Guild Wars 2

I think glorious hero armor needs to be legendary status since it’s much harder than the raid gear to obtain. If not that then at least for staying in legendary tier for a certain number of matches. Hard? Yes, but legendary armor is supposed to be. Also for certain WvW achievements of equivalent difficulty. Legendary tier looks impossible though, and it frankly should be for the very best. With the way MMR works however it’d be unrealistic trying to attempt it since even top tier players have 80% win rates, which is much smaller vs. those of a similar tier (world class teams don’t just play each other) so against other world class teams their win rate would be 50%.

I think sniper sounds cool but the way the mechanics work is you need to move around quite a bit so hunkering down for long range attacks wouldn’t be a practical playstyle.

yolo swaggins.2570:

And this monk elite is going to get staff as it’s weapon right?

No, especially since elite specs can’t be mixed due to balancing issues and some elites would likely share a weapon.

The monk elite would be bare hands, no weapons equipped. Punch, palm strike, and other abilities with no weapons equipped. As a monk having no weapons equipped would be like equipping two ascended zealot weapons, but could still swap between no weapons and a base thief weapon set. Zealot because it would be a bruiser/healer spec, druid should still be better for dedicated healing but would be mostly for single target melee DPS with good healing rather than a dedicated healing spec. This would allow monks to alternate between decent group healing and good single target DPS. Double fist (no weapons equipped) would have three attacking and two healing skills, one a point blank AoE and chi wave which is both offense and healing like solar beam but is stronger than solar beam with a wider area to account for initiative costs. Solar beam is an autoattack so it makes sense for chi wave to be better in the short term (I use that term loosely since solar beam can be spammed while chi wave would require recharging initiative so their overall healing should be the same in the end but chi wave would have wider attack and healing radius with bigger heal numbers).

A quote that stuck out to me was,

“The director level is incredibly detached from what it actually takes to create a good game.”

But at least as far as the economy and HoT difficulty is they seem to be making a great game. You spend a very marginal fraction listening to or watching cutscenes, even the story instance repeats are for the challenge achievements and spend most time of course grinding but that’s to get ready for more challenging stuff. John Smith did lots of good for the Guild Wars 2 economy. PvP balance on the other hand needs a serious looking at.

“There is no clear vision of what makes a game good.”

Yes there is, at least among the multiplayer game community.

1.PvP balance. This being number 1 is intentional, this is most important because all the players involved are actual players…well, not all, you still have mist champions, archers, etc., but stakes, pride, sportsmanship, and honor are more important in PvP than PvE. If you exploit a dungeon for example you aren’t cheating a real person whereas if you do speedhacks in WvW then that’s far worse, since you’re letting third party programs carry you and cheating someone out of an honest result.

2.Economy. Stuff should be worth what it’s worth. Who determines worth however? The market also known as the players ourselves. Certain goods are high as they are because players are willing to pay for them, and they’re willing to pay that much due to need and scarcity. Let’s say linen is quite rare due to its implementation and overall mechanics. The bags they drop in have an okay chance to give them while also sharing loot tables with jewels, food, etc., and salvageable rags won’t drop that often. You’re level 80 so you aren’t going to see light armor drops in the 40-55 range that often. Then that shares with other cloths for bolt of Damask which has time gated components. This time gating combined with scarcity of materials was simply brilliant: it gave finished products more value than the sum of its parts because one simply cannot mass produce them keeping supply lower while things like crafted exotic armor is worth less than the sum of its parts. The base metal and cloth are potential and flexible, you can put those towards anything that requires them. A finished product on the other hand lacks that flexibility, so the ectoplasm, orichalcum, and gossamer have more value by themselves than mixed into the armor.

So both time limits to restrict supply and flexibility create value.

3.Open world PvE content. It seems easy to us, but we gained experience playing and even before elite specs had full exotics. In a lower level area it’s assumed you don’t have all your traitlines and skills unlocked while wearing greens. Being level 80 therefore (and logically should) give you an advantage there. However, the whole spectrum of skill should be represented. Orr in 2012 was fun because it taught us to dodge pullbacks and get our rotations down and be alert to our environments. Today HoT zones do the same thing, but those zones assume you’re at least wearing full exotic, and frankly should. There are zones that give intermediate and good players trouble, and that’s a good thing, it pushes them to raise their skill levels and coordinate and organize better on those events.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Agemnon.4608:

Since HoT mobs are stronger some power creep is justified.

Sorry no. once you work out how the mobs behave HoT is quite easy. I found HoT hard on my first play through, I was a Warrior in ascended Knights armor, with Ascended Zerker weapons and trinkets, my Guardian was a little easier, Burn guard with zerker armor, and a mix of zerker and Soilders trinkets, all exotic gear. My third time thought with my full zerker ranger in full exotic, bar her longbow that is ascended and HoT is easy mode.

From my experience of hot ranged players have an easier time in open world and story mode than melee classes.

BloodyNine.7504:

Supernaut.2684:

WoW did a lot of things wrong, but one thing they did right, IMO, was to provide a clear and reasonable path for gear progression.

