Guild Wars 2

Nub.2391:

game like diablo 3 and many other MMo would introducing new class not longer than 1 or 1 and 1/2 year.
i remember we getting 2 new class after 1 year from GW1.

Dialbo III and Guild Wars 1 aren’t MMO’s. They’re CORPG’s. Think of the relationship between GW1 and GW2 less like going from Final Fantasy XI to FFXIV, and more like going from Warcraft I-III to WoW.

Regardless, most other online games don’t have systems like GW2 where they can introduce completely new play styles through the existing classes. Adding new weapons, traits, and skills can introduce roughly the same level of diversity as adding a new profession.

Only bringing it to ascended tier requires 500 crafting, which is the reason 500 crafting exists in the first place.

Neither. Sorry.

1. First option won’t work for new players wanting to start off with a revenant.
2. Player characters still need to be Commander of the Pact, the Slayer of Zhaitan, and the Hero of Lion’s Arch, and be able to play through LS Season 2, even though that all happens before Rytlock’s return. Putting tons of unnecessary work into creating a new PS won’t change that plot hole.

I think those closest to the Pale Tree will maintain her protection. Soundless and Nightmare Court are definitely vulnerable. Those sprouted from the Shadow Tree, or whatever it’ll be called, were probably corrupted fully from birth. Except Malyck, but he very well could have been corrupted since we last saw him.

Guardian
Signet of Arrest
Passive: Replace Virtue of Justice’s burning with cripple and vulnerability.
Active: Your next attack petrifies the target and inflicts 15 stacks of vulnerability.

The purpose is to give guardians an option to focus more on dealing physical damage, instead of the standard condition build.

They test the heck out of everything for at least a month or two before release. You just don’t hear about it because all the testers are bound by non-disclosure agreements.

And like Wanze said, the high difficulty is intended.

Even the lowest population servers can easily fill up a single instance of the map with a little organization, and that’s all you need to start making attempts and learning the mechanics. All that the higher-pop servers get is an increased chance of fragmenting into a half-dozen overflows.

I feel there are just enough major rewards for a 20-level system, like GW1. Level 80 would become 20, 76 would become the new 19, etc. That’s all we need. Minor rewards can be at tighter intervals if you divide the experience bar up a little.

Less is more.

What if sylvari die when touched by corruption because the Pale Tree is deliberately extinguishing them before it takes hold? That could explain why the soundless can survive the process.

As for Mordy not corrupting physically: we don’t know that. Husks could very well be corrupted minions, (like icebrood), instead of generated, (like destroyers). We haven’t seen the process in action yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur.

We know that one of the elite specs will get six traps, and glamours are being considered more defensive now. I’m probably not the first to speculate this, but that skill used by the shield-wielding mesmer in the HoT trailer could have been a chronomancer time trap. Whether it actually was a shield skill or a utility being used, we don’t really know.

What would your opinion be if chronomancer gets traps? Is it something you would be excited to play? How would you see traps fitting into the mesmer meta?

The flip side to these answers is that if your character will mostly be fighting world bosses, precision and crit damage are useless, so power and might stacking thus become much more important.

There is currently little incentive for players to spend time on many of the game’s maps. This causes several problems for both the players and developers, and steps need to be taken to resolve this before new permanent explorable maps can be brought out.

Here is my idea for a system that—balanced with other improvements—could bring players into the lesser played zones.

• Give each explorable map a fluctuating Control score.
• Completed events drive the score up. Failed or lapsed events drive the score down.
• All events should have a timer. It can be a generous one, but it should be there.
• Event frequency and scaling should adjust according to how active the server currently is. (So players aren’t punished for going to bed, or for simply being on a low population server.)
• Program daily achievements to automatically include objectives specific to maps that have low Control scores.
• Change daily achievement rewards to scale up when more maps have a high Control score.
• Scale event frequency and rewards up on low Control maps.
• Scale event difficulty up dramatically on high Control maps. (Not so much in a way that makes players die a lot, but more in shortening timers and increasing fail rates.)
• Make more of the champion spawns, (such as most in Frostgorge Sound), count as events, so their frequency, difficulty, and rewards will scale with this system.
• Balance the frequency of champion spawning between all maps. Stagger and slightly randomize frequencies and locations of different champions within each map, to break up trains.

