Guild Wars 2

Pendragon.8735:

The best part of GW2 was never the dungeons. The dev team does not have as much experience or creativeness of other MMO’s that were designed and focused on dungeons and raiding from the beginning. It’s strengths were in the new gen ideas it pushed. About freedom of playing how you wish, anti-grind, multiple avenues to the plateau, lively combat, not restricted by rote raiding schemes, etc.

So simply throwing some higher number rewards into dungeons, and worse, forcing it to matter to all parts of the game, funneling players there whether they want to do it or not, is not any kind of answer or solution to dwindling player numbers, if that is what this is about.

In fact, to the extent that is happening, I would say its because dungeons were already too much of the focus of end game (for all the best looking skins) and they were dreadfully boring to run over and over, and most players simply are not doing them. So why make them even more required? And compound the problem by putting a gear treadmill on top?

Why not more longer outside dynamic event chains with cosmetic rewards at the end? Judging by how many people still do the same couple Orr events over and over, it wouldn’t take that much improvement and variety to get a lot of people out into new zones with new and better events. Why not more unique and challenging crafting reward? Why not more than one or two skin choices for WvW rewards, despite that so many already enjoy that mode even without virtually any rewards. Don’t force them into stale dungeon grinding, reward them for playing the part of the game they like.

I want to quote this because I feel like this is one of those interesting and nuanced posts that’s going to get lost in a lot of ad hominem and arguing.

You raise a really interesting point, and one I’ve been mulling about over a while. I do think there’s an overemphasis on dungeons, but in the sense that the PVE system needs to be more robust.

The premise of the game is a robust, flexible, tactical PVE system that depends on various builds and specs rather than a rigid definition of role. And the game isn’t there yet. We haven’t reached the point where PVE is actually interesting. Most PVE is still a matter of three things: Get out of red circles; dodge telegraphed attacks; keep hitting the boss.

And no amount of theorycraft and no configuration of traits fundamentally changes the way you approach most encounters. Most encounters will play out the same way regardless of your spec.

In other words we have a PVE situation in which you can spec/trait however you want, not because every build is viable, but because every build is tactically inconsequential. Unlike GW1, we don’t have the depth or the flexibility to build for an encounter, and swap our traits and spec to do something very specific.

So I think you’re very right. It seems counterintuitive to overemphasize dungeons when the PVE model still needs work, when Dynamic Events still need to be developed. When all the core features of the game still require attention and cultivation, it’s odd that they’d define “dungeons” as the thing to do at 80.

Hello ANet,

The current trait system encourages dynamic changes to your trait choice. Out of combat, you can instantly change your equipped traits based on whatever you have unlocked. Consequently, this feature encourages changing Traits around in accordance with your strategy.

I’d love some way to “save” my current Trait loadout, so I can switch to it with a push of a button when out of combat. Perhaps implement some kind of internal cooldown to prevent rapidly switching Traits between fights. But this could prove very useful when, for example, I want to switch from a Burn-heavy build to something else because I’m fighting enemies immune to Burn. Or when I’m equipping a Staff and want to switch in to Two Handed/Symbol support Traits.

GW1 had a feature that allowed you to locally save your build setup for quick and easy switches while in town. I’d love to see something similar implemented for GW2’s traits.

We already have the ability to switch traits out of combat, thus encouraging experimentation and versatility of builds. Please help us make full use of this underappreciated feature!

Leonard: The premise behind your build and the philosophy supporting your playstyle fascinates me. I, too, have run a 30 Honor 30 Virtues build before, albeit different from yours. In my experience, 30 Honor and 30 Virtues is actually a remarkably adaptable build, owing to the versatility of Honor traits and the playstyle-agnostic Virtues line, which is useful for any build and any playstyle on any day of the week and in any dungeon. ;)

Consequently I feel like the way you’ve realized your design philosophy is weirdly at odds with the potential of the Honor and Virtues trait lines. These are two powerfully versatile trait lines, and in their versatility, these trait lines reflect the design philosophy behind Guardian support: not through +healing and boons, but through a combination of everything, including damage, conditions, condition removal, aegis applications, Virtues, boons and—yes—direct heals.

Therefore the playstyle you’re submitting seems ironically hamstrung by a build that runs into issues of ‘soft’ diminishing returns. What do I mean by soft diminishing returns? Essentially this: By investing so deeply in +healing and purely support Traits, your capacity for offense and direct damage has become almost crippled; however, the loss of offensive capacity is proportionally greater than the actual, tangible, practical “support” you gain in return. Thus, ‘soft’ diminishing returns.

Let me give you some concrete examples. You’re swinging a hammer, but not really taking advantage of Writ of Exaltation or Writ of Persistence, both of which: A) Make it much easier for your party to actually trigger Combo Finishers off your Symbol of Protection and B) Take full advantage of your +60% boon duration and C) Make it easier for your party to pick up Protection and significantly improve your Hammer damage output as well. Instead your screenshot shows you with Pure of Heart. Now, I don’t know the numbers and I’m not sure how well Pure of Heart scales with Healing Power, but that’s not the point. Pure of Heart is a trait that really shines when you’re pumping up as much Aegis as possible (i.e, it works best with Valorous Defense, Might of the Protector and Shattered Aegis).

I feel like you’ve overemphasized support based on a traditional, Holy Trinity stereotype of support, hence your emphasis on big Might stacking, powerful dodge roll heals. In fact, your original post says that Protection, Hold the Line coupled with a powerful dodge-heal and Staff Empower gives you “not too shabby” survivability.

I submit to you that the use of dodge-heals and Staff heals to promote survivability is actually a misuse of dodging and staff. Healing is a poor way to mitigate damage given long cooldowns and low scaling, and is best used to keep health pools up and top off incidental damage rather than substitute for survivability or bring you back up after eating a hit. Your survivability is almost always going to come exclusively from two sources: 1) Well-timed use of specific abilities and 2) Good dodging and spacing.

