Guild Wars 2

kangaroo.8753:

“I disagree, in what battlefield do the enemy soldiers just stand around, meandering like they have little else to do.” —> patrolling maybe?

They are not the zombie of the films ok, it was as an example to make you understand that the “grab you thing” works the same….but can’t it be that their goal or order is to stop you? Or attend to “kill everything” they seen move? Of course, in a part of orr there is nothing, so they has nothing to do, but the fact that every waypoint is contested means that zhaitarn give them order to get the pact camp, and they do it very well^^

Patrols are organized, as in groups traveling with a goal. Having your troops stand all over the place isn’t very tactical, rather you’re spreading your forces thin, which would be a good way to loose. I’ve never heard of having your forces spread out in single fashion so you can catch stragglers, while the rest are off fighting important emplacements that actually have strategic value. Just saying it shows how little sense it makes. In war, whoever holds important positions win, not so much the one who can cover the most ground and can spot the scouts as they run past your spread out troops.

Also the waypoints are contested these days not in a sense of Zhaitan making his advance, but because fewer people are going to Orr. This isn’t a story driven reason, the reason is gameplay wise, so don’t confuse the two.

Yes, Zhaitan does attack the Pact camps and Fort Trinity, but meanwhile the rest of his army is spread all over the place. Like I said in the first paragraph, there is no strategic value in doing so. He had a lot more to gain if he would have focused his attacks with the greater majority of his troops to take the camps, to cut of Pact requisitions and reinforcements to starve the army further inside Orr. Like I said, patrols consist of small groups covering ground in an organized fashion as they scope out the land, patrolling isn’t half your army stationed across an entire landmass.

You know what, it now makes sense why Zhaitan lost, because he’s a freaking idiot.

Well, the client just finished downloading a 155mb patch. The patch notes show two mesmer changes and items being taken away. Now I’m sure the latter doesn’t need a large patch to accomplish, as with Halloween showed it can merely be turned off.

Which makes me wonder, is this some of the January update content already?

I disagree, in what battlefield do the enemy soldiers just stand around, meandering like they have little else to do.

And don’t say, “but they’re zombies, haven’t you ever seen zombies before…”. Guild Wars zombies aren’t your run-of-the-mill zombies, they are all minions of Zhaitan. They have no will but his will, they are all connected to his thoughts and exist to achieve his goals.

Now don’t say, “but its behind enemy lines, they are reserve troops standing at the ready…”. With Orr under constant attack by the Pact, what sort of genius battle commander will have the brunt of his force just mill about? Obviously Zhaitan would have them mobilized and fighting desperately to not only take back Orr but also make a push for Fort Trinity. No wonder he can’t take over the camps or succeed at taking the fort, half of his minions are just standing all over the place.

On the one side you can see ArenaNet wanted Orr to reflect a desolate lost world that fell from glory due to a huge tragedy, while the forlorn undead try to pick up the pieces. Though on the other side they want it to embody the face of a vast army at the ready, doing the bidding of one of the most dangerous enemies Tyria has ever faced.

Problem is, you can’t have both, and it just makes the entire thing seem conflicted.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.

Man am I glad you said no new regions. Do we really want just another Southsun Cove added to the game? As if anyone frequently visit it right now. No, rather fix Southsun, fix Orr, fix all of the zones so there are more to do and more activities overall in the world, and I don’t mean just combat.

However…

Just to help provide some clarity on this, we’ll be releasing within the next couple of weeks a high level summary of our big plans for the first half of 2013 to help provide more transparency into our plans with the game going forward.

This sort of makes it sound like the blog will be coming in two, maybe three weeks. Does that mean the the patch will only hit close to the end of the month? I was thinking it will be closer to the middle, around the 18th or so.

stof.9341:

You can give the Orr enemies all kind of interesting skills and tactics worthy of a final boss in a great action game, all that is moot is they got nothing they can use against players that just ignore them and continue running in a straight line.

Which is why the Orr Risen got a lot of anti “just run past them they cannot catch you” skills. Without those the zone would be a joke too.

It’s already a major joke. Enemies are easy, and the “anti-just run past them they cannot catch you” don’t work as it stands now. Doing ori runs with my guardian, engi and ele are so tedious, and running fighting a group prompts an “Ugh” response, not so much a nervous “Ah, kitten”. It’s just that easy, and boring. For people who find it hard, it’s not a good mechanic, just being snared and having them pound away at you, which is terrible design.

That’s why I think that there should be more DEs, all with trash mobs that use interesting abilities, like to ones I suggested. In between these DEs there should be groups of veterans and single champions with mixtures of interesting abilities and mechanics, and they should have good drops, which prompts people to team up to take on them, and these guys should be really hard with tough boss fight mechanics.

stof.9341:

Judging from the amount of posts complaining that the zone is a death trap where risen will jump on you by hundreds and keep you perma CC until you get disconnected for inactivity, I think it might be too hard already

I’ve read that as well, and that still enforces my point. They keep you locked and kill you, that’s pretty much what makes the zone ‘difficult’, but it’s just lazy design in practice. It’s pretty much a situation of going in, getting snared, and getting swarmed. That’s the basis of Orr and that is such a terrible design idea, I can’t even understand why not more people are moaning about it.

