Guild Wars 2

Er, no, statistics don’t work that way, if something has a 1% drop rate it’s 1% likely to drop EVERY TIME you do it, whether it’s the first or the hundredth!

Um, sort of. Basically, the odds of you getting it the next time do not increase, so your 100th attempt does not have better odds than your 23rd attempt. Still though, the more attempts you make, the more “rolls” you get, and therefore the better your odds of getting the thing overall.

Basically, if something has a 1% drop rate, then you aren’t guaranteed to get the item on your 99th, 100th, or 101st attempt, but you do stand a better chance of getting the item over the course of attempting it 100 times than you would over the course of 50 times, and most people would have it at least within 200 times if not much sooner, but of course there are always outliers. The more you keep trying, the more likely at least one attempt will eventually pay off, but it could be your first or your ten-thousandth.

Other than party size and needing to know mechanics, which was not always true in dungeons, raids are very much like explorable dungeons.

Raids are about as much like GW2 Dungeons as rebuilt Tequatl was like Shadow Behemoth. Similar in theory, MUCH more complicated and failure prone, which makes them completely different experiences.

ANet planned to cater to that demographic from launch. Explorable dungeons were supposed to be raid equivalents. The reason raids may seem to be a departure is that explorable dungeons did not work out that way for the most part.

This may be true, but is completely irrelevant. What ANet intended with the launch dungeons is beside the point, they launched how they launched, and people who came to the game liked what they were, and played for several years under the expectation that this was how the game should be, that this was the best possible state for the game. Then raids were added and were something else entirely, meant for a completely different audience of players.

“Harmful to the game” is an easy accusation to bandy about, but a hard one to prove. What it boils down to is that you and some other people want to do raids but choose to believe you can’t unless there’s an easy tier. Some other people don’t want to fail because failing is not fun, so they want an easy tier. Still others want the ease and convenience of, “log in, open LFG, join raid squad, complete raid, collect loot, log out.” Those peoples’ intentions are thwarted because they want something that raids are not. That does not mean raids are harming the game.

If those players exist, and they do, in some number, then it is harming the game. Now, that said, it also is clearly benefiting the game, in players who like raids just how they are. So the only unknown question is, how many are there of each group, what is the balance of benefit vs. harm, and how much should ANet care?

I mean I can tell you as a fact that the introduction of raiding caused fairly catastrophic damage to my guild at the time, and that it has severely eroded my enjoyment of the game, because it set whole portions of the story, rewards, and mastery process out of my reach. I still enjoy the game, but I’ve definitely been far less invested in it over the year since raids came out than I was in the several years previously.

“Have you tried to do any of the easier raid bosses with your guild members? If not, what stops you?”

Yes, and Vale Guardian stopped us.

Allie Murdock.8152:

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

I totally agree on this, but at the same time, what we need from your end is some assurance that these issues WILL get fixed within the near future. To say “Rangers wouldn’t be Rangers without their pets, and we know pets don’t work right, but we won’t be able to fix that any time soon, so tough luck.” Is not a satisfactory answer. We need to get something to the effect of either:

A: Pets are vital to the Ranger class, and we know they aren’t working right right now, but we have plans in place to fix that within the next few months so it’ll be ok.

OR

B: Pets are vital to the Ranger class, but we can’t make them work right any time soon, so we’re going to offer some other effects in the meantime to bring Rangers up to snuff without even factoring in the pets, and we’ll make pets mandatory again once we’ve figured out how to make them work right.

There definitely needs to be a change made for the game that either A: makes pets far less likely to die when meleeing in large zerg/boss situations, or B: makes them just as useful while “dead” as while alive.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Illuminati.2431:

While I really think a CDI about guilds would be very usefull, I just think it wouldn’t be very usefull to discuss guild related things at this time.
The forum is flooded with (healthy and constructive)discussions/raging/complaining etc. about the latest feature patch. That’s what is moving the forum right now.

I think it would be best if someone of the development team, doesn’t necessarily has to be Chris, would first open some kind of CDI regarding the latest feature patch.

I would really like to see improvents on guilds, don’t get me wrong, I just think we won’t get 100% out if it while the majority of the forum is moved by another thing.

Many others and myself are reading the other threads. i think its best to hear all the comments and give folks more time to play with their alts before discussing so……

….once i get my doc finished then let’s begin the CDI.

Chris

I agree with Illuminati, I could not care less about guild features, what we really need to talk about is stuff like fixing the new TP, and the new leveling system, and the various other issues caused by the patch.

Clearly anet is not listening to you.
Other wise some skins wouldn’t be outrageously more pricey than other.

I never said they were listening to me, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right thing to do.

They have merit, and they are supposed to have merit. Otherwise its meaningless.

That’s preposterous. The skins have value based on how they look, that value is completely separate from the tasks one needs to do to acquire it.

The people arguing against difficult content in this thread were also saying the Beta area was too hard after having access to it for 2hrs, I know these guys are just being ridiculous and not trying.

I do think the beta was “too hard.” Keep in mind, I don’t mean that to say that it’s too hard to exist anywhere, but I do think it was too hard for where it was placed right in the world. The story mode was too hard for the first step in the HoT story, the open world content is too hard for “center line” open world content. Difficult content should be off to the sides, fully optional to those that want to engage in it. I’m not saying that I can’t gain the skills to overcome the content that was in the beta, I’m saying that I shouldn’t have to just to get by.

I know that people progress at different rates but if you never even challenge them how will they ever improve? People don’t change until they have to but the wonder of them is that they can.

That’s their business. Some people choose to spend hours in the gym every day, and wind up with massive muscles. Some don’t. They each pursued their own choice. The game should not be trying to get players to improve, players should want to improve for their own reasons, and if they don’t want to improve, then that should be fine too. The game as a whole benefits from the highest number of players that are having fun, not from having the highest number of highly trained and skilled players.

Also there will be PLENTY of rewards for the majority of the population, I see no issue with there being a few more difficult to get rewards.

