Guild Wars 2

mobilejunkie.9260:

Can I ask why some of you don’t want mounts?

Please search the Forums; you’ll find plenty of reasons in threads like this one. To summarize:

• lore. Asura teleportation tech makes riding unnecessary.
• map design/layout. Ties into the “lore” thing – maps are designed with fairly dense content (e.g. wandering enemies, Renown Hearts, outposts, jumping puzzles, etc). There simply aren’t very many “wide open spaces” where rapid mounted travel would be necessary.
• precedence/consistency. The world is full of “infantry.” Major NPCs go into battle on foot. It would be a bit immersion-breaking for a level 2 Necromancer to ride around while Destiny’s Edge has to walk.
• visual noise. If you let a player have a mount, then he’s going to buy the biggest one possible (Giant Dolyak? Elder Plains Wurm?) and park it in front of the bank or Trading Post.
• special advantages. Dissenters are often told that mounts could be made purely cosmetic. “If you don’t like it then don’t use it; you won’t be missing anything.” This reassurance is undermined by proposals (often within the same thread) for mounts to provide bonuses to mobility, resistance to CC, etc.
• workload. Mounts which function as “town clothes” are tolerable, but anything that interacts with actual weapon/skill animations (or, heaven forbid, an actual mounted combat system) is going to require a significant outlay of development time. Many players would prefer to see development effort focused on bugfixes, new dungeons, heroic capes, Cyrillic chat, an in-game LFG tool, etc…

Ohoni.6057:

if you wanted to retrieve the item unsold, in which case you’d have to pay at least a portion of the original fee to recover it (although certainly not the tens of gold you’d originally need to).

This is a concern. The listing fee encourages sellers to set reasonable prices, because they stand to lose a lot of money if they are forced to repeatedly relist an item at successively lower prices.

If you allow sellers to defer the fee, and reclaim/relist items without actually paying the bulk of the fee, then we’ll see prices rise on some high-demand items (e.g. precursors). We’ll probably also see increased load/stress on the Trading Post system itself, as people will be more likely to “babysit” their sell orders and make frequent changes.

I’m not saying “any change that benefits sellers is automatically bad.” I’m just trying to point out that your suggestions could have some serious unintended consequences.

Wiki entry for Sigil of Purity indicates that it can trigger (and thus go into cooldown) even when the character isn’t suffering from any conditions. If this information is correct, then it’s reasonable to assume that the Generosity sigil works the same way.

Astral Projections.7320:

Can’t they be set on to show when cooldowns are going to end with a countdown timer on the skill? Or are you talking about something else?

The game uses a lot of internal, invisible timers. Such as “amount of time remaining until your [Nutrition]’s on-crit lifesteal effect can occur again.” Daendur would like to make some of these timers visible to the player, so that they can make effective decisions (e.g. “I’m not going to get any lifesteal healing in the next five seconds, so I should retreat”).

It’s theoretically possible to keep track of a few timers in your head, but I can’t think of any good reason why such information couldn’t be included in the UI.

You know how your #1 weapon skill is normally cycled to produce a continuous attack “chain”? It’s possible to do the same with some utility skills (such as “For Great Justice!”) so that they’re automatically used whenever the cooldown is complete. If the player has chosen a skill with a sufficiently low cooldown interval, then their weapons will remain unsheathed.

More information: Auto-attack

It’s included in order to cut down on the standard videogame strategy of “walk backwards while shooting enemy until it dies.” Backpedaling allows you to use your normal offensive skills, so it’s balanced by putting you at greater risk. The developers want to encourage more diverse playstyles, such as:

• shoot the enemy until it gets close, then use knockback or a leap/shadowstep/teleport power to maintain distance
• immobilize or cripple the enemy, then turn and run away briefly before starting another volley
• switch to a melee weapon when the enemy gets close
• get the enemy to focus on something else (e.g. clone, minion, elemental, pet) while you autoattack it to death
• choose weapons, utilities, traits, party members, etc… which will provide Vigor and Swiftness (so that your backpedal/dodge strategy will be more effective)

If your problem is AoE fields, then don’t rely purely on backpedaling and dodging. You should be willing to turn aside (which will probably prevent you from attacking) and run forwards (at full speed) for a few seconds, in order to avoid getting killed.

It’s a decent idea, but it would be very susceptible to exploitation. If I have a million karma then I could spend an hour organizing my guildmates, recruiting players in map chat, running pre-events, etc… or I could just Guest over onto a high-pop server where the temple is open and make my purchase there. Or I could just check the map periodically, wait for someone else to clear the temple on my own server, zone in, and buy the stuff.

