Indeed. Alliances would be adding something to the game, and I’m sure they would make many players pleased. Especially, Alliance chat. =)
Not sure about the logistics of Influence, Bonuses, Buffs, or anything else. What I mean is would people be asking for such things? Would several smaller Guilds want to pool their resources in such a way as to be able to, then, participate in content only the larger Guilds are able to now?
It might require some thought.
Now… suppose we have Alliance Chat. Would that only display for the guild the player is currently representing? Imagine if you were in 5 guilds in 5 alliances…
And the other issue is for WvW use – scouts could get info out to a lot of people using an alliance chat channel but there’s no way to be sure that everyone in the alliance is on the same server. It’s a bit easier to police a server WvW guild, but right now that has the representing communication block.
Alliances could allow some new stuff in WvW, such as holding a fort for 24h to get a reward, but I wouldn’t recommend putting that one in unless something is done to address population imbalances and karma training. Alliances ain’t going to fix WvW and could possibly make it worse – more bandwagoning for rewards.
But in PvE, the ability to ally guilds allows for smaller groups to participate in meta-event sized guild challenges and could be loads of fun. I’ll just point to the Marionette again.
Alliances may have some merit – I’m sure there’s a few things they could open up in terms of large-scale activities. Reducing guilds per account would only pressure guilds into supporting every one of their players’ interests, however, if they want to retain them. Guilds of friends would be ripped apart while people flocked to larger guilds in order to continue earning commendations and so on.
Make no mistake, GW2’s acknowledgement that players mix with different circles of other players was a huge step in the right direction for MMOs.
What it needs going forward is some mechanism to make that easier, and the suggestion above for a different-coloured ‘channel’ per guild in the chat would be very helpful toward that end – I’m representing one particular guild 95% of the time because my friends are there and I don’t want to miss the conversation, even though server resource guilds I’m in could really use the influence.
Not going to happen.
Personally I would really like this and we can discuss it more when we get to the Raid phase of the discussion. i specifically like the idea of making them part of the Living World with complimentary story, strategic group challenge and rewards that really show of that you have beaten the content.
Please no, none of this. The Triple Threat event is already bad enough. I really don’t like the content in the game where you need to “organize” well in advance and hang out on a map for hours just to stand any chance of completing it.
…
If you do insist on adding more of that sort of content, then do not give it any cool unique rewards that players might want even if they have no interest in that type of event. If it takes a lot of time then it can involve a larger quantity of reward to justify the time spent, but it should not be a higher quality of reward, including unique skins, than one could earn elsewhere, because any player that really does not enjoy that sort of gaming experience should never feel bribed into doing it anyways just because he wants that specific reward.
It doesn’t have to be Teq / TT level, and I’d suggest it shouldn’t, if it is tied into LS. Marionette and Dry Top are more around the difficulty I’d expect, and at that should be repeatable content (as in guild missions) so there’s always a number of guilds attempting them week-to-week.
The challenging bit would be organising them. Guilds tend to pick up the slack there. Non-guild members looking for rewards could just join a party and help out where needed.
…although on looking back over it the original post was about instanced content.
No player should ever be ‘required’ to do raids with a guild for Living Story. If it happens to appear in relation to the living story, put it under a separate category, as Teq and TT were, so you don’t end up with players feeling they’ve ‘missed’ part of the story achievement line by not being able to participate with a large guild.
(edited by Ben K.6238)
Got to wait for everyone to realise AA is another K-grinder in different clothes, after all.
Works for me… I have stuff to get done between now and then. And as was mentioned above a few times, the more time they spend making something good, the better.
Looks like a new map opening up, after all.
To Mamnoon Lagoon it is, then.
I’d recommend it.
Create new character: Hard Mode unlocked.
Considering the number of fans Dark Souls has, I’m sure there’s a market out there who’s happy to kill everything using skill 1.
Or maybe I’m thinking of champ trains.
Well, you’re still talking about guild management so it could be worse.
I’d be rather surprised if guild halls / GvG aren’t in the pipeline by now, but building GW1-style halls may take a long time. CDI will still be a useful resource for ANet to compare what they’re working on with what players are asking for. They just can’t comment on progress.
Issue: Still possible for guilds to become separated on megaserver maps
Potential Solution: Allow members to right click other member and “join guild in …” map
Could there be a WvW-style join queue for guild members?
If they weren’t gated, we wouldn’t have this thread. So, it was worth it.
