Guild Wars 2

The Greyhawk.9107:

Sepheiron.4918:

I’m not talking about the gliders which are fine but the wings as back item look so ridiculous and don’t really match the original style of GW1 imo. Should’ve left them in Aion.

I don’t disagree, but the djinn’s outta the bottle. Not really sure what point there is to this thread.

I also can’t see the point… They aren’t going to just remove them now… But I must agree that adding them into the game was a mistake. As adding a lot of other things… Players no longer match the surrounding world and its characters.

I’m not talking about the gliders which are fine but the wings as back item look so ridiculous and don’t really match the original style of GW1 imo. Should’ve left them in Aion.

While some of what the OP talked about can be fixed with l2p, it can’t be argued that there’s been power creep in the game. For those who don’t know, it started about 3 years ago when they decoupled stats from traits. The balance was never quite right from the baseline stats, and it definitely favored power. Then with HoT, some builds and core specs put out insane burst damage, not just power burst, like DD thief or GS headbutt warrior, but condi burst as well, like with mesmers putting 25 stacks of confusion or guards with burning in one second. We’ve all been one shotted or close to it, and that is just unbalanced gameplay. I’ve advocated for years that they up toughness/vitality base. I’m not alone. Not by much, maybe 25%, but it needs to be done.

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

That’s all on the players though. Asking Anet to parent when it’s within their power to remedy is like herding cats.

Been over this before, human behaviour is essentially selfish on the whole, its up to the game design to mitigate against it and the design of WvW doesn’t. Alternatives have been proposed that do mitigate against it better

Yep.

But I did with this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Elastic-servers/first#post6703028

And yet nobody wants to talk about it because it could impact their stacked server lol.

I think it’s worth testing for a couple of months to see if it does indeed spread out the population.

My other idea is to charge $150 per transfer.

Djinn.9245:

Ariurotl.3718:

I’m not being an ELITIST here, I’m a pretty poor player, but I have to disagree. None of the bosses caused me much trouble other than Caudecus (due to the camera and awful AoE bloodstone-throwing mechanics) and Aerin (because screw all this Zephyrite jumping nonsense). If I can beat them, then almost anyone can.

So, you say you are a pretty poor player but you thought the bosses were fine. What do you think this says to the people who are having trouble? And “If I can beat them, then almost anyone can” – so those who report difficulty are liars?

Ariurotl.3718:

I hate to say L2P, but what are you gonna do?

P.S. Don’t deck your chars in Berserker gear if you have trouble. Toughness and Vitality are the best friends for bad players such as you and I.

I play the stories with a Warrior with Soldier armor and traited with regeneration and a few condi-cleanse. I did not complete any boss stories unless my friends happened to do them with me. I recruited their help to finish HoT so I could do a Legendary.

Answers like this are simply not helpful. What if I was in a college group and said I found Calculus difficult? I doubt anyone would have trouble understanding that some people are better at Math than others. I don’t know why people have SO MUCH difficulty understanding that the same can be true of anything.

Actually those answers are helpful. Because if enough people feel that way, then someone could figure out that maybe they’re not playing well, and they could learn to play better. Not everyone is going to feel that way, obvoiusly. Some people will claim they absolutely can’t improve their play or learn to do it.

But then you have the issue, make something simple enough for the bottom percentage and a bigger percentage of people at the top will find it boring

There’s always going to be someone that cant’ do a boss, or can’t do a mission. You can’t keep making the game easier and easier because someone says they can’t do it. You have to look at the percentages of people who can’t.

So if a player can’t solo things that 90% of the playerbase can, I’m not sure that’s an issue for the devs. If they made these things easier, it would harm the game from other peoples’ point of view.

tldr; You can’t please everyone.

I used to be annoyed by not having a WP nearby where I needed to go when playing the game, however over the last year or two I appreciate it more and more.

To this day I remember the Zones and Paths of the original Guild Wars, simply because there was no teleporting to nearly exactly where you needed to go.
In GW2 there is barely a single Zone of which I can recall the whole layout or even half the content in them, since once you ran through once, you can just TP where ever you need to go.

Mounts will make the world feel a whole lot “smaller”, but I hope also bring back a feeling of exploration, scale and population in a sense.
As long as there are Waypoints everywhere (sometimes 3 within 20 seconds of normal running) though, that feature is essentially useless.

