Guild Wars 2

I’m 90% certain that this isn’t an exploit. The point of the Karma jug is so that no matter which character you complete the daily on, only the character that you actually want to give Karma to will get it. Previously, Karma boosters worked on the daily Karma. Ergo, Karma boosters working on the jugs should be working as intended.

I’d legitimately be confused if this was later labled as an exploit.

I have no regrets about the purchase price but I’m still miffed that, much like GW1, it’s not really an “MMORPG” in any traditional sense. If anything, it just feels more like an online-only RPG.

It’s odd, really. If GW2 was considered as an RPG with a huge multiplayer component, I don’t think anybody would be complaining. If anything, people would be stunned by the amount of content crammed into $60.

However, this is supposed to be an MMO, and MMOs have a different set of standards. And a very core part of those standards is to have content that encourages people to play constantly. In the oldest of games this was made by just having the level cap take you 1yr or more of lifeless grind to reach. WoW reshuffled that by making the objective gear grind, and then gradually introducing more tiers of gear to elongate it. Other things like crafting grind (which for the record, GW2 still has) require you to grind the materials or gold for materials, then sit there waiting for the crafting to complete, then farm a dungeon for a rare drop material, rinse lather repeat.

GW2’s objective is to remove “hard” grind that the game basically forces you to complete. However, I believe that Anet has neglected to introduce alternative aspects of PvE that independently have a reason to be repeated without some sort of overarching purpose like grind. For example, while Events are repeatable, there isn’t any sort of inherent reason to repeat them unless you either need to grind levels to progress to the next zone, grind karma for exotics, or grind monsters for materials. Dungeons are repeatable, but after you’ve figured out the fights and enjoyed your wipes, it just becomes repetition while you grind for dungeon tokens.

I believe the original concept was to have a set of varied objectives, which individually sink time and occasionally overlap aspects of their completion. For example, while trying to hit Lv80, you will do events. Events grant Karma, which can eventually be used to buy Exotics. The skill points accrued also can be put towards a Legendary weapon, as well as excess karma. Therefore, the level, exotic, and legendary objectives are connected. However, the problem here should be apparent: only Events seem to have this nice mix of Exp, Karma, Mob Farming (materials), and Gold income. Dungeons throw Karma and Mobs (relatively speaking) out the window in return for Tokens. WvWvW is horribly inconsistent in terms of gains due to matchups, whether or not you get kills, and whether or not your allies can ever get events completed.

So what we end up with is a single path that produces multiple outcomes. Unless you’re specifically shooting for a Dungeon or WvWvW set, you grind Events. Repeatedly. For EVERYTHING. In my opinion, this is a huge issue because Event rewards are only maximized in the Cursed Shore, due to all events being Lv80. So unless you feel like forcibly hamstringing your forward progress, you don’t even get a decent variety.

On top of this, not enough things reward Karma, because that basically just boils down to Event grind. Personal Story doesn’t grant Karma. Dungeons don’t grant Karma. Exploration doesn’t grant Karma. Gathering doesn’t grant Karma. Killing monsters doesn’t grant Karma. Crafting doesn’t grant Karma. Note that all the stuff I listed still grants Exp. But the only things that grant Karma are Events, Events, and WvWvW Events. And yet, the grand whopping majority of PvE things are purchased with Karma, or can be purchased with Karma. Racial Armor. General Exotics. Crafting Materials. WvWvW basic Weapons/Armor. Various tools. Boosts and Buffs. There are a ton of Karma sinks, and only one decent source of Karma.

One big problem I have with the Personal Story and the Open World (Hearts, Events) is that zone pacing can easily outstrip personal level gains unless the player forcibly decides to backtrack and repeat content for 1-2 hours…every 1-2 hours. I don’t believe that leveling slowly is an issue – I grew up on Ragnarok Online – but to put it bluntly I don’t want to gather devourer eggs 5 times in a row just so I can keep pace with the game design. My solution is to compress the level requirements, without actually changing rewards or the amount of content.

One thing that I still despise about the open world is that even if I walk into a zone at parity with its lower requirement, I’m forced to hover around the start point and pray that I get to farm a rapidly recurring event. Otherwise, I’ll quickly find myself one, then two, then three, or even four levels below the area I’m standing in. And if it’s a zone with a zone boss, that boss can be up to 10 levels above the zone baseline…which means that even if I see “BOSS IS UP” in chat, I’m SOL for at least another 5 levels…if not another 8…or even another 10 due to event mobs getting scaled up. 5-10 hours of wishing that I could do the boss event without getting instagibbed by a stray AoE.

