Guild Wars 2

Superior Rune of Whatever Slaying (6/6)
(1): +10% damage to Icebrood
(2): +10% damage to Elementals
(3): +10% damage to Dredge
(4): +10% damage to Inquest
(5): +10% damage to Ghosts
(6): 5% chance on hit to transform your target into Icebrood, Elemental, Dredge, Inquest, or Ghost (cooldown: 120 seconds)

Hey there, Anet.

At the moment, we already have enough problems with community coordination due to

• always full and never empty maps in megaserver system,
• people with language chat filters turned on and unaware of its existence,
• lackluster Commander system,
• absence of in-game voice communication (not happening for understandable reasons),
• message suppression.

All other things aside, the last issue is getting more of a problem since you’re delivering us more content which requires coordination, but you’re suppressing us while we’re trying to actually coordinate – thus playing it the way you intended!

This has happened before at Tequatl and Wurm, but you most likely had people on Teamspeak there… now it’s Living Story full of random people from different servers. We need to communicate there if you want us to play it your way, and calling out thing like “Conditions now!” or “Stop conditions, DPS!” or “Turret here!” or “Throw seeds!” or “Do not throw seeds under the boss, #;&!:!!” is part of it.

I tried being a turret caller yesterday at Boom-Boom… and I got suppressed really fast. I then had to spend crucial time to misspell the “trurrat” word each time instead of DPSing… And still got suppressed eventually.

So, what I suggest doing regarding message suppression:

• Raise substantially or lift suppression threshold for areas which require coordination: Teq, Wurm, Marionette, Assault Knights, Hologram, Pavillion etc.
• Raise substantially or lift suppression threshold for players who have a Commander tag acquired regardless of it being active or not, because detagging is often crucial to avoid the lemming effect.

To further facilitate communication you also can:

• Turn off language filter by default. People will tell each other you can turn it on eventually.
• Provide Commanders with more abilities, like assigning sub-commanders (would help in events which require either zero or 5-6 tags – see Mario, Pavillion) for a limited time even being detagged themselves,
• like different colors for commander tag icons,
• like pre-set commander chat commands (“Turret!”, “DPS!”, “Repair!”, “Build!”, “Stack on me!”, “Fire fields! No light fields!”, “Blast water fields!” etc.) which could be assigned to buttons (numpad?) and rapidly delivered to players without having to type them each time, especially if Latin is not your main keyboard layout.
• Think of a system to temporarily demote people who tag up when they shouldn’t (and thus drive away the lemming part of players from correct objectives); it may be a kind of very transparent or bad-colored tag as a semi-measure.
• Think of reworking the squad system.
• Introduce a user-side right-click anti-spam report system which would activate a message suppression algorithm (no, not just suppress everything) to deal with real chat abusing (preferably usable on emotes as well).
• Lift mail restrictions on things like potions in parties and message restrictions in non-local and non-map channels.

I made 9 templates for creating KEEP CALM and SOMETHING posters (8 professions + 1 general) and I’m sharing them here now. Feel free to use them (for both the good things and the bad :P) and upload your posters here!

Download templates:

• .psd files used by Adobe Photoshop and hopefully GlMP
• or less customizable but more common .png files.

Download font. Needs no license for personal use. To install a font on Windows, go to C:\Windows\Fonts and paste/drag the font file there.

Forum tip: if you want to attach several images to a single post, attach the 1st one and then click Preview to get one more attachment field at the next step.

Not sure whether this topic should stay here or go to Fan-generated content, but since it’s pretty general and GW2 Jokes are also here, I’m putting it where it is.

A wild “Changes Coming to the NPE” thread appears! You ran out of endurance and cannot attack.

Vayne.8563:

Seems to me most of the complaining has withdrawn, one week after the patch. So I’m not sure why this is such a huge issue. Some people will still complain of course, but the pendulum, if you haven’t noticed, is swinging back.

For a whole week, people have provided ANet with extensive feedback.

For a whole week, people have been creating separate threads, each about a personal experience (because nobody likes megathreads where you get lost on page 2!), receiving similar feedback from other players from similar threads and defence from the ever-present forum’s White mANetle.

For a whole week, people have been wondering what has actually been heard and what not, what is a bug and what not, and had to keep repeating their criticism over and over again to counter the force of the same people from White mANetle who kept repeating the same “everything is awesome” in every thread they saw.

After a week, people got sick and tired of it, they ran out of will and had no desire to repeat the same things again and again. Someone left the forum, someone stopped reading the threads, someone left the game. The White mANetle stayed, feeling that the victory is near and the “toxicity” is finally being driven away.

After a week, a “Changes Coming to the NPE” thread finally appears. The White mANetle says that everything is fine and that people are getting confused by the amount of dissatisfied people because having to read forum names is overwhelming; red post in the thread agrees that repeating your feedback is baaad – missing the point that for a week that very feedback had to be repeated over and over again without being acknowledged and because it had to be repeated to counter the forum defence forces.

So yeeeah, after a week, “the pendulum, if you haven’t noticed, is swinging back”… if you avert your eyes from the facts that people are not only sick and tired of repeating the same things, but also told to stop posting their negative feedback, and only the most stoic people still care to write and oppose the White mANetle which are now the ones claiming to officially representing the “vocal majority”.

