Guild Wars 2

I dunno, peeps. If Charr femme-armor had to have boob-windows, shouldn’t it get three of them? =P

Many of the masteries aren’t actually good. They generally act as gates in two senses: The first that they gate off content that you may or may not care about. For instance, nobody really cares about being able to fight the ally champions beyond the collection items they give. “Yeah! I get to fight Potoni the Massive,” said nobody ever. The other kind of content they gate off is in regards to where you can go in the environment. Unlocking Itzel Poison Lore and having new areas to go to was actually kind of neat. I wouldn’t like to see this concept over-applied but the way it was done in this instance, I actually enjoyed. The second way that they act as gates is in regards to other masteries. There are a lot of interesting masteries locked behind masteries that nobody cares about. If players were given the option to choose which order to unlock masteries then you know that there are a bunch that would just never get unlocked at all. So from the perspective of a progression system this isn’t great. Your progress should be meaningful, you should be excited, like, “Yeah! This new thing I’ve unlocked is awesome” instead of “Okay, so I’ve unlocked this thing nobody cares about and now I’m one step closer to the awesome thing I actually want. Yay.”

Thanks for putting this out there, Tapioca. 100% my opinion without my usual rambling.

Some of the masteries are decent in that they open up things you can do rather than just unlocking stuff you should have been able to get to in the first place. Masteries should have made the game experience either more efficient or more rewarding, instead of completely blocking off content.

Gliding is a joyous Mastery to have. Mushrooms and Wallows are useful for traversing maps without having to take the long way. Shortcuts, give us shortcuts.

Other semi-decent ones are the extra reward options (challenges, auric mining) that give us something else to gather. Unique currency that isn’t just map related is also useful. Nuhoch Stealth at least gives us a counter to some of the mobs that use stealth in Magus Falls, so it’s useful and makes encounters easier. (I could write an entire other post on how this was mis-applied to Axemaster…)

Terrible masteries? Itzel Poison Mastery comes to mind. It is nothing but a gate to content, including other mastery insights. Bad. There is no shortcut or bypass, just death for walking into the wrong spot without protection.
It could have been so much better. Enemies that use toxins as part of their damage could be mitigated by poison mastery (had some thoughts on how to redesign Axemaster with this in mind), and again, an availability of shortcuts that would normally be closed off.

Paulytnz.7619:

“We?” No Sir, “I” Want Skritt to be the first and next playable race in the next expansion. There you go Anet now make it happen. PLEASE. :-D

I want Skritt too!
I guess that makes us We!

insanemaniac.2456:

in some cases, the problem is that hoarders be hoarding and its restricting the ability of the market to compensate and reflect where a price should be.

Is it really hoarding when it’s literally “I need 300 of these to complete one crafting step”?
I tease, a bit, but that’s how it is with some of these crafting materials, and it just seems like the game relies on fewer-but-larger sinks instead of filtering out materials with daily quests. The vendors in HoT that take rares in exchange for currency were a good start, but it still ends up being “ANet wants me to do this how many times?” to where I’m not sure most people are actually going to do it, so the material market was probably unaffected.

Curious side question, though. With the introduction of mass salvages ( <3 to the UI devs for this! ), did we see a spike in the Mithril supply from unintended quick-salvages?

A PvP festival? Yup.
PvP festival with no comeback mechanics and shoddy collision/aim detection? Yup.
Zero fun.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes maybe 30 min to run from VB to DS; likely less. You do not need to do any events in TD in order to gain access to DS.

…Great. You run to Dragon Stand. Then what?

If it’s not 30-minutes before event restart, nothing. That’s what. If you’re not in the bloated LFG squad waiting to do the event, then nothing.

gg, Anet.

And? Their issue was that they did not have access to the map yet.

“And?” I just spelled out the “and” for this. Getting to Dragon Stand is only half the problem. Ignoring that is just being utterly callous and oblivious. Having Dragon Stand events is worse than having a daily rotation boss, because of how inaccessible they are.
There’s no excuse to yield to bad design just for the sake of being contentious.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

And please remove activities from the daily PvE rotation. The activities are not PvE.

They are PvE.

Wait, what?

A game activity that is competitive against other players is PvE?

No.

Daily Activity is PvP, it’s just not accessed through the PvP interface.

