got contested less, removed a mob here and there, and made some of the Hero Points more reasonable, but that’s more quality of life changes I feel. Chak Gerrent is probably the big exception to this but really that was just soo >.>

Rauderi.8706:

Wanze.8410:

Kuu.3954:

Wanze.8410:

Kuu.3954:

The gossamer patches are a killer, even for basic insignias. I feel for any of you guys that use medium armor.

Last time i checked, gossamer insignias cost the same for any armor weight.

Yes, I just meant that medium users will be having to use leathers to make the insignias + the armor which is more expensive.

Anyone starting the game and wanting to craft is gonna be a little daunted. Lol.

well, if its about the price of leather, you should say so in the topic and not pretend to be talking about insignias.

And i dont know why you would craft basic exotic gear (with vanilla stats), as those exotic stats can be acquired quite cheap compared to crafting by other methods.

It’s not healthy for the discussion to be deliberately obtuse. -_-

Insignias are a part of the armor-crafting process to get to 500, making Ascended gear available. Even for crafting Ascended gear, the Ascended insignia requires the Exotic one. Even getting a loot box from a fractal, conversion through the Forge requires an exotic insignia.

Kuu’s statement happens to drive home the point that the leather component is entirely too costly and affects the entire playerbase.

The ascended insignia requires the same amount of hard leather to make as the exotic one. Compared to the total cost of ascended armor, it represents a relatively small portion. Aka, if you can’t afford the insignia, you can’t afford ascended armor to begin with. Even if I were to send you all the hard leather you needed, if you think 90g is a lot, it would still be a bad idea.

And of course, for crafting itself you can use soldier/shaman/etc standalone insignias.
http://gw2crafts.net/leatherworking_400.html

Essentially, all problems are artificially created. The total cost of 0-500 is 30 gold more than what I spent on it, and gold was harder to come by back then.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OriOri.8724:

Yea, the price for leather is beyond ridiculous, yet Anet refuses to address the root of the problem.

INB4 someone says “Leather is fine. You should be buying all your gear instead of crafting it anyway”

We don’t like the high price of leather. That’s very different from it being “bad” or “ridiculous.”

Further, what’s wrong with buying gossamer patches on the TP? The price is 2.4 gold, compared to crafting which is over 10g.

There’s nothing wrong with crafting, but there’s nothing special about it either.

Those patches get crafted in 5’s per craft.. You can’t do anything with a single one.

That’s fine with me. But BL keys themselves have to be a bit easier to find. I mean there’s a reason why people keyfarm.

Report all instances. Attempting to impersonate people should count for something.

I’ve seen such cases before and it takes a lot of repeated reports to do anything.

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

ArchonWing.9480:

Don’t nerf it, buff loot in other places to not suck, and maybe people will go elsewhere.

+

I used to like dungeons, until i realised the lucky get rich from it, while I end up wasting my time.

Ursan we’ve already seen what these events look like with low incentive, I’ve seen graves with more activity..

It is far better as it is now.. honestly it seems the main problem people are having with new system.

“Oh, But there are so many people it causes it to lag”
“Oh, But there as so many people that I got put into overflow”

Both of those issues will become smaller over time, and guesting work both ways, while people from low pop servers can join your very high pop server to get theyr dynamic events quicker, people on very high pop can just as easily join a low/med pop server if they prefer there are less people at the events.

Personally I am on a high pop server, and there is no lag what so ever, when I guest on very high pop servers, sure there is alot of lag but despite that it is far more enjoyable due to the amount of people participating!

Yea, seriously. It doesn’t lag in some of the more deserted areas, but that’s hardly a good thing. Lag means there’s lots of people playing around, and that’s why I even bought this MMO in the first place. Solution is to handle the lag, instead of punishing people for trying to play the game. And it seems a lot of people are enjoying themselves— we have large gatherings on our server and share what dropped. And contrary to what some may think, we’re not popping oranges everywhere anyways. It’s usually just 1 mediocre rare.

Personally, I find the events nice. It makes me journey to areas I normally wouldn’t go otherwise. And people would go elsewhere if they didn’t feel so at mercy of the RNG like they do right now.

Oh, and I’m sure there’s quite a few TP speculators that don’t want the masses invading onto their turf. Well, too bad.

MethaneGas.8357:

ArchonWing.9480:

I don’t know. Try standing in a meteor storm and lava font as full glass and see what happens. It’s technically 1200 range but the radius increases the reach.

You can walk out of a meteor shower or lava font (not to mention meteor shower has an insane cast time). Landing combos with a staff ele is 10 times harder than clicking on a target and pressing a button. Eles also don’t have a 2000 range 6-second reveal which essentially shuts down one of thieves’ only modes of escape/survival (stealth).

Oh, you mean those aren’t instant killers if you avoid them? Because anything can kill if you make no effort to evade them.