Don’t have access to the game at the moment, but I’m sure it looks familiar. Is that the bandit fort in Brisban Wildlands, or the desert gate near Ebonhawke?
Three additional questions/thoughts on QoL topics.
- Is there a place for a system like the GW: Factions alliances?
Member cap per guild is higher in GW2, but the alliance chat between like-minded guilds was nice to have.
- Should the number of guilds per account be increased?
I have a lot more than 5 groups I know – so for now I have to choose between the most active.
- Would it be possible, without unreasonable overhead, to show orange dots on the map / other maps to display representing guild members’ locations?
Guild Meeting Points
Essentially an area on an overworld (PvE) map that can be used as an impromptu guild hall, with associated QoL features.
Features
- A guild may set a location as a meeting point once per week. The nearest waypoint is free for representing guild members.
- Bank, guild bank, other vendors and crafting stations spawned by guild members within the area last for 7 days (limit 1 of each, inclusive of permanent stations).
- Can not be used in PvP, dungeons or WvW, and cannot overlap other guild meeting points on the same map.
Potential issues
- Megaserver map shut-down may destroy banks and stations.
- Hazardous areas of the map would be poorly suited to such a feature. May need to specify safe zones.
- Placement of stations over pre-existing interactive objects would be a problem for much longer.
Who would have known that people who’d been playing for over a year would care so much about the 1-10 levelling experience?
…Oh I see.
It’s key farming, right?
Cooldown can be reduced a little with a trait, but I’ll give you that. It might be the instant recharge on phantasms that got me hooked.
What if it converted a condition to a boon every 10 seconds?
passively knowing “we” have 3 portals and 2 veils does nothing for the group when the commander says “veil veil veil veil veil!!!1” or “portal the golems away NOWWWWWW” and nothing happens and afterwards the commander is like “well i know we had 2 veils…”.
Both of which are invariably on cooldown. (That’s the other thing needed for it to be useful.)
Is it possible to have a toggle instead? /squadinfo:Portal for example might pop up a persistent line of text above the chat window, perhaps, showing how many Portals are equipped and available.
#YBproblems
One of the best things about playing against nightcappers is it doesn’t matter whether you refresh siege or not.
Signet of Ether
Add a small constant life regeneration while keeping the maximum possible amount of regeneration. There is absolutely no point in not having a benefit at all when there are no Illusions around.
It’s a thought, but honestly it’s already the best heal for most mesmers and needs the drawback.
Signet of Domination
I’d love seeing the condition damage being changed to condition duration. Condition duration is useful for almost every Mesmer playstyle while condition damage is not.Signet of Illusions
As other stated: It is pretty inconsistent. Why the additional health while the active encourages shattering illusions? Why not make it work similar to the new Triumphant Distortion? Shattered illusions could gain Distortion for x seconds.
Agree with Domination Signet. Illusions… I like the idea of the active giving them a buff, perhaps 5 stacks of might and 5s swiftness on a 60/90s cooldown?
Signet of Inspiration
Since we will probably never get a passive speed buff why not at least make the random boon also apply to allies? I don’t think this would be a big deal.Signet of Midnight
The boon duration appears to be a bit too low. Could easily be 15% or even 20%.
A different thought:
Why not mix up the Signet of Inspiration and the Signet of Midnight? The Signet of Inspiration could grant the additional boon duration. The Signet of Midnight could reduce the duration of incomming conditions. Or reduce the effect of control impairing effects. This would feel a lot more consistent than it is right now.
SoI could even do with 10% boon duration and 25% movement speed in one. The existing random boon thing is a nice idea but it would need a better average return to justify the slot.
As for Signet of Midnight, I’d suggest 10-20% condition duration reduction on the passive, with the 5s blind plus a 10s Power Block-style cooldown increase on one target to give it an offensive angle as well as the defensive. That would need something closer to 60s cooldown on the signet though.
WvW is steadily running out of players but PvE seems pretty stable. Couldn’t say for PvP – I hardly ever go there and until some decent game modes get put in, I hardly ever will.
WvW just needs an overhaul. The same thing every week for two years just gets stale because there’s no real attachment to the map. If it were like EVE where an alliance could hold territory for months at a stretch it might be a different story.
Exactly the same thing but swapping dom sig for the mantra. Might have a bash at some gear for a shatter spec as well but 4/4/6 CI build looks even better after the patch.