I’m all in favour of 1-4 WP’s at Key points of the map and thats it.
This will make the game feel more populated, since you will actually see people around travelling beside you (and stumbling upon events together), instead of everybody just watching a loading screen until they are precisely where they needed to go, before teleporting away again.

In retrospect, the Waypoint overload of Core Tyria was one of the biggest mistakes of the Core world.
For a game based around exploration and stumbling on events with other people, to have a teleport nearly anywhere at any time, did huge damage to the feeling of a populated and active world.

Essence Snow.3194:

I’d be interested on hearing your thoughts. Do you like the trend and why? or Do your dislike the trend and why?

The waypoints in Heart of Thorns are less than those in core tyria but they are placed in ways that they cover the entire map. The Itzel camp in Verdant Brink has a waypoint inside that gives you easy (and fast) access to all the Itzel events, the Ogre camp in Tangled Depths has a waypoint which gives you access to all Ogre events. I honestly don’t think more waypoints would’ve been a good idea for Heart of Thorns maps because they are placed in such a way to provide fast access to all events around them. This works because Heart of Thorns maps are built around event hubs. Not to mention, Heart of Thorns maps are smaller than Core maps.

LS3 maps also have less waypoints but they are built around the Heart of Thorns event hub logic. With the sole exception of Draconis Mons, all the other zones have all of their events a very close distance from the nearest waypoint, meaning even with less waypoints, you are never missing an event anyway. Draconis Mons has some events that are really far away of waypoints, but as I said, that’s the exception.

On the other hand, Core Tyria maps are NOT built around event hubs. You might have events at distant places, meaning more waypoints are needed to get around fast and reach events before they end.

So the question for me is, how are Path of Fire maps designed? Are the events scattered all over the place or they happen around event hubs? If the events in Path of Fire use a similar method as Heart of Thorns then I don’t think you will notice that there are less waypoints. Players who like waypoints will be able to teleport to the nearest event hub and start finishing events around it, like normal. Those who don’t like waypoints, will run there on their mounts, so it’s a win for both types of players.

Now if they use the Core Tyria model of having events happen all over the place then I can see how problematic the reduction of waypoints can be.

Carnius Magius.8091:

If the game is that easy then strip all your gear down to nothing and play starting in Queensdale and play with only equipable drops. Then move on the next level area upgrading only from equipable drops. Heck they should make an achievement for that.

That’s an argument I see a lot but it doesn’t make any sense at all. Stripping the gear won’t make anything more “challenging” that’s a quick and excuse to dismiss the actual problem. Contrary to popular belief, challenge doesn’t mean things take longer to kill and you take more damage, that’s annoying, not challenging, that’s frustrating, not fun. That’s what the old fractals were like, mobs that took forever to kill and could 1-shot anyone. That wasn’t fun nor challenging.

The old final boss of Snowblind fractal had loads of hit points and did very high damage. Mechanic wise he was trash, a giant sack of hit points that hits hard with slow, predictable, auto attacks. No fun, no challenge, no excitement. The new Snowblind last boss has actual mechanics, has interesting adds to deal with, all while his own damage was lowered massively as well as his hit point total.

Despite how many times this argument is posted, the answer is the same. Replacing your gear with lower tier gear won’t make things interesting nor challenging.

Here is the deal, we can talk from the new player perspective and it would hold some truth. ANet did go out of their way to dumb down the core game to appeal more to new incoming players.
However lets also remember that we had far too many veteran players more willing to run the Queensdale Champ Train back when it was still a thing rather than doing the more challenging Frostgorge one. So players as a general rule seem to want their PvE squishy. Core will probably stay as it is even though I do agree that modifying perhaps on the higher level maps would be interesting.

I’d have to agree that core maps do need a very slight bump., but I think it’s more about the downscaling. I played at launch, and all the hype around the game was this: endgame was not necessary because core Tyria would always be challenging. You would always be able to go back and play the maps, downscaled to your level and meet the appropriate challenge!

Downscaled from 80 in any map in Tyria, even with blue and greens (I’ve tried this) is simply too easy. It just needs the downscaling formula to be tweaked, imho. Sure, I would also like, as some above suggested, some more variety in difficulty (harder patrols etc.) but the scaling is the main issue.