You might be able to make it work by providing the discount only to those players who participated in the temple-liberation event chain. However, it’s still a bit of a gimmick. If you really want players to run temples then the most obvious answer is simply “improve the loot.”

rizbliz.8579:

so yeah what do you think?

You can’t really have a “horror” experience with a heavy UI. Horror requires immersion. First-person perspective is good; fixed-camera third-person is okay; free-camera third-person (allowing you to safely look around corners or see what’s on the other side of a closed door) is lousy. When you have guild chat on-screen (e.g. friends talking about dragon spawn timers and telling rude jokes), a nagging reminder about your unfinished daily achievement, and a minimap in the corner, you’re just not going to get a sense of personal fear. At best, you’ll be able to startle the player by making monsters suddenly appear. Toss in the whole “ability to instantly leave the scary place and zone into PvP/WvW” and any sense of tension is shot. I just don’t think that the concept would work.

It would be pretty humiliating for your PvP opponents if they turn to flee but find that a turtle is somehow keeping pace with them and nipping at their heels. Considering the limited range of motion on a turtle’s limbs, it would be a challenge for the animation team to make it walk at normal speed without looking ridiculous. They might need to just replace its lower section with a cartoon-style “motion blur” whenever the pet is running.

Also, before this thread goes any further, you’ll probably want to specify which sort of “turtle” you’re talking about. The word means different things (terrestrial, semi-aquatic, etc) to residents of the USA, UK, and Australia. All of the turtles that I’ve seen in GW2 have been aquatic.

Yes, I know that a skilled Thief can keep close to an enemy while mitigating almost all of its damage. I suppose that you could setup a tank Thief, without introducing an evasion statistic, simply by minimizing offense (thus conserving Initiative for evasion skills) and opting for smoke/blind utilities in place of stealth skills. But now you run into the standard Trinity problem: “who would want to play this role?” You get worse loot than the DPS guys, and you’re under more pressure.

I don’t think that you’ve solved the “LF tank, LF healer” problem. Any class can serve as a tank, but that doesn’t mean that one guy in each random 5-player group is certain to have an appropriate trait and gear setup. So you might get a group together at the dungeon gate and then try to bully one of the party members until he returns to town, pays the waypoint and respec fees, dons an alternate suit of armour, and adjusts his skills. Or he refuses and leaves the party, at which point you have a four-man party mournfully repeating the familiar chorus “LF tank.”

P.S. Everything that I’ve written in this thread has been in the context of dungeons, under the assumption that dungeon content will be rebalanced so as to require trinity playstyles. If you’re thinking more about open-world encounters, dynamic events, PvP, or WvW then a lot of my criticism is probably inapplicable.

Mujen.2089:

Okay how about a rationale behind why not?

Trinity is the norm. I like having non-categorical playstyles; being able to jump into a group, knowing that everyone will contribute, but never being certain of exactly how. Suffering some initial difficulty as the group learns how to work together; laying down fields to boost attacks or cover an ally’s retreat; blinding a foe that’s about to smack someone down (or knocking back the enemy instead, or reflecting its projectile attack, etc).

I like having these kinds of small-scale “war stories” – minor successes involving good judgment, quick reflexes, etc. Things that demonstrate player skill (or, if you prefer, “class mastery”); things that can be complimented and thereby build rapport among players. I fear that a Trinity mechanic would tend to reduce everything to numbers (e.g. incoming damage rate versus healing rate, position on aggro tables) and tend to make combat encounters more similar (viz “tank and spank”).

Your point about Thieves using evasion tanking is also a concern. At present, the game relies on a relatively small range of random numbers (I’m referring to combat rather than loot here). Players and enemies can score critical hits, but you don’t have stuff like “my Agility stat is 1096, therefore 45% of all attacks aimed at me will automatically miss.” Mesmers can do something akin to evasion-tanking, but it doesn’t rely on dice rolls – it’s all about reading attack cues, balancing your cooldowns and endurance, adjusting distance-to-enemy using Leap and teleport skills, etc… I wouldn’t want to see the viability of a playstyle governed by a single “magic statistic” which supercedes player skill.

Shufflepants.9785:

I’m confused. How is going to this site and making a posting any different from going to Lion’s Arch and posting in map chat?

/map chat is visible to people in Lion’s Arch on your server. And your request will be rapidly displaced by random chat about Quaggan backpacks and Guild recruiting. And someone who arrives five seconds after you’ve made your request will be unable to see it (unless you decide to annoy everyone by spamming). Assuming that it works, you’ll still have lost a bit of coin on waypoint fees.