Now, to keep this post constructive, I’ll quote my tl;dr of the patch, because I have no idea whether it got noticed in the hundreds of other threads or not:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Highlights of my view on the leveling changes:

Best:

• Rewards. Rewards are always good, but only if they’re something new, not if that’s something you take away from someone and then present as a “reward” back. So, a trinket or a booster is a good reward; unlocking downed skills is a bad reward.

Worst:

• Weapon skill gating. Learning skills for each weapon one by one was the most intuitive, best and exciting feature when I got this game – and I never played a serious RPG or an MMO before! I killed mobs and searched for events to kill more to check what that next half-learned skill with a cool name did… then I searched for new weapons and did it again, because it was fun, and fun is the best reward I can get from a game. This should definitely be brought back.

My personal “fix-it-fast-and-make-it-better”:

• Stop calling “Asura Gates”, “Trading Post” and other core features “rewards”! That’s a very large part of that widespread misconception. Instead, turn them into hints and clearly name them as such, even if it stays in the same reward pop-up; like, “HINT: Trading Posts are now displayed on your minimap! You can do X and Y with them! Check it out if you haven’t done so yet!”, not “You have unlocked Trading Post, yay!”

As for leveling experience in practice… I can only say that I never felt like making alts after the Traits update, but I’m still leveling a warrior and it is at level 30-something at the moment. About 5 of those were from Tomes from PvP; and even though I don’t really like PvP, I think I’ll be doing more of it because after 3 lvl 80s, doing all the things over and over again to get to 80 and start actually playing the things I like – Dry Top, Orr, Dungeons/Fractals – is really, really boring. The trait system make it worse; the new level-gatings – even further. Instead of “learning something new” and altering my build, I’m just grinding monsters and hearts over and over again with the most efficient weapon set, until I can finally do something new and fun if I happen to unlock some traits… and if I am allowed to use them at all.

And by the way, do you know what I’m leveling that new warrior alt for instead of using an older one? To gear it with Leyline weapons and armour. And if I drop it now, these money won’t be spend by me and people like me anymore.

Cheers.

Draknar.5748:

Yes some like to decorate. Developing player housing so that some people can fiddle around with it while most players ignore it/stop using it is a big waste of time and money. That’s the point people are trying to make.

Yes some like to duel. Developing dueling so that some people can fiddle around with it while most players ignore it/stop using it is a big waste of time and money. That’s the point people are trying to make.

Yes some like to use mounts. Developing mounts so that some people can fiddle around with it while most players ignore it/stop using it is a big waste of time and money. That’s the point people are trying to make.

Yes some like to wear capes. Developing capes so that some people can fiddle around with it while most players ignore it/stop using it is a big waste of time and money. That’s the point people are trying to make.

See what I did there?

Asmodeus.5782:

And yes, a lot of farmers makes it helluva hard to buy anything valuable for any non-farming player.

I think it’s again time to quote myself from another now deceased thread:

I’m amazed at how short-sighted many people are: they’re happy at making other players suffer without understanding that those people were the ones who made their life easier by repeating monotonous task which the first players wouldn’t have to do. It’s like being happy at a limit of those dirty lousy yardmen – before seeing that they’ll have to pick up all the trash themselves now.

Fasalina, Nerelith and others who admit they haven’t studied economics, here’s a Wiki image.

The image shows an increase in supply – the price drops. When supply decreases, the price increases.

• Let’s say we had 100 players who needed 1 charged lodestone per week each, which makes 100 lodestones per week.
• We had 10 farmers who farmed 10 lodestones per week each, which makes 100 lodestones per week.
• Let’s say the price got an equilibrium at around 2g.
• After patch, we still have 100 players who need 1 charged lodestone per week each, which makes 100 lodestones per week – nothing changed.
• After patch, the 10 farmers can only farm 5 lodestones per week.
• When the first 50 lodestones at 2g are sold, the other 50 players still need 50 more lodestones.
• Because they need these lodestones but can’t get them, they offer more for these lodestones – let’s say up to 4g per lodestone.
• 10 other non-farmers see that the offers for lodestones got higher and decide to go farming.
• Now we have 20 people farming instead of 10 people to provide enough supply of 100 lodestones per week, while players pay more for the exact same lodestones because otherwise the farmers will stop farming.

Result of the train-nerf which you’re so happy about? More people have to grind, more casual players suffer from an increase in prices. Both sides become unhappy (and eventually leave the game).

…and let’s not forget that world boss trains for ecto and Orr event farming for T6 also got nerfed.

“I am too inefficient at earning and spending and don’t want to improve, so let’s make EVERYONE ELSE equally inefficient!”

Where do people even get those ideas from?

16. Confusing Combatants trait. Doesn’t affect phantasms. Ninjafixed on 28 Feb 2014.

17. Phantasmal Mage fires at inconsistent ranges at 800 to 1000 range. DEV: “Intended. All ranged and melee skills have a 15% buffer range to take account for tracking.”

18. Illusionary Elasticity trait. (reported by Asuka Shikinami, Wiki) Not fixed in 15AprFP.

• Does not affect staff clones even though affects other clones.

19, 20. Illusionists Celerity and Malicious Sorcery traits. Not fixed in 15AprFP. DEV: “Intended. Shouldn’t be able to utilize both at the same time.” – but there’s definitely some confusion here.

• If only MS taken: Illusionary Counter CD when triggered is 10s (bug).
• If only IC taken: Illusionary Counter CD when triggered is 9s (bug).
• If both MS and IC taken: Illusionary Counter CD when triggered is 9s (bug); Illusionary Counter tootip says 8s (bug); for the sword block, the tooltip is bugged, but all the cooldowns are proper.
• All other skill-trait combos are fixed.

