Guild Wars 2

I don’t believe this is a good idea for an MMO forum. It’s an absolutely excellent idea for a more discussion/debate oriented forum, but the general type of poster on an MMO forum is far more likely to simply do it “because I need people to see my thread and answer it right away.”

For the size of the playerbase this is definitely one of the more classy MMO forums I’ve read, but a bump option in this environment is inevitably going to be abused more often than used to keep an interesting discussion within the field of view of people just arriving on the page. As you said, it’s used throughout Professional, Well-Established forums. It is almost a given that the community of such forums are Professional enough to treat the bump button appropriately. An MMO community as a whole is not.

It’s not necessarily great etiquette but if someone needs an answer to a question it’s a much better solution to simply double-post than to implement something with potentially disastrous effects.

I unfortunately did not have the wherewithal to keep the page open instead of navigating away from it after mistakenly believing I had taken a proper screenshot of it, but something interesting happened while I was browsing the forum before logging into my account. I use the Firefox browser.

I went into the Guardian subforum for a bit and then moused over to the
Guild Wars 2 > Forums > Guardians
options and clicked to the Forums, where I then clicked into the Suggestion subforum. What I found was that the language on the page had changed to German. When clicking on a thread, I received a notification that there was no address to connect to from that permalink. When backing out or clicking the option to get back to the main Forum page and then going back into the Suggestion subforum the issue persisted. In addition to that, at the top of the thread list where the page numbers are listed, there was a graphical error. On my browser the first 9 pages are listed individually and then there’s a gap after which the last two pages are listed. There was some kind of error covering the link to page 9, and in the gap there was text saying “Gap” with an additional graphical error directly above that, though I unfortunately can’t remember the text on it. These glitches were present at the bottom of the page as well.

I do apologize for not having a screenshot to show. What a strange error, though. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that as soon as I logged into my account and checked the subforum again the glitch was no longer present.

Well, two things.

One, this is a decent suggestion and you should hit up the suggestion section with it.

Two, why would you ever stop to rez if someone nearby would have used that time spent rezzing to have their way with you anyway?

Gandalf The Green.3549:

Archmortal.1027:

The Halloween event was made because ANET isn’t staring at their own feet when they plan content design/implementation.

No. ANet are doing a Halloween event because every other MMO does one, and they think people will play, if they do things similar to other MMOs! What about they be the first MMO to actually put Player requested content in the game on a regular basis?

Did you read what I said? If ANET didn’t have one, Holiday events would be the #1 player requested content right now. That’s called planning. They prioritized content that they knew a large number of players would demand over content that maybe a handful of people have deemed important enough to be worth coming into the Suggestion forum to mention.

And again, no one is saying ANET shouldn’t take suggestions like these into consideration. God knows I would waste many a minute just hitting /roll 1-5318008 if it were there to do. They should just be suggested with the understanding that they aren’t that important to most players, and saying they’re “simple” and that we deserve to already have them isn’t the best way to get a suggestion across.

Farming Candy Corn: Every holiday event in the history of MMOs has some aspect of farming involved be it boss farming, item farming or whathaveyou. The drop rate for trick or treat bags is actually a lot better than I’m used to. Sure they mostly spit out candycorn, but you can then use that candycorn to get Personalized Bags from dressed up kids in LA which feel like they have a much better chance to drop things like recipes and rare ingredients. Not being able to Collection Store the skulls and teeth seems like a reasonable approach to get people to want to use them ASAP so they’re out of the way, not to mention it makes it more inconvenient to try and store them away to try and profit on them in Spring or something (I count that as a positive).

Jumping Puzzle: cannot be worse than that god-forsake Griffon bomb run.

Now that’s just plain naive thinking. If they didn’t have a Halloween event we’d see a hundred times more posts about “Halloween event: how I think you should do one” or “WHERE’S THE HALLOWEEN EVENT” or “I’m disappointed, WoW has a Halloween event, why can’t GW2?” than any other issue.

The Halloween event was made because ANET isn’t staring at their own feet when they plan content design/implementation.

Priority isn’t being used as a way to differentiate what players want and what players get. It’s used to contextualize what the game needs to function properly before adding additional content that could simultaneously cause additional problems. No one’s saying ANET shouldn’t take what the playerbase wants into consideration.

