Guild Wars 2

Dashingsteel.3410:

Unfortunately, Anet listened only to a small section of the playerbase…. I am sure a lot of the playerbase wasn’t even aware of the CDI back in the day…… Lots of the ideas for HoT came directly from the CDI and I sure don’t think HoT represents the wishes of the entire playerbase.

The backpedaling Anet did with trying to partially patch it up later, and general negative opinion HoT received suggests it didn’t represent those wishes. For the most part, at least.

zealex.9410:

Meanwhile se3 map feel like amusement park you vsit onces and you are done for the year :/

That is unfortunately true. If you’re not farming map currency for ascended accesories, those maps are not very interesting. In that regard, SW and Dry Top have far better replayability than LS3 maps.

Ramoth.9064:

I love this. Joke topic from 3 weeks ago is still on the front page. Keep it!

Perhaps, just perhaps it is a joke only to you.

Mel.3064:

More raid bosses may lower the time gate, but the time you need to spend raiding each week will go up in return.

Yes, if you want to obtain something faster, you need to spend more time each day on it. Nothing special about it – almost everything in this game works that way.

It’s generally fine as long as you keep to few rules:
1. ingame currencies and/or services only. Paying using RL stuff is against rules.
2. only you are allowed to play on your account. Paying someone to play for you on it is not allowed.
3. Any forms of match manipulation in PvP modes (both sPvP and WvW) are also prohibited. You can, for example, pay someone to team up with you and help you win a match. You’re not allowed to pay someone on opposite team to throw a match for you however.

Josh Foreman:

There is a difference between a core vision for our design principles, and the implementation of specific systems.

Yes, there is. Problem is, that the changes that are usually brought up when people are speaking about promises broken are usually those made not to latter, but to the former.

That saying, i don’t agree with parts of what OP posted. LS1 pace (the “two weeks’ cadence”), that OP is claiming was too slow, was already way too fast for many players (only those able to play on most days were able to catch up with it, while the majority of the game population felt more and more left behind). The fact that LS was a real living story, that took place mostly in open world, and was designed to be present only for a short time also created a lot of discontent.

This type of approach is good only if you can participate in it. The more of it you skip, the less appealing it becomes however. And obviously it does absolutely nothing for those players that started after it has already passed.

I’m not surprised it got changed. And “traditional MMO players” had nothing to do with it. Quite the opposite, it was mostly unappealing not to hardcores, but to casuals and “new mmo players”

There were other changes OP could have brought up as leading to his conclusion that would have fit far better than those he concentrated on.

Considering how good (lol) were the real wintersday promotions, i wouldn’t count on much this time either.

Ashantara.8731:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Example the Vine event in AB, I open all Ex. Chests and just click salvage all and walk away. I never even hear of anyone getting anything decent.

I have actually gotten quite a few exotics from those chests. My Magic Find is currently at 223%.

Are those chests even affected by MF? Most of the chests aren’t.

Tomiyou.3790:

Anet’s mentality is this: you play PvP for fun/competitiveness, you get rewards while doing it.

Those rewards are not aimed at this group of players however – they are clearly aimed at PvE. No need for ascended tier gear in sPvP after all.

That’s the problem with the reward system currently – the rewards themselves are aimed at non-sPvP players, but the method of obtaining them is balanced around those that sPvP primarily.

Linken.6345:

henchmen.1856:

Zalavaaris.5329:

It requires no skill therefore it’s not worthy of the legendary status or perks. It’s just a skin with a time sink.

and copying a rotation someone else made and repeating it over and over in a predictable environment requires tons of skill /s

Well when people complain that raids are to hard the raiders here say no they arent they are easy.

So do the raids really require skill then?