21. Spatial Surge hits the target even while marked by red bar as out of range. DEV: “Globally intended. Buffer range.”

22. Shared skill cooldowns. Separate topic.

• Some skills will go on cooldown after you swap them in while another skill is on cooldown. Video. Another scenario.

23. Clone skills and bundles. Broken since The Bazaar of The 4 Winds patch. DEV: “Fixed some now, will fix some later.”

• Clones are not created at all while holding bundles (env./conjured weapons etc.); affects both traits (like DE) and skills.
• Super-lazy solution: create clones with these bundles, but idle.
• Evident solution: create clones with the original equipped weapon casting skill 1.
• Ultra solution: make AI use bundle skills (ok, nobody’s hoping for it really).

24. “Obstructed” and LoS issues. DEV: “Fixed some now, will fix some later.”

• Most evident in WvW when trying to hit oil sites and players on walls and stairs with GS (primarily GS1); reported not to work in the dredge fractal when destroying the turrets. Behaviour seems to be buggy as very often there are no visual reasons for obstruction.

25. Underwater Phantasms. DEV: “Intended.”

• Both underwater phantasm skills can be activated without a target, causing the skill to go on cooldown while doing nothing.

26. Mirror of Anguish/Halting Strike instakilling enemies. Fixed in 15AprFP!

27. Phantasmal Rogue. Claimed to be fixed.

• Attacks inconsistently (similar to Warden). Can stand doing nothing.

28. Illusion of Life. Fixed in 15AprFP!

29. Confounding Suggestions and Mesmer Runes.

• Runes and trait increases do not stack. Separate topic.

30. Phantasms and Weapon Master.

• None of phantasms count towards the achi.
• Phantasmal Warden’s kills do not count towards the Focus Master Achievement, thus leaving Mesmers without the ability to obtain it.
• Corresponds with Phantasmal Disenchanter not counting towards Daily Condition Removal.
• Contradicts with illusions counting against In Tune achievement during Holo fight.

31. Illusionary Persona.

• Confusing Cry with IP will not grant Retaliation if illusions are not summoned.
• Distortion, however, will properly give its effect (also called Distortion) without illusions.
• Shattered conditions do not work.

32. Underwater Mimic.

• Mimic channel/reflect is only ~2 sec underwater, though tooltip states 4 sec.

33. Underwater Skill Range.

• Targeted underwater skills may initiate at that range yet will then immediately display “Out of Range” and fail to work. More.

34. → Swap.

• Misses “Breaks Stun” in the tooltip.

35. Outfits.

• Clones are not wearing outfits, making it easy to see who the real mesmer is.

36. GS1 damage indicator.

• Endlessly incrementing damage on occasions; minor annoyance, only indicator affected.

37. Phantasms and Gates.

• May not attack gates (both in PvE and WvW) – just spawn and do nothing.
• May spawn on the other side of the gate.
• As a result, may switch targets and attack enemy players/NPCs since they’re already inside.
• As a result, may get killed instead of staying on the right side of the gate and attacking it.

Nope, sorry, but YOU’RE WRONG is not an argument

Ascended is a long term goal with a less than 5% stat increase. You can complete all content (apart from lvl 50 FoTM), in exotics – heck, even rares, or even do naked Teq and Wurm runs.

Invest time or money or deal with it. Sincerely, a person who’s lazily gearing his 4th character in full ascended by playing in evenings after work and haven’t bought gems for a year.

Flash.6912:

i want to see more open legs across all type of armors

Should’ve named your account “Flesh”.

It’s been almost a year since I compiled the List of 150+ QoL Features, and since I like lists so much, I decided to go for a (personal) list of fixes/changes/features which I consider long overdue.

Feel free to compile your own lists in the comments (or support parts of mine). Seeing that some bits of changes actually do make it into the game after years of forum posts, I still hope it can make a difference.

Medium:

• UI
  • reworking Hero Panel to display all info in one place
  • freely movable elements
  • freely resizable elements
  • toggle for display of interactible object names (DT, SW chests and badges etc.)
  • consumable/item inventory slot which always stays visible
  • different icons for Downed and Dead players
  • sound notification for party match queue
• Contacts/LFG/party
  • guild chat persists after character switch
  • party chat persists after party disband
  • fix to guildies displaying as offline until guild panel is open
  • always present and reliable “Join party” option for player submenu
  • “offline” players can no longer one-side whisper you
  • blocked players can no longer join your parties
  • parties with blocked players do not show up in LFG
  • Block and Report in a single click
  • auto remove chat from blocked players
  • do not remove party LFG advertisement when the last person leaves
  • guild name and tag in party member hover info
• “Unsalvageable” tag on unsalvageable gear
  • for karma gear,
  • for NPE gear,
  • for WvW gear,
  • for ascended gear,
  • for random gear which should be salvageable but is not
• “Unique” ascended rings/trinkets
  • elaborated information on the meaning of “unique” mechanic in the tooltip
  • prompt “A character cannot equip two of the same rings” when buying a duplicate of an equipped ring
• Ascended rings/trinkets
  • salvaging
  • or making forgeable
• Useless superior sigils/runes which sit at vendor price
  • buffing/reworking
  • or making forgeable
• Dragonite eater (likely to be tied to some event like SAB)
• Fall damage
  • dying when walking down slopes/stairs
• Fixing bugged events
  • especially Ogre Wars
  • and Orr events
• World Bosses
  • World Boss in-game timer
  • fixing boss HP and mechanics (Fire Elemental dies in seconds, Inquest Golem is a long boring 111 spam from safe spot, Shatterer is an AFK zerg)
• Fix to no champbags for killing champs after the threshold of the first ~50 players
• Account-bound Dungeon Story unlock
• Fixing dungeon exploits
• Personal class pick: Mesmer
  • reliable source of swiftness (signet/trait)
  • Temporal Curtain stacking swiftness
  • Portal “out of range” indicator and map markers
  • reliable source of non-illusion damage
  • reliable source of AoE damage
• Tracking
  • dungeon paths per account
  • story paths per character
  • done dungeon paths per day
  • done world bosses per day
  • done daily crafted materials