Yes, the priority argument. Woe to all of us whose gameplay experience hinge on being able to view a random number generator in-chat or who want to talk behind the backs of our guildmates because we’re superior and have important management things to talk about that the lesser guild members can’t be trusted to know about.

“Last Logged In” I can understand, but it’s not exactly a big deal for it not to be there. If someone doesn’t seem like they’ve logged in for a few days they probably haven’t. Likewise, knowing that someone was logged in 2 hours ago isn’t going to tell a person much except that they were logged in 2 hours ago. Is there an actual pressing reason that this needs immediate attention? Not really.

Preview option in the trading post is at absolute worst a minor inconvenience, and only for the fraction of the playerbase that won’t use other means to figure out what an item looks like. And it happens to be one they -are- actively working on. Maybe with how many people are typically viewing the tradepost at any given time across every server it causes the Preview window to lag excessively at times? Who knows. Let ANET deal with it at their own pace.

Honestly, saying an MMO has no hope because it prioritizes fixing bugs over implementing even more buggy content is extremely short-sighted.

A good way to work this in is if the Sons of Svanir/Nightmare Court went rogue, i.e. they still love their precious dragons and whatnot but they aren’t willing to help them out until said dragons get a stern talking to, suck it up, and start helping the other races of Tyria against ‘The Source.’

Given how ridiculous such a notion is when the dragons are presented as mad beasts I doubt it’s gonna work/happen. The sheer retconning would be the death of some of the more lore-dedicated playerbase.

I honestly feel like a client-heavy game like that would kind of wreck all of our computers. It does stand to reason that more information is client-side than is probably healthy for a game with this much ambition, as if the information were server-side there would be no feasible way to access it and manipulate it.

I’m having a similar issue. I was looking at the elementalist “Post Your build” thread and after being redirected to a build tool I hit back to get back to the thread and now it’s coming up blank.

Ocelot.3148:

I love how you ppl love to give new idea to DEV’s about fixing hour skill/nerf about.

I kinda think it was intentional, otherwise Judge’s Intervention would interrupt the action just like any other early-use of a skill.

Mistfire Wolf is great for a build that doesn’t completely ignore our ability to set things on fire.

I had a similar thought, but I left it out because if it’s put on a timer anyway why not let them have a little spy action going on? One minute is a whole lot less obnoxious and abusive of the system than sitting around doing whatever while typing out advice to your side with no fear of reprisal.

Lutharr.1035:

Korrigan.4837:

Lutharr.1035:

Korrigan.4837:

Lutharr.1035:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no. just no.

go play world of warcraft for those raids.

Are all wow haters braindead / washed fools that just repeat the same crap every kitten thread?

Insults will get you nowhere but in trouble.

This said, I’m no WoW hater, played the game since day one of US release in Nov. 2004, which means I have at least one active WoW account since almost 8 years. I still don’t want to see raids in GW2, because it’s a slippery slope I don’t want this game to head to. That kind of content just doesn’t fit the philosophy of this game.

So you think because WoW has a feature then thats a valid arguement to dimiss it in GW2? Maybe Im just sick of the pretend cool kids hating on wow for no other reason that cos its wow.

Maybe you may want to read my full post and see I’m not a WoW hater. But I guess insulting people is more fun – and you call others “cool kids”? The irony is thick, don’t you think?

We got WoW and a dozen of similar clones since 2004, I’m sick of that, I don’t want this game to slowly become another WoW clone. This way, I can play BOTH games because they are different, specially considering GW2 doesn’t have a sub fee. I have one good AAA game which doesn’t have a raid end game – and I will voice my opinion so that it remains that way.

Funny cos last i checked i posted before you had even entered the thread. You quoted me so I answered. I must have known your were going to show up and decided to call you out before you even made a comment.

So lets see. Because you play WoW alongside GW2 you dont want raids to be in GW2? Selfish much?

If Anet introduce a feature your happy doing in another game you do realise no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to do it here right? maybe some folks only play GW2 and maybe they would like some raiding. Maybe, just maybe, you let them enjoy it while you go about doing what you do? or is it to much to ask that other people do something in this game you dont want to do? Maybe Ill ask Anet to get rid of legendary items too since I personally dont want one, and Im kitten if ill have others having them if i dont want it.