It’s because the difficulty is not really skill-related. Both groups are actually right here. The raids are easy if you have no problem organizing a static group that won’t fall apart after few failures and will remain stable for months. Otherwise, they can be extremely hard – but again, it doesn’t have much to do with skill.

of raid bosses, your build might work for more chaotic attempts at Cairn (especially since you could double as kiter in addition to being the third healer). The general problem is, again, what was mentioned already – more experienced groups might not need a third healer at all (and for primary healer roles druid is better due to the GotL buff).

tigirius.9014:

Curious if the team has given serious thought to porting to the next gen consoles?

Yes. Several times. The answer was always that they’re not interested in doing that.
(it’s not the first time someone asked that question)

From what we’ve been told, that would not only require rewriting the game engine from scratch (something they do not have manpower for), but also negatively impact the ability to introduce content patches, or, worse, to bugfix on the fly.

I see no info about any balance patches yesterday. You are saying Anet sneaked in a major skill balance without saying anything?

Daishi.6027:

You cannot compare generalized PvE rewards to that of exclusive content

Why not? There are some rewards in there that were content-exclusives before those tracks got introduced. And they got introduced exactly because sPvP players did not want to play PvE.
(before you again claim that dungeons don’t count – no, they were not abandoned content yet when those tracks got introduced)

(also, pvp pots as a cost for pve-related guild unlocks was always a bad idea, and it’s not getting any better)

Phineas Poe.3018:

PvP dailies never should’ve attracted “non-PvPers” in the first place

Then they should not give rewards that non-pvp players might want (for example materials for strictly PvE guildhall upgrade).

That’s only if you are a WvW player that doesn’t want to even touch PvE but is fine with playing spvp. Otherwise farming berries in bitterfrost is much easier and faster.

Well, it will increase the number of pve players that are there just for daily and don’t care about the game itself in unranked and ranked games. I’m sure PvP players will love that.
Though, at the same time it will no longer incentivize class stacking due to class dailies, so at least that one is good.

bobsort.4097:

Well, I was more serious than telling a joke!

I think this need to be addressed, either by increasing drop rate of lily or changing the forge recipe to create lily from gemstone.

The droprates of lilies do need adjustment, but it has nothing to do with this recipe. You can use all t6 gems in this place after all, not just lilies. Just go with what is cheapest, not with what costs the most.

Wanze.8410:

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

I doubt that most regular players earn enough t5 leather directly to craft one spool of elonian cord per day (200 sections).

They still likely earn t5 at a rate fast enough compared to t2,t3,t4 that they can make elonian cords faster than convert those cords to squares. It’s that conversion part that will hold them more than availability of cords.

I disagree. The Blended Leather Sheet, which is used for the grandmaster marks instead of Elonian Leather Squares, uses 50% less t2-4 leather but 130% more t5 leather, so Anet considerably tilted mat requirements for ascended armor crafting away from t2-4 and towards t5.

Those require also special content currency on top of marks. Getting this currency again will likely take longer than getting t5.

Wanze.8410:

I doubt that most regular players earn enough t5 leather directly to craft one spool of elonian cord per day (200 sections).

They still likely earn t5 at a rate fast enough compared to t2,t3,t4 that they can make elonian cords faster than convert those cords to squares. It’s that conversion part that will hold them more than availability of cords.

Remember, that you can’t dc even once before getting that achievement. That includes not being fully loaded when someone first talks to Caithe. So, if you want that achievement, be sure you’re the first person in the instance, and the person that starts it by talking to Caithe.

DiscipleofLaw.3796:

I’m trying to play GW2 with my brother, and I don’t see his character in the game, even though we’re supposedly standing right next to each other. His character portrait is blacked out, too. We’re both on the same server, both on the Mount Maelstrom map, we both have completely updated the game, we both own Heart of Thorns, and there’s no option to click his face to “Join in Mount Maelstrom” or whatever.

What am I not thinking of? Why can’t we see each other?

Should not be possible. There’s only two possible scenarios why you wouldn’t be able to see the join-in option. One is if you were playing in different zones (one in EU, another in US) – that obviously is not the case, if you’re on the same server. Another option is if you both were on different game version instances – that would mean one of you would not have his game fully patched though.