Just taking AC Explorable as an example, the Lieutenant Kohler fight is almost entirely neutralized by having one decent Guardian of any spec (20% faster Shout recharge is ideal) using “Stand Your Ground!” the second he starts charging his Scorpion Wire. The timely use of a single shout utterly neutralizes the single most threatening aspect of this fight. No amount of +healing or boon duration can even come close to the survivability provided by knowing when to dodge and knowing when to use SYG.

You cite powerful Might applications, frequent availability of combo fields and good incidental heals as the keys to your success as a Supporting Guardian—and I agree with you. But I also strongly believe that you’ve overinvested in pure support, and your investment is going to give you very little return after a certain point.

My suggestion therefore is to trim the fat a little and cut some of your healing and boon duration in favor of offense. Damage, after all, is what wins a fight, and nothing is better for a team than a dead enemy. Sacrificing your damage for support will not give you a 1:1 return, and eventually you’re sacrificing more damage than you are making up through party synergy. Here are my proposals. Take them with a grain of salt:

Girlysprite,

Wow. Speaking as a roleplayer, your story really upset me. I’m sorry you were treated so rudely, and this sort of hive-mind snobbery toward the amorphous Other is a pernicious element of the roleplay community, and one of the reasons I avoid taverns altogether.

Kudos to you for recognizing that good roleplay is about interacting with the world, and creating a greater sense of immersion—not just for you and your circle of friend, but everyone around you.

-Valerie Cross, Tarnished Coast

Celestina.2894:

Random question regarding blinds, how does blind interact with non-target things such as barrage in PVE and PVP. Does blinding the source still cause them to miss?

I’m 90% sure it will cause the first attack to miss in a multi-hit attack (like Barrage) regardless of the target being an enemy or an area.

@Hydrophidian:

I’ve played a lot of MMORPGs over the years. I’m not discounting what you say, but my experience has been more or less consistent with my claim that gear progression is a defining element of the MMORPG. If you have any examples of games that refute this point, please let me know. This isn’t sarcasm—it is a sincere request.

@Snoring Sleepwalker:

I can back up my points if you’d like. I thought I did, but I can clarify. Is there a part of my post that you feel requires more evidence? Also, I’m not saying that GW1 wasn’t successful. I played and loved GW1. I’m saying it wasn’t an MMO.

And that’s my entire point. I’m submitting to you the possibility that gear progression is a basic, fundamental assumption in MMO design. I’m not making any value judgements about whether or not this is a good thing; I’m saying it is what it is, owing to patterns observed in dozens of MMORPGs released in the last ten years.

GW1 is a fine game. It’s not an MMORPG by ANet’s own definition.

My argument is that if ANet wanted to rid itself of gear progression, it shouldn’t have tried so hard to embrace all the other tropes of MMORPGs. GW2 resembles other MMOs in many, many ways. If it really wanted to do away with gear progression, it should’ve been a lot more like GW1.

It’s true that Greatsword’s function has changed. It’s no longer a reliable weapon for Symbol builds, which are now better suited to Staff, Hammer and Mace. The damage nerf is relatively insignificant, and only looks significant on paper. It’s a situational damage nerf, and not on its own a big deal.

Greatsword capacity for support through Finishers actually hasn’t changed. Previously, Greatsword was a very powerful all-around weapon that provided both strong Symbol support and three Combo Finishers. Now, the Symbol support is limited, at best, but the Combo Finisher support actually got better by a good margin.

Our one and only Leap Finisher got better. I’ll argue that we could use another one in Sword, but that’s not really relevant here. Our two Whirl Finishers remain strong sources of both damage and support.

So Greatsword is hardly a bad weapon for Support. It’s just a matter of how you go about achieving that support. Greatsword’s role has become more clearly defined. It lost one role—synergy with Symbol based builds—but it’s become solidified as a Combo Finisher weapon.

The point I’m trying to make in this thread, which I hope I’ve illustrated, is that these changes are seriously not worth throwing a fit over. Dismissing Guardians as a broken class, a useless class, one fit for storage, that’s been “nerfed to the ground”—the sort of rhetoric that’s being used in this thread—doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help players looking for some sensible feedback on the changes, and it doesn’t help ANet on the off chance that they’re reading our feedback.

If you want to make a thread about how Greatsword lost its Symbolic support—an arguably central tool in the Guardian support toolbox—I’d gladly engage you on the topic. Heck, I’d probably even agree with you.

What I can’t agree with are these knee-jerk, over-the-top topics that spread misinformation about the degree and scope of the nerfs and create white noise over which valuable feedback gets drowned out.

Happy to help!

And for the record, I’m an advocate for more Guardian options too. Not many more, just one more Ranged option.

I’ve always believed powerfully in the relationship between options and strength. The more options you have, the greater your range of tactics. The greater your range of tactics, the better you can perform in a given situation provided you’re prepared for it.

Options reward prepared players. The broad number of Warrior weapon options, coupled with their ability to switch between weapons quickly and capitalize on Burst skills per-weapon, contributes to their viability.

I would absolutely love a Guardian longbow weapon, but that is neither here nor there. Developers mentioned interest in the idea during BWE2, but said they lacked the bandwidth to make it happen before release.

Here’s hoping!

