Guild Wars 2

Shen Slayer.3058:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Big discounts?
Caithe’s Bloom and Kasmer’s Staff were always 600 gems weren’t they?
I know the dagger was 600 at least.
A whole whopping 0% off sale!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to see them bringing some stuff back and adding new stuff. But I hope stuff being full price isn’t going to be the norm here.

I don’t remember the previous price were, but if what you say is true, than what a big slap in the face to call it a “sale”.

Call it ANet logic, when bringing things back at full price is a sale and a birthday celebration is the same as selling you something.

Klocknov.8219:

Remember the first question after creating content that has to be answered in most all game design is “Does this content offer appropriate or proportional rewards to effort and time spent?”

Wow. That is so very, very wrong. Not saying you’re wrong, just the statement is.

The first question should always be “Is this fun?” If rewards are the main reason you’re doing content, and not because you enjoy that content, then maybe there’s something wrong.

As for exclusive rewards for tougher content? I think it’s a mistake to put anything cosmetic or “in world” as such a reward. Casual players should always be able to earn it, but it’s okay if hard-mode players earn it faster. Things that are not “in world”, such as badges or titles (they show on the user interface, yes, but they’re not actually a part of your character) are fine as hard mode rewards.

But if hard mode is to mean anything, then it needs to be HARD. Bugs need to be fixed, exploits need to be punished. And if it becomes too predictable, it needs to be changed. Hard mode should NEVER become a farm, it should result in party wipes and failures. If it’s not truly hard, then there’s no need to even pretend that it should have some kind of increased rewards, exclusive or not.

People are fond of comparing this game to Guild Wars 1. There was very little in Guild Wars 1 that couldn’t be purchased with gold. Arguably, the hardest weapons to attain were the weapons from DOA, or maybe rare stuff like the celestial compass, the bonecage scythe, the frog scepter or the voltaic spear.

All these high end items were available to sell. You didn’t have to be great to get them. You could farm feathers in a low end zone over and over till you could afford to purchase them.

No one in Guild Wars 1 seemed that riled that their rewards weren’t exclusive. It allowed players who wanted challenge to do challenging content and profit. It allowed less intense players to have the rewards.

I think this is the best solution all the way around.

To those who support those hard core rewards, I guarantee you if there are enough rewards casual players can’t get, you won’t have enough players left to continue running the game. Casuals, in my opinion, make a vast percentage of the playerbase. The more you put out of their reach, the more of them you lose.

Algreg.3629:

your ability to write elaborate language certainly speaks against that – I rather think you act the inapt fool for some “bad player agenda” you are not actually involved in personally

PS: Though I agree with you in general that “casual” is the way to go when you want to earn big money and keep your game alive. Even as I lament the degeneration of western society, I cannot deny it. And I certainly don´t expect a gaming company committing acts of martyrdom

I may or may not suck at this game. that’s a fact and I mean it!

Now the problem we’re having here, is one of communication. Anet goes on and says silly stuff like we want feedback. The more I think about it the more I’m starting to believe that they really don’t.

Feedback on what exactly. I mean let’s recap for a moment the arguments here.

First, anet gives out exotics for the testing so it’s safe to assume that’s the entry lvl gear. Can’t remember who told me that (was a couple of people) but they are right. So to enter the new maps you need exotics. So none of that what will new players gonna do. The answer is farm and go get some exotics.

And then someone else (can’t remember his name) that they might have jacked up the density and respawn timers cause it was only 25% of a map and -everyone- was in there. And you know what? He’s probably right too

So what exactly are we testing here? They don’t communicate to us the objective of the test so how can we give feedback? How can we comment on the respawn times, or the density, or the normal, veteran, champ distribution, when they just don’t talk to us. All they say is give us feedback.

And then it’s that quote from collin. To quote one of my favourite bloggers Inventory full

>>They do seem to be mordantly committed to making things slower, more painful and more tedious. Sorry, sorry. Off message. Of course I mean more challenging, fun and involving. As they put it in the request for focused feedback after next week’s test:

“Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles?
Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding?
Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?
Warning—creatures will be more challenging than in the existing Guild Wars 2 world.”

To which I would expect my answers to be

“Why would I want to?
It already did, thanks.
At the risk of repeating myself, why would I want to?
If this is something I’m supposed to enjoy, why do you feel the need to issue a warning about it?”<<

I mean look at that.. look at those questions … need to use your entire bar in battle? really? do they not know that we can’t do that? we’ll have to use some of the kittenty skills now? and what about elites. does that mean that we should be using our elites on each and every battle? so if an elite has one minute cooldown it’s one battle per minute and then wait till the skill is available again?

