Guild Wars 2

The primary role of any class is to do whatever you want with it (though admittedly no one likes a glass-cannon running in and dying all the time).

That said, mace and shield is a good way to block damage. It’s arguably the most powerful damage-avoidance weapon set a guardian has purely in terms of skill utility. However the combat game is about avoiding damage, not soaking as much of it as you can. I say the role of a profession is to do whatever you want with it but genuine tanks are just flat out infeasible and this has been implied by ANET. A Guardian can take more consecutive hits than any other profession just because it has the capability to spam Aegis with the right build, but even that won’t last and even the sturdiest Aegis Spammer needs to dodge once in a while and not just sit there waiting to see if an attack is happening before trying to dodge it.

The guardian is arguably the most powerful profession in dungeons simply because it has so much versatility. It can group mobs together, it can dish out significant damage whether single-target or AoE, it can avoid tons of damage whether through a build for dodging (you really don’t even need to build for it, it should be a thing regularly done) or a build for spamming aegis (plus Wall of Reflection), it can heal and support extremely well (even while dodging) and it can even do a lot of those things in the same build.

Hardly anyone can take more than one of the bigger hits dungeon mobs can dish out, which is why most of those are so obviously telegraphed (and why no other player I’ve seen has insisted tanks are a thing in this game). Since you qualified that you’re just talking about regular stuff though I’d like to point out that while the regular skills enemies use don’t have such lengthy animations they are still very dodge-able and a lot of them are still extremely easy to notice in-action before the damage is incurred (meaning time to dodge them).

Guardians don’t need more HP or more healing capability. We’ve got so much more survivability than most Professions that the HP would make us nigh-unkillable if built properly and our healing capability while not the very tippy top of the chart is pretty good anyways (ever hear of Monk’s Focus or Altruistic Healing?)

Also, have you looked into Toughness? It sounds like you have zero of that stat on your equipment.

Kermit.3601:

Stuff.

I’m just gonna say that a rule of play that players are given to understand they will operate under in any game is not the same as extrinsic motivation. It’s an equalizer, a measure in place to make sure that repetitive failure is not met with pure reward. The penalty by nature ensures that players will try to avoid it. The obvious way is to develop the skill to avoid it, which is an intrinsic desire catalyzed by something outside the player’s control. The wasteful way is to not participate in activities that risk incurring it (i.e. people acting as though repair cost is a barrier when really the barrier is their own skill). The deciding factor is not whether the penalty is extrinsic or intrinsic, but whether the player’s own intrinsic desire to become better is greater than their intrinsic value of small amounts of imaginary money.

Intrinsic desire to become better will take a back seat to the lazy train if there’s no reason to become better, basically.

Take away armor damage from combat-related death and you take away the incentive to develop skill.

Taemek.1602:

The only skill you can use without a target while downed is your heal and guess what, no use to you on a Stealthed Finish move.

Nurvus, ^.

Healing yourself isn’t useful against anyone doing a finisher unless you’re really kitten close to rallying already. Just sayin’.

Taemek.1602:

And you need to realize gear grinding and gated progression is utterly meaningless to others as well. I always quit MMOs near or at level cap because I know there is nothing meaningful at the end. That is until GW2, which is why I bought it.

If raid-type gear progression is added, I will uninstall the day it is announced and never touch the game again.

Does this mean you will quit when they add an expasion in the game?

And here’s the “other MMO” mentality. Why does an expansion need to raise the cap on anything? How long did GW1 run for and how many times did the level cap or gear stat cap go up with content updates or expansions?

Let’s look at it this way. The Elder Dragons are supposed to be our Huge Threat in this game (hints of a Source that would clearly be the Final Encounter type deal, but that’s beside the point as of yet). The players can already fight against two of them. Are the others substantially more powerful with no explanation?

The nice thing about having a level playing field is that the “competition” is more competitive. Instead of stat difference being a contributing factor to fluff the outcome it comes down to personal build and skill.

Speaking of personal builds. Does everyone talking about personal progression realize there are these things called traits in the game? There’s your progression right there. This isn’t like most other MMOs where a defined trait path is indisputably the best and therefor required to be competitive. There’s all kinds of things you can do with them to make yourself better, to say nothing of trying other weapons with your build.

ANET has announced and very vividly expressed their intention to never do a gear treadmill. Dai Bish’s idea about slight bonuses that are only active in specific fields of use is a nice compromise between giving players something to feel like their stats have progressed (even though they wouldn’t) without resorting to everything loathsome about the gear grind.

Building on Dai Bish’s idea… those sigils we see with “deal [x]% more damage to this enemy type” could be set bonuses on the appropriate dungeon armor. That way the more of a dungeon’s theme armor you get, the more effective you are at getting it/killing things in that specific dungeon. It’s not like many people use those sigils anyway when it comes right down to it. This is a way for players to use some semblance of those effects without necessarily shafting themselves by ignoring much less restrictive options and it would not affect the greater balance of the gameplay between players.

On the mold of levels: yes GW2 could do without it without much changing unreasonably as a result, but the concept is hardly outdated. That it needs to have a gear treadmill associated with it in order to be effective on its own is absurd.

