Guild Wars 2

Dodge roll?
The clone doesn’t imob you. The clone doesn’t really do anything by itself. It’s the swap that will happen a second later which you have to watch out for.
You see the clone appear on you, dodge. It’s pretty quick, but that’s hardly unique to this skill.

One Note Chord.5031:

It grants distortion to phantasms on summon, not on kill.

Ah, that makes much more sense.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

I’m pretty sure that the distortion for phantasms is really just for the berserker in wvw so Mesmers can get a tag in before it dies 1 second later. Or maybe using a different phantasm to shatter in a zerg. If going 6 dueling then 3 mantra charges will be the PvE choice.

How are you going to get a phantasm tag in with this skill if this skill requires that you already tagged something and it died?
Phantasms getting the distortion didn’t seem like that great of an idea to begin with to me, but if they were going to go for it they should have made it last 3 seconds just like the mesmer.

Clownmug.8357:

Nice changes, but when their blog said they were revising grandmaster traits I thought Disrupter’s Sustainment would’ve been the main one.

Yea no kidding…. there’s so many obvious things that need work, yet they didn’t touch them at all. I think that’s why this feels so underwhelming despite the fact that all the changes are positive.

The fixes are nice, great even, but there’s reallly not that many of them…
This is otherwise quite underwhelming.
So… Yay! they didn’t nerf us? I don’t know, this is all positive, but I feel mediocre happiness about it in a very backhanded way.
I felt better about the warrior changes (my other main) which included nerfs, then I do about this…

Can’t say any of these changes actually sound all that great as they’re described here. We’ll really just have to wait and see what the changes actually are.

Don’t know why they would rework mimic to copy boons instead of just slightly tweaking Arcane Thievery so that it’s more useable…
I feel they should have made it more akin to warrior’s Defiant Stance, except instead of healing damage done, you turn it into a projectile that can be fired (with a balance appropriate cap on the damage it can do).

Kulvar.1239:

And I assume that, if Kasmeer & Marjory were Asura or Charr, the kiss scene never existed.

And my assumptions (and therefore problem) is that the scene never would have existed had it been ANYONE else.

I don’t care if you’re gay, and only one homosexuel couple are in the spotlight -Kasmeer and Marjory.

They are, in fact, the only couple that are in the spotlight.
That’s fine on it’s own, but as I outlined earlier can be a problem depending on other factors.

Alasteir.7031:

People aren’t going to get jaded over something completely normal and okay, and the way they’re doing it is perfectly acceptable for the rating of the game. The OP is right, no one really cares too much, and they shouldn’t, just like they shouldn’t care if there was a straight couple introduced the same way, which is why they don’t put too much focus on it. Maybe a few years ago, it would have been a wtf moment, but now it’s common enough not to be “how dare you shove your different lifestyle where I know you exist!”

It is completely normal and okay. That’s why I provided examples of the equivalent straight couples we already see in game as a means of saying “look, it’s already in game, no problem if they had homosexuality to the mix”. Representing other facets of life in the game’s world is great.
What will make people jaded and discontent though is if we start seeing gross over-representation and focus. They haven’t really done so yet, which is why I said “IF they start”.
An example that they already are a little guilty of though: they gave a large amount of focus to two main character’s lesbian relationship and even felt the need to shove a kiss scene between them into an important moment in the main story. Something unprecedented in the game, and something I’d wage we will probably never see repeated. It makes it feel like they did it just because “oh look lesbians”.

Another problem is that they only seem willing to represent lesbian couples, and not gay men. Oddly enough, this is a trend my girlfriend often talks about noticing in webcomics and fanfictions she reads.

Haven’t played it yet, but so long as these are just nameless background characters, it’s fine by me. Just view them in the same stroke as the other random NPC couples you see around Tyria from time to time (like those 2 quaggan, or the housewives talking about their husbands in DR, or the flirty couple that used to be in Fort Salma, etc).

That said, this is GW2, a video game, not someone’s personal platform for raising w.e social awareness problem they want. If they start shoving it down our throats by giving such matters repeated attention or special focus, people are going to get jaded and discontent.
Hopefully it doesn’t come to that though.

Happy with the changes. Burst Skills will be less mindless and spammy. Adrenaline will require more attention be paid to it.
If it negatively impacts warrior performance enough, it will also inevitably call for buffs elsewhere.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Yoh.8469:

One a separate note, how dismissive are you? Saying that people would have to learn a 2nd set of numbers if you split skills. How stupid do you think people honestly are?
Your basically saying people are so stupid, so lazy that they can’t read a skills description, and can’t comprehend that they work differently in different game modes.

I’m not saying this is intentional on your part, but it’s sounds so ugly and dismissive of your player base. Personally it just sounds like a cop out, and excuse to put as little effort and resources into balancing your game as possible. And forget about new anything to professions, what a joke.

I don’t think that was Mr. Jonathan’s intention at all Yoh. I believe he was merely saying that skill changes between game type(WvW, PvE, and PvP) can be hard to understand and cause confusion to some players.

As a mock example, Lets say you play PvE with your awesome build that gives you 5 seconds of fury when you use a skill and your build relies on it being 5 seconds. However, we split that specific skill only in PvP and you go play and realize only after playing a few engagements that it only gives 3 seconds of fury. Then you go to WvW and realize that the skill is back to 5 seconds of Fury.

