Guild Wars 2

They might also lose players as a result – not everyone will buy the expansion, just as not everyone buys gems. Whether they’d still come out ‘up,’ I have no idea. I’m sure others have a better idea of what the end-result will be.

I do know I’ll be one of the players lost; they’ve just never followed through on their most significant comments/ideas, as far as I’ve seen, such as ‘every class, every weapon,’ or Precursor crafting, or even resolved issues like Engineer Hobosacks. I haven’t bought any gems as a result, and I won’t buy the expansion.

On the other hand, if the expansion is free and resolves the issues above? I might actually play the game again, instead of logging on and getting rewarded for existing.

If you just log in once a day, you’ll get laurels once per week, until the final reward offers a big bunch of them.

I’ve been using CnD+Mug for a little while. It’s never revealed me.

I know I, at least, posted in a thread she’d posted in shortly before she posted in this one; the thread in question was about capes, and my post was calling out the dissonance of the reasoning provided for why/why not capes by pointing out hobosacks.

If that kind of ‘track them down and call them out’ is required, it’s rather disheartening, though I’ll never be certain whether that’s really what brought her to this thread.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Basaltface.2786:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Anymras.5729:

stuff

Thank you for your comments!

How about this:

TL;DR for Gaile

• create a bomb, a grenade, and a medkit “weapon” held in hand
• if back item is equipped and box set to “show backitem”: always show back item (override hobo sack)
  —> even if it is a back item without skin, so people can go with nothing on their back
• if back item is equipped and box set to NOT “show backitem”: show hobo sack
• on standard player models (competitive PvP): show hobo sack

• Shields will still clash with back items, but it is the same problem (and can be handled the same) as any other class that has access to shields or sheathed weapons on the back, such as bows, greatswords.

This way, people who always want to see their backpiece can do so. People who like hobosacks can wear them. People who would like absolutely nothing on their backs can have that. And people who need to see a visual tell in order to know what weapon or kit the engi is using at the time, can do so.

Community: did I summarize this correctly? Is this the easy fix that will make almost every player happy – those that hate and those that love and those few that rely on seeing hobo sacks?

yeap…sounds about right. Everybody should be happy then…though i might also add another point that i (personally) find should be present aswell

Now the question is, how DO we get Gaile back into the thread? :P

Theoretically, the staff reads this thread, though they’re unlikely to say anything due to Anet’s policies.

Maybe it’s the sylvari in question’s Wyld (ugh I hate that spelling) Hunt to learn as much about non-magical methods of doing things as they can. Or they just don’t like magic, much as the Nightmare Court rejects the teachings of Ventari.

There’s a lot of ways you can reconcile it, if you really must reconcile it at all.

Lert.6287:

Minimum range? That’s just silly. There’s nothing like that in whole game. And how do you think that would work? “Great, I just wasted nearly half of my trait points just to be unable to use granades when I need them”.

There is actually one skill with a minimum range – the Mortar.

I definitely agree that the Grenadier trait’s 50% increase is a problem – it gimps the base kit as a result of its effectiveness, and that’s ridiculous, even for a Grandmaster trait.

As for the proposed fixes, I…honestly don’t play enough to be able to give much input, anymore.

I do have to point out that the application of Vulnerability isn’t a Grenade Kit thing, but rather the result of the minor GM trait, so changing how it works could have unexpected effects.

It was here shortly after the game began.
It will be here, given the perpetual ‘other things take priority’ attitude, until shortly before it ends – because only then will there not be anything else ‘in the pipeline,’ though I may have missed some opportunity to monetize some other tiny, tiny aspect of the game that would push it back to ‘Well, we were finally going to fix hobosacks, but then the company killed the servers, so it doesn’t matter anymore.’

Thumbs-up from me.

Fixing weird page glitch.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

After catching up with the last few pages,

TL;DR for Gaile

• create a bomb and a grenade “weapon” held in hand
• if back item/shield is equipped: always show back item/shield; if NO back item/shield is equipped: show hobo sack
• on standard player models (competitive PvP): always show hobo sack

Community: did I summarize this correctly? Is this the easy fix that wil make almost every player happy – those that hate and those that love and those few that rely on seeing hobo sacks?