Obviously (hopefully) it’s unfinished in terms of graphic effects, but this isn’t really about that. Something much less obvious that maybe ANET already plans to do and maybe they don’t.

Eternity’s icon has a distinctly unique hilt compared to Sunrise or Twilight. If this is not something already intended to be implemented when Eternity is being polished off, I would recommend giving it that unique hilt and letting the blade/effects do as they normally would while the unique hilt remains the same.

It’s a small thing, but when the game needs to go down be it for maintenance, updates, or what have you and it says 3 minutes. How about letting the timer count down normally instead of forcing it to speed along the process. Let’s just say about 30 of us were greatly inconvenienced when a champion in the Mad King Labyrinth was at about 5% health and we only failed to kill it because of the sped-up countdown.

poe lyfe.5879:

if they introduce this there needs to be a way to attack and kill everyone at the wedding and sow salt in the ground so nothing grows on the land ever again.

Aside from everything else, the idea of a PvP option for the ceremony is awesome, I’ll give you that.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

We’ve had synced dances between multiple characters of different sizes. Hugging and kissing…. wouldn’t be too hard.

Really though people, I’m finding it hard to explain why you can’t just dye your armor and prance around for a day.

The reason direct interaction between two models is so much harder is because it’s not just synched. It also has to not clip, not be too far apart, can’t make the character models look ridiculous or bent weirdly out of shape, etc. There’s a lot more work going into two models participating in one interaction than just letting characters synchronize their actions. Synching a dance up just makes sure every character’s dance is timed together, it doesn’t make their models do anything special.

Anyway we don’t need animations for /hug or /kiss, but the emotes showing up in chat would be nice. This is kind of off the topic of the actual proposed suggestion though.

On why we can’t just dye our armor and prance around for a day instead: why don’t you do that instead of going through some silly union ritual with a loved one irl? Because it’s silly and doesn’t mean anything unless people want it to. Since acting silly won’t mean anything to people in-game it’s not going to replace the idea of a recognized marriage-like thing implemented in the game to be done.

Forge seems like the best suit for you despite the “meh for condition damage.” It has a burn and a 15% duration increase on it all in one in addition to protection and a useful stat.

Divinity is my personal favorite but that’s because I’m a balance die-hard and love that it gives stats to everything. Despite my preference, Divinity really isn’t suited toward specialization and it wouldn’t add anything particularly useful for your build. The price-point on Divinity is only so ridiculous because it gives the most stat points, not because it’s better or as good as anything else in most cases.

I kind of feel like Earth’s protection’s CD is too long, which is just another reason to use Forge over it.

I support the Birthday part of this.

There’s no such thing as “unwanted” publicity. Any publicity is good publicity, especially if anywhere in that publicity there’s any hint, indication or implication that one supports ideas that aren’t outdated and hatemongering.

For an added step in the right direction, don’t even call it marriage. That would avoid the whole problem for the… people who would have a problem with it.

Opportunity for more outfits and more things to do. Why the hell not. It could fit in on a character’s portrait right above/below titles: [Term to replace Married] or it could be another little mark of recognition similar to the little gold thingy for 100% world completion.

Make it open to every gender/race combination and then step back and let the community run with it. A handful of blow-hards that are too immature or hateful to handle it won’t ruin the game for anyone that’s actually busy playing the game. And as vespers said, banning/losing the hatemongers is a good thing.

I support the idea but I think the mob pathing AI might go berserk if it falls off a cliff and ends up way outside of its normal “only chase you this far” range. Could be why they didn’t make cliff chucking a mutual thing between players and NPCs.

For what it’s worth, we also deserve to have enemies suffer fall damage.

Running with 1920×1080.

The FoV is noticeably better than what the game started with, however my character is noticeably not centered anymore. I think the new FoV should be put into the game proper so long as the character is centered properly.

I’ve seen other people say this and I agree with them: the camera should still be anchored to the head, not the waist. A person being able to relate to their character’s face more directly will have a subtle but extremely good effect for long-term enjoyment, to say nothing of how the play experience would be improved for everyone, especially Norn/Charr with less of their character’s body blocking their view ahead.

Jazhara Knightmage.4389:

I been saying this for a while, they just need to make an “Easy Mode” server thats not connected to other servers, you cant transfer to the normal servers and WvWvW is just easymode vs easymode vs easymode(same server filling all sides)

make it so they just have to kill 1 mob to clear each maps level cap, if they get in radar/minimap range of an event/vista/heart it auto completes for them, same with collecting mats, instant no need to actually walk over and tap them.

just give them everything, that way they can have their perfect game without all the hassle of actually playing the game.

… and then have the rest of the community collectively asking wtf. I don’t think this is a good idea.

Upon further thought, the Warrior Longbow skillset could be transcribed onto Guardians and it would be pretty much perfect for us. Looking at the skillset I’m not sure why it was put on a warrior instead when they already have a rifle and axe for ranged.

Alt+Click -> Drag. Can be done in your inventory or bank. Won’t work with mail, the stacks need to be separated before putting them in and stacks from mail cannot be separated until they’ve been taken out.

-edit- For the record, I have only ever done it with the left alt key, so I don’t know if it works with the one on the right.