Korrigan IS right, you know. If ANET starts making scenarios similar to what’s in WoW then their whole endeavor leading to that point would have been in vain. Given how enthusiastic their people are about the design philosophy they’ve worked around I doubt we’re going to see a feature from WoW (as to the “well GW1 had raids too” argument I say the encounters were fundamentally different and there was as much similarity between them as there is between Psychology and Physics. They were not the same feature and anything resembling a WoW raid in GW2 would be all kinds of out of place and it would be really awkward and janky as hell).

It’s a valid tactic only insofar as it a mechanic that can be abused.

A little popup much like the timer that appears when your queue to get into Lion’s Arch from an overflow server is up appearing at the bottom of the screen for you to choose a waypoint you want to spawn at is perfectly reasonable. If the timer expires the game will automatically send you to the spawn point. 1 minute is more than enough for whoever is defeated to “spy” and inform other people before they are rezzed and can run back to repeat the process of running in, failing to defeat others, being defeated themselves, and spending a minute coordinating tactics.

WvW being the environment that it is, “burning” the corpses or otherwise implementing a way for players to force the defeated to respawn is an excellent idea that would very much fit in with the setting.

MrsAngelD.6971:

you guys saying you don’t want raids, I wonder if you’re aware that gw had 16 man dungeons (meaning double the normal party size) they were actually pretty fun to do sometimes. Anyway my point is that it’s not out of the realm of possibly that they would do that same thing again in GW2. Just remember if they do add something like that it won’t be required content just like the current dungeons aren’t unless you want the armor from them.

I don’t see any instanced scenario with over 10 people being anything more than a World Boss instanced in a dungeon. Just no. That said, I use the number 10 because I think that could work and the idea of two different groups racing toward the boss loot is awesome (make it an event- the first team to make it to the boss starts a countdown for when the boss pulls, if the other team doesn’t make it in time their door stays locked, if they do the boss is scaled up for 10 people and any time before the pull can be used for both teams to tweak their build options a bit to prepare. Bronze/Silver depending on how close the team got before being locked out, gold being reserved for the teams involved in the fight)

nachtnebel.9168:

Raids in general are less entertaining than small group dungeons. Just take WoW (cause most of us probably played it) as an example. The person who really “played” the raids were mostly the raidleaders, the main tank and some people with special tasks, the rest just had to performe a dance while maintaining DPS.

I would hate if they wasted valueable time on something like that.

I agree completely, and it was abso-kittening-lutely terrible when said raidleader was any of the following:
1) Selfish
2) Emotional
3) Not good at leading
4) Not good at playing
5) Not willing to listen to advice
6) Forced you to use DBM

In GW2 we would get to add this:
- Paid 100g to have a leader symbol floating above his/her head to make them feel entitled

Though to be perfectly fair everyone other than the tank generally had to do something during the fight involving some sort of delayed awareness of things on their screen other than Recount.

BabelFish.7234:

From my time in WoW (pre cataclysm) raids were a bit more complex…now that complexity wouldn’t translate directly into a game like GW2.

Complexity lends itself better to GW2, actually. But I mostly wanted to respond to you because nah… the raids weren’t really that complex. Everything was on a set timer and the most complex part of the endeavor was counting on everyone else to pay attention to the mod that displayed that timer on their screens. I don’t understand how people put up with DBM in that game. Takes all the fun out of it.

BabelFish.7234:

To me it sounds like you just don’t understand how to support your Glass Cannon team mates properly. :/

Lol’d irl. A+ would laugh again.

I’m so in love with Greatsword and Sword+Torch that I’m rerolling another Guardian so I can experience the Hammer proper. I’m leaning toward Mace/Shield as a secondary for him.

Please for the love of all that you hold dear, no.

Yeah. The other Norn elite animal transformations need to be brought to par with Leapard. They won’t become so useful as to be more advantageous than other Racial elites, but they will at least become more than a faint twinge of character-creation regret.

How hard is it for a program to detect an application acting on the client as directly as botting/hacking does? If it isn’t hard, there’s your solution.

On Gold-seller spam: this approach would actually work. After a certain number of reports, mute the account for a day or three.