GW2LFG is visible to people in every map on every server. Your post remains visible until you find your group, so you can put up a request and then just play the game while waiting for responses. Since it’s cross-server, you can ask to be invited to a dungeon which is currently contested on your server, bypassing the usual delay and event chain.

Crossplay.2067:

What do you guys think?

On paper, it’s a great idea. You get unique/personalized Legendaries, progression, and (hopefully) a wider array of farming activities (e.g. pushing people towards some of the currently-unpopular maps and dungeons). People can grind for cosmetic improvements, stop when they get frustrated/bored, and still have something to show for it.

Based on my limited understanding of the game’s code, though, it would be infeasible without a major patch. For instance, every possible Mystic Forge combination (e.g. Greatsaw + Aura of Mesmer) would need to be defined as a recipe, and then individually tested/verified. You’d almost certainly need to alter the way that weapons are defined in the database, which would be a hassle since the game is already live. Personalized names would definitely require DB changes, and would introduce more potential headaches (e.g. you make a typographical error when naming your “Sword of Merciless Reaping”. You wake up to find your legendary weapon confiscated and your account suspended for ToS violation).

Also – I may be missing something, but where do the unique models fit in? Your system seems to start with the desired skin and then add on glow, particles, trail, footsteps, etc… Would the existing special appearances (e.g. Twilight blade) simply become rare drops (akin to Fractal skins) or would they also fall within the scope of the (Rare Materials + Mystic Forge) process?

V Man.8512:

When you ask Mr. Sparkles a question he cannot answer, he says “Insufficient data at this time”. Clearly a reference to Data from Star Trek.

I thought that it was an Asimov reference.

There’s a Dynamic Event in Metrica Province involving a pair of Asura NPCs. The brash, foolhardy leader is named Xapp and his reluctant sidekick is named Kippf.

Do you mind if I propose an alternative? If so just let me know; I can remove this post from your thread and repost it as a separate suggestion.

I’d like to see a simple guild-based rule for golem access control:

• if an empty golem is within a claimed structure then it can be piloted only by a member of the claiming guild (in practical terms, “within the structure” will simply mean “within the coverage area of the guild’s WvW buffs”)
• if an empty golem is within an unclaimed structure (or the spawn area, or in the middle of a field) then it can be piloted by any friendly player

Rationale:

• the game needs more guild-based stuff. Golem assaults are inherently group-based (scouting, portals, infantry support, etc) so we might as well hook them into the social and communication structure of a guild.
• it might be easier to implement than a “golem key” item or transferable ownership (since it could piggyback on the existing code for the Guild WvW buffs)
• encourages players to spend money on golems (goldsinks are good)

This system would allow for reasonably-secure construction, storage, and handover of golems. Any guild which wants to maintain a “private stash” of golems would need to claim and defend a structure. Anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the complications of guild ownerships can simply park their golem in the spawn area (tacitly accepting the risk that a newbie or spy will destroy it).

This system would still, of course, be vulnerable to griefing. A truly dedicated jerk with a one-man guild could claim a tower, hijack a golem from the spawn area, march it to his tower, and then park it there so that it becomes unusable to the rest of the team (and then repeat the process until he has a private golem menagerie!).

I like the idea of a frazzled WVWer zoning into Lion’s Arch and shouting, “If there are any [foo] players in here then please get over to Eternal Battlegrounds ASAP! You’ve got five unmanned golems and we’re forming up for an attempt on Stonemist.” Perhaps the SM attack is a poorly-organized effort led by a junior commander. Perhaps it’s actually a feint. Perhaps the [foo] guild has a major group operation scheduled to begin 20 minutes hence, and so they decide to conserve their strength. Perhaps a few impetuous [foo] members decide to join the assault anyways, lose their golems, and then get demoted or /gkicked for disobeying orders. Lots of possibilities

Geotherma.2395:

Isn’t EVE one single world?

Mostly true. The Chinese server (Serenity) is a separate “world”, but that’s for legal/diplomatic reasons. You can find some statistics about server population here, if you’re interested. They also have public test servers.

One really important feature is time dilation – when too many players gather into one solar system (“map” or “instance” in GW2 terms), the server simply slows down the activity so that it can keep up. This isn’t quite the same thing as the skill lag that we see in GW2. Imagine if your character (and all other player characters, and all NPCs and mobs) moved half as fast, swung weapons half as fast, recharged skills half as fast, etc… EVE Online’s time dilation feature can go as far down as 10% of normal speed (e.g. during titanic fleet battles involving 1000 players). It works okay for a spreadsheets-in-space simulation game, but it would be pretty weird to see that sort of feature in a high-APM reflex game like GW2.