Yup, the bottom line is that if the gear is required for content then you should be able to get it through content. I don’t want it given to me for free. If I need ascended armor for doing higher level fractals, then doing lower level ones should be able to eventually gear me up. That was I can work my way up.

If ascended weapons are needed for raids then high level dungeons, and or other high end content should drop those as well. You can gear yourself up through playing content to work to harder content. Grinding/buying gold and crafting the armor/weapons should be a shortcut. Not the only way to get there.

None of that would matter at all if the content didn’t require those items. But it does.

you can get them Via drops, granted they are few and far between. but they do drops.

If you think about it power creep can communicate: “You’re actually going to need these stats or abilities sometime. Better get used to it.” We could already beat the much easier content without it, this would further widen the gap making gathering that much faster and more convenient. HoT may not be as hard as their reputation like you stated but there are times when you have be careful. In Tangled Depths for example there’s a spot with abunch of grunts, a couple of mounted mordrem, some snipers, and a veteran smoke scale off to the side. I know to shadowstep behind a sniper, burst him down, switch to shortbow, let the bouncing arrow and exploding ponies bleed out some extra damage, go back to sword/dagger for more daze stunning, take out the juggernauts, then the grunts. It’s that ledge near the steps you need to get up where you glide to a helicopter blade, jump off to the cliff, climb up the ramp, get the vista, then dive (seriously do it! The free mastery point was a pleasant surprise) only to be chewed up by piranhas.

Exploring that part of TD was actually fun so I don’t understand why people hate the map. Yes getting the meta to succeed requires great organization, familiarity, and skill, but there’s more to the map than just that one meta and besides, those who mastered the content need some open world stuff too. Some content needs to chew up intermediates and even goods but not quite greats and spit them out.

I think a monk class that focuses on tanking and healing and would be our version of druid would be better. Some mechanics would be different and our best weapon would be both hands unequipped and it’d be like having two ascended zealot weapons equipped. Black belt is my other idea for an unequipped weapon class for guardian but their fist would have ascended celestial stats and be focused on debuffs, DPS, and tanking instead of healing and tanking.

Elite specs cannot both be taken so monk would have two dodge bars and unable to use staff but could still use shortbow or sword and dagger in addition to an empty hands weapon slot for various chops, punches, and chi waves that act like solar beam but more potent (because it would have a CD unlike solar beam since solar beam is an autoattack whereas chi wave would be double fist 4)

Yasi.9065:

As long as you get punished for playing good, you will see people trying to manipulate their mmr.

The whole mmr system is flawed, has been flawed forever, will be flawed forever because anet is just incapable of writing anything but mediocre algorithms.

That’s why I advocate rating floors, to prevent such sandbagging. Though if you have a 2,000 teaming up with a 1,200 that would create some complications, especially if the sole 1,200 wins enough with them he’ll have an inflated floor while he’d be dipping the 2,000 rated players’ average so they’d be fighting against what we’ll call class A players (1,800-2000) The novice would then have an intermediate floor but only novice skills but because of the experts he’s stuck there.

To prevent this kind of abuse you’d only be able to team up with people within your own rank, but this creates problems since it would vastly increase queuing times. If PvP had more people then it wouldn’t be a problem until you reach 2200+ Elo where you’re better than 2% of all players.

I’m not positive on Eagle but it seems like it has its uses. With three dodges and quick dodge regen you can dodge many knockbacks while staff and some utilities have interrupts to ensure the opponent stays below. Since it’s only 5% extra damage below 50% health it might be intended to be a PvE rune set only because the 5% extra damage is more meaningful on bosses with hundreds of thousands of hitpoints but should still be felt in PvP especially with high HP classes like warriors and necros.

Fury is a boon, which means it can be stolen or converted into a condition by some classes. I don’t care for pistol whip in PvP since it’s rooting though I can see where it’d come in handy with good group coordination (AoE CC for example where a bunch of minions and players will have to eat at least a lot of the pistol whip) but doesn’t seem to have as much utility as sword/dagger though s/p 5 has some good uses. Not my style overall though.

You’ll have lots of mobility but people will know better than to chase you and you still only have three dodges, there’ll be more nukes flying around than you could dodge.

There’s a lot I still have to learn though but eagle seems to work well in WvW (I haven’t done it before massive nerfs however and they seem fine on staff or d/d ele at least.)

Chase.8415:

If they reset MMR, people would have complained they are being matches with the best players or grouped with bad players because the MMR is fresh.

I agree with an MMR reset because the best players will simply go back to the top quickly enough and since many people’s skill hasn’t caught up to their MMR (some smartened up and no longer SoloQ for example) their MMR would be more accurate. Rankings should depend totally on MMR, no more of this pip or even level stuff. I also think there should be MMR floors every 200 points to prevent sandbagging abuse, so if someone’s skilled enough to obtain 2,000 ELO equivalent then they can’t fall below that.

Serious Thought.5394:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVn8lCFmiVmCemCkmiFYCzLNcGaDzdwT4KULBEAyAA-TJBFABCcKAue/hqKDAwTAAA

Made full post, but I figured I’d ask here too- anyway to make this instagib harder? So far the V-F1-3 combo 100-0s players.