Ahaha, I meant the realistic-looking ones the game currently has are scarier to me than the monstrosities in other games. I have seriously jumped when a Ranger with a Black Widow has a delayed appearance on my screen in LA from the huge number of people.

Longbow would make sense. Otherwise why would we be able to conjure up a Spirit Bow?

The question becomes what do we give up for that? Pretty much all of our main-hand weapon options have a lot of people who love using them.

Awesome.6120:

You weren’t forced to grind the same events repeatedly. You wanted to level faster so you chose to grind them rather than level a little slower and explore more.

Perfect example of this is Kessex Hills near Overlord’s Waypoint. There’s a zerg of people that just grind the event cycle on the west side of the map endlessly. This is certainly a valid way to play and level up, but it’s the boring grind-y way and if you choose to do it, it’s on you for being bored or burnt out.

The game already has more ways to gain XP than any other MMO I know of. It screams optional at every turn. Didn’t get to that event in time? Eh it was optional anyway. Don’t like PvP? Optional. Massive EXP bonuses from crafting but you don’t have the mats? Well it’s not like you need to anyway. Most players do more than just circle around to every heart/event. If you even so much as gather materials then by the time you’ve completed every heart you’ll have most of an additional level up’s worth of experience from gathering.

I mean you see people saying everywhere how fast leveling goes in GW2, and you yourself are kind of right in that “what other MMO’s have to give” is a ridiculously fast trip from 1-Max. If you don’t feel you’re going fast enough, do more than just circle through every heart on a map. You’ve got more options at your disposal than any other MMO. Make use of them. For what it’s worth, I can count the zones on one hand that don’t regularly spit me into the next area overleveled for it.

And this general sentiment has been going around the suggestion threads lately due to gear grind requests: the game is meant to be played leisurely. There’s no rush to get anywhere, so feeling like you’re forced to do something is a result of your own mindset.

Realistic Spiders > Skyrim Spiders in terms of scariness. You can take your idea and go jump off a cliff, sir. It’s already painful enough to watch people walking around with giant Black Widows at their side… I had a bad experience irl.

Donbosco.5034:

As any heal ability also pure of heart receve a ridicolous bonus of healing power..as i said only merciful intervation 2:1 and selfless daring 1:1 take a decent bonus of healing power

Given that at 100 Healing Power it heals for 650 and at 300 it heals for 675… where are you getting a ridiculous bonus? If you build your equipment/runes toward healing power much as possible I can see repeated 700+ heals resulting in that kind of bonus over time, but not without exerting the effort to make a build that can spam Aegis at all. Pure of Heart seems rather resilient to bonuses from Healing Power.

Seems like Pure of Heart is 8::1 which effectively means Selfless Daring would get a much better relative bonus if it really got a 1::1 bonus on Healing Power. Pure of Heart definitely does not get ridiculous bonuses from stacking Healing Power.

-edit-
Whoops, if you were meaning Amount Healed::Healing Power then that makes more sense. But at the same time 2.5:1 would be wildly inaccurate. I was going Healing Power::Amount Healed and was going by it taking 200 more Healing Power to see a 25 heal increase. That is at best 8::1.

Thogart.1639:

Yay, That’s exactly what my working friends /w kids want to do…
It should be easier…

As far as I can tell “Full” is determined by the number of people logged in at a given time. But because “Full” servers are generally more attractive for new accounts/transfers people wait and wait until that “Full” ticks down to “High” and then they join the server. The logged-in population gets a bit bloated because of this and it becomes progressively less likely that few enough people will be logged in to tick down to “High” for people trying to join the server.

I did it at around 9am-10am CST successfully without much waiting for the Full server I joined and when my friend joined a couple days later she managed to squeeze in at around 10pm CST, so even around peak times before it gets super late at night it’s possible for enough people to log out at once to get in.

That said it’s already pretty easy. Full does indeed mean Full. Maybe they could implement a server join queue so that people who were willing to wait would be guaranteed to get in.

As I understand it, the only Legendary that may need fixing is Eternity as many of the graphics associated with Twilight/Sunrise are not working on it such as blade trail during throw attacks and footsteps, plus even while showing the Twilight skin, Sunrise’s glow is seen on it instead.

BabelFish.7234:

Which is why I’m a fan of using the gear treadmill, not to boost base stats but to augment traits.

I mean can you imagine running into people who say “you must have +15% duration on bleed to party”? Not bloody likely…

Not yet, but if/once hardmodes start rolling out you bet I can. After vanilla WoW with all its messy mechanics nitpicked player raid eligibility because they were short one piece of tier 2 gear to get into the raid that drops tier 2, I can certainly believe that condition duration is something to dismiss others for in a small group environment where that condition staying up might seem/be more important than it should.

Wreckdum.8367:

The Mad King dungeon was a step in the right direction. Now we just need the difficulty to be ramped up above carebear mode. Everyone doesn’t have to be able to do everything… It is OK to give a couple 80 exclusive events. Especially seeing as the game has been out awhile now. I can’t see your demographics but I’d be willing to bet the population is more top heavy now that the game has been out awhile. So how about we start catering to the higher levels instead of the lower population new players? I mean seriously there is already enough to do 1-79.

I agree with the bits I cut out about making things less auto-pilot in the open world, just to cover that base.