There are three game modes: sPvP, PvE, WvW. Which one does it fit in? Certainly not sPvP or WvW.

Answer: Mu. Your question is wrong.

Also, activities are:

• player versus player
• with set, structured skills.
  Activities are much more sPvP than any other category. To ignore that is simply being dense for the sake of arguing.

But, to refer to the misguided question of “where does Daily Activity belong: PvE, PvP, or WvW?” The answer is none of them. It belongs in a trash bin of bad ideas. It most closely resembles PvP, but it isn’t, so ANet ought to just drop it and make the Activities rewarding enough on their own.

My biggest problem with Dreamer has always been the frequency. An internal cooldown of 5-10 seconds or only triggering it on non-autoattack skills would greatly reduce the annoyance.

Possibly as a suggestion, see if it sticks, fire off a pony once per cooldown, change the pitch off the irritating whinny (make it lower), and on shots during the cooldown, make it a mellow sprinkling while firing pixie dust. Seems apropos.

Ashen.2907:

Djinn.9245:

Pifil.5193:

Funny but I thought that the discord in the little group where Marjory was not willing to simply be told what to do as if she was a subordinate and Braham’s anger over what he saw as the disrespect for his mother’s (and Snaff’s) legacy was the first sign of any true “mature content” in the story line.

These are not soldiers in our own little army, they’re heroes and almost by definition a hero is someone who’s willing to stand up to and do what they think is right. When that’s at odds with what our character wants then a clash is inevitable and correct. Before now the characters were all just tagging along with us on our merry japes, now they have a little character of their own and their own goals. This will allow for a much more interesting story-line, IMO.

I suspect that they will return with a preview of the new elite specs before the next expansion but then I remember that norn who go to fight Jormag and fail tend to come back as icebrood so…

You think “I’m glad you didn’t join Destiny’s Edge. My Mother wouldn’t want you in there.” is mature? LOL

No, what people are complaining about is characters being immature or selfish.

I am not opposed to NPCs being immature or selfish…plenty of people are. My concern is not being allowed to avoid or ignore punch such people.

FTFY

I’m waiting for its fussy teenage phase where it grows grass over one eye and listens to angsty music.

Rock on, man! Good to hear some positivity in forums (or any game’s forums) for once.

If you need any tips, drop me a line!

aRestless.6213:

Faux.1937:

I always thought Skill Points could be a way of doing the Trait system, each zone could have 1 Skill Point spot thats an event/challenge more so than a fight, or a fast talk.

You mean like the current blue skill points on the map, with similar tasks, but granting a trait instead of a skillpoint?

That’s actually a pretty cool idea.

I’ve been recommending something like this for a while now.

But now, red post has me curious. Curious mostly about when this debacle is going to finally end, so I can make another alt.

Lankybrit.4598:

You don’t HAVE to pay a subscription for Wildstar either. Nor for TERA. Nor for the upcoming Archeage. What’s your point?

Uh.. Wildstar’s threashold for “subscription free” is basically shelling out to their internal gold farm.
It’s the same as if GW2 told you to gather 1200 gems per month to keep playing.
That’s about 153 gold. Per month.

I’ve given ANet plenty of cash, just because I wanted to support it, specifically because it offers the good will to tell I don’t have to. And buying gems actually gives me something for the buy-in.

With all the nice staff posting pictures, I feel kind of bad wanting to make this into a trait agenda post. But I’ll behave instead.

Fluffball.8307:

The argument has always been that it’s semi-wasted content. The personal story is not popular and is only played through once anyway, starter zones are something you use once and then outlevel in an hour of playing, etc. There is not much replayable content for a new race.

Perhaps several level 80 ‘starter zones’ for a new race could be interesting, and this new race starts in the end-game (for example how the Kodan live in what would be level 80 territory). The “personal story” could consist of like 8 new missions that are unique to the new race, almost like a living world update, just something to give the new race some lore. I could get behind that.

Definitely something we’d have to see with an expansion. A new starter zone/region, and the new race might have to integrate outside of the Zhaitan story track. Partially to avoid having to re-voice all those lines. Possibly even avoiding having to revoice all the Season 2 and HoT lines. A new race would have to resolve all of that first. We glossed over Revenant’s place in storyline because the class still functions with the existing voice acting (even if it’s really disjointed in lore).