What it should be like is enemies should all have different strengths and tactics when you fight them, and that is what makes them dangerous, they’re own unique abilities, not the fact that they could stun and jump you.

For instance, when you see one enemy, you know he has a strong range attack when you stand still, while another enemy might have an escalating melee hazard, like a building bleed stack perhaps, and when you look at another enemy you know he can do ricochet shots that become dangerous when groups of players stand too close together. And then you have the big guys who’ll have a lot more tricky mechanics.

That’s what I meant when I said this zone is a joke. It’s not really hard, it’s just a sad one trick pony.

stof.9341:

I don’t see the problem with Orr. Just dodge the pulls/immobilizes and run away. They hardly spam those CC moves but they tend to use them as their first skill which is then predictable and so easy to avoid with a dodge.

I highlighted the problematic parts of Orr, all summed up in your post.

Orr is supposed to be challenging. Like you said, what makes it “tough” is easily avoided and the enemies are quite predictable, because their “tough” abilities all come down to one move, i.e. CC.
That is exactly the problem. The zone should be hard, but it’s a joke, mostly because some designer thought that CC is the equivalent of a good challenge.

PowerCat.5738:

Oglaf.1074:

I don’t mind the general theme of Orr.

I quite like it.

What I can’t stand is all the CC-spam from the enemies.

That was arenanet’s way of making the zone challenging. I mean it’s so easy to run through mobs when they don’t CC, that’d be the only thing preventing you from getting around fast.

It’s really utterly stupid. And then some will say, just get anti-CC utilities…
That doesn’t fix the problem. Spamming movement impairing abilities isn’t close to being a challenge, it just give them more chance to swarm you, meaning, it’s meant to cover up the lazy design that went into the enemies. And without CC, they fall flat, because they just hit and stun/pull/knockback/etc. you and they have nothing more. You can easily take a few of these guys down, because they’re a joke.

No, the enemies need to be redesigned, they need to have interesting abilities that make them tough out of what they can do.
I think it would be great if there were a lot of trash mobs to keep with the whole ‘behind enemy lines’ feel, all of them quite ‘soloable’. Then there should be scattered single tough mobs with good, strong abilities and interesting fight mechanics, whom drop good loot and have other incentives to kill. CC should be minimal, one mob type at most. The enemies should be tough for what they can do, not for the fact that they can keep you locked into one spot for a long time.

I don’t consider myself a “hardcore” GW player, but I do play a lot and I really enjoy the game. To me the road to a legendary item though just isn’t all that legendary, it’s uninteresting and not fun at all.

It’s like ANet just didn’t have time to put some ingenuity or imagination into the process of making a legendary item, it doesn’t feel like you become a legend by obtaining one, nor is the procedure to craft one a legendary endeavor.

It’s not so much a journey that takes you across the world, taking on certain tough challenges and acquiring interesting and unique components that you craft and work to put together in an inventive ways, nothing like that. Instead the designers just went with the maximum amount of the top tier crafting components, along with other items that you need to grind to get, and items that take some time to get, while sprinkling in some RNG.

Legendary weapons have no soul or making that goes into them. A legendary item mean nothing to me, it’s just a conglomeration of meaningless items with large price tags on them.

I know many people have said it, but it’s true:
- More Fractals!
- An update to all dungeons, as stated in the beyond Lost Shores blog.
- More open world revitalization. DEs have grown a bit stagnant, and doesn’t really prompt a person to return to old zones that much.
- Fix Southsun. Right now this place is terribly boring. There’s no incentive to kill the enemies, there are only a handful of events, and it doesn’t feel like you have reason to go there and stay.
- Additions to skills. More utilities would be nice, but it would also be great if you were able to do a bit more with your weapon skills as well.
- Just more additions to make the open world exciting, and better rewards and incentives to participate in a zone.

nethykins.7986:

I don’t think it’s going to be a “content” patch as such.

It’s more like “here’s a patch to fix all that crazy stuff we didn’t have time to fix earlier” a la, disconnecting in fractals/not being able to re-enter, party being kicked from a normal dungeon when party creator leaves, bugged skills for classes, resolving the WvW continual domination issue, constantly contested waypoints etc.

I think I’m going to disagree. Colin did say in an interview:

But January and February are actually are biggest updates to date. They’re even bigger than all the stuff we did in October, November and December. And I think that when people see how much stuff they’re gonna get for no monthly fee in January and February, they’re probably going to be blown away. These two months combined are basically an expansion’s worth of content for free.

Since the interview was in December, and Colin sound quite sure of himself, I’d say the content they have planned are quite deep in development, if not already undergoing severe testing.

Yargesh.4965:

I am talking about games in general, meeting deadlines is ‘usually’ not done due to last minute bugs or other events taking precedence. Since this game is 5 months old I will not be upset if they do not do something every month or even every other month.

