Guild Wars 2

Stupid idea, just another lazy way to balance mechanics. Rather than encouraging people to use sigils or create runes to remove or steal boons, they just give people more damage to punish boons.

Giving it to the burst classes like warrior and thief is additionally a bad call. These burst classes already do so much damage, giving them extra vs. people who run with boons is just silly.

This game needs to encourage less bust vs bunker but not by saying okay lets make it so burst can trump bunker to!

Edit: why do they also seem to ignore team mechanics? Rather than just saying a thief or warrior should burst a boon class, why aren’t you looking at it from a team perspective, so you bring a necro or mesmer to strip boons then the burst to kill them.

@ OP.. comparing GW2 to all those fps and SP is like bordering on the stupid.. totally different set of demands when you add in network, ISP’s, remote servers etc, etc… even a non IT person can work that out.. your 50+ fps on a single person game actually sounds pretty poor as I can get that running GW2, SWTOR, DDO etc. without any issues… if I go play some closeted SP game I would expect even more.

As for GW2 prior to the last patch I was struggling to get much beyond 30FPS and WvW at zergfest time was nothing more than slideshow of single digit FPS.
Now I easily get 50fps running around in there and when the zergs hit hard I am seeing 15-30FPS.. not earth shattering but an improvement that makes the game playable again.

My rig is an i7 3700K, 16GB RipJaw DDR3, dual Nvidia GTX 570’s (I don’t tend to use SLi very often though as I think most MMO’s still have issues with it) and running of a Mushkin 120GB SSD….. load times are sweet, and GW2 doesn’t task my CPU that much at all… maybe max 20%.. GPU does work hard and sees temps rise to around 55 degree… which considering no other MMO has causes that to happen tells me the GPU is definitely doing something.. so its not all CPU dependant.

There most definitely are quirks and glitches pretty much in any MMO.. two identical rigs can behave differently especially when you play across the interweebs to deny that is plain silly.

As for screen res.. I actually find 1080P to run like a bag of nails so I stick to 1680×1050 for best results.
By the way I have all settings piped to best quality except for Shaders and post processing, which I find seems to help.

One big thing I must say has made this game better in regards to WvW is the optimisation around culling… I was so sceptical about this " big improvement" they were working on bringing in, but I have been happily proven wrong it works a treat.

One thing though I will add.. since Thursday I have noticed FPS has dropped across the game, WvW especially and last night I actually logged off because of it as did others as well.. it was almost back to single digit FPS times except the zergs was only like 20-30 players and not all that tasking… maybe we all just had a bad few days across the iweeb but I am not convinced.

Nuka Cola.8520:

The game needs it badly but instead we get new ridiculously priced items (with juicy RNG) in gem store. Look at Skyrim for example, not only the game looks significantly better (modded of course) but in same amount of time they’ve achieved ~double frame rate. Time to optimize gw2, this is not a looker like Crysis 3 and should run waaay better than it is.

You comparing a Singleplayer game with a B2p based model mmo is enough to just stop it right there…Also,they havent done any optimizations ? Read the patch logs again.

And for saying Guild wars 2 is not Crysis 3 so it should run wayyy better…just shows you don;t have a clue what you’re even talking about.

You cannot compare an MMO with a singleplayer game…it works entirely different.

@ThePaladin…What do you mean with your GPu’s are overheating and why don;t you show the temp that you’re getting ? Overheating means,System shutdown….

Most of the people run unoptimized systems,have no clue about the pc their using and why their getting low fps with a system that should do better,but Everyone is able to blame it all on Anet……

Thief is Tied with Elementalist and Guardian for Lowest HP in the game. They do not have the fewest weapons, (that goes to Elementalist) and what form your off hand weapons take are irrelevant. Thief is actually the only profession for whom the #3 skill varies based on which offhand is selected.

Thief is one of my favorites to play, (I have a level 80 of all professions except for Engineer). I don’t think the profession itself is over-powered, but it’s possible certain builds need to be slightly adjusted and further balance achieved by improving other professions, where appropriate. However, if you argument on why they aren’t OP’d starts with three bullet points that are misleading or untrue, you probably aren’t doing the profession any good with your post.

