Guild Wars 2

DiogoSilva.7089:

Why give up on the ele two days before the buffs?

because they’re not buffs?

For a PVE player the changes might be fine but for most PVP players, the changes will make 20 water 20 arcane the new minimum instead of 15 water 20 arcane.

Not a great result when their stated goal was to reduce the dependency on arcane.

Well they haven’t delivered on the new skills/traits one at all…

Mirta.5029:

Just going to point this out – there are no MMOs with infinite content. There simply can’t be.

Wrong, UO had effectively infinite content; EVE has effectively infinite content. Both games are still around, and in fact, EVE is 10 years old and it is still gaining subs.

Coulter.2315:

Again the extra char slot is £5 is it worth the damage of the Guild Wars name?

TBQFH, it’s Anet’s greed and casual dismissal of its existing playerbase that’s caused this PR disaster, not the players.

charging $50 for what appears to be a really thin expac doesn’t help either.

Reminds me of the sledgehammer ride the lightning nerf to d/d Ele that saw it go from top3 to unplayed in PvP for 3 months.

A good balance team makes small frequent changes, and never by more than 20% in any direction.

No, the obvious thing to do is:

• remove any/all stat differences between exotic and ascended gear – 8% better is not acceptable
• make agony resist into a set of runes, or make any armour infusable

Won’t ever buy a B2P game again, 90% of the developer focus in this model is creating crap they can sell. I’d rather pay a subscription and get real content and attention to balance.

The amount of new content since release that I have actually enjoyed has been close to zero.

Almost no substantive balance or diversity improvements have been made in a year, with the notable exception of WVW and art, the game could not have disappointed me any more than it already has.

I reported this as a bug and encourage everyone to do the same.

It’s extremely irritating in WVW to die mid-fight and not be able to watch the rest of the fight because the camera force-pans.

How did something like this slip through QA?

I strongly support time-limiting the defeated state but the forced camera pan has got to go.

So in summary, with the changes, Ele’s now need 20+ water and 20+arcane instead of 15+ water and 20+ arcane before the changes.

Awesome.

I don’t think I know anyone who played both games who doesn’t think they ballsed up the skill system & core combat mechanics in this game. I mean, dodging and combo fields are good, but are in no way a substitute for the diversity of skills & depth of combat mechanics in GW1.

I still hope the GW2 designers come to their senses and add back some of the diversity and depth of the previous game, because this game has a severe lack of it.

Fernling.1729:

There was a big thread way before they announced the prepurchase asking for a slot to be included with the expansion. It wasn’t until after everything blew up(including massively, pc gamer etc) that they went back on it.
I’m not convinced they would have changed this if the freakout wasn’t as large. Even the worst companies know a thing or two about damage control.

Yep this. A lot of brand damage was caused, ostensibly because greed won the day.

It seems very obvious to me that an expac for a 3yo game that introduces a new class should come with a char slot, especially when GW1 expacs used to come with 2, and especially when the disparity between the new and existing player offerings was so huge.

There’s no sugar-coating that this was a massive kittenup from a marketing & brand POV, and really, a lot of this was foreseeable in players’ requests for char slots in previous forum posts from months ago.

GW2 being anti-grind was a recurring theme in their advertising, and e.g. the manifesto video.

The last thing BG needs is more people. So unless you like waiting in queues every night, pick JQ or TC.

coglin.1867:

I am a little confused here. When did they state we were “forced” to do it?

It’s “forced” because the super weapon is gamebreakingly strong. Nothing should be that strong for starters, and rather lame PVE quests (killing mobs and fedexing items) is the kind of thing that belongs in <level 10 PVE zones, it should definitely not be the “IWIN” mechanic of a WVW borderlands map.

TyPin.9860:

scerevisiae.1972:

Exactly. It’s the poster-child of generic names.

For me it’s also a poor name because:
1) if the class is supposed to hunt/kill dragons, why is not one of the skills/traits/mechanics/anything is tailored to killing dragons? do the new trap skills work against elder dragons? i think not.
2) it’s the only class named this way. it sticks out, and not in a good way.
3) it’s more in line with a profession name than a class name.

1) Why does the engineer not build things? Why does the Thief not actually steal things?
2) It’s the name of a specialization, not a class. And you don’t know yet, what is to come.
3) Yeah, well, we have no classes in GW2. We have only professions, like Guardian, Mesmer or Thief (that is the actual wording, which ANet uses). Chronomancer and Dragonhunter are no classes either, they are elite specializations (see #2).