Pockethole.5031:

but guardians, engingeers and warriors for example dont have that.

…and mesmers do not even exist in the game…

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

I also would’ve preferred a UK flag for English in LFG. I saw those USA flags yesterday and got confused every time – it made me feel I was going to join an NA server group

How about…

…logging in to play the game, analyze it a bit and then come up with your own opinion as well as suggestions on gameplay improvement instead of posting a provoking thread?
…not forcing “worth” as an antonym to “zerg” when speaking of a large-scale multi-alliance invasion into the most important city in Tyria?

Ah, my bad, I forgot we’re playing Forum Wars 2 here, not Guild Wars 2. I should go check if my browser has already fetched an update for this Living Story.

I would speculate that the “Our Community is a Disappointment” to “Our Development is a Disappointment” thread ratio shows that at this moment we have more problems with Development than Community.

People have predicted the problems without even trying them out simply because those were predictable to anyone who played the game long enough. People got exactly these problems, plus more.

People have been promised good things and bugfixes. People got useless and post-PR-nerfed traits and next to no bugfixes, plus more bugs.

And when the patch hits, the feedback gets merged into megathreads with no dev in the main forum to answer any.

Why would people be happy? Why should they be happy?

Yes. I enjoyed the daily world boss routine and hopping to Orr farming events when they were active on API (and it actually felt like being a hero constantly helping Tyrian folks in their mishaps and not a farmer), and with these gone, I’ll be doing more enjoyable things outside of GW2.

PeterFries.1057:

Iason Evan.3806:

It just needs to be tighter during the meat of the rising action and tension and body of the story for it to work as a complete thing.

Got it. Tighter meat.

By the end of Season 3…

Carighan.6758:

“Play how you want” is not equivalent to “Do whatever you want and still get all the rewards”.

That’s on a vertical scale. How about a horizontal (timeline) one, which is the concern of this topic?

“Play how you want, with rewards” yesterday is not equivalent to “Play how you want, without rewards from yesterday” today.

What about “the most powerful rewards” in the form of enjoyment from the game, the feeling of freedom, the feeling of being emotionally attached to a world which, unlike real world, has very little restrictions here and there?

This enjoyment is fading away as more and more restrictions are placed – those which want to “streamline” (official), or “pigeonhole” (unofficial) the player’s experience.

Rym.1469:

If your worst experience is buying the game, why do you still play it and post on forums ?

The 50$ (30$ if discounted) for 19 months of play was too much of a price to easily forget.

EDIT: /sarcasm

Eos.6951:

It’s posts like these that make anet devs not want to update us on what they’re working on.

ANet: Guys, here’s what we’re going to do.
Players: This is a bad idea, we do not want it that way.
ANet: Okay, next time we’ll just roll out that bad idea without asking you.
Players: ?!

What’s Trahearne’s favourite video game?

“Plants vs. Zombies”.

Minor:

• Randomly resizing inventory
• Per-character keybindings
• Account-wide character bag
• Smarter dye management in Preview window
• In-game “fitting/hairstyle/makeover room” which lets you try on and dye all available skins under neutral in-game lighting
• Human female idle animations
• Profession trainers refusing to train in low-level areas
• Objects like harvesting node meshes partially hovering over terrain
• Horizontal-oriented objects not respecting terrain angle
• Right-click on skill slot to change skill instead of clicking the small arrow
• Titles for various substantial collections
• Crafting
  • Favourites for recipes
  • “Craft full queue” function

Teon.5168:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Okay, so I spent 25 minutes doing dailies for AP and experience for alts instead of playing the new patch.

What should I like again about that change?

At least experience is bottled and can be passed…

You got 10 AP instead of 3 AP and in less time than it would have taken to get 10 AP.

Sounds like a win to me. 7 more ap than before, and in a lot less time.

Sigh. Let me repeat the math for you:

Earlier:

• 6-8 AP in 0 minutes of dedicated grindning. I play the content I want and get rewarded for playing.

Now:

• 10 AP in 20-30 minutes of dedicated grindning or nothing. I have to play the content I couldn’t care less about to get rewarded AT ALL.

I don’t know about you, but I consider 20 minutes (if you scale it to the previous 6-8 AP) of my playtime (which is part of my limited life actually) to be a considerable amount of time to spend on things I do not like. I already have daily timegated crafting, gathering and charging (as well as other timegated stuff like dungeons and fractals which I can’t simply save for weekends), and I despise another forced daily grind.

And don’t even start talking about “achieving”! Beating Liadri was an achievement, collecting 4 plants in Maguuma, tagging 4 events in QD and looking for stuff to MF on multiple characters (all clean sold and salvaged, as always) is nothing more than grind.