Changing our skills around to over come challenge? So what, we’ll need to constantly change our selection of skills from battle to battle? that sounds awefully convenient and fun. If they wanted to use a greater variety of specs and mix up our skills a lot, give us build templates and 3 10 slot skillbars and -trust me- we’ll use them. Having us switch around this and that on X minutes intervals, doesn’t sound so much fun tbh.

And ofcourse they went silent. Cause god forbid they communicate with us about this “beta” testing thing, which feels more like a limited advertisement and hype move than actuall beta testing.

So, truly, the only possible feedback we can give in here, is if the mobs 3 shot you or 2 shot you or 1 shot you. Only this isn’t challenging. This is plain bad. A challenging mob has abilities and responds to your actions. And the people in here complained that they were being 3 shoted before they had a chance to respond. Only to be put down by people who were either bored or found the perfect opportunity to let the world know how awesome players they are cause they didn’t fell for it.

Anyways, every time I end up writting up small essays and nagging, but that’s only because I love the game and care enough about it to want to see it succeed.

And shame on them for 4 maps only. Shame on you anet, that’s a huge debt that would need to be repayed on the next expansion.

OMG I love them. YES PLEASE! Anet please make this happen.

I love longbow #2 the most out of all those bows because of the shard-like edges and the pinkish energy running through it – as the others look too similar to the tormented weapon theme, whereas #2 looks very shatterer inspired and unique.

For swords I’d go with #5 (because it matches the shield I chose), with #3 (very nice and celestial looking, also very sleek) and #4 (unique and obsidian-themed) as runner ups.

For shields, well, they’re all pretty good. I’m tossing up between #4, #6 and #7. I like #4 because it reminds me of the destroyer shield, only with a shatterer/purple effect, which I’ve always wanted. #6 looks more obsidian-like, and #7 would go GREAT with mesmers and their chronomancer’s spec allowing them to wield shields, and cause, y’know, they have pink particle effects, so it would look great. If I had to choose one though, I’d go with #7 (as #4 when I think about it, would be too similar to the destroyer shield, and #6 is obsidian-esque and wouldn’t match with the sword and bow I personally chose).

I did find the bugged version of the event more engaging than the intended version. However, it’s worth noting that the bugged version goes against one of GW2’s core event design principles: A player should not be able to cause an event to fail for everybody else.

If I had a dollar for every time I saw people killing the low health Vinetenders either due to trolling or an inability to understand people around them saying some variation of “Please don’t kill!” or God knows what, then I would have enough money to, I don’t know, fund a nice night out where I could irritate my friends with tales of The Irritating People Who Didn’t Understand The Concept Of Waiting To Kill The Mob. Apolus argues in an earlier post that this is evidence that players aren’t dumb and should not be treated as such. And I mostly disagree. This is evidence that MOST players aren’t dumb but there’s still that small contingent of players who can, and will, ruin everything for everybody else and they’re why we can’t have nice things.

Where I would agree is that I would like events that are more complicated than stand in the blue square and kill all the things. But I don’t want events where players can introduce a fail state for everybody else. Whether through malice or stupidity a player shouldn’t be able to ruin events for everybody else.

Why aren’t compact & deposit all materials buttons in the inventory panel beside the gear? There’s space there for it, and they’re a one click -> result action.

https://twitter.com/simmonli/status/631845230149419008

[edit] they should be separate buttons, guess I’m not super clear.

Talyn.3295:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

lulz

A gear tread mill has two key factors

1) New Tiers are continually added. -Hasn’t happened
2) Each new Tier invalidates previous tiers. -Hasn’t happened

Stat choices aside, the fact my warrior is still using the exact same exotic greatsword I purchased for him shortly after hitting 80 almost three years ago now, invalidates your entire argument. It is just as viable today as it was then, despite the ascended introduction to the game.

Peace

Don’t confuse incompetence as intentional design. We know for a fact that these stats, when first added, were theoretically better then most existing compositions for at least half the classes in the game.

The incompetence is the fact that these new combo never lived up to their potential, because of the Dev’s reluctance at fixing the underlying mechanics that would make them work. Condition damage was broken for how long? Only now (after Sinister stats were released) had they tried to fix what was holding them back from fulfilling their intended function within the build meta. And yet, despite the intent of the rework, they waffled on several decisions that made condi damage even less scalable then it was before. Any theoretical advantage was then lost, as the combined damage of TWO whole damage vectors couldn’t even come close to the scalability of the one vector that is direct damage, despite that vector having the most counter elements.