The thief took 3 seconds to die. There were zero dodges. Even if he was caught off-balance, which happens to everyone, it’s simply their fault. You can get your heal off in that time, much less dodge or use shadowstep.

I mean, maybe the thief had a bad day, but they would have to blame themselves. At least I would if I’m wandering next to a wall.

MethaneGas.8357:

ArchonWing.9480:

If you get killed by a single player when you’re a thief in the open, it is always your fault unless they are hacking.

The only problem is that WvW is not 1v1. You will be roaming / fighting and sure, you can handle certain situations but when a ranger (like in the video) comes along, click on you from miles away, pushes a button and you die… it surely is thrilling that you got so out-skilled.

I find the “miles away” thing to be incredibly disingenuous. They have which is 300 more than the projectiles of most classes. And if you are distracted, a lot of classes can guarantee you die.

If 3 people are distracted on one guy, I can hit something like lich form and faceroll them all. Nobody outskilled anyone; it’s just how the game works.

And again, it’s just silly to use someone on a wall as an example of any form of balance. You usually aren’t winning a fight vs someone on top of a wall unless you pull them down. It means very little when you take in account game design.

Yes, I do understand rangers make a lot of +1 scenarios a lot worse, but honestly, that’s sort of the point of the entire class. Though I am glad to note that wvw isn’t just 1v1, so you can’t just nerf rangers based on these cases, especially when large scale combat is a factor.

MethaneGas.8357:

ArchonWing.9480:

The problem with the OP comments is that it lacks context. I can possibly accept “rangers are OP when attacking from a wall that protects them” The problem is where does this really fit in the grand scheme of things? Are hardcore wvw guilds posting rangers everywhere to blow away would be attackers in towers and keeps? Why is there no GWENR?

WvW is a lot more than just zerg fights… and I’ve been all over Bronze and Silver tier. WvW is infested with Rangers. The last time Necros were OP (beginning of Dhuumfire) you saw condi Necros everywhere. Last time Warrior’s were OP, all you ever saw was warriors. Now all you ever see is rangers. It’s a common pattern.

[/quote]

People go for easy kills. But honestly, I’ve only seen mass rangers since the initial month when they buffed rapid fire,

In pretty much all cases except for necro, I find condition rangers a far bigger threat because they seem unkillable. Bow rangers are generally pretty much one trick, most of them. On a thief, I’d rather complain about engineers or medi guardians because if you want lopsided….

I think an example of things being less casual are the strict timetable for the new maps. If you try going into Dragon’s Stand at anywhere other than when it starts, or you arrive at another map when the meta is far off, you’ll have a crappy time. It’s sort of like my disdain for World Boss schedules taken to a new level— you play to the game’s timetable, or you can just bugger off.

This is opposed to a lot of other content where you can just hop in and start playing. To make matters worse, people taxi to circumvent the issue, leaving even more maps empty, and even if you want to play on the map you zoned in, the game will CLOSE the map you’re on and forcing you to go elsewhere. And your participation goes down to 0%.

The inactivity timer is also very poorly designed. While it’s geared to stop leechers, it creates bad situations where you might die and if waypoints are contested you might get dinged for inactivity. This isn’t discounting the time when the poor design of events makes you punished for inactivity when the NPCs are talking and thus there’s nothing to fight anyways.

There was one time where I was starting the Ordinance Corps meta where you have to clear out 3 sets of enemies. The 3rd set was so far away that I got inactivity for walking over there. If someone had cleared it out in the meantime or I died en route, then I would have gotten zero credit despite doing 2/3rds of the work! Fun! I appreciate how the game’s basically saying “Nope, you just wasted your time here”

While I think the new maps have been great for group meta content, it is not so great when players are more sparse or want to play in lesser numbers. And sure, you can LFG and zerg the map; but that being the solution to everything isn’t particularly fun either.

I think there’s actually a legitimate reason why gem store items cannot be too good.

Look at boosters and BL keys. How can that possibly be cost effective? If you buy an item booster, I doubt it’d ever come close to making its cost. But you can get these just by playing the game. It makes sense that the intent is to get them as such, and you pay a premium to have them without playing the game.

If gem store items were too good for their value, then they would start to be viewed as mandatory, and that would have pay to win vibes. Take the watchwork sprocket pick, at which point was actually able to pay for itself a lot better than the other items— that caused a ton of trouble. It wasn’t mandatory, but it was a definite advantage even against similarly priced mining tools.

As is, the slots are meant to be used with other gem store items. Having a copper salvage kit means that if you have 3 characters, you will have almost tripled its effectiveness, and thus won’t have to buy 3 of them separately. If you buy one copper salvage kit; you can pay 700 more gems to have it be used on all other characters, which would be cheaper than even buying one more copper salvage kit— making it more effective on even someone with 2 characters.