Sandra Martino.3870:

I duno, but isnt guardian (tank), 3 ele`s 1 mesmer (or 4 mesmers for that sake) a lot quicker then 4 war/mesmer? Since dps warriors will die before they down the boss, and thuss boss moves around (loose dps) or warrior goes downed (loose dps) instead of the guardian facetanking it?

In my experience, no. DPS warriors usually don’t die during the boss fights, especially when you have someone using Skale Venom (which will tend to keep the boss permanently Weakened). The Slave Driver doesn’t have any reason to move around if the whole party is already within its melee range. The Effigy moves a bit, but its hitbox is quite large and it’s stationary while using its skills, so most of your channeled damage will still hit. Also, the team’s Mesmer will be using a mainhand Sword which has an immobilize skill on a fairly short cooldown.

The biggest DPS liability is the lack of stability. The Mesmer’s Feedback skill can reflect the Effigy’s Shockwave (knockdown ability), but the Searing Crystal drops are sometimes hard to spot (and therefore hard to dodge). An unlucky set of crystals can leave several players stunlocked for a while.

Aegis and Stability are helpful, but there’s one important drawback with the Guardian profession: Virtue of Justice is visually overwhelming and makes it much more difficult to recognize attack cues.

Imperatora.7654:

however this is a problem for natives as we can not get out of overflow to do our own events on our own servers.

There is a workaround for this problem: join a large guild. Whenever a world-boss event occurs in primetime I see Guild chat fill up with “stuck in overflow, please help” messages. So long as at least one guild member made it into the native map instance, they can invite others to join them. It helps that the boss fights themselves are over-populated and face-rollingly easy; I can watch Guild chat and send out party invites without much risk

Guests could theoretically do the same thing, but a server-native guild will tend to have an advantage in communications and response speed.

hoyasaxa.1974:

Why not make the clone spawn on the target like many phantasms do?

A Mesmer standing outside a tower can often target defenders or siege weapons, thereby summoning illusions atop the walls. If you were able to Swap position with one of them, then you could quickly create a Portal Entree and bring in a few friends to capture the tower.

Kill drops are largely (entirely?) determined by damage contributions. Support, CC, and healing roles receive lesser rewards, while DPS is favoured. I haven’t encountered the exact issue that you’re describing; I’ve generally seen Bronze rewards in PvE only when I stumble on an Event at the last minute and barely help out at all. Assuming that it isn’t just a bug, here are some suggestions:

• check your gear. Ensure that it’s level-appropriate and that its stats are appropriate to your build (e.g. condition damage or precision or whatever).
• run Dungeons. Chests and completion rewards are given to all party members.
• participate in world boss fights. The chest rewards are quite generous and you don’t need to do a huge amount of damage in order to earn them.
• do WvW events. You can get Gold credit for most of them based on presence/proximity, even if you never attack anything.
• if you’re doing group PvE, then optimize for damage. As a Mesmer, you’ll probably want to either summon a lot of clones and shatter them OR summon a few Phantasms and keep them up. You might also consider switching to Sword for your main weapon – it has respectable DPS and surprisingly good frontline survival (once you understand how to use dodge, interrupt, distortion, etc).
• petition/complain about it until the developers boost kill rewards for non-DPS roles.

ANet staff definitely have the power to change account names; they changed mine a few days ago (presumably because the original name was considered offensive). So perhaps you could submit a support ticket and ask for a name change.

Alternatively, you could try to report yourself for having an offensive name. Assuming that this approach works, they’ll probably just replace “chaosmesmer” with something random (which may not be to your liking).

Xorcerox.4807:

Aimbot shouldn’t be working. Besides, if it’s only one PvP mode, it would be nice. You don’t have to participate in it (such as in Keg Brawl, etc.).
Btw, to make it more fair: everyone has the same race in a round that rotates.

Why stop at FPS? I demand PVP modes covering all genres!

• flight sim
• trivia contest
• choose-your-own-adventure book
• alternate reality game
• high-stakes baccarat
• typing tutor
• open-wheel racing
• rhythm game
• dating simulator
• Roguelike dungeon crawler

Seriously, though, your proposal doesn’t really seem to be related to GW2. Ranged weapons in GW2 have an “maximum range” of approximately 20 meters and the game includes some mechanics (such as reflection and blindness) which would be confusing from an FPS perspective. You’ve already conceded that this game mode wouldn’t really involve our GW2 characters (since the races would be randomized). Essentially, it seems as though you enjoy playing FPS games, but that you’d like to be rewarded with GW2 items/currency/glory for doing so.