This part I quoted though. The game hasn’t been out a while. Maybe it’s a while in terms of the success rate of MMORPGs that aren’t WoW, but 2 months is not a while. 2 months is how long it takes for some patch bugs to finally get ironed out.

Aside from that, ANET isn’t catering to anyone at the moment. We’re running on default settings here. Nothing non-player related has seen a nerf or a difficulty increase of any significance yet. This is the balance they chose to start with and for every person I see saying the game needs to have hardmodes I see just as many saying the dungeons are pretty hard. Seems like a pretty good balance to be at to get things rolling.

Hardmodes are probably going to happen given that every competing game has them and so did GW1. I don’t think that should mean more powerful gear rewards though. Certainly by nature of the modes being harder and the ability to complete them being based on skill will make any special skins lootable in the dungeon rare and more accurately represent cosmetic progression, but having higher stats or special stat distributions would start up that “I’m falling behind” feeling for players not able to make it over the difficulty hump. Yes, it’s okay for hardmodes to not be accessible for players not up to par with it. No, it’s not okay to disrupt balance between players with the rewards for completion.

I’m glad to see someone with your opinion saying there’s plenty to do. Though I’d say the 1-79 can be rolled up into content available for 80s to do as well.

Liron.5024:

Hello,

So I am player from Guildwars 1, I must say the PvP there was amazing (Before the expansion packs). It is MUCH different than Guildwars 2.
It seems that game lacks alot in PvP, actually the PvP currently is horrible.

Me and other friends of mine from Guildwars 1 agree with me. Please improve the PvP, add modes like in GW1 (HOH). At the moment there is only ONE MODE!
There are no player builds, no group builds, no tactics, no goal, no nothing. Just kill and capture. There is even no point to communicate. In GW1 you had MUST to use voice communication or you wouldt get too far in HoH.

After that, you also should merge all the PvP servers into one, like in Guildwars 1. That way, players will be able to choose their team from lot’s of other players, based on PvP rank. The leader will choose who to add to his team and who not.

It will be also great if you will add an “Emote” system, yea, also, like in Guildwars 1.

To be honest, I really hope that the PvP will be much better, but as for now, I dont see it happening, and I am pretty sure every Guildwars 1 player with PvP rank of 6+ will agree with me.

I really hope this will change, I loved Guildwars 1 and I dont want it to end.

The lack of emotes honestly feels like an oversight. Like they probably had a big list of them that didn’t get properly incorporated or something. I can’t imagine any other reason there are so few of them.

That said, WvW can easily devolve into mindless zergs, but it’s pretty obvious when there’s a decent commander and a number of skilled players within the group able to effectively support every goal, be it damage, healing, or what have you. 9 times out of 10, the organized group is going to pound a regular zerg into oblivion. But yes, I agree that there should be a little more incentive to act as a team rather than a wall of bodies. Something along the lines of group builds would be pushing strongly in the right direction, though I’m not sure Group Builds themselves would be the way to go, as then optimization takes priority over fun and discourages players that don’t want to build within the group parameters from playing. If the devs want player activity to stay/go up then it needs to remain pretty open in that regard even with some kind of strong incentive for skillful play. On the subject of communication, I’ve actually noticed that it helps tremendously if people are communicating in chat and on the field. It makes the group ridiculously more effective.

On the number of modes, Guild Wars 1 was much more PvP-focused. Guild Wars 2 leans in that direction but not so strongly and so in lieu of PvE difficulty modes or different modes of PvP we got a more rounded game out of it with tons of room to stretch in both directions without alienating players who favor either aspect of the game. I know that sounds like a cop-out “let the game grow” but this is what we got at launch so um… cough … yeah.

NinjaEd.3946:

Grinds have a time and place, and it being the only path for end-game gear is what is depressing. Taking the time (And funds) to design a unique story line or armour set from a mini boss for everything just isn’t practical which is where grinds come into play. I don’t mind the grind as much as I get bored by only grinding. The story line lasted a long time and served its purpose but… now what? Grind for a Legendary?

It’s kinda like BrunoBRS said. Max level isn’t a whole different thing. In other MMOs it feels like it because of massive gear progression and stat/item-level lockouts.

But specifically the “grinds have a time and place.” What is the proper time and place? For that matter, what kind of grind would even be appropriate for a game designed around specifically not doing that sort of thing?

In place of the text wall I had, a slightly shorter wall of text!:
tl;dr – This game is a different beast that was conceived to avoid such things. Such things adhering to any kind of stat progression or standard of “do this every day or you’ll fall behind the people doing it every day” are not compatible with GW2 and its design philosophy. Are there other ways to make it seem like there’s more to do? Sure there are. There’s another thread talking about how increase the motivation to WvWvW and increase the longevity of interest in the activity. I’m sure there’s been discussions on how to increase incentive to sPvP as well, though I couldn’t link any for you off-hand. Adding dungeons, areas to explore, World Bosses, reworking existing World Bosses so they aren’t embarrassingly easy, reworking dungeon trash mobs to not be such huge HP sponges, reworking Orr to not be such a ripe target for mindless zerg grinds (incorporating new areas would assist with this, I imagine), perhaps tweak a few dungeon boss mechanics to be more effective at what they’re supposed to do, you get it. Imposing a grind isn’t going to create more things to do, it’s just going to create another way to get bored.