1. There is no achievement for winning an argument in Lion’s Arch Mapchat.
2. It’s hard to read emotions and intentions over the internet. Don’t assume by default that someone’s being short with you.
3. Unless they’re Asura. Ha ha. Get it?
4. I’m sorry. That was a pretty terrible joke.
5. Someone who doesn’t share your sense of outrage isn’t necessarily a “fanboy/fangirl”
6. If you’re a roleplayer, please don’t mock someone else’s style of roleplay or choice of character. Intentionally embarrassing someone who’s trying to be creative is pretty low.
7. If a Dungeon team is going absolutely nowhere and you want to leave, that’s fine. But at the very least, give them some advance notice and one or two more tries, and be polite about it.
8. Value your newbies. They’re your most vulnerable and most valuable member of the community.
9. If you find yourself losing your cool in-game, snapping at people or just not having any fun, take a few deep breaths and step aside for a while. Log out, if you have to. No dungeon team likes having an irate teammate. PVP’s never fun if you’re furious at everyone. And the forums are just going to rub salt in it.
10. Learn to use the Block/Report tools. Block trolls—don’t feed them. If someone’s being impossible, rude or just plain inflammatory in /map, turn them off.
11. Try and be rational and tone down on the hyperbole and angry rhetoric when posting on the forums. There’s a simple reason for this: If you want a decent discussion and you want the devs to take notice of what you have to say, be civil about it. Even if you’re upset. Especially if you’re upset. The game is by no means perfect and you very well should bring up honest criticisms and complaints. Just do it in a way that isn’t insulting to anyone who disagrees with you.
12. Having a valid complaint doesn’t make you a hater. It doesn’t threaten someone else’s enjoyment of the game. A full-throated defense of ArenaNet shouldn’t drown out valuable criticism, and very often the most loyal and passionate fans are the ones who genuinely want to see problems fixed and gameplay improved.
13. The highest form of courtesy is the courtesy you show yourself. Don’t let other people stomp on your fun or drag you down.
14. Take it easy around Trahearne. Use few syllables and talk slowly. He’s not the greenest lettuce in the crisper.

EgonVenkman.1907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I feel sorry for Anet. Their initial fanbase turn on them so easily.

The sad part is that these people are turning on them for something that has been in the game since launch.

Did none of you notice the different tiers of gear before this?

Did none of you notice the PvE stat boosters in the Gem Shop?

It’s like none of you have actually played the game you are now complaining about. Tiers of gear power have been here since the first week of beta, nothing is changing, they are just adding the next tier, it is literally no different then to what is already in the game.

Until February, when they announce Mythical gear, then next June with the dark side Diabolical gear, following next October on their annual release with Malevolent gear. They just need a few more tiers, then they will stop. Seriously. They will stop this time.

Trust them. Just ignore their previous marketing attempts. No gear treadmill indeed.

Slippery slope fallacy. And totally irrational. No one has any idea what the Ascended gear is actually all about. You’re just assuming Ascended is a new tier gear, and it’s going to lead to a whole new ladder of tiers, and before you know it the game is dead and we’re playing another WoW clone.

That is a massive cognitive leap considering that we have no information about the upcoming changes.

Would it kill you to relax, be patient, and wait for the blog post?

Making Trahearne the hero that’s destined to save Kryta is like making Kif Kroker the Jedi that brings balance to the Force.

*Abilities
Whether I go full tank or build the glassiest cannon ever, my play style doesn’t really change. I’m mostly going to be trying to dodge out of the way of mobs and doing damage whenever they aren’t focused on me. Going from glass cannon to full tank mostly means a switch from being able to take 0 hits to being able to take 2. Tank builds can still do decent DPS. This basically means that tanks don’t feel tanky and glass cannons don’t feel very powerful. This leads to a feeling that it doesn’t really matter what gear you use or how you trait your character. While the abilities obviously have different effects, they aren’t very radical and this leaves combat feeling extremely repetitive and similar no matter which class you pick. If you want to specialise in something, it ought to be special, kitten it.

This. There’s a very low ceiling to tactical variation in GW2. Most builds center around one or two key traits and differ in small but significant ways, but you can’t specialize around a particular tactic—not really, anyway.

The game doesn’t let you specialize in the way GW1 did. It doesn’t let you specialize in the way any MMO does. GW2’s combination of middling traits and high-cooldown utilities lead to a situation where nearly every playstyle focuses on dealing damage, with small variations toward or away from survivability, conditions, burst or support.

I think it’s a problem, and one that I hope the dev team will address over the next year. This isn’t something a patch or two will fix.

I still really love the game. I don’t think my criticism of recent developments precludes my enthusiasm for the game, but rather reflects it. =)

How long should the developer be given?

Until what, exactly? /V/ invades? The Pope excommunicates ANet? We stop making threads like this? I don’t understand.

Bugs range from mild annoyances to catastrophic failure (crashes, story stoppers, etc.).
…
Systems that took years to design prove to fail post launch
…
Its these sort of decisions that can take a successfully MMO launch and destroy it.
…
Are all hands on deck to stop the hemorrhaging?

I’ve bolded all the obvious examples of massive hyperbole in your post. Honestly, you seem so utterly convinced this game is bleeding players like a severed artery all over your new MMO carpet, so why are you even asking this sort of question?

How much communication do you want? For the first week of launch, they had a day-by-day State of the Game. Since then, we’ve had official comments on everything from Dungeon tuning to bugged Events to botting nearly every single day.

You want to mix metaphors, fine: you want to convince me this game is hemorrhaging players like the sinking Titanic, fine. Show me numbers. Show me evidence that one month after release, GW2 is in half a bad a shape as you and nearly every other thread on this forum describe.

I’m willing to believe you, and I’m willing to give your arguments a chance, but when you make claims that outlandish and use hyperbole that frequently, I expect some extraordinary evidence to support your extraordinary claims. Otherwise, frankly, this just sounds like another Sky Is Falling thread.