GADefence.5634:

The mistfire wolf just needs a duration increase to 60 seconds or full time up, even if it means a slight nerf in damage. Perma companion that is killable would make it more sought after, instead of just being a fern wolf with less duration or hounds of balthazaar with less DPS.

In all honesty, as it’s the same kind of skill as Hounds of Balthazar it needs to have a comparable recharge time. Given that they fulfill the same function (a pet that does burning damage till it dies) the only difference is that Mistfire is a single creature whereas Hounds are two creatures with half the health of the Mistfire each. If you’re going with a build that utilizes burning damage then which do you go for? The single minion with a large health pool or the dual minions with small health pools?

Making it a perma-companion would step on the toes of Rangers everywhere so they can’t really do that (not to mention it would essentially act as an incredibly huge buff to Rangers themselves)

One of the Mistfire’s abilities is actually a hell of a good nuke. Problem is keeping it alive long enough for it to trigger (which is why I prefer it over Hounds in the first place- they die even faster). If its hard-hitter triggered within the first 10 seconds of summoning instead of the last 10 the wolf would be a much better elite skill to use.

It makes more sense in WvW than in anything else. The advice of “adjust your strategy” is the solution to being annoyed by it. It’s a mechanic. Learn to take advantage of it. If you can’t then you probably aren’t helping your group as much as you could.

Make Dungeon Waypoints act the same as City Waypoints. i.e. travel to any Waypoint in-dungeon for free.

Completely agree the double fee is needlessly punishing.

vlaka.2198:

thats fair enough but once you’re at 100% map complete there’s no point in repeating anything…can’t redo heart quests (not that I can see why anyone would want to) which is the point of this thread ;D

Actually, assuming you have the time and desire to make the effort for multiple Legendaries, you can only make so many before you have to get 100% on another character, which means doing hearts again.

Honestly given how many times I’ve repeated the same quest in WoW, being able to redo a heart where there’s more than one way to help is aces for MMO replay value.

There’s already a boatload of Legendaries in this game. I can’t even think of another one with this many options outside of single-player games that have an “Ultimate” weapon for each type. If you’re bent on using two legendary pistols, make a second legendary pistol. I don’t see anything like WoW’s “Unique” gear mechanic that isn’t allowing you to have more than one.

On the number of Greatswords… well that’s just because they were easier to design around because they have a gigantic area of space to mess with while creating one. Honestly even though Greatswords got a lot more love in terms of number, every other legendary also got a lot more love than those in any other game. I’m kind of iffy about the My Little Pony bow (why wasn’t it My Little Kitten?) but even that has visual design that shows love and attention.

Maybe they’ll add more. Maybe they won’t. Currently there are double the number as what WoW has and even though there aren’t two of everything there’s still an incredible amount of variety given the weapon options of each profession.

There’s an option in the Options menu where you can check a box that says “Auto-loot.” This will apply to all things loot-able, including Gathering nodes.

Hermes.7014:

This is how it works. If you get zerged in WvWvW it’s normal that your enemies will ress their dead. Your server mates will do the same to you. Moral of the story: don’t fight many enemies at once.

This.

Also, granted while no one should be stopping to resurrect a dead player if they’re at high risk of being downed and killed in the process, there are utilities that accomplish this without spending a full minute kneeling by a corpse, which is just another decision to think about when building your character.

MiceElf.6897:

And therein lies the problem. It was fun. For awhile. Now it is just the same old thing over and over again. I played GW1 for years and never got bored. But I’m already bored with GW2. I think GW2 will survive as a PvP game, but I have doubts about PvE. There is no strategy involved. It’s all hack and slash and as long as you have a big enough crowd you can beat any event. There’s no planning, no figuring out what build is best against a given boss, or what professions were best to bring along. Everything that made GW1 awesome was just thrown out.

All these different things you talk about that made GW1 “boss prep” fun are present here. GW2 only makes it much more viable to stick with your favorite build rather than go out of your way to seek the most effective one (also these bosses are designed expecting a group of actual people, so the added fluff necessary when solo-ing with a group of AI isn’t accounted for).