(Though that certainly is an issue when it comes to people that did bought multiple copies). And we certainly have complaints about that, meaning that, in some cases, the slots are too effective and have made purchases redundant. For the price of 2800 gems, you will have gained the efficiency of people that have spend many thousands of gems for all those copies— there’s already an imbalance there.

It all depends on what you value. For example, I don’t raid, so I don’t see the need for high end level 80 food when there’s much cheaper food that’s almost as effective. I would find it a waste for my needs. I also think legendaries are also an expensive waste of time too, all for a skin and just a stat change. But hey, I just don’t bother with them if I don’t like them.

But this is from the perspective of someone that doesn’t buy gems with money. Gold can’t be redeemed for money, so the opportunity cost is obviously different. I also think this will only be the beginning, so we should have more slots to accommodate armor sets as well. But it really only works if you buy them in order— for example it makes more sense to have a good deal of bank tabs before buying a storage expander.

Living Story is more like extra side chapters in a story. It should not be interpreted as a starter pistol shot to begin the rat race to the skinner box every month. This game was never meant to be the “omfg time to get back on the grind treadmill” when it comes to new events. Such an approach will just lead to rage and failure.

So in terms of adding temporary or minor activities, I have no problem with that. However…

The main problem is that the living story only works if it has a solid worldbuilding to add too. Which the game really doesn’t, unless we count that personal Trahearne story. The result is extremely detached happenings that have no lasting impact on anything. And nobody cares.

Without it, we can’t really appreciate the details of what really goes on. Refugees on Southsun. They ran all the way there, but erm, why do people care again?

Therefore, Living Story in itself isn’t bad. But the problem is that you need to tell the story better.

Honestly, this is why I don’t bother investing in anything at the start of an expansion or major release because chances are they will be adjusted. And I’ve donated quite a few materials to my guild— I don’t want any of it back. I’ve also profited quite a bit selling materials asap at release because I knew that even without changes, that was the highest that would be. Should I have to give that gold back?

Another example. I bought the Watchwork Pick a while back to gain easy access to a difficult material— sprockets. When they became a map reward, my stock of them dwindled in price. I was pretty upset, but then I remembered how many of them I sold for quite a bit in the past.

Not too long after the shared inventory slots came out, they went on sale for even less. I could have saved those gems instead of getting them right away. But hindsight is 20/20.

Point is, you pay a premium to be first.

Also, Anet pls pay me back for all those slivers I forgot to sell before the April Patch

It’s unfortunately consistent with pretty much the entire game. It seems to be an attempt to grab people’s attention but just gives all the signs of a rushjob.

But HoT itself seemed to have a rushed date as well. The lack of polish has been a longstanding issue with the game in practically every aspect.

It’s very obvious that in order to make Lion’s Arch profitable and running due to the poor economy and all that rebuilding effort was to gentrify it and turn it into a tourist trap. So tourists will come admire the beauty while being ripped off by shady vendors like the Miyani-Zommoros racket while life becomes more inconvenient for the locals causing them to move onto other locations that provide a better lifestyle like Divinity’s Reach and Rata Sum. As the lower class citizens leave, the property will be bought up by the rich landowners and the situation will become more pronounced as Lion’s Arch becomes even more beautiful yet even less functional, and pretty soon you will have to pay for waypoints and other infrastructure because you find out Kiel’s been secretly spending the money on Asuran crack and it’s already too late because she’s broke and has nothing to pay back.

We await the next chapter in the amazing Lion’s Arch saga when the forces of Walmart come to make their presence in Lion’s Arch felt.

gebrechen.5643:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon#Skills_that_remove_boons
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon#Skills_that_transform_boons_into_conditions
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon#Traits_that_remove_boons
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon#Traits_that_convert_boons_into_conditions

Oh, and most of them are on necros.

And how many of them are on the same builds or weapon sets?
And how many boons are corrupted vs boons are granted?

Are you really serious about your argument?

Yes, are you?

Do you actually play necro? Because you shouldn’t even have to ask these questions.

I think Inspired Virtues should be baseline, since the baseline ones are so uninspired.

Currently I think Guardians are too tied down to this tree and thus 2 or 3 of the trees aren’t even given a chance. It reminds me of rangers in the past when they had to go all the way down to GM to make sure their signets weren’t complete garbage and that trait would compete with other good ones. That was a fine example on top of many on why ranger traits were garbage at that point but it was dealt with.

I think it’d be better if the end rewards just worked like the dailies and dragon reward. It should just show up as a reward chest in the right hand corner granted immediately on completion. Saves everyone time and prevents this.

The forum specialist thread wasn’t exactly a very productive thread, and as is wouldn’t have been incredibly welcoming to anyone that was going to join.

That being said, I’m just going to assume things are very busy, because unlike some I think all 3 game modes are broken in some aspect or another but there are certain issues such as dailies that I do not feel should be taking so long.

First zone wins.