I’m guessing that the cause is likely the latter (even though you seem to think you’re both fully updated). There was a patch today, so it’s possible one of you logged before it happened, and one logged after. Both of you would be fully updated at the moment of logging in, but one would still be on earlier game version.

Joxer.6024:

Astralporing.1957:

Joxer.6024:

And, as I said, this process killed raids in that game for most.

That’s highly debatable, actually. Yes, it made it worse for some. Just as it made it better for some. As for “killing raids” however, that’s just an opinion based on your likes and dislikes. It’s not supported by any hard data.

that’s why I said for “most”.

And why i said that “most” is also just your personal opinion based on the fact you didn’t like it. It’s not supported by any data. Even if we agreed that “most” raiders left (which in itself is highly doubtful), it’s not like there weren’t many other, completely unrelated to LFR reasons that caused many veteran raiders to leave. Reasons that for many were much more important anyway.

maddoctor.2738:

Op, as i mentioned prior, WOW did EXACTLY this with their LFR system.

I think we can all agree that the LFR system of WoW cannot be used in Guild Wars 2 despite some people asking for it.
(lengthy explanation cut to save space)

Those are actually quite valid arguments. Some of them could likely be minimized with some changes, but for at least one (the need to change party composition) i can’t really see a solution in such a fully automated system.

Joxer.6024:

And, as I said, this process killed raids in that game for most.

That’s highly debatable, actually. Yes, it made it worse for some. Just as it made it better for some. As for “killing raids” however, that’s just an opinion based on your likes and dislikes. It’s not supported by any hard data.

OriOri.8724:

Question, are they applied separately? What I mean is that say you gather 36% MF from login rewards before you hit 300% magic find through consuming luck, can you then use luck to get to 336% MF, or are you capped at 300% and have to wait for more loyalty chests to go up any more, the MF from the loyalty chest just made it significantly easier to get to that point?

You don’t get MF from login rewards – those are for gold. You get MF account bonuses from reaching higher tiers of AP. But yes, those are counted separately, the cap applies only to MF gained with luck. If you have 300% MF from luck, and 17% from achievement points, your passive total bonus before any boosts are added will be 317%.

Wanze.8410:

No, I meant that most players at end game will spend more gold on t5 leather than t6 because ascended gear doesnt really need t6 leather at all but huge amounts of t5 leather.

For the most players however t5 likely doesn’t need to be bought at all. It’s the other tiers that are in short supply.

Personally, i have never enough of t2,t3,t4,t6, but my bank slot for t5 skins is always full. I don’t need more of those at all.

It’s the t2,t3,t4 that are a chokepoint for ascended armor crafting, and it’s t6 that is required for insignias for stat switching. t5 is almost never an issue.

Wanze.8410:

The droprate of t6 leather from unstable hides (LS3 event rewards and drops from white mantle) is considerably higher.

Yes, those have a much better tier salvage ratios than bloodstone hides. Unfortunately, the farm area is probably the worst place on the map to get them (well, lake doric in general is not the best place to farm those)

Fenom.9457:

We knew it would have to be addressed, but now we know it’ll be the focus of EP6. Today we got a Jormag dye… remember when we got a Primordus dye a few weeks before Draconis Mons, which completely changed the course of his story and essentially “defeated” him?

Remember when we got tormented weapons set in gemstore that confirmed the Abaddon fractal incoming shortly after?
Oh wait…

Gemstore skins, outfits and dyes often hints at things we don’t get to see. Yes, it may be possible the next LS chapter will be Jormag related, but gemshop sales are not very reliable as a source of confirmation about it.

mtpelion.4562:

Ashantara.8731:

mtpelion.4562:

Besides their use in the leveling process for your Guild Hall, they are also used for crafting all of the Chinese New Year items that rely on https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Red_Lantern_ as their base.

Ohh! Thank you.

Last question on my part: Does the Magical Enrichment infusion for amulets still work once you have reached the maximum? Meaning, giving you a total of +336% Luck?