To compress the levels of an open world zone would not be to modify its recommended level range, but rather to just modify the level requirements for events and hearts, such that it starts at the same point and then only rises partway to the upper bound. In my opinion, having it sit at +5 levels would probably work well, because from my experience in the 70-75 and 75-80 zones, there is still good zone flow within a 5 level range. Therefore, my proposed level ranges would go from:

1-15, 15-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65-70

to

1-10, 15-20, 25-30, 35-40, 45-50, 55-60, 65-70

This admittedly leaves the issue of a lack of zones that cover the “missing” 5 level intervals, but this could be remedied by staggering a different set of maps. Unfortunately, that would also be counter-intuitive because the level ranges would entice people to repeatedly fly across the map every 5 hours for “same level content”.

With the Personal Story, the problem is that there is a TWO level gap between story steps. In other words, that’s two whole hours of not-story in between ~30 minute quests. While this isn’t a severe issue with the 1-10 arc, due to the relatively fast level gains at that point, it becomes a horrible pacing issue later on where trying to play story for the sake of story quickly and easily puts you upwards of 4-6 levels lower than recommended for your given quest. Again though, once you hit Lv70, pacing becomes far more sane as the quests are now spaced by one level, so underleveling is far less severe.

My solution here is to the exact opposite of the Open World solution – compress the level ranges into the upper half of the bracket. Therefore, this reshuffling would go from:

1-10, 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 60-70

to

1-10, 15-20, 25-30, 35-40, 45-50, 55-60, 65-70

The raw time spent getting to the Lv70 point still remains the same, but individual arcs feel more continuous because you can more easily keep pace with the level ramp up. And while the overall story can be separated into 1-30, 30-50 (shared 20-30 between 1st and 2nd) and 50-80, each of these come in mini-arcs of 10 levels. This in turn allows the current design to “break up” the mini-arcs without ruining the pace of the overall story. In particular, creating the 5 level gap means that instead of instantly getting a message that “Something big is happening!” immediately after an arc ends, there is instead a pause that properly implies the passage of time. Nor do you have the issue where a story branch might say that you “need to do something quickly”, but because you’re 4-6 level behind you can’t do so without dying horribly trying.

With the Personal Story, the problem is that there is a TWO level gap between story steps. In other words, that’s two whole hours of not-story in between ~30 minute quests. While this isn’t a severe issue with the 1-10 arc, due to the relatively fast level gains at that point, it becomes a horrible pacing issue later on where trying to play story for the sake of story quickly and easily puts you upwards of 4-6 levels lower than recommended for your given quest. Again though, once you hit Lv70, pacing becomes far more sane as the quests are now spaced by one level, so underleveling is far less severe.

My solution here is to the exact opposite of the Open World solution – compress the level ranges into the upper half of the bracket. Therefore, this reshuffling would go from:

1-10, 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 60-70

to

1-10, 15-20, 25-30, 35-40, 45-50, 55-60, 65-70

The raw time spent getting to the Lv70 point still remains the same, but individual arcs feel more continuous because you can more easily keep pace with the level ramp up. And while the overall story can be separated into 1-30, 30-50 (shared 20-30 between 1st and 2nd) and 50-80, each of these come in mini-arcs of 10 levels. This in turn allows the current design to “break up” the mini-arcs without ruining the pace of the overall story. In particular, creating the 5 level gap means that instead of instantly getting a message that “Something big is happening!” immediately after an arc ends, there is instead a pause that properly implies the passage of time. Nor do you have the issue where a story branch might say that you “need to do something quickly”, but because you’re 4-6 level behind you can’t do so without dying horribly trying.

One big problem I have with the Personal Story and the Open World (Hearts, Events) is that zone pacing can easily outstrip personal level gains unless the player forcibly decides to backtrack and repeat content for 1-2 hours…every 1-2 hours. I don’t believe that leveling slowly is an issue – I grew up on Ragnarok Online – but to put it bluntly I don’t want to gather devourer eggs 5 times in a row just so I can keep pace with the game design. My solution is to compress the level requirements, without actually changing rewards or the amount of content.