And then there’s armor and modeling. As the most likely candidate is Tengu, there would still have to be work done for each piece of armor rigging, and probably other work done in cultural armors. Another gargantuan effort.

As much as I want, and would pay mucho monies on characters for, a new race, I doubt we’ll see it. Unless there’s some sneaky bit of moving the Legendary Weapons team to securing a new race for the expansion? I can hope.

Frozen.7245:

Ok, I’m a very concerned about this new traits/specialization rework that’s coming soon. I personally don’t always use an adept, master, and grand master trait in each of my trees. Will I still be able to use 1 adept and 2 masters if I want, or 2 adepts and a grandmaster?

On the other side, I’m really excited about the ability to modify my class by unlocking new roles for a class and a new weapon like Druid for a ranger. I think that is going to be really enjoyable, once I get that done.

But even as excited as I am about that, I have a feeling that you’re about to break a lot of my characters. I currently have EVERY skill and trait/perk thing unlocked on my Ranger and my Thief. I just have this gut feeling that it’s all going to be erased and I’m going to have to do all of that work over again, with whatever new setup you’re going to have and all of the time and effort I put into working on that is going to be for nothing.

1. As it stands right now (which may, but probably won’t change), you get one Adept, one Master, and one Grandmaster. But, you also get three Grandmaster traits. Some of your builds may have to be retweaked, some may be blessed as some traits combine into one. Cross your fingers.
2. The best way to insure yourself against having setbacks later is to do some world completion now, and hit up those skill challenges. Not only are skill points getting converted to materials (or something), but the system will likely read your level and completed skill points when handing out Hero Points for rebuilding.

That’s based on what I’ve gleaned so far, and it’s obviously up for change. Best thing to do right now is keep calm and explore.

It hasn’t only been Revenant.

It’s also been pointless PvP tourneys.

Amaimon.7823:

Parody of Fallacy

FTFY

Meanwhile, the actual PoF name:

Profit Over Fixes
/sagenod

Death Prosecutor.8713:

ANET’s prerelease hype, “we’re going to get away from grind” (GW/grind). Now we have ascended armor / FOTM GRIND. What a prerelease con. A bit hypocritical It would seem.

Yeah, they really did go for the “no gear treadmill / no grind” hype. I can understand why they skewed away from it, and they’ve only added one gear step, but that gear step is a hideous, obvious grind intended more for controlling the economy instead of making a player feel accomplished or giving a variety of things to do.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

Totally agree. Aquabreathers should be craftable in some fashion. With how little support ANet’s given underwater combat, make it one recipe that makes an Exotic breather that lets the player choose its stats. Then do the same for Ascended.

What about the excessively long and convoluted line the chef makes the customers go through to get the best pastries? Or that he only give his good pastries to the customers who waited in line the longest?

Or that he hides the toppings for his cupcakes behind pithy clues in corners of his store, hoping that his long-time customers might just stand on their heads for access to his sprinkles or get fed up and pay the extra dollar for the privilege, when before, he added those sprinkles as a part of the cost?

tl;dr
One really can’t “white knight” the abusive trait system and the suddenly 80-heavy focus of traits or the rest of the game.
I love(d) this game, but even I can see that it’s going downhill. I don’t want to leave, but it’s getting to be a waste of time. :\

Drop-dead timers are a sign of bad design. ie, we should have expected ANet to use it.
#grr

We’re better off with a soft enrage mechanic, common to WoW/Diablo 3. The longer the fight goes on, the harder it is: attacks do more damage, effect radii get wider, more adds spawn more frequently.

That sort of design lends itself to groups that can better play the war of attrition. If healing and defense keep up, they can succeed, but it becomes more difficult to maintain. High damage groups will coast through most of the fight, relying on prevention tools before the enemy’s damage gets too severe. It serves both play styles.

There’s almost no need for an actual timer (including open world bosses, if I’m honest) in fight design. Unless there’s a bomb. Which would be hilarious.
Not to detract from the conversation at hand, but I’m musing on a boss fight now. :P

Actors: PCs, Boss, HUGE BOMB.
As the PCs fight the Boss, the Huge Bomb slowly loses life. They have to direct the boss away from the bomb, or it shortens the time available for the fight. Boss does suitably bossish things like cleaves, area effects, and such.
When the bomb explodes, it does enough damage to kill all the players, but also damages the boss by 50% of its current health and stuns it for 10 seconds. A well-timed Aegis and other invulnerability skills can prevent a party wipe.
But I digress.

nexxe.7081:

Veterans keep getting screwed over with every patch. First traits, and now this.