In general, there is a lot of buffing that needs to happen to various professions and builds through out the game and more viable build diversity for all professions should be an over-riding goal for the remainder of the year.

IMO, outside of specific sPvP tweaks, Arenanet shouldn’t be nerfing anything until they have successfully managed to boost build diversity and general playability for all the professions. One they have successfully expanded the number of fun/viable builds across the board, they may find that nerfs that mike make sense in the current meta require little or no action amidst a stronger variety of builds for all professions.

It may seem like it would be less work to just nerf the most powerful builds, rather than try to raise up a bunch more to be comparable and that may be true. The thing is, though, that many people have gravitated towards some of the top builds not because they theory-crafted for min/max or decided to copy/paste the current Flavor of the Month, but instead have arrived at their builds while working out what kind of build was fun to play for their profession. Nerfing powerful builds to bring them in line with mediocre ones is likely to also nerf fun builds to the point they are no longer very fun. Balance would be counter-productive to the game if the point of parity where one where nothing is very fun to play!

I’ve played many, many MMOs over the last 14 years and I think balancing away fun game play is probably one of the most common game killing mistakes that developers make after release. Nerfs to FotM builds tend to go overboard in most games, with developers deciding to just nerf such builds to uselessness, rather than trying to find a way to maintain the flavor, while restoring balance. I don’t think Arenanet has gone to the common extreme, but that doesn’t mean that nerfing, rather than buffing, improving and tuning, is actually preferable.

Don’t forget you get a star next to your life bar, it’s a pretty big deal and shouldn’t come easy.
That’s what makes it so special and that’s why I was so happy when I got it.

If anything I thing it should be even harder to get, add all the dungeons paths too as a requirement for completion and when ever a new Vista/PoI/WP is added to the game, remove the star until people get those, you’d keep the title but the star only if you have everything.

Now at first that seems a bit unfair, but think about it for a minute, like I say I have it already, but since then there has been new WPs and PoIs introduced that honestly I haven’t gotten yet.
What’s more if a new map is introduced (say something like Lost Shores where I haven’t set foot in yet) I still have that shiny star, I could stop playing for a year and it will still be there, so it’s not gonna be contemporary and IMO that’s no good and it takes away the whole idea of it really.

TiF.6589:

Based on your logic, can I requested that they nerf the drop rate of Sparks since I already have my Incinerators and if more people have them it would make me feel less awesome?

Well, not nerf the Precursor drop rates. But perhaps make them all Account Bound, so they can never be sold on the TP?

Ellisande.5218:

If I can paraphrase the opener’s post:

“I got my legendary and now I want to make sure noone else can get their legendary so that I can feel like an extra special snowflake.”

Exactly! If I see too many around, the Legendary will no longer be rare. I farmed my rear off to craft it. But if it becomes easier to get/make, then it loses it’s “awe” value.

There a very simple answer to your desires and it’s not reducing drop rates. By simply disallowing the sale of said items they would become truly rare. You know this, I know this, heck everyone knows this. The only reason as many people have items mentioned is not because they were able to farm them…..it’s b/c they were able to buy them from the tp. Earning gold is easier then farming certain items <—-there’s your issue in a nut shell.

I’m 80 and I haven’t completed my personal story yet. I just go wherever I felt like going as long as it didn’t outlevel me. I simply did all the cities and level 1-15 areas first and went from there.

Do hearts, don’t do hearts. Try to complete a map or not. Wander the countryside as a traveling hero helping out when you stumble upon an event. You don’t even have to complete the event, just help out for a while. Even though this isn’t a sandbox style MMO it feels like it at times because you aren’t dragged around by your nose. You can even just do level 1-15 content until you hit 80. But travel does broaden the mind and changes the scenery.

Just some ideas on a few of them.

General:

• You’re allowed to make this open world content hard and fail-able. Seriously, you are. Even if the mechanics are complex, with enough visually noticeable tells and possibly NPCs shouting out things that aren’t as obvious, players can and will figure it out.
• Introduce mechanics to split the zerg and allow players to contribute without necessarily doing DPS to the main boss. Force the players to split up and take out something or activate/support something in another (within viewing distance) area to contribute or be allowed to continue the fight.
• There should be a reason why this epic mob is there, and not just to give a loot pinata to the players.
• Design the event so it takes at least 3-5 minutes of fighting (not counting any non-fighting segments) to complete. Many of these fights are so short their epic-ness is completely overridden by the fact you only see them for <1 minute every hour or three.
• Have some way for the bosses to determine if players are mobbing together…then target those areas.
• Add a “failure in: X:XX” mechanic to the fights like the Guild Bounties. Seriously, let these things fail.