Again, the total quantity of rewards distributed is ENTIRELY irrelevant. What matters is whether the rewards one actually wants are distributed to the people who want them. If you can earn 99% of the content in the game through casual means, but 1% of it is locked behind difficult content, that is zero comfort to the people who don’t care about that 99% of content and only want the 1% stuff. If you tell me “you can have anything on the McDonalds menu that you want, but the fish sandwich is only for people that can show a certificate of marathon completion,” then that would still suck for me, because I like those fish sandwiches, and the availability of the rest of the menu really doesn’t help.

And now we get to the real reason people complain about the economy. They’re not complaining about the economy, or how much profits can come from crafting, no. What they’re really complaining about is their lack of legendaries.

Can’t it be both? I don’t know, I’m not “on track” for a legendary, even setting aside the high cost resources needed to make one, I am also nowhere near the WvW requirements for it, but even so, I can look at items going for hundreds of gold on the TP and say “that just doesn’t make any kitten sense.”

If the rare items suddenly became easy to come by everyone would have one. Stop and think about that for a moment. The item that you’ve been hoping for and pining for (that in both the cases of legendaries and lodestone crafted items offer no stat advantages) would suddenly be everywhere.

Excellent! What kind of absolute kitten takes a look at the bow in his hand that shoots rainbows and unicorns, looks at another guy nearby with the same bow, and says to himself “aw, well now I’m no longer happy with my bow that shoots *kitten rainbows and kitten unicorns out of it,”* Anyone who wants a legendary because they want to show off how much money they have is a complete kitten, kitten them and the kitten imaginary horse they didn’t ride in on because GW2 doesn’t have mounts in it.

This would be the ideal market, in which people buy the things that they wants so that they look how they want to look, not how they can afford to look.

And why is it such a surprise that players who take the time to invest (as opposed to spending or even saving gold) have more money? Do you think this shouldn’t be? That if I handle my money wisely, don’t go buying every dumb set of armor my heart desires, take the time to examine a market, take advantage of opportunities I spot… that I should have no more money than you, who (most likely) does nothing but spend?

You’re combining two distinct positions here, one right, one wrong. Yes, players who SAVE money, who spend less than they could, and retain their money, should end up with more than player who waste theirs. Of course. However, players that “invest” money should not make more money than players who just save it up. You should not be able to make money from money. You should not be able to buy things and then sell them at a higher price than you purchased them at to end up with more money than you started with.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Add a “Berserker” mode to pets when they “die,” in which they still attack but cannot generate or retain threat, so they can no longer tank.

Goal of Proposal
It’s too difficult to keep pets alive in chaotic situations, and too much hassle to use melee pets in most fights, so this is designed to allow pets to remain viable even when “dead.” In the current system, unless you specifically design your pet to be particularly survivable, and micro manage where they are and what they’re doing, it’s almost impossible to keep a melee pet alive in high damage AoE fights like group boss battles. This greatly limits which pets are viable and takes a lot of the fun out of pet selection.

Proposal Functionality
Basically, I suggest that when a pet’s HP reaches zero, they do not become useless. Instead, they just keep attacking, but they lost all agro management (ie they lose all threat and enemies never target them again). This means that if you send a bear out to tank for you, and he dies, then the enemy will charge right for you, but he can still deal damage continuously.

This change means that you can use melee DPS pets in boss fights and other AoE-heavy situations without having to micromanage their HP, and still benefit from their attacks and special abilities, but prevents you from having the pets be “immortal tanks,” because they can only tank so long as they have HP.

Once in the “Berserker” state, you can return their normal state through the usual swapping and pet-rez methods, or leave them as they are if you prefer.

Associated Risks
It would change the Ranger DPS meta, since it would become impossible to nullify pet damage until the Ranger was dead, but I think it’s worth doing, since no other class has core damage that you can “shatter” like that.

DrEckers.2039:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Do some of you understand why people enjoy narrative game design? Why there are people out there who buy games for the story? They could very well stick to books and movies only (but they don’t).

Gameplay allows for very immersive storytelling in an unique way. It allows you to experience the story right within it, interacting with the world, with the characters/ NPCs and having to deal yourself with the dangers of adventure.

If your most intelligent suggestions are to “go to youtube”, “ask for a instance with gameplay cleared” or “ask Anet for a mode where all bosses have 1 health”, then you are clearly missing the point. You could very well tell them to ignore GW2’s story, ignore storytelling in videogames, stick to books and movies and play GW2 only for its “intended gameplay”.

I personally am not a hardcore raider. I can’t see myself ever raiding. However, the story that they are presenting in raids is really interesting, touching on subjects that players (especially from GW1) have been asking for years.

Yes, I definitely want a “story mode” for raids. Ideally, by having it work like Arah’s story mode: tuned for solo playing that scales if you invite someone else. Let us enjoy the raid’s storytelling at our own pace, do some of its explorable achievements (those that can already be done through “cleared instances”), a simple final reward at the end of it, and call it a day. And, who knows, maybe that would also be a good way to have more players jump into actual raiding.

When Spirit Vale came out, Woodenpotato made the point that one the key elements to the story was the difficulties of the bosses. It made the bosses feel like real threats to tyria that the player characters actually had to band and strategize together to defeat. When Salvation Pass was released, anet released a video talking about making the white mantle the main villains of the raid. They had wanted to tell this story, but they could not find a setting “epic enough” to tell it. Raids provided that setting.

Adding an easy mode or Solo mode tears down this epic setting for Players.

That’s silly. How “epic” can the raid boss encounters be when they can be defeated with just ten people? I mean, it takes 100+ people to beat Claw of Jormag or Shatterer, or most of the other world bosses in the game. Raid bosses are tougher than your average champ mob, but they’re currently only difficult because you aren’t allowed to bring an entire map against them. they’re nowhere near the threat level, of, say, the Karka Queen.

I have to say, I have very mixed feelings about this update.

Pros:

• 5-point jumps instead of 1 point jumps. Since this really is a system of 5 points already, this totally does make sense, making it easier to spend and reallocate points.