ANet wanted to force us into content we didn’t want to play to boost metrics; they definitely succeeded in it. What they failed to see though and what they will feel in the long run, despite their perfect metrics, is that once again they killed my will to buy any amount of gems with real money despite the good content they recently released – which happens again, over and over, with traits, NPE, fixed GEM exchange and cheap F2P daily systems.

You guys are awesome

…when you wish you were a staff guardian while chasing a mosquito in your room.

…when you wish you could Daze a person who’s going to say something unpleasant to you.

You know you’ve been playing EoTM too much…

…when you feel like using Temporal Curtain or Illusionary Wave on those guys sitting on the handrails.

…when you’re alone in the street and try to cast Mass Invisibility if you spot someone in the distance.

…when you see a “You can’t carry more supplies!” alert if your shopping bags are too heavy.

…when you want to check the bridge’s health before crossing it.

Kissa.4586:

My sister saw the Bank Midwest logo that looks like the icon for the Event Icon: A service or assistance that needs to be provided.

I always called that one a “pizza icon”.

I decided to be honest with ANet and farm it once during the initial instance. Guess that was the price of honesty.

Let’s take a look at this:

ArenaNet defines an exploit as any deliberate action that provides an unfair advantage over other players or otherwise hurts the game, community, or economy; it does not matter whether the exploit is a hack or makes use of a mechanic (bugged or otherwise) within the game. Before taking punitive action on an account, ANet considers whether players made deliberate use of the exploit; use of hacks or bots is always assumed to be deliberate. In addition, players that publicize an exploit are also subject to suspension or even banning, regardless of their motives, since well-publicized exploits require ArenaNet to react immediately to prevent the abuse, which diverts resources away from the rest of the game.

For a variety of reasons, the company cannot equivocally define exactly what will be considered an exploit, but they have offered the following rules of thumb:

• Does it seem to good to be true?
• Would your friends consider this to be an exploit?
• Does it provide you with an unfair advantage over other players?
• Could this be the result of a bug introduced with a recent update or new feature?
• Does this seem like something that could be reasonably considered to be intended by ArenaNet?

If you are still unsure after answer these questions, the safest thing to do is to avoid taking advantage of the potential exploit and report it via the methods listed at the top of this article.

So…

Does it seem to good to be true? Yes, if you bought Balm at 8s, you were breaking even at the 2nd bag. Even now you’re breaking even with the 4th bag, which is easy.

Would your friends consider this to be an exploit? Yes, I consider it an exploit. People on forums consider it an exploit.

Does it provide you with an unfair advantage over other players? Yes, because people who have finished the instance can no longer farm it. To farm it, people deliberately leave the instance, knowing of the exploit and using it.

Could this be the result of a bug introduced with a recent update or new feature? Yes, Halloween patch brought it here.

Does this seem like something that could be reasonably considered to be intended by ArenaNet? No, because there is no “exit instance” button – you have to get “kicked” out of the instance or forcefully log out to fail the instance. No, because once the instance is done, you cannot get back.

ArenaNet defines an exploit as any deliberate action that provides an unfair advantage over other players or otherwise hurts the game, community, or economy. Is it a deliberate action? Yes. Does it hurt the community? Yes – the community is divided into those who can farm it and those who can’t. Does it hurt the economy? Yes – the economy is always driven by the time/profit ratio of any action, whereas this exploit lowers the time required to farm bags considerably, creating unintended oversupply of bags. Does it hurt the game? Yes – changes after changes makes players lose trust in developers’ deeds. This particular change and the official stance on it will lead to more people using borderline “features” in the future and referring to this case as a precedent.

Argon.1563:

I can’t help but be worried about the big “BUY MOAR GOLD!” Button at the top. Im hoping its just a link to the Currency Converter though.

If it actually makes our fellow players to stop buying from you-know-who who in turn spam us every now and then, I would be happy regardless of where it takes me.

Once again, dumbing down and hand-holding for clueless players who migrated from Android games… which, accidentally, once again leads to additional limits and constraints for loyal veteran players.

Earlier:

• Log in.
• Do what you want. Enjoy your time, casually play the game the way it was supposed to be played (leveling, events, gathering, dungeons, fractals…).
• Get rewarded for playing the game.

Now:

• Log in. Get rewarded for logging in!
• Go out of your way and do things you do not like to get rewarded. Go to a place you do not like, go at a time which is inconvenient for you, do things you do not want.
• Get rewarded for agreeing to do the content you didn’t want to do in the first place!

I do not like daily PvP and “competitive” PvP elitism. I do not like daily WvW and zergs. I once loved world bosses, but nerfs and megaservers ruined them for me. Why, why do I have to do it to get my supply of laurels and other important things?

This sounds like 2 cheap tricks to boost metrics for those who care about numbers more then about people, and make it look like there’s a lot of content in the game. Sad truth: there’s only “a lot of content in the game” when every player who enjoys specific type of content has enough of it, not when you force players to do stuff they don’t want.

ANet, before even rolling out this system, please see player’s concerns regarding forced specific daily requirements! I have a separate topic on it here because I think it’s important enough.

I do not know anymore what’s going on with temples because I no longer visit Orr because the part of the game I enjoyed (farming temple events) was stolen from me on April 15.

Zaoda.1653:

Not cool. What happened to ‘play how you want’? The supposed motto of GW2 from day 1… I can’t play how I want because I’m forced to do something I don’t want to do!!!