Yes. Luck gets you up to +300%. All other Magic Find buffs (infusion, food, potions, boosters, guild buff, etc.) ADD more Magic Find on top of your luck.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic_Find

You can get an additional +355% on top of your +300% Luck for a total of +655%. Some maps have additional buffs on top of that as well for even higher Magic Find.

Also, the AP-based MF bonuses do not count for the 300% cap, so you can get few percents more that way.

Daddicus.6128:

Agreed. There are many ways they could make this work, but nearly all of them could have unforeseen consequences.

It’s not like the current version didn’t, and those were mostly negative ones at that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In other words, Scarlet had no source to “base the ones she produced on someone else’s work”. There were no steam creatures existing in 1319 AE, at all.

We don’t know that. We just know she didn’t base her steam creatures on those from Lornar’s (but we knew that already, because those were retconned to be her creations). And that unlike Grand High Soverein, she only claimed to make the creatures, but didn’t claim to invent them.

Feanor.2358:

Astralporing.1957:

Dungeons were totally fine without that exclusive content.

Right, because dungeon skins and runes aren’t exclusive rewards. Plus it was the top gold farm at the moment. Try again.

It actually wasn’t the top farm (with the exception of the very beginning times of back-to-back CoF p1 running, at most points of history there were better ones). It just had a good reward ratio. That was enough for the content to be popular. It would likely still be popular if it had comparable reward level to fractals (and wasn’t being known as abandoned content).

IndigoSundown.5419:

When ANet decided to add harder-than-dungeons group instanced content, they chose to call this content “raids.” That word has meaning to MMO consumers. That meaning includes exclusive and better rewards. It’s part of the package.

If you paid attention to the original CDI thread, while some players asked for it, that wasn’t assumed to be part of package even by veteran raiders. It’s not something raids have to have, it’s just something they need to have in games driven by that type of content (and by gear grind). That simply isn’t necessary in GW2.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Not only that, ANet accepted the better/exclusive rewards expectation for raids.

Which was a mistake, at least for some parts (most skins are no more or less problematic than dungeon or fractal ones, so they’re probably mostly okay, but exclusivity of legendary armor definitely was a bad idea). Though Anet actually didn’t make any claims specifically about supporting raid reward exclusivity, so they can easily change their minds at some point still.

The solutions would be to use those as mats for some sort of consumable buffs.

Ashen.2907:

Weird, the reason the people I know did dungeons, or at least repeated them, was for the skins.

And do we have a healthy number of people doing dungeons now?
Yeah, thought so.

Vinceman.4572:

Repeatable content has to be rewarding otherwise players will abandon it.

I agree. This has nothing to do with exclusivity of said rewards however.

Feanor.2358:

Raid rewards need to be exclusive to create a drive for players to play them again and again. The content is great, but even the greatest content gets exhausted if you have no reason to go back to it. See dungeons for instance.

Dungeons were totally fine without that exclusive content. It definitely wasn’t for dungeon exclusive skins that people were running them. It’s not for fractal skins that people are running fractals now (even the legendary backpack likely has only minimal impact fractal popularity).

So, why exactly raids need to have the drive that so surpasses the same for dungeons and fractals? It’s not like they are (again, supposedly) any more important of a content, right?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Because raids in most games are about rewards in addition to challenge, and there are two factors.

1. The reward must be the best of its type (usually gear stats) the game offers, at least in PvE.
2. Some players who raid look for prestige to be had by displaying the raid reward.

All of those games are raid-centric, so they should not be used as an example of “what things should like” in GW2.
In those games the reward for raids have to be the best, because raids are considered to be the most important content of said games. That assumption is supposedly not true in GW2.

thrag.9740:

Hold on. Right now, cm is inconsistent with the tier system. Who says t5 has to have higher AR or do any of the other stuff? We can trade one inconsistency for another, but at least then we can just have our own lfg for that tier etc.