I think they’re trying to set a standard for other MMOs to follow, where content is constantly added to improve the game experience, and I think ANet is really trying hard to do something every month, be it a holiday event, PvP updates, or an addition to the world.

It seems they’re so dedicated to achieve this goal that even some bugs will slip through the cracks. Let’s be honest, Lost Shore could have done with some extra testing. Even so I think they’ll slowly get into the swing of things and content will start running smoother and with less hiccups.

Cushnahan.7058:

How do you know we are getting a ‘huuge patch’ this month?

I’d be very curious to find out where you found out!

The interview, and if you look here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-2012/
You’ll see January is marked “coming soon”, so we’ll definitely be getting something big this month. I’m starting to think that there’s going to be something big at least once a month. Good times.

Maybe, instead of just falling back into a tired, safe system, why not let them tweak and improve the one they have? Like you said, the GW2 system isn’t quite there yet, but then why completely overhaul the game into a scrappy old mechanic that everyone has seen overused so many times.

GW2’s system doesn’t have the luxury of working off of the old and well detailed trinity blueprint, because this is new territory that hasn’t been done to death. Anet is treading new ground here, and like with anything that’s new it’s going to need practice to get right. If you thought this system was going to be perfect from the get go, then you were only fooling yourself.

maddoctor.2738:

January 3rd when Wintersday ends officially?

It’s kinda what I thought as well, but I was hoping it might be today. XD

I know I’m a bit early, very early in fact, but I’m curious to know when we’ll be seeing the January update teaser?
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-2012/

Will it be Today (the 1st), like with the Wintersday update or will it be closer to the weekend? Not to seem pushy for asking, but I’m bursting out of my skin with anticipation. Any bit of info will hold me over. I’m very psyched to see what you ANet guys and gals have in store for us.

Vasham.2408:

Angry Joe is part of That Guy With the Glasses and thus loses all credibility as a critic of anything.

Yeah! Who does think he is anyhow, having an opinion, coming online and sharing it with the rest of us. Pssh…

Jokes aside though, if you’ve followed his videos in the past, he does say ‘in my opinion’ or ‘I personally feel’, so he doesn’t go around stating things as fact, but rather approaches it from his own point of view.

What I like about his videos is the fact that he looks at games from the everyman point of view. Some reviewers will give game stellar reviews, but neglect to point out that the $60 product has 3 hours worth of entertainment value at best. He values games as a consumer, not as someone that’s a part of the corporate machine.

It’s now officially the last day of the year in Europe, and an entire year of possibilities lie ahead. That said, the prospects of what awaits GW2 is both exciting and daunting. How different will the game be this time next year, how many of the changes will be welcomed with glee, and how many will bring down the wrath of fans on this here forum.

Well, let’s remain hopeful, and I think a good idea to start off the coming year from ANet’s side would be to openly communicate their intentions. Sure, a lot of things will change as time passes, even some ideas that seem valid now might be thrown out in a months time.

That does not matter though, a moderate sense of trepidation still lingers after the Lost Shore patch and I strongly believe that an open book of how ANet intends to start the year would do the fans a lot of good. A blog would perhaps be a good place to bring this together. All I’m saying is that an entire year worth of content awaits us, and I’m pretty sure the guys and gals at ANet are filled with concepts of where they intend to push the game over the next few months, and it would definitely be a good step to share a few of those intentions with the GW2 fan base.

Zoid.2568:

Trehearne is starting to take effect at lvl 50 and then all the way to 80, 30 levels with him is pretty painful as he’s not a very fun or interesting character. I liked Sieran but you know what happened to her.

Trahearne is definitely a low point (if not the lowest) of the story. Far too many have agreed on this fact, but I also feel your personal growth, or complete lack thereof, also spoils the story. To me the whole ‘This is my story’ tagline crashed and burned as the story progressed, and I blame three shortcomings for it.

1. You never made any lasting choices. The largest was probably which race you allied with. Even your biography had little effect past level 20 when the orders come into play. Even your choice of order mattered little the moment Trahearne hijacked your limelight. Consecutive missions should carry a reminder of what came before, or else what is the point?

2. There are no personal challenges. Your character remains a flat concept throughout the game, and feel a bit too wooden. Barring the two biography choice missions, which I feel are the best parts of the story, the A Light in the Darkness part of the game comes in as a close second. Here your character had some opportunity to shine, but this could have been developed a bit more. Like I said in the OP, the story should be less about you following NPCs and more about you taking control and the NPCs following you.

3. You should be able to shape who your character is. What’s the point of keeping a personality chart if it doesn’t mean anything? The way you sculpt who your character is should carry over. More of these dialogue options should appear in chat, and it should be noted by other characters, or even play a small part in a mission.

2. Dynamic Events driving the world
DEs are the answer to quests, a old system where some new breath was a welcoming change. But I often wondered if DEs really fill that role. At first there weren’t Renown Hearts, ANet added them when people felt lost and didn’t know what to do in the game, it became the small task system, and I often wonder how the game would have been without them.