• Reallocate anywhere for free. While I really don’t want to change my traits constantly, because that seems like too much hassle and would leave me constantly confused as to what effects I can use, it’s still a nice option to have. I just hope that they don’t design content expecting that I’ll be changing my traits around to adapt to it.

• More GM traits. More traits are always fun.

Cons:

• Later trait availability. Many classes are barely playable without certain traits (cough Mesmer cough), and pushing back when traits start filtering in will push back when they’ll be playable. I could barely stand my Mesmer until I hit level 40, now as I understand it I wouldn’t be able to use those traits until 60+? Fix this, restore the trait progression to begin at level 11-15.

• Unlockable traits. I don’t like jumping through specific hoops. I don’t like having to do content I don’t want to earn specific rewards that I do want. It’s nice that you can buy them for cash on the trainers, but I don’t think that’s a good solution. If the trainer cost is triflingly low, then there’s no point to the unlocks, you could just buy all the ones you’d want and never buy the ones you don’t. If the cost is reasonably high, then that just mean the TP tycoons will be able to buy all the skills they want, while all the other players will have to do it the hard way. I could only support this element if they also correct the economic imbalances of the trading post.

• The more GM traits, but no more Adept/Master traits. More traits is good, but you can typically only slot 2-3 GM traits at a time, and even doing that means limiting your other trait choices. Having 5 new GM traits means always having 5 GM traits you can’t slot at any given time. I would much prefer having more Adept and Master traits available, allowing you to slot more of these new traits at once, and without having to focus on maxing out individual lines.

Needs:

• If they are adding in the ability to swap traits around on the fly like this, then they also definitely need the ability to “store” trait builds, so that you can swap between several builds at a button press, rather than having to move the points around and swap out the abilities individually. If they allow you to swap traits then you’ll be expected to swap traits, and doing so manually each time is just tedious.

The particularly annoying thing is, these sorts of complaints keep coming up, but they refuse to comment on any of it. They know that whatever they’re doing is not working for their players, and yet they can’t even offer us any hope that they recognize the issues and wish that they could do something about it.

There’s been some recent discussion about making raids more convenient and approachable to players that currently feel alienated by the existing raids, either due to difficulty level above their skill, or inconvenience in forming and coordinating a group for them. Many people enjoy the raids in their current form, so I don’t believe the existing raids should be changed in any way, but I do think having alternative options would be a positive change.

An easy mode version of the raid would allow lower skilled/geared/un-meta players to experience the content without needing to be carried, and would allow those that don’t have the time or interest to spend forming a “meta” party and struggling through the content to just pop in, move through the raid in about the same time as a normal dungeon, and then get on to other activities.

For those that enjoy the hard mode raids, they would remain exactly as they are, and would remain by far the best way to earn the raid-centric rewards, so there would be no temptation for those who can do the hard mode raid to “just do the easy mode instead.” It would be like a trained surgeon deciding to just flip burgers instead. Of course, potentially raiders could run both, and since there is a weekly cutoff to how much raiding you can do, running both versions would give you slightly more max gains than just running hard mode currently does.

So here’s how I see it working:
1. Selecting the version. This shouldn’t take much developer work to implement. They already have plenty of methods of “choose what you want to do,” and I’m not sure which would be easiest to slot into the existing raids, but one of them must be a fairly trivial addition. They could use the vanilla dungeon “talk to an NPC to select path,” or the Fractals “on entering choose the path you want from a UI,” or the story mission “challenge mote” element, whatever is most convenient. This would activate the easy mode version (hard mode should probably remain default).

2. Designing the easy mode content. The actual mechanics and enemies would be identical to hard mode. No need for new animations, mechanics, anything. Everything you’d need to do in hard mode, you’d need to do in easy mode too. The only difference would be in the consequences of failure.

Effects that deal enough damage to OHKO almost any player, such as failing a lightning drop in Vale Guardian or wading into the poison on Slothazor, would instead just be normal damage, threatening, but not auto-wiping. You wouldn’t want to “stand in the fire,” but it wouldn’t be the end of the world either. This would encourage players to do the mechanics right, but would rarely lead to a party wipe if they screw it up from time to time. This would basically just be a numbers tweak, changing these effects from being “enough damage to wipe most players,” to “about half that or less.”

Enemy HP would also be toned down slightly, so that you wouldn’t need constant prime DPS in order to kill the boss within the timer, again, just taking an existing number and making it a slightly smaller number.

Breakbars would also likely need to be tuned down a bit, to require less coordination. Certain unique mechanics might also need to be more forgiving, like how with Slothazor’s white mushrooms, if you miss one then you don’t get another for a while, instead make it so that two spawn at a time, with the second being in a less advantageous position. Messing one up would be a set-back, but not likely to lead to a wipe.

The intended balance is that the hard mode raid should be comparable in difficulty and chance of failure to an average vanilla dungeon, or at worst a low-level Fractal.

3. Rewards. The easy mode raids would have a weekly lockout just like the hard mode, ideally not a shared one so that people could do both. Anything that drops from the hard mode could drop from easy mode, but at a much lower rate, perhaps 10-20% of the existing rates, meaning that on average an easy mode raider would need to complete the raid around 5-10 more times to get any drop reward than on hard mode (and keeping in mind that hard mode raiders could be doing both, giving them a bonus roll for the rare loot each week).

Current Spirit Vale bosses award 10, 14, and 18 shards respectively, 8 shards for the combat content in the maps, and up to 6 shards per failed attempt. My recommendation is that the easy mode versions would offer at least 3, 5, and 7 shards respectively, none for the non-boss portions, and none for a failed attempt. Ideally it would be a few more than that, up to 50% of the existing reward, but this would be enough. And again, players willing and able to do the hard mode could get these on top of their existing rewards.