If balanced correctly and used in conjunction with other improvements, players should find that they get the best rewards by shifting their focus across every part of Tyria.

Of course, this demands that every event be both fun and rewarding. It would take a fair amount of work to implement, but I believe the results would be worth it.

Because for some reason, they decided to make karma universal instead of per-map. Now they’re stuck making all these crazy currencies that are almost but not quite like karma, or dungeon tokens, or renown (hearts), just so that each new map’s rewards can’t be bought right on first entry with resources gained elsewhere.

It seemed like a good scheme at first, but we are all starting to see now that it’s going to get messy, and soon. This is far from the first thread I have seen on this topic in the last few weeks.

What I would love to see is a single currency, (i.e. “Favor”), that works the same everywhere, but is tracked individually per map, and is woven into a cohesive reward scheme alongside the map’s achievements. Merge together the best aspects of most of the non-gold currencies in a way that makes sense, and won’t explode into a noodly headache by this time next year.

My current ideal for a trait system:

Tier 1 fully unlocks automatically, so players can experiment at early levels.

Tier 2 traits can be bought (cheaply) with skill points (no gold), directly in the trait interface.

Tier 3 traits require facing trait challenges and spending a few skill points. Complete any trait challenge to unlock any T3 trait of your choice, making it open for purchase with skill points. There should be more challenges to pick from than traits to unlock. Unlocking of a trait would be account-wide. Purchases of unlocked traits would then still have to be made on a character-by-character basis.

Reading OP: Very confused. Nightfall was a campaign, not an expansion. Also, those bazillion maps were hella empty. There’s more to do in Verdant Brink alone than in all of Vabbi.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Best way to go is force all gear sets to have 3 different stats.

Offensive stats: Power, precision, ferocity
Defensive stats: Toughness, Vitality, Healing power
Supportive stats: Boon duration, Condition duration, Condition damage

Each set would have one of each defensive, defensive and supportive stats. That’s a total 27 possible combinations, which is a bit more than what we currently have.

Power sets would then most likely become meta, but even then you would have 9 possible choices, which is a whole lot more than only 1.

Calling Condi Dmg a support stat feels like a stretch to me. Unfortunately, the game is simply not balanced evenly between offensive and other attributes. Even within those categories, some attributes will always be more desirable.

Personally, I would rather see the stats themselves overhauled. It would be better to have 5 equally good attributes than 9 attributes with a clear hierarchy between them.

Here’s what I would do:

• Brawn (combines Power & Toughness)
• Agility (Precision, plus Endurance recovery rate)
• Concentration (Condi Dur & Boon Dur)
• Ferocity (Crit Dmg & Condi Dmg)
• Vitality (Health Pool & Healing Power)

This gives us 3 mixed attributes focused on play styles, and 2 that are strictly offensive or defensive. Every attribute is strong and desirable, and choosing between them actually means something.

On humanoid females, the new zodiac armor looks like it was designed for the easy nursing of infants. Take a look at the medium set for example.

Certainly, it has artistic merit and beauty, and the human body is nothing to be ashamed of. On the other hand, it’s hard to claim that this isn’t biased sexualization. Considering that males are neutered to the point of looking comically unnatural below the navel, the presence of fully exposed chest-orbs seems a little unbalanced.

What do you think?

As the devs have repeated every time they talk about this preview, including in the opening post of this thread: This is NOT everything. These are just some examples.

No, they couldn’t use all weapons. A necro/warrior with an axe is weilding that axe as a warrior, not as a necro. The axe doesn’t directly synergize with any necro skills or attributes.

GW1 didn’t even have weapon-based skills for every profession like GW2 does. Heck, staves, scepters, and foci provided you with absolutely nothing but stats and an auto-attack. Each weapon didn’t automatically determine half your skill bar.

It’s a really unfair and inaccurate contrast, that I think we can stop making.

The presentation of her background bothers me, but the character can be salvaged. Assuming she has been insane for a while, I think the odds are heavily against her having complied with the Colleges’ rules to graduate legitimately.

As for her having “studied” with the other races, we have no idea what that means. Rumors have a way of blowing things out of proportion, so I’m going to ignore this part until/unless we hear more about it.