Torch isn’t bad at all. It’s wonderful for what it offers: dependable burning, dependable condition removal, and a good spike. It works well with Radiance/Condition builds, has something to offer every one-handed weapon, and is a classic favorite in a sword/torch Meditations spike build (which, admittedly, I don’t see as often these days).

If Torch gets a bad rap, it’s because we as players often fall into the trap of absolutism. I.E, if it isn’t the best, it’s garbage. So the argument goes that you should never use Torch if you have the option to use Focus. However, Focus doesn’t spread Burning as dependably as Torch; Blind isn’t useful against Champions; Torch arguably offers superior condition removal as well, and synergizes better with the Radiance line. Weapon Swaps also ensure that we’re never stuck with just one weapon.

The Torch is a solid, dependable weapon if you want damage, burning and condition removal. It does take a little finessing with positioning, though.

Trust me, your heterosexuality is perfectly safe if you choose to play a fictional character of an opposite gender. Likewise, your loyalty to the human race is also perfectly safe if you choose to play a Charr, a Norn, an Asura or a Sylvari.

Paladin.5268:

Ynna.8769

Voltric, didn’t I already pointed out (to you) that that’s not a good argument? Each profession should be viable in every “role”. Range is such a role.
“Come on, hit me!”

October 02, 2012 15:13

---

This is not true, else all the other classes would be complaining about not having the ability to run a “support” build like Guardians can. Not every class is meant to be equal on every part. If you want a “Ranged Role” then roll a class that support that play style.

Guardians are not one of them.

This is a bit of a straw man. I think the confusion comes from the use of the word “role.” You could argue that your ‘role’ is Support (and even that makes me chafe—support isn’t a role, but more of a playstyle) but “range” is not a role.

Range is an element of gameplay. In GW2, Range is a particularly important element of gameplay. Several (perhaps even most) PVE encounters, especially in dungeons, tremendously benefit the player who can stay at 900-1200 range. This is to say nothing of WvWvW or sPVP, where being at range constitutes a sound tactical advantage.

I don’t think there’s a single Guardian on the forums seriously asking to be a powerful ranged class. We have a ranged weapon—Scepter—and I imagine most of us would be perfectly happy with a few minor tweaks that let us: 1. Actually improve Scepters via traits and 2. Improve responsiveness and attack speed. Right now, I can outrun my own Scepter projectile. That seems a little pointless for what is essentially our only 900-1200 weapon.

Xandax.1753:

Eveningstar.6940:

<snip>
Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

If you’ve been part of a dozen major MMO communities, you’d also know that the situations on the forums were shaped by the state of the games.

Absolutely, but that doesn’t keep me from saying that the situation of the forum is regrettable. Yeah, it’s on ANet in the sense that only ANet has the ability to be the mediator here, step in and get an honest dialogue going about why people are upset, whether it matters to them and what, if anything, is going to be done about it. Until then, the forums are probably going to stay unproductive and hostile for a while because we have no closure.

That goes without saying. The only thing I’m saying, though, is that if that doesn’t happen, and we don’t get some kind of decisive closure to the issue before long, the attitude and tenor of the forums could change permanently. We could go from a rare MMO forum that’s largely characterized by friendliness and civility to yet another toxic community full of anger and divisiveness.

My point is, I don’t think anyone wants that. It’d damage the community in the long run (I honestly do think forums are more important to the health of an MMO community than we give them credit) in ways we aren’t really anticipating.

Money is a bad metric for measuring the value of the game. If you ask me, “Did I get my $60 worth from the game?” then the question misses the point.

Time is much more valuable than money. Money comes and goes; time is a permanent investment. The time I spend in the game—not the money—reflects my passion for the game, and my personal investment in the game.

So the bigger question is: What do you expect out of a game that you’ve invested 500 hours in?

Ah, Black Lion Chests. The penny stocks of the trading post.

Fortuna.7259:

How can it be “wrong” when many, many people obviously want to play that way? Maybe it isn’t “profitable.” (More likely I suspect it merely less profitable short-term). But… wrong? Seriously?

I want to play that way, but I need to make something clear.

I’m not saying it’s not going to damage Anet’s credibility that they broke their manifesto. They did, and it hurts.

What I am saying is that their manifesto was probably unrealistic considering how they designed their game. Their Manifesto describes a game that isn’t an MMO. They made an MMO.

If they wanted to follow their Manifesto more closely, they shouldn’t have designed GW2 to look and feel and play like a classic, run of the mill MMO. But they did. Consequently, some elements of their Manifesto proved wrong in practice.

That’s the argument I’m presenting.

Does anyone ever support as a guardian? And if so am I doing it right? Use this as a guide if you want because there are not many guardian support builds out there.

It’s hard to get away from doing support as a Guardian. Very few builds actually have little to no investment in group support.

The thing is, Support isn’t just something that you do through your heals and shouts and symbols. It’s not some marginal aspect of your play that’s somehow divorced from everything else (read: the melee, the range, the dodging, the kiting).

It’s better to think of support as the sum of everything you do rather than the specific effect of a few specific abilities. Barring things like Wall of Reflection, it’s going to be pretty hard to gauge the contribution of a specific Utility in the course of a fight. You can’t tell exactly how much your heals helped keep people alive. You can’t tell precisely whether or not your Protection boon saved someone’s kitten And that’s kind of the point.

A lot of us have come from WoW or games like WoW where our contribution to the team is: A) Defined by our role and B) measured numerically. Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on your opinion), GW2 does away with quantifying your contribution and instead depends on individual performance and team coordination.

I know it seems like a cop-out answer. For that I’m sorry. The best input I can offer is this: Were you using your Utilities at specific times, or did you feel like you were popping them randomly? Did you coordinate with your team through your playstyle? Did everyone get through the content alive and in good shape?