The thing about Queensdale is that it actually feels like a place populated with people rather than just random locations that conveniently have NPCs to perform their regular functions. You have small towns, farms, and monasteries and stuff. In addition the hearts for the quest are a bit more unique. And then a scary swamp on the outskirts.

When you get to Kessex Hills, you still have some of this, but then a lot of it is large stretches of boring brown mountains and large swaths of water. (ugh!). Genderran fields is even more sparse and less memorable, and the Hrathi Hintherlands is really just the same thing over and over— take the most annoying parts of the previous zones and make one solely out of it.

I do like the north part of Bloodtide coast though. It is out their in the wild in the border with pirates and risen, though near the south it just becomes like a scaled down version of Orr.

In the far future, perhaps Anet will add a way for you to acquire some kind of residence in your race’s starter zone. That might make it feel more like a home zone. Yes, I know there’s a home instance, but it’s not particularly interesting.

A lot of people are grinding elites, judging by….

• The random few that do have elite specs on WvW
• Me seeing WvW frequenters in the new zones
• Me actaully BEING in the new zones doing the same thing.
• People not being able to navigate the maps
• Add in Halloween and people are very spread out
• Leads to less people in WvW to actually play WvW to farm elites, leading to even more people going to PvE to do elites
• All kinds of bugs, like not even being to log in for extended periods of times
• WvW reset being on Saturday Night
• The Guild Buffs for WvW is completely new and also, Guild halls.

:S

As is, this would hurt the super casual players more.

They’re less likely to log in every day, and if we have a typical work schedule, any substantial play time is going to be on the weekends.

I would like to understand why reset night is being moved.

Stonemist, along with a lot of EB beyond your own third are traps assuming numbers are at parity.

This is because it is only worth 35 points, 10 more than a keep , but is far harder to defend. As long as your enemy has some degree of control over their third, sm will always have holes in outer. Being smack dab in the center means it is quite easy for enemies to come from multiple approaches and a lot of resources are needed to really defend it.

I don’t neccesarily see it is a bad thing as it is still a good place to fight over as some icing on the cake and of course holding it for a bit gives you lots of mobility advatanages. But it really depends on what they want it to be.

I would like to formally apologize to Mike O’Brien.

Apparently, we do really have many people that are so into pve that they not only not want pvp, they actually abhor it to the point where it violates their game mode; all duelers and roamers need to go to where they are out of sight of karma trains in order to not frighten the zerglings. Wait, that’s not enough. They need to stop taking up queue space, and not those 20 people that are just hoping the tag will not defend the keep so they can retake it again for some karma, an easy daily, and reward track progress while looking at “stimulating” videos with the other monitor and not bothering to look out for enemies or even spend their supply building things.

I was wrong. You may now stop reading this post and continue firing your cannon at that 1 person. I think that Arrow Cart over there is going to expire in 5 minutes. But it’s okay. I sell them for the best prices on the TP!

But seriously, this whole thing reeks of control issues. Must every member that is on the map be forced to follow the will of the blob? Or is it because people will not bow down to the PPT gods are heathens that can not be controlled, and thus too dangerous? And again, you certainly have the right to take these folks off your lawn, kill them, maybe even send an emote at them. But again, what makes you so important that you decided that you are justified, and they are wrong?

Because ascended gear is poorly thought out, and every aspect of them shows why.

choban.9027:

Why so serious? Everyone seem to be kittened off by this week-long event, but after all it’s just a game and some people find this event to be lots of fun. Personally, well, it was fun for hour or two, but still I don’t want to rage. In our matchup we have lots of fights and I haven’t seen that many K-trains going around, there are even few waypoints across all maps.
Only thing I am really mad about is alarming number of players abusing the bug to get golem buff when they are not in them…that’s a shame…
I can also add that I am really passionate about WvW and that I spend 80% of my gaming time upgrading, sieging and defending our objectives….

Well, I feel like they could have added some more effort and thought into this. Like take this as a chance to stomp out some bugs, but instead we get some more ridiclous bugs and exploits. If that didn’t exist, and say change the golem bonus to 10% damage and made golems only cost half supply then it could still exist without the same degree of disruption.

Imagine if they just extended the golem thing to pve maps. Let’s say you can’t use them to attack other players. There would be a lot of crying foul; I’d assume, even if it’s only temporary.

Random.4691:

ArchonWing.9480:

Johje Holan.4607:

What happened to NSP? A few weeks ago they were up in T3 and not doing too bad.

Coverage, and I imagine a constant flurry of RNG matchups that kept putting them higher. From the SBI view, it would seem NSP hung around mostly due to their rather strong defensive and scouting network. Generally, their stuff is very hard to karma train capture, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this discourages attackers rather than be a malicious 2v1 situation.

This is speculation, of course and also turning into an MU thread.