Just like players get Veteran Slayer as daily/monthly, I think the devs might get a Veteran Slayer achievement too. =P

Randulf.7614:

I agree with you on – I think GW2 has long since lost its sense of identity when it comes to aesthetics and has succumbed to a much more wacky and cartoony style than even its predecessor.

Yeah, I agree. I feel like the designers are trying, but they’re not connecting with a consistent aesthetic, and some of them are downright bad (Slayer, Mordrem anything, some of the shoulders/gloves/wings).

We’ve been clamoring for simpler, close-cut designs (and summer fashions!), but what we get are goofy hats, flaming backpacks, and buttcapes.

And to answer the question: no hats, they make me bald.

Myself, I love(d) the game and played since launch, but the luster’s fallen off. Since I’m an altoholic, I worried less about the “endgame” and focused on learning to enjoy each class and dig into the personal story paths.

But half of an MMO (if not more) is in its endgame. Less so with GW2, since seasonal events and story threads have targeted (nearly) the entire player base. Previous Living Story content occurred on a temporary basis, so the challenges and rewards were accused of being shallow. And they were.

Especially the rewards. If there was a single, greatest criticism of GW2, it’s that gameplay time doesn’t really match the rewards we see. Seasonal/Living Story events have been meta-achievement/token grinds. Ascended and Legendaries are unnecessarily long grinds. “They said there wouldn’t be grinds.” But every game has them. Challenges are limited in the game, and where there are challenges, the rewards are “two blues and a green.”

That’s the major source of the hate. Which is a shame, because I see so much potential for GW2’s style of gameplay, but the devs seem to be designing for older MMO models, not the one GW2 was built on.

BrotherBelial.3094:

I can’t see us having Tengui. It would be cool, but would call for a reworking of all the armor sets in the game. We might get Largous as they seem to use the human model, but have big wings, nothing new there really, so they would probably be the next.

Out of the “big three” usually requested, you’d be looking at Tengu or Kodan, as far as adaptable design goes.
Tengu were originally panned before Charr were solidified, and they can likely use the same rigs. So new armors for Tengu would be mostly adjusting fit on those that already exist and coming up with cultural ones.
Kodan are basically Norn with bear heads. They’d be the actual easiest to port over, for lack of weird rig structure. Their main problem is, without some ‘subrace’ to provide some color, there would be little to differentiate them.
Largos are barely present. Their wings would interfere 100% with back pieces, and players would complain and complain hard. And there’s no way to resolve it without telling players “suck it up and turn off back items,” which would be kind of insulting.

Yeah, figured this argument would switch from dungeon speedruns to Mossman speedruns. :P

Same advice applies:

• If you don’t see an LFG whose requirements you meet, please make your own. Keywords to use are “all welcome”. Also specify “full clear” or “cutscenes” (less relevant for fracs) if that’s what you’re going after or it’s your first time in.
• Bring two friends with you. This keeps the trolls from kicking/hijacking a group.
• General life advice, don’t be a D. If you see LFGs you don’t like, please be mature and leave them alone. You wouldn’t want to play with them, anyway. Agree to disagree.

mXz.4512:

I’m just glad it’s a one time deal with the mini games though after getting gold.

Just to point out to the forum scouts reporting to the dev team:

This is not how valuable content should be viewed by your players.
Especially for something that is used as a progression mechanism.

Wanze.8410:

I don’t think the Game Director and Game Economist should be spend long hours of game-testing long term goals.

Actually, they should. The former ought to be familiar with all aspects of the game in design. Perhaps not so much in the greatest detail, but knowing the player-side experience is vital.
The latter needs to be in the trenches as well, to identify things a spreadsheet is going to miss, and to know the feel of economic impact. Simultaneously answering “is it stable?” and “is it fun?”

To be more tongue-in-cheek about it, I have to wonder if JS considers the “mundane” route fun. Grinding materials, events, and fractals for ‘long term goals’.
Or if he uses insider trading info to make money. :P

Overall, not a fan of this map.