When the game launched, Toughness as a stat didn’t even work. I can’t even remember when it was fixed in relation to when the first batch of LS events came out that added new prefixes to the game. There are still SEVERAL prefixes which are exclusive to a handfull of items, many of which aren’t even exotic, or can only be obtained via deprecated prefix items that got stat selection to back fill.

Just because its not vertical, doesn’t mean its not a treadmill. The fact that we’re constantly encouraged to pursue them, putting inordinate amounts of work into obtaining, and then having to repeat the process again in the hopes that the next prefix might do what it theoretically should….. Thats what makes a treadmill.

Anet could also allow us to combine 5 exotic luck into 2 legendary luck… I’m just saying it would be a nice option to have as legendary luck is currently the only essence we cannot craft.

As for more uses for luck, I’d like to have consumables crafted from luck that can increase the chances of salvaging components such as inscriptions and insignia from armor and weapons.

Tigaseye.2047:

Why on earth would anyone want to make “sub-optimal” characters?

I totally understand enjoying a large amount of choice, but surely that approach only works if they are capable of balancing it?

I can’t speak for the person who said it, but “sub-optimal” doesn’t necessarily mean “intentionally bad”. It just means “not meta.” If I can take an axe trait that makes my DPS 1000, or a greatsword trait that makes it 1050, then the greatsword is optimal. However, the difference is small enough that the axe character can easily perform just as well in any game mode. If a player thinks the axe is more fun, they’re free to choose that with no real detriment to themselves.

That’s the loss that many people are mourning. There were many, many build options that were not meta, but could perform just fine, and which naturally had the highest usage among players who weren’t trying to crunch that extra 1-2% of damage out of their build. If character efficiency were on a percentage scale and 1% was the meta, the “sub-optimal” 90-99% are where the variety was gutted.

Probably. Legendary weapons require WvW badges, but edge of the mist gave us a viable alternative to obtaining them on uncompetitive WvW servers.

Kind of like of all their scavenger hunt ideas, initially they’ll try to shuffle us around to under utilized game modes, eventually stop upkeep on them, and introduce an alternative so they don’t have to fix the underlying problem of the primary method. This won’t stop the intrepid players, but they will pay a higher cost as a result.

I know that historically people have complained a lot about the sounds the SAB minis make, but since I never had any interest in using one myself it wasn’t really a problem for me, although I certainly agree that a “mute miniatures” checkbox was long overdue even before now.

Now though, we have the Mystical Dragon, which is a gorgeous mini and finally one of a decent size. However, it is constantly making a very low-frequency growling noise like a creaking ship, and I just can’t deal with it anymore. As much as I love the mini, I had to switch back to something silent. Of course, since it was a free mini they are now everywhere , so getting away from the noise completely is very difficult.

Please, please give us the option to mute the sounds miniatures make.

NapTooN.6283:

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

A friend deleted her character with the legendary staff on it by mistake, didn’t get the character nor the weapon back. And we did send many emails and explanations about a genuine mistake (another of her characters looked very similar in name and appearance).

What do we learn from this?

• Always check the Inventory of the Character you want to delete before you delete it
• Don’t name one Character xXxKillerxXx and the other xXxKilIerxXx (one of them has a capital i as an “L”)and make them look the same and have the same Profession.

Agreed.

I make, and delete, a lot of characters and the only thing I’ve ever lost is some karma back before it was account bound.

My method is to strip everything out of the equipment tab, even stuff you don’t want to keep, because it’s easier to look at an empty tab and confirm it’s empty than to look at one with stuff equipped and work out what you do and don’t want. Condense their inventory down to the starter backpack (by banking, selling or salvaging items) and remove all extra bags.

Then go through the stuff in the inventory, carefully read the name and deposit, salvage, sell or delete each item individually until there’s nothing left. Then double check I’ve done everything above.

I do a similar thing when actually deleting them. I click the character I want to delete, double check it’s the right one (it’s pretty clear, since they’re the naked one), type the name in, double check the name and then delete them.

Although I have to admit I’d never made a temp character with a name that was virtually identical to one I wanted to keep.

As the title states, the mystic dragon “mini” is far too large.
While I can appreciate that some people preferentially like this, please consider that these are supposed to be miniatures, and that something that large and long is getting obstructive.
It seriously occupies more screen space then several ranger combat pets. That’s partly a result of its profile and animations rather then sheer physical size, but the size itself is fairly large too.
Even scaling it down to half of its current size would still leave it as one of the larger and more showy minis.
It’s a great looking mini, I love it, but the size is just too much.

Personally, I wouldn’t salvage anything ever if I had dawn in my inventory. If I obtained a dawn, I would stop whatever I’m doing, move it straight into a nice special place in my bank and never remove it until I was ready to forge it into sunrise or sell it.