My honest take on it is, NSP had a band wagon, it wasn’t a huge one but it was enough to cause disparity in T4. They seemed perfectly fine when they could easily win with little to no competition. Then they rolled T3 (really this was their own fault) and got stomped, the easy wins evaporated and they had to taste their own medicine for a couple of weeks. They finally got to come back down to T4 but unfortunately CD had been doing some band wagoning themselves, now there was competition, NSP had another server that could hold their own to deal with. People either left NSP or stopped logging in. It was all their own doing.

In short, NSP created T4 disparity and were happy with easy wins, when things got tough they tucked tail and ran.

I am not sure how true that is. NSP didn’t bandwagon to t3; they were originally T3 when it was all screwed up with one t2 server kept coming down. Eventually, this was “fixed” when DB permanently dropped down and SBI/Mag began a buildup to reach t3. It only made sense that it would push NSP down to t4 and they were naturally overmatched against t4 for a while. At the same time, DB was increasingly getting weaker, thus increasing the chance NSP goes back to t3 regardless of what they do. But as it appears CD is readying for T3, t4 is again screwed up. In fact, recently CD was able to defeat HOD, the current t3 occupant.

I think this is more of a function of a population imbalance and other servers collecting players rather than anyone fairweathering since anyone looking for easy wins on NSP would have ran off somewhere in between Dec 2014- Mar 2015 and they seem to be better off than a few other servers that were in t3 at the time. After that, it would seem like there would be a few more bigger bandwagons to join.

RoseofGilead.8907:

ArchonWing.9480:

Is it really that convenient?

I mean if you go into HOTM you can sell and access their bank and keep where you were. The biggest to advantage to such a thing is that you could craft or mystic forge and come back, but it sends you back to a city anyways….

I’ve only used the temp airship pass about two times when they used to drop back then, and I ended up deleting the rest. I just don’t think they were useful, so I really think being able to stay where you are isn’t that big of an advantage especially when it costs so much to buy.

That’s how I’ve felt about them, as well. Same for the Home Portal Stone. The cost isn’t worth it for me, but many people just like the convenience of it. So, at least someone is enjoying them, I suppose.

Well, to me it’s not just about cost; I suppose as you said some people do feel it’s worth it. I just can’t relate to it. I’ve bought a lot of silly things that will never pay for themselves. Sometimes I guess it’s just the novelty of spending on something different.

The Home Portal Stone and these passes aren’t worth it to me at any price in their current state as indicated by me not using them even when they were “free”. I do however think that their high price does justify bringing space saving and really wouldn’t be a big deal considering the options we already have. As for the fear that cities will be empty, I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t buy them anyways as well as the fact that Lion’s Arch has done a excellent job of driving me away from it on its own.

It might also be nice if it remembered you were there and you could load into there to begin with.

At this point, it feels like the main value of it is having exclusive access to an instance, which I guess is something.

We could try to fix it, but I am not sure if they’re up to the task. It’d make sense to have at least a rotation, ideally rotate away the current incarnation until things can be thought out.

I would suggest:

• Remove Barricades or leave gaps so all they do is widen paths when destroyed. These do nothing to hinder blobs but are a pain for small groups.
• Open up more paths from center to other parts of the map. The middle is effective wasted space atm, oasis event or not.
• Widen most paths. In the event a fight happens, more pirate shipping isn’t very fun.
• More paths in general. Remove some of these barriers so you don’t get as many meandering paths.
• Shrink Towers/have less attackable walls. There’s so many angles of attack it just places unnecessary strain on scouting defenders, and in a lot of cases people just don’t bother at all.
• Don’t make jump pads such a big deal, make more stairs.
• Look at SW tower. Can you even call this thing a tower? It is badly designed and you should feel bad.
• Tone down all automatic pve gimmicks. Nerf air statues to knockdown, not knockback, nerf fire keep air turret damage, remove cripple from earth keep, tone down the CC from guards.
• Bring back Bloodlust to the middle, the only appreciated middle gimmick.
• Remove Keep “revealed”
• Air/Fire Keep WPs should be usable by whoever owns it.

~Archonwing
SBI Deserted BL Cleanup.

I think it’d be a good idea if you could salvage ascended stuff for their materials. For example, salvaging a cleric’s sword could result in 1-2 deldrimor, 1-2 spiritwood, 5-10 dark matter, and a chance of the inscription and ectoplasm.

It’s sorta hard because ascended items are already rare and the chances of getting a desirable stat combo is even more rare. And we have a situation in pve, which ascended items play the bigger role where only 1 stat combo is desirable.

Zerker meta isn’t bad in and of itself
Rare ascended weapons aren’t bad in and of itself
Rare ascended weapons that have many variable stats aren’t bad in and of itself.

Together they make ascended drops a non-factor, though.

Thus far, I’ve only received the following ascended items:

Cleric weapon from Teq chest.
Celestial Armor, Apothecary Ring, Rabid Armor from wvw chests.