Looks way too squishy and rune of evasion doesn’t seem that great considering cripple is trivial to cleanse and since lots of fighting happens in close quarters they can hit you whereas ranged would still be able to hit you for a little while. Cripple is nice but not dedicate a runeset nice. I’d go marauders and replace bandit’s shield with signet of agility. I’d swap out one of the elemental runes for a +5% damage rune. That’s straight up damage which will also balloon with crit. Let’s say you have that sigil and do a 1,000 hit non crit, if you crit with 200% ferocity you’ll do 3,000 damage. Without the sigil you’ll do 950 damage and crit for 2,850. Just wanted to use a nice round number for the sake of simplicity. 5% doesn’t seem like a lot but it adds up over time. Paired with eagle runes (should be more your style since you’re going for a fast burst down single target style) should do well. I’m not familiar with all rune types so there could be something even better. Some swear by scholar’s but to me they seem impractical because staying above 90% seems unrealistic.

Auesis.7301:

Agemnon.4608:

Invictorum.7643:

Muchacho.2143:

I’ve enjoyed reading this thread. I’m new to the game (just picked it up a month ago) and after watching your match this past week, you inspired me to give the thief a try. I’m only rank 30 in pvp so far, so obviously my experience won’t necessarily reflect that of people with higher MMR, but I’m having a fun time with your build. I love the mobility. None of the other classes I’ve tried give you as much freedom to move around the map. Any advice to somebody very new to the class?

Honestly, keep to Thief even during the times when it’s weak.
When Thief comes back up to a balanced state again? You’ll be used to outplaying everyone to win, so once you’re on the same playing field you’ll be a league ahead.

I really like that line of reasoning, but the problem is your team will be mad at you for running an underpowered or even simply non-meta class. Maybe practice dueling in guild halls?

Gonna have to be careful if you do that since:

1) Guild hall arenas don’t have any capture points or changing terrain. Mobility and moving around the maps are key components of PvPing as a Thief, so getting in to a “duel to the death” mentality might mess you up when you go back to Conquest
2) They’re in PvE maps, which means equipment and stats scale wildly higher compared to the controlled amulets. An ascended Warrior can easily land a 10k+ Arcing Shot on a semi-tanky target. Be mindful of what you’re wearing.

Yeah I kinda thought about the gear and rune issue (I want to practice duels in guild halls as a daredevil and druid but even if stats are wildly different rotations should still be similar). I’d craft exotic marauder stuff for thief but celestial would be a real challenge. I’d have the easiest time practicing on my ele since he’s full ascended celestial except one ascended dagger is berserker though his ascended staff is celestial. My ele is ready to go, the thief and druid on the other hand should ditch their crusader, zealot, and marauder armor pieces for pure marauder and celestial respectively to be more exact. My ranger successfully dueled a revenant, elementalist, and other druid relatively recently so I’m already getting used to it and even 1v2’ed a guardian and ele (though my team softened those up beforehand). Since druids have pets, insta daze, and six second stability that lasts longer than the black hole charge in celestial avatar form I don’t know how proud of myself I should be. The other druid had a pet spider (mine was smokeskale) so that was a fair 2v2 though.

Invictorum.7643:

Muchacho.2143:

I’ve enjoyed reading this thread. I’m new to the game (just picked it up a month ago) and after watching your match this past week, you inspired me to give the thief a try. I’m only rank 30 in pvp so far, so obviously my experience won’t necessarily reflect that of people with higher MMR, but I’m having a fun time with your build. I love the mobility. None of the other classes I’ve tried give you as much freedom to move around the map. Any advice to somebody very new to the class?

Honestly, keep to Thief even during the times when it’s weak.
When Thief comes back up to a balanced state again? You’ll be used to outplaying everyone to win, so once you’re on the same playing field you’ll be a league ahead.

I really like that line of reasoning, but the problem is your team will be mad at you for running an underpowered or even simply non-meta class. Maybe practice dueling in guild halls?

What do you think of this build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYWn0MBFOhlOBemCkmildCzbKEFuCbBgazBa+A+AvgA-TZRBABR8AAivMwGHCgZ2fAgzAAA

I haven’t actually tried it out in practice but I like sword and dagger primarily for the daze stun chains and shadowstepping utility (besides swords simply have the coolest skins in the game) while the eagle runes are to reduce the opponent’s chances of recovering. If I get the opponent below 50% then getting a 6% damage increase would burst them down even faster thus widening the gap between our respective hit points. It’s also when interrupts should be kept in mind since they’ll eventually try healing back above the 50% threshold.

Staff is the raw DPS plus blinding weapon, vault isn’t a problem since I have ground targeting locked to target so I don’t have to juggle moving with targeting as I’m holding down my mouse buttons. I have switch to chill since that slows their cool downs.

I’ll think about swapping out critical strikes for something else though and I only use it in PvE to make up for the crit and ferocity loss from a crusader helmet, zealot shoulders and pants, and marauder chest and boots (nearly all accessories are berserker however). Since in PvP I’d go marauder as I think I’d have enough crit to justify dumping critical strikes. Is acrobatics still a joke? I might also dump sword/dagger for shortbow if that’s optimal.