Decemberween.6098:

Sports/luxury cars are expensive for the exact same reason

Alternatively, you can consider the high price itself as a desirable aspect of the item, since it serves as an explicit indication of the owner’s wealth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Avathor.1849:

1. The homebase, like in the King in chess, should be possible to overtake! Yes, i said it. And once taken, that team is out of the game, for this week. And most likely you go one tier down when the ladder updates (i dont know, perhaps monthly?).
The homebase should have TONS of npc`s fighting for the server, and for sure it would take some 3-6 hours just to get rid of them. And even more time if players are there. But still doable.

In a perfect world, this sort of high-stakes PvP feature would produce epic battles. In practice, though, it runs into the problem of time zone dominance. Flip over to the WvW forum and you’ll find many complaints about “night-capping” and suggestions for how to mitigate it. Your proposal would potentially punish dedicated WvW players/guilds for events that occur while they’re asleep by denying them access to their favourite part of the game. It would even punish the victors – if you knock out both of your opponents, then what do you do for the rest of the week? Swim around in the lake killing Krait?

Since much of the “final battle” content would be PvE, it would be susceptible to the usual PvE exploits (e.g. “everyone stand on this tree branch so that the NPCs won’t fight back!”) and would tend to favour players who are best at discovering and abusing such exploits. The aftermath of any defeat would be rife with accusations of hacking, cheating, spying, etc… which would be pretty bad for the player community.

You may want to look at the history of EVE Online’s “Sovereignty” system. They faced similar challenges (asymmetric PvP engagements across timezones, with serious consequences for a failed defense) and it took them years to develop a system which is (reasonably) fair to both sides. Their basic approach (similar to yours) was to include some sort of “speed bump” which delays the attacking team until (hopefully) the defending team is awake and online. In practice, the attackers are forced to do something unchallenging, boring, and repetitive (e.g. killing endless swarms of NPC mobs for 3 hours). Most importantly, the process for challenging Sovereignty in EVE is overwhelmingly not fun for either the attackers or the defenders, and you risk bringing similar unfun content into GW2.

Confirmed here as well. Human mesmer. I’ve seen only one hit with the Stab skill, which (I think) was due to extreme proximity as UnknownFreak suggested. Using Auto-Attack or simply mashing the 1 key, the outcome is the same.

Can you elaborate/explain your idea a bit? I can think of two possible meanings:

• implement an open-world area with Dungeon-like difficulty (presumably with an event chain similar to Orrian temples), which is scaled/tuned so that a regular (casual) guild will likely fail to complete it. Only a dedicated and co-ordinated guild (e.g. 100 dudes on VOIP, arrayed into disciplined 5-man teams) will stand a chance of beating it.
• implement a system of Dungeon ownership, whereby a guild would need to complete a series of challenges (and/or pay a fee) and would afterwards gain the exclusive right to visit that dungeon (on that server). If other players wished to run the dungeon then their own guild would need to displace the current owners (perhaps by completing the same challenges, or perhaps by wining some kind of PvP contest against the current owners).

I doubt that either of these ideas would be seriously considered by the developers. However, if I’ve missed your actual meaning then please spell it out in great detail.

The mobs do give visual cues; you’ll come to recognize them eventually. Many players complain that the cues are sometimes obscured by glowing fields and particle effects, which is indeed a problem in big fights. Asura bosses can be especially difficult because their movements are harder to read.

As a Mesmer, you don’t actually need to dodge everything. Learn to recognize when an enemy is targeting one of your clones, and then you can safely close in to melee distance (although you don’t want to stand directly beside your clone because you might still be hit by a cleave attack). Your #2 sword attack (Blurred Frenzy) gives you 2 seconds of near-invulnerability, so you can generally use that as soon as an enemy begins to “wind up” for an attack. You can blind an enemy as he’s performing an attack (or a few seconds beforehand); it will automatically miss and do zero damage. You can also try to use the “Counter” abilities on your Scepter or offhand Sword (but the activation is a bit tricky – if you mash the button in a panic then you’ll just activate the chain skill instead).