We will be trying to spread our devs out as much as possible.
Any chance of them being on different servers in the same match-up?
…so we can get Mike Z to terrorise them all with ponies?
Yak’s Bend has the lowest population out of the 5 T3 servers.
Seen this one bandied around a bit.
It’s false. After a bunch of people from Mag and elsewhere went to YB for a free ride, and players started jumping off SBI, YB has at least the second highest population in its tier now.
Not working on dungeons would be horribly short-sighted. They might be a lot of work, but they’re interesting in their own right, and if the world’s being expanded it only makes sense to see a little more of everything.
Particularly now we’re seeing some bosses in the story instances that require a bit of thinking to knock out.
LA’s lion statue already got rebuilt once. Granted, that’s the only thing they’ve rebuilt yet…
To be honest, I’m not surprised 1v1 is on the back burner in a game based around team PvP combat – you can get a more reasonable 1v1 in GW2 than the original, at least, because classes are more self-sufficient. But there are still hard counters all over the place. Any game mode built around 1v1s would just be so full of gimmick builds…
Many years before. There were no ghosts in Ascalon to be in a perpetual battle with yet, Kryta was at war with Ascalon, and Ebonhawke didn’t exist.
I love the way the activities mentioned in that demo are still locked off.
SBI has lost population again with LUN / ex-HIRE looking to go elsewhere for the season, so barring weird rolls next week I’d pick CD or DR to be the eventual server in T2.
Turns out that Diablo 2 was also very popular.
This is gonna be hard in english… lets try:
Sometimes i break out of the maps and i find interesting behaviour on map textures. The same “piece of paper” (let’s call it that way) gets a solid texture from one side, so you are actually seeing a wall, but if you go around and watch that very same “piece of paper”… well, it’s invisible. That allows me to see everything on the other side of the “piece of paper” allowing the camera to see in a directiong where there’s something solid.
That’s backface culling – polygon faces only need to be rendered from one side when it’s expected they’ll only be viewed from that side. Problem is some faces will remain visible to the camera unless the object is strictly convex, so they will still obscure parts of your view.
Some game engines turn objects invisible when they impede the camera view. Perhaps this might help in Troll’s End etc., but it means you’ll see a lot more backfaces in some places.
The tanking thing…it’s short sighted because all it does is buy you a 4 week reprieve. T2 will still be there after the tournament and it will annihilate you.
Right now your biggest hope is that FA continues it’s mission to kill the opponents with boredom, a frighteningly effective strategy.Anyhow, there’s no way this turns out ok for T3. You will have a rotating hotseat of death into T2 after the tournament so putting off the pain is not helping your situation.
How’s that short-sighted?
Terrible matches now, or terrible matches in 4 weeks. The end result is the same, it’s just that the T3 servers not pushing now have a better chance to enjoy the game for 4 more weeks before it’s all over.
Are you suggesting we quit the game early to be less ‘short-sighted’?
You mean the Foefire? Charr caused the Searing, after all.
There was something like a 20-year gap between the Searing and the Foefire, during which the charr forces invaded Orr and Kryta, losing both expeditions to the Cataclysm and Mursaat respectively. It took a while to rebuild their armies but with the huge casualties and loss of arable land suffered by Ascalon, the fall of Rin and later Ascalon City was inevitable.
Ebonhawke was only saved with Krytan reinforcement and materiel via the Asuran gate. Of course, it helps that it was spared from the effects of the Foefire.
Was going to bring something about that up for the CDI, in fact. If we have ways that unaffiliated players can work with guilds and get the same rewards, it doesn’t need to be exclusive. Something like the guild-sponsored Tequatl, three-headed wurm, and boss blitz runs – but supported by the game.
I think the general idea could be extended to Dry Top runs and even WvW-based GvG events for a weekly reward, initiated by the guild but extended to every active participant. I’ll explain in the CDI when the appropriate time comes.
(edited by Ben K.6238)
Cheers Chris, seems a good choice of topic. Best start compiling some ideas…
There’s PvP going on in EotM? Something’s gone horribly wrong.
Please, stop tournaments and living story, We want more permanent content!
We’ve spent years asking and you don’t listen us!Thanks for reading and responding.
Please don’t.
I don’t think much of the WvW tournaments because they’re being run on a broken game mode, but the living story releases over the past two months have been very popular with a bunch of old fans I know. Actually brought them back to the game.