And this is after many, many chests of these sort being opened. The celestial and rabid piece found use in wvw, though I’d imagine pvers would consider these aside from the celestial to be a slap in the face. In any case, it should be a joyous event, instead of "hmm, I’m going to put it in my bank until I know what to do with it (usually never). In any case, it feels very weird that finding an expensive exotic item is cause for more celebration.

Xenon.4537:

Oh look it’s this thread again!

a·chieve·ment
n.
1. The act of accomplishing or finishing.
2. Something accomplished successfully, especially by means of exertion, skill, practice, or perseverance.
3. something that has been accomplished, esp by hard work, ability, or heroism
4. successful completion; accomplishment

Map completion is a feat which requires you to do a lot of things to complete. Going through the WvW maps is a significant part of the journey full of its own unique challenges which must be overcome. Without WvW, map completion would simply not be the same thing it is right now. Doing map completion requires that you do certain things in order to earn it. If you can’t, or are unwilling to do those things, then you don’t deserve it.

Liken this to hockey or basketball or whatever you want. If you can’t or are unwilling to do what it takes to be the best, you don’t deserve the gold medal/trophy/what-have-you.

That is a case of severe circular logic if one of your points is simply that changing it makes it not what it is right now.

Actually, you can’t liken this to hockey or basketball, or any legitimate competition. I don’t know of any competition that allows for 5x, 10x 20x, more players on one side than the others.

Measuring a feat is pointless if the circumstances are not balanced. Fact is that the effort required to achieve this is very different depending on circumstances. All the open world exploration is balanced because everyone faces the same content. There won’t be 2 veterans guarding a skill point one day, and 10 champions guarding the same skill point the next. The difficulty of visiting various locations does vary heavily in wvw. Plus guesting makes it so that no excuses whatsoever are possible.

In the end, a lot of the WvW exploration parts are outside the player’s control, which diminishes its value as a feat. Sure, there are workarounds like color changes, but I do remember my server keeping the same colors for quite a while. This should be pretty obvious to anyone who spends any decent amount of time in wvw, especially during that league season.

Sich.7103:

ArchonWing.9480:

I honestly think t3 gates AND auto upgrades seemed a bit overkill. I dunno.

The T3 gates are fine, but they are too easy to get….

Yea, that’s what I thought as well. You could have tough gates, but they shouldn’t be easy to get. And if upgrades were that easy, then you shouldn’t have as tough gates.

I really do think if the upgrade process was slower or if Yak denial proved a bigger role, it would be not as bad.

Right now, I am demanding rams get an autoattack, because…

It’s for convenience. That’s what the internet is for.

All mf stats should be converted to

Power
Precision
Critical Damage

I imagine this is the first step, so they can remove everything that’s not berserker.

/sarcasm

Anything please let me melt it down for laurels or something.

Meh. Still needs more remodeling.

Ultimately though, as long as they provide a large enough space to fight and enough people on the map doing their thing, I’ll be okay. TBH, I wouldn’t even mind a queue if it led to something good. I’m honestly a very simple person when it comes to gaming needs.

1.) You can’t be “kicked” in WvW. You can be kicked out a squad, but that doesn’t stop you from following them. You lose out on communication, supply count, and party placement but the later 2 do not matter because boon share is generally irrelevant for rangers anyways unless they are frontline heal or something. Proectile weapons such as ranger longbow are liabilities due to the large amount of projectile hate, and while you may not, there’s no way for the commander to know you personally.

Speaking as someone that does use “rallybots” at fodder, I’d like to say that people that blame pugs for their failures especially in large fights are generally projecting and just want to blob the map, especially now that rallies are only 1 per kill so this generally is more of a problem when numbers are less than 10 In general zergs though, the so called “bads” often get 1 pushed and die before they have the chance to rally anyone. Unless you are heavily outnumbered, nobody in your group should even be close to going down before all these non-squad folks are dead. If you are, then you’re probably as bad as the pugs you’re kicking if not worse.

The ones that do the rallying are actually the bad heavies that are selfish and don’t push with the melee so they burn all their cooldowns for selfish survival and end up dying at the worst moments. But don’t let facts get in the way of rage I guess.

2.) Epidemic on pets is a problem…. assuming pets actually live long enough for that to happen. Which is never. 99% of the time just target the ranger and epi load .

3.) Make your own squad. You can’t be kicked from it. Hell, you can even make a squad and kick everyone using meta builds if that’s your thing. Once there was no tag and we came under attack and there wasn’t any time to switch toons, so I tagged on Druid. People cooperated because there was nothing better to do anyways.

That’s always something I’ve wondered on this topic. Why don’t people make groups like “Casual Bring anything NO META OR KICK groups” I doubt anyone is going to complain about being excluded from that, so what’s the downside?