Shatterer:

• Introduce strafing runs for Shatterer while you have to take care of his minions/repair the cannons.
• When he lands, have it produce a crystal shockwave over the main area that either engulfs you in a crystal or knocks you back.
• Introduce another phase he goes into where he spawns four large crystal formations a little bit away that buffs him tremendously so players have to abandon the fight and take those out or die. Meanwhile he’s making his way towards the forward camp, and will take it out (and fail the event) if you don’t.
• One of his scaling attacks should be a Dragon’s Claw type of attack that hits any player in its path.
• Add events to the Kralkatorrik’s Legacy meta event so that it feels closer to the new Orr meta events. Right now the Shatterer feels a little like just another mob in the zone because there’s only a couple events that people expect others to complete and then he spawns.

Tequatl:

• Have the siege weapons do significantly more damage to Tequatl than the players can (introduce a buff to Tequatl that lowers damage from player skills by 20-50%)…until the mega laser fires, which removes that buff and increases their damage.
• Allow players to speed progress of the mega laser by bringing items from the nearby United Arcanist Lab.
• Have the risen minions proceed to another siege weapon after claiming one, or go after spots where players are mobbing together.
• Add event chains to the Danger at Fabled Djannor meta event so it feels more like Tequatl is arriving because you’ve pushed the Risen forces back to the water. Upon failure, risen should swarm back along the chain and wipe out your previously captured locations.

Maw:

• Vastly more health. The fight NEEDS to last longer.
• Break up the fight by forcing players to go back away from the fight and take out more portals or be swarmed by more and more powerful elementals. Make the shaman invulnerable during this time if you have to.

Wurm:

• Again, vastly more health. It needs to live long enough to pull off the mechanics. The health increase from devouring the husks should be massive so players are encouraged to get rid of them. Having a NPC call this fact out is necessary.
• Preferably there should be enough health, and the healing from husks so large, that whatever the scaling is at players cannot not defeat the wurm without taking out at least some of the husks. Taking them all out should speed it up a good bit.
• Some sort of punishment that includes ranged and not just melee. Maybe a powerful, but short retribution buff when devouring husks.
• Since it’s stationary, minions that cause more and more havoc (and also come in from the outside as well as scattered through the fight) as it scales up are useful.
• It’s an animation change, but introduce a new phase after the husk phase with a highly deadly caustic/poison attack that the wurm slowly rotates and uses, causing players to have to stay ahead of it or be downed. Have it be just slower than combat run speed so you don’t actually have to use swiftness to stay ahead (although doing so would give you more opportunity to attack). After it completes a rotation, it stops and summons more husks. Failure to take the husks and wurm out causes the wurm to heal up from devouring the husks and repeat attack…this time faster.

Biggest problem with the mega boss events is the same as all other events, they’re based 100% on damage done to the NPC. In normal dynamic events you’re not fighting the event, you’re fighting your fellow players in a game of tag. Dynamic event s is currently all about tagging NPC’s and getting the most possible loot, it doesn’t matter if you support other players, it’s currently a punishment to do any form of team play.

I think the way loot awards and medal/chest awards is given needs to be reworked completely, I’ll use the same example I’ve used for a while, On the centaur mega boss encounter I played my staff mesmer and spent most of my time removing conditions, giving out boons and most importantly getting probably 20-30 or even more players up from downed state, at the end I was likely more useful than someone just auto attacking the boss, yet I was given a bronze medal, a friend was given gold for auto attacking and going downed, then continuing auto attacking.

The game is currently too based on tagging mobs, if you’re in a party you should be awarded loot/chest/medals for what your group members do so you can do your role of support/condition remover. Feels like you’re punishing players with this “interactive” system because bots might abuse it, all other MMO’s I’ve played reward me loot if my party member kills a mob, even if I do not touch it, why doesn’t GW2?
This current system just promotes selfish greed and discourages team play.