4. If they want, as a further incentive for players to at least attempt the hard mode, they could make it so that you have to at least attempt the Vale Guardian on hard mode, say, ten times, in order to unlock the easy mode. Pretty much any group of players would be capable of that, and players would be able to get an idea of how it’s meant to work before deciding that easy mode is the only option for them.

Ultimately, I think this system would be more than fair to those who enjoy the existing raids, while opening the content up to a much larger portion of the playerbase as something they could reasonably do on a regular basis. I also believe that my proposal would require very minimal time for the developers, as most of the elements required are already existing in other parts of the game, ready to import, or simple number tweaks in a database, or at most a few timing changes on timed procs like mushroom spawns. Even the balance testing would not have to be terribly rigorous, since the hard part was in making sure that the hard mode was tuned against top-tier players. Just making it “easier” has much more room for error, and if they mess it up there is much less harm in just tweaking it again later.

So, does that work? Any issues that I haven’t considered or should we implement this sucker?

Proposal Overview
Make Fractals shorter from entry to exit.

Goal of Proposal
I do not enjoy spending an hour or more running a single type of content, in which leaving prematurely would result in abandoning my rewards and disappointing other people. I want some sort of change that would allow me to get in and out in under a half hour, while still progressing meaningfully towards Fractal goals.

Proposal Functionality
Since the idea of the current Fractals seems to be that you need to complete three fractals to reach a boss, and beat the boss to get the core reward, and part of the challenge is in not being able to pick the fractals you get, here is my concept for shortening the runs:

1. You can run as many Fractals as you like, 1, 3, or 10, whatever. For each Fractal you complete, you get a unique key (ie Key of the Colossus, Key of the Snowblind, etc.).

2. You combine three different keys to get a Boss Key, which you need to access the boss fractals. If necessary, it could require specific tiers of key, for example the easiest fractals would be coded green, the longest coded red, and you need a red, a blue, and a green to make a boss key, preventing people just doing the easiest ones.

3. The boss you get from a boss fractal is random and while you can abandon it, you’d lose the key you spent.

4. You can only get a reward chest from a boss fractal once per day, same as currently, but you can collect as many keys as you like.

Associated Risks
It would give players slightly more control over the order of the Fractals, and would allow them to recover between rounds, but each Fractal would be left alone internally, and it would make doing fractals far more convenient for people who just want to kill 10-30 minutes and then move on to a different activity.

You can technically run anythingyou want anywhere yes, but are you really going to tell me facerolling a dungeon, or fractal tier 4 (which people DO faceroll) is equivalent to playing a Platinum/Legendary PvP game, provided everyone there actually is of rank?

Look, you can argue that PvP involves a tighter tollerance than PvE, and I think that’s true, but ultimately it comes down to fun. If a given class is not competitively balanced in PvP then it is not as fun to play, and that is the important part there, whether it is fun. But likewise, if a class in PvE doesn’t have fun and rewarding mechanics, if it leads to an inordinate amount of failure and frustration, then that isn’t fun either. A PvE player not having fun with his character matters exactly as much as a PvP player not having fun with his, and by all accounts there are way more PvE players than there are PvP players, so in aggregate, their balance concerns should take priority. I hope that all your balance concerns do get met, just so long as they don’t come at the expense of making PvE builds even slightly less fun to play.

To address your point, it’s not “weak to other players” as you will have noticed the high ratings if you didn’t cherry pick the thread. It’s that Ahlen is tunnel visioning one specific aspect of the game. Yes SB doesn’t look too valuable in PvE at the moment, but in PvP and WvW is one of the best new elite specs.

If you’ll pay attention, both players were referring ONLY to PvE, and I would agree with them that Spellbreaker really doesn’t seem to offer much to PvE, and that’s a disappointment.

See this is what I don’t understand about some people’s criticisms of the new elite specs…

Why would you want 2 elites specs competing for PvE right now? When you could have 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP/WvW, 1 for etc scenario… I thought that was the point of elite specs?

No. Every expansion, every new spec should offer something new for every play mode. People who only PvP, and want to main certain classes, should be able to play a new and interesting spec for that class. Players who only PvE and want to main a certain class, should also have a new and interesting spec to play with. It should not be a case of “oh, sorry, your main is getting a raid support spec this expansion, maybe better luck in two years. . .”

There should not be “PvE specs” or “PvP specs,” the spec should work for both. The differentiation should come in traiting, and there might be a trait thread that offers benefits only useful for PvP, sure, but then if you just choose a different thread, it should offer equally useful benefits to PvEers. I’m not sure what the best course is for Spellbreaker, but it definitely does need to offer something more for PvE players.

I main a Thief. The last few updates have been very frustrating for me, because I’ve found it impossible to stay alive during the final boss battles. The damage just piles up way too fast with way too few options to clear it, and that’s even with Shadow Refuge on my bar. I imagine my Guardian would have an easier time surviving, he usually does, but all classes should have a reasonable chance at survival. Yeah, you can just reload a checkpoint and continue from where you left off, but rez-rushing boss finghts just isn’t a fun way to play them.

I think that the default boss fights need to be better balanced for solo players, of ALL classes, not just the tankier builds. They should be about following the mechanics of the fight, not about surviving massive burn stacks and two agroed opponents. If you want to do a “challenging” version, that’s fine too, but make it the optional challenge mote version, intended to be done with a full and balanced team, not the default “story mode” version of it.

I think this update was great overall, I just wish that it were better balanced for glassy characters (in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you).

The only thing that was toxic was being forced to play other classes when we only main 1 or two. I’m tired of the, “I don’t main this class but I need the rewards” mentality.It just skews matchmaking even further.

No, the toxic element was flooding sPvP with thousands of players who had absolutely no interest in sPvP. You can’t expect to have a healthy multiplayer environment when many of the players do not share the same fundamental goals of what a healthy environment should be.

You have to original sPvP hardcore that actually cared about “prestige” and about fair match-ups and about honest competition between players, and then you had far more players who were just in it to clear out their achievements and get the wings so they could get back to the PvE they actually enjoyed.

Nobody benefits from that.