TopBadge, if you’re on a US server and you want help with HoT, I’ll be able to show you how to get around and survive it. It’s definitely not easy but it can be a lot easier and quite a few people I took through and showed the ropes to like it a lot more.

The three things you need to understand going through HOT is mob selection (which foes to go after in which order), your own profession, and how to deal with break bars. Beyond that, it’s not as bad as a lot of people make it out.

That is to say, sometimes having a guide can make this a lot easier.

HoT for me is the best content in the game. I play all over, in most game modes, but there’s nothing better than going back into HoT maps to experience the great synergy of playing around other people in interesting fights. I’d say if PoF isn’t on about the same level (which I’d guess it’s probably going to be) then many will leave the game. We certainly don’t neeed any more faceroll content – there’s a whole core world of that to play in.

All 1U1D does is have servers that don’t belong in a given tier fall or rise faster. Otherwise once it stabilizes, which it does so quicker, it’ll be even more stagnant and less-balanced than before.

After stabilizing, the top server placement matchups will be
(1, 2, 3)
(4, 5 , 6)
(7, 8, 9)

where numbers are the ranks/servers. This makes sense for balanced matchups.

On the 1u1d system the following week will be

(1, 2 , 4)
(3, 5, 7)
(6, 8, 9)

T2 and below now have a full two-tier gap between red and green. #4 isn’t going to do better than #3. The only way to rise in 1u1d with existing disparities is to actually get mass transfers and stack servers, which is the exact opposite solution people were looking for. 1u1d would only ever work for servers that were already very close. Obviously this isn’t true at all.

And the following week?
(1, 2, 3)
(4, 5, 6)
(7, 8, 9)

It’s a cycle. The expected chance to win never changes.

1) ANet has only N different ways to do the linking without creating huge population imbalances. I suspect that N is less than 1. ANet suggested to double the number of worlds, so that they would have more choice. But that suggestion was shot down fast by the players. In addition EU language specific worlds impose more limitations.

2) I bet they do consider the coverage. Unfortunately the players of similar time zones tend to flock on the same worlds. This is mission impossible without forced migrations. (linking is a form of forced migration itself)

3) A solution would be to relink every week, but players wanted to have 2 months periods instead. There was a poll about it.

What can be done then? I’d say end world linking since it does so much harm to the game mode. ANet promised to rebalance the world populations before adding any meaningful rewards for winning a matchup, but that seems forgotten.

Jayne.9251:

Pensadora.9478:

Jayne.9251:

Pensadora.9478:

And I would point out that not one person has yet to argue that this gamemode is balanced nor competitive in its current state.

You need to let this go. WvW was never meant to be balanced. The devs themselves have said this many times over the past four years.

I think what you think I mean by balanced is not what I mean by balance. I do NOT mean by balance: equal numbers on each side, as in soccer, football, baseball, etc.

Balanced, as far as I am concerned, is a multi-faceted measure. It is the summation of many factors, population being among them, that create fair and competitive fights.

So, ‘balance’ is not just population.

But, I can understand how you might think this is all that I mean, as currently the massive disparities in population and coverage, which we have been discussing here, show clearly that this gamemode is neither balanced nor competitive in its current state.

That’s all on the players though. Asking Anet to parent when it’s within their power to remedy is like herding cats.

Until the players, guilds, get their act together, no amount of blowing up and rebuilding will fix the issue.

That said, with the dev response, this thread should die lol. It’s academic at this point.

Academic is important, only when people are more informed of the issues then they will understand the limited amount of solutions and be supportive of any solutions that can be implemented to solve the issues. So far, there are more don’t-read than read, so, it is really hard.

Then again, you are also right, devs already explicitly state that we will always fall short in our perspectives due to limited access to the data thus all is pointless.

Firebaall.5127:

I find it pretty silly that Anet merged so many servers, yet won’t touch the Stackgate server problem.

It’s REALLY annoying to get get paired up with servers that are under-performing, then get rematched/paired with servers you fought against. Anet’s “balancing” servers in WvW is a horrible joke. They have ruined any sense of server pride for those servers that are constantly paired up with others.

It’s clear the home server system is a failure in WvW.