While we’re at it, 10 messages seems small for an inbox, I would think.

So, what’s life like being a bad player?

Better performance and UI would be worth another expansion’s money. Gw 2.5!

10 people owning 50 people zergs sounds fine.

10 people owning 50 people zergs because the former pve’d enough for it, well….

Go PvE heroes! They were right. You guys really are into PvE!

Although in all seriousness, there’s quite a few complaints about “pirate ship” which would suggest increasing the damage flying around would make the situation a bit worse? Oh I don’t know. Just a opinion.

Hmm, gotta agree. Frequently, I call the next target to train down by their rank. I don’t see what’s the point of a rank if only anonymous enemies can see your rank. Should be able to toggle on/off to enemies and/or allies, but if that’s too much clutter to allies they could be like those pvp badge things (what relevance do those have in wvw anyways?)

Though people have been able to pick out the driver even if they are relatively low rank based on the movement, but I suppose that’s just a skill.

Another possibility is that the titles can just be unlocked and you can pick any you’ve unlocked. I think Gold Legend sounds a lot better than Platinum Recruit anyways. It also doesn’t help that platinum makes your name longer.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWl8AhmhYpQwVIwPEHMEVuFyv9DXBTwXeL2GIAA-TliFQBA4RAUFlgqb/BCp+zZ0HkQlDURJR6OBAJ4IAYElYBAQAuZb2m3MwRXuRXuRPa95Pv5RvZpA8bZE-w

[WvW]

This is my personal heal/support build. Yes, technically there’s only 2 minstrel trinkets and a celestial ring because I don’t feel like crafting another set of minstrel armor but you can definitely put nomads and minstrels in any of the slots if so desired but I feel like I’m tanky enough. Basically it’s mostly revolving around aegis heal spam and spamming shield skills also helps.

Notes:

• Take Merciful Intervention instead of retreat if your group is organized.
• Take Strength in Numbers when if another guardian isn’t doing it already
• Communal defenses is alright, but honestly underwhelming.
• Take mussels gnashblade if you are rich and feel like you could use survival
• Take lemongrass/poultry leek soup for a cheaper alternative.
• Double energy sigils are great for sustain, if desired.

Depths.4051:

ArchonWing.9480:

Sounds like a busybody thing to do. I wouldn’t even notice the skins most of the time.

I don’t anymore, but when I got the skins initially when I was newer, I was of course proud. I think it would be similar for other newer players who work hard for their skins. I’d heard a person complain when pvp armor and weapons were merged with pve gear. Although I liked the change, I found the complaint understandable that they might be upset since they worked hard to receive that gear, and then have the satisfaction on that work taken away. I have enough nice skins and an excess in many tokens, so your right I rarely notice anymore, but it wont change my thoughts on dungeon selling.

Well that’s fine too. Some people come for self-fulfillment, others come to just own stuff. To me, they’re equally valid reasons, even though I personally don’t agree with what they’re doing sometimes.

What I don’t agree with, and should be banned, is the ability to join someone’s party and kick their own instance because that goes way beyond dungeon selling and is just an ingredient for a toxic environment.

I mean it doesn’t matter what OP was doing. Let’s say he just started the dungeon on his own for a few minutes and then uses LFG; and then gets kicked. That would clearly be wrong, wouldn’kitten It’d just be a few minutes of progress stolen, but still— that should not be allowed.

jheryn.8390:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

People keep repeating this like programmed drones…
specs are not content, they are the means to play it. It’s not that I don’t want to work for something, I don’t mind that, I just want my spec while doing it.

I want to play hot with a Chronomancer, not play hot and get a chronomancer at the end.

When Nightfall came out, did you get heroes automatically or did you have to play the new game to get them?
When Eye of the North came out, did you get PvE skills automatically or did you have to play the new expansion to get them?
When any of GW1’s games came out did you automatically have all skills – both normal and elites – unlocked?
When you start a new character on GW2 do you have all skills and specializations unlocked and accessible right away?
When you played Mass Effect games did you get all abilities unlocked and accessible right away?

Those are not content. Those are how you play the game. So according to you, they should all be free. Every skill, every ability, every gear should be free. Because “they are the means to play it.”

I’m “sorry” to say but unlocking more means to play a game is part of playing the game.

Every game with progression – which is just about every game ever – has this.

You do not start a Metroid game with the best armor, weapons, and all abilities. You do not start a DOOM game with all guns. You do not start Batman Arkham games with all abilities unlocked. You do not start an Assassin’s Creed game with all weapons and abilities. You do not start ANY game with everything unlocked.

People keep “repeating this like programmed drones” because that’s what it is – it’s asking to be handed an intregal part of the expansion on a silver platter.

You might as well be asking for the function of legendary armor to be given just because you bought the expansion.

Does this mean that their method of locking the elite spec is good? No. But should elite specializations just be automatically unlocked for purchasing HoT? Also no.