The truth is that the efficacy of a single build or a single playstyle will almost always be overshadowed by the competent teamwork of a group (whether or not the team is dodging, making use of LoS, kiting, picking up Downed allies, focusing on called Targets, etc.) , or conversely, rendered pretty much useless by the incompetence of a totally uncoordinated team (i.e, players running off on their own, pulling extra mobs, staying in melee all the time, picking their own targets, not making use of their utilities, and generally not working together.)

Is this a serious thread chronicling some missteps and controversial decisions in the history of MMO design, or another thread decrying Ascended gear as the ruin of GW2? Assuming it’s the former, here is my list:

• World of Warcraft (vanilla) introducing the original Honor system. PVP was originally limited to the open world, and offered no rewards other than enjoyment. The Honor system not only introduced a system of top-tier rewards for World PVP, but made these rewards competitive, meaning you had to out-kill every other player in your faction in order to earn rank, and therefore gear. And you had to keep that gear.

The Honor system drove off a lot of players and killed the subculture of World PVP, replacing it with a gear grind of the worst kind. The competitive nature of the system ensured massive factional imbalances (the Alliance would almost always have a huge numerical advantage) and disproportionate rewards for players with far too much free time. It turned Tarren Mill/Southshore into a nearly inaccessible area, and led directly to the development of Battlegrounds and over four years of struggle trying to manage and balance PVP.

• Champions Online Day 1 Patch. CO generated a significant degree of hype. It was Cryptic Studio’s next, revised shot at a comprehensive superhero MMORPG after Paragon took up City of Heroes; CO attempted to be everything City of Heroes should have been. However, an early release coupled with serious balance, performance and design issues culminated in a massive Day 1 patch that retuned the game across the board.

CO has since bounced back. Or climbed back, rather. It took some time, but they’ve carved a solid niche for themselves with an innovative combat system and lovely design. They’ve been doing well and I’m happy for them. But I have to wonder how things might have been, if there were no Day 1 patch.

• DCUO – Limited Social Systems. DCUO was a wonderful game in so many ways, despite a few missteps: a highly stratified endgame raiding system, for example, and a bug-riddled post release. However, DCUO’s developers publically announced and went forward with a design plan that specifically limited social options. Owing partly to a PS3 release, chat was highly limited, and it was nearly impossible to find a group, join a guild or even emote.

DCUO vastly underestimated the importance of social options in an MMORPG—and this is coming from a player who passionately argues that one of the strongest qualities of City of Heroes was its robust social options. Consequently, the game was never able to fully capitalize on word-of-mouth hype and never facilitated the creation of a cohesive community. The game went free to play within months, and Sony Online cut half its staff.

And special mention of…

• World of Warcraft – Real Name Fiasco. This happened a few years ago alongside the introduction of the new Battle.net. WoW was on the verge of rolling out a new Real Name system, which would require everyone who posts on the forums to use their real names. The outcry was loud, angry and universal. Within a few days, Blizzard capitulated, issued an apology by e-mail and rolled back their decision.

It would’ve been arguably one of the biggest blunders, but it never actually happened.

Morpeth, the problem with your point is that you’re using money as a metric for quality. The idea that we’re getting a whole boatload of entertainment for just sixty dollars and no monthly fee somehow precludes complaints. Consequently no one has a right to complain, because the game is free.

The problem is that money isn’t how I measure the value of my game.

Time is more valuable than money. The measure of a game’s value is not in dollars but in hours invested, in time spent participating in the game, evangelizing the game, exploring the game, theorycrafting, arguing on the forums, getting involved and being emotionally invested in the game.

No one, not a single person here, is going to claim that we haven’t gotten our 60 dollars worth of entertainment. It’s not about getting our money’s worth. It’s about the time and interest we’ve invested in a game many of us are intensely passionate about.

If I quit tomorrow, my money certainly wouldn’t have been wasted, but I wouldn’t be investing any more time into the game. I wouldn’t be investing any more passion into the game. I wouldn’t be investing any more interest into the game. I wouldn’t be investing any more creativity into the game.

Ask any developer how much a passionate, enthusiastic and devoted fan is worth. Players are not a form of capital you can measure in money.

Dgenerate.1948:

Yup. And casual = boring. This game rewards the casual and punishes the dedicated players.

“Dedicated” is not the opposite of casual. “Obsessive” is the opposite of casual. Casual players (i.e, those of us who play less frequently than you) are still dedicated. We still have goals. We still want to improve our skill, our gear, our performance and experience new things.

We just do it in smaller doses.

By the way, the game doesn’t punish dedicated players. If you have a great deal of time to invest in GW2, try sPVP. I’m actually not kidding. GW2 is a brand new game with a metagame still in its embryonic stage. Now is a great time to get into sPVP, accumulate experience, and cultivate real skill. If you have the time and want to devote yourself to something that will distinguish you from other players, go for sPVP.

Nonlinear.9823:

Hydrophidian.4319:

3. Play the game normally, and collect what’s needed over a long period of time.

Play the game normally, what does this even mean?

I am confused about what this, how does it work? How do you play the game “normally”?

If you do 100% map completion you won’t get all the 250 stacks of t6 mats you need. Not even close. What other “normal” stuff is there to do? Wander around in Orr? Kill Jormag 1,000,000x? Stand around bored in LA?

That’s Hydro’s point. Broadly speaking, if you aren’t specifically trying to accumulate as much gold as possible (grinding) or paying out of your wallet (gems), then it follows that you ought to be able to make money parellel to routine gameplay. World of Warcraft had Daily Quests, which were essentially chore lists but would give you a decent stipend of gold to cover expenses if you needed it. Other games relied on Dungeon runs to facilitate wealth; you ran a dungeon, got a reward, which was either a pile of gold or a shot at something rare which you could then sell.