So whatever they do next season, it should not involve any sort of exclusive reward that would have any purpose outside of an sPvP match. It could maybe be a finisher, or a title, or a nametag flair, just nothing that a PvEer would ever say “I never want to PvP, ever, but I really do want that thing.”

Sorry unlike you guys I do actually care that the community overall in this game is happy, which is one of the reasons why I am also really disappointed in the latest content drought outside of raids, even though I am mainly here for raids.

I am curious, if you are mainly here for raids, which the game did not have at all six months ago, what were you doing for the previous three years?

The daily isn’t required. These days you can get 2 gold easily in many different areas of the game, so if you don’t like the daily, simply spend the time to earn your gold another way.

Not relevant to the topic at hand. I do want to do the dailies, I just want more options for which activities the dailies consist of.

Rangers NEED to be able to stow pets in certain situations as others have already outlined.

There is no situation in which pets NEED to be stowed, except maybe during jumping puzzles, and that’s more want than need. The only problem is that there are some situations in which they die more often than they are worth, and that is what needs correcting.

If you don’t want a pet out all the time, then you should pick a class that isn’t a Ranger. If you would like to have a pet out all the time, but find that this isn’t ideal because they die too often, or confuse agro in parties, or other such reasons, then the solution is to fix those problems.

The solution I proposed would be to make it so that when a pet “dies” they can continue to deal DPS unaffected, but no longer generate threat, preventing players from “pokemoning” battles, but any similar solution would work as well.

I’d be fine with allowing players to permanently stow their pets, but not if it means making them stronger than a current Ranger with a dead pet is. That would only encentivize them to deliberately stow their pet in combat, and then they might as well just be a different class.

I can now, like today for example, complete my dailies in much less time than was the case in the past, allowing me to spend more of my limited game time on things I want to do while still getting the rewards I desire. Today dailies took just about four minutes.

Well, that’s lucky for you, but for me I find that it takes me about 2-3 times longer dedicated to completing dailies than before the change, leaving me considerably less time to do anything more interesting. I spent almost an hour in Fields of Ruin the other day just trying to find four active events.

Wouldn’t it be nicer if they just had a wider variety of options, so that you could complete yours in four minutes doing whatever it is you do now, while I would also be able to complete it in four minutes?

In a way, I think this is the point of the new dailies. It’s a way to get people to branch out and do stuff they normally wouldn’t do. People that solely play open world pvp are now more inclined to try out WvW, SPvP and/or dungeons.

But they also need to respect our choices when we know full well that we do not like green eggs and ham, for serious, no moral to that story, we just don’t like it. I’ve tried WvW, I’ve tried sPvP, I’ve tried Fractals, I know for a fact that I do not enjoy any of these activities and multiple attempts at it won’t make me enjoy it any more. I’ve tried them all, and not I’m asking the game to never give me any more reasons to dabble in them ever again.

“Branch out” mechanisms should be one time things, mechanisms to get you to attempt something at least once, and then respecting your reaction to it. “Branch out” mechanisms should not be something that occur on a daily basis, forcing you to constantly adapt your playstyle and play the game how they want you to play it, rather than respecting you as a customer to play the game how you most enjoy it.

I agree with Vayne on this one, though I had 4 PvE choices with 2 choices involving fractals. The others were Maguma Miner and Brisban events. I cannot remember a time when I felt I had to group to get the old dailies completed. If there were group-oriented tasks under the old system, there were enough non-group related ones that the group ones would be for the extra AP, not the whole ball of wax. FWIW, I also completed my dailies in WvW today.

It used to only be one Fractal or dungeon option, out of six PvE ones. If you didn’t do those, then worst case scenario you might need to do all the other ones, and they were all super-casual stuff, so no problem. Now it’s possible half the available options, and the other ones are typically super-specific, requiring to go to zones you might have no business whatsoever in, or build your entire play schedule around the timing of one specific world boss that doesn’t actually interest you.

They need to open these things up, so that you can fight the world boss you want, farm the resources in the zone you want, run the events in the zone you want, etc.

You have yet to provide a source to back up any of your claims regarding the problem “a lot of people have”, most of the replies in this topic disagree with you.
Until you do so this looks like an issue for a very small group of players.

If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you, but to each his own.

Btw noone claimed the expansion is only for those who like challenging stuff, most of the people who replied here were ok with the level of challenge provided,

There have been plenty of people. in this thread and others, who have basically said that if you don’t like the challenge level in Magus Falls then “go back to Pact Tyria.” Don’t try to underplay that common response.

More piece armors, less outfits. Seriously ANet, this is getting excessive. I have no problem with you selling them on the stores, but stop making them all in one immutable piece.

I promise that constructive discussion and criticism are far more likely to make a difference than passive-aggressive comments.

Perhaps, although 100 times 0 is the same as 1 times 0.

A very large buff would be even better.

GW1 had a lot of hardcore content and because that had been missing from GW2, many players were alienated and still play GW1 to this day.

Yes, GW1 was a more hardcore game. GW2 is not GW1.

Making parts of GW2 more challenging will help bring those players to GW2.

And potentially drive away many of the people that made GW2 more successful than GW1, especially when you have people in the community actively say “you know that game you’ve been enjoying for three years? Well the new stuff is not for you.”

As long as you have a winrate > 50% you will advance, no winning streak needed.

But if your win-rate is only barely above 50% then you will only barely advance, gaining one actual pip only every few days, as most of the pips you earn get eaten just as quickly. And again, win RATE is largely out of your hands, since you have no control over who solo queue matches you with, or against. If you’re good, it helps, but it guarantees nothing, and those that think it does are only allowed to think so because the current matchmaking system blesses them with unchallenging match-ups.

Basically, there system should be all forward, no back. If you win, you should advance. If you lose, you should not advance. The only way the “win some, lose some” system works is if they can somehow get the overwhelming majority of players to gain over 50% win-rates, which if you run the numbers. . . is not a thing that can happen.