One thing that I still despise about the open world is that even if I walk into a zone at parity with its lower requirement, I’m forced to hover around the start point and pray that I get to farm a rapidly recurring event. Otherwise, I’ll quickly find myself one, then two, then three, or even four levels below the area I’m standing in. And if it’s a zone with a zone boss, that boss can be up to 10 levels above the zone baseline…which means that even if I see “BOSS IS UP” in chat, I’m SOL for at least another 5 levels…if not another 8…or even another 10 due to event mobs getting scaled up. 5-10 hours of wishing that I could do the boss event without getting instagibbed by a stray AoE.

To compress the levels of an open world zone would not be to modify its recommended level range, but rather to just modify the level requirements for events and hearts, such that it starts at the same point and then only rises partway to the upper bound. In my opinion, having it sit at +5 levels would probably work well, because from my experience in the 70-75 and 75-80 zones, there is still good zone flow within a 5 level range. Therefore, my proposed level ranges would go from:

1-15, 15-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65-70

to

1-10, 15-20, 25-30, 35-40, 45-50, 55-60, 65-70

This admittedly leaves the issue of a lack of zones that cover the “missing” 5 level intervals, but this could be remedied by staggering a different set of maps. Unfortunately, that would also be counter-intuitive because the level ranges would entice people to repeatedly fly across the map every 5 hours for “same level content”.

Mujen.5287:

You may not have read my original post. I’m not looking for your opinions on what you think the game lacks, but instead what do you want? There are plenty threads that go over the topics you mentioned but that isn’t what i’m looking for.

What do you want added to the game to give you a better experience when your level 80? Although after reading you post this game just not be made for you, and that’s totally fine! Just please when you post on this thread read the main topic and I’d love to read what you have to say!

And again, I really have no idea how to fix this, short of the work needed to basically build a brand new game. For example, in order for the world to really “change” between visits, Anet would need to at least double the number of dynamic events in the world AND offer more branching options between those events. However, the branching options alone would be the work of creating events, squared, just to account for world states possibly becoming broken or nonsensical (like a random invasion camp in the middle of nowhere).

In order to fix the endgame issue of Events and Dungeons, without just resorting to ye olde standby techniques, you’d still have to have an incentive to repeat this content, but without just resorting to either constant little rewards or carrots on the end of a stick. How would you do that? I have no bloody clue. And once again, I bring this back to the endgame being half-assed, as well as a side remark to Sequilitis: Super Castlevania 4. Anet overhauled the rewards themselves, without actually considering how much of an impact that would have on the reward-gaining process. On top of that, these are completely conflicting systems: one wants you to play forever, the other doesn’t care how long you play. This in turn creates a situation where you play forever to get a reward that does little more than show that you played a long time.

So after my rant, what is my answer? You got it: I have no idea. The only concepts of endgame that I’m accustomed to would fundamentally contradict the way GW2 was designed, so I have no idea how to create an endgame while still respecting the aspects of GW2 that make it GW2.

And don’t get me wrong here, I believe that this is the best $60 I’ve ever spent. Doing stuff the first time around is really fun. But short of contradicting the game’s fundamentals or a stroke of design genius, I don’t see how I’ll ever want to do all that stuff all over again.

I feel that the “endgame” is pretty half-assed to be honest. I mean, going through them one by one:

- Events for…uhhh…Exotics? The problem is that rewards are only relevant in the Lv80 zones. Yes, you CAN join your friends in the lower level zones, but apart from that…why on earth would you go there? To farm Copper? If we had several times more events and a more flexible chaining system, then maybe it would feel more interesting to do this for longer than an hour. But as it stands right now, it’s just a long, boring grind for something that you don’t actually need, nor have the capacity to really show off. Mind you, I’m not an anti-grind person – my first MMO was Runescape, and my second was Ragnarok Online. My problem is that the only reason for this particular grind is to prove to yourself that you can grind.

- Dungeons suffer from the exact same issues as Events, minus the lower-zones thing. You need to run Dungeons over and over and over again, long after they cease to be interesting, all for a reward that you can barely even show off. Dungeons do have slightly better longevity, on grounds that they’re more difficult than most Events, but right now it’s just a treadmill that doesn’t go anywhere.

- Jumping Puzzles…aren’t really endgame. Lets be honest here – as awesome as jumping puzzles are, they’re basically one-shot deals. Even if you spend time running around the world trying to find these things, going back and experiencing them for a second time just isn’t going to cut it. It’s like replaying a Phoenix Wright game; half the fun was solving the problem, so half the fun is lost if you already know the answers.