Mesmer solo gameplay is about balancing aggression versus risk. If your Blurred Frenzy cooldown is complete, you have plenty of endurance, your Blink is ready, and you have an instant-cast Blind available – then close in and do some damage! As the fight proceeds, you may need to use these countermeasures in order to avoid damage. If all of your countermeasure are exhausted? Retreat a bit, switch weapons, stealth, summon some clones to distract/tank, wait for your cooldowns, etc…

I like the basic idea of “give defenders something to do”, but I don’t like the idea of Keeps being completely overwhelmed by NPCs. I think it would be more useful to have friendly Keeps periodically spawn Dynamic Events for the defenders to perform (each of which serves a dual purpose as a mini-tutorial).

• [Siege Engine Practice] Targets spawn at various locations around the Keep (a few in arrow-cart range, more in cannon or ballista range, a few farther away for catapult practice). Defenders can shoot the targets for the usual Event participation rewards, but will also gain practical experience in using catapults and trebuchets. This DE will also encourage new players to “refresh” siege engine timers, even if they don’t know about the despawn behaviour. If the keep has no siege whatsoever then the event will fail, so defenders will have an incentive to deploy at least one AC.

• [Stop the Skritt Thieves] CC-resistant Skritt Thieves spawn outside the keep and enter through the doors. They will make trips back and forth, removing supplies from the keep’s stockpile each time, until they’re eliminated by defenders. For balance reasons, they shouldn’t be able to completely drain a keep even if it’s left completely undefended; perhaps the DE will fail automatically if the stockpile falls below 50%. This event is intended to remind new players that their usual CC → Nuke combos may not work in WvW, because their opponents (most importantly: human players) can quickly shrug off many control effects.

• [Patrol the Perimeter] Players will be called up on to “capture” a number of very small control points within the keep. A lone player should be able to sweep the area in a few minutes, pausing at each point long enough to “capture” it and satisfy the objective. If there are many defenders then they could split up and complete the Event more quickly. The control points should be selected randomly from a set of locations which are strategically important (e.g. gates) and others which are known to be popular hiding places for enemy Thieves and Mesmers.

The respawn rate on these events should be fairly low (perhaps one event per 5 minutes?) and they should probably be automatically ended if an actual attack occurs. Defenders who are strategically manning a fortress will gain some minor participation rewards and (hopefully) stave off boredom; new/casual defenders will tend to move between forts in order to farm events (thereby learning the maps, passively scouting, and exposing themselves to fights/ganks); and we’ll see less PvDoor action since attackers would be more likely to encounter at least a token defense force behind any given set of walls.

Benjamin.3024:

wouldn’t [full berzerker gear] increase the chance of dying ?

If you were going “blind” into a new dungeon? Yes. If you were going into Fractals, or something else with varied mechanics (e.g. enemies using heavy CC and AoE attacks)? Yes. Facing concentrated ranged firepower, as in Caudecus Manor? Yes. In a PvP fight? Yes.

Players understand the mechanics of CoF path 1 extremely well. They know that most of the mobs can be skipped, ignored, or leashed. The unskippable stuff (e.g. Slave Driver, Flame Legion Blademasters guarding the braziers, Searing Cauldron Effigy) can simply be killed very quickly because it does not dodge, evade, or punish (e.g. fireshield, retaliation). The all-zerk party might not fare well in a battle of attrition, but CoF P1 is amenable to blitzkrieg tactics and so that’s what they use.

Can you elaborate on what you want and/or how it would work? You certainly couldn’t allow players to upload their own custom meshes and textures (since someone would almost immediately create “nude” skins and then the feature would have to be shelved).

You might be able to get away with something like the mix-and-match armor customization from Neverwinter Nights, wherein everything was modular and players could switch between different pauldrons, forearms, gloves, leggings, skirts, boots, etc (and similarly – different handles, crossguards, and blades for their weapons). The problem with that kind of system is that it’s either very restrictive for the 3d artists (limits their creativity, forces everything to be similar), or it leads to a lot of clipping when the wrong components are matched together.

Elthurien.8356:

I think dungeons should scale to however many players enter (with a cap of 10)

You’ll run into game-mechanic problems with groups of ten. Many AoE effects are capped at 5 targets, so players could actually “steal” boons or heals merely by standing in the wrong place. As a result, the metagame would tend to favour battlefield-modifying effects (such as Wards, Smoke Fields, and Projectile Reflection). Meanwhile, the increased enemy firepower will tend to kill animal companions very quickly, and the larger groups will rapidly hit the condition-stacking limit on enemies (making Rangers and Necromancers even more shunned by powergamer/elitist players!). Finally, it’s sometimes difficult to “read” enemy attack cues when they’re covered by 5 players’ worth of visual effects; this would become a serious hindrance with 10 players.

I’ll admit that there are suggestions on this forum to address each of those issues. Until they’ve been handled, though, I don’t think that 10-player dungeons would be a good idea.