And last but not least…how would I deal with druids? Goal mostly being interrupts until team can burst them.

If you set AoE fields to lock under target it solves so many problems, like actually being able to move when using staff 3-5, well 4 still needs to be aimed properly while moving but worth it.

Balancing should be determined by both developers and top ESL players, since players good enough to actually win money and glorious hero armors know the classes inside and out and use that information to form strategies they can also be consulted for balancing purposes.

A good question to ask when balancing is, “If two world class players played against each other would one’s class overwhelmingly beat another in 1v1?” If yes then is it an intentional rock paper scissors kind of a deal? In that case the balance comes from another class hardcountering the other, and others being hardcountered and it’s one big circle. If not and the class is simply objectively better that’s when you tune it.

I think rankings like rabbit and dragon need to be scrapped in favor of an MMR based ranking. Leagues I’d keep but base off MMR so if you’d have an ELO of 2500 or higher (using WoW terms here) you’d be legendary rank, 2100-2499 diamond, 1700-2099 sapphire, 1500-1699 ruby, 1300-1499 emerald, and under 1300 amber.

Serophous.9085:

yeah, it was real nice watching 2 players on my team sitting in mid during a stronghold match doing nothing.

Oh well, least it ended in 5min

Some strategies involve watching over the resources and while it seems like mid would be a great place to camp to watch what’s going on every where else there are too many obstructions for that to really work. But yeah I can see where two players in mid can be a problem after awhile if the other team is busy defending or attacking your fort. I don’t really care for odd numbers per team because you can’t evenly split up between offense and defense. It’s awesome whenever your champ is being invaded, you play a little defense, then turn the tables and crawl up from a lower score to win afterward.

Esquilax.3491:

You are in the kitchen making a cup of coffee with your character standing idle in a safe spot. You start to hear combat noises from your PC and come back to observe that guy dragging a mob next to your character so it starts killing you. You faceplam, kill the mob and watch the scoundrel move on as if he was totally innocent.

I hate that guy.

“That guy” is doing so because he thinks you’re AFK and therefore scaling stuff or an event leecher.

Mea.5491:

I would separate PvE from PvP (skill-wise).

I would halve the cooldowns of almost every skill in the game (GW2 has big kitten cooldowns).

I would give passive 25% speed signet to EVERYONE and passive signets would work without equipping!!!

I would get rid of Ascended gear (Exotic would be the best and easy to get, Legendaries would get Exotic stats).

I would make events and end-game content that have GOOD rewards.

I would get rid of costumes and make more armor skins.

I would get rid of all the time-gated crap.

I would get rid of elitism. I would make sure EVERY CLASS is needed and useful in any game content!!! I would try my best BALANCE everything.

I would get rid of ferocity and make crits 200% damage at all time.

I would get rid of preset stats and let people choose 3 different stats on their gear freely (I would immediately get power, toughness, con. dmg for my Necro)!

Strongly agree with separating PvP and PvE and making 200% crit ferocity baseline. In theory pretty much every game developer wants to make every class feel useful in every game mode but the job is quite difficult even for those experienced trained professionals. That’s why they resign themselves to making specs and even entire classes dedicated to PvP or PvE usually implicitly. Let’s say you have a class that does lots of CC and good burst damage, but is relatively squishy…but big dungeon bosses are immune to CC and with their millions of HP what that class excels in can’t be felt whereas in PvP that same class would be awesome to have around.

Something like Nightfury but with little flying reindeer in place of bats ^_^

Odokuro.5049:

After Personal stories, Living story seasons, and HoT story ect.

Beating adversaries, killing dragons, restoring Orr, ect. Will we ever see a day when maps are restored, Orr full of life with no undead, ect. Or will we always be reminded of past events in never-changing maps?

I for one would like to see the changes that would occur after completing stories, ect.

I think it would be good but only for level 80 characters. Since lower level zones are in the past our powerlevels need to reflect us how we were back then, not as we are now. How else would you justify level scaling anyway? So it’d be a good idea but only if level 80 characters get to see the updated versions.

Zero Day.2594:

Well…

There is a bit or Role Playing in BDSM…

And this is an MMO RP G game…

I guess it works?

---

And… Considering you could build stuff in your guild halls… You can make your own “dungeons”…

Watch it become a sub-mode of a sort like GvG in WvW was (and now a thing of it’s own)

I wouldn’t call it an RPG at all because the mechanics are radically different from Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games.

jewishjoyride.4693:

Oh hi Chaith. I just thought I would put up a screen shot. I am Odoreye. My points were good enough to be second on their team. This is fairly discouraging over all if personal score has nothing to do with pips as your individual skill and impact in a match still won’t help you progress.

You lost to the Abjured! That’s very okay, nearly any other team would too. Those guys are world class elites.

1.I’d get rid of grind rankings in PvP and instead have your rank based off your MMR. Top player in different categories would contribute instead of just win/loss record.

2.I’d have mounted PvP where you could steal their mount after defeating them and underwater weapons would be used as jousting weapons with a different skillset.

3.Bump up AI across the board.