Linking is in essence a soft merger to keep “server identity” as intact as possible. In reality, server identity is challenged. Devs understand very well that they can only reduce imbalance issue by consolidating populations but I believe the main problem is that community is not very supportive to any solutions that involve partial or total destruction of servers. This strong objections become a major obstacle to wvw balancing therefore limiting the number of approaches until there isn’t really any immediate approaches left to try.

It’s a good idea and I think it’s something that Arenanet should trial particularly given the other things they have tried haven’t worked too well.

To limit exploits:

1. Limit numbers not based on the lowest populated world, but based on the 2nd lowest populated world. This retains the essence of your idea but only the largest world would normally get queues and nobody could exploit anything by “simply logging out”.

2. Implement a lower limit before such a system would kick in – for example you can always get the first 20 people into a map no matter how many enemies and then for the 21st person if would depend on how many enemies there were on the map. This makes it much easier for a guild to get most or all of its members on the same map. This would also mean that a world can always have at least 80 people total before queuing all maps (and obviously many more if the enemy turns up) but is prevented from having all 80 people as a single blob unless the other worlds have similar numbers.

3. Allow a grace period for people who got disconnected or otherwise left to re-enter the map without needing to queue again. Otherwise people who did get disconnected would be frustrated that they can’t rejoin.

4. Trial a system first and then adjust it based on feedback.

5. Some game elements would need to be rebalanced to assume more even numbers.

Note: I am not talking about megaserver dynamic maps.

Was just thinking of ways to deter bandwagoning …

What if each server could only get X+10 players on a map based on the lowest populated server?

Server A has 100 players trying to get on EB.
Server B has 65 players trying to get on EB
Server C has 50 players on EB

Server A and B would only be allowed to have 60 players on map unless Server C added more players.

A queue would result for any over the 60 cap, added to incrementally as each new player joins the map from Server C.

If players from Server C leave the map, further reducing lowest pop numbers, then players on A and B remain, but if they crash or leave, that spot is removed.

People hate queues.

Would this motivate to spread out, at least for some, if they can’t consistently get their whole guild on map; or can’t get on as a single player?

Einlanzer.1627:

I think the only thing that’s wrong with underwater exploration is:

a.) mob density tends to be too high for the 3d movement
b.) too many utility skills don’t work for no good reason.

If they addressed both of those things I’d kind of enjoy it from time to time. After all, it’s still a minority of content in the game, and I don’t expect that will ever change.

c) thief is a Joke underwater.

I think the only thing that’s wrong with underwater exploration is:

a.) mob density tends to be too high for the 3d movement
b.) too many utility skills don’t work for no good reason.

If they addressed both of those things I’d kind of enjoy it from time to time. After all, it’s still a minority of content in the game, and I don’t expect that will ever change.

TexZero.7910:

Xbon.9086:

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

Underwater combat is half done.
You have if you’re lucky 2 weapon choices (makes swapping pointless) that have no synergy with your terrestrial traits/build.
Your skills if you’re lucky are limited to about 40% and in some cases that 40% is utter garbage and has no reason to be locked out other than because they can.
All of this is before even mentioning the junk deal that is aqua breathers. The most significantly overpriced portion of the content if you want desired stats since you’ll always be at 5/6 runeslots without one.

Underwater combat is bad and needs a metric ton of fixes for the above alone.

Aquabreathers shouldn’t even be a separate armor item, it should just use your normal headgear’s stats and rune, it’s just a convenient deus ex machina for why we don’t have an oxygen meter, which was initially what was so exciting about how anet was going to do underwater combat, we’d be able to swim indefinitely under water and explore a lot of cool things, underwater ruins, underwater puzzles, fund sunken ships, treasure chests, etc. All that is cool stuff, but having to buy another helmet (and for a long time our choices on breathing devices was limited to karma vendors so we couldn’t even get a level 80 one), another rune, and then having skills locked out and doing less damage, with the underwater weapons not really supporting your build (IE I find that trident is often condi focused and spear is often power focused.. if you’re a condi build but a class that can’t use trident your damage will suffer. If you’re a power build but your class can ONLY use trident, your damage will suffer.)

Having Aquabreathers be cosmetic only would improve underwater combat.

Having all classes be able to use all underwater weapons would also improve underwater combat.