- Map completion is the same case as Jumping Puzzles. It’s great the first time through, and then you’ll never really want to do it again.

- Personal stories are a pretty severe time sink, and the one big issue I have with their replayability is that you spend more than half the time trying to get a brand new character back up to Lv80. The story arcs are incredibly disjointed due to their level requirements jumping up by 2 levels per step (until Lv70, when it only jumps by one level till Lv80) so even if you’re trying to go straight through the story, you end up spending more time just ploughing through hearts and events as fast as possible so you can do the next step. Yes, you can play these quests two, three, even four levels below their requirement, but that can only last so long before the game forces you to level again.

- WvWvW, and by extension sPvP, are decent sources of endgame simply on grounds that they’re both PvP. PvP in general can theoretically last forever on grounds of competition, so there’s no real reason to have carrots there. However, not everyone is a PvP person, and many people actively avoid PvP. So while this is a valid source of endgame, it’s incredibly short-sighted to say that everyone can get their endgame here.

The only, current, source of endgame that I can find is the Legendary Weapon grind, which is long and tedious but at least the reward is something that you can show off. After all, it’s kind-of hard to ignore rainbows raining down on your enemies.

By Ogden’s Hammer!

…yeah, I have no idea where that comes from, because I don’t remember Ogden Stonehealer using a Hammer. E. V. E. R. But if you’ve been to LA then you’ve heard it at least once.

67 Ranger, 13 Ele, 7 Mesmer.

Man, the post-50 personal story really peters out…or maybe it’s just that Ranger mechanics are pretty boring.

What I hate is when your plot power goes up, but your actual power drops coughCadalbolgcough.

Although, I do admit that having all your enemies being grunts 99.9% of the time is kinda annoying in terms of storyline power progression. I mean jeez, I go from the mortal enemy of my race…to a bunch of zombies…to even more zombies… The only time I got to fight a dragon (up to Lv67 anyways) was a static fight where I stood off to the side and lolfight.

Elementalist.

Because John Kittening Madden.

Seriously, try a D/D Ele, and make sure you’re actually trying to do stuff like swap attunements, use self-profession combos, etc. That stuff is bloody FRANTIC. Hard as hell, and for a reward that’s not especially better than something easier, but I’ll be darned if it isn’t refreshing.

inb4everythingistheendgame

Fact of the matter is, the grand whopping majority of complaints about this that or the other stem from PvE content that was not made available during the BWEs. Stuff like the post-50 personal story (especially the final boss), every dungeon except AC, every open world zone that wasn’t 1-25 or Gendarran, etc. And even then, none of the content was tested long enough to truly gauge its replayability.

Now, I’m not bashing the game here. I’m playing, I’m enjoying it. Plenty of people have sunk hundreds of hours into GW2, which is already several times better than most other games, in any given genre. However, before release I had serious concerns about the longevity of the content, and very little that I’ve seen suggests to the contrary. Just to cite some stuff that I can claim to have experienced (in a spoiler tag to save space):

And what really annoys me is that so much of this could have been mitigated, possibly even avoided, if members of the public had a chance to fiddle with it before release. You could say that release was really just as extended beta, and you’d be right to an extent. It’s unreasonable to believe that Anet has the capacity to test a global Trading Post and account for 1 mil+ people trying to use it at the same time…without actually having 1 mil+ people trying to use it at the same time. Many of the Event bugs were not experienced during beta. Even the overflow migration and social features worked better during beta. Nevertheless, there were still several issues that could have been resolved quickly and effectively if Anet just let people have at it. I mean, the proof is already there: people have identified the broken parts, and Anet has fixed them very punctually.

You could also say that Anet didn’t want to spoil the later stuff. However, I can’t help but think that a half million people getting spoiled earlier might have saved the next 1.5 million from running into all these avoidable issues. And quite frankly, Anet had already made their buck off that first half million, so I don’t think there was much to lose in that regard. Even if that half million got spoiled, they still would’ve had content like WvWvW, sPvP, re-running DEs, working up to non-wiped cosmetics, etc.

So, I dunno, in the end your impression is probably that I’m venting, and you’re right. And indeed, hindsight is 20/20. However, it still just bugs me that so much pain could have been avoided so easily if Anet had just let us work out the wrinkles before release. After all, if this is really a successor to GW1, we’d still have a reason to come back to GW2 long after we believe we’d “exhausted” it.