For example, re-tuning the dungeons a bit to appeal to more players would make them fun enough to increase incentive to do them without resorting to obscene rewards or imposing a gear grind, and that increased desire to do dungeons would then act as a shift of mindset into “wow, there’s more to do than I thought” as currently when people don’t enjoy the dungeons their mindset becomes “dang, there isn’t anything to do.” Obviously that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but if all the aspects I listed and more get that kind of pick-me-up the game as a whole will feel like there’s more to do without the number of things to do actually being increased.

There’s plenty to do in this game, there really is! To really appreciate all there is, one kind of needs to not stick to the old MMORPG paradigm of tirelessly trudging toward your carrot and instead do what you find fun, chillax, and go for it. There’s a circle of non-grind at work here:
-There is no special incentive to grind unless you really want that style
-There is no pressure to grind to feel like you’re not wasting your $15 monthly sub
-Given the first two points, the game expects you to hammer out what you want at your leisure rather than ASAP. It’s a slow burn rather than a quick espresso shot.

Blizzard may remind its players to go outside and get fresh air during loading screens, but ANET silently expects you to not spend all your free time on the game grinding away at it. The game isn’t built to be fun that way. It can be if you’re of the right mindset, but needing some kind of imaginary progress bar of epicosity isn’t the right way to approach it.

GW1 had less to do end-game at launch than this by far in terms of PvE. I know a lot of people don’t take it seriously because “well that other game has [X] now and GW2 was being made for so long!” but let it get through the growing pains. All the actual mechanics of gameplay on their own merits are phenomenal, and probably took more effort than any other part of the game to create. The “game” itself is aces. The rewards for playing the game well aren’t quite there yet, but I like the direction ANET is taking with it, valuing cosmetics over stats.

Unique or semi-unique rewards (or at least a noticeably increased chance at a rare item) for bosses/certain objectives would help tremendously, though, I agree. However, the grind aspect is not going to go away because it’s an MMO. WoW has systematically moved away from Unique things over the years and so has every other MMO released that tried to succeed using the same formula. What GW2 has is a fantastic opportunity to capitalize on Unique Things that sadly didn’t quite get implemented beyond the prettiest dang weapons I’ve ever seen in a game. Judging by the Mad King armor set (not the Gemstore costume) they’re moving in the right direction… though admittedly they could have/should spare the time to give it a unique skin so it doesn’t get treated like a 60% chance to get a fancy rune out of your loot bag.

“Wow this game is great I just wish the game had more game at this level of game.” I understand where it’s coming from, but I really think people need to break out of their old paradigms for a moment and take a look at the game with fresh perspective, rather than fresh eyes. Almost all the “nothing to do at 80” is coming from a mindset born of another MMO and their gear progression rather than an objective look at the game for what it is and what it was designed to play like.

The game could always use more dungeons, though. God I love those in this game. Might be nice if Legendary ingredient requirements were more spread across the board for each individual legendary too. That would add incentive for all the Greatsword enthusiasts to farm more than one dungeon.

BabelFish.7234:

runeblade.7514:

NinjaEd.3946:

runeblade.7514:

Grind for skins because it looks good.

Grind for different kind of equipment to have a larger variety of stats in the equipments.

Grind to make a different kind of build.

OP’s suggestion is terrible and should never be considered.

The 3 things you just listed are basically the problem, not his solution. Troll somewhere else and I agree with the OP. Currently everything is just an excessive grind for looks or purchasable by lazy people who buy tons of gold for the items to make those pieces. It is irresponsible for game developers to leave such a repetitive end-game when the whole time up till 80 was always different and unique. levels 1-79 was fun and challenging if you didn’t level in zones matching your level, always a few ahead. When I reached 80 it seems like the motto is grind for looks…

Not really, it is the solution. You could just grind your to make a new set of armor with a new set of runes or a new set of weapons combined with a new set of sigils and then discover a new playstyle. If you don’t like the solution, this is not a game for you.

The problem with PvE isn’t that there is no vertical progression. The problem is the lack of places to explore after completing it and the lack of motivation to go back. Going from Level 1-79 wasn’t fun because you progressed, it was fun because you explored and did whatever content there is by the area.

Vertical progression is very repetitive as well. Please go troll somewhere else.

I’m inclined to agree with the other guy. Your idea of end-game content is very warped and for the love of god, if you’re going to use the word troll please use it properly…

First one used it because he didn’t like the opinion and the second one used it out of retaliation. Both were technically improper.

Moving on, the way Guild Wars 2 is designed is to be actively different from the typical MMO these days (WoW and its cookie-cutter games). It stands to reason that the vertical progression is different and can’t be understood when looking at it through the paradigm the market threw at us over and over for the last 7 years. runeblade is actually very correct in his statements.

I mean honestly the parallels are all there. Everyone is going to call it a grind whether it’s for stats or looks. The difference comes in where the stat ladder isn’t necessary to get what you want in GW2, whereas in a gear grind system there will always be a stat threshold to lock you out of something and incentive for people to dismiss each other if they don’t meet the requirement. I’ve heard from a lot of people that the community in GW2 is much friendlier, and it’s because of the lack of gear grind. Competitive players =/= unfriendly players, but that’s another issue for another thread.