• You’re not forced to do anything. Having or not having a skin makes zero impact on how you kill mobs. “I can’t kill mobs because I’m not stylish enough!” is not an argument, even for Kasmeer.
• Nothing happened to “Play how you want”. Play how you want – get rewarded with something. Want a specific reward – play how you’re supposed to play. Play WvW for Mistforged skins. Play PvP for Balthazar skins. Go on a scavenger hunt and LFG “lvl 1 fractals friendly run, first time, everyone welcome!” 5 times to get the vine skin.
• Despising Fractals, WvW, PvP is not an argument. Want a reward? Make an effort. That’s why it’s called a reward. Even if it means you have to step outside of your comfort zone. Or ask someone to 4-man fractals and buy a slot with gold.
• You are not entitled to get everything unless you’re investing effort or money. These particular game’s endgame is looks. A non-tradeable multi-phase backpack is an essential part of the endgame. Remove the time/skill/content limitations – and you got rid of the endgame; everyone has everything on the next day, uninstalls the game and GW2 shuts down.

I cannot agree that the same autoattack spam for 7 minutes instead of 2 minutes is harder.

As a player with 15 characters (a double for almost every class), I find the current situation disappointing and frustrating. Solutions:

1. Halve the SP cost (to 200). If one has full map completion, that means he’s played enough to master a new spec. Really, after 3 years the last thing one wants is to play his old class instead of a new one.

1.1. Move decorative reward to end of line. I can live without the new pretty exo shield, thanks. Really, that’s how this game always worked: functionality from day one, cosmetics – after a variable grind.

2. Make each class elite spec unlock account-bound. My main is a mesmer and I finish all LS on it; I also made a mesmer themed for a chronomancer; do you really expect I will enjoy grinding the same 400 points in the same content just to have characters with different skins? No thanks; I should better think of asking for the char slot refund for all my duplicates in that case.

What we know by now:

• HoT will have no level cap increase and no new armour tier, with the reasoning of keeping old content alive.
• HoT will be bringing Masteries to both new maps and old ones (including Fractals).
• You won’t be able to complete certain challenges until you get specific Masteries.
• The new maps will be focusing on smaller areas with deeper, more replayable content, instead of larger but emptier regions.

So how is “gear grind” actually different from the “skill grind” we will be getting?

Gear & Level Grind

• You are not able to complete certain challenges until you get the new levels and the new armour.
• In GW2, you can level by doing (almost) anything you like, when you like, how you like.
• In GW2, you can earn gold for craftable/buyable gear by doing (almost) anything you like, when you like, how you like.
• In GW2, you can still come back and do low-level content thanks to automatic downscaling (which could [or could not] use some tweaking, but that’s another topic).

Skill Grind

• You are not able to complete certain challenges until you get the new skills (“Masteries”).
• In GW2, to unlock character traits, you have to do an enormous list of random tasks, or pay a hefty sum of gold and skillpoints. You have to grind the same tasks over and over again for each character. Until you acquire traits, you cannot start actually playing what you want and instead do what you’re told.
• In GW2, to unlock LS achievements and then get them and the exclusive rewards tied to them, you have to grind specific content over and over again until you succeed. You cannot buy it with gold or other currencies (the official way at least, from the game, not LFG sellers). You are out of luck if you are not there to group up with the people who know what to do in the first days.
• Traits and achievements feel like a “must do” list of chores which nag you until you finish them.

So will the new “revolutionary” progression system be actually better? I’m not sure.

Instead, I’m afraid that with the two camps of “no level cap/gear grind!” and “more character progression!” players we had, we’ve drawn ourselves into a trap which could be worse than the new Trait system and NPE combined.

Disclaimer: I’m not advocating for gear grind or level cap increase; I’m just voicing concern that with the current policy of making people grind more and more for everything, gear grind and level cap might have actually been a more user-friendly solution.

UPDATE:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, here we go:

When this ability is unlocked, your character’s experience bar will change to become a Mastery training bar while in PvE zones. This bar will track your progress on training the Mastery track you currently have selected, showing both the abilities you are training toward and those already earned from the track. To see all your Mastery tracks, spend Mastery points, and change which Mastery you are currently training, click the Mastery training bar to bring up the Mastery tray. Because the Mastery training bar completely replaces the experience bar, players who’ve reached level 80 will no longer gain levels but will instead train Masteries.

TL;DR: to level Masteries, you play in the new zone.

Now the important part is… How grindy and annoying these levels are? Is it like SW and DT collections, or more like a couple of PvE levels? How much can you actually play what you want now, instead of grinding the allowed content until you’re so bored to death that the new gated content is no longer intriguing?

To train a specific Mastery track, you must first unlock it by spending Mastery points. Mastery points are awarded for completing various pieces of game content. Things like completing a chapter in your personal story, completing certain achievements, reaching hard-to-find locations, overcoming challenging encounters, excelling at adventures found within the Heart of Maguuma, or earning 100% completion for a map will award Mastery points.

TL;DR: to unlock Masteries, you do what we currently do in the LS: grind obligatory achievement tasks until you succeed.

Now the important part is… How grindy and annoying these tasks are? Can you get them naturally, like climbing up a mountain to a vista in the current maps, or they’re similar to the revamped Traits and LS achievements?

nGumball.1283:

If you consider ever form of playing grinding then you shouldn’t play MMOs cause that’s how they are.

Playing any content I want to play with a character and leveling it is not grind.