Straight up buffing bosses would be a let down. They should be focusing on the setup and how do they “divide and conquer players.”

What I’ve always imagined larger fights to look like (especially after watching that video they put out before launch about Orr), would instead of having just one orange event circle pop for the event, you also have like 4-5 event circles pop up simultaneously with and intersecting the perimeter of the main event that effect the main event in some major way if not dealt with suitably. The more people there are the more sub-events there are (but all tie in the to main event, so that you get credit for the overall event when doing these sub events).

The dragons could use a reworking too. The dragons need to have a breathe attack that actually is a “get the heck out of the way” move for players; move it or lose it. Then they also should swipe with their claws a bit, and have the fight go on more than off to the side where you can’t really be hit. Players should also be on siege to take this thing down, as well as having players that are attacking the dragon directly dodging and moving more. Dragons just don’t feel that active of an event, currently it’s an “oh, this dragons up; get your rare for pretty much just standing there!”

Certain events need to become less of a “If you die, waypoint and run back!” kind of thing, and have the mechanics reworked a bit so that they are still as tough as they can be, but also allow more coordination and reaction from players. We just did Balthazar as a guild the other day and it was a ton of fun; we announced it in Lions Arch and a whole bunch of people came (hey, it’s balthazar lol) and starting from Fort Trinity working our way to the temple actually felt like we were launching a campaign against it and Orr. The one thing that bothered me though, is that still ended up being one of those “waypoint and run back” deals for many players (most people don’t res in temple events, because it often just causes the event to fall apart for one reason or another; especially when theres a timer).

Also, going off that last comment; long campaign chains would be cool. In order to get full “gold rating” credit participation from a staging area all the way to the end would make some of these events (especially in Orr), with the proper notification in game to players on the map, a lot more epic.

The DE’s in game provide a nice base to work off of in my opinion, but definitely should be worked on to maximize their potential.

EDIT:

Well for starters a bit of mobility would be nice.

At least for the dragons there should be some sort of failure condition with consequences.

A much better dragon fight.
http://youtu.be/W0CyBlirYQ8
There are many things wrong with that game but the fights aren’t one of them.

Hell yes, I loved Vindictus. I can’t play hammer classes in other games now because of that lol. The boss raids were just so epic in that game GO FAIRYTAIL WEST! (even though nexon derped and erased all the guilds because they decided they wanted to … oh never mind)

My wishlist would be:

- Make battles more fierce – bosses’ attacks should be more dynamic, faster, harder, more epic – Shatterer’s breath attack should be devastating, Tequatl should massacre all when he lifts up, Claw should charge or jump on us.
- Battles SHOULD NOT look like now – everyone pew-pew from one location. Some skill MUST be required to defeat bosses – make us divide to accomplish different tasks in order to defeat boss –
one party must hold off army of mobs while others concentrate on holding locations and the last must attack boss so he don’t reset locations OR
randomly spawned portals which must be entered to perform some additional tasks – party enter some other domain to weaken boss by destroying his source of power. If task isn’t accomplished in
certain amount of time – boss regenerates some health.
- Make bosses be able to MOVE! Or at least spawn at different locations.
- If fights are taking too long – spawn ADDITIONAL mini-bosses to penalise us!
- If you are defeated by boss – you can only be resurrected by players – no WP spawning!
- Attacking Claw in first phase is boring – he should do different things when he lands.
- Mobs should rush to help their master! Spawn some to attack NPC but also spawn lof of them to attack us!
- Give us more toys to battle – Charzookas at Claw’s battle are ok but sometimes it should be required to plant explosives near Ice Wall – where, of course, mobs spawn! (similar to Dredge Fractal )
- Make one or two more
- All in all make bosses attacks matter – when Teq lifts up I always though that he just wants to look at us and he wonders “How da kitten can I defeat them all when I just randomly put AOE here and there” For few first battles it seemed that he indeed just goes up and then lands

Rather than having many of these encounters on an arbitrary timer, why not make a decent chain of dynamic events that has to be completed before the boss appears? The minimum time needed to complete the events would have to be set so that the boss couldn’t appear more frequently than what is healthy for the game. However, it would be more fun if one knew it was always possible to work towards getting the encounter going. This would also eliminate timer hopping between zones, and encourage people to work together to get fights going. Once a boss is down, the first event in the chain goes back up.