4.Introduce super mobs that randomly attack players anywhere in the open world PvE zones. Their AI would be very sophisticated and have higher stats than normal versions of the mob. There would be shadow leaper, teagariff, risen, and other mob types but with more abilities so they can intelligently interrupt and crowd control players and know what skills they have. Super mobs wouldn’t be limited in location to where the normal versions are typically found. There are no teagariffs in Queensdale, but a teagariff super mob randomly spawning there at random is possible. All areas will have them spawn once per hour and would be picked from a pool of 20 super mob types at random in a random part of the map.

5. Minigames for thief players to actually steal stuff and similar class based quests for other classes.

Gathslan.1870:

Arenanet reads the forums, and from all the complaints i think it is clear that the community wants open world to be easy and relaxed. I guess we shall see in a few major patches if they listen, i am sure they will release new zones entirely too with patches for hot.

Hardcore content should stay in raids/pvp

Some of it should be but HoT is still reasonably challenging and should stay that way. It would be nice to see a formal dev response to the players insisting on nerfing difficulty, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Get good and play on!”

Teutos.8620:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

when in reality the division icon represents your effectiveness on a premade team

Currently, the league icon only shows how much you played.

As long as the pips gained is not effected by your mmr, it currently does not matter, if you won your matches facing high mmr premades or just killed some low mmr solo-queueers .

It is currently the same if a top tier ESL player wins 50% of his matches and slowly gains pips or a noname at the bottom of the mmr ladder.

(It also includes the option of abuse:

• Once you reach a new division, that you can’t loose: Just loose as many games as possible to put your MMR to the ground -> then farm lower-mmr players for a win streak and easy pips.
• Play with a premade at a low-population time, where no players with your mmr are online -> farm lower mmr players for easy pips. )

But sandbaggers can’t get into the prestige leagues…surely?

More new leet specs:

1.Slayer: base class Mesmer. Their new weapons are daggers. The slayer skill glorious bod would make the player immune to critical hits thus is a counter to passives that have a 100% crit proc like a weapon swap from a sigil.

2.Black belt: base class guardian. With no weapons equipped it’s like having two celestial ascended weapons for this guy. The elite skill bicycle kick cannot be blocked and last a little longer than a ranger’s rapid fire. It’s like rapid fire mechanically but the black belt tracks its target with chained attacks. Cannot be interrupted, 60 second cool down, 20% more crit with no weapons equipped.

So far we have:

1.Monk-thief
2.Ninja-warrior
3.Idol-elementalist
4.Solid fang-necromancer
5.Slayer-mesmer
6.Black belt-guardian

That leaves three more.

7.Fast rider: ranger. They ride their pets and obtain 1/2 of the pet’s stats. So if a brisleback has 16k HP and a ranger rides it the ranger would obtain 8k HP in addition to half its defense, crit, power,etc. Saddle of justice would increase the stats to 1.5x pet’s base stats for a 15 second period. Pet skills can still be used, but being mounted cannot attack one player while the ranger handles another. Like druid traits for staff (since two elites cannot be taken at once it makes sense to have the same weapon type as another elite so it’s no net loss in the end) and has druid’s staff skills complete with healing, only celestial avatar is missing in order to keep the balance.

8.Bladetecher-engineer. It makes sense to finally give engineer swords because I think the 2012 Halloween chain sword goes great with them. Kits revolve around augmenting blades. Remember in World of Warcraft rogues using different poisons on daggers? Here the same principle applies with different effects including shared group lifesteal, chill spam, burn, or poison effects can be augmented to the swords. Don’t know what elite skills to add however, engineer is already pretty versatile. Keeping in mind that it can’t stack with scrapper however maybe reuse their elite skill?

And for revenant…I got nothing so far, sorry :(

“That’s like asking for Raids to be soloable (Which someone is actually asking for lol)”

I don’t want them soloable per se but because they assume 10 people are going at it if I can clear it by myself then I’ve reached an exceptional level of skill since I’d be doing the job of 10 people. I want to be that skilled so I wanna complete a raid without armor to really tighten the timings needed to dodge or get specific skills off.

Ele was my first class and is currently decked out in full celestial ascended with ascended staff and triforge in PvE and WvW and sometimes celestial and berserker dagger (switch out ‘zerker for Viper for better burning yields?) It’s a good class but managing all those abilities has a decent skillcap to it. Celestial is overall the best stat set for it because it’s a class that makes the most out of all the stats. Water for healing power, fire for condition damage, power, ferocity, and crit, earth for condition damage and defense, and ele has good overall interrupts, mobility, and gap closers.

Slowpokeking.8720:

Hume.2876:

This game is so not hardcore.. Listen I get that SOME people might feel the game is too hard. But here is the rub..

1) People get bored easily by content that they can always complete.
2) To extend this content – you have to make the grind longer..

So GW2 has to find a balance between content creation (expensive)/challenge/repetition..

I think they have done really great here. So I would say – be careful what you wish for. Here is the problem with your scenario OP.

Easy content = more grind. More grind = less players. Less players = money lost.

Sure you can have content that is too difficult..

Then you have hard content = massive frustration. Frustration = less players. Less players = money lost..