As for “now it’s the same old thing” I refer you to almost every game ever, MMO or not. There’s almost always only so much to do and so many different ways to do it or paths to start from. The size and scope of Tyria are fantastic (compare it to another recent MMO’s world: Star Wars again, laughable and stale by comparison isn’t it?) and the events going in each zone keep the game from feeling like the most boring thing you’ve ever experienced while traveling from point A to point B, and if you think all that’s tedious well just skip to point B via waypoint. Waypoint cost is a separate issue, but overall it’s an extremely effective MMO World design. If you loved the PvE GW1 and don’t dig it in GW2 well I don’t know what to say to that. The PvE content of the two games was designed with completely different ideas in mind, and as such they turned out completely different.

On PvE hack and slash: the goal is to allow everyone to involve themselves. It would be impractical to implement Boss Mechanics on every event champion a group of people could happen across, and it would just make the game even harder on people who already have trouble completing events due to varying server densities. That said, the events with bosses that people constantly zerg between could definitely use some additional mechanics with their champions/veterans. As the zerg has just enough willpower to find a way to zerg somewhere regardless, it would at least require them to display a similar amount of skill that is sometimes necessary when an individual is solo-ing a veteran (Vollym’s Battle Pit’s heart quest comes to mind when choosing the hardest option as a good difficulty curve to shoot for) without further compromising the experience of those on servers with low or sparse populations.

-EDIT- Upon further thought, the Champion Bandit that the zerg in Kessex Hills fights against represents a pretty solid balance of difficulty and mechanics. So perhaps make more of the Champions/bosses that get zerg’d constantly adhere to a similar difficulty/mechanic structure.

Yeni.1924:

And still that was way more than dungeons in GW2 has.

You’ll note, having a hundred people fighting Zhaitan doesn’t make the fight more complex. The same is true of 40 people running around trying to work together in WoW. WoW’s release did not have anything in any of its numerous (I’ll give you that, WoW did have more dungeons) regular 5-man dungeons on par with anything in any of GW2’s dungeons. After 4 years and with WoW’s first expansion the game was still relying on health pools and damage numbers in its small-group content rather than numerous mechanics (and in the cases of numerous mechanics even presently in WoW they are a timed pattern rather than a dynamic series of actions or events- imagine a champion mob hostile to both you and the enemy randomly popping in on a boss instead of just on regular mobs, now THAT is an idea ANET should take into consideration and one their design philosophy could easily incorporate if they don’t already have plans for something like that).

The dungeon boss mechanics often achieve depth where other games impose patterns of behavior to veil the lack of it, and when they don’t achieve that there are at least very clear indications that they were trying for it and nothing more than a little tweaking is necessary for the fights that are lacking.

I mean seriously, was anyone really expecting this to adhere to their dreams of the best MMO ever?

MarzAttakz.9608:

I’m sorry but there’s no excuse in this day and age for simplistic dungeon mechanics, unless they were all designed five years ago. There are plenty of good examples to follow even if you’ve decided to throw out the trinity.

Most recent for me prior to GW2 release were the dungeons in The Secret World, not only did they flow extremely well with the story but they were also well varied and with fresh new takes on the old formulas, in addition they could be run on normal (story mode), elite and once unlocked nightmare modes and each difficulty level had extra and interesting mechanics added to keep it challenging.

GW2’s dungeons in contrast are like rewatching “Jurassic Park”.

Different strokes for different designers, and different balance for different games. The goal of every PvE scenario’s design is to flow and yes GW2’s crack at it has been kind of blunt and forceful. As a game, the balance design in dungeons seems to mesh well enough with the balance while solo-ing. If ANET decides to tone down the ridiculous HP and damage on dungeon mobs (the bosses are in a much better place than the mobs leading to them) then there’s no reason they can’t later develop hard-modes for things. Nodding toward WoW again, it never implemented more challenging modes until several years in, and they weren’t even so much “more challenging” as they were “this is the max-level equivalent of that dungeon,” which is something that holds true to this day. If I recall correctly, GW1 had difficulty modes as well. I don’t know if they were present at launch or not, but clearly there is very strong possibility that they will be implemented in GW2 once ANET is satisfied with the initial difficulty-vs.-capability balance.