She has been hinted at since Flame & Frost, but is so far detached from the players’ experiences that she has been irrelevant. This is the biggest problem.

Players could have met her early on as a slightly broken but non-evil savant of interest, watched the emerging Aetherblades make promises to her that they couldn’t keep, followed her as she pushed herself through experiments to expand her capabilities, rescued College heads she kidnapped when they wouldn’t give her degrees in subjects she barely understood, stood by masters from all the races as she challenged them one-by-one and was beaten.

We could have come to care for her, and been saddened whenever a new crack appeared in the facade of her sanity as she was pushed further and further by the Aetherblade Admirals who kept making more and more promises.

It could have been SO MUCH STORY, and all we got was a maniacal laugh.

Why can’t I put them both in the Mystic Forge with a permanent quaggan tonic and a makeover kit? My guardian’s appearance still doesn’t match how he feels on the inside.

I still would love to see the reward tier be shared across all instances of the map, so that we’re truly all working together instead of just lumped into a random sampling that may or may not have the drive to succeed.

If you use the right math to apply averages, weights, and suchwhat, balancing it out should be feasible.

Torvic.8256:

And at least in my mind, my GW2 ranger (as is his sister, obviously) is definitely of Ascalonian ancestry since he’s a direct descendant of my GW1 ranger.

The fun thing about ancestry over 250 years is that your original character makes up just around 0.1% of the new character’s ancestry from that period. The other 99.9% don’t necessarily have to be Ascalonian.

I’m sure ArenaNet is very sorry for having offended you by attempting to fund the vast enterprise that keeps this game running and growing without a subscription fee. They have certainly realized the error of having to gall to offer you things you might want in exchange for money. After all, they’re just a few hundred talented artists and technicians working full time to maintain a AAA title; they don’t really deserve to pay off the student loans that got them there.

Scarlet is simply a chaotic evil Trahearne. When they square off in their big kitten ed war, I plan to go down and live with quaggans.

A few splotches of non-combat ground would be nice, but most of it can stay as-is.

For me, the big issue is, “Where the heck are the events?” And of course, “What the heck is this event telling me to do?”

There is so much textual blargon on the right hand side of my screen, so little on the map, and hardly anything that consistently and clearly demonstrates to me what I need to be doing. Silverwastes was so good at this part, I want them to remember how to do that.

I’m really tempted to stop referring to this as the NPE as and start referring to it as NCE (New Character Experience). What we’re talking about is leveling and character growth. The stuff to teach new players has been bundled into it so tightly that the vets can’t escape it, and yes, we dislike being treated like new players whenever we make an alt.

And the trait revamp always gets merged into this, because it is a big part of the NCE. From most of the accounts I’ve seen, the current NPE really is doing a better job than the old NPE for introducing the game to beginners. Of course, it still has a lot of room for improvement, but there always will be. The big down side has been the equation NPE=NCE.

To me, the mistake was in making the first 15-20 levels go the fastest. These are the levels most crucial to new players. These are the maps most able to teach them how the game works. Take your time here and use this as the real teaching space. Starter zones are starter zones for a reason. This is also the only level range we vets get to completely skip. So why not take as much of the NPE as possible and put it here? Let these levels take the longest to complete. Let new players move through the pseudo-tutorials at their own pace, instead of power-leveling them and pushing them forward. And then make the 21+ game more vet-friendly.

The VPE (Veteran Player Experience) shouldn’t be restricted to level 80. That’s not how we all play.

I like the idea of introducing sub-classes, but please blur the lines a little and give players control. Here’s my idea: merge sub-classes into a heavily reworked trait system.

Replace the five trait lines with three: Control, Damage, and Support. Let each trait line go up to 50, but adjust per-point bonuses to each attribute so the final values stay the same.

• CONTROL
  • Condition & Control Effect Duration
  • Condition Damage
  • Toughness
  • Profession Attribute
• DAMAGE
  • Power
  • Precision
  • Critical Damage
  • Profession Attribute
• SUPPORT
  • Boon Duration
  • Vitality
  • Healing Power
  • Profession Attribute

Control effects would be scaled down by default, but scale up well with the trait. When healing other players, the game should usually use an average Healing Power between the skill user and target, so that Boon Duration isn’t the only attribute in Support that affects other players.