+ Looks pretty enough.
+ New mastery is a fun toy. (Obligatory “but”…)
+ Bonus +1 for allowing the vine whip to be used in mid flight and having the oakheart nodes refresh on fly-bys. Reminds me of the “little things” the devs think of that make me smile.
+ Good to have plenty of flight again. (And yet…)

[Suggestion]: It might have been better to have a waypoint at the highest elevation. Not just Heathen’s Hold, but one closer to the map ceiling, so it’s easier to warp up and glide down to some of the spots on the map.

• Not sure if I can say good or bad here, but the map is pretty huge. It might have been nice to have the gliding skills from Bloodstone Fen, even just the #5 horizontal burst.

- Navigating the map is a chore. I don’t blame the map design itself so much as the mapping tools we have available, which are still not up to snuff on portraying/conveying information for multilevel, complex maps. I sincerely hope an upgrade is pending for the expansion.

- (Mastery; Fun toy but…) Climbing/collision detection seems especially spotty on this map, even beyond my low expectations of most MMOs or GW2 in general. It was my biggest source of frustration on the map.
- (Mastery; Fun toy but…) Yet another mastery/gimmick that removes our weapon skills. With the Special Action button available, this really shouldn’t have been an issue.

- Not just Draconis Mons, but all the new maps: Updrafts don’t convey as accurately as they do in the main four HoT zones. I’ll be in the lowest swirly bits and not catch the updraft, where in the original HoT zones, it would have triggered.

- Open world encounters were . . uninspiring? Lots of rehash, thankfully nothing too overpowered. Between wind riders and mushrooms, I continue to believe someone on some team, somewhere, grabs the lotion when a player takes a 5-second knockdown. Reminds me that I need to write that treatise on how constant CC actually devalues Stability.

- Story yielded some confusing motivations and was really short. Final fight would have been difficult if I weren’t Commander/Defense-spec’d Warrior.

7-9foot tall demon mancats made of muscle and sinew and intense physical training.

…can’t clear a 4-foot wall that even I could climb over.

I don’t feel overly heroic in GW2 at times like that. >.>

Addendum: They’re also bad at climbing hills! MMOs are wretched about this, and perfectly equivalent gradients can have two completely separate collision reactions based on whether or not the developers “want” players to climb it, with no other visual indication.

Stormdancer.4972:

You know full well this would have turned out very differently if a Charr had been in charge. Someone who understands not just commerce, but how to DEFEND what you have gained as well. Someone who understands that wealth and progress means nothing if you cannot defend and protect it.

Someone like Evon Gnashblade.

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gnashblade.

Ayrilana.1396:

…should not be ones that you can passively complete.

That’s a rather unjustified opinion. A lot of the comments above were rather happy with having small goals that could be achieved through normal play. It simply provided extra direction.

As a personal example, if I got Ascalon Event Completion before, I’d pick an alt that was in a suitable level range and go faff about until I got the achievement. But in the meantime, I was exploring the zone, harvesting, hitting POIs and Vistas…

Now, if I get Plains of Ashford, I dread it, bring out an engineer, set up turrets at event circles, and /sleep while occasionally pressing F for loot. I don’t explore, I chore.

I don’t mind directed play. I’m encouraged by it. But when it comes down to a scattered list of chores, I log on, hit them, log off.

I’d be okay with this. It lets owners use their unlimited access anywhere, and it stops me from F-ing on an NPC that doesn’t actually work. :P

Deleena.3406:

Pact Airship x Aetherblade Airship!!! (chouldnt resist)

Pact Airship x Mordremoth!

…it was a messy falling out.
/sunglasses

I had this concern as well, Throfin. If there’s a focus on healing, then Healing Power needs to step up somehow. It’s been discussed in other threads before, and there’s some good ideas that came of it.

Perhaps most notable and applicable to raids are:

• Healing Power contributes more to outgoing healing, but not to self-healing. Either as a percentage (1% per 100) or by making sure other-healing skills and regen applications have a higher coefficient.
• Healing Power contributes to incoming healing, not just self-heals. This allows for more ‘tanky’ characters and rewards the party for bringing that little bit of extra healing power, even if they’re relying on a heal-spec’d character.
• Healing Power adds to boon duration. A repeatedly favorite idea. It gives Healing Power dual applications in offense and defense by extending all boons, from Might and Fury to Protection and Regen. It would mean adjusting Giver’s, but no one uses that anyway.