Pristine Fractal Relics are just yet another thing in the row, but this time it’s WvW crowd QQing about doing the “hard” content they “despise” for 5 (!) times at lowest level (or buy them from dungeon sellers).

I’m 100% PvE, I just hate the Fractals, and I have a surplus of badges left over from Achievement chests. It’s not the “let us use badges” part that’s important, it’s the “let us avoid those God-forsaken Fractals” bit that’s important. If they want to let us avoid fractals some other way then I’d be fine with that too.

…MMOs often only give you one possibility to get an item and it really is a good way to get people to try new content.

I’ve tried fractals. I do not like them. I do not need to try them again.

If ANet decides there is only one way, there is only one way.

This is not their hobby, this is their job. We are their customers. Their job isn’t to make things the way they like, it’s to make things the way we like, to keep the customers happy. If the decisions they make are not the ones the community would want, then they are best served by shifting gears, not by sticking to how they’d like things to be.

What I also think doesn’t help you guys is your negative mindset against fractals – Maybe your runs back then went to kitten, maybe the groups you had yesterday were kitten. That doesn’t mean fractals are kitten.

No, Fractals being kitten is what makes fractals kitten.

If you enjoy fractals, then that’s fantastic, have fun doing them without us, but don’t expect them to be everyone’s cup of tea. I think it’s fair to say that most of the players who ever could enjoy fractals in their current form ARE currently enjoying fractals. All those players who are not doing fractals have very good reasons why the current nature of fractals are not their thing, and they should not be bullied into participating. The same is true of sPvP, WvW, and any other type of content. Let people play how they enjoy, and try to get them every type of reward that they might want (cue sarcastically hyperbolic contents about how Dawn should drop off of ambients in 3, 2, . . .)

If you want equality, bring equality everywhere. Some players cannot be more equal than other players. Until it’s done, there’s no ground for you request for equality in a specific situation while everything else is left intact.

Ridiculous. If I see something as being unequal, then I will fight for that. If you see some other issue as being unequal, then feel free to fight for that yourself, I don’t argue against you. But it’s silly to say that you can’t argue that one thing is unequal until all other things are made equal, if you take that attitude then nothing could possibly change.

Well I like them and a lot of other people seem to as well. It seems more like a few people dont like them and a lot, do find them reasonable/like them.

Again, neither side can claim to have superior numbers, so it’s pointless to try. Both sides can claim to have some numbers, and it’s up to ANet to figure out how many are on each and what to do about it.

Well again one of anets major selling points of HoT was raids.

Yes, but keep in mind that they were selling to people outside the game, trying to attract them with things that the game didn’t already provide. At the same time, however, they have to keep the existing players happy, and there have been some points where HoT has failed to do this. You don’t sell an expansion to new customers by saying “you know that game that you weren’t playing? We’re doing more like that!” You have to actually provide that anyway though.

Now, if you’re right, if they are taking the attitude of “we only want NEW players, all the millions of current players can GTFO,” then fair enough, but they should really come out and say that explicitly.

I’ve been critical and quite vocal of the living story the past two weeks. Considering how many of us have been, I think the Dev’s have been doing a good job of responding. We had not only received bug fixes, we received actual revisions to the events every day this week. Can’t ask for much more than that.

But they weren’t patching it for us, they were patching it for themselves. Each change they made made things worse for the players. This LW was in it’s very best state on Tuesday night, each subsequent patch has only made things worse. It’s been in it’s worst state since Friday and there’s no sign that they’re even doing anything about it, making the whole weekend a waste for people who mostly play on weekends.

The least they could do is revert the game back to an earlier patch when the events actually worked.

There’s a sight issue with sometimes bots loitering in areas that are prone to events they can mooch off of, but also with genuine players having to go AFK and other players mistaking them for bots. My suggestion would be to involve a gameplay mechanic that would allow a player to type /afk, go into a recognizable animation (perhaps with a little “AFK” flag above their head), and while in this mode, the player would be flagged by the system in such a way that they cannot collect event credit, even if they are in the right area for it, which would mean that any player you see in this mode is clearly not up to shenanigans.

Faolain, on the other hand, is just a maniacal laugh away from being a saturday morning cartoon villain (similarly to Scarlet). She’s so over the top with her emo attitude that it’s bugging the kitten out of me. And then they made me kill an entire village of centaurs just to protect her. Great.

Well, I kind of get her. She is not human. The Centaurs are not human or Silvari. She is a plant. There is no particular reason why she should care about them at all, we are just projecting our human morality onto her. And she even had an example of the Asura considering the Silvari no better. We view her actions as being very wrong from a human moral perspective, but for a Silvari defining her own moral framework, I could see her as not feeling particularly upset by her own actions, no more than I feel snuffing out millions of lives in a single day as I mow the lawn.

Just a question here because I am curious. The idea of the Living World is that there is a storyline that you take part in, that you are involved in events that shape Tyria in permanent ways—how would you all convey the sense of progression and change without also making changes to the landscape? I see a couple of comments regarding creating things, not simply destroying. Do you all have any other ideas?

Just keep adding to the world, make new maps.

Yeah, Last night I did Maw and Shatterer, and neither were in any way better. They just took a bit longer (maybe 150% as long for kitten, 1000% longer for Maw), but I felt no more threatened than usual in either fight, and it just was more boring.

Claw actually had a few changes, he seemed to use his Fear more often in the first fight, and the avalanches are backwards now, but it wasn’t actually any harder to do (might have been with less people).

ANet should follow a simple rule when trying to buff a boss mob: Do not raise their HP. If they have to raise their HP then they’ve probably failed at something else and should fix that instead. Making a fight take longer makes it LESS fun, not more.

At least now people actually have chance to make it to event once they see grawls are attacking. Good thing shaman fight lasts longer than my loading screen, i will probably be able to get there in time now.