Honestly, at times I would also have felt lost. It’s happened a few times where I ran around for minutes, and no DEs seem to kick in, so I travel from one zone to the next, just to find a DE to do. Now I know they work on timers and they can’t go off all the time, but then again, why can’t they? Events are supposed to be the meat of the game. In previous games you always had quests or were on your way to the next quest hub, so why should GW2 sometimes have zones that become dry?

Well, I don’t enjoy moaning without giving what I’d like to think is a solution, so here goes.
Each zone tells some sort of a tale, be it centaur raids, or pirate activity. So why not have each zone have a multitude of small events going on, like picking apples, or escorting a merchant to and fro, or chasing away vermin. Eventually a zone wide event will kick in. This will cause all small events to stop, since the crap struck the fan. During this time multiple events will go off all around the zone, making the zone a bit more hostile. That way a lot of players will have a lot to do to quell the threat, after which the zone will return to normal.

Again, this is all just my scattered thoughts. I’d just like to see more events go off and play a more cohesive role in a zone. As with Arathi Hinterlands, for some reason I really enjoy what ANet did there, and think it could also work on a more massive scale.

Having played the game extensively (clocking in at almost 600 hours), there are two gripes I’d like to mention that held the game back for me.

1. The way the story is told
While I agree with those who think Trahearne is as interesting as moldy bread, I also feel the role of the main character is a bit underwhelming. It started of strong with your personal choices, but from there your decisions take a bit of a backseat.

Unlike in GW1 where you played the silent protagonist on a journey to greatness, often times in GW2 I felt like NPCs are telling my story for me. The only direction I had was when an NPC stated that there are two ways to proceed onward, which of the two would you prefer. Instead of allowing events tell the story, it was more a case of characters giving a monologue of what is happening and where the tale is heading. I think part of the problem is the two character face-off approach GW2 takes as opposed to an actual cutscene giving life to the events.

Then there’s the matter of progression. From one story arc to the next (approximately every 10 levels or so), the story will progress from a personal to a more global tale of heroism. The part where my gripe comes in is how choices matter less and less. Like I said above, your decisions feel underwhelming, especially in this game where it feels as if you should matter. Your character is a bit of a cliche, a card board cut out, a Mary Sue. Where the choices come in, it perhaps only affects the layout of the next mission. Dialogue can change your personality, but this effect is completely superfluous. And worst of all, a lot of what occurred previously doesn’t seem to carry over.

I’m not saying make it a deep game where choices effect the world, this isn’t supposed to be the Witcher. What I am saying is that it would be nice to have your chosen personality come through from time to time. Choices from earlier in the game should stay with your character in some way. Quite often I felt it wasn’t my story, I was merely being dragged along with it.

I know others did enjoy the story, and that is a good thing. But like I said, this is my personal gripes. For my second point:

You get 100 per Infinirarium run, for a total of 2 minis. We received 250 from the chest, that’s a total of 3 minis. However, from the chest we received 200 cogs? Are these supposed to be used, because I see no other way to get the remaining 50, or are these cogs just going to remain in our banks until next year?

I like it how people will point at WoW’s dungeon finder and freak out. Some even go on to say that GW doesn’t need a LFG tool… Yet no one mentions that GW1 had a LFG tool, which worked perfectly. Go figure.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

As someone who worked extremely hard on one of the Orrian maps, I can tell you that DusK has the most accurate comment.

Your explanation doesn’t make sense. The will of the risen is bound to Zhaitan, and Orr is his base of operations. There is no “continuing on the tasks they performed in their old lives”, they have no lives, they’re all Zhaitan’s troops, his fodder. And as far as the game tries to imply, Zhaitan is at war with Tyria.

I’ve never seen an army base in preparation for war have its troops just standing around, the commanders content to have their troops do whatever they like. Orr feels like a mishmash of half ideas. Like you wanted to create the sense of a world lost where sad beings dwell without purpose, while also forcing a sense of ominous war, and also creating a sense of an inhospitable looming threat, but the glue doesn’t hold.

As someone who worked extremely hard on Orr, you should reassess the place, really. The enemies are nothing more than a massive annoyance; I honestly don’t know who thought that a lot of enemies with movement hindering abilities equals a challenge. That person/team really needs to be schooled in gameplay.

Orr needs/begs to have better enemies with better abilities. They should pose an actual threat, where they have tricky abilities that pose a challenge. Just throwing different sorts of snares is just plain lazy. And people who think you need large coordinated groups make no sense, I can run through this place with my guardian and my engineer and never feel threatened, only annoyed.

There needs to be a stronger cohesive flow of ongoing events that constantly have enemies on the move, attacking and being active in the zone, which will make them far more believable and threatening than just having a whole lot of them standing around all the time.

The temples are the best part of Orr, but there could be some more large scale events. What about a lost keep that players need to capture, or a huge series of events culminating in a large scale battlefield right at the footsteps of Arah.