P.S. You might also need some mechanism to “lock in” the group size (and difficulty) or implement a “participation level” for dungeons akin to that for Dynamic Events. Otherwise a skilled player could spend a half-hour running a solo dungeon (or maybe a lot less time if they’re good at glitching and skipping), reach the final boss, and invite nine friends/guildmates. Presumably all of the skipped mobs will suddenly become tougher as additional players enter, but who cares? The newcomers jump to the waypoint, fight the boss for a few minutes (admittedly, this will require some skill since the boss will be scaled up), and then everybody collects 60 tokens.

Upvoted.

The basic idea is sound – people complain about sinking a lot of time into an event-chain and boss fight and then getting “rewarded” with a few blue/green items. The token would reduce the sting of a bad loot drop, since the player would know that they’re one step closer to [Tyrian Defender Shiny Pants of Justice] or whatever.

Balance-wise, it might be prudent to restrict the tokens to one drop per account, per event/boss, per day. Otherwise is would encourage “camping” and “grinding” rather than roaming and exploration. The dragon loot DR system suggests that ANet doesn’t want people to park an alt beside each dragon fight and just activate them at the appropriate moment, so it’s unlikely that they’d implement a token reward system which incentivizes such behaviour.

One thing that you may need to consider, though: dungeons items are offered at the recommended player level (e.g. Ascalonian Catacombs rewards include items usable by a level 35 character). A relatively low-level character might be able to accumulate enough world-tokens for an Exotic item, assuming that the player logged in only to fight low-level bosses (e.g. Shadow Behemoth, Enraged Cave Troll). If the token merchants carry only L80 Exotics, then that player might be a bit annoyed. Perhaps, like Laurel Vendors, the token merchants could carry a variety of items (e.g. mini-pets and crafting recipes) so that even a low-level character with a handful of tokens could obtain something fun/useful.

You don’t need to turn via the keyboard. You can reorient your character by moving the mouse while holding the Right Mouse Button. Some players are annoyed by this requirement, and would prefer additional UI option which allow for faster movement/reactions. You can find some of their suggestions by searching this forum for “mouse lock” and reading about the defunct “combat mode” mod.

Once you’ve done that, you should probably add some content to your post (viz: what is “POV combat” and how would it work for characters who rely heavily on ground-targeted abilities?) or simply close the thread. It isn’t really a “suggestion” at the moment; it’s more of a “complaint”.

Story Mode dungeons are (mostly) balanced for at-level pickup groups; you can give them a try when you’re looking for a bit of variety. You can also skip them and then return with endgame gear; the rewards are pretty lousy so most people just run each one once for completion/narrative purposes.

Skip CM EXP until you’re more experienced. AC EXP is much more forgiving for new players: you’ll occasionally get downed by a trap/veteran/boss or fail an event, but it’s rare for the entire party to be stunlocked and wiped out by a group of regular mobs (which can happen to inexperienced groups in CM).

You can hang out in the Plains of Ashford map chat or just post on GW2LFG. Ask your guildmates as well. Explain that you’re new and that you’re looking to learn the dungeon. Be aware that many players will want to skip groups of enemies (or entire boss fights); ask them to warn you in advance, and equip mobility/stunbreak skills. If you find that you don’t enjoy a particular EXP path then try it again (maybe a few days later) with a different party setup; you may find that the problem was in your team setup rather than the dungeon content.

Once you get near level 80 then you should look at the Citadel of Flame. It’s very well-trafficked, so you’ll have no trouble finding groups (although some of them might kick you for being a Ranger). You can quickly master the mechanics of Path 1 and Path 2 and, if you find that you enjoy running CoF, it can be quite lucrative (which is handy if you’re saving up for Exotic gear). Stay away from CoF path 3 until you have endgame gear and a dedicated party.

The most important thing in dungeons is understanding your dodge ability (and the invincibility frames that it provides). Get in the habit of dodging attacks (even non-life-threatening ones) when you’re doing open-world PvE. Dungeon mobs hit much harder than regular ones, and seemingly-harmless enemies (like spider hatchlings) can quickly kill you. This is a major problem in dungeons because nobody can rally at a Waypoint if the party is in combat; a single careless death can snowball into a full-party wipe. Get in the habit of avoiding damage.

OptimusPrimo.9547:

I just swing my weapon wildly when a thief uses stealth. Generally scares them away. You can’t see them but they may not attack you. If you do hit them by accident, then they’ll be revealed upon taking damage.