I certainly don’t think Arenanet has done that. I see LOTS of players who don’t really like old GW2 who are back playing this game. I’d say that is mission accomplished.

The content might be too difficult for some people – but extremely few. I’d say less the 1 in 1000 video game players would have any difficulty in this game. This is still a very easy game for the most part. (I am not counting raiding or competitive PvP – those are more difficult.).

I don’t oppose hard content, but I oppose hard content in open world, especially the TD meta.

I think the TD meta sets a good precedent. Not all super tough content should require formal grouping. It is likely intended for guilds to taxi people in taking up the entire map and complete it in an ultra organized fashion.

Maybe you can start a guild dedicated to obtaining Nevermore and keep taxiing people into the same map to ensure that particular map will fail?

Eric.7813:

I actually am okay with staff skill 1.
But am I the only one who finds no use for staff skill 5?
and staff skill 4 doesn’t seem too useful either…
turns out people don’t really need to be healed that much

Five is good if you watch for telegraphs while 4 feels a bit clumsy to aim with practice it could become a good CC/cleanse skill.

Dark Saviour.9410:

Not all ‘growth’ is desirable to all people. :-/

I’m going to have to agree here. The fundamental problem with more people getting into something is those who are established already built up a decent skillset. (I’m mostly talking about PvE here) Since new players are going to be less skilled than established players newer content or even previous content will have to be nerfed to accommodate them. Popularity also means sanitation and neutralization, which is why you hear original fans of a band complain whenever the group they liked becomes popular. Their attitude, values, statements that spoke to the original fans is now lacking. It isn’t the fact they become popular per se but rather how they do it. Instead of speaking to them they speak vagueness to everyone.

And so the same danger applies to video games. Not just to specific franchises, but gaming in general. We want games that know they’re games and don’t try being movies. The occasional custscene is okay, but too many can hamstring the game’s flow. In Mass Effect 2 for example it felt like I spent more time talking than actually shooting things, and that wasn’t too engaging since it was mostly cover and let team buddies do a lot whereas in an old school game like Quake you’re dropped right in the middle of a fun level and can immediately get shooting. I know TPS and FPS are different (Sheppard obstructs too much so TPS seems like the superior sub-genre) and Quake seemed to have far more hidden stuff and mechanics like using an invincibility power up to traverse lava. In addition to mechanics specific to the genre games should build on them to avoid feeling exactly like others, but also to avoid gimmickry. Final Fantasy innovated the ATB and limit break systems while its dynamic difficulty in VIII was just gimmicky. Just turn monsters into cards, save before every card game to avoid losing cards or getting the random rule, and turn cards into high level spells that can’t be drawn from monsters at a low level. Not exactly an intuitive way to play but is optimal since it avoids empty levels.

Tl;dr: Games need to be made for gamers and a franchise shouldn’t lose what drew in the original base. A game has value because there is a lot to master, and some content should challenge those who’ve obtained such mastery. If someone hasn’t mastered it then they do not meet the skill cap to clear obviously.

For PvP this is what I’m thinking of running. Point blank shot offers an interrupt and I deviated from the meta build somewhat to accommodate longbow:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqANsgVsCmsCctgl/ADet+WvrLvuMQA4JN0tOal8s0A-TpxFwAKOEAJeAAH3fAwRAAxFAoZZAA

I’m finding staff 4 (vine skill) to be quite unwieldy when moving around but am aiming it better with some practice (hold mouse 4 to strafe them aim that way)

It seems best for CC and healing I’ve found. Skill 5 also converts projectiles into healing. Celestial form skill 5 is pretty sweet.

Solid Gold.9310:

Shame on ArenaNet, your “Average Joe” payed for the game as well.

Then the average Joe should learn to properly become raid ready. When people pay to enter a tournament in something you aren’t owed winning but should earn it by outplaying everyone else. Likewise for raiding you should find a team, coordinate, go over tactics on the drawing board, research raiding footage to see where others went wrong or what they did right, and obtain the proper gear for their strategic and tactical roles.

If we’re going to have level scaling then we may as well not even have levels while EXP would unlock skills or if I’d decide to keep levels explain in universe why you’re “weaker” in some areas but stronger in others. Low level areas canonically taking place in the past seems like a decent enough hand wave.

I’d also unlock everyone’s abilities so you don’t have to choose between binding one skill or another. I mean you’d still have to learn the ability but you won’t be limited to just 10 skills.

I’d keep gear tiers, traits, and stuff but have harder areas reward proportionally. I’d have PvE be less rewarding than sPvP and WvW since it’s less prestigious than them. I’d still buff dungeon rewards however but add dynamic AI for a new hardest mode. I’d have supermobs with very advanced AI that knows what players will do and maximize its winning chances (they will know what skills a player has) and be picked from a random pool of current mob types in random locations at random times. A supermob teagariff or shadowleaper for example could utterly gank new players in a starting zone as they wouldn’t have the experience or even the gear to cope with the challenge while a super bandit mob in HoT zones (or anywhere) would have more abilities and way higher stats.