This could take advantage of the whole map. There could be variations in some of the events from encounter to encounter, or there could be multiple chains going that eventually converged on the boss. There’s tons of possibilities to make this awesome.

As for the bosses themselves, some good suggestions have already been made, but anything that creates a little variation would be welcome. There are rarely any doubts about the outcome as the fight progresses for many of the bosses. It’s just the same stuff on repeat. One of the penchants of PC gaming is decision making, and there isn’t much of that here.

actually: why is the medal-system like this

You hit any mob during the event 1 times = bronze
You hit any mob during the event 2 times = silver
You hit any mob during the event 3 times = gold

…at least it feels that way. A game where you can’t be bad is not a good game. Such game might cater to the people who farm stuff 24/7 and they will be angry if anything hinders der farming-rate, but… this can’t be good for the game

I honestly believe that farming stuff (as it is implemented at the moment) is bad for the game because a lot of people find it more important to get their legendary than to have fun encounters.

I’d like to just point out that there may be a need to take a look at what is required to get credit for events such as the mega boss events. I say this because earlier today I somehow managed to get credit for an event (Tequatl the sunless) just because I was afk in the area. I was waiting for it to spawn and had tabbed out of the game, and while I was, the event had apparently spawned and finished before I tabbed back to the game. Apparently my pet (I was on my ranger) did enough damage to enemies that had spawned in the area before I got killed to get me a bronze metal for the event and credit for the chest…

Draygo.9473:

8) disable close waypoint

yes please! It’s like graveyard-rushes in dungeons at the moment. It was a problem there and Anet fixed it. It is a problem here too. The boss can’t win, because we can’t die.

Well, ya’ll know, blizzard has a blizz-con, minecraft has a mine-con, what about fans of Guild Wars? Will there ever be a Guild-Con?

I mean it’ll be really cool to see fellow players of the game, and i dunno, have a chance for developers to answer some Q & A, and of course would be the coolest time to launch an expansion!! (if it was ever coming). Guild Wars 2 cosplay, action figurines, dioramas on display etc lol.

Was there ever any convention planned during the years of Guild Wars 1?

I’m just waiting to see the patch notes.

If they still have a single class that can pop out of stealth and burst people down in a couple seconds, and if it doesn’t go their way just turn invisible and reset the fight until it finally does go their way…

…then I’m still going to consider this game a complete waste of 60$ and go do something else.

Personally, I find a lot of fun in the start-and-pray method instead of pre-scouting. However, I do admit that there are some bounties that seem to have some very obnoxious routes that could take a considerable amount of time in just looking for them than just fighting them.

Here’s a novel suggestion: how about allowing the Scouts (the NPCs that would normally reveal uncompleted Heart Tasks on the map) to tell us a rough ball-park idea of where so-in-so bounty could be? Those guys spend a lot of time scouting that I’m sure some of them have some interest in actually helping guilds out in finding their bounties.

The tension over loot in PUG raids in WoW, and the risk of being perma-labeled a ninja (in effect having to leave the game) for a simple slip of the finger or misunderstanding of complex norms of who could roll for what when, because loot assignments were irreversible.

I don’t ever want to experience that in a game again.

another thread by someone that doesn’t get it.

The problem isn’t any “lack of trinity”, it’s that there is no hard content that requires roles beside beserker.

In any trinity game notice what happens when people outlevel “trinity” content? They can do it in any spec/class. Trinity doesn’t make content challenging (say hi to dark souls)

DiogoSilva.7089:

GW1 had an healer, GW1 could have a tank in pve, but GW1 had a much higher diversity of roles than GW2 ever came close to be.

GW1 was also very nicely done with six classes. After it hit ten, though, the roles and classes got murky and messy. Frankly, Ritualists took over a lot of roles as “most effective” and Assassins played in a certain way walked through a lot of things. The core six classes, however, were very well done and could . . . in theory anyway, work in one role well and one other not so well but passably.