I think that the problem wouldn’t be half as bad if encounters weren’t designed the way they are.

Take CM Story for example, the first boss. His abilities are AoE Melee one-shot, mid-range flame AoE, and a rocket shot that can “shotgun” if you stand too close. And of course, an melee AA. The ENTIRE fight punishes you for trying to be melee, because if you fail to avoid a single attack you end up instagibbed, on the floor, with fire burning you as you try to recover. Meanwhile, at range? The instagib can’t reach that far, the rockets are actually ignorable if only singles hit you, and you can just get out of range of the fire with ease.

And then there’s Brangoire. That fight is straight up IMPOSSIBLE to melee in because spiders will just swarm you if you try to dance around Brangoire, his normally negligible AA can shotgun you, and he has a melee AoE fear that can throw you into a wall, making you easy prey for the spiders. Meanwhile, any ranged with some form of swiftness can just kite away from the spiders while smacking Brangoire, effectively allowing you to completely ignore two parts of the fight (spiders, fear).

I prefer the “singles you out” bosses because those tend to pick a target, leap to them, and then combo them into submission (eg: TA Story, 2nd boss). That’s ok, because even though melee is still more dangerous (swing arcs) it’s not like ranged is at an absurd advantage. Additionally, Ralena/Vassar is reasonably fair because when they’re together, they have an anti-projectile and knockback auras respectively, so you’re forced to head into melee. Even Adelbern is reasonable because he hauls everyone close.

Having the game at Max 20, Factions/Nightfall style (hit 20 after leaving <insert start zone here>) probably would’ve worked better.

The leveling curve as a whole has just been a source of frustration for me because of stuff like running into zones I’m 5-30 levels below, content difficulty being all over the place due to zone and participation scaling (anything from beating on Lv4s as a Lv8, to being Lv4 against Lv8s, etc), and not really getting to do the cool stuff because anything below its requirement means I get instagibbed by the horde nobody is zerging.

It would also have helped cement the fact that the level cap isn’t supposed to mean anything, because having the cap be high AND having people level progressively through it just makes it misleading. Admittedly, this would mean that all Traits become available by “the end of the 15-25 zones” (effectively speaking) but even then you can still have skill points capped off for progression’s sake.

The really old system that GW2 was originally slated to use had a “mana” bar that was gradually chipped away by abilities and chunked horribly by dodging. To offset that, there were mana potions.

Now that I really think about it, our current skill system (12345 anyways) seems to have been based off an older resource requirement because very few of these abilities have any reason to not be spammed. I mean for crying out loud, the Ranger Speargun 4 does more damage per hit at its lower threshold than Ranger Speargun 1 (admittedly sans bleed). There’s no utility attached, nor is there repositioning associated. It’s just a “push me to do more damage” button. And having played most of the classes, basically everyone mashes all the buttons unless it’s either a Stun or Leap/Disengage.

Azthioth.9682:

Maybe having it back in the form that we all know it is the bad idea, but why not let every class tank, heal, and dps as they choose?

No more we need a tank since everyone can tank. No need to a healer cause everyone can heal. It’s the mass chaos that bothers me. There is no real challenge other than patience.

This doesn’t fix the actual, complained problem about the Trinity, which was grouping. WoW 5s require one Healer, one Tank, 3 DPS. Thing is, player populations are rarely a 1/5 : 1/5 : 3/5 split. In terms of HTD, it’s more like 1/10: 1/25 : 43/50. Remember Dungeon Finder queues in WoW? Or LFG 1 Tank <insert raid here>?

In terms of gameplay, the trinity isn’t actually bad; heck, I’m a long-time healer in virtually every other MMO I’ve played. However, in an MMO situation, the spread of the playerbase that chooses to fulfill the minority roles is usually completely out of whack with the game-defined ratios.

I haven’t even hit Lv 80 yet, but from all the discussion I’ve heard, it seems as though:
- Post-80 basically has nothing new at all.
- People are finding pre-80 to lack any sense of progression past the Personal Story
- Difficulty is both cheese easy and unfairly hard, depending on context.

If you ask me, I think the game was originally tuned around BWE1 difficulty. Y’know, the one where everybody and their brother was dying horribly, repeatedly, to Lv1 mobs in the starting instance? I believe most comments were to tone down the 1-15 zones, slightly tone down the 15-25 zones and then leave the rest alone, because the difficulty floor was way too high for newcomers.