• Also need a Medkit in hand; this is the third of the three empty hand kits.

• Instead of ‘If Back Item or Shield is equipped: Always show Back Item/Shield,’ I would suggest ‘if Show Back Item == True: Always show Back Item.’

Explanation of suggested change: ‘If equipped’ implies ‘is present in a slot on the Equipment screen,’ and using that to determine the result could indirectly cause cosmetics to affect stats (which would in turn cause problems for the pro-hobosack faction (Probosacks?). Using the ‘Show’ checkbox to determine this instead would allow the cosmetics to be opted in or out, as desired by the user, without affecting stats. It is important that this not be linked to whether the back item has a skin or not, however, as some players would like to not have anything on their back, and should not have the sack thrust upon them. With cosmetics being such a big deal as to cause a thread like this to exist, the three factions (Probosacks, Nobosacks, Nobacks?) should all be considered with equal weight, even if not all cases can be resolved.
Shields are a somewhat different beast, given that they’re a problem for every class with them, but could likely be handled in the same fashion.

SEM suggestion works just fine for sPvP.

Yeah, when somebody rolls in and goes “The devs won’t remove ranger pets,” in a thread about Engineer hobosacks, we – or, at least, I – will probably not find it particularly funny. It’s as irrelevant as whether the devs have stated whether they particularly enjoy fish and chips. The dev reaction isn’t even shared between the two concepts, with the general response to hobosacks being ‘we do not have the time or resources,’ as opposed to the flat ‘no’ response to requests to allow removing pets.

TL;DR: Fish and chips.

DeceiverX.8361:

“It’s the class feature and it fits within our creative vision of the class, so we have no intention on allowing for it to be optional.”

-Ranger CDI

Difference here is that the staff has actually expressed some desire to do something about hobosacks, but seemingly never have time to.

So, because some other classes don’t have viable elites, you want to nerf the only viable one for Engineers? Why not, I don’t know, buff or redesign the nonviable into viable elites? Because it’s easier? That’s the stupidest way to balance anything.

You just keep getting beat by engineers with Supply Crate in PvP, don’t you?

If IP is restricted to particular skills, an ICD is probably not as necessary – sure, they could burst-drop a bunch of Burns by spamming their skills, but after that, each skill has its own cooldown.
The reason behind the ICD is, instead, probably related to just how many crits can be dropped; Flamethrower hits ten times in two seconds, Grenade Kit hits two/three times and has a toolbelt skill that drops a bunch of grenades at a time, and Static Discharge builds focus on dropping as many attacks onto the enemy as possible in as short a time as possible. Those’re just specific examples I can think of off the top of my head as ‘potential reasons for Incendiary Powder to have an ICD for fear of ever-lasting burns.’ Can’t think of any that focus on use of mainhand weapons.
(Of course, none would really focus on Flamethrower, as far as I’m aware, but I also haven’t been keeping an eye on what builds exist, so I’m probably missing a few seemingly-obvious examples.)

It seems like it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement a general check for input – “If [input from (default keybinding) 1-10] is active, wait until input is not active.” Maybe have it put up a “Hey, Last Refuge is ready to pop” indicator.

No, really, it’s been a long time since Scarlet was beat. Is Lion’s Arch ever going to be anything like the way it used to – that is, not a pile of rubble?

Jayden Ennok.3687:

asterix.9614:

OK kind of like the traits I am using at the moment, I am using a full dire condi (I know cheeseXD build, im new to thief), but what gear stats to use…….. Any link to the build using p/d +d/p together would be a boon.

Ty

The magic is in the traits, I recommend trying 2/0/6/0/6 instead of rejecting the very advice you asked for.

I’d been wondering about a very similar build, since I find the ping-pong teleportation amusing, and I will take the advice to heart.

I wouldn’t say they promised it, but they did state that they were working very hard [anti-filter filler] on getting all weapons to be available for all classes; I believe this was mentioned as something they wanted to get done before the end of 2013.

Looking at the future, what comes close to exciting me: Eventually, we’ll get new weapon accesses for all classes. Or so they said. A year ago. As something they’d have done by…2014.

Other than that, I’m hoping that they eventually do manage to excite me. Or do something besides make me sigh and go “How did I not see that coming?”

You know what?