@all:
And how is it, you all know better, how a profession and specialization is “supposed” to be. When the actual game designers, who define the content of the game, say otherwise. A lot of entitled opinions in this thread… but when children scream “childish”, what can we expect?

are you familiar with the phrase “the customer is always right”? we are the customers.

this forum exists to garner feedback, we are providing it.

why do you arrogantly assume the role of trying to censor legitimate opinions? you need only post that you like the name, and leave others to express their own opinions.

GW2 is widely criticised for its lack of build options. Several classes have basically 1 good build and everything else lags a long way behind (hello Ele).

One easy win that would make a lot of people happy and open up a lot of new builds would be allowing regular utility skills in the elite slot. The other thing to consider here is that for a lot of classes, the “elite” skills are worse than the utility skills.

In addition to highly specialised builds, eg: 4 utilities of the same type, 2+2 builds (ie: 2 utilities of 2 different types) would become available.

Skill & build diversity.

No stupid downed state ruining PVP.

Elite skill capping.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

The important thing is that they listened to what we had to say, and did something to alleviate our concerns.

Not really, after release, existing players get waaay less value for their $50 compared to new players.

Plus, expansion adds a class, it ought to add a slot, simple as that. GW1 generally gave yu 2 free slots with every expansion.

Say what you like but this still doesn’t seem right to me.

Yep, condi D/D Dodge daredevil. Fought one yesterday in an allied camp full of veterans and he still managed to kill everything cause couldn’t land anything. All he did was spam dodges and dagger #3, and stunbreaked my only hard cc.

Totally broken.

No. Using tornado makes you less effective than not using it. It’s the opposite of elite.

I actually like the unique playstyle of Ventari, but IMO there are a few things precluding its use. Basically, the traits.

Ventari (Salvation) are too narrowly focused on being (just) a healer, making it difficult to combine with Rev’s other weapons and legends or make any kind of workable hybrid build, the GMs being the worst culprits.

The most interesting thing about Revenant is the interplay between utilities (legend), weapon and traitline, and being able to combine all different legends, weapons and traits to form builds should IMHO be a key design requirement.

Traits that could be improved

• Hardened Foundation (minor master; healing power -> toughness). I think this conversion is the wrong way around, should be toughness -> healing power.
• Tranquil Benediction (dropped healing orbs given regen and swift). Shouldn’t be restricted to staff only. Perhaps could be x% chance for any weapon skill to drop a healing orb, and all dropped healing orbs grant regen and swift.
• Momentary Pacification (daze on elite). This is a weird trait, as the ventari elite already knocks back, so what’s the point of the daze? wouldn’t daze on heal (with 10sec CD) make a lot more sense? would work a lot better with othe legends as well.
• Selfless Amplification (healing power -> outgoing heal%). Another conversion? Another outgoing heal percent% bonus, really? This is just filler, surely. There are already multiple outgoing heal% bonuses in the line already, and no other traitline in the game has more than 1 conversion trait. I’d love this to be something like “You and your tablet swap positions when using an elite skill or swapping legends.” This is thematically consistent (pacifist/avoidance) and gives ventari an escape which he is otherwise lacking.

Staff
Staff doesn’t feel quite right to me. It’s a bit underpowered compared to the other weapons. A couple of specific things:

• combine the 2 skills on the #2 skill, or make the daze the first in the chain and make the second skill a knockdown if using a skill.
• the damage coefficents on the autoattack are a bit low.

Skills
The skills are really unique, and the unique delivery mechanism is the best part of the legend. The upkeep skill is a bit boring/ineffectual/high cost for what it does. It could stand to have an additional effect, e.g. pulsing regen or vigour or endurance regen.

WVW only here. I’ve tried and tried to get into sPVP, but to me it just sucks. PVE is even worse. Most of my guild is WVW-only, with PVE only to fill gaps & make money/get shinies.

What’s for sure is WVW is the only thing keeping me play this game.

Saweth You Him.9047:

So while an aoe nerf is being discussed armies of 20 golems are still being portaled to reinforced gates and destroying them in 3 seconds with time warp and capping a tower or keep much faster than the waypoint resets so no oppurtunity for resistance can be made. And then the golems are waypointed to safety. 2000 supply worth of siege portaled to a gate then waypointed away.

Not to mention AOE is already so gimped because of the 5-target cap that a defending side could not take those golems down before they get the door down.