I’m not a game designer and already I feel as if I can have a better shot at making Orr more engaging, which just isn’t right. For some odd reason you guys at ANet see Orr as a major success, even though there’s been a lot of threads with good reasons as to why Orr just isn’t fun, and I really can’t comprehend why you don’t acknowledge that. In this game I do the three dragons, I do holiday events, and I tend to go back to the zones I really enjoy. Orr isn’t even in my top ten, and I haven’t been there in a month. To me it really is the weakest part of this game, and as someone who’ve anticipated it since launch, I really felt with Orr you dropped the ball.

When I saw this topic, I went and bought 10 chests, even though I told myself I wasn’t going to buy any. I’m not going to buy any more.

From 10 chests I received 0 minis. That’s luck for you.
Can’t say I’m angry or anything. I knew perfectly well there was a chance I wouldn’t get anything. That’s how it works. No harm, no foul.

I gave it a bit of thought, and an interesting idea struck me. Why not have traits have two effects, one with an active change and another with a more passive effect.

To give an example, take the “Greatsword damage is increased by 5%” trait. That will be the passive effect, and add “Greatsword attacks cause weakness when health falls below 25%” as the more discernible primary effect.
To give another example, “Signets recharge 20% faster”, which would be a secondary passive bonus, but as a primary active effect it would change per profession. So for instance, while for the guardian that trait might be “Gain 5s protection when using a signet”, for a mesmer it might be *"Create a clone when using a signet".

This way traits will feel as if they have a dual layered purpose. Interestingly enough, there are already a few traits with two effects; the guardian trait Honorable Shield comes to mind, although it’s not a 100% as I described in my example, it still feels more interesting than having either the one bonus or just the other.

I’m not sure what ANet can come up with, but a lot of people agree (probably some ANet employees included) that traits feel underutilized. The system definitely hasn’t reached its full potential.

I added my questions to list last AMA, but Chris never got around to them because people kept on hammering away the questions on ascended gear. Anyway, my questions were:

• Less and less people are interested in running dungeon story-modes, which is detrimental to new players. Are there any plans to fix this? And also an increase to the replayability value for players who have already completed their run?

• It’s been stated that old content will receive new updates as content is released, especially during the January and February updates. Are there any plans in the works for an Orr update, where the experience is seen more as an “annoyance” then an actual “challenge”?

Peetee.9406:

I think your definition of pay to win and my definition are different.

Tell me how his ‘bought’ lvl 80 is stronger than your lvl 80.

Exactly! People don’t seem to know the actual meaning of “pay-to-win”, hell, it’s explained in the wording itself. You pay money, to have a physical advantage over someone else in game. Someone getting to level 80 faster than you does not constitute as P2W, not even close.

Vorch.2985:

There are some classes with uninspired trait lines. However, I think you are over extrapolating the problem.

How so? You’re not really giving me a very compelling counterpoint in your statement. I’ve looked over all traits, and all trait lines have cooldown and damage changers. How can anyone argue in favor of these?

I’m sure ANet want traits to feel exciting and it’s also been mentioned that they want traits to define your character, make it your own, so you can say This is my Guardian and someone with their own Guardian will really see a difference in playstyles between his and yours. Cooldowns and damage changers don’t really promote this ideal, and it certainly doesn’t make you feel special or unique in the way traits ought to.

Blacksarevok.8104:

But it just seems like a lot of time and effort that could be put towards more important issues (how about we actually get all of the traits WORKING before we start changing them?)

I don’t really see the point of them fixing traits, then taking them out and putting in new traits that could potentially be busted…
Just remove the traits that don’t feel right, and make them work right off the bat.

Khairos.3890:

Azjenco.9425:

Traits are supposed to define builds, to redefine your character’s purpose from one spectrum to another. But at present, traits feel more like a checklist of things you’d need to take than an actual part of character building that you’d want to take.

Let me explain what I mean:
GW2’s skills are the backbone of your character, and they form the foundation for how you play. Traits are suppose to be the meat that covers the framework, traits ought to rewire your skills to accentuate what it is you’d want your character to do. All of that is supposed to happen in a fun and engaging way. Adding damage here and lowering cooldowns there does not make for exciting builds.

Wow, this is an amazing post. I agree with you 100% fully. I could not have put it in better words.

Much appreciated, and so far it seems a lot of players agree that traits require a bit of an overhaul. I really feel that a constructive discussion will raise awareness, and with a bit of a nudge, ANet will certain improve on this promising, yet severely underutilized system.

I’m also curious about this. I also missed a day due to insane work hours (festive season indeed…), and now I can only craft one of the toy’s. I missed the second by one day.
I really hope you can get it from the second opportunity in LA, if not, then that’ll be a bit of a waste.

digiowl.9620:

While i applaud the attempt, i fear it will fall on deaf ears at ANet. This because their focus seems to be on making it more about player “skill” at the controls than clever combination of traits and character skills. This so they can angle the game towards esport…

Sadly, you’ve made a valid point. With the e-sport pressure and getting the game perfect for PvP, I wonder if we’ll see any real trait or even skill overhauls. I do hope so though, it’s a strong system that’s yet to realize it’s true potential. It’ll take some work on ANet’s side and some testing, but I believe they can bring a little zest to the boring state traits are currently in.