@Aurie (quote and other options not visible at the moment, woo)

I love the ideas of server firsts in all aspects of the game, however I think they might want to hold off on that till they can launch it with new expansion, as the current content has lost pretty much any chance of such things being representative of the achievements.

On Contribution in WvW, absolutely. I don’t want a system like another thread was talking about where names are visible on some leaderboard (cue top-rated person being the first target on everyone’s hitlist essentially making it a Player vs. World scenario), but the idea of how much one person/group/guild has contributed to a given task really does need to get some attention/implementation in the rewards/mechanics of rewards.

Timed scenarios seems a little bit of a stretch though. This isn’t really the kind of game for it, and whether by design or chance the Mad King’s Clocktower reflects this. If you go too fast there’s a point where you have to wait again, just like at the start of the run. In MMO’s being able to say you’ve done something the fastest/most efficiently has always been more of a personal bragging right than something associated with an achievement/title anyway in my experience.

On non-server/world first titles/rewards: if it’s something a player can get by doing a thing, it’s going to be something they can grind for. Periodically updating a title name would be the most appropriate fix, so if you did this within X date and Y date you got this title, but if you did it after that you get this other title. Then the issue becomes “well it’s the same task, why did the reward change?”

Shining in PvE is, as a lot of people would say, cosmetic. “Wow that set looks great, where’d you get it?” “that one dungeon everyone says is balls hard.” “Wow, I want it too!” I’m kind of exaggerating since the chances of someone not completely new reacting like that are pretty low, but still. Working as intended on that front.

Sidenote: I also think the dungeons are awesome and I don’t get why more people don’t. Sure they need a little mechanical tweaking but overall they are (or can be with minimal effort) the best dungeon scenarios I’ve experienced in an MMO.

And yeah, I disagree with PvP in the PvE, but not because I’m casual and don’t want to deal with it. If they could find a way to effectively overlay WvWvW onto PvE areas without compromising the experience for PvE individuals then I’d be all over that. Their PvE event designs seem to be workable around such an idea. I just don’t know what it would take to accomplish that, so I don’t know how worthwhile it would be to pursue from an opportunity cost perspective.

BabelFish.7234:

And as such those armors that are profession-based could offer bonuses to the traits.
It doesn’t need to have better stats then exotics. Heck, we already have some runes that do this indirectly such as Rune of the Infiltrator.

I can’t think of a reasonable way to implement this either. If there’s a pre-determined set of traits that the armor potentially improved it would still impose a “do this” mindset. The game could theoretically be programmed to detect your build and give your armor trait bonuses accordingly but I think that would be entirely too massive an endeavor for any developer when there are as many other things to put time into as there are as it is unless there were only a few potential outcomes, which would circle back to “do this.”

And I only seem stubborn on this because something as beneficial as a Trait bonus should never be on a single piece of armor, implying that it would be a set bonus for the physical armor itself (which would also potentially impose a “look like this” which would be like trying to stab the heart of the game).

Legendary Runes/Sigils are interesting. Still wouldn’t relate them to professions though.

The problem with Profession-based gear that reflects our chosen profession is that it would impose an artificial “this is what you should be” on every profession. It directly conflicts with the interest of keeping the game Trinity-free.

However, certain drop-only armor pieces such as the Mad King’s Armor could have a cosmetic bonus only applicable if they retain their name/skin (which of course may call for a bit of creativity in re-skinning such holiday-related armor to be more unique) such as a 2% chance when hit to trigger the voice of the Mad King cackling and telling the player wearing it what to do, giving the player a 1 second self-refreshing Aegis or invulnerability until the player successfully inputs the simon-says command, like the first phase the Mad King dungeon right now (in a panic situation it would likely only prolong one’s fleeting life and if it were powerful enough to be a game changer, just make it a Town Clothes set and give that to it as an associated skill. It would make a fine contrast to the Gem Store outfit).

On general gear progression: I don’t think it’s necessary or even good for the game as it is. If players working to level 1-79 shouldn’t deal with gear that they’ll immediately replace, then why implement such a thing at max level? At worst it would cause artificial gear-locked content (ranging from new or re-tuned dungeons to whether or not a guild will recruit you or bring you to one, to say nothing of the PvP implications- hint: all of them would be bad).

The game makes no secret that it doesn’t center around gear or stats, and I don’t think implementing ideas that would force it to would be good for the overall game experience. And honestly with the way traits are currently set up, even with a reasonable gear ladder, re-adjusting traits and utility/elite skills makes far more difference. With the way the game is currently designed a gear ladder can only result in insignificant differences appealing only to the number-lovers or absurdly large differences that render the depth of the Trait system much less important or enjoyable to experiment with. The traits are really what the game is all about from a non-cosmetic perspective.

Kefke.2435:

On step might even be to introduce an ammo system to tomes because I find the duration to be too short and just keep spamming stuff instead of tactical usage.