On the note of mechanic complexity however, you’re dead wrong. If there’s no excuse why has every MMO that’s recently launched with the intention of becoming a big name had simple mechanics at launch? Nothing done by GW2 is any less complex than anything done by WoW or Star Wars (which was so faithful to the World of Warcraft archetype it took from that it posed less challenge to an individual than the Cave Troll in Queensdale poses to the group beating it up). Attacks being more clearly telegraphed so the player can rely on real-time observation rather than trial, error and third-party mods with attack timers is not “more simple” or “less complex,” it’s just better design (and without all those handicaps required in WoW it makes GW2 less artificially difficult). For instance, in AC Story Mode the Necromancer boss is balls easy, but her mechanics if implemented more effectively offer the opportunity to make the encounter challenging and engaging on par with any 5-man boss in any other game’s current standards. The Two-Boss pair is arguably more complex than any similar fight I’ve experienced in WoW. Yes you can lock one in a hallway but that seems like an oversight rather than something intended to be allowed. Fight the two of them together. They may have one or two fewer mechanics at work than Valiona and Theralion from World of Warcraft’s Bastion of Twilight 10/25-man raid but every single one of those mechanics is more effective at threatening your character without falling back on insta-death if you make a mistake. The Ranger boss is on par with every non-raid boss in WoW prior to its third expansion in terms of number of mechanics and function. All of these examples are found in the earliest dungeon of the game. The earliest dungeon in Star Wars deserves your “no excuse for this kind of simplicity these days” far more. I would mention the earliest dungeon of World of Warcraft, but apparently comparing games in their infancy is somehow more unfair than comparing one in its infancy to almost a decade of different tried-and-true design evolution.

I’m not saying the mechanics are phenomenal, but they’re effective and they are not lacking in complexity. What other game offers the option of knocking bosses over with boulders as a viable way to interrupt their actions? That’s added depth and variety which is indicative of deeper complexity.

The World bosses however, are definitely in need of some more complexity, or at least a tweak in mechanical execution that requires the players to experience the complexity present rather than find a safe spot and auto-attack while afk. Shadow Behemoth is a phenomenal World Boss for its location and level/experience expectancy, as is the Shaman in the 1-15 Norn zone (even though technically it’s not a world boss, still a great example), but with little in the way of difficulty progression beyond them there is definitely a problem.

…message too long…

Zaxares.5419:

Currently the only way to get the Mistfire Wolf elite skill is to buy the Digital Deluxe or Collector’s Edition of GW2. Perhaps somewhere down the line ANet will put the Mistfire Wolf for separate sale in the gemstore, but that could be a long way off.

Considering the Wolf is essentially 50-99% of the reason to get the DD at all I don’t think they’d sell it separately.

Upgrading to DD through the Gem Store does give the Skill though, right? I would hope it does, otherwise it’d be kind of… you know… not an upgrade.

Also why is this thread in the Suggestion section?

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

I agree.

Also, some more info on what MF actually does… Some numbers or figures of chances would be nice.

Magic Find seems pretty clear already:
Base Drop % + (Base % * MF ) = New Drop %
10 + (10% * 50% MF) = 10% + 5% = 15%

I agree that the base magic find given by Armor should be displayed somewhere on the character sheet. No need to get messy with it and show hidden bonuses from partying/events or the buff from sigils (though sigils could stand to show the value when the buff icon is moused over – all sigils, not just MF). Just show the fixed amount given by armor, runes and trinkets.

If they’ve programmed Magic Find as a background stat across the board though this might be difficult and not worth the time.

Adine.2184:

Yarrmor.8406:

I don’t see a big problem on both sides. It’s only a simple adding.

i don’t think it is additive actually .

If it weren’t additive there would be no sense in numbers like Major Rune of the Pirate. 13% bonus and 7% bonus that sum to 20%. If the bonuses aren’t additive this would be needlessly messy and obtuse.

solanu.3784:

It is to be noted that the objective here is impossible to reach without at least 4k HP (due to the level down here) and the 50% falling damage trait.

Not to nitpick, but I’d like to point out that while I may have had just a smidgen above 4k health while doing this puzzle, the 50% falling damage trait is by no means necessary. There are several red eggs along the path that fully restore any falling damage you take. I’m actually not sure why you would even need 4k health unless you consistently get hit by the gryphons which insta-ends the attempt anyway. Falling damage is percent-based, not level or zone-based (though I can see how getting a low level there would be a nightmare).