• How does that player feel?
• What questions is that player going to ask?
  * Is this a bug?
  * Why is it only different in PvP?
• Who is going to answer those questions?
• Are they going to try and seek out someone to answer these questions?
• Is the person they (if they do ask) going to know the actual reason for this change?
• Is that player going to stop playing PvP or GW2 all together?

The simplest change can have a huge effect on a player in any game, and when you start splitting skills and causing inconsistencies on top of balancing multiple game modes it can get a bit crazy for players to keep up. I hope this helps everyone understand what questions and thought process we go through as a team when deciding on splitting skills.

Nothing complicated. Literally just put a note in the tooltip that says: PvP: 3sec of Fury

Playing PvE vs PvP vs WvW are already very different. You’re changing your build and “relearning” your profession when you make the switch, regardless of whether there’s skill splits between modes.
Of course there’s lines that can’t be crossed, judgement calls that must be made. Something that fundamentally changes a skill can probably be agreed upon as “going too far”, and you shouldn’t wind up with every skill having different values because that really would be convaluted. But if you need to make some game-mode specific number tweaks in order to properly balance the game, hesitating because “oh know, the player will have to know what they’re doing!” doesn’t strike me as a valid reason not to go through with it.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

well i do use the signet for the passive.

at the moment, its 1 adrenaline per 3 seconds.
very weak.

they mentioned buffing it 50%

does that mean 1.5 adrenaline per 3 seconds?
more likely 1 adrenaline per 2 seconds …

Really? I can’t really think of a situation where sitting on an unused 5might, Fury, Swiftness would be good because of 1adren/2sec.
Signet of rage is obviously good, but it’s fairly poorly designed so far as signets go. Kind of like the old signet of might, there’s just no real decision making factor between on/off.

Shockwave.1230:

I am A Okay with the less frequent blinding while in the field.

That said one of the boons of the field is that when you pull someone through it you can reliably count on a blind being applied.

I would add one addition proposal to the skill change to keep this reliable blind, and that’s to add behavior similar to ring of fire’s burning, so that when an enemy first enters the field, a blind is applied.

+1
This sounds like an entirely reasonable and overall good idea. Entering the field should blind you, staying in the field should re-blind you at a low frequency.

Bazzoong.7145:

I really want to answer to this, to me this perspective is exactly the opposite to what I want from the game.

Please bear with me and read what I have to say on this.

This is a RPG, it means role play game, the different professions or archetypes in an RPG cater to different “fantasies”. For example the warrior caters to an “empowerment” or “hero” fantasy, you play it to be the strong guy who is incredible tough and has such qualities as loyality and honesty, we are talking about Thor or Hercules, the stone monkey(though that is an example of a trickster becoming a hero) or even the Hulk here. The thief caters to the “trickster” fantasy a person who you can not be sure of who might actually be one of the bad guys at times, we are talking about Loki, Coyote, Anansi about “shady” and "slippery"charakters here.
The stealth mechanic perfectly caters to that fantasy that is why in next to all games and in a lot of myths the “trickster” uses the “unfair” advantage of invisibility.
People playing thieves in games take that profession specifically for those kinds of mechanics those are part of what they want from those games, they find it enjoyable like others find it enjoyable to be the “hero”.
Being the single most annoying thing to fight is the whole point in thieves as a profession, being hated for that is part of the profession.

The suggestions in the post I quoted are exactly what not to do with thieves, they are just a version of delete the thief and reroll warrior idea. Do not change one fantasy to make it similar to the other keep them distinct players want that in an RPG.

If you find fighting thieves to be not fun that cannot be a reason to destroy the fantasy of the trickster, I do hate fighting warriors but I would never ask to destroy the “hero” fantasy.

Balance must happen by carefully ajusting the numbers not by messing with the core of the professions in my opinion.

Stealth is also either broken or in a very precarious state of balance in pretty much every game that includes it in their PvP that I’ve ever seen. (we’re talking the “you straight up can’t see me” variety of stealth, just to be clear).
It’s very hard to balance because the advantage stealth provide isn’t quantifiable.

This is not a single player game. Nor is it an entirely cooperative game. It’s not a one way street, there are situations where a player has to deal with stealthed enemy players.
When you’re making something in a PvP game, you have to be concerned about more then just the person who’s using the skill. You have to balance it in such a way that it is not only fun and interesting for the person using it, but also for the person who is forced to fight against it.
If you want to lololpewpew unfeeling enemies who can’t react to you, I’ll point you in the direction of single player games such as Skyrim. This is the problem with stealth. It’s a selfish mechanic. Its enjoyment is entirely for the user, and comes at the cost of the opponent’s enjoyment.

If you find warriors frustrating to play against, fine (though honestly, it’s probably a result of the thief’s dependance on stealth ;D ). But at least there’s counter-play. As an enemy to the warrior, there’s a way to interact with their mechanics. The warrior’s abilities are very well-telegraphed, and the effects they impart can be countered in various ways (dodging, condi removal, damage mitigation, stun breaks, etc).
This isn’t the case with stealth. When someone stealths, they gain complete initiative over the fight. The only interaction the enemy can partake in thereafter is waiting, or taking wild guesses that are loosely based on meta knowledge.
Now Arena Net is taking some steps to add stealth-counters: Rangers and Engineers have/will have access to a revealing debuff. This is very binary though, it’s a crude interaction and I don’t think it will suffice on it’s own.