If Anet:

• Fixes the hobosack issue (by which I mean ‘let us turn the kitten things off’)
  and
• Does not link turning them off to a Gem Store item (because that’s just so grabby, guys, what is wrong with you)

I will buy gems.
Because doing that will show they at least sometimes listen to players, and that this game isn’t as doomed to ‘welp, the ivory tower overlords have other things to do, as they always have and always will’ as I thought.
I still play it, after all, after more than two years, despite my aforementioned feelings. That’s pretty good.
They fix this, I’ll buy enough gems to get the Deluxe Edition, and maybe an outfit or two. Maybe more. Don’t know.

Oh, I know there’s that difference. That’s probably why they haven’t fixed Hobosacks, and won’t unless they make it a Gem Store-based thing – why bother with Quality of Life changes, when they can just implement simple customization options and charge gems for them?

I don’t think Bomb Kit is a reference to Glaive Bombing. I feel like they have similar mechanics, but, really, a lot of things do. Necromancers can also do this ‘glaive bombing’ thing with Wells and Marks (if the marks are cast at their feet), as can Rangers (via traps).
A similar ‘this behaves somewhat similarly’ argument could be made for the Engineer’s Kits in general being a series of references to Team Fortress 2 (Bomb/Grenade = Demo, Flamethrower = Pyro, Toolkit = Engineer, Elixir Gun/Medkit = Medic). Doesn’t mean it’s actually a thing.

I don’t think game designers are miracle workers. Let’s get that out of the way. Even if I had, at some point, thought they were – well, it took almost a year for the devs to realize Scope wasn’t working (after they initially claimed the script looked fine, and then had players running 10k shot tests to double-check), took I don’t even know how long before they finally managed to fix Deployable Turrets (to be fair, the trait apparently worked in PvP, despite having the exact same code involved), broke it again, fixed it again, and then managed to put out a half-patched Rocket Turret. Miracle workers? No. But that’s not a dig – bugs happen.

What I do think is that they’ve had this issue sitting here for the entire released life of the game – two years and then some, and that’s not including beta testing, where this issue was undoubtedly brought up. That they’ve told us, every time they bothered to tell us anything, that ‘other projects take priority, but we’d love to do something about this.’ That they could easily make kits simply respect the existing back item flag.
As far as I can tell, that shouldn’t even be a day’s work for a single person, and requires absolutely no new resources or UI elements, just a few lines of code. It’s not even a balance concern, with Standard Enemy Model in the game. The same code could be applied to shields, so as to keep them from doing exactly what hobosacks do.
Instead? They let you customize the mail if you’re level 71+, because apparently this popped up in a suggestion thread. At a glance, it requires: Shrunken Griffon model, animation for it, sales picture in the BLTP, UI tab specifically for mail carriers as a setup for future monetization, and probably some other things I haven’t thought to point out.

These projects shouldn’t have landed on the desk at the same time.
These projects shouldn’t have even been in the vicinity of the desk at the same time.
This thread, that we’re having this conversation in, should not exist. The impetus for it being started should have been corrected before the game ever went on sale.

I’m not, to be clear, talking about customizing kits.
We shouldn’t get what other classes don’t, so that shouldn’t happen until other classes can customize their graphics. Then? Well, we better get some customization options. It’s only fair.
We should get the same ability to enjoy our back items in combat, however, and that’s why this is so frustrating – a simple stopgap, for now, is all it would take. Just a simple ‘Kits will now respect back item enable/disable flags,’ no weird skins or anything. Throw a buff icon on the bar with a simple picture of what the kit uses.
But, it’s been two years, and they’re customizing the mail instead. As a player and paying customer, I feel alienated and disrespected (and have, for some time now) – they know this is a problem, and they still brush us off, only to implement things like customizing the bird that brings you mail, but only if you have a level 71+ character on your account.

Oh, so this was actually something people wanted? I didn’t know.

It still bugs me that this is something that gets worked on, when there’s still issues that’ve been drawing complaints since (at least) launch, and get responded to with ‘the engineering team is on higher-priority projects.’ Interesting priorities.