This isn’t actually something I’d thought of, but it definitely falls in line with making the function similar to an Elementalist’s Fiery Greatsword. It has a longer timer than our Tomes and operates on whether the charges or timer runs out first. This would be an excellent way to limit the power of any replacement Spirit Weapon elite and it would just be a nice tweak in general to our Tomes as they are if no other change is made. It would certainly make them a bit more worthwhile than “use preferred skill and drop” as they currently seem to be used.

Dobi.4168

It won’t mean dying, if Anet merges the zones. It would be great. Please, answer Arenanet!

Well it’s not dying as it is, really. Merging the low-pop zones between several low-pop servers would be a good idea, but I don’t see a reason to apply it across the board. On Stormbluff Isles I consistently see plenty of people (pre-Halloween) going about their business in Queensdale and the other starting areas. I even see up to 8 people participating in a single escort event at times.

Some people stay in WvW/sPvP/Dungeons/Orr whenever they’re on and some people are making alts. It’s all about what’s hip and happening at the moment, like YumCHA said, and as soon as Act 2 of the Halloween event started I instantly noticed many fewer players in the starting areas farming Candy Corn/doors in favor of the areas with the pages for the second Mad Memories book, and now that most people have that they’re all isolated in Lion’s Arch for the dungeon.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Archmortal.1027:

Clark Skinner.4902:

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

Just a note on this . Those servers are marked full by online/offline, not number of accounts who call it their home. Otherwise there would have been no way for me to get on Stormbluff Isle when I started a couple weeks ago, much less help my friend get on there a few days later.

Basing this on fact or a guess? Maybe people transfered off stormbluff while you transferred on.

Observation. I’m rather unwilling to believe that people transfer off one of the most populated WvW servers every 5 minutes.

-edit- To elaborate, I also don’t believe the status changes from Full to High based on a single transfer/logout. It’s far more likely for a number of people to be logging out about the same time than a number of them to be transferring at the same time.

Grok Krog.9581:

Dear Anet, please make a child Quaggan Pirate minipet that says “Quaggan is a Piwate. Yarr!” every now and then. The game will then be perfect. That is all

I will pay cash money for this pet. Take my money, ANET!

Clark Skinner.4902:

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

Just a note on this . Those servers are marked full by online/offline, not number of accounts who call it their home. Otherwise there would have been no way for me to get on Stormbluff Isle when I started a couple weeks ago, much less help my friend get on there a few days later.

Population drop in general is probably a thing, but it’s not nearly as bad as people think. Out of the 2 million purchases the first week or whatever I would think maybe, at worst, fifteen thousand of them have no plans to play anymore. That’s less than a single percent of the number of sales . Free server transfers have made a lot of the lower-pop servers even more barren. As they are still around, I would suggest making use of them to get into a High or Full pop server (note on Full: you may have to keep refreshing the display before the Full server you want is lowered to High, but it -will- happen). ANET’s mistake was not so much a mistake as a safety net, and it’s working. Now that the net has caught all the stragglers on the low servers Free Transfers opened up so you can fight your way into the throngs of people. Plus, you know. Halloween and WvWvW have concentrated almost the entirety of every server’s population to Lion’s Arch/the surrounding zones.

Did anyone coming from WoW notice that before Mists arrived, there were doomsday posts on their forums about the game dying? Yeah. They even had a slightly higher percentage of the population quit playing by the time they’d reported the official numbers than my rather pessimistic estimate about GW2. What makes it seem like they didn’t lose players? Population consolidation. They went through their too-many-servers phase already and had to do their share of server/battlegroup mergers to keep things reasonable for the players (and even still some servers are just as dead/lopsided as the lowest population server here). If anything is dying, it’s mass interest in the genre from people as a whole, sort of like what Dead said. Guild Wars is taking it a different direction than the established money-making precedent however, and I see no reason to believe it will die any time soon (and seriously, Star Wars sank like a rock. Almost 2/3 of their servers were deader than dead by two months in. Guild Wars is doing fabulously so far (Deader is a word as established by Planescape: Torment)).

The problem with the Tomes is that other than maybe the boon skill on Wrath and a couple abilities on Courage, they absolutely need to be built toward for full “Eliteness.” Very few other Profession Elites by comparison require the sacrifices that need to be made to make the Tomes fully effective. Situational is fine. Underwhelming in 90% of other situations is kind of not fine.

Renewed Focus is all around great, but it doesn’t make up for how lackluster our thematically inconsistent reading material is.

If Hounds had their CD reduced, they would also need to reduce Mistfire’s CD as the latter is nearly the same thing unbound by race. Sure you have to pay for it, but the CD reduction would make both of them too good for their respective association (Hounds being racial, Mistfire being paid-for).

bhansen.7251:

I agree that gear based PvP isnt the way to go, but i would like to see maybe a PvP-trait tree. Where PvP-trait points are earned through WvW. People are so afraid that hardcore players will become OP. If you played DAoC, you know thats not a fact. Bad players will still be bad.

And good players who have amassed their PvP traits will be nigh-unkillable to those just coming in. PvP traits/stats are definitely not the way to go (as per WoW’s example, PvP-only stat makes newcomers suffer). They would only discourage inexperienced players from joining in which would be the opposite of increasing longevity.

On communication/knowing who you’re fighting: the current setup is ideal.