On the other hand something like Shadow Refuge is a good, well designed skill. It localizes the stealth to a limited area, and only pays off with non-localized stealth after a long duration. There’s opportunity for the enemy to interact with the thief as they stealth because the thief is limited to a small space for a long time before the “payoff”. I can AoE the space, or use knock-backs/pulls to get the thief out.
Short duration stealth is generally okay as well, because the stealthed individual is very limited in the space they can traverse and act upon in short periods of time. Chaining stealth and high mobility while in stealth ruins this though.

As I said, I know the thief is “the stealth class”, and I can’t expect them to take that away. I explicitly stated such in my original post because I don’t want them to ruin a beloved fantasy archetype. I do expect them to deal with this mechanic as a part of a game that has PvP though, and that will involve additional counter-play options and/or more limitations on stealth.

fellyn.5083:

If it’s their intent to make adrenaline more precious then they’ve failed. All they’ve done is make it frustrating to use.

The majority of burst skills are terrible, telegraphed easy to dodge skills. And if you’re likely to miss and not proc cleansing ire then there is even less reason to spend it or to use that trait.

Earthshaker, Eviscerate and SkullCrack all have builds that put them to good use, and each have had their time in the spotlight.
Flurry is useful in general, imob→cancel/swap→ damage in power build and it’s good in condi builds.
Combustive Shot doesn’t even need mentioning, it’s obviously sitting in a good position right now.

So that leaves Kill Shot and Arcing Slice which are “bad”. Kill Shot is used in some trolly builds, and has also seen limited use in high-end tournaments though. Arcing Slice is getting reworked/significantly buffed in this patch.
So you’ve got one mediocre skill in the bunch.They aren’t “terrible”. And “telegraphed”/“easy to dodge” are the same thing. And the Burst Skill aren’t particularly more telegraphed then other warrior abilities. The warrior profession as a whole is just one who’s abilities are quite telegraphed for the most part.
Warrior Burst skills have significant effects on very short cooldowns. 3 sec stun, 2 sec aoe stun, damage nuke, 4 sec imob, huge fire field. If they weren’t burst skills, these effect would usually be on longer cooldowns then 10 seconds. Th resource (adrenaline) is a balancing tool, and by making it more easily wasted (either by expending it on a miss, or by draining it OOC) they are, in effect, making it more precious.

So what’s the problem exactly? That they made 3+ condis removal per 10 seconds on a Master trait that also gives you adrenaline on (being) hit require some work to land?

So far as I’m concerned, the only problem is that they didn’t nerf Combustive Shot’s interaction with Cleansing Ire so that it’s on par with other Burst skills.

I’ve only very briefly touched thief, so I’m an outsider to it. As an outsider “looking in” though, these changes don’t seem that great.
Thieves are really annoying and unenjoyable to fight against, largely as a result of how stealth works. I would have preferred they made a set of buffs and nerfs that moved thieves away from stealth while increasing their potency elsewhere. Thieves need buffs, but I feel the unquantifiable nature of the potency of stealth stands in their way.
I propose making the revealed buff stricter in PvP, while buffing thieves survivability/utility elsewhere.
Thieves are “the stealth class”. I don’t expect them to just get rid of stealth. Stealth does get in the way of balance though, and I think they should be stricter about it’s use.

Sixpool.9421:

They aren’t as creative as they think they are. Kinda obvious copy of WoW, not to mention a kitten change.

*eyes suspiciously * are… you implying that Rage in WoW was unique or original?
Also, rage interacted with abilities much differently then how adrenaline does. As someone else mentioned, more akin to GW1.

I think they just want adrenaline to be more precious in general. No more keeping it when you miss. No more carrying it around the battle field. You build it and use it in combat, and it’s contained to that encounter.

It’s more or less an buff in PvP.
Like you said, Hundred Blades isn’t that great in PvP because it’s hard to land the full thing (requires setup/cc/allies assistance). They’ve moved some of it’s damage into Arcing Slice instead, which is much easier to land.
Whirlwind is an evade, so it remain useful even if they move some damage off of it and onto something else.

Personally, I’m fine with the timer. It’s nearly 100% up time so you just replace it occasionally. Banner trait make it 100% uptime.

I’d like to see the auto attack removed from the banner skills an d replaced with something unique to each banner.
Banners are not elementalist conjured weapons. No body picks on up to attack with it. You pick up a banner for 2 reasons:
1: to move it. In this regard, the swiftness and rush skills are perfect and don’t need changing.
2: to quickly and (somewhat) tactically use what ever utility they offer. As it stand, that means the banner-specific #2 skill.
To reinforce this, I feel they should remove the “auto attack” #1 skill and replace it with another banner specific utility/support based skill. An AoE daze, a boon, a block, a combo field, or what ever else. Just something more, so that when I see X banner on the battle field, I really start thinking “hmm, if X happens I can grab the banner and use the skill”. And when I, as a warrior, am picking which banner to equip, I’m not just thinking of the passive stat boost, but also of what utility that banner can give to nearby allies for the situation at hand.