As for story I’d kill off Marjory, have Jormag fake his death but it backfiring on him when the Inquest kidnaps him, controls him, and gives him ceramic armor to resist heat much better. After killing him for real you unlock access to the Inquest’s base in the Far Shiverpeaks for raiding. They also killed Marjory and are holding Logan and Zojja prisoner. They accuse Zojja of being a sell-out because she’s in love with Logan. The raid would be all about rescuing them. It would be divided into difficulty tiers: 10 mans, 20 mans, 40 mans, and 100 mans. The 100 man one has a guaranteed chance of dropping precursor weapons or armor upon success, but will absolutely not forgive mistakes. The utmost cooperation, mastery of one’s class, timing, and mechanics are essential to success in the 100 man raid. If someone prematurely tries interrupting a trash mob for example they will get downed, if they’re too late then the big telegraph also downs them. So coordination and timing interrupts would be the name of the game.

If the raid wipes the players would be shown a cutscene where Zojja dies in agony, with a close up of her face with sorrow and despair. Don’t worry, it wouldn’t be canon but rather motivate the players to do better next time.

I’d also add 40 man and 100 man battlegrounds that are modeled after Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest. Just these big siege brawls where you storm the castle and take out the head NPC. Like stronghold kinda but more fun and bigger battlegrounds. I’d also add straight up death matches for those who like them. Also separate balancing between PvE and PvP.

Basaltface.2786:

Liewec.2896:

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

But dont you know? Outfits are the best thing ever. No class identity needed, not much work needed and they can “make stuff that doesnt fit any armor class”…like basically all but two or three outfits they released up to this point. Oh look.. today we got a heavy armor outfit that would really make some great combinations with norn armor…or charr armor but nope outfit it is.. cause we here at arenanet dont give a darn about armor personality anymore. Here have these three + the mistward set in this 50 bucks x-pac and that handfull of spec armor pieces cause full armor would be a waste, buy outfits! Be a storm trooper! Bah.. even reading the word “outfit” makes my salt encrusted blood boil.

Look on the bright side, they could introduce royal outfits where you could look like a king or a princess ^_^

I like the uploaded outfits and think they’d fit the game pretty nicely. Also some school girl outfits like in animes like K-On!

Boysenberry.1869:

A lot of people like to say that everyone needs to stop complaining and just give Anet the time it needs to sort everything out. I understand that fixing the myriad of problems in the game takes time. What bothers me the most is that Anet prioritizes fixing/changing the oddest things over game breaking problems.

A lot of critical progress blocking content still simply doesn’t work half the time and yet it looks like they’ve spent a lot of energy lately nerfing visual effects. Huh? Has anyone ever sat down to play GW2 and complained the game was too visually appealing and that it needs to be made bland? Did I miss that post?

It was done to make tells less obstructed in PvP, and is a much easier problem to solve than intricate balancing. I think the full effects should stay in PvE however.

Stormbolt.7293:

I don’t get it. They received overwhelmingly negative feedback last time they did it, and then they do it again. Their esports pipedream isn’t going to happen. It’s a saturated market as it is, and GW2 doesn’t measure up to other esport games in terms of competitive gameplay. Anet needs to stop neutering the game in the name of PvP (statistically the least played gamemode) and focus on the MMO aspects of GW2

I strongly disagree. PvP balance is the most important thing an MMO can focus on. It’s only the least played for a couple of reasons. People are afraid of exposing themselves as utter noobs while PvP also cuts into farming time.

With that said I agree that the esport ambitions hurt the game somewhat (such as the fireball and other visual nerfs) and the game modes should have separate balance.

Thaddeus.4891:

Agemnon.4608:

Since HoT mobs are stronger some power creep is justified.

Power creep is never a good design. Never. That invalidate older content because of a cheap way to introduce more stuff in a expansion.

That said, Ascended are in the game almost since day one. 2 years since ascended armor and weapons are in the game. That’s not a power creep anymore, it was 2-3 years ago.

Specialization Update and Elite specialization on the other end are recent power creep.

I wouldn’t call older content invalidated since you still obtain the same rewards from it and if you gain the power creep then you’ve earned your overpowering rights by defeating tougher stuff to obtain those stats. Raids are supposed to be tough, so it’s good to have elite specs and new stat kombas to handle them better. Where powercreep really matters is PvP but that should be balanced separately anyway.

Another benefit to powercreep is mobs in base Tyria weren’t designed with stats like marauder or elite specs in mind and assumes you’re wearing greens (except Southsun and the deserts, those assume you’re at least in exotics) so your survivability and damage is better and could thus finish fights faster, meaning less time overall between nodes.

Since HoT mobs are stronger some power creep is justified.

I like the new effects too.

What are the two most important things in an MMO? In order they are PvP balance and economic health. Some great things were done for the economy such as giving T5 silk and leather value way beyond vendor price, but nerf dungeons and don’t have rewards proportional to difficulty in the newer zones.

As for PvP the meta gets shaken up every so often, and it’s good that we’re seeing new mechanics added to classes, but scrappers, revenants, and reapers dominate way too much compared to other classes and AoE spam obsoletes previous roles and strategies. At this point Anet is well aware of their critical faults at least on the PvP balance front.