Now that I’m no longer sleepy while typing I’d like to add a further suggestion to this:

If the skill-swap effect needs to be kept for the replacement Elites for balancing reasons might I suggest making the Spirit [Object]s work similarly to an Elementalist’s Flame Greatsword? Honestly, a Greatsword/Hammer Spirit weapon could suitably replace Tome of Wrath’s graphic entirely and the only effect it need have on the game is to be more suitable for a Wrathful Guardian than a big book. As there are no Greataxes in the game, perhaps one can make an appearance here with some kind of divine motif instead of another Greatsword/Hammer Spirit [Object].

Let’s assume the skillsets of the Tomes need to remain as they are. Give each Skill of the Elite a different Spirit [Object] association. For Tome of Wrath’s Affliction have a Spirit Bow materialize in the Guardian’s hand as he gets into a shooting stance (nothing fancy, should be plenty of time without compromising the 3/4s cast time). For Judgement, a Hammer (a very big one, or perhaps multiple regular ones) and so on. This would be an excellent representation of the Guardian’s versatility rolled up into an Elite skill without compromising the current skillset associated with the Tomes.

That said, the current skillsets associated with the Tomes are not that great and there are a number of racial Elites whose use are not nearly so situational and are therefor better options for a Guardian most of the time. The general consensus seems to be that racials were not intended to outshine Profession-specific elites, and as such I think the current skillsets of the Tomes need a little reworking if they are not going to be outright changed as per the first part of my suggestion.

Get rid of the Tomes and bring in more Spirit Weapons and/or Burning damage. Every other Profession is thematically consistent with their elites, so too should Guardians be.

Fun as it is to claim you’re so powerful you can sit around reading a book in battle, it’s just not consistent.

Not that all Guardians are human, but muse over something like ’Kormir’s [Weapon]’ which would obviously be a weapon of some kind or ’Balthazar’s Armor’ which would act as a more powerful Fire Shield that could be graphically represented similarly to our Torch skill that cloaks us in our signature blue flames, except perhaps larger/more intense and longer-lasting and it could, in addition to causing Burning, give us/those within a certain radius the same boons that Tome of Wrath can give.

Thematically consistent, and being named after a god would appropriately represent the greater strength of the Spirit [Object].

If the skill-swap effect needs to be kept for the replacement Elites for balancing reasons might I suggest making the Spirit [Object]s work similarly to an Elementalist’s Flame Greatsword? Honestly, a Greatsword/Hammer Spirit weapon could suitably replace Tome of Wrath’s graphic entirely and the only effect it need have on the game is to be more suitable for a Wrathful Guardian than a big book. As there are no Greataxes in the game, perhaps one can make an appearance here with some kind of divine motif instead of another Greatsword/Hammer Spirit [Object].

Pretty much agreed with Calintz, which is exactly why I’ve stuck with Mistfire so far. I don’t PvP much so the chance of it being killed is pretty low and it adds a not insignificant amount of damage on top of Burning. Sucks that the non-paid-for equivalent is Human only (and that they’re much easier to kill).

You really would think that Guardian Elites would center more around our Spirit Weapons or Burning damage, considering pretty much every other Profession is thematically consistent in that way. Who knew, right?

Insta-80 is never going to happen, and as Neal points out, crafting will make things go absurdly fast if you do it right for less cost than any insta-80 service would ever possibly cost (I don’t see such a service ever being purchasable without thousands and thousands of gems or by putting down cash which is just more reason not to have the option).

Instanced PvP doesn’t create a community rift. The “community” in this context is limited to the one you directly interact with, i.e. your server. PvP creates a rift as much as shoving spaghetti down my pants creates food in my stomach. It makes even less sense to say that about WvW as your ENTIRE SERVER is on one side.

I’m not going to disagree that a lot of people are looking for more things to do than farm Orr/Dragons but honestly the entire game levels you out so that you don’t outgrow anything. Yes there should probably be some more PvE content to do with some less mundane rewards but the lack of things to do at the moment comes from a misguided notion that max level = extra content.

Enabling PvP in general throughout PvE areas would create a rift, as ANET would more than likely have to label servers as dedicated PvP servers where you can’t unflag. The elitism that would come from such a setup is what would create a rift.

Also to the OP: calling an MMO of this size an excuse for one is kind of… missing the point? I don’t see how that’s even remotely valid to imply.

If such a feature were to be available for an MMO community, then I personally don’t think it would be a good idea to allow more than one bump a day per account. One person every 10 or 20 minutes is kind of losing sight of just how many people use the forums, even if they aren’t actively posting. Any kind of timer that would allow multiple bumps throughout a single sitting of forum-browsing is going to cause more chaos than it will help to keep interesting discussion from migrating to another thread.

I’m not entirely sure about the protocol, but there seems to be a method to have threads stickied. If sticky-ing a thread is open to request/review then this is the best compromise for a thread with meaningful discussion going on. If it outlives the discussion or its purpose it can be unstickied and life would go on.

If it’s the type of thread where someone creates it because they have a great idea/story/whatever they want to share and no one else is posting in it to keep it on the front page, then that’s just a hit to the ego a person has to take once in a while. And as I said, if it’s a request for knowledge and the person needs it to be addressed a double-post is a much better solution as it is just as short-term as the issue the poster wants to have addressed.