Off-hand axe, main-hand mace, and riffle all got some nice changes/buffs. Combined with the nerf/damage shift to GS, I feel this will open up more options to us.
The GS changes make the weapon more interesting to use in general.
Brawlers recovery really needed the change, and might actually be usable now. Potential 1condi per 5 seconds, which is more in line with what other classes have. Considering the adrenaline nerfs, Brawlers Recovery might actually compete against the alternatives GM traits (Burst Mastery and Heightened Focus).

Utilities are a mix bag. I’m quite happy about Rampage though. It’s an ability I always try to fit into my build, but never really works because it’s underwhelming.

Adrenaline changes/nerf will obviously hurt, but I’m more concerned by the fact that they didn’t address Longbow’s inconstant behavior (relative to other burst skills) when interacting with Cleansing Ire. LB was already the most “useable” burst skill, since even if you somehow mucked it up, you still removed conditions and got a fire field out of it. With the nerfs to adrenaline, it just got an even bigger lead.

Rousing Resilience is… eh? I don’t know. Could be good? 1000 toughness is pretty nifty, and it last as long as Balance Stance now, kind of turning Balance Stance into a defense steroid.

Pretty happy with the changes over all.

Edit: I don’t see why they don’t make it so that you only proc Cleansing Ire if the initial hit from Combustive Shot lands.

Zelulose.8695:

Remove spectate. It ruins the fun of inventing original builds and makes them easy to copy. It the reason we have these builds suddenly become meta builds. And yes, it does allow a losing player to become a winning player with little to no effort.

Special snow-flake syndrome?
There’s nothing wrong with builds getting around. And using a “good build” isn’t a short-cut to being pro.
And that’s not how metas work… a meta and meta builds will form regardless of spectator mode. People share their builds, and people can figure out builds just by playing against them.

I feel like a fairly simple change could address this. When you join a map, you have X seconds to pick a team. If you fail to pick in that time, you get LOCKED into spectator mode.
And (to prevent people simply leaving and rejoining to circumvent this system):
Once a match has progressed passed a certain threshold (let’s say, once a team is passed a certain number of points), new players who join are automatically put on the team with less players (if teams are uneven), or the team with less points (if the teams are even).

Greatsword 5 could probably use a nerf in mobility. Maybe ride the lightning style, though not as severe (I still feel they over nerfed it a bit), or just reduce the distance.

The other one I’d change is Sword 2. Increase the cooldown of Savage Leap from 8 sec to 10 seconds, but then buff the Blade Master trait so that it reduces sword cool downs by 20% (on top of its current effect). This way, you have to invest in order to get the most mobility out of it. (some other sword cooldowns might need adjustments as well if this happened though).

Might want to investigate why she wants to play WoW. Does she have a lot of friends that play? could be more of a social desire then a gaming desire.
That said, WoW’s probably not her best bet. It’s old and has a sub fee. There’s a lot nicer stuff available now a days, and for cheaper at that.
GW2 is also a game with a lot more freedom and convenience, which is probably more suitable for someone so young.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Eh, they could create a game in which you play an exceedingly comon personal with no special abilities or skills and no important ties, the role of a grunt souldier who accomplishes maindane meager feats and moderate accomplishment that are far from note worthery… but that wouldn’t really be interesting, and is a direct contradiction as to why we play games in the first place.

That’s my point thought
Who plays an RPG to be a faceless nobody who’s completely unexceptional?

World of Warcraft kind of does what Carighan was saying: the NPCs (generally the faction leaders) are the “main characters” that most of the story revolves around, while the player is an elite troop of sorts. But even there, you’re still an outstanding individual with an adventure of your own.
Having the story built so that the player is just “one of the masses” and is referred to as such is going too far though. And for what, some shallow sense of “it’s a multiplayer story now!”?

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

No, from the begining, we were always the main character…. I mean, you don’t seriously think the members of destiny’s Edge have 2000 close and personal friends, or that there is 2000 commanders of the pact, which is second in command or the entire organizations army (which would be like having 2000 five star generals, when in US history we dont even have 100, not to mention 2000 at one time), that there’s six hundred heroes of shamore, each and every one of which having struck the decisive blow to save the town?

no, I can believe there are 5~25 commanders of the pact, that there are 3~6 heroes who worked together to save shamore, and another 3~6 for each of the other nations, who saved that respective nation, I can believe that destinys edge has 5~25 close and personal friends… and I chose to believe, those other heroes/adventurers who acomplish these feats with me, at my side, are my personal friends and guild mates, and that everyone else I pass is just an everyday soldier, soldiers under my command even… otherwise, the story makes no sense.

You don’t want to be the main character… but unfortunatly you have been from the start, that’s simply what gw2 chose.

Not just what GW2 chose, it’s what playing a role in a game is all about. It’s an RPG. You, the player, can’t be a faceless nobody. You necessarily must be a somebody in the story because it’s an RPG, and an RPG must give the player a role to play. Now that role doesn’t have to be the biggest, bestest, greatest character in the universe, I’m not the Queen of Kryta or a human god or a leader of a Charr legion, but it does have to be something the player feels is worth playing as.