So instead of having something like “Greatsword damage is increased by 5%”, why not let it be “Greatsword attacks cause weakness when health falls below 25%” It’s not the greatest example, but it’s far more interesting than a flat 5% damage increase.

Even Blizzard saw this hole their WoW talent tree design, so I don’t know why GW2 had to fall into the same uninspired trap. GW2 is a far more interesting game, with skills that have a lot of room for good customization and fun builds. I feel traits have a lot of potential to take an average turret build (which isn’t great atm) and open avenues for a lot of great gameplay choices. Turrets deal 15% more damage and have a longer attack range sounds as unimaginative as it is, and Turrets are self-repairing and Reduces damage dealt to turrets by 30% can honestly be rolled together.

Just consider what I wrote and think about it. If you look through your traits, do they feel exciting, do you find the options engaging and a pleasure when placed into practice? Do traits really aspire to their potential that could make gameplay as exciting as it could be? Honestly, I don’t think they do.

Is there anything about “Greatsword damage is increased by 5%” that sounds fun and engaging to you? It feels like traits are the biggest thing in this game that needs the most work. Traits are supposed to define builds, to redefine your character’s purpose from one spectrum to another. But at present, traits feel more like a checklist of things you’d need to take than an actual part of character building that you’d want to take.

Let me explain what I mean:
GW2’s skills are the backbone of your character, and they form the foundation for how you play. Traits are suppose to be the meat that covers the framework, traits ought to rewire your skills to accentuate what it is you’d want your character to do. All of that is supposed to happen in a fun and engaging way. Adding damage here and lowering cooldowns there does not make for exciting builds.

Now let’s look at some traits that do bring out the more exciting parts of your character:
When an aegis you applied is removed, it burns nearby foes.
Spirits can move and follow you.
Apply a random boon to yourself when you interrupt a foe.
Whenever a minion dies, it explodes in a cloud of poison that lasts for 3 seconds.
Mist Form, Frost Bow, and Signet of Water grant 6 seconds of regeneration. Damage and inflict chill and vulnerability to nearby foes while in mist or vapor form.

This is where the heart of your character comes through, and while some traits can do more to add to a build you have in mind. Especially the ele example used above goes a long way to promote build diversity. Let me make up my own example of a trait that opens up build diversity options:
“Create a poison cloud whenever you drink an elixir or place a turret.”
So instead of taking elixir or turret traits for a focused build, a trait like this will make one consider a mixed build.

I know you have an introduction for your character, which tells the tale of your personal story rather well, but the game still doesn’t have an introduction that shows the larger tale of Guild Wars 2.

The strangest part of it is that there’s already a cinematic that would do the job admirably:

Just skip from 2:02 to 4:15, cut here and there to keep it flowing, maybe change the voicing and music, but the visuals and the message is brilliant, I can’t understand why this isn’t currently in game.

tonyl.5063:

Azjenco.9425:

I really hope this game stays miles away from the old trinity system. As a healer, I can honestly say it’s boring as hell. Standing in the back pressing 4,4,4,5,4,4,4,4,5,4,4,6,4,4,5… isn’t engaging gameplay. The trinity is lame, and GW2 needs to stay away from it.

As opposed to my warrior which is pretty much 5,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,2…

Again, having a trinity role doesn’t make boring gameplay, bad game design does.

You don’t want to avoid a trinity, you want to avoid only havng very limited combat abilities, which, honestly, how do you not realize that you’re even more limited in this game than other games?

Which is exactly why I proposed something different in my full post, which you just ignored. But you feel the game should revert to old tropes just because ANet have figured out their combat systems yet. And yes, the trinity is terrible and broken, period.

The reason I only use 4,4,4,5,4,4,4,4,5,4,4,6,4,4,5 as a healer is because it’s the only healing skills I’ve got. And I can’t deviate, because if I start using other combat skills, well, then I wont be fulfilling my role as a healer, now would I, and the party will start dying. Sad, pathetic pigeonholing game style.

The reason you’re using only 5,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,2 is because the other skills aren’t yet interesting, and the enemies aren’t yet fully fleshed out to allow you to use the others. And yes, you should be using all skills as you play, because you’re skills in GW2 aught to be interesting to use in different situations, which ANet just hasn’t pulled off yet. Unlike the trinity where you only need to use your few role skills in group situations.

As I proposed in my initial post, traits really need to be reworked, because they just aren’t fun and don’t promote interesting builds. But also, the weapon skills need some extra work, they need to function in a way where you use them differently against different enemy types, and also open different ways of fighting in different situations.

Kessex Hills, definitely.

However, why is it that the image the loading screen displays is actually not represented in game… ? O_o

I really hope this game stays miles away from the old trinity system. As a healer, I can honestly say it’s boring as hell. Standing in the back pressing 4,4,4,5,4,4,4,4,5,4,4,6,4,4,5… isn’t engaging gameplay. The trinity is lame, and GW2 needs to stay away from it.