Meanwhile, GW2’s roles can be simplified to this:
GW2’s pve roles: Being a zerker zerger;

. . . yeah, I don’t think so. I do mostly fine not wearing Berserker gear other than one piece (I haven’t replaced it yet). Swarms of players is a natural extension of some other issues which arose in Guild Wars 2’s design, but it’s almost preferable than the alternative. (For reference, that would be “how do we make sure we don’t have players fighting over camps?” and the result opened up the option to just “zerg it”.)

… pve has too many mechanical or design problems that prevent role diversity in this game:

You say “problems”, I say “choices”. Or even “trade-offs”. Again, I disagree there’s only “one role” in PvE. It might seem that way in some instances (speed clear) but there are some definite differences between classes enough to suggest “roles” in a loose way.

1.3) Crowd control and disruption are pointless against the bosses where it most matters, due to their anti-control buff. What else is there to say here? This alone renders useless many traits, utilities and even entire weapon sets for pve content.

Actually, more to blame are the people not watching the buff and just spamming control skills so it resets before anyone can make use of the window to really make it useful. Defiant exists for a reason – to keep mobs from getting stun-locked. And in smaller group encounters, it works very well. In larger, it becomes a little crazy but that’s because . . . as I said, often people just cycle their control skills through spamming for extra DPS. Or they just don’t care.

1.4) Aoe and spash damage is king. You can make the highest bursts in this game with aoe (hundred blades, lightning hammer, guardian’s GS, etc). You can farm events far more effectively by spamming aoe. What’s the point of single target attacks, when aoe is better in almost any situation. Fortunately, we have official confirmation that AoE will be nerfed.

The point of single target attacks? Single target encounters, naturally. Simple answer.

1.5) Normal content is too easy, and GW2’s defensive mechanics place too much emphasis on skills and too little on stats…

Erm, hmm . . . no. This is not a good idea to begin working with. You see, once you decide to start having statistics matter more than skill, you get into that point where it’s stats and not skill which can give you the edge. You’re probably aware of the whole fuss over Ascended gear and it’s stat increase. Now picture if it was made even more important to people who track that, or important at all to those who don’t.

Please. No.

Jae.5138:

LHound.8964:

In the end, the team is correcting some huge mistakes they did upon release. Those corrections may not be faster as the players might want, but they are being done! If it’s not of your liking just move along as a lot of players did.

/Cheers

The problem with innovation is that you’re the first to try it and as a result, you’re the first to fail, as well. ANet has clearly done some things right in abandoning the old trinity system. But was it successful? While you may argue that it’s up to your personal preference, in the adults’ world, this is not so. If they’re intent on keeping this system – where every man’s for himself – the boss mechanic would have to be more complex to address that. Unfortunately, that is not the case right now.

What’s really sad about this whole issue is that many of the GW2 team members have that same attitude – the ‘if you dont like it, leave it’ sort of attitude towards their creations. It’s important to take pride in what you do. But the above quotation is one you can repeat until your game finally has reached down to its last single player remaining. Any good company – not just gaming – knows how to take feedback and turn them into strengths. Your childish ‘take it or leave it’ attitude will, ultimately, destroy a potentially amazing MMO like the GW2.

I strongly disagree.

Many players came to play Gw2 because they though it was the holy Panacea for every game out there. This game isn’t suited for everyone, and definitively not all won’t like the game! We can see players wanting the game to move to one direction and players wanting to move the other direction. In the end how can we define what players want and how the game should evolve?

You are absolutely correct that innovation is the key element and while many players strongly are against innovations, other are not. So in what way should your claim of the game current situation be any better than the ones that find it excellent? Indeed they should pride of their work, but shouldn’t they also being able to ignore the comments if that destroys the integrity of their work? How do we stand then?

To the players there is nothing more than the old “Don’t like it? You are free to leave anytime”. If you can’t bear the waiting for the tide of change, just walk along in the beach and try to find another MMO who suits you more! This is the overall picture. I don’t agree that the game will ever reach 1 man standing playing the game. It simply wont. The game will in it’s own way, filter the holy grail chasers and leave the game for those who really enjoy the game for what it is.

Game Progress will walk slowly towards perfection, and still it may not be the perfection you desire. For that it may never be!

/Cheers

Jae.5138:

Do majority of gamers want to hit the highest level in the game, only to go back to helping farmers collect bunnies?

You might be surprised.