The last statement is incorrect, in my own experience as well as the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth – Characters in stealth cannot be targeted by enemies, but can still be hit. This does not break stealth). Which leads to something that I’d like to call the “piñata problem” – even a blindfolded person instinctively knows whether or not they’ve hit something with a melee weapon, but our GW2 characters do not.

What you’re seeing is perhaps some combination of the following:
-your attacks scare the Thief player away; he can’t land the [Cloak and Dagger] attack that he had planned; his stealth expires normally
-your wild swings deal enough damage to down the thief; he gets revealed

Rizalee.4593:

Give Rogues a Perma-steath ability on a mid duration recharge (Maybe 60 seconds) that only works in open world settings.

Even the open-world content has balance requirements. If you allow perma-stealth, then Thieves could easily harvest valuable resources (e.g. Omnomberries, Orichalcum, Passiflora) without being slowed by the need to fight or evade the mobs guarding those nodes. If properly traited (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fleet_Shadow), then they would permanently benefit from the fastest movement speed in the game, providing a solid advantage in exploration (e.g. map completion, scavenger hunt). They would also have an advantage in several Jumping Puzzles (such as http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wall_Breach_Blitz), since they could simply ignore enemies who are supposed to pose a challenge to players.

No, for three reasons.

The first is related to lore/fluff. I can suspend my disbelief regarding short-duration stealth effects; I imagine that that the thief is simply tossing out a small smoke cloud and then maneuvering within it for a sneak attack (or escape). Or perhaps the thief is using a quick feint and nimble footwork to get behind an opponent, thus “vanishing from sight” for a few crucial seconds. I can’t think of any conceivable explanation for a thief running (not crawling/sneaking) hundreds of meters across a brightly-lit meadow, while somehow evading the attention of sentries and archers on the nearby castle walls.

The second objection is that stealth is simply too effective at the moment. Ideally it would have more limitations or countermeasures (e.g. running into an opponent’s collision space triggers Revealed, taking direct damage from a melee attack triggers Revealed, stepping on a trap triggers Revealed, ranger pets will Reveal a stealthed thief who comes too close, etc). In the current state, a 60-second stealth effect could be used to trivialize or bypass large sections of game content (e.g. the entire “dark waters” section of the underwater fractal) without demonstrating any real skill or incurring any risk. I know that skipping/speedrunning is already part of the game culture, but the proposed change would make it even more prevalent.

Finally, most stealth skills have a cooldown that is 10-20 times longer than the duration of the stealth effect. A 10-20 minute skill cooldown would be inconsistent with the rest of the GW2 content, which suggests that the proposed 1-minute stealth is excessive.

tl;dr – hell no………….

“Starting with a profession, while core to the established game-play, is inexplicable in the sense of the game universe”

I’m not sure what you mean here. The professions/roles themselves are reasonably well-established in the game. It would admittedly be nice to see NPCs training/drilling some of the more “exotic” skills (rather than just stabbing dummies and shooting at archery butts), but you’ll often see NPC rangers hanging out with their pets, NPC engineers alongside defensive emplacements, and IIRC there’s a quest chain in Kessex Hills involving an NPC necromancer. I certainly wouldn’t object to more content, though – it would be neat if you had to make a pilgrimage to the “Grand College of Elementalists” (and incidentally learn a bit more about the profession) in order to fully unlock your traits.

The separation of the professions is partially explained by backstory fluff: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone. You can’t be an Elemesmerist because the Gods say so. You can’t be an Engimancer because that’s just silly :p

Perhaps you mean “why does the story begin with me as a combat-capable [x] rather than an apprentice [x]?” Meh, it’s a combat-focused game. Many players would be annoyed by clicking through thirty minutes’ worth of fetch-quests and exposition before they get to pick up a weapon.

“If the idea is to restrict abilities, let classes who aren’t supposed to use a weapon have a default ability that sucks.”

Why bother? The only real use that I can see for such setups (e.g. a Warrior double-wielding Foci and ineffectually bashing people with them) is to humiliate opponents in PvP (“I’m so awesome that I can defeat you with off-class weapons!”). I’d rather see the developers spend time on content that will be widely used/enjoyed by the playerbase.

Your proposed system could also confuse/annoy new players. They might create an Elementalist, unlock all of the Staff skills, get bored, switch to a Rifle, and then file a bug report because “my rifle doesn’t do any damage and I can’t unlock any of the good skills”.

I agree with your general point about inconsistency (w/r/t the player character’s instant proficiency with any environment weapon) but in this case I’m happy to sacrifice consistency for the sake of variety. After all, many of the envWeapon and transformation minigames are fun!