Problem is, Anet ended up nerfing the entire game in the process, causing EVERYTHING to be cheesy. This was especially apparent after BWE3 when despite the BWE2 difficulty drop, apparently Anet still saw fit to make it even easier. No, Dungeons aren’t easy, and Jumping Puzzles haven’t changed, but in effect Anet nerfed the difficulty of the ENTIRE LEVELING CURVE. So unfortunately, this creates a ton of issues:

- A diminished sense of accomplishment, because everything is “Press 1 to win”.
- DEs getting bricked, because they can’t fail if anybody is around to do them.
- An extreme difficulty jump from Open World to Dungeons.
- A disjointed difficulty difference between Story and Open World.

Naturally though, we never tested this during the betas. Why? Because the only zones that were available were 1-15, 15-25, and the Gendarran Fields. We had no way of knowing that everything post-30 (and technically post-20 in the personal story) was going to turn out this way. Even in the case of Dungeons, how many people managed to hit Lv 30 before the end of the weekend? And of those people, how many were already the experienced gamer type?

I’m pretty sure that Quaggan are a writeoff because apparently the race is entirely non-aggressive in order to prevent themselves from going berserk. Or something.

I have no idea how you’d manage to pull off a playable Skritt.

Hylek are a definite maybe, if only because they aren’t antagonized 99% of the time like Centaurs.

nerva.7940:

theyre not too “dynamic” currently because people are facerolling through them. we’re not seeing the branching events that arise from failing the opening DE. it’s not an issue with design/content…they need to fix scaling..asap.

shakehead

The issue isn’t that it’s too easy to beat DEs. The problem is that repeatedly beating a chain results in only one event ever happening. That’s a bigger design flaw than just being easy; it’s a case of not considering that the chain structure isn’t optimal.

Currently, DE chains are basically A <> B <> C <> D. A causes B, which causes C, which can be pushed back to B, etc. The design flaw is that if AI only ever pushes from A to D, and you’re stuck at A, BCD end up being completely unused.

Because there’s no real way to force the players to not do content (and even then, a lone player soloing a DE can force the chain to stop) what Anet needs to do is remedy the coding which causes A to be stuck. In my opinion, there are two ways to do this:

- Use a Tree/Map structure instead of a Chain structure. What this basically means is that any given state (ex: state A) has more than one progression option (ex: instead of just A <> B, you can also A > C). This means that there isn’t a solitary line that the progression moves up and down; instead, it flows more freely between various states.

- Create events that divert players away from the main chain. This can be anything from parallel event chains to random events. The idea is that instead of forcing Event A to fail, you create Event Z to pull people away. This could also get chained into Rift’s idea. For example, if Chain A is Centaurs and Chain B is Undead, forcing A into a stuck state can open up options for B to progress more easily.

Just roll a Human Warrior, Human Guardian, Norn Warrior and Norn Guardian. Problem solved.

Once you get far enough into one that you don’t want to flop back to another, and you want the extra slots for, say, Charr/Sylvari/Asura, then delete the ones that you can part with.

The main problem is that Combo Finisher: Projectile is really bad. The only thing that’s really good for is comboing with a Holy field for condition removal, because none of the other effects actually stick to your target long enough to notice that it even happened. However, Leap, Blast and Whirl are all really good finishers.

Apparently Arah works as advertised.

However, I can’t help but think that the “guidance” of Renown Hearts actually severely detracted from the impact of Dynamic Events. According to some interview a fairly long time ago, development originally planned for EVERYTHING to be a DE. People were getting lost, so Anet decided to throw in Hearts. Problem is…I really can’t help but think that the Hearts themselves weren’t put in addition to DEs, but rather were replacing certain DEs.

I think the biggest culprit I’ve run into so far is the Gendarran Fields. When you’re on your first pass, there seems like there’s tons of stuff to do. On the second pass though…there are MASSIVE deadzones where the only options are farming (nodes or monsters) and the few areas that still proc DEs are tiny sections carved into the north side of the map. Even more annoyingly, all the Heart-specific trigger points (like Suspicious Bushes and whatnot) are still there, yet you accomplish absolutely nothing for triggering them.

Anet’s iterative process is great and all, but I can’t help but think that they completely overdid this iterative pass. They should’ve used the same mentality they had with Vistas – put something MORE there. Because from my perspective, if they did Vistas like how they overhauled the all-DE world, we’d have lost several Points of Interest in the process.