This isn’t how I would do it. If they want to make the event take longer start to finish, the best way would be to make the Grawl portion last longer. This way, peopl can do all the phases of the event, rather than just the last phase. Ideally they would also buff up some of the middle phases when you have a lot of people, like instead of spawning six shamen and a bodyguard at all times, spawn a ton of them when there are a ton of players, and make some vets, and the currently vet guard into a champ. Make that phase take 1-2 minutes instead of ten seconds.

Thanks for your reply. I was just talking about the design dev process primarily. We do have a QA team that tests the work and an Alpha group for feedback.

The process i described above is definitely not about speed (-: It is a quality iteration process as well as a best working practice that allows us to learn and improve the quality of the experience as we go along.

I will ask Ed Hocking our QA director to comment about the QA process and Gavian (our production director) to talk about production practices on Monday.

Once we have the feature ‘as designed’ i would love to chat about the design side of the release regarding NPE.

Phys is right. Whatever role your internal QA teams play in negotiating new feature changes, it can’t be enough given how many features go live that the players would never let you get away with. I mean, clearly the internal teams approved the April Trait changes and the Fall leveling changes, where if you’d asked the community about these “features” we’d have shot them down in a heartbeat and saved you who knows how many man-hours in implementing and subsequently un-implementing them.

I know that the NGE isn’t working “as intended” yet, and some of the community complaints are related to that, but many of them seem to be related to a genuine disagreement on intended elements, and since nobody from ANet is willing to give a breakdown as to which changes are bugs and which are “features,” we’re left treading water for now.

Currently on 20-21 winstreak Solo/DuoQ. After spending 100s of games getting to legend last season due to getting ‘’les uncarryables’’ on my team every second or third game last season this is quite the refreshment. Finally being able to reach my actual division fast is a really nice feature and i feel although it hurts newer players it helps as a whole.

So, let me guess, you consider yourself to be one of these “top players?”

I’m stunned that you’re fine with how the system is working.

I noticed last night about a dozen players trying to sell Legendaries via the Open World section of the LFG tool. They claimed that this was a perfectly reasonable use of the tool, but to my mind, it should be used for finding adventuring groups, not for commerce. Is there an official stance on people using the LFG tool (or map chat, for that matter) to try and bypass the TP?

The rich orichalcum node in Southsun Cove is dramatically increasing the supply of orichalcum ore in the game, lowering its price significantly.

A perfect reason to leave it alone. Anything that lowers prices on the TP = good.

Prices going down helps the PLAYERS, because it means that the things they want to make using Ori are cheaper to make. Prices going up only helps gold farmers, market exploiters, and other people who game the economy for their own economic benefit (at the expense of anyone who actually wants those resources).

If ANet has to side with one group over the other, they should side with the players over the Trader’s Forum fat cats any day of the week.

I really wish I could get that. I’ve had to fight hard for every single win, it’s not even remotely fun. I really really hate this game right now and am ending every night hating it more. I wish I could stop playing PvP entirely, but I can’t unlock those wings otherwise. Why does ANet want me to hate the game that I’ve spent the past three years loving so much?

Please don’t put words in my mouth. Those items are valued because they can only be acquired though doing specific content, which lends them a degree of rarity.

Again, they’re valued because people like the way they look. If they were super rare but looked really stupid then people wouldn’t bother. If they were super common but still looked cool then people would still use them. The whole “they’re special because they’re hard to get” argument is nonsense.

So don’t do the dailies. Seriously. Exercise your choice not to do them.

My choice is to want to do them, I just want them to be better.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right?

I fully appreciate the living world. I fully appreciate that the game continues to expand the story and provide chapters like Echoes of the Past, and how that this continues.

However. . .

I also want to see a grander vision than three mini-zones added over two years. I want to see a new Caledon Forest sized map added every six months (or two smaller ones, or two Caledons per year, but basically that much scale on average). I want the map to expand considerably faster than it has at the current pace.

I want new classes, and new weapons added to existing classes. We’ve seen one shared heal and one unique heal per class since launch, and four new traits added to each class, in two years. I want to see a dozen new traits per class, I want to see a dozen new skills, per two-year period. I want to see a fix to Condition Damage that allows it to do 100% damage against zergged enemies and world bosses. I want to see Precursor crafting, Ascended Jewelery and Cooking. I want to see a new set of Legendaries added, to give some variety to players that might want a Legendary bow that doesn’t shoot unicorns, or a Legendary pistol that it’s a party-popper.

I understand that these features would come at a development cost and I’m willing to pay it, if you need a paid expansion to make these changes viable, go right ahead, but make it happen.

Yes, the living world counts, but no, it’s not sufficient.

But here’s the thing… not everybody is supposed to just be able to grind it out to legendary. Ruby is end for those only grinding pips by playing massive amounts of matches.

But even Emerald becomes a horrid grind if you don’t get placed in winning matches far more often than losing ones, that’s the point. I don’t think it’s horrible that things slow down a bit around ruby, but the current system stalls out as soon as you leave Amber!

Think of it this way, if every tier were build like Ruby, then at least half the players would NEVER make it out of Amber, likely another 10% on top of that. Requiring a 50% win-rate to advance requires half the players to fail. That is not a system that can please the overwhelming majority of players. It is a bad system.

Hey all. I’ve put together one report on this subject for the devs, and I intend to write up another one after the holiday break.

I’ve changed the subject line to be a bit more neutral and hope that everyone will contribute thoughts on the subject of the new dailies!

Ok, but can we start another thread on the topic “I don’t like the new dailies,” because we are not neutral on the topic.

Slightly cheaper being around 250g cheaper for the the legend, around 50g cheaper for Zap, and 200g cheaper for spark and those are with Buy orders only

We’re still talking around 500g+ for these things though, which is not chump change. The gold cost is still the largest and most time consuming element of their construction, which it should not be.

I can only imagen what you are all gonna say when you find out all the grind you need for a Legendary after this pre .. clovers, high mats by the 250, and 400 crafting and allot more …

And that’s part of the point too, that after jumping through all the hoops necessary to earn the Pre AND paying significant amounts of gold, you still have to start from scratch on turning it into a full Legendary, and all that entails. If they’re going to charge you so much gold for the Precursor Crafting process, the least they could do is offer you shortcuts to the Legendary process, like throwing in some of the more expensive or time consuming components.