There’s no point in mentioning using an already existing tiering system if you’re not really intending to use it at all.
It’s exactly because CM is inconsistent with the tier system that it’s called CM, not tier 5.

Notice, that Scarlet doesn’t actually say whether she was the one to invent steam creatures, or if she was (or wasn’t) basing the ones she produced on someone else’s work. It’s entirely possible she had a contact with one of the steam portals before and is just trying to copy what she saw.

FrostDraco.8306:

Astralporing.1957:

thrag.9740:

One thing I want to contribute. If every fractal gets a challenge mote maybe they should just be called…. tier 5? Seriously what is the point of a scaling difficulty system if you don’t use it when trying to actually introduce more difficulty.

Using already existing scaling system for this would imply suffering other consequences of said system (namely – inflated mob stats, and, what’s worse, increased required AR). Thanks, i’ll pass.

Implying AR was ever an issue for anyone running t4.

Suuure, i’d so love to need to replace all the infusions in all my fractal characters. Again.

Yes, annoyiance for annoyance’s sake is an issue.

Cyninja.2954:

Is it fun? No.

Is it hard? No.

Does it serve a purpose? Yes.

Is it annoying? Yes.

Could it have been made less annoying without losing the purpose? Yes.

So, basically, it’s been made unnecessarily annoying for no purpose whatsoever.

Endelon.1042:

It would be nice if they increased the magic find cap beyond 300% from luck.

If they ever did that, they’d adjust the base drop rates so that capped ones would give the same drop changes they do now (if you think the current drop rates are not calculated around the max MF people already, you’re naive).

So, the people with new maxed MF would still get the same drops they get now, but everyone else would get less.

I don’t really want to see that.

Feanor.2358:

perilisk.1874:

I mean, if we were going for sensible options, they would have fixed the one formula that causes the 375% leather/cloth disparity in armor crafting before fixing things with a farm and then nerfing it because people were farming. So obviously they will instead resort to some sort of overly complex, high-dev-cost fix that breaks the intended gameplay along with the farming.

I don’t think it’s that simple. Leather had no value whatsoever before this disparity. Changing this one formula may very well bring back those days and I don’t think this will be healthy for the game economy.

There are three changes responsible for the disparity. Reverting (or balancing, in the case of patch formula) just one of them will not bring back the previous situation, but it may make the gap between those two types of mats become smaller.

Their last official stance on this was that the old expansions will be included with any new expac sale, with f2p being vanilla gw2. So far they haven’t said anything that might suggest they may have changed their mind. And, considering the next expac is going to come really soon, if they planned any such changes, and wanted to avoid any debacle on the level comparable with those they got with HoT, they really should have made an annoucement about it already.

So no, i don’t think it’s going to happen.

@Menadena: i don’t think they will retroactively apply it to old areas. This might potentially work with core (seeing as the gliding did), but i see a lot of serious troubles if they tried to use it in HoT. Or some of the new LS3 maps.

(also, it’s something that a lot of people may actually hate being introducted, depending of its implementation)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So what’s your fun, more interesting alternative that provides the same benefits?

Fun? Nothing, the whole idea is not really compatible with the idea. I could think of several things that would make it less annoying however.
(for example, use tradable craftable provisioner marks for everything, instead of different items for each vendor, and make a slot for those in the bank)

thrag.9740:

One thing I want to contribute. If every fractal gets a challenge mote maybe they should just be called…. tier 5? Seriously what is the point of a scaling difficulty system if you don’t use it when trying to actually introduce more difficulty.

Using already existing scaling system for this would imply suffering other consequences of said system (namely – inflated mob stats, and, what’s worse, increased required AR). Thanks, i’ll pass.

The nodes wouldn’t need to be all that common. The consumption of those resources is still massive, so adding few nodes here and there would not make them worthless.

As for impacting the prices – yes, that’s the idea behind a farm. As i said already, the farm that does not impact prices is a failed design.