Oh, I don’t think they’ll forget about us…I just don’t think they’ll ever bother to do anything. I mean, they just implemented a mail carrier customization for characters above 70. That pretty much tells me that they’re always going to have something ‘more important,’ even if it’s something completely pointless that nobody (to my knowledge, anyway) even asked for. They’d rather shoehorn in more ways to add Gem Store items.

Edit: Apparently, it was in a suggestion thread. It’s nice to see that they take the concerns of the community seriously…if said concerns can be turned into Gem Store merch. Congratulations, folks, we’re less important than ‘Can I turn that pigeon into a griffon if I give you money?’

Well, they might fix it, I guess…by, going by Gaile’s ‘well, this is what some of them are thinking,’ making Gem Store items be the fix. Because it’s totally okay for one of the eight professions to have to pay to be able to actually enjoy the cosmetics the game pushes as endgame when in combat.

Easy to use, except it’s pretty much exactly what the trigger for the old Scope trait was. Unfortunately, it completely failed.
It never worked.
At all (despite initial insistence to the contrary from a particular staffer).

So, it’d probably be easy to use, except that Anet has already demonstrated an inability to create a functioning asset that switches states based on whether people are moving.

They can think we’re arrogant, and we can think they’re idiots.

Also, as somebody who’s got a little bit of grounding in coding (working on it, and attempting to make my own games): From what I can see in-game, it seems likely that it could easily take the state of the Back Item checkbox and use that to figure out whether to Enable or Disable the kit model.
It should take maybe two minutes to write the basic ‘if this box is checked, disable that; otherwise, enable that’ function, and probably a similar amount of time to call it in each Kit’s equip button.

Only Condition Damage, Condition Duration, Boon Duration and Healing Power are applied to Turrets. Pay no mind to the tooltips; they lie, even when they really shouldn’t even have the ability to.
I think there used to be some kind of trait-point interaction, where bonuses from traitlines actually would have an effect (for example, points in Explosives increasing the direct damage), but I haven’t checked that in forever.

They changed ranger pet locations with the NPE. Not…really sure why, but that’s something that happened.

Clarity in skill function is something that should definitely be encouraged.

Narrrz.7532:

Anymras.5729:

I’d be pretty happy with being able to put Utilities in the Elite slot, personally.

That sure wouldn’t hurt, though there’d need to be some compensation for losing the toolbelt skill. Maybe it could be a tools line trait, granting you ~100 condition dmg, power, precision and ferocity while you have a utility equipped in your elite slot?

Honestly, I wouldn’t even be that annoyed about losing the toolbelt. It’d be nice to be compensated for it, but it might prove useful enough that compensation for no toolbelt could be unnecessary or even unbalancing. After all, with just one more skill available, a lot of builds could potentially be made viable – so I’ll hope they let us just try it sometime, and then evaluate the need for compensation.

I think customization of things is interesting, but likely impractical, overly complex and potentially unfair (assuming, of course, that other classes don’t get a similar degree of control over their own things; if they did, then it’d be perfectly fair).
The most ‘balanced’ method I can see for doing this involves extra UI elements, for example, and Supply Points to be spent on the various things in the Crate – as well as rebalancing/reworking of Elite Supplies X.

If I recall correctly, I once proposed something somewhat similar using, more or less, special traitlines; players would get points to put into lines that would offer customization options for particular skills, essentially. Reception was lukewarm at best.

Narrrz.7532:

That’s basically my intention. It would give you flamethrower kind of damage out to ~1000 range, but at the price of no longer being multitarget on the auto. At the max range, skill2 should be a slight dps increase over the 1-chain, just so that skill is actually worth using.

The “elite” bit only comes into play if you decide to blow your kit up.

honestly, part of why i want an elite kit is just so i don’t feel like i have a filler skill equipped there, & so i don’t have to sacrifice a precious utility slot for a weapon kit.

I’d be pretty happy with being able to put Utilities in the Elite slot, personally.

Retaliation/Confusion would both become more important, I think – they punish the things Quickness makes happen.
Other than that, it’d pretty much go as the general consensus leans: Some would whine about essentially being insta-downed, others would advise dodging/reflecting, and a lot of people would get snipped off in zergs by Warriors with Killshot, Rangers with Rapid Fire, or basically any other high-damage, long-range skill. Then zergs would start Reflect-chaining before anyone could fire at all in an attempt to stop the onslaught, at which point Quickness Berserkers would drop into melee, and likely be downed shortly after downing one or two enemies.