Otherwise I mostly agree. If Splendid Chests have some kind of increased chance to produce rare/exotic items then it’s hardly noticeable outside of event-related chests as Magic Find has minimal effect outside of events. The promise of reward is simply not followed through on strongly enough in these scenarios (though again, event-related chests I’m fine with; I see nothing wrong with their potential rewards).

Got stuck in the environment.

While running toward Shaemoor Garrison from the northeast side I started trying to climb the rock face and clipped inside of the lowest portion of it. Depending on where I was inside the rock or how I aimed my camera some things would blink out of existence. In the first shot the entire world above ground-level where you see the mountain would disappear, including everything to the right of the image and what you can see of Divinity’s Reach in the second image. In the third image the top of the towers would clip out, though the rest of it would remain visible.

I’m also getting 20% longer duration just as you are. It may be a bug and it’s meant to last for 50, but whoever changed it back to 50 in the wiki is currently wrong.

20% CD reduction and 20% duration increase.

It really does feel like the increase should be 50% though, as the base durations are so short that a 20% increase only amounts to a single second, which while handy in panic situations is next-to-worthless in any other situation. So bug or not, the only reason to use the trait at the moment is for the CD reduction.

Yeni.1924:

Archmortal.1027:

And you know, I think it’s better than the current state of WoW too.

No discussing with a blind fanboy who wants to brown nose all day and sweep issues under the rug I guess.

I’ve been playing GW2 for all of a week. I couldn’t tell you the hour count between all my WoW characters, but I was pretty clearly playing it enough to qualify as an addicted fanboy. This game obviously has issues. It’s new and everyone is complaining about different things. I just don’t believe that the endgame and players choosing to do the same tasks over and over are valid things to complain about. One is there with plenty to do and the other is a player choice, not a design flaw.

So, do you actually have an answer to the question I asked you, or did you default to petty insults because you couldn’t think of anything?

Shadenmonk.7580:

Stuff.

I guess I misunderstood it because it sounds like you want to incorporate another game into this game. The ideas you think should be taken as example from WoW are essentially The Game Itself. The parts of GW2 you find to get repetitive after a while are things you are completely free to ignore. Yes it won’t necessarily stop the game from telling you when an event pops up (perhaps the suggestion should turn toward having an option to turn those alerts off? I haven’t seen one like that but I also didn’t bother looking specifically for one like that yet), but that feeling of repetition is born of your own mindset, not the design of the game. The experience boost from doing those events is nice, but it’s hardly necessary. Having started as a human in Queensdale I got the impression that the game wanted you to know that events are going to go on whether you’re participating in them or not. Stressing over tedium and repetition in a dynamic world is not the fault of the world.

Jmcdg.8706:

Stuff mostly about WoW comparisons and stuff.

tl;dr the gameplay comparisons are spot-on. WoW is grindy and repetitive by nature and design to the point that they’ve even turned their holiday events into more grind-intensive endeavors. (I say tl;dr because I had a text wall typed and then thought better of such an extensive critique) I really do like WoW, but it’s not a secret that most people with [x] goal will get on for an hour or two a day to grind the daily limit of rewards toward said goal until that one day a week comes along where they can [x] with other people in a raid/arena/roleplay environment.

Those are things a lot of people playing GW2 would say “no, this is a problem and I don’t want to play a game like that” which is why they play this game and not that game. This game isn’t like that and shouldn’t be compared to that, but it will be because that other game is the one that set all the precedents for success and longevity. One has succeeded for the better part of a decade while one is new and different, but just as fun. It’s the “people are afraid of change” idea all over again, it’s nothing new. People resist the idea of endgame like what GW2 seems to be going for because WoW taught them that they should grind for days and weeks and possibly months before they feel powerful; GW2 gives you nearly all the tools you need to be a competitive max level player almost before you even get there . When people complain about GW2 but play it anyway it’s because the game is actually fun, their way of thinking just hasn’t shifted paradigms yet (plus, you know… having no monthly subscription fee to keep playing adds a lot of incentive to adjust).

That said: the grindy bits of this game are by choice, not by design. I have seen nothing in this game that requires a player to repeat the same or similar tasks repeatedly with no clear end in sight. The exception to this is Legendaries, however the boon to GW2 Legendaries as opposed to other MMOs is that this one doesn’t require you to rely on a group of other players that have to agree that you are the best/most deserving candidate to have the opportunity to get one. The Zerging people do from one event to the next is something that later down the road you yourself might say “DID YOU EVEN PLAY THIS GAME FOR MORE THAN 10 HOURS YOU ARE DOING IT SO WRONG SHUT UP AND ENJOY THE KITTENS OUT OF IT!”