You don’t know what drives Anet’s decision to introduce precursor crafting.

Nor do we have any reason to care. We’re working from what drives the community to ask for Precursor Crafting, and if ANet’s solution does not solve the community’s problems then it is a failed solution, no matter what their rationale might be. If ANet did not set out to fix the problem that the community was expressing, then they set out in the wrong direction.

This is not a PvE game… it’s a game that has 3 game modes one of which is PvE.

Yeah, but given how often they have to bribe players into pleeeeeeeeease touching the PvP modes, it’s pretty safe to say that while the developers are really obsessed with them, the players really don’t care. If this game had to survive on PvPers alone it would be doing worse than Wildstar.

Without separating skills and how they function in each one they can’t balance in the name of PvE because mobs can take way more punishment than players and the way things affect the game modes are different.

If this is true, then they absolutely have to separate out more skills between modes, because balancing just for PvP is just not good enough.

Easiest thing to look at is Ride the Lightning. It got nerfed due to how “toxic” it was in sPvP and WvW, but in PvE there really was no need for it.

Exactly. They need to stop doing that.

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

But if it’s true that the devs are listening, and I’m not saying that they aren’t, then how did we wind up with the spring trait changes or the fall NPE changes? Are you saying that they heard what we were saying, and then decided to do the exact opposite of anything we’d want? I have slightly more faith in them than that. So it stands to reason that if they even entertained the idea that the NPE would be well received, then there must be some sort of breakdown in communication someplace, someone not asking the right questions, and we’d just like to get that solved before they start getting do deep into the next catastropatch.

They are so when you go underwater you don’t drown. That said, I do wish they’d just convert them to a cosmetic thing that clips though existing helms rather than an entire inventory slot that overrides helms.

As an example of transparency, I loved that Colin basically gave us something to get excited about during his PAX 2013 interview(s), mentioning a Legendary trinket, Precursor crafting, both as things that should be seen before the end of 2013 it was said. This was transparency, exciting information! Hammers for Engineer’s was even brought up. I don’t play my Engineer but got super excited for those who do. But there is a problem with such transparency too, more so when they aren’t followed through on (for whatever reason). He said these things should come before the end of 2013 (not the Hammer for Engineer mind you), and that yearly end came and went. It’s now practically a year since he stated those things, and the excitement turns sour, you wonder what in the world happened

But the problem here isn’t that they were too transparent, it was that they were transparent, and then they weren’t.

What you gave was an excellent example of the transparency they should have. The problem is, those rough deadlines came and went and we’ve still heard nothing. Clearly they either stopped working on them, or they are still in development. Which is it? They haven’t said anything. This leaves players disgruntled, but if they wanted to solve that disgruntlement, the solution is not to never have told us in the first place, it’s that when things change, when reasons pop up that they can’t do something, TELL US. Explain to use why they either had to give up entirely, or why it’s taking longer than they planned. If they are still working on it, keep setting rough timelines and explain why they aren’t met. Keep us in the loop and there’s no problem, the only thing that’s a problem is radio silence.

And yes, of course there will be people that will get upset if a feature is cut even after it’s been fully explained, but there’s nothing to be done about that, don’t let those people ruin things for everyone else, including yourselves. Rip the bandaid off when you have to and let us know what’s going on.

I will say this. I do not often use the currency exchange, but the ONLY time I would is in cases where what I want is, say, 400 gems, and I have 360 left over from previous purchases and need 40 gems to top me off. I would NEVER buy 400 gems or more in bulk, I have dollars for that. Just let people enter in however many gems they need, and let them know how many gold that would cost, problem solved.

I like the visuals on most of the attacks. The class looks great, it just doesn’t actually accomplish much. Maybe it’s the “bard” class, and can focus on entertaining people in Lion’s Arch?

The average player doesnt have the choice to list his loot at the same value as me?

He doesn’t have the understanding of what price to list things at and expect to ever make a return on that. Listing things is not free, there is a listing fee, and a time lost. If you know that the price on an item will rise 20% over the next few weeks or months, then it might be a good idea to list it at 20% higher than the current list value. If you have no idea that the price will rise, or even that it could fall further,then you have no reasonable expectation of positive returns, so just randomly listing items at prices well above the current level is not likely to pay off.

There is always risk in speculation, but there’s far more risk for those that lack the wherewithal to predict reasonable market movements.

As I said, it’s like if there were a god-class in the game, but it required a certain level of skill to operate. Not more skill than other classes, just more skill than the average player would be able to display, and the returns for it are far and away superior to anything that any other class could possibly achieve, regardless of the skill applied to those classes.

If I had to pick as to who has the better understanding of the ingame economy, it definately be Wanze over you Ohoni.

He understands how to abuse the ingame economy for his own benefit, that does not mean that he understands how the average player interacts with it. His problem is in not understanding human psychology, not in not understanding economic principles.

No, its because his point is entirely self serving, hes blocking out all long term over arcing factors that effect the entire game and is only focused on making things easier and convenient for his own personal play style.

Quite the opposite. You guys are defending a system that serves yourselves, at the expense of the majority of the game’s players. The playstyle I’m trying to reward is the playstyle that the overwhelming majority of the players embrace, and the “playstyle” that I’m trying to curtail is one that is only enjoyed by a tiny fraction of the game’s players. Don’t try to portray your side in this as the populist angle.

but i dont go around complaining about the players who do these things because im just as capable of doing it too, i just choose not to and i accept that i wont receive the benefits because of my own unwillingness to work at it

That’s a very defeatist attitude, but why do you believe it would be beneficial to the game? Why should players have to employ systems that most of them do not enjoy to achieve that level of returns? Why shouldn’t the most enjoyable activities also be the most rewarding? Why does it benefit anyone to have to choose between “doing the things in game that I enjoy doing” or “being able to afford the things I want to have?”