Except that Guild Wars 2 does not provide you with any means of earning gold which is either reasonable, reliable or readily apparent. Purchasing gold from gems isn’t reasonable; grinding isn’t reliable owing to DR, and there is no content designed to award you a steady flow of currency.

You’re perpetually broke because, by design, gold is supposed to be very valuable. Dropping 4-5 gold on an item should be seen as a moderately large investment. Unfortunately, this is only true provided everyone else is just as broke as you, but the moment a small enough percentage of the population manages to accumulate a disproportionately large sum of gold…

…well, to use an old cliche: prices rise but wages stay low.

It’s up to ArenaNet to step in, either by adjusting or removing DR so that grinding for gold is something you can do, or implementing some repeatable content that provides you with a steady sum of money, which constitutes a bottom line (i.e, everyone should be able to make at least this much.)

Dailies/Monthlies are a good place to start.

I think paying for their waypoint fee is a very classy thing to do. Just be discreet about it so it doesn’t feel patronizing. A quick “Thank you for helping me out; the waypoint fee is on me” note will probably strike the right chord with the right kind of people.

…I didn’t cover Sword?

I didn’t cover Sword!

Sweet Dwayna. How the hell did I miss Sword? Hang on, I’ll work on updating it.

Raine.1394:

I would really like a non-PR recounting of the thought process that led to this.

I can give you my best guess, but I don’t know how much that’s worth without solid evidence. The justification for Ascended armor is to bridge the reward gap between Exotic and Legendary—one is relatively easy to get; the other is going to take months.

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re telling the truth. That’s probably why they added Ascended in the first place. So why did they make Ascended armor one tier higher? This time I’m just deferring to Occam’s Razor; the simplest explanation is most probably the correct one, and to me the simplest explanation is this:

They just didn’t think it was a big deal to add another item tier—one they felt was missing from the game. They felt that a relatively small stat bump would deflect fears of introducing a gear grind, and just did not anticipate as large and angry a response as they got.

Of course this explanation assumes that the Manifesto was never a sacred document but more of a combination of vision and PR spin. ANet always intended to take the pragmatic route and design a game that’s supposed to be inclusive and fun for everyone, casual and hardcore alike. Therefore the inclusion of Ascended gear is actually consistent with the overall design of the game, but not the Manifesto.

In short: They honestly thought a tier was missing from the game. They honestly thought it wouldn’t be a big deal if they added a new one with a modest stat upgrade to bridge a rarity gap. They honestly thought Ascended gear is something that could benefit the game in the long run, which wouldn’t alienate casual players but would also appeal to hardcore players, which wouldn’t result in a grind but would create a sense of progression.

They just didn’t anticipate such a massive outcry. And now that it’s happening, there’s nothing they can say that won’t lead to yet -another- outcry because their credibility is shot.

The Manifesto is idealistic, but ANet is being pragmatic. They did what they did with perfectly good intentions, and did not anticipate the response they got.

No conspiracy theories. No Under New Management interpretations. No Nexon Overlords. This is my sincere and honest guess at what happened behind the scenes, just based on what little evidence and patterns I can discern.

(P.S: This is roughly more or less what happened with LOTRO and Radiance. The Devs wanted to be bold and honestly had good intentions with it. They tried hard to sell it despite outrage. It didn’t work. So there is precedence for this kind of thing.)

Hydrophidian’s response

Your recent points are very well taken. I spent a fair portion of the morning mulling over City of Heroes, and why it managed to not only successfully eschew conventional gear systems, but inexplicably fly under the radar of the discourse.

I think, fundamentally, you’re right. I can’t offer a rebuttal here. There are games with successful, nuanced and complex progression systems which do away with the de facto assumption that tiered gears constitute endgames, and endgames likewise constitute an MMO’s lifecycle.

But what really struck me is this: DAoC, UO and City of Heroes either predate or mirror WoW’s release. Champions Online and Star Trek Online were released after WoW, but the designer, Cryptic, was responsible for the original vision behind City of Heroes. Consequently, even though Champions did have a gear system, players were never saddled with the drudgery of pushing through tiered endgame.

Therefore I’m drawn to a conclusion similar to yours: WoW was (and perhaps remains) a supermassive presence in the industry, and following Blizzard’s success we saw a glut of MMORPGs uncritically following WoW’s design philosophy, a phenomenon encapsulated in Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuk’s (I think it was him) infamous comment that if a game deviates from “The WoW Model,” then they did something wrong.

So it isn’t that gear progression is an inherent element of MMORPG design—it’s that titles released after or developed during WoW’s phenomenal success rarely took the risk of innovating. Therefore I’m starting to suspect that—no, it wasn’t the manifesto that was wrong. A manifesto is an expression of a high ideology, the design document for your dream game. It’s not that the manifesto was wrong, but that…the design of Guild Wars 2, the overall experience of the game, is, at least in retrospect, pretty conventional.

When we look at what’s already been done, by City of Heroes, by Guild Wars 1, by Champions and DCUO, the admirably lofty design goals outlined in ANet’s manifesto have been implemented in one form or another. They’ve just never come together in a mainstream title and successfully shifted the industry into a Post-WoW phase. At least not yet. Maybe that’s why the new Ascended gear has caused such a massive uproar.

[Reserved for future updates.]

Knuckledust,

Honestly, I agree with you.

I use Shields often because I enjoy the theme, and I like practicing my timing with Shield of Absorption. Furthermore, I get some pretty good mileage out of #4 in groups. But I agree. It could be better.

I’ve always thought it peculiar that a Shield has absolutely no block mechanic at all. Also, the long cooldowns on Shield make it an oddly passive off-hand weapon. The extra protection is nice, but not all that noticeable or significant without some investment in Valor. Short of switching Focus #5 with Shield #5, here are a few small suggestions I think might help Shield:

• Have #4 grant a small duration Aegis to the Guardian in addition to the group Protection. Conversely, remove the group Protection mechanic, replacing it with a short duration (1s?) Aegis.