Zaraki.5784:

No. Please. No.

Echo that.

I wasn’t against the idea of the annoying little minigames, but their execution was tragic:

• Time-limited, even after the April patch fixed some of the issues.
• Required masteries to reach gold
• Too integrated into progression and rewards; gold rank required for collections/masteries
• Actual gameplay was choppy and unrefined, littered with bugs
• Ping times would kill performance margins
• Terrain flaws were not conveyed properly, compounding issues with unforgiving race timers

I doubt those issues will ever get fixed, and I am glad to leave Magus Falls’ “adventures” behind.

+1, just not for solo.
I really wish they’d designed the dungeons for 1 to 5 people. As someone who has resisted “guilding up” for years in MMOs, sometimes I just want to play with friends and not toss the dice on random strangers. As it is, it’s only me and a buddy online nowadays, but we’d have a ball 2-manning dungeons if they were designed for it.

And yeah, I’d be totally down for doing it, even with reduced rewards, because right now, I’m not really doing them at all.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I can certainly see, I believe, the thinking behind making traits require completing certain content to unlock, and the desire to add more zest to leveling after level 30. The unlock system is — superficially — like the GW system of unlocking elite skills by killing certain bosses or earning extra stat points via certain quests. However, there are some major differences:

• GW bosses were all in instances that could be completed by players solo, using henchmen or heroes when necessary. This meant that the elite skill you wanted was available on demand. At least some of the new trait unlocks, published in concert with mega-server, are anything but on demand.
• Most elite skills in GW were in max level areas. However, the Elite skills were never meant to be lower-level options. With the flat leveling curve in GW, this was not that much of an issue. Requiring map completion of a level 70-80 area for an adept trait (usable at level 36) is so silly that I could not believe my eyes.
• Elite skills were options. Traits are an integral part of the unlock process. Traits remind me more of the additional 30 stat points available in GW. In Prophecies, the extra points were not available until deep in the game — Crystal Desert for 15, then the Shiverpeaks for the rest. In Factions, you could get them before leaving the starter island. In Nightfall, you could get them before doing most of the content on the starter island. For some strange reason in GW2, ANet chose to move in the opposite direction by backloading trait availability.

Regardless, I have two reactions to the trait changes.

1. I dislike the backloading and placing unlocks on meta event content that I find tedious and headache inducing due to ANet’s unwillingness or inability to provide an effects slider.
2. Fan reaction makes me think that ANet is currently feeling what was conveyed in the words of Dan Fogelberg:

“Changing horses in the middle of the stream
Gets you wet, and sometimes cold.”

Excellent perspective from a long-time GW fan.

Will always say yes to this. Have been for over a year: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Tonics-to-Outfits-It-s-time/

The dye channels were there, and there’s a good 17 tonics that need converting.

I’m with you on this one.
Had there been a Tier 6 Node pack, I would easily have flung 800-1000 gems at it.

Instead, they want me to buy … 6 keys and get crap for it.

I can understand not rewarding ‘freeloader’ play by making all the rewards two blues and a green or shoddy RNG, but other games go out of their way to reward paying players with something decent.

Cheaper keys and better boxes.

Aeolus.3615:

Issue with banners is that they are all the same, with the difference if only skill 2, which is super weak.
Banners need some QoL work.

This is probably my biggest problem with banners being carryable. Dragging them around to go from location to location is useful for quickly re-establishing a battleground, but doing so punishes the carrier with some semi-useful utility and a pathetic auto attack. Why bother with Skill 2, even it were buffed, when you have no other use for it?

Banners could definitely use some buffs. Laying out a bit of stream of consciousness here.

The TL;DR:

• Skill 1 / 3 / 4 / 5 all need upgrades to make carrying less punishing.
• Make Skill 2 more standardized and useful. Convert to Shouts for more synergy.
• Trait lowers cooldown by 10-15 sec and increases Banner effect radius.
• Burst skill for Banners.

Skill 1 – Currently too slow and not damaging enough to justify carrying a banner. Up the overall DPS into the range of Elementalist weapons. Add Vulnerability per hit (1 stack for 10 sec or 3 stacks for 5 sec, something like that). Give it oomph.