I’m happy to see Trahearn back. The way the letter was written actually made me excited for what was to come.
Not to mention he wasn’t that bad in the first place. People made him into a huge scapegoat for their problems with the PS, and many people just hate on him because they hear other people hate on him.

And no matter how bad he was, it would be far wrose if they didn’t include him. Kill him off? forget him? How utterly lame and boring would that be. Like it or not, he’s a significant figure in Tyria, to brush him aside and never mention him in the story would be leaving a significant hole.
Much better to bring him back and simply improve his character and the writing surrounding him.

The events likely scale down enough that soloing them isn’t a problem. But if the only way to get the full enjoyment out of them without the detriments brought by the open world is to wait till no one else is around, then why put them in the open world in the first place? Might as well be instanced.

Zayd Akira.1942:

Didn’t you get enough instanced storytelling via the actual instanced parts?
Not everything needs to have some 5 minute scripted intro with NPCs puking exposition left and right. I feel the mix of instance and open world was pretty fair and balanced in this episode.
If the zergs of 100s of people steamrolling the events weren’t there, i might have actually enjoyed it.
Anet should have planned for that.

How do you plan for “people wanting to do new content”? You can only split people up so much, and you still need them to all touch each piece of content.
There’s also the problem of the events happening independently of the player, causing you to miss things.
Events related to what’s going on is cool. It’d give you something to do on your way to the story instance, keep the world feeling “alive”, contain extra tid-bits of information to discover, and give a source for patch related items to drop. But once again that’s not the best platform to deliver story through.

Carighan.6758:

How does one follow from the other? What you say sounds like what I expect from a single-player RPG. But that’s the thing, MMORPG. Thousands of “heroes”. Make something of it instead of cheapskating it and having to pretend everyone is a solo-player!

This “You are the hero” is effectively just lazy MMO design. Can’t do it properly, do it like a single-player RPG, at least you can copy&paste their solution.

You still have yet to address the perfectly legitimate qualitative experience issues I brought up.
It’s all nice and pretty to say “it’s an MMO! so just MAKE it have multilayer story telling”, but you still have to deal with the logistical issue of making that a reality.

“Just refer to the player as a group” isn’t good enough to magic away all the problems.

Katai.6240:

I don’t understand why everyone wants everything to be instanced. It sort of takes away the point of being an MMO, doesn’kitten

Not everything. Specifically just the story parts that would benefit from being able to concentrate on them and do them at your own pace.

World bosses, new dynamic events, new zones, dungeons, jumping puzzles, guild events, gathering, etc. All the other stuff can be open world/group oriented.
I’m only asking that the parts that benefit from being alone are instanced. And when I’m trying to read dialogue and progress a story, the distractions of the open world are a very clear detriment that can be avoided through the benefits of instancing.
There’s nothing about 10 other people running around me that enhances my gaming experience when I’m trying to have a conversation with an NPC.

Carighan.6758:

The problem is that given that I play a genre which’s distinguishing design element is that a nontrivial amount of other players are constantly around me, this is the one assumption you should not ask me to make.

Spacegoats in WoW? Fine.
Lasertech in my fantasy MMO? Fine.
But being the sole hero in a massive-multiplayer game? I wouldn’t be playing the genre in the first place then, would I?

For the story, assuming that you’re the only canonical “hero” is an assumption you can’t make? If you want a sensible RPG story, that’s the assumption you’ll have to make.
This is still an RPG, and your character holding an important role within the story is non-negotiable, so you can’t reduce the player to “generic faceless footsoldier” while the NPCs are the only real characters. On the flip side, you can’t have a large, undefined, changing number of “important heroes” solving the story’s problems. As I mentioned before, that would be a convoluted mess to write.
You’re still in the social environment of the MMO, you can still play with others even if the story content is instanced, but you can’t expect the story to be built around a narrative for a large, undefined, and changing number of players. I won’t even get in to the fact that solo play is still an important element of the game even in an RPG.

Furthermore, you STILL haven’t provided any counter arguments to the gameplay experience concerns I brought up originally, and brought up again in my response to you earlier.

Carighan.6758:

I think the problem is more in the way NPCs react to us.

In general, I do not like instanced storytelling.
It makes no sense. Especially now with LS2, the NPCs consider me “our boss”, and I’m frequently presented as the hero. Huh? Me and the other thousands of players? Are you that short of memory that you forget each of us 0,1 second later, Kasmeer? Really?

It just totally breaks immersion for me. I know there’s lots of other players around. I mean come on, it’s why I’m playing a MMORPG instead of a single-player RPG in the first place.
Yet this instanced story, especially now LS2 (earlier story tried to put the hero-focus on a NPC, which didn’t work but was a pretty cool idea), is trying to make me think it’s me who is important. It gets even more weird when you group up for it, because the NPCs obviously cannot acknowledge two bosses.

Anyhow, back to open world. The issues are in execution, IMO. I’d make the following changes:

• Any “hero-moment” should be based on a NPC. That is someone who you only got one of.
• NPCs need to acknowledge the amount of players. If you genuinely are alone, they’ll say something about “finally” someone showing up to help. And remember you personally and then call you by name. Also summon some NPCs to help.
• OTOH, if there’s 3-5, they might still address you by name but start talking about "everyone needing to work together2.
• At larger numbers, they address the players like you would a battalion in an army. They might talk about each being individuals, but having to all follow through with this plan for it to work.