Ayrilana.1396:

Khisanth.2948:

Ayrilana.1396:

Adding nodes would add too much supply without any effort. Well, actually, maybe it could work if they did some gauntlet that relied on personal skill to access the nodes along the path which players couldn’t bypass with mesmer portals. It would of course need to be timegated.

and then it would be yet another failure. Reminds me of the blooming passiflora node in ember bay guarded by at least one veteran bristleback along with a bunch of non-vets

Well adding nodes, which are easy to access, would introduce too much supply and tank the prices.

There would have needed to be a ton of those nodes to really tank the prices. Even mithril and elder wood (the materials with most number of nodes in the more active areas) aren’t priced at vendor level. So, yes, the prices would go down, but that’s the general idea behind a working farm. It still wouldn’t make leather worthless.

Aldath.1275:

Is Anet’s ability to develop stuff that can be played even after maps get emptied non existant?

Pretty much yes. They always had a short attention span, and are able to concentrate only on relatively new stuff. That’s why any changes/upgrades/fixes to old content take so long.

Faaris.8013:

That is simply not true. Yesterday I could literally watch people learning at Golem Mark II. You died because of electric fields on the ground? Oh, better move out of them next time. Ah, red circle, I know what to do. Oh kitten, even bigger red circle, so I have to dodge twice in a row, better save up my endurance. Alright, so this machine gun circle shower again, get closer to the golem. Now the rotation starts again…

Huh, before the answer many people came up with was “ranger longbow at 1500+”

As mentioned before, Tribulation Caverns JP starts where the previous JP (rift scaffolding) ends. It’s really hard to miss entrance to the former if you’ve done the latter correctly.

Also, with any speed boost on, you can jump directly from the platform below the beam. Faster and generally safer.

neven.3785:

Even arena net doesn’t see EoTM as wvw, They call it a test map, so naturally it should be less rewarding than real play where you actually have to kill an enemy now and then. The EoTMers should be glad right now that there are much less guilds on there hunting down their easy free bags and their ktrains can run much more efficiently thanks to that.

And yet it’s the EotM ktrainers that are in the best situation now.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I can’t agree. It would, of course, be much easier, if the CC window was longer and easier still if characters could break it. But all the same, it can be done by fliers. Again, it requires coordination ahead of time. There has to be a group who are willing to wait at the jump pads for that moment (and ideally, another one to focus on breaking crystals). It does get done by PUGs.

If your group is on pad the moment the breakbar appears, most likely they will fail to break it. The succesful attempts have people that organize the rest telling them when to jump. Which most of the time requires voice comm to get the timing right.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

People used to do Tequatl daily, even when it was about the same level of difficulty.

Before the nerfs? Organized groups did it, but pugs almost always failed. So, basically the same situation we have now with the Shatterer breakbar achieve.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think the main difference is that the rewards for Shattererererererer aren’t commensurate with the challenge. Offer a chance for a set of unique skins (such as the Sunless set), with Ascended rarity, and I’m sure it would get PUGged in multiple instances.

Sure it will. But any of those PUGged instances will still almost always fail to break its bar even once.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

There’s a difference. If I want to craft an axe, I need ores. But to get those ores I need to go out in the world to get them (or buy them from the TP, but that goes for about everything, so I’ll ignore that for now).
Now, if I need to craft some nice soup, I need roux. I can stay at my crafting station to craft that roux (provided I have enough of the base materials stored).

Okay. Now compare that not to ore, but to ingots. Don’t you see some similarity now?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m on NA. I can confirm that the achievement isn’t broken — it just takes coordination, which is often most easily done with a sponsoring guild.

It’s actually even more stringent than that. The cc window is very short, and the bar way too big. This means that the only reasonable method of breaking it requires using bombs from a large number of flyers – which requires all that flyers to be up and ready to throw at the same precise moment.

That’s not what you can expect from a normal non-guild organized instance.

The cc window really should be made longer, and the bar balanced around profession skills, not the flyers.