In general, traits need to make all three roles viable and attractive, but difficult to perform simultaneously.

Note that each trait line has its own unique profession attribute. Two more would need to be created for each profession, which I feel is manageable. Some of these could replace current fixed minor or major trait bonuses with flexible values. For example, Phantasmal Healing could be replaced with a scaling attribute that varies how much healing you and allies get while near your phantasms.

To further turn this into a subclass system, make most of the weapons and skills weaker by default, but dramatically increase the bonuses gained from related traits. If somebody is effectively using a greatsword, you know they have a Damage build. Staff? Support. Mantras? Control. And so on. New weapons and skills introduced to the game could play on this more than the base set, possibly even being locked behind trait walls.

I feel this creates a lot of opportunity for diversifying characters in a way that brings a lot of satisfaction. The final-slot bonuses from each trait line could be marvelous character-changing beasts if done right, and I would love to see what the developers could come up with.

If this were combined with an out-of-combat paradigm hotswitch, the results could be amazing.

Here is my full checklist for judging other people’s builds:

1. Do you have a build?
2. Sweet. Let’s go kill the things.

My only concern is that the new crew is being written by the same people who write Scarlet.

Actually, I have an itch telling me that our Villain Sue will be “cured” of her insanity and brought into the fold. They are lacking a sylvari, after all.

Mark me down as a vote for not adding more currencies in the first place.

I’ve posted elsewhere before about adding a Favor system to maps, and have thought about it since.

Here’s the basics:

• All merchants on the map take coins or karma.
• Your Favor level on the map determines what items are available
• Favor is tied to the map’s achievements.
  • Add achievements – some repeatable – for completing events, slaying enemies, and the types of little tasks that would fill hearts on older maps.
  • Similar to meta-achievement tracking, the number of achievements accomplished advances you toward the next tier of Favor.
• Favor tiers can not only unlock items at merchants, but also give the player other rewards, such as permanents buffs while on the map, unique items, and titles.

Guild halls and player housing don’t have to be either/or. A lot of the tech and assets that would potentially get developed for guild halls could probably be ported over into housing.

Building one could make the other a lot more possible, so let’s try to stay focused and make this current step happen. OK? Alright.

As if quick-fire muskets aren’t ridiculous enough. I’ll give my vote to crossbows and their insane firepower, IF every bolt you fire puts the whole weapon on a 20s cooldown.

They read pretty much everything, as has been pointed out many times. It’s posting that they don’t do often, and that’s as it should be.

These forums are not a direct customer-service line to the development staff. They have work to do, and don’t owe us direct answers to all our petty questions. We are not entitled to have them publicly agree or argue with us over all the details of their work.

Hmm. What if the memorial wall in LA could be updated to include the names of those lost to the community in real life? Not just pets and loved ones, but even players and staff themselves that we lose. It could tightly controlled, with nominations vetted and analyzed for appropriateness.

The gold sinks are needed to fight inflation. Without them, we’d eventually be paying 2G for an 8 Slot Bag.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Is it ok to farm these bandits?

Within a reasonable limit, it should be fine. I wouldn’t expect much in terms of rewards; they’re just trash mobs, and kind of a pain.

Maybe with a party, it could be a fun place to use a Killstreak Experience Booster.

I like the schedule system as a concept, but feel there’s some room for improvement. Firstly, make it visible in the game.

Secondly, run two schedules side-by-side, each triggering simultaneously every 15 minutes. This speeds things up, and gives players a choice of which boss to run.

Schedule A contains the 8 high-level world bosses. Each boss runs every two hours, at the same time within the hour. (e.g. Fire Shaman runs at 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, &c.)

Schedule B contains the 4 low-level bosses and the 3 legendary bosses. It runs through all 4 low-level bosses, does one of the legendaries, goes through the low-levels again in the same order, hits the next legendary, and so on. Each low-level comes up every hour and 15 minutes, and each legendary appears once every 3 hours and 45 minutes.

While Schedule A cycles fully every 2 hours, Schedule B takes 15 hours. This means that it takes 5 days for everything to wrap back around to happening at the same time of day, giving players with limited play time a more varied experience.

Sometimes a narrator is just a narrator, folks.

While the regional home instances are supposed to be individual homes for our characters, the Hall of Monuments is a shared property spread across the account. Why not make more use of it?