I don’t even think the Skritt have mouth animations. At least, I never noticed them.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the trailer is targeted at non-gamers. Especially non-gamers who want to feel smart. At the very least, you have to admit that the trailer is pretty memorable, if only for the wrong reasons.

Zish.9817:

Maybe a spoiler for you so,
To answer your title: It’s not; your story at all. It's Trahearne's.

Hmmm…I’m going to say yes and no to that. That person shows up eventually, but from 1-50 it’s still objectively your story. Then that person comes out of nowhere (almost nowhere if you’re a Sylvari) and takes over the show. Never mind the fact that the transition at Lv 30 already renders everything you did before that meaningless in the grand scheme of things. And then the second transition at Lv 50 renders everything before that meaningless as well.

I dunno, I wasn’t exactly expecting Mass Effect here, but as far as I can tell my choices so far have been of no consequence whatsoever.

I’m mildly surprised that I managed to snag “Vsin”. I mean, I ran into a guy several years ago in GW1 who overlapped with my old V + class/role naming scheme.

Other than that though, Aldracity seems to be unique to me since I’ve managed to snag it on every game I’ve tried. I also have auraofblade, but I haven’t really used that one since Exteel…

The concept of Dynamic Events is pretty cool. Repeatable content that changes based on what conditions are met.

However, there’s one big issue that I have with DEs. With the possible exception of Arah (I haven’t been there yet), most given world states have only ONE progression option.

Lets take a simple example: Centaurs are attacking the bridge in Kessex Hills. You change the world state to “We have repelled the Centaurs”. The ONLY progression option from that point onwards is “Centaurs attack the bridge”. As such, if you repeatedly repel the Centaurs at the bridge, NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE CHAIN. All you’re going to get is Centaurs attacking the bridge over and over and over and over and ove…zzzzzzzzz. Certainly, a different event can be firing off somewhere else, but in the immediate vicinity there will rarely be any other event that you can quickly pounce on.

And this also means that events don’t really, well, “Cascade”. Even if you do get the fail state, the next event is to attack the next town. Which you can still camp at with no fear of finding centaurs smashing down any other doors. Event iteration is as linear as a LinkedList: even if you want option 3, you MUST run past option 1 and option 2 just to get there. And if you never get past option 1? Well then tough luck buster.

Therefore, Anet needs to at least implement it such that event chains, well, AREN’T chains. Without forcing them to just write more events, they could instead allow for multiple events to count as “start” options, which in turn can set off other events. For example, instead of always attacking the bridge as the start event, Centaurs could alternate between the bridge and a nearby town, or possibly both at the same time in order to attempt to force a fail state. From there, it would then activate adjacent events and badda bing badda boom we have the promised cascading. I’m certain that if events are coded as “nodes”, you could just list two options as start choices, and then add extra branch options for any given event. Those options could be chosen at random (y’know, to be Dynamic?) and that would simultaneously provide additional events and a better chance of creating fail states, without just making monsters crap on people.

Open World:

Greatsword/Shorbow
Troll Ungent
Spike/Flame/Snake Traps (occasionally swapping Spike for Frost)
Entangle

Fern Hound/Devourer

I was absolutely shocked at how fun the 20 Skirmishing “Throw Traps” trait is. Seriously, it just feels good to use them, and the damage output from stacking three is fairly respectable. Besides, having an on-demand Ranged AoE Snare is just plain awesome. Flame Trap is nice with the Greatsword since I can get the Fire Aura combo without requiring Torch > Swap.

Dungeons:

Axe/Warhorn + Shortbow/Longbow
Troll Ungent (no, I don’t use Healing Spring…Water is a meh combo field)
Signet of Stone/Hunt + John Madden
Entangle vs trash, Rampage as One vs Bosses

Because the Warhorn is absolutely awesome, Axe is a solid AoE option, and the Shortbow is arguably the best single-target DPS. I occasionally swap in the Longbow if I need the knockback.

I still use Troll Ungent in dungeons because the HPS still ends up marginally better than Heal as One, and Regeneration/Water Field honestly doesn’t heal for much. Signet of Stone and Signet of the Hunt are used interchangably, based on whether my opponents are melee (Hunt) or ranged (Stone). The other two will generally be traps (Spike/Flame), although occasionally I use Signet of Renewal for condition removal or double Spirits (using it less because effect radii blow and they die so fast).