Yeni.1924

Lol @ all people chanting “it’s a young game give it time” etc. newsflash! People don’t really want to buy a game and have to wait half a year for it to catch up to current standards.

So tell me, what other brand new MMO has been more successful in its infancy than this one or the one that lasted for almost a decade and hasn’t been properly pared down to its own infancy when being compared to? Judging by its current state, GW2 is a far, FAR better and more complete MMO than any I’ve ever played within half a year of launch. And you know, I think it’s better than the current state of WoW too.

As someone who was thoroughly entrenched in WoW’s endgame throughout Wrath and Cataclysm, I don’t understand why anyone would want that in this game. If you want WoW’s endgame, go play WoW. Guild Wars 2 is a different beast and it’s an extremely young one at that. Let the game grow.

Or hell, a cosmetic Kitten model of each weapon you could transmute onto any non-legendary weapon. I think the Pony Bow is a little overkill on a Legendary already, so let’s not jump to another cute animal for one just yet.

I’m not sure about implementing the actual gestures, but simply having the game recognize and reflect in-chat something as common and innocuous as /hug would be a great boon indeed.

Being pretty new and not ‘getting’ the complaints due to only ever having experienced post-change Greatsword I can say pretty decisively that Symbol of Wrath is completely messed up right now.

I don’t have any proper insight as to what the proper CD should be on it but as-is it is absolutely too long. The people saying/joking/complaining about how much auto-attack spam there is are absolutely correct.

In terms of Retaliation itself I’m nowhere near able to go in-depth on it, however the suggested alternative method to “Targeting Retaliation Builds” of replacing the Retaliation effect with Aegis/Swiftness/Might is so incredibly and so obviously superior to what was actually done that it addles the mind to imagine how such an option was missed or overlooked. It’s simple and effective and such adjectives are the only ones you ever want to use to describe a nerf. This deserves to be acknowledged and the question of why it was not done instead deserves to be answered. Such a solution would have required much less effort on ANET’s part and would have caused zero to no problems in addition to having the intended (and more importantly, non-problematic) effect on Retaliation builds.

On Leap of Faith. The cooldown is either too short or too long. Implementing the idea of reverting Symbol of Wrath’s CD and replacing its Retaliation effect with Aegis would call for restoring LoF’s previous CD as well and I feel this would actually be more fitting, as its current utility is baffling. It can’t be used often enough to fill in the missing gap in Things To Do that ANET obviously anticipated when they doubled Seal of Wrath’s CD and yet it comes off CD just soon enough to completely miss opportune timing for just about anything, be it self-combos or combo-finishing with others. Its current CD isn’t friendly at all.

On Greatsword Guardians as a whole: as soon as my friend started playing with me on her Mesmer I started noticing just how much damage I was taking. Some of that was not properly using my utilities like Wall of Reflection, but most of it is simply because as a Guardian using a Greatsword, having nothing to do for long periods of time between Whirling Wrath CDs means there are long periods of time where I have to run from enemies so they don’t butcher me. That’s part of the game and I love it, but it lasts too long and happens too many times during the same fight. Judging from comments I’m seeing everywhere this is not something that other professions deal with and it was not previously the case with Guardians either, and having an active build that seems to have previously existed where I’m not just sitting there waiting to be able to push buttons (as one of ANET’s own articles states it aims to achieve in all cases) would greatly alleviate that problem, a problem which again does not seem to have even existed prior to these… kind of really not well thought out changes.

All in all, having never experienced the previous CDs I believe that whatever caused the current incarnation of Guardian’s Greatsword setup to come about was at least, if not a mistake, extremely premature. If these effects were fully intended then they imply other changes that would lead to the balance Greatsword seemed to have previously and which is so desperately craved now. Such a huge change in a Profession’s dynamic requires the additional effects of changes not yet made or it should not have happened at all because as stated by others and observed and restated by myself: simply replacing Retaliation with an Aegis/Swiftness/Might effect would have achieved all of ANET’s stated goals of the change while causing none of the problems. Simple and Effective.