• Reduce Shield of Absorption’s recharge by 10 seconds. Detonating the Shield of Absorption early adds an additional ten seconds to the recharge. Heal allies for a small amount per projectile absorbed. This should improve Shield of Absorption’s reliability and reward good timing.

What do you think? I might be overshooting it a tad, but I feel like this could make Shield more attractive.

If you’re finding yourself making excuses to log in or forcing yourself to play, you may be burning out. Listlessness is normal; there’s a threshold of hours-played past which a person just loses interest in an activity. In other words, it’s okay to not get yourself to play.

GW2 doesn’t operate on a subscription model. The gameplay is designed less around keeping you on a contiguous monthly subscription and more or around facilitating frequent play interspersed with frequent breaks. You can’t fall behind in this game. There is no gear treadmill to chase. So it’s in your best interest to take breaks.

Take some time off. Come back when and if you actually feel up to playing. Forcing yourself to play when you’re totally burned out just turns this game from an enjoyable activity to a pernicious habit, and before you know it you’re running laps in Lion’s Arch and getting into a Mapchat argument about Doctor Who.

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

Hang on. Dial it back a second. Can I see your source? I’m not trying to sound snobby—I just honestly want to know where you found this bit of news, who this “unnamed artist” was and what context you took your quote from. Because going from “wanting universal rather than Asian themes” to “There will be no Cantha” is a magnificent leap of logic.

There’s a lot of ways you could interpret ‘avoiding Asian themes,’ but without the actual quote and the source, it’s all speculation.

However, a slightly simpler argument might say that they want to avoid Asian themes in the overall design philosophy of the game. There has to be a believable element of Western fantasy (which, believe it or not, has plenty of room for Eastern themes) in the design of GW2 in order to make the world more accessible, and do differentiate it from the stereotypical Korean Grinder.

The quote might have just been about universalism as a goal of the GW2 design vision and its relation to shying away from characteristically Asian themes. In which case, the evidence is all over Tyria. The world is variable and diverse and draws from all sorts of fantasy sources, and it’s hard to pin down in one specific genre.

Again, no idea what the original quote was, the context, or who even said it, but this is a simpler interpretation.

Good afternoon, Lore forums. I need your help.

I’m a roleplayer on the Tarnished Coast server, and I’m looking to flesh out and develop my character, give her some background and a strong motivation. Having played through the personal stories (and recalling their presence in GW1), I find myself powerfully drawn to the Shining Blade. They have all the elements of an organization I love—a classical, almost idealistic loyalty to Queen and Country, a willingness to operate covertly, and a reputation for being highly trained and dangerous.

I’d like my Guardian, Teresa Harcourt, to be a member of the Shining Blade. Her personality meshes so well with the principles of the Shining Blade—she’s intensely loyal, devoted to her Queen, obsessed with self-improvement and mastery, and deeply faithful to Dwayna and the other deities.

Please help me find more information on the Shining Blade, so that I can play a member of the organization in a way that is believable and respectful to the continuity of Guild Wars lore. I’ve read the Wiki entries for both GW1 and GW2, but I have a few specific questions:

• How secretive are we talking here? Men In Black level secrecy which denies the organization’s existence and tries its best to hide itself from the public? I kind of doubt it’s that secret, since even the Order of Whispers is known to exist. And they don’t get more clandestine than the Order.

• Do members of the Shining Blade operate more or less exclusively inside Divinity’s Reach? I know that two Exemplars show up to help you during your personal story but is it possible that the Shining Blade will investigate threats to the Queen and carry out her will beyond Kryta?

• Does the public know that Anise is a member of the Shining Blade? Well, frankly, she's the leader, but do they know that too?

• Let’s talk White Mantle. Where are they most active? Human lands? Are they present outside human areas as well?

Thanks so much.

Leopardo da Vinci is pretty brilliant.

I liked Banana Karenina.

Preview Most Weapon/Armor Sets In The Game

Head over to the Heart of Mists and drop by one of your PVP lockers. They’re arranged like Collections Tabs that you’d find in your bank, but instead of holding crafting materials, they hold armor. All the armor available in the Heart, actually.

The best part? You can right click on any icon and click Preview to see what it looks like ahead of time. Most (if not all?) of the armor there is also available in PVE.

Have fun playing dress-up!

This is not a thread about the recent change to Symbol of Wrath. Symbol of Wrath, however, is illustrative of a larger problem with the Zeal trait line, and therefore makes an excellent launching point into a discussion about Zeal. So let’s start from there.

The October 7th patch doubled the recharge on Greatsword’s Symbol of Wrath, which inspired a response from the community ranging from apathetic shrugs to furious indignation. But I contend that change to Symbol of Wrath had a more profound effect on the Zeal line than it did on the Greatsword weapon. The Greatsword functions much as it did before, but its synergy with the Zeal line is all but broken. This is a problem with Zeal before it is a problem with Greatsword.

Zeal isn’t a bad line. It seems much maligned because most Guardians have difficulty extracting some useful builds out of it. As it stands, Zeal has three basic uses:

• An ancillary trait line you drop 10-20 points into to help round out another build, almost always for Fiery Wrath, Greatsword Power or Focused Mastery.

• Spirit Weapons, for which Zeal is an essential line. Spirit Weapons are an effective and powerful build, but rigid and leave very little room for flexibility and build variation owing to deep Trait investments.

• Symbolic support, making use of Symbolic Power (which requires 25 Zeal) and Symbolic Exposure (which requires 15 Zeal), both of which are Minor traits.