Basically, stop pretending the other players don’t exist. If I want to be the sole hero, I can play Skyrim or Divinity Original Sin or so. I don’t need my MMORPG to try replace my single-player RPG. I’d rather want my MMO to feel MMO-y

All it takes is one simple assumption by the player for instanced story telling to make sense. You recognize that your character is the hero and that other players aren’t in your story. It just takes a very brief suspension of disbelief (so to speak). From there, it doesn’t matter how many million people go by, because that didn’t happen in your story. Not to mention that the instancing means that that whole scenario with Kasmeer forgetting doesn’t happen in the first place.

A story that simultaneously incorporates every player that walks by in an MMORPG as a character? Yea good luck with that. It would be an incoherent mess to even begin to try to recognize multiple players in the story. It would be a fantastic display of convoluted story gymnastics.
I do think the examples you provided would be cool for quiet a few events. Having an NPC address a group when a group is present is really cool. But to incorporate that into the main story narrative? I just don’t see that as reasonable. Nor do I see the removal of the player from important roles, and diminishing them to cannon fodder foot-soldiers that come by the dozen, as being appropriate. MMO or w.e else, this is still an RPG, and I am still play a role within it. Because while the MMO need to be MMO-y, it also needs to be RPG-y.

And this really doesn’t address any of the concerns I brought up about the player’s experience of the story. Zergs will still be a detriment to my experience of the story. Passerbys and open world distractions will still be a detriment. And the pace of the events being outside of your hands will still be a detriment. What’s the alternative to instances that would fix these problems while keeping you in the open world? Phasing? a rather complex fix when something as simple as instancing can do the job. Not to mention all the other problems phasing brings with it.

AysonCurrax.3254:

The bit with the pieces of the crown was good? are you kidding me? If anything, fishing a supposedly legendary, magical item out of piles of rubble ABOVE GROUND is very poor, lazy story telling that feels like a filler at best and as if it was thrown in there at the last second. That should have been instanced aswell and take place in actual ruins of some sort. Because it would actually make sense to find them in such a place rather than in something that might aswell have been a trash can for all i know. The instanced bits were actually quite nice. The whole zerging, boring stuff not so much.

Let me clarify:
When I say “the bit with the crown pieces was good”, I mean that an action as simple and singular as picking up an item is better left in the open world, and doesn’t need an instance all for itself.

Over all, the crown section could have certainly been improved. I felt the locations themselves were appropriate, but they should have put a lot more into it. Make a small struggle to acquire each piece, stash the pieces somewhere more appropriate then a rubble pile, add some dialogue/books revealing some history behind why the piece was there.
Or perhaps they could have instanced one of the outdoor mini dungeons or jumping puzzles and re-purposed them for the crown fragments, adding appropriate enemies and NPCs/books.
It didn’t have to be anything grand, there doesn’t have to be an epic struggle or long winded search behind every thing we do, but it felt too excuse-plotty and they certainly missed a chance to add some interesting information/lore.

So just to be clear, I’m NOT talking about bugs. Bugs happen, I don’t really care so long as they get fixed. This thread isn’t about that.

What I want to address is the state of the open world portions of the Living Story missions (the green star stuff from the journal).
They were bad.
The story, being a story, is something you actually want to focus on and experience. The fact that it was in the open world was a great hindrance to that. This is the case for several reason:
First, the zergs. Zerg content is not compelling. I won’t say it doesn’t have a place in the game, but when you want to get your players interested and engaged, running around in a blob of 50 people spamming abilities is not the way.
Second, the distractions the open world brings. When there’s other events going on and players running around, it draws your attention away from the story. Zergs amplify this greatly, and zergs are inevitable when tons of players are drawn to the same spot upon the release of something new.
Third, the nature of dynamic events. You can show up half way through and miss portions of what’s going on. They also don’t cater to your individual pace, and while this is good in many places, it doesn’t work when you’re trying to follow a story.
Last, the lack of immersion:
“Yea Eir, I’ll go do this alone”, you then travel to your objective and find a hundred players running around in a big blob, destroying the objectives in the event that’s half way through it’s chain before you can even get to them or figure out what’s supposed to be happening.
There where a bunch of dolyaks at one point. Why? don’t ask me, I have no idea.

Now the distinction needs to be made. I don’t think all Living Story Journal missions need to be kicked out of the open world. If you’re just talking to an npc, it’s good. If you’re finding a trail of notes in the desert, it’s good. If you’re just picking up crown fragments, it’s good. These are things that would be outright annoying if I had to pop into an instance every time. What’s bad are portions that feature gameplay/combat. Those can’t be exposed to the open world because of the reasons I outlined above.
Furthermore, there’s no benefit to be had by putting these events in the open world. If I want to play with others, I have that option by inviting people to the instances. If I want more events, the way they were handled in Dry Top was great. There’s no inherit benefit to putting these story bit in the open world VS putting them in instances, but there are many detriments.