Edit: Also, personally, a lot of the reason I’ve never touched Quickness skills is the generally long cooldown associated with them. Not sure if they should lower that, though.

I don’t know if this is a bug, but every time the Aspect Masters yell that it’s my chance in get in close, or actually yell “Get in close!” at me, if I actually do so…I take a bunch of damage.

The first time this happened, not only did I take a bunch of damage that, because I hadn’t expected it and was at somewhat low health to begin with, downed me – and then the guy who told me to get in close to begin with completely ignored that I was down, despite NPCs commonly being intended to rez players so far in the Living Story, and the other Aspect chick actually did pick me up the next time I was downed.

Not sure if these are bugs or reasons to distrust the Zephyrites, but it could really be either.

Ulfberht.8519:

Carighan.6758:

Ulfberht.8519:

This wouldn’t really unbalance anything

I’m hard pressed to think of any game component except maybe the login screen which this wouldn’t completely break, balance-wise.

It would make every class a bit stronger, but i think it would be roughly an even boost to all of them…

I’m going to use Engineer as an example, because it’s the class I’ve played most. Other classes might have similar things going on, but it’s not like I’ve played them enough to be able to point it out.

Complaints regarding Engineers tend to be based on the ‘spamgineer’ perception, or the ‘turret nest’ thing, as far I’ve noticed, so I’ll look at those.
These can’t really be used together – turrets get more out of traits than most of the Engineer’s other skill sets, despite their final product being lackluster even with a massive investment, and the trait investment required makes having anything other than Turrets on the skill bar feel like a waste, and a ‘spamgineer’-style build is probably going to use a lot of Kits if it’s not a Static Discharge-based one; traits can be useful for this, but with Experimental Turrets giving boons to the user, lacking them wouldn’t be a massive deal. Rifle and Flame, in particular, would work to offset the damage loss by applying Fury and Might as long as they were on the field.

Now, take a full Turret build. Give it, I guess, X/X/6/6/X for trait points, traited for sturdy, regenerating, buff-engine Turrets with increased range and damage. Load it with whatever Turrets best fit your playstyle. This build isn’t going to be good at moving around, but it’s also going to be tanky. Much of the damage comes from Turrets, and the boons they give – but, without the Turrets, the Engineer is almost helpless…except if he has another set of utility skills he can swap to. Which, uh, well. That’s an interesting idea.

Let’s just load those extra ones with Kits. All of them, just Kits. Medkit, the Engineer loads up his points with massive amounts of healing packs – and can use Stimulant to get Swiftness to travel between points quickly, letting his Turret nest delay people trying to take the other point, or making a grand old entrance with several Turrets if he hasn’t placed them. Also gets Fury from Stimulant. Fun times. Especially because this kit also has Antidote, cleansing a condition each – add those to Healing Turret’s two cleanses every fifteenish seconds, and that’s three per fifteen seconds after the ones littering the ground have all been used.
Still occasionally dies, despite a carpet of med kits, antidotes, and a pulsing regen field? Can be kited? Can be cornered? Elixir Gun would really like a word, with skills #2, #4, and #5, nonrespectively.
Doesn’t have the damage or options required to bring a target down without Turrets? Let’s bring in the Bomb Kit – it’s even got a fire field that can be self-triggered six times with just what’s been listed so far (four Detonates, Big Ol’ Bomb, EG #4). Seven, if he’s using Pistol/Shield – so that’s 21 stacks of Might so far.
Enemy still gets away? Toolkit magnet. Bring them right into the Turret nest, beat them to a pulp. If the nest has been detonated for Might, beat them to a pulp without Turrets. Grenade Kit might even be viable for this, with Chill to slow the retreat, Grenade Barrage to drop as much damage as possible on their heads, and the Poison Grenades to make sure they can’t properly heal, but really, just yank them in and hit them with the Prybar. Drop a Glue Bomb while you’re at it.

All that, and Supply Crate, too (for a potential eighth Blast finisher, if properly timed, as well as boons from the several turrets within it, making for a potential 27 stacks of might, among other boons).