Prior to the October 7th patch, Zeal offered one more option: Greatsword Symbol support. Zeal’s Greatsword traits and Symbol traits, combined with Greatsword’s readily accessible Symbol of Wrath, made 30 Zeal/30 Honor an attractive builds, with damage, fast recharge and very powerful symbols.

Unfortunately, the build depended entirely on Symbol of Wrath. And this is a problem with Zeal, rather than Greatsword. Zeal offers very little else to Greatsword other than Symbol improvement. The Greatsword traits available in Zeal (5% more damage, 25 HP per swing) are insufficient to cover the loss of Symbol of Wrath.

An entire Trait line should never hinge on the use of a single ability on a single weapon.

The Problems, Summarized

• Zeal’s Grandmaster traits are difficult to justify and difficult to build around. Radiance’s “A Fire Inside” grants more damage and utility to Spirit Weapons than Zeal’s “Wrathful Spirits,” which is a Grandmaster Trait and provides a paltry 10% damage boost. The “Zealous Blade” trait has very little, if any, additional synergy with other traits, and contributes a negligible amount of mitigation over the course of an average fight. Furthermore, Zealous Blade’s theme (mitigation through Greatsword) is at odds with the rest of the Zeal line (aggressive Symbols, improved damage and rewards for Burning).

• Zeal’s Minor Traits support Symbol use, but its Major traits offer very little of value to weapons that depend on Symbol use. Consequently, builds that emphasize Symbol use dig into Zeal almost exclusively for Minor traits.

• Spirit Weapons is a powerful build, but restrictively rigid. A good Spirit Weapons build requires at least 20 in Zeal, 20 in Radiance and 10 in Virtue, leaving 20 points to distribute elsewhere. Because Symbolic Power requires 25 Zeal, and both Writ of Exaltation and Writ of Persistence require 20 Honor, you need—at minimum—25 Zeal 20 Radiance 10 Virtues and 20 Honor to make full use of Spirit Weapons and Symbols, which is impossible by 5 points.

• A preponderance of purely statistical traits leaves Zeal uninteresting, static and largely invisible. Greatsword Power, Scepter Power, Wrathful Spirits, Zealous Blade and (to an extent) Fiery Wrath all seem interesting on paper, but provide no interesting tactical variations.

_TL;DR: Excessively expensive Spirit Weapons, Symbol support in Minor traits but no Major traits that offer anything to Symbol-using weapons, and Grandmaster traits that are difficult to build around.

5 amazing 80’s.

It won’t take that much longer.

mulch.2586:

there is a suggestions forum

why suggest something to take away player choice?

did you realize the engineer doesn’t exactly have a melee set?

This argument gets brought up over and over again, and it’s a bit of a fallacy.

Melee weapons cannot be used at range. All ranged weapons can be used in melee range.

That’s why the argument that “Engineers don’t have melee weapons, so professions that lack ranged options shouldn’t whine” misses the point. The OP’s point is that weapon swaps limit your weapon choice because one of your weapon choices should be a ranged weapon.

This is not true in every case, but it is true that the ability to be at range and stay at range is often an advantage, and if one of your two swaps is not a ranged weapon, you potentially put yourself at a disadvantage.

Cool, thanks for the link. I, too, would love a return to Cantha. Factions is what sold me to GW in the first place. Shing Jea and Kaineng City took my breath away.

I just posted a guide to Guardians for new players on this forum. Check it out. It might answer some questions.

Red Falcon.8257:

It’s obvious everyone is getting the signet, other heals are barely worth it.
Healing Breeze doesn’t heal others enough to be worth the 3 sec cast time nor the 40s CD, takes away too much self-healing and isn’t an effective way to heal anyways.
Shelter healing is too weak, 2s block is not enough to make up for the health loss.

I doubt anyone actually uses anything outside the signet.

Warriors had their heals toned to be on par with each other, will our heals be balanced too?

I’m very skeptical about this sort of theorizing, because it’s dismissive of tactical nuance. We have this weird habit in MMOs of discussing abilities in terms of black and white, viable or inviable. If you’re going to dismiss Healing Breeze and Shelter right off the bat, I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

One thing to remember is that you can—and should—change your utilities/heals/elites as necessary. You have three heals. Each of them is useful in different situations. If you’re using nothing but Signet of Resolve—ever—then you’re leaving options on the table.

As many have pointed out already, Shelter has potentially far superior mitigation to Signet of Resolve, depending on how much damage you block. Two seconds of block is potentially very high mitigation. Sure, you aren’t likely to mitigate much in general leveling, but what about dungeons? What about sPVP and WvWvW? You will get much more mileage out of Shelter provided you mitigate high incoming damage.

Healing Breeze isn’t monolithic. It isn’t our party heal, in the way Flash of Light was in World of Warcraft. In order to get the most out of Healing Breeze, you need to be able to aim the cone. Healing Breeze sacrifices some personal healing for superior group support. No, the group healing component of Healing Breeze isn’t high on its own, but cumulatively, as part of a build that emphasizes group support through healing. We’ll never be “healers” and Healing Breeze won’t bring us any closer to that ideal, but it does have a role in Honor/Virtues setups that emphasize group mitigation.

Signet of Resolve is a wonderful skill and universally useful. It isn’t mandatory. Signet of Resolve is probably better for general use, but Shelter and Healing Breeze are much better for their specific situations. Because you have access to all three skills, and a potentially infinite number of skill points to spend, you should buy all three, and equip Signet, Shelter or Healing Breeze as necessary.

Besides, why would you want three separate Healing skills, all of which are “on par” with one another’s numbers? That’s three totally redundant healing skills none of which are tactically interesting.

I completed the October achievement before the Oct 1 patch. Screenshot attached.