In the field, as a bunker Ele I will routinely stand in AOE as I can comfortably outheal the damage long enough to stall a push or halt a rout on our side using counter-CC. The idea that AOE is too strong in WVW is laughable.

I would prefer to see the AOE 5-target cap removed and only then look at reducing AOE damage based on distance from the geometric centre point/line of the AOE that same way DAOC did it. eg: centre of the AOE = full damage, close to edge of AOE = half damage.

WVW desperately needs mechanics that punish zerging/balling up so that more group-based strategies can flourish, or at least have the tools that they can counter zergs through skilful play. I find it ridiculous that the current game mechanics reward/encourage zerging/balling up/turtling in order to mitigate already woeful AOE damage when every other area of the game seeks to punish this behaviour.

I don’t think the LOD levels are strong enough – even on the lowest LOD, I still find there is far too much effects noise. Combined with inflexible UI, specifically miniscule condition/buff icons I can’t relocate or scale, I find the game UI one of the worst I’ve played, especially for PVP.

Ensign.2189:

Balance is not particularly good, and there is not enough build flexibility for a metagame of counter builds to evolve naturally.

Very little effort has been put into balancing the game, with most of the ‘buffs and nerfs’ we see really being bug fixes at their heart, with balance implications of secondary concern. I cannot blame them for this, because bug fixes are important in the long run regardless of balance implications, and their game is very, very difficult to balance – more so than the original Guild Wars.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even look at balance right now in their shoes. They have major design problems with many of their skills and weapon sets, and weapon design is the core of their game. They need to get the play patterns of their different characters and sets into a reasonable shape before they even start thinking about balance concerns.

As for sPvP, balance is the least of their worries there. The format has major, major structural problems, and if they don’t feel like addressing those they’re honestly wasting their time.

By far the best post in the thread. GW2 has major design issues with class/build diversity – for most classes there isn’t any.

The game design is too rigid. The linearity of skills being completely bound to weapons and trait lines being completely bound to weapons/utility skill types/stats has to be broken. Other design constraints are even more baffling – why are Ele’s forced to change attunements frequently just to perform at baseline effectiveness? There’s no good design reason to limit the whole class to exist within that 1 mechanic… silly.

GW2’s floundering PVP situation is more a function of poor game design rather than balance IMO – shifting some numbers around isn’t going to fix the problem – players will continue to select the best weapon + the best trait line(s) + the best utilities, and due to the aforementioned ultra-tight binding of weapon and utility to trait line and stats, only a tiny number of “good” builds can result. Case in point, 8 months after release and the metagame has not changed at all.

Removal of all siege except rams.

Bring back the orbs.

Ardid.7203:

I think it would be nice to have pets that don’t forget their names.

It would be nice to have pets that were either optional or didn’t feel like a handicap.

not buying expansion

Theres been orders of magnitude more complaints about downed state, instagibbing, and across-the-board lack of viable builds yet all those things are not being
addressed.

They aren’t listening and they clealy dont give a kitten.

Why are veteran players who don’t pre-purchase expected to delete one of their characters, with potentially 100s/1000s of hours invested, in order to enjoy the new class that’s part of the expac? Why are we expected to pay more than everyone else?

And more concerningly, why do you have such a low degree of respect for your existing players?

An expac that adds a class ought to come with a character slot for all, automatically.

finally someone has found something that rangers do better than another class in WVW.

Elemental Attunement is a class-defining trait. A caster-only version of it should be baseline, with a 10pt arcana trait to restore the AOE effect.

HOT being harder is a big improvement IMO, the PVE in the base game was ridiculously easy. The real issue is the grindiness that’s creeping in.

Ele skill “Ride the lightning” has been broken since its implementation was changed shortly after release. It frequently (almost always) overshoots, even on stationary targets, which leads to the usual followup spell “Updraft” often missing.

This is gamebreaking if/when trying to play ?/D Ele. It’s even worse when trying to updraft a moving target.

The first 2 clips are in WVW, the 3rd is in PVE. I play from Australia on a fast connection. The extent of the overshoot seems to correlate with increasing network latency.

Dolores.5471:

Well, sucks that it’s an universal cooldown, but then again if it weren’t eles would be able to blind up to 20 ppl with a single skill.

You mean like thieves can with any of their smoke fields?

If the blind were short, I don’t see a problem with no CD on the trait as the challenge would be how quickly you could apply and clear burning.