Replace the current, (admittedly beautiful), character select screen with the HoM as a Home Screen. Have all our characters moving around inside it, going about their business and sometimes interacting. When you select someone’s portrait, the camera zooms over to show them.

Represent multiple categories of achievements inside the HoM:

• Order banners and such from the current character select screen would become physical objects in the HoM.
• Achievement gauges are illuminated on a physical display.
• Crafting stations get a visual upgrade according to your highest level in the craft.
• A random selection of minipets stored in your Collections run around.
• Trophies and other awards are prominently displayed.
• Linked GW1/2 accounts will show the big banners and maybe more from the first game.
• Even small objects scattered around can represent accomplishments.
• Flavor with a couple props or characters from the current living story.

Inside the actual game, replace the Hall of Monuments Portal Stone with a waypoint. Make the inside match the loading screen version, with all the trimmings. You can even interact with your other characters in a limited fashion, including swapping to them right from the dialog if you don’t want to go out to the Home Screen!

For an added bonus, bring back the Scrying Pool instead of filling our inventory with cinema-playing objects.

I know everyone talks about making the Home Instance better, but it’s not our only home in Tyria. This is something you would actually see on a regular basis.

The late Captain Ashford was human. Sorry.

Elementalist is a tricky one. It’s hard to change their mechanic without having to rebuild a hundred or so skills. It’ll be interesting to see what they’ve come up with.

Gillian.1859:

You are trading your toughness and vitality in a glass build. Don’t complain about downing all the time if you cannot dodge. It’s YOUR build. Own it.

I have ran dungeons with glass warriors complaining about the lack of dps the rest of the team does when he goes down every 5 seconds… not impressed.

Exactly. Let me elaborate: DPS should not be calculated—or estimated—as an ideal maximum, but as an average. This value may not be the same in every situation.

The key is that time spent waiting for your teammates to pick you up off the floor, (over…and over…and over again), counts heavily against you. Here are a couple reasons why:

• You are doing less damage with your downed skills than your standing ones. Make that none when you fall from downed to dead.
• Teammates reviving you are unable to activate most skills. This subtracts from your personal contribution to team DPS.

It is possible for your net damage contribution to be negative. In certain difficult modes of play, you simply cannot dodge everything, and moving points from offense to defense can actually increase your damage output.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

(snip)

There are some good ideas here. They fall somewhat in line with things I’ve been considering for a while.

I have a critique to offer on how it is presented, though:

• Macro over micro. At this point, the details don’t matter. Things like balance and exact rewards have to tie in with other projects and schemes, and it’s much better to let those chips fall into place later. Readers’ eyes will skim past these parts, trying to find the top-level concepts.
• Hide the archive. We don’t need to see both old and new versions of points when you edit. The unnecessary information is confusing.

I recommend cutting it all down to a couple paragraphs and few bullet points. Briefly tell us the problem, (a sentence would do), and outline only the critical points of your solution.

You have an interesting central idea, but it’s hard to see the tree through all these leaves.

I had to make myself a wallpaper, (sans letterboxing), to remember the moment…

There were more than enough nails in that coffin already.

Also, some of those were placed when that was the minimum price. Certain min prices have gone up, and the old orders stayed in the BLTC.

Honestly, a different set of items to steal would be enough. Something less random?

On the very slim chance that thief goes more magical, (dark, shadowy arts, obviously), you could get items that let you mess with that particular target again. Maybe steal “mementos” to serve as magical foci. Take a lock of hair, a coin from their pocket, or such. Gain an advantage against that foe while you have their memento in hand. Then use it later to steal their health, speed, recharge etc.

If the PvP tourney was an issue, they could always host those matches on a separate server using the current pre-spec system. Not a big concern, there.

Would it be easier to change the traps themselves to gain a unique benefit from Critical Damage/Ferocity?

e.g. (trait) Traps can crit when applying conditions. This converts xx% of your Ferocity into Condition Duration for these stacks.

Closers and retreats are different in ways other than which direction they toss you. One has offensive aspects, and the other defensive. Letting these skills become both offensive and defensive gives players more versatility than desired for balance.

It also makes it harder to use the skills as intended: you have to remember to hold forward with your closer, else accidentally throw yourself in the wrong direction.