It could just be Yak’s Bend, but I’ve never had the issue of people not transitioning to Faolain when she tries to res a ghost.

Who on earth designed this guy? It’s a really boring fight, but it’s also downright infuriating. Kite around and around and around in circles just outside his fear range until he drops. Screw up once and you get instagibbed by his army of spiders.

I mean, could the spiders have been made a phase or something? As it stands, the only thing you can do all fight long is kite like a madman, because it’s nearly impossible to AoE the spiders down to manageable levels, and going into melee is impossible because of spiders chasing and he just fears you away. Brangoire himself does almost no damage on his own, to the point where in one group I basically soloed him while my allies spent five minutes running back from the starting waypoint…

Faolain is hard, but at least there’s strategy and coordination to it, and some interesting lore background. Brangoire is do one thing repeatedly, but fail once and you wipe, and who the heck is Brangoire anyways?

Vargs.6234:

This could be one of the most fun weapons in the game, but instead it is one of the most awkward and frustrating, alongside the engineer’s buggy flamethrower and tedious grenades. It’s not like you get a whole lot of other options for ranger melee either. Greastsword is the only other melee weapon and despite the name it isn’t especially great.

Just remove the animation lock. Considering that the chain cripples anyways it isn’t even useful for keeping on a target, while also making the weapon super unresponsive and extremely difficult to position yourself with.

As easy as removing the animation lock would be, I refuse to consider that a solution because of how unique the animation lock makes the Ranger Sword. All that needs to happen is the ability to actually use your 1 and 2 as soon as you hit them.

Also, the Greatsword…it’s honestly pretty good, but it’s also really boring. Just 1 and 2 all day long…you don’t even have to dodge all the time because of the 3rd chain being an evade XD

Colin Johanson. He’s EVERYWHERE.

The Ranger downed skills are insane for PvE. You can res yourself even with stuff beating on you thanks to your pet res. The damage is entirely dependent on a Condition Damage build though, and your “finish cancel” is a measly single-target knockdown.

Copypasta from my thread in GW2Guru to save time.

As much as I want to like the 1H Sword, I find this absolutely impossible to use this in PvE outside of the starting areas. Why? I can’t interrupt my ¹ when I want to. I mean, I get the idea: the ability is designed to stick to a target with ease. Sweet, that’s awesome in sPvP. But in PvE, the sheer unresponsiveness just gets you killed, repeatedly.

The problem is that the 2nd strike is a Charge/Dash, and the 3rd strike is a Leap. NEITHER of these can be cancelled by inputting a different skill or dodging. Compare that against long animation abilities like Barrage – if I want to stop the animation halfway through (y’know, because a monster is about to beat on me) I can.

Even worse, trying to input ² or ³ when I want them to (because that’s the point of having two evade skills on the bar) actually tends to cause both the 2nd AND 3rd hits to resolve before anything happens, sometimes even looping back to the 1st hit before I get any response. Too little too late, because all that time spent waiting means an instagib or near-instagib ability just smacked me in the face.

I would absolutely love it if at least Dashes could be cancelled. Heck, that would be darn useful for every profession. Cancelling leaps would be kinda odd with the whole changing direction in midair thing, but such a feature would go a really long way to help the controls feel more responsive.

This bug is weird. Really weird.

If the heart has bugged out, you’ll approach the area and possibly see a few suspicious trees/bushes, and some warhounds attacking the air. However you’ll quickly run out suspicious trees to kick.

If you start swinging a melee weapon near the air-striking warhounds, or use a “trap” ability that triggers when it hits an enemy, you’ll notice that melee will chain and traps will trigger. Do this enough times and you’ll end up killing an invisible enemy and get credit for one. Immediately after, all other related enemies (ie: kill one separatist, his two partners show up, maybe with less HP) will suddenly become visible.

Of note is that it takes a disproportionately large amount of time to kill the invisible enemies than when they’re visible.

It’s going to be pretty darn hard to make a ForEx profit unless the Gem price somehow swings by +- 30%. Yes, 30%.

Compare buying Gems to selling Gems – the average price difference is 30s Buy, 20s Sell. So basically, you need to buy at 20s, pray that the price spikes back up to 30s and then MAYBE you’ll make a profit of a couple coppers before the price sinks back down again. And if PLEX is any indication, Gem prices are likely to remain near-constant.