As it currently stands, it’s an adept trait.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Anyways, staff is going to have better support, conjures are going to be stronger, warrior’s pve damage trait is going to be moved a tier up, and assassin’s s/d boon stealing is going to be toned by half. All goods news to elementalists in pve and in pvp.

except that:

• 20+ arcane still required for the class to be tolerable
• 15+ water still required for any non-joke PVE build
• around a third of traits are total garbage
• signet build still kitten weak
• glyph build still kitten weak
• conjures still kitten clunky
• focus lol

…and that conjure buffs won’t help because…

Conjures don’t get used cause they are badly designed: they feel really clunky to activate & use, the skills are generally underwhelming, the limited charges are annoying, conjure traits are terrible, and last but not least – they consume a precious utility slot.

The whole design of conjures has no redeeming feature that make them worthwhile- why give up 20 skills to gain 5? they should replace only the skills of their respective element, so you’re free to switch elements as you please. You know, the core class-defining mechanic…

same problems as day #1 of release.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to pop in and say that the changes listed are not all of the changes coming. Unfortunately, we can’t share everything we’re changing due to the nature of some of the changes.

I think you guys are doing yourselves a disservice by not sharing/previewing this stuff – a fully engaged community is a happy community and early customer feedback is almost always a good thing – even if (especially if) a feature is highly likely to change.

sPVP pop is very very low. they confirmed 3 mill box sales recently; and there are 100-400 sPVP players per server, so <10K sPVP across all servers, or < 0.3% of the game pop. If that isn’t “epic fail” status, I don’t know what is.

I tried it, it just isn’t fun. Things that make it unfun for me:

• downed state destroys the continuity of combat and is annoying on several levels.
• secondary mechanic like khylo treb, like DS, is annoying as it requires you to break combat to deal with
• repetitive
• severe intra-class imbalances, lack of build choice

WVW is more fun because of its sandbox nature, leading to unpredictability, and WVW supports a much much greater range of playstyles. I also find the quality of 1v1s/2v2s/5v5s to be way higher in WVW.

A better question would be why Elementalists are more or less forced into heavy water/arcane builds to perform decently in PVP, to which the answer is approximately: terribly-balanced and buggy traits.

In 3 months, basically nothing has been fixed nor issues addressed either. Fine if they don’t want or don’t know how to balance the game properly, but there is no excuse for the legion of broken traits and abilities to still be unaddressed in quarter of a year when they continue to churn out gear grinds and gimmicky seasonal content.

Priorities. Misplaced. Badly.

Inexplicable.4165:

“Oh, I’m not buying the expansion. What can I do with my free time now? I’ll let everyone know.”

You realise the new PVP, WVW map, and guild halls aren’t in the expac, right?

The uproar is due to Anet wilfully try to first deceive players through the FAQ edit (which they claim was a mistake – it wasn’t), and then proceed to try to rip players off by not providing a character slot in an expac that adds a class. They’re still trying to rip us off, just some people are happy to be ripped off because they’re naive and don’t know any better.

This has been a calculated move to attempt to extort an extra $10 out of people on top of the (already overpriced) $50 expac cost, unless they’re willing to pre-pay and do Anet’s QA for them (and then have all their progress wiped anyway).

Cherokeewill.7504:

New player pre-purchase = HoT access and core game and 5 character slots (6 with Deluxe and Ultimate)

Vet player pre-purchase = HoT access and 1 additional character slot (2 with Deluxe and Ultimate)

Vet player = Hot access only

Fixed that for you.

All 3 pay the same amount. How is that even remotely fair again?

Lothirieth.3408:

Hunting for skills as we did in GW1 was something that was asked for I think during the horizontal progression talks in one of the CDIs so I appreciate that the devs have tried to do something like that with the needing to unlock the new traits. Unfortunately I feel the activities they are making us do to unlock said traits aren’t great.

This. The event unlocks aren’t nearly as satisfying as the signet of capture system from GW1.

Anet silence deafening

Sizer.5632:

Is there any game where content (pve content specifically) is not considered by anyone to be a “grind”?

And no i’m seriously asking.

CureForLiving.5360:

Here’s the thing: it is literally impossible for ANet to produce content faster than players can consume the content. So repetition of content is an inherent part of extending the life-span of the content.

Kartel.2561:

What we have now isn’t a “living world”, it’s a fake scripted one.

yep, and this is the core problem with themepark-style MMOs (where devs attempt to create all the content, and in-game player-player interactions are superficial) versus sandbox-style MMOs (where the devs create systems for players to create their own content).