Playing content that I do not want to be able to unlock traits for my characters is a grind.

Playing content that I do not want to be able to buy traits for my character is a grind.

Hey, did you notice we were talking not even about ascended mats locked behind specific content types and non-exchangeable for optional gear, but about basic character abilities known as traits?

There must be a line in “grinding”. For me, even gathering mats for full ascended was fun and not grind, because those +4.7% stats were optional, similar to how optional were the looks of illusionary forged weapons for me.

Are traits optional? No, they’re core features of any class, and having an 80-level Personal Story to unlock a Master trait is ridiculous, as ridiculous it is to pay 43 gold + 360 skill points for unlocking all traits.

People are saying that there’s no endgame; ANet’ve failed to deliver new persistent content, and now they’re trying to tell us that leveling is the new endgame – not by adding something new to leveling, but by making us play content which has been largely ignored. Can I agree with such a concept? No.

Nerelith.7360:

Maybe if we put our experiences of pre-patch gw2 aside, and try to see the game with new eyes, you may find it’s more fun? Just a thought.

If we forget how driving cars felt, maybe we may find riding horses is more fun?

Lankybrit.4598:

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

No Holy Trinity.

Simple as that.

No.

Zergs are simply a by-product of:

Lazy people.

Simple as that.

You a) may be hardcore; b) may be casual; c) may want to play the game on your notebook with a donut and a youtube. The c) niche is usually occupied by Facebook flashgames which are not epic enough for a regular gamer; GW2, however, in its business model takes a step in that direction and grabs a large amount of one-time buyers who get a “real” RPG which requires next to no skills and effort to succeed in.

And eventually, we receive enough people liking megazergers and pushing us out of the main target audience.

Here’s a direct result of different servers getting dumped together and language filter stealth-added and turned on by default. So much for “facilitating friendly play”:

• Warriors have been nerfed multiple times already, but who among the pugs reads the patch notes?
• Having more than 1 warrior in a party is actually suboptimal – but hey, go tell it to the pugs! I remember doing paths with 4 warriors and doing the same stuff with war-guard-ele-engi-ranger or something like that – the latter being far better when organised: engi for vulnerability and blasts, ele for might, ranger for frost spirit and spotter, guard for active defence, war for banners – everyone contributes, skills synergise and traits do not get overwritten.
• It is hard to be a bad warrior. It is very easy to be a bad ragner or an engi. For pugs who follow the path of least resistance, it means war/guard/ele is the way to go.

So yes, while there is a certain imbalance in PvE (because the game is balanced around PvP, because E-SPORTS!), the problem is mostly in the ignorance and not balance.

Jaymee.1560:

Just generally asking a question. Why do some people have to be so unhappy?

Please go read these forum threads and think about them instead of asking us to deliver you a summarised digested version of our discontent.

People had a part of their daily fun removed – and that’s a good enough reason to be unhappy.

Gery.2718:

I think he was being sarcastic guys

Yeah, seems I should’ve attached a [sarcasm] sign. (:

nGumball.1283:

And there are people thinking that leveling is the best its been.

Probably those people who have to be officially forced to do the content to enjoy it because if they’re left with options, they seem to be forced to do everything in an easier way aka “efficiently” and cannot enjoy it if they can.

I remember leveling a mesmer (my main) pre-patch – hard and slow, but doable; the sylvari racial skills helped to survive a lot, as well as traits. I feel that my mesmer at 80 still either doesn’t do enough damage or is squishy even if it tries to squeeze a bit more of DPS.

I remember leveling an ele – I had to kite and kite and kite not to get killed by same level mobs, while skelks were virtually unkillable; getting some traits early on really helped. I just accepted it, grinded Tomes of Knowledge on my main and leveled it to start playing it. Now, equipped in primarily zerker gear, I still do not see a lvl 80 ele as a good DPS source (as generally regarded) despite it being extremely squishy.

I remember trying a war – and facerolling most mobs of 3-4 levels above me and dropping it because it’s boring. I also see warriors who melt their targets at 80, and I ask myself a serious question: WTF?!

So yes, since the only important class in this game doesn’t really need traits to be viable in PvE till level 30, having the game balanced around it doesn’t surprise me.

Will I be leveling my other alts? No thanks; I still can’t make myself finish map completion on my main, and actually spending time on the same content or grinded gold on acquiring traits is not my definition of fun.

No.

Because people are aware of systems established long ago which can function in an efficient manner, and care enough about the game to prefer having those systems back over innovative yet lacking systems which often lead to discontent among veteran players.

That said, I generally like the overall concept of this game and agree that some systems are requested inertially, and while they do not belong to this game, something still has to be done to unleash the full potential of the now stagnant “innovative” system.

My favourite awesome purple wells, the epic fireball and the magical auras got nerfed with the excuse of “reducing visual noise”. So what is the point of having this completely irrevenant information clutter my screen in PvE?

Map completion, mastery level number (3-digit, going over 100), “I bought HoT” icon, and now the PvP League marker. The names are overloaded with information both in world and in target mode, where the multiple icons are not even aligned and look like a total mess…

The PvP icon should not be displayed in PvE. To make people play PvE, one fixes matchmaking, splits PvE and PvP balance and makes new non-PvE maps, and not pushes more e-Sports information into our screens.

+1 to all, but mostly to “Open all”.

I would suggest a real auto-loot function that loots mobs on kill and does not force us to repeatedly press F to revive dead, to pick up banners and to talk to NPCs instead of looting.