^This. I agree 100%.

Why play a game at all if you just given everything? If that was the way games were made you would pay $40-$50 bucks and after you downloaded it, all you would see is a fully loaded character with the end credits rolling.

I am looking forward to unlocking my elites. It gives a sense of accomplishment.

I also agree with Konig that it probably isn’t the greatest way we could have unlocked the elites, but however it is done, I am still glad we are unlocking them and not just having them handed to us.

I disagree if you think progression of this form is “everything” and there couldn’t be a reason to play it for anything else. I am of the mindset that in-game progression is limited and has a finite end— this is probably because I haven’t played any other MMOs and thus I just don’t seek that kind of thing. And as a WvW player, I would consider testing my abilities against other players to be a form of progression, plus we have our own forms of progression in World vs World; it’s just that some of us are doing unrelated content for this progression.

And this isn’t just WvW. I also like how some pve content such as dungeon can be made so trivial by getting better at it, and a lot of it is independent of build.

Point is the game is a lot more open ended, and progression takes many forms

Furthermore, people aren’t just complaining about 400 hero points; it’s 400 hero points per character, and it leads to a situation in many progression based games that I never liked personally: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneManParty Basically, you’re gimping yourself unless you focus on one or several characters, and that results in other choices being very underpowered and often not used at all.

This is often cyclic, with one character becoming slightly stronger, making it more likely for them to land the finishing blow, or survive the boss’s attacks, leading to them gaining more levels and strength, making it easier for them to kill the enemies and survive and so on…

And depending on how the meta evolves, this could be far more impacting than ascended gear especially with the inclusion of raids.

As a side note, I’m not against unlocking progression things, just the way most games handle it seem to be bad for me. The only big exceptions in my book is Diablo 2 and the Mega Man X series, which I’d be glad to elaborate on.

I don’t see much of that on my server; most people tend to be alright, and if not, they don’t do much of anything. Then again I come from battle.net, where there’s tons of malicious activity and griefing going on.

If there’s generally any trash talking, it’s 1 or 2 people that get ignored fast, and it generally happens in wvw, but that’s natural. There’s hardly any trash talk from what little I see in pvp, and that I found rare.

On these forums, there seems to be a lot of people with control freak tendencies— they tend to be so concerned with what other people doing, and often labeling people who do not play like them derogatory terms like “casuals” “no-lifers” or “exploiters”, well the precise words don’t matter, but there seems to be some kind of moral superiority complex going on— in any case other people are some plague that would destroy all of civilization if left unchecked.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Tasao.4623:

This is just flat out terrible. Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind. Some of us play 9+ characters. You want to shut cosmetics behind grinds? You want to shut toys and vanity items behind grinds? You want to shut proportionate rewards behind grinds? Sure. Cool.
But it’s just plain bad design to shut core gameplay for the expansion specs out behind a long grind.

If you can unlock all the traits and skills in short order, that’s fine. It’s ok for the special skins to then take another 200+ points to unlock. But people are going to despise running around for the first week with a half-finished traitline and missing abilities.

Feeling forced to dash off into the jungle and skip content and rush hero points so I can fill out my trait line is going to directly reduce my desire to play GW2. When I think “I feel like playing my Mesmer now that Chronomancer is available” and then remember I need 100+ more points to unlock Chronomancer abilities and traits and the only way to get those points is to grind WvW or to skip jungle content in favor of focusing on hero challenges, I may well just not bother. Because this issue won’t just come up for Chronomancer. It’ll come up for Reaper, and Daredevil, and Berserker, and Tempest. It’ll come up for every single spec.

This is an incredibly alt-unfriendly design decision.

Considering the number of people who have told me I am a terrible forum specialist because I disagree with ANet’s choice to make elite specializations so expensive, I am just going to quote, +1, and emphasize this post here. This post perfectly reflects how I feel in the matter.

Oh boy, I must be worse xD

Some folks around here are purporting a false dichotomy about being wanting to be handed everything and doing whatever the plan is. I don’t think it works that way. Personally, I wouldn’t mind getting 1000 points if it meant I would unlock all elite specs for all classes currently. If anything, I’d be more willing to accept this “challenge” over someone that just needs to grind out 400 over a single character and ignore 88% of the choices in this game.

Challenge is cool. Repetition, not so much. Nor is being made available a brand new way to play a class, expanding on the concept, and not being able to use it for said content unless you completed said content. This is like if I told you there was an enemy that was hard to beat unless you used a new technique that you learned by beating the stage. Actually, there’s some value to such a concept, but I think it should be used sparingly.

As played, I have to play as base Engineer and base (sigh…) Ranger and necro in the new content because my main (Guardian) would be wasting time earning points towards a spec that is no good anyways. I will admit there’s a WvW workaround which is fine, but still disappointing. Maybe only other guardian mains can understand this.