Would this be fun to play as? I’d find it hilarious.
Would this be fun to play against? Hah. Hahahah. HAHAHAH. No. No, this would be terrible. This would be taking the most frustrating aspects of dealing with an Engineer (tons of available skills, various combos between them, and turret nesting), and jamming them together sloppily. This probably isn’t even the most broken thing in the game, but it’s the first thing I could come up with off the top of my head as an example of ‘why this might favor some classes more than others.’

Edit: Oh, man, I hadn’t even thought of the implications if Kits count as swaps. hahahah. Also, I ignored traits other than Turret traits, which really just kind of makes this even worse.

Shaogin.2679:

This thread needs to go on forever till gadget traits become useful!

We’ll just have to add it to our Engineer Forever Threads, alongside Hobosacks and Legendaries.

Don’t know about firing at the ground, but when you fire at closely-packed NPCs, AoE bleed does happen for me.

Turrets do have five-minute timers, and if they were able to be chained (because of cooldown starting when they were placed, for example), I don’t think there’d be much complaint about making them shorter.

Agreed – things like that, it just doesn’t make sense to not have a consistent ‘baseline’ level of trait synergy. Even has aspects of the NPE to it, as it’s bloody confusing to have to keep track of which traits work with which other traits on which class, rather than being able to go ‘yeah, these will work with those, every time.’

The first time we got a response regarding it, the priority projects were things that, well, they’ve already completed. Pretty sure nothing’ll change – every time a project is completed, another will come up, and we’ll be stuck with hobosacks until the game dies.

A short sound-clip, similar to what plays when elementalists change attunement, would also help clarity.

I’d almost suggest something like ‘Also, with this trait, Gadget toolbelt skills can be swapped out for other Gadget toolbelt skills,’ but that’d just…be awkward. Also, possibly OP.

Engineers have a similar couple traits – well, similar in that they’re both automatically using specific skills when a certain condition is met. They’re both Elixir skills, and are affected by the Engineer’s Fast-Acting Elixirs trait, which reduces the cooldown of Elixirs. Seems odd that this is something not mirrored across the board.

Even when using a full bar of gadgets, current Gadgeteer just doesn’t do enough – for which I blame the boons, as they don’t want to give too many of them or make them too strong for fear of stacking, I guess.
I definitely support making gadgets more useful, and this version seems pretty handy.

On a related note, I think the aspects of randomness in both Mine Field and Rocket Boots are problematic for each skill.

• Mine Field isn’t quite hit-or-miss, but I think it’d definitely be nice for it to be more predictable for the user – or even sort-of-controllable, possibly using a charge-up mechanic. What I mean by that: Set the positions of the mines to something akin to a five-pointed star, rather than leaving them randomly scattered. Tap the Mine Field button, Mine Field is placed at maximum dispersal; hold it and the dispersal zone narrows until the minimum distance is reached.

• Rocket Boots seems to send the user tumbling in unintended directions far too often for it to be reliable, in my opinion – what’s the use of using it to jet away when the tumble at the end, which doesn’t even act as an evade, has as much chance of sending you rolling back toward the enemy as it does of not? It’s not quite random, but it’s definitely awkward.

Theoretically, if they’ve been reading this thread, they’ve seen the ‘put things in the player’s hands’ suggestion. It was not mentioned whether those designer ideas (fanny-packs and Gem Store items, because Gem Store items are obviously the exclusive cause of this issue and the plethora of other back items can’t possibly be part of the issue, or a part that needs resolving, as seems to be the viewpoint of Designer were the only ones; it seems safe to imagine that there’s at least a few suggestions from this thread bouncing around.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ultimately, enabling any correction will involve members of several different teams (design, art, programming) and those teams members currently are engaged in other prioritized projects. But as you can see, the team wants to address this situation in the future and we’re grateful for your patience while the team selects the implements the right fix for the issue.

They’ve been ‘engaged in other prioritized projects’ for years now, probably being rolled from one to the next and then on to whatever new project came up while they were working on the other ones.
Thanks for actually looking into it, in any case. It’s nice to hear they still care, even if the current project pipeline seems unlikely to ever allow them time to do anything about it.

It would be really nice if the actual forum search would work. Unfortunately, it’s just never worked at all, as far as I’m aware, and I really don’t think they’re going to fix it any time soon.