Xbon.9086:

I like the underwater combat, never bat an eyelash when aquatic fractal comes up… I don’t see why people hate on it so much.

Underwater combat is half done.
You have if you’re lucky 2 weapon choices (makes swapping pointless) that have no synergy with your terrestrial traits/build.
Your skills if you’re lucky are limited to about 40% and in some cases that 40% is utter garbage and has no reason to be locked out other than because they can.
All of this is before even mentioning the junk deal that is aqua breathers. The most significantly overpriced portion of the content if you want desired stats since you’ll always be at 5/6 runeslots without one.

Underwater combat is bad and needs a metric ton of fixes for the above alone.

I’d only support this option if guards near villages and towns attack you for having your weapons out. If we’re gonna pull the “roleplay card” having your weapon drawn all the time is a symbol of perpetual hostility, and should be responded to as such.

I agree that it would be helpful if you could give specific examples of the bosses you’re having trouble with.

A lot of story bosses, especially in Season 3, have specific mechanics which make the fight much easier. In some cases I’m not actually sure you can beat them without doing it that way, no matter how many people you have or how good you are at combat in general. (If you’ve ever played a Zelda game it’s the same idea – you have to avoid their attacks for a bit, then you get an opportunity to stun them or break their invulnerability, a short time to attack normally and then it starts over.)

If you can tell us which bosses they are we can help you work out what to do as I know it’s not always clear.

Are there less in the new maps though? Putting HoT to one side, the LS3 maps are generally much, much smaller (Draconis Mons being an arguable exception due to its verticality), so the number of waypoints have scaled down a lot to compensate. There are also many (too many!) extra travelling methods with lava tubes and that grappling thingy which also compensate for less waypoints.

I’m 50/50 on waypoints. They are incredibly useful and for a game so accessible as this they are a natural and seamless fit in that respect. They do however, shrink the World too much. It’s not sure how easily we can get places from an ease of game playing, it is how easily we can suddenly get from place to place in the story and travel from Ember Bay to Bitterfrost so suddenly, when the mileage is probably in the thousands.

The problem with the core maps is how we are spoiled with waypoints just scattered a bit less strategically, meaning some are clustered together unnecessarily. I THink LS2/HoT/LS3 does a better job of placement so the ease of travel exists, but the number isn’t too excessive encouraging you to really explore and learn the map.

Tdlr: I think the reduction has been a positive thing

Well a.i on mmos tend to Be overall awfull due some limitations.
Even with boons on mobs it needs to be scripted as a.i, making just npc’s spam boon because yes would not be a good thing to add.

2 things thay would be decent to start would be implementing player classes to PvE mob’s.
Dagger thiefa with backstab a.i from players back, and keep adding just some Key skills with some scripted rotations for they other classes.

Rauderi.8706:

Granted, I would be very interested in a post-mortum from people who decided to put the game down. What kind of “boredom” did they experience? Open world in the base game? Dungeons? The material grind? The post-80 experience? The limited raid experience? PvP class imbalance? Stepping foot into WvW?
It’s a huge list of possibilities.

True. The word “boring” can mean different things to different players. For example, the introduction of Ascended gear was meant to combat the “boring” part of gearing. A fresh level 80 could easily get exotic gear of the stats they wanted and then asked “what now?”

Buuut, lamenting endgame doesn’t matter if players never get to 80. And the current vanilla mobs aren’t really going to hold any attention aside from indulging the occasional power fantasy. I’m not suggesting making them HoT hard/annoying, but nudging them up a bit, or at least giving them enough health/toughness to warrant using a rotation instead of just auto-attacks.

Yep. Exactly. And it’s not only while leveling, you can fight the Risen in Orr with a random build while equipped with masterwork gear and only using your auto attack. A game with such an active combat system goes to waste when it’s not used by the content. But as we’ve seen in this thread, any idea to buff the mobs to make them more fun and exciting instead of hp sponges is dismissed because to some players there exist two types of mobs: the ultra easy one and the ultra hard one, without anything in between.

Oh my god don’t buff the mobs because I will quit if I can’t fight them pressing only 1 on my keyboard.

The Snow Leopard Cub (aka the “bugged,” unhidable mini) was one of the most annoying surprises I’ve run into in this game. Seriously, thank you for the new vendor with cat items.