Skill 2 – Most of the buff ones aren’t so bad, there’s just no other reason to carry a banner to actually use them. The attack ones are fairly garbage. So keep to the spirit of the banner and make all of them boons. There’s some possibility in having the Skill 2 be a Shout, just for some decent synergy with the Tactics line.
As Shouts:
Defense – Protection (3 sec, 10 sec cooldown), Inflicts Knockback on nearby enemies.
Discipline – Fury’s good(-ish) as is. Maybe tack on a short Quickness (1-2 sec).
Strength – (Ugh, so bad…) 3 Might for 8 sec, Inflicts 3 Vuln for 6 sec to nearby enemies.
Compassion – Huh, Shout thoughts mean a lot of double dipping on HealPow for this Skill 2. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I kinda like it.
Battle Standard – The Stability’s okay, but it feels lackluster for an elite. It feels like it needs something else to pair with it.

So maybe, maybe not Skill 2/Shout, but it’s worth considering.

Skill 3 – It’s decent, but tack on a “Removes Cripple/Chill/Immobilize” and it’d be worth grouping up for.

Skill 4- Useful for getting toward a fight while having the banner in transit. I wouldn’t mind seeing a damage or buff burst (small range, like 130 or 250) at the end just to make it a wee bit more strategic. I’d almost recommend making it a Leap finisher, just to pretend that Powerful Synergy is useful.

Skill 5 – Not that I miss Powerful Banners, but with the ability to drop it by weapon swap, and blast finishers not being that useful to justify waiting for a banner skill to come off cooldown, it really ought to be doing radial damage like it did with the old trait.

But that’s not all! Because the trait needs some fixing too.

Inspiring Banners:
Change Regen to pulsing heal. 250 per 3 seconds, 25% HealPow rate.
Decrease Banner summoning cooldown by 10 seconds. I’d prefer 15 sec, but it’s a preemptive compromise. The 6-sec gap before the trait was mutilated was too short, but 30 seconds trait or no trait, is too long. 15-20sec feels like the sweet spot.
While carrying a banner, increase the radius of the Banner’s effect by 300. (So Radius 900.)

And the cherry on top:
Give the Banner a Burst skill for Warriors! I’m not sure what it would do, but it would mean carrying the banner doesn’t utterly hamstring the warrior. I also want something hilarious for a primal burst, but that’s probably just me. :P

savacli.8172:

Already been posted in other threads.

TL;DR

Anet purposely nerfed the rewards to move players away from dungeons as they have not had the means to support dungeons for years now and cannot modify them to adopt the new material introduced with HoT. No, they will not revert changes. The new 5-man content is officially Fractals, and their end-game content is raids.

Not just tin hat. Explicitly stated by ANet.

They wanted dungeons to continue to have ‘unique’ rewards, which come from dungeon tokens. Problem is, the tokens don’t drop in a reasonable amount. Increase those (50%, double?) and dungeons might be in a decent spot.

Kraggy.4169:

HOT has little to no useful purpose to ‘exploration’, you’ll see most of it during the metas.

HOT actively discourages exploration. What was GW2’s original joy is crushed under the thorny weight of Mordremoth. ;_;

Yeah, that doesn’t quite work very well for, say, the Labirynth, where literally every mob has a push/pull/root on a stupidly short cooldown.

Andraus.3874:

This is why a lot of responses here are like “grow up, get over it, Ect.” Because to counter this type of negativity you have to rise above it and realize it isn’t worth getting upset over so you simply block report and move on.

Actually, the “grow up, get over it” crowd are the very people that would get silenced/kickbanned if ToS they agreed to when they bought the game were enforced properly. :P

So far as #1, at least it makes the falling traits mean something.

Teniz.5249:

New race?

Either Largos or…

#NoWaterDrow2016AndBeyond

Besides, they’re all Steve’s minions anyway.

Redfeather.6401:

Because the Tengu are literally just standing there in the game world and haven’t done anything since release. If they won’t do anything, let me control one! I’ll do all kinds of stuff with them.

Username Redfeather.
Wait a minute…
BIAS DETECTED.

Really though, give me Tengu, and I will, guaranteed, sacrifice $90 upon the altar of our avian overlords. (That’s more than an expansion price, hint, hint, ANet.)