The story itself was cool, the instanced portions were fun and over all well done, and the items you collect through the story and then refine (Mysterious Seed, Sacred Glacial Water, etc) were interesting. But the open world portions of the story were bad, and it’s a lesson I thought was already learned back during the original launch of Southwsun Cove.
Adding events to the world is fine, but that’s something that needs to be handled separately from the story. My hopes are that this isn’t repeated in future content patches.
Thanks for reading

I agree. If it’s just talking to an NPC then that’s fine, in fact I prefer it. But when you start adding events/combat to it, it just becomes a mess.
Keep the story bits in instances. Experiencing the story with 50 other players around you does NOT enhance the experience, quiet the opposite it’s a detriment.

Crossaber.8934:

I will prefer bringing back the GW elite skill – Head butt

Medium single target damage – Physical skill

3/4 sec activation time

90 sec CD

2s stun

2s self daze if being blocked

That sounds absolutely terrible. Why would I ever take that skill in GW2? Not only is it a garbage stun on a ridiculously long cooldown, it can even backfire and screw you over.

The OPs idea isn’t much better. Even as a weapon skill or a utility skill it doesn’t seem to be that great of an idea, certainly not as an elite. An execute that reduces downed HP? why would I want that over a regular high-damage ability?
Maybe if it automatically downed them if they are under 15% hp, I could see it being useful for tank builds that don’t do much damage. But that’d be quiet the cheese skill, could have stupid snow-balling moments, and be fairly uninteresting gameplay-wise.
A skill that deals bonus damage to low health targets is cool, but such skills are already in game. Reducing downed HP is useful, it gives you a longer period of time to stomp someone before their allies can get them up, but poison fill that role already. If you want more option to do so, I don’t think a skill like this would be the way to do it.

Some builds cater more to solo queue. Case in point, you mentioned people not being able/knowing how to work with you well when on your bunker guardian. On the other hand, the warrior build you rolled sounds like it’s quite self reliant.
You also played for a pretty short amount of time, couldn’t have been more then a few rounds. It could easily be a fluke, or just the time you queued at. Some days of the weeks/times sport different types of players.
The class is also quiet noob friendly, it has a low skill floor. Not to mention warriors are in a pretty good place right now. I wouldn’t say they’re OP, but they’re certainly not hurting.

Would love Skale/Skelk.
Raptors and Griffons would be obvious choices as well.

Dude, don’t touch it. “Boss” is awesome as a name.
Boss is amazing. Seriously, I love it. It firmly establishes the player’s relationship with the biconics as “the guy in charge”, and does so in a semi-formal way.
It has flavor, can be used in a playful way, and maintains the player/biconics relationship. It also rolls off the tongue easily without sounding awkward.

I feel empowered by it, but I don’t feel like they’re just saying it as some stiff military rank or title.

I used to raid lead in other games, so trust me when I say I understand the need for a solid 30+ minutes to organize a massive group of unorganized strangers.
I was referring to the nonsense where you spend the hour before the fight starts right clicking someone’s portrait just to get in to the dang zone. I had heard mega servers compounded this problem, which had me worried.

And yea, I’ve read up on the fights and am appropriately prepared. I just didn’t know how to go about finding these organized groups.

Thanks for all the responses

Thanks for the answers. I’m on NA, ill try looking at the guilds.
Hearing that there’s still this “wait for an hour so that you get in” nonsense is incredibly disheartening though.

I’ve been interested in getting involved with organized Jungle Wurm (and to a lesser degree, Tequatl) groups/guild, but I don’t really know where to go.
I’ve never killed the Jungle Wurm, and Teg pug runs usually fail, but I want to do them.

Is there a website, famous guild(s), specific server, or people I can talk to to get involved with some regular runs, or do people not even do these any more?
I’ve looked around and can’t seem to find any substantial or recent information on the subject.

Considering the Krytan Royal Locket and the mention of an important leader (potentially Jenna) being targeted, I would assume that either Jenna or the Heir is either present for or aid in the cleansing.

Also, I’m pretty sure Eir successfully retrieved Magdaer and had someone who could reforge it. This happened at least a year ago in in-game time. Perhaps we’ll finally see that plot-line fulfilled?

And while I like the biconics just fine for the most part, I’ll actually be really happy if they can just kitten off for one release and we can see some other characters get some focus.
I know we have to finish up what happened last time and go talk to the Pale Tree, and we’ll probably see some resolution between Rox and Rytlock and the whole warband affair, but if they could just stop after that for this patch and actually focus on some other character for a while, that’d be great.

BlueZone.4236:

Longer time to develop content can lead to higher quality work, the ability to delay/scrap bad content, cohesive design and story, content that tailors to many groups simultaneously.

It’s not really “longer time to develop content” though. They’re not releasing “Entanglement” as an expansion and getting extra time to develop as a result. They’re working over a longer period of time, but they’re also working on more things in that time.
The only thing they can’t do is the “simultaneous release of multiple content types”, but they can instead release them over the course of a few patches/weeks. In the case of an expansion though, content would be separated by several months instead. So you’d get your “simultaneous release” that caters to multiple groups at once, and then have several months of nothing. Once again, the only real difference is how the content is packaged.

A traditional expansion allows the developers to release content when it’s ready, while the Living Story forces developers to release content when it’s due.