They should segregate PvP and PvE so abilities have different powers and times in both but that’d make too much sense. That way revenant and reapers could still be viable for raiding while being more in line with other classes in PvP. Does a class have poor group utility and no viable AoE attacks while being squishy? Then give them lots of damage to make up for it. Is something tanky with great utility, healing, and control? Take some off damage, or kitten the utility, control, and healing abilities when speccing for pure damage (well, kitten at baseline but make the non-damage utilities great when traited).

PopeUrban.2578:

Given the social awkwardness, culture mixing, and general forced pandering to oversensitive asian audiences, I could only see Cantha coming back as a highly diversified “civil war” area in which Canthans split themselves in to recognizable asiatic cultures.

The problem with that is that it completely destroys the aesthetic and theme of Cantha as a place. What made cantha special really was that feel of a “unified asia” and the way that all the architectural, clothing, and cultural elements were blended together.

In a “socially acceptable for asian markets” Cantha, that would be lost, and we’d end up with a really boring continent full of simply mundane “oh, here is team japan, here is team korea, here is team china” vibe.

Or, in stead they could revisit Elona, which was a just plain more well developed and interesting setting in every way.

I’ve seen alternate asia in like half of every MMO ever and if we’re not going to get a unique treatment of “only the coolest looking stuff from all of asian history” like we did in factions that would completely overcomplicate and subvert the existing lore, then I’d rather not see it at all.

Elona on the other hand is extremely unique as a fantasy environment. I can’t even come up with a single other MMO, or even a single video game that really dove deep in to north african culture and built a thriving and sensible world around it.

If I had to choose between a Cantha gutted in the interest of political correctness, or an Elona untouched by anything but the natural flow of tyria’s lore, I’d pick elona every time.

I’d really love for Cantha to return but not like that. Still, it’s been centuries since the Guild Wars 1 timeline so there’s lots of scope for change. I personally think it’d be great to shoehorn in a martial arts vampire theme. If there are new elite specs then I think giving ninja to warrior, which would be daredevil modified for warrior while warrior obtains stealth skills with their new weapon (offhand dagger and some utilities). Warrior can already duel wield swords so it makes sense while thief can have a monk elite spec because thief is relatively weak on group healing apart from shadow refuge condition removal. Elementalist meanwhile can be an idol with a pop theme mechanically based off boons and would somewhat be like chronomancer but without the base mesmer stuff and have a different rhythm and boonset to it to avoid obsoleting chronomancers or making taking an idol and chronomancer redundant. Meanwhile necromancers can have a solid fang spec where they gain vampiric powers like transforming into bats (skill similar to ele’s mistform) and while I know they have lifesteal need more vampire stuff. Two elites cannot be taken so no daredevil monks please.

Morwath.9817:

Agemnon.4608:

Probably because it is well known that druids can prolong a battle. That is just one negative, another being the relatively limited scope for stratagems and tactics. The best players apply the same strategies and have the same builds and compositions, and even skill differences are close. The best and second best isn’t absolute and can be determined by one’s mood and/or diet since when you’re that good the difference between best and second best boils down to subjective factors as technical excellence is achieved by both.

What? You blame the Druids, which were least used profession today?:P

No one knows what’s going to be played beforehand except the players themselves. The druid part was speculation and even then had some, not most blame.

Probably because it is well known that druids can prolong a battle. That is just one negative, another being the relatively limited scope for stratagems and tactics. The best players apply the same strategies and have the same builds and compositions, and even skill differences are close. The best and second best isn’t absolute and can be determined by one’s mood and/or diet since when you’re that good the difference between best and second best boils down to subjective factors as technical excellence is achieved by both.

That was truly awesome. Things like that are why I play games mostly.

The viper set goes really good with a dragon helmet:

If it is overrepresented in the top tiers you know it’s OP. Top players with lots of experience and research don’t pick classes just because. They pick them because they have deliberate advantages in a given role and have better sync than other class combinations.

They usually post on Reddit. Players I can understand since Reddit has lots of player based sub-Reddits where they’re outside the eye of official forum moderators. Can’t infract someone outside your jurisdiction right? But devs…I really can’t understand.

Keep in mind that they’re actually working on the game and sometimes can’t post here (or Reddit).

Oreithyia.3064:

I often like the male outfits a lot. My charr and my asura males still wear the wedding outfit, because i think they fit their culture very well.
except for asura and charr I also like my guys wearing daydreamers finery.
In some cases i think it is more difficult to make good clothing for men, because there are a lot more rules what’s socially acceptable for a man in a video game to wear than for a woman.
A woman ( in a non PG18 game) can wear almost everything as long as you don’t see nipples and reproductive organs… men still have to look manly or cool or atleast “funny” to not hurt the delicate eyes and souls of the gaming community.
You’ve gotta do more than design some kind of swimsuit or bikini and overknees and say “there new skin, buy it people”.

i think designer often design the woman clothing first and then they struggle a bit with time and ideas when they’ve got to find an outfit fitting the same theme for the guys. ^^"

Good female outfits though still cover quite a decent amount while still bringing forth the character’s beauty. The human wedding dress and Noble Countess outfit are perfect examples.