Honestly, the GW2 ‘trinity’ of control, damage, and support is stupid. These are just basic descriptions of things everyone can do in battle. It’s there and it happens as naturally throughout the game as walking forward and jumping happens, so promoting these basic combat functions are nonsensical.

No, I’ve typed this elsewhere and I’ll repeat it here, each profession needs ‘roles’ of their own. For instance, turret or elixir engineer, a banner or stance warrior, a spirit weapon or symbol guardian. Now you might say “well, they can already be all of that”, well, yes and no. You can equip these skills, but the effect often times feel a bit lackluster, and I blame traits for this.

Right now some traits feel a little wishy-washy. For example: “reduce damage dealt to turrets by 30%” or “increase spirit weapon damage by 10%”. WoW suffered from the same ‘numbers just aren’t all that fun’ issue, and GW2 kinda replicates that now. Traits should have a sense of being fun. Some do, but some of them could be a bit more powerful than they are now. Basically, they should promote GW2 archetype builds, like a spirit guardian or turret engineer, and they will be a fun asset to the party through fun and interesting trait choices.

Perhaps if traits were used to better define skill functions or change options, maybe even affecting two different sorts of skills all in one trait, which would promote build diversity. There can be so many better ways to construct your character, and admit it, 10% more damage is far less interesting than a trait that shoots lightning when you use specific skills. Traits can be fun and practical, but most importantly, traits should allow for interesting skill tweaking that not only defines your chosen “profession build”, but should also allow for more diverse builds through skill combination allowance.

Sure, GW2 doesn’t have that combining a deck of cards feel that the GW1 skills had, but why shouldn’t it. I mean if there are good traits that allow for interesting turret builds and others for elixir builds, then that’s good, but a trait like: “create a poison cloud whenever you drink an elixir or place a turret”, well such a trait will open path ways to create a turret/elixir build instead of one or the other.

First off, why doesn’t the game have an introduction cinematic to the game itself? I know there are the character introductions, which paints your personal story rather aptly, but the game still doesn’t have an introduction that tells the larger tale of Guild Wars 2.

The strangest part of it is that there’s already a cinematic that would fulfill this function admirably:

Just snip it at 2:02 and connect it to 4:15. There could be minor edits done to the flow, voicing and music, but the visuals and the message is brilliant, I can’t understand why this isn’t currently in game.

Secondly, the game could do with a cinematic viewer, maybe an in game one (sort of in the same style as FFX). From here you can unlock your character introductions, the dungeon and order videos after you’ve seen them in game. There can even be a gold fee, or a token system.

Not sure about the finer details, but it feels like ANet don’t fully grasp just how awesome these cinematics are and that some of us would really want to watch them again.

Korrigan.4837:

No.
If anything, this game needs more opportunities to play with other players.

My thoughts exactly! There should be more opportunities for players to work together. DEs, combos, and dungeons are a good start, but we need more of them and there should be more content down the line that helps players to work together.

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is, GW1 was not an MMO. ANet had made this fact very clear from the start, it was coined a competitive online RPG, not an MMO, NEVER an MMO.

What the H&H supporters also don’t seem to understand is, GW1 was completely instanced, while GW2 has a large open world. Now they’d like everyone to be running around with a group of NPCs at their back, appearing no different from a group of bots. This will make DE scaling go haywire.

Well, the H&H supporters can keep on asking, but ANet will never budge. GW2 is an MMO, a game where players are meant to group up, not hire a bunch of NPCs for help. GW2 doesn’t need H&H, it needs a good LFG tool.

minbariguy.7504:

Azjenco.9425:

Ugh, no. They frustrated the kitten out of me in GW1. They could never come close to a decent human player, and you had to babysit them far too much.

I understand what you’re saying, but the NPC’s we’re saddled with during our personal story are exponentially worse. Not only can they not come close to a decent human player, they can barely approximate the skill level of my cat if I were to sit her down at my computer and sprinkle catnip on my keyboard.

I’d rather have to do a little babysitting of henchmen than constantly have to rez useless cannon fodder.

Exactly, the story NPCs are atrocious. Now imagine them in a dungeon.

There’s a lot more going on in GW2 battlefields than in GW1. In GW1 NPCs could get away with ability spams, and sometimes there were some parameters that required a skill at a certain moment.

Now imagine NPCs needing to dodge at a very specific time, or needing to move to certain areas, or having to not use some skills at certain times, or doing an action at a very specific moment. What about some dungeon areas where there are some precision work that needs to be done, or where a very specific strategy works more effectively and now you need your henchman to do exactly what you want at exactly the right moments while focusing on what you’re doing yourself. The dungeons will need to be drastically redesigned to accommodate them, and frankly you’ll loose some of the interesting parts in the dungeons because of it.

Ugh, no. They frustrated the kitten out of me in GW1. They could never come close to a decent human player, and you had to babysit them far too much. It was like playing a strat game at times.