…or buy it from TP by converting gems to gold.

3. Let players know what is happening in the game and where it is happening!

• Would developers like to know why many people cosplay in hub cities and not play the game? The answer is simple: they don’t know what to do. Yes, they can go do a dungeon, but they may need a party and it gonna be long and unrewarding if they’re bad at it; they may go do a personal story step, but it’s unrewarding and so single playerish that it’s boring (and at some points it’s over anyway). They will not go explore because you have to walk through half a map to even stumble upon an event, and the one you stumble upon will most likely be unsoloable – and not worth the time anyway. In other words: this is a multi-player game, yet there are little means provided to us to “multi-play” as a whole server, and doubly so for players in small friend-only guilds (who are unable to read guild chats of larger social guilds they may join).
• Solution 1: make all major events always displayed on the whole world map. You open the map – you see one of the Balthazar chains being done – you hop on, contribute, everyone wins. If the map is hardcapped, just overlay it with some kind of red tint and make the event icons disappear.
• Solution 2: make a world event tracker similar to map/local event trackers. At any moment in time you can push the “Active world events: 7/50” button and see a list of events all over the world. It can be a UI button, an event tab in top-right corner, an “event fairy” summonable NPC, an inventory “asuran broadcasting stone” – whatever it takes to tell people what they can do.
• Solution 3: make a /world chat channel so that people can interact with others and write “We’re alone at Grenth pre, come help or it gonna fail!”, or “Tequatl turret defense set up, need DPS people!” without leaving the map (and risking their slot/losing progress from a contested waypoint) and wasting time cycling through cities.

4. Make dynamic events worth doing.

• Directly increasing rewards looks like an evident solution, but there will always be something needed to offset inflation which comes with it.
• So probably cosmetic rewards is the way to go, and this can be done with PvE regional reward tracks which lets you gather several types of map tokens in these zones which can be than traded to unlock unique non-tradeable map gear and/or dyes, and possibly traded for other materials (laurels? karma? ascended mats?) once you have too much of those.
• More entertaining (harpy love buff!) and useful (fire elemental powder!) consumables introduced every now and then may increase the interest for events just a bit more.

5. Make exploration worth doing.

• Precursor crafting which requires you to gather materials throughout the whole world of Tyria.
• Mystic forging unique skins from non-tradeable items found in different places on the map. To simplify the process of creating skins for developers, this can be limited/combined into a region-specific coloring component used to craft/forge skins of different colour (similar to the use of Knight cores) – e.g. Maguuma zones for green, Shiverspeak for blue and so on. If extended to having matching colours for each profession, that would be GREAT – just imagine colouring your Cobalt purple, or making a Whisperblade red, or… you got the idea!
• Map bounties – bosses which are never displayed on the map and harmlessly roam around it and often change locations but once triggered by a group of players, transform into a worldboss-like creature at their current location and become an event with a guaranteed reward.
• Followers of Nicholas the Traveler – NPCs roaming around maps which provide daily rewards (map tokens? karma?) to those who manage to locate them.
• Growing dyes – using specific places in different places of Tyria to grow plants which can be then harvested for dyes of specific colors (after a period of time and probably some materials from nearby dynamic event merchants).
• Unlocking new traits – just listed the Feature Pack feature here as I see it as a good example of what can be done.
• Gonna catch ’em all! – unique collectible minis/polymock pieces tied to maps.

After reading many threads on trinity, I’m inclined to think that those advocating for it simply cannot cope with having to adapt and choose any role on the fly depending on the group and the encounter. They perceive freedom as shallowness, and they are dead set that “gear” equals “build”. They want to be handheld, spoonfed and pigeonholed so that they do not have to make their own thought-out decisions, and only then will they be happy… until the moment they realise that they’re back to waiting for healers and raging at dumb tanks and every fight looks like the other one, and even then it will be someone else’s fault and not the system’s.

So yes, I have no problems with “zerker meta” and yes, I do not complain about it on forums or in map chat.

medohgeuh.4650:

I think the problem here is that you’re taking a video game too seriously, especially when you start using words like “investment”.

I think you shouldn’t be reading long and boring forum posts such as OP’s and leaving comments because you’re taking a video game too seriously.

OP, agreed. Balancing this game by the lowest common denominator has always amazed me… One might think that after the initial launch phase and running out of fresh players you should cater to your loyal veteran players, but it looks like the B2P principle has grown too deep into the gameplay and goes far beyond zerk meta and zerg content.

I’m not ready to give up on my mesmer (yet), but I’ve been voting with my wallet for a long time now and am spending more time on other classes.

Finally the stuff that people want from a fantasy game, and not some medieval hobosack from Queensdale!

Yes, they will be overused, but for the same reason as t3 human cultural light, t3 human cultural medium and flower hair are overused: there are not enough options which are equally cool. Want them gone? Give more equally cool options!

I’m a bit disappointed though that it’s not a legendary/ascended backpack which requires certain substantial achievements in a thematic zone to get it… But on the other hand, no boring SW scale of grind, yay!

Sankekur.9182:

My god, I do not want to play the month after these things hit gem store shelves… >.<

Don’t worry, you’ll be replaced by those who like wings, get back in and buy it to complete the look of their favourite character.

Rednik.3809:

I hope “hide backpacks” option will come soon. Those wings are not belong to this game. Looks plain kittened.

I will be sure to come rage about capes when those get released. ’Cause, you know, both black wings and capes existed in GW1.