MattyP.6954:

Ayrilana.1396:

Also keep in mind that the OP is referring to weapon swaps outside of combat.

…but that already exists, and every class has it. It’s called the Hero Panel. There is literally nothing stopping Elementalists or Engineers from switching weapons out of combat.

The OP’s request is redundant bordering on nonsensical.

No, OP’s request is a Quality of Life improvement. They could easily just lock the weapon swap button once combat is initiated or once the PvP match starts. The fact is, it’s a pain to open to the hero panel and swap weapons, especially since the hero panel does not automatically default to the weapon screen.

However, I could see this taking a whole different route. Instead of asking for Elementalists and Engineers getting a pure-QoL weapon swap, we should probably instead be advocating for a more-streamlined process for swapping weapon, armor, and accessory sets across ALL classes. Maybe an HUD icon with a pop-out menu where you can swap individual items or whole sets (out of combat only, obviously).

CrashTestAuto.9108:

lordkrall.7241:

So, here you have your comment about where SAB is:

Rinith’s reply is probably the closest description to the reality as of today where we stand with SAB. We’ve made a number of changes to the physics engine as a result of places like Silverwastes, Dry Top, and the expac that means we need to go back and re-work SAB to use all the new movement systems. It also needs a pretty solid rewards overhaul, and I know Josh would love to make some changes to world 2 before it returns.
We’re all focused on expansion – both the announced details, and the un-announced details and simply can’t peel anyone off a team to work on it right now without it effecting expac. The two SAB worlds we’ve seen will return as we’ve said before, but simply put our focus right now is on making the expansion amazing

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3bqhaf/infinite_continue_coin/csoszn5

Umm… what does he mean “needs a pretty solid rewards overhaul”??? SAB has the best reward system in the game!!! The balance between “luck/money/farming” for blues and then “skill/dedication” for greens and yellows (which are just different colours, not qualitatively better than blues) was fantastic!

I’m with this guy. Why the kitten does SAB need a “solid rewards overhaul”? Its the best system in the game. If anything stuff like Teq and TT need to be overhauled so that they are more like SAB reward structure. Its like they try to kill SAB off, first with the “rework” to world 1 and the bauble changes, now this…

Subscriptions:
- Feeling forced to play to make your money worth
-Doesn’t make sense for the expansion fee as well
-Still has a cash shop, but not reversible (can only use gold to pay for subs)
-In order to make money, the company only has to make enough content for the people to pay the Subscription

No Subscription:
-Can play and quit and come back at no cost
-Justifies the expansion fee
-Has a cash shop, but reversible
-In order to make money, the company has to make enough content for the players to be interested in the game and make interesting cash shop content for the players to buy them

Well, Arenanet haven’t exactly gone out of their way to instil trust in their playerbase.

• They said they would do a patch every two weeks to adjust balance in light of the huge balance patch. Have they? Nope. Have they even mentioned anything about it? Nope.

• They haven’t released any statements regarding the wvw, or even acknowledged it.

A simple statement here or there would quell the playerbase immediately. Have they bothered to? Nope. Their silence only further angers everyone.

So, basically: “other people have stuff, and I want stuff, so take away their stuff to make me feel better”.

Seems legit.

An infinite trahearne tonic, to troll all the Marshall-haters.

My guess this year.
A 20 level scroll
A birthday booster
And that’s it.

Why? Because they are working on the expansion and don’t have time to think about birthday gifts. They are too busy to have holidays or release old content, much less make a new birthday present.

1. Lots of People create Eternity for sale. They get 4000g+ and 2 legendary skins. In my opinion Eternity must be Account Bound instantly after creating.
2. Anet please uptade Eternity Skin for something special, Not Day/Night Skin. Something like this

A sub fee is the dinosaur of gaming. There is nothing to be gained from adding $15 a month except a smaller gaming population.

Its technically not sink, and more of a distraction. The mat mulchers can’t reliably yield good loot, because the input material, being abundant, is not a gamble by nature.

It was added as way to say there is a use for all this junk mats, that literally has a minimum cost to utilize, without actually giving us something useful from it. As such, I don’t expect it to have any kind of improvement to the output of the system. If anything, they’ll add different merchant/crafting intensive use, and looks just obtainable enough to the masses so they’d pursue it. The upfront cost of Ascended armor is what turned people off to it….. So I bet the next iteration will have a larger number of intermediate steps, and hide the high total cost by making the cumulatively expensive outputs account bound. Like how the Gifts of Might and Magic have no trade value, but their source materials are the majority of the Legendary’s cost.