Hardly, expansions have due dates too. True, they’d gain a bit of flexibility in how much time they can spend on development, but there’s still a due date in the end. Not to mention the alternative is something akin to WoW’s current situation, where they hide behind “when it’s ready” as an excuse and see huge content droughts with no pay-off as a result.

They obviously get advantages from having “more time” to work on and polish things, but they’ve shown they’ll take that time when needed. They went on vacation and skipped some releases around christmas, and they took several months to work on things after season 1.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I like the general idea of this, but as much as I am rooting for conditions to become more viable in PvE, what you have done here is essentially given a HUGE buff to the damage output of zergs. Damage over time is simply converted to burst damage.

While it is kind of crappy to feel like your conditions don’t really “count” in a large group, the stack cap is not just there for technical reasons. On an individual scale, I know it seems like condi builds don’t do as much damage as berserkers — but if you got a whole bunch of players together who could then infinitely pile on DoTs and convert them to instant burst damage, it would be a real mess. Zergs would chew through champs and world bosses even more effortlessly than they do now.

Removing the condi cap is not going to affect solo play or smaller groups, which is where I feel conditions need the help.

High health targets don’t cleanse conditions, and have such a large amount of health that they survive to see the full duration of conditions applied to them anyways. So whether the damage is done upfront or ticks over the course of 10 seconds won’t really present a significant difference. Zergs aren’t going to chew through champs/world bosses significantly faster just because condi builds are viable for use now, it’s not like the stacks resetting are also resetting your cool-downs to place those conditions.
Furthermore, your example of multiple people being able to apply dots and as such do too much damage is completely flawed. You can’t infinitely apply dots, each player can apply a finite number of conditions that is dependent on their build, and so long as those individual build’s damage capacity is within the same range as direct damage builds damage capacity, then it doesn’t matter how many people are applying them because their damage capacity is the same. Every one being allowed to apply their conditions wouldn’t make condition builds “over powered” or “do too much damage in groups”, it would just make it fair and on equal footing to direct damage builds.

Solo play won’t be changed, but solo play doesn’t need changing. Condi builds are already fine in a completely solo situation.
Small group play will be significantly helped by such a change, because it means you’re damage is no longer wasted as soon as you hit the stack cap (which is the whole problem). In fact, it potentially creates a fun “mini game” wherein a small group can aim to “crit” the stack in order to burst the target.
The only problem I see is that condition builds, builds which are supposed to be about attrition, would then have the capacity to also do great burst. Which is a bit unfair as a “best of both worlds” situation.

She’s clearly reckless, and that’s a trait which is independent of her intelligence. Since her introduction, she has been happy to dive into danger to reach what ever interests her. And now, with these new releases, she flips switches and starts things that have 50%+ chances of killing her/us without much care.

Some people have mentioned her being a child, making her have a disregard for safety do to delusions of grandeur.
You can also look at the flip side for motive: she has a potent degenerative disease. It’s entirely possible that she simply values the pursuit of her research more then she values her crippled life, which is subject to ending suddenly due to disease anyways.

Ropechef.6192:

for every 25 stacks of bleeding, a stack of “hemorrhaging” is applied.
regular bleed stack resets for new stack.

hemorrhaging
duration 5 seconds
damage 5000/second
maximum stack 25

something like that??
instead of increasing the cap, perhaps add a new “condition”

No, I think he means the stack kind of “explodes”. If the total damage over time the 25 stacks of bleeding would have caused was 20k damage, then the 20k damage is done immediately and the stacks are removed, clearing the way for new bleeds to be applied.

The more I think of it, the more I like it to be honest. Would take some ironing out though. Confusion, as mentioned, wouldn’t work. Similarly Torment is going to have a problem, unless the damage calculation just assumes the average. And I think duration stacking conditions would need a different solution.
Perhaps, when a burn reaches 15 seconds, additional burns apply their full damage immediately? or new sources beyond the cap apply their damage immediately? I think they might have some technical difficulty with that though…
Regardless, I don’t think the stack “criting” works for duration conditions because you really WANT them to stay on long. Wouldn’t want someone applying a 2 second burn/poison and causing the rest of the stack to crit and disappear.

Edit: player used confusion just plain needs to be reworked in PVE anyways. Make 50% of what ever Arena Net expects it to do be just normal condition damage that ticks over time, and the other 50% be triggered on attack, or something.

Not a bad idea, but as you said, it’s not ideal. And if they’re going to make major changes to fix it, they should be aiming for something a little closer to ideal then this I feel.
Still, I think the general idea is a good direction to go in. Some sort of condition overflow, wherein passed the cap the damage is applied immediately in some way or another.

This would of course be a PVE only feature.

People criticizing Anet and Gw2 because they aren’t infallible, they have things wrong with them, and they deserve to be criticized. The criticism, as with any game, is multifaceted and stems from several sources, some of which are subjective and based upon players personal preferences making the situation even more difficult to pin down. You can’t just find a single source for the criticism (or problems).
The numb-brained GW1 fanatics can just be ignored. Nothing will ever replace their precious, they’ll forever hail it as being a god-tier game, and they’ll never forgive Anet/GW2 for daring to change.

With regards to expansion, I don’t really understand it. They’re fundamentally the same as regular patches, and anything they can deliver can be delivered in patches as well. In my experience (talking about other games as well here) it’s really just a matter of packaging.