AND finally being able to mute other players’ legendaries to boot. Now we just need the option to hide dialogue bubbles and the QoL gods shall sing

Now you got me with the title, I first read it as “Thank you for letting us get rid of coats” and got excited that Anet may have changed course about coats for medium armor classes.

I’m happy for you that you got rid of the cub though.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Honestly, adding more/proper boons to enemies aren’t going to make them “zomg the insta death” to lower level players. In fact it might make them consider their choice of skills a little more, or traits, etc that allow for boon strip and condi cleanse, etc. OP does have a point that once you reach a certain level, the mobs do become a little easy to faceroll without much thought to gear or even personal skill. Sure it could take a while but most times when doing a map open or something, or even a HP in core tyria I find myself literally running in a circle around an enemy with my 1 set to auto while I drink my coffee. I only ever use the other skills if I want to practice a combo or something like that, but usually its just a kiting game.

In reality, it actually makes a huge difference. Below level lvl 60, boons are disproportionately stronger because of how they scale compared to stats. However, mobs are scaled on the assumption power compounding from Traits… and its not until lvl 60 that players had access to Grandmaster traits (and points to use them) under the old 5 Trait system. For a LOT of builds, almost 1/3 of the damage potential comes from trait synergy, while another 1/3 comes from skill combinations.

As a result, high level players in low level areas are substantially stronger then low level players in matching levels, despite the fact that high levels are also underscaled to compensate for this. In fact…. they’re underscaled on all 3 vectors for raw statistics (base stats, item tier, and passive bonuses)… but the compounding power of % based traits, and baseline values of conditions and boons, they are still way stronger then level matched players.

This disparity means any bonus thats large enough to be noticeable by high level players is downright devastating to matched level. Consider Espec builds can reasonably solo Champs, while a player still leveling Core its a major struggle to not die from the collateral damage champs produce. Even standard mobs with access to boons make them twice as hard to deal with….. just look at the dredge, or other groups that boon share.

The real problem isn’t the scaling….. its the entire encounter design that lends to scaling being the only vector for difficulty. The evidence of this becomes apparent once you start looking at Mordrem. Silverwaste introduced a whole new vector of combat by giving every single one them access to CCs…. with the most dangerous being the ones that can stack it (ie Teragriffs). They actually don’t do that much more damage then other lvl 80 tyrian enemies…… but its the way they can layer an area with damage fields, and then trap players in them, that make them night and day more dangerous then anything the Risen had ever thrown at players. And Risen were considered borderline OP for a while, with their higher avg attack rate.

Looking at HOT further, Chak are the perfect example of the very primitive AI behavior being given the damage output scales of players. Aside from Chak Goop, they’re basically berskerer geared, dishing out 4-9k worth of damage per hit. They also can’t take hits either… with many falling to a single burst of damage. Thats effectively what giving boons to mobs is like, when the player doesn’t have ample access to skills that counter it. Boon strip is rare in Core…. with only Necro, Mesmer, and Rev having ready access to it at lower levels.

The irony here is that the only reason this is a problem, is the fact that Side kicking exists at all. Most games don’t even bother normalizing player stats, so that lower level content still poses a risk. And for good reason…. the encounter designs in these games are beyond basic. Even with an ounce of experience with the combat system, a vet player with just weapon skills and dodging can severely outclass a new player with access to a full range of skills. Thats why the difficulty spike of even the east most side of Verdant Brink sends players into mental shock, despite most of them being easily defeated with knowledge of simple counter tactics….. nothing in Tyria that isn’t a unique champ comes even the least bit close to behaving that way. Pocket raptors are the bane of most people’s existence….. but any moderately powerful AOE neutralizes them in short order. Stone heads are easy to manage if you time your dodges, or deploy hard CCs. But both of them together, and most player can’t handle the split in attention. Beating Mordrem is an exercise in selective targeting and field avoidance.

For this reason, HOT’s encounter design with the damage scales toned down would be the only way get a real challenge in Core Tyria. Because it exercises and rewards knowledge of mechanics, and can be relevant regardless of the stat scaling used. The closest we get to this in the current design, is the realization of how stupidly powerful dodge rolls are… to the point where we do it all the time without thinking.