Example of sandbox MMOs: Eve, Archeage, Darkfall. If you really want to play a “living world” MMO, you really need to be playing a sandbox game like one of these, they kill this game for dead in the lving story department, it’s not even comparable.

Sandbox MMOs generally still do offer grindy PVE-type content, because that’s what some players like, the difference is, the high-end PVE rewards are almost always in full PVP zones, so surprise fights/ganks can and do happen. Of any MMO i’ve played, i’d probably rate Darkfall’s PVE as the least grindy, simply because the mob AI is pretty good, the combat is very active, and high-end mobs are generally pretty hard (plus the good mob spawn areas see frequent PVP action).

The closest GW2 comes to being “living world” is in WVW, and even then, the original WVW in DAOC was a lot more sandboxy in the sense that owning and holding keeps actually meant something, and keep takes often took hours or days, not minutes.

In any case, Anet haven’t shown any interest in even flirting with sandbox-oriented concepts anywhere, so I highly doubt they’re going to change now.

If nothing else it continues the tradition of Ele having crappy elites.

i don’t think anything has changed – if you want to build optimally for WVW or PVP, you’re still stuck with water+arcane+cantrips. 3rd trait line feels fairly optional, so i guess that’s something.

IMO Ele balancing will continue to suck until they stop making the water + arcane lines not mandatory. The best way to do this is make Ele Attunement baseline, and either make other utilities offer equivalent survivability to cantrips, and/or move the cantrip traits out of water.

I note also that glyphs and conjures continue to suck as much as they always have.

So in summary, nearly half our traits are mandatory and half our utilities suck, so no, Ele may be in an OK place when using the cele/water/arcane build but Ele balance is overall still just as bad as it was 3 years ago.

Angelica Dream.7103:

As a player since GW1 I am not buying HOT until we see some resolve.
I would be happy with a $10 price reduction for current players and an extra character slot.

If Anet wants Loyal players to stay they need to show it.

Yep.

For $50 i got 31 zones, 6 dungeons, 7 pvp maps, 8 classes, 5 races, and 5 character slots.

How is 1 zone (with 3 levels), 1 new class, 1 new WVW map, and 1 new PVP mode + specializations (really just another trait line) worth $50?

Should be no more than $40 and include a new character slot.

WVW is based on DAOC’s RVR, which had what many regard as the best GvG PVP of any MMO. WVW is the perfect backdrop for this, the problem in this game is that every element of the game promotes zerging as by far the most rewarding mode of play.

I think the weapons are just really poorly designed IMO. There is no rational design justification for why 19/20 staff skills are AOE on a class with no weapon swap (and don’t get me started on how crappy and clunky conjures are). At the very least there should be trait(s) that sacrifice AOE capability to gain single target DPS/solo capability… the present state is just stupid.

Then there’s Dragon’s Tooth, a skill that’s designed to miss its target in the general case. That’s like designing a car with a 5L petrol tank… useless for 90% of the purposes for which it was built. Appalling design.

chronus.1326:

The biggest problem that tells the most about this game’s future is not the actual content, but the lag at which ArenaNet realizes and deals with missing basic components, and inherently wrong systems.

They have completely screwed up priorities.

It takes them months to implement almost mindbogglingly basic things like the titles displaying under the names. Things that should have been there since conception. Mistakes that only amateurs make.

These are ameteurish mistakes.

It’s like as if the team’s collective creativity and intelligence suffered some kind of a stroke and was reduced to the thinking capacity of a banana. Who knows why? Maybe some people who were crucial in the creaion of the original game already left? I do no know, I do not follow dev drama.

But very fact that a lot of basic things are still missing from the game and we, again, have to resort to 3rd party sites like gwlfg.com instead of having such things incorporated into the game… the very fact that for the developers it was not trivial that these things should be implemented is what speaks volumes of the game’s future.

It’s like only the creative department is still intact, because seemingly everyone else is doing a helluva poor job.

But popping out world events is not gonna save the game. You have to make big changes, or you can kiss the game goodbye. And you have to tell people about the upcoming changes, because with saying that you do not plan to make expansions, you just destroyed a humungous ammount of enthusiasm.

In case you did not know, that was what was keeping people here.
That maybe you will fix all this **** in a huge update in the for of an expansion.

And you killed that hope.
Nobody is buying the “this game will become GW2.5 and GW3”.
People are thinking that you were deprived of fiancial support and you simply have no money to make an expansion.

People know exactly how this industry works.

QFT. Screwed up priorities. Arrogant developers.