When ANet releases an actually decent LFG tool (and hopefully very soon) then things will start going a lot better.

P.S. A good LFG tool should actually be priority at this stage. I’m not sure the developers realize how frustrated players are at the present and will do FotM a lot of good. Why not look over at GW1, it actually had a pretty good LFG tool, and GW2 not having at least the same one implemented at launch is confounding.

People have talked a lot about combos in these forums, how they make dungeons easier, how they can turn the tide in PvP, or even how much fun they can be. As a guardian and engineer player, I can’t say I use them all that much, nor have I sought them out to use them in dungeons.

I went onto the wiki to have a closer inspection, and I was rather surprised to see how few options there actually are. Guardians have 4 blast finishers and only 1 leap finisher. Engineer have no leap finishers, but a quite a few blasts, which makes sense (although half occur when you detonate your turret).

Now as for the actual field effects, Guardian only has access to light and fire. Only 2 fire skills though, but 10 light, half of which belong to symbols. No wonder I’ve only used light a few times, it’s about all I have as a guardian, and frankly I don’t care much for the cleansing effect either, since I feel my shout build handles that pretty well.
Conversely, the engineer has access to four field effects, ice, poison, smoke and water. I love grenades, so I have worked with the poison field before, but haven’t seen the other three before.

Yes, I know I haven’t played the other professions much, but in my defense, in my guild groups we’ve never tackled dungeons and mentioned combos in our strategy discussions, not ever. For a mechanic that feels so important to the game, combos to me doesn’t really seem like it’s coming out of the woodwork, it feels a bit hidden, actually.

My question to you is: Do you actually use combos extensively, and how do you incorporate them into your gameplay?
Or are you like me, feel it’s too much in the background and needs a bit more prominence? Honestly, I’d like more skills (perhaps them all… why not?) to utilize this interesting game feature.

I’ve seen PUG groups fail and keep on struggling because one or two people players have their mindset stuck in tank or healer playstyles. If a guy tries to tank, he’ll die pretty fast, and if a player tries to stand back and just heal, then he wont be adding any damage, and he certainly wont single-handedly keep another player up (especially if said player have tanking delusions).

No, this is GW2, if you want an MMO with an old trinity, then play one. Why try to change this game into something it clearly isn’t?

What I will say is, I wish the professions came a bit more into their own. Each profession should play like it has its own role. Some skills feel a bit lackluster, and I blame traits for that. Instead of having a healer shaman or a paladin tank, this game should have a spirit weapon guardian or a turret engineer.

Right now some of the traits feel a bit wishy-washy. For instance, reduces damage dealt to turrets by 30% or increases spirit weapon damage by 10%. WoW suffered from the same ‘numbers just aren’t all that fun’ issue, and GW2 kinda replicates that now. Traits should feel fun, and some of them do, but more over some of them could be more powerful than they are now. Basically, that would promote GW2 archetype builds, like a spirit guardian or turret engineer, and they will be a fun asset to the party through fun and interesting trait choices.

Also, from a setup like this weird builds will emerge, coupling odd traits together to form strange combos, but it will work together in fun ways, which adding numbers to numbers just can’t promote.

With each new holiday event, the special event achievements will grow into quite a large list. Only Halloween and Wintersday are already a decent sum together.

Would it at all be possible to add a title to display where each list starts? Basically above the Emissary of the Mad King and below the Honorary Krewe Member there will be a “Halloween 2012” title card, while a “Wintersday 2012” one will be at the top above Apprentice Toymaker.

Sigh… It’s already past 1 o’clock where I live. Was really hoping I’d get to play some before going to bed, and I’ve already pushed myself to stay awake far too late. Tomorrow I work full day (morning till evening), as well as Sunday and Monday. Will only get to experience Wintersday for the first time on Tuesday.

Majorly disappointed. :/

I just find it odd that the response message as the day drags on remains “the game update will arrive sometime today”. Not to throw salt in their coffee, but that’s a bit impersonal (somewhat cold) and very uninformative stance.

Instead of replying the same thing over and over, why not just say what’s going on in the background, as I’m sure it’ll abate the hunger mass a lot more effectively than the current method would.

It sort of reminds me of Anet treating the constant enquirers like they’re the kids in the backseat. :P
Forums: “Are we there yet?”
ANet: “We’ll get there when we get there.”

Mr Quinn.9815:

seems black-n-white to me …

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-2012/

If you look next to the release date of the actual game update itself marked for the 14th, you’d notice there isn’t an exact time, unlike the other dates that all have an exact time. So no, it’s pretty grey if you ask me.

oneeyedirishman.6835:

These things aren’t always an exact science. They’ll release the patch when it’s ready, and when they can assure everyone quality content.

Well, shouldn’t everything be ready like a day before? If they push everything to the last minute, then you’re bound to run into major issues. While if you get it up to speed earlier, then there’s a lot more room for a quality update.

Over here it’s past 9am (GMT+2), so technically some of us are already well into tomorrow across Europe and Asia. Sorry Anthony, but you’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that. XD