The Revenant revolves around the Legend Game mechanic with swapping between 2 legends changing the utility skills instead of the weapon skills, and an energy upkeep/management system similar to that in GW1.Everybody knows this but I want to state it clearly to highlight how the present setup does not always seem to be cohesive to that mechanic design.

1. Weapons: to Swap or Not to Swap, that is the question.
There are lots of arguments on the forums for and against the Revenant having a weapon swap. The basic mechanic of swapping utility skills instead of weapon skills as a matter of simply bare numbers looks like it should be no different than weapon swap on any of the professions that permit such. Yet that neglects 3 subtle but significant issues.

1a. The first is the overall loss of utility flexibility. When it comes down to it, each legend is a prepackaged SET of utility skills. Where every other profession allows players to mix & match utility skills to meet their anticipated needs, the revenant only can choose between 5 sets (OoC), rather than the mathematically significant combination possibilities available in other classes to select each skill individually. This means that if someone does not agree with the options within a package set they are simply out of luck. This is a non-trivial impact since weapon skills are also a set of skills that cannot be chosen individually.

This loss of flexibility comes home to roost with the current lack of mobility & stability skills within the Legend skill sets.

1b. The second loss of flexibility is seen in the inability to adjust for opponent range. Every other class with the exception of Elementalist has at least the potential to change between close/mid and long range weapons or kits. The elementalist is like the revenant in that it does not have the ability to account for range differences (think d/d vs. staff), yet the number of skills available with the 4 attunements provides double the skill flexibility IN COMBAT to that of the revenant. This applies a significant penalty to the revenant in game play.

1c. Legends are closely associated with a particular weapon. However because there is no weapon swap, the play can really only utilize the full scope of play for a single legend, with the second legend being handicapped by being out of sync with the weapon equipped. I can think of three possible solutions to this. One – make the revenant swap ALSO swap weapons at the same time (so single click/key changes both); Two – step back from the close association of Legend to weapon, Three – have swapping legends change the weapon skill functions so that the weapon effects vary from legend to legend. Personally I think this last would be the best option, but probably the most difficult to achieve. This is the greatest failing of the revenant concept right here.

2. Energy Admixture
The energy mechanic is awkward. The idea is fine, but applying a skill cool down AND an energy cost to weapon skills at the same time seems to be buying the worst of both worlds from the thief vs. other professions. This really should be one or the other, but not both. Given the profession mechanic with its concept of swapping utility rather than weapon, I think the energy cost should be applied to legend skills only, with the common casting time/cool down method being used for weapon skills.

3. Let’s Play well together
Ideally I think there ought to be a measure of synergy between Legends. We should have good reasons to swap back and forth between legends. There should be a reason to pick Mallyx/Ventari together in one place and Mallyx/Jalis somewhere else. We should be encouraged to swap between legends frequently as part of skilled play. Right now this sort of interplay between legends seems to be lacking.

4. Visual Suggestions
On a completely different aspect of playing the revenant, I have a couple thoughts on the visual appearances.

4a. When playing the mace/axe weapon pairs, the red weapon effect looks . . . flat. It seems to have no color depth or something, so it felt unpolished. The issue really just seems to be that one tone of red. Color & design aren’t something I am good at so the best I can do is this rough impression.

4b. The skills that have an energy upkeep, I had a very, very difficult time visually identifying whether they were toggled on or not. I just could not tell by looking at the skill. I don’t have any suggestions on how to fix that, just that it needs to be adjusted some how.

Over all I loved playing the revenant. It will be a great addition to the game. However, I do hope that there will be some adjustments to accommodate for the loss of flexibility.

AlphaK.9486:

I figured it out. The invocation line first trait “Swirling Mists” is the problem. Using a skill summons an orbiting globe of mist when you spend energy. This extra effect counts like a skill in the queue eating up the second skill that was queued.

It should be noted that the engineer trait “Static Discharge” has the same issue with the static discharge being placed in the queue and canceling out the second queued skill. (Note: It’s likely that any trait that causes a cast/summon creates this issue! It would be a good idea to review any traits that cast/summon and confirm the behavior.)

This is however a much bigger problem with the Revenant since the trait “Swirling Mists” is unavoidable when taking the Invocation line.

I really hope we will see this fixed in the next beta.

Props to finding that one. Nice one.

rapthorne.7345:

2. Allowing weapon swap on legend swap (ie, having a weapon in the secondary weapon slot that got swapped to when swapping legends, and vice-versa). This I feel would be the more practical and easy to implement solution, requiring the least development time while still making legend swapping in combat feel much better than it currently does.

I feel like this is the most agreeable and sensible option, especially due to how each weapon is tailored to a specific legend.

Revenants should have two weapon slots, but only switch them when changing legends.