Not that a more diverse range of new activities wouldn’t be appreciated – I’d like to see ANet put some effort into things like the guild halls, home instance and even those minigame areas that have been sitting blocked off since launch. But all this is content I’d want to see being developed on the side at whatever pace is realistic, not developed instead of the main story which is really the only engine giving GW2 a sense of movement at this point in time.
Dry Top might not have been everyone’s cup of tea but it was kitten good to see a new map again. Even if it’s a daily reminder that charr footprints are still facing backwards.
I wouldn’t run PTV on a mesmer under any circumstances. The extra durability isn’t going to make a huge difference on a light armour class, it just means you hit like a wet noodle.
What works best depends on what you’re doing. If you’re playing dungeons, world bosses, champ trains… condition damage is no good on any class for those because there’s a per-target cap in the open world, and in dungeons it just doesn’t kill fast enough. Berserker is the gear of choice for all of those simply because it does the most damage, and damage is the only thing that matters.
For PvP, though, conditions are extremely effective, and berserker gear gets you killed fast if you’re not careful.
Some of these changes are very good, especially the changes to the Guild System.
However, i don’t like the change that kicks players out of a megaserver. That is very disruptive to gameplay, especially if you’re doing a jumping puzzle or a meta-event. I hope the announcement gives at least a 1 hour warning.
It doesn’t kick you out, it gives you notification that the map is emptying and you choose to be reassigned whenever you find it appropriate.
With any luck the notification won’t be in the middle of the screen.
Anyway, on another topic the major thing missing from these updates is the ability to choose the instance you play on directly. While a list of numbers – like District 1, 2, 3… 16 may not be particularly informative, they were useful even in GW1 for grouping up and in GW2 would make it way easier to co-ordinate events. Would also allow the RP community to select separate instances.
Condi bunker ranger handles a 3v3 far better than a longbow zerker. Basically after PBS is on cooldown a longbow ranger has to swap to a more sensible weapon or die because it has no other defense.
They can sort of roam if everything goes their way but any half-decent thief will have them on the deck without recourse. Ranger really needs all the evades and blocks provided by the sword variants, and you also have to understand what you’re fighting against so you avoid the most important ones. So it has a high skill cap.
I imagine a revamp to the PS is going to come before any new races.
Charge 3000 badges for it.
Pyre’s armour would be a good start. Charr are nearly limited to cultural armour for something that doesn’t look ridiculous so a few more sets of it would help.
This means you are restricting an exclusive armor set to less than 1% of your player base.
Exclusive armour set for 1% of the player base that takes 1% of the dev time put into new skins over the past couple years?
Sweet as.
You’ll also see Ash Fiends etc. which I figure aren’t Flame Legion in GW1. They’re split by profession – those ones are necromancers for example – but generally the societal structure is different in GW1, with the shaman caste ruling, placing less emphasis on the individual legions.
As a side-note, it’s probable the charr scout in pre-Searing, Vatlaaw Doomtooth, was Blood Legion. Most of the invasion force in Kryta, including its commander, were Ash – they got wiped out by the White Mantle.
The problem with a power bow ranger is it drops like a rock when the fight isn’t going exactly according to plan. It can’t fight outnumbered, and there are too many builds that it has no answer for.
Not exactly, I use Sword and Focus on my mesmer and it wasn’t that easy.
I use the same weapons on one of my mesmers. Found it trivial.
I leave the Wardens to take care of the statue. So long as I don’t go too far away, I don’t even need to look at the thing again.
Blurred Frenzy to block the suicide blast of the Spectral Flames. Sometimes they spawn close to you and catch you off guard – make sure you have a condition cleanse and you’ll be fine. Aside from that they’re slow and easy to see, so just stop running into them.
Lastly, greatsword swap weapon for disposing of the Menders and fear wards. Illusionary Berserker has a cripple, which gives you so much time to kill them that you could just about go make a cup of tea before they reach the statue.
There’s lots of room for error in fighting this boss in general, except for one thing: don’t run into spectral flames. ANet made them slower than a wet week for a reason.
[Edit: …then I checked your build. Well, you shouldn’t have any problem surviving, but if you’re running a healer/boon spammer with limited offensive capacity it’s going to take you a while to kill things no matter what you do.]
(edited by Ben K.6238)
Imagine if they straight up and told us “Sorry we’ve been lying, we’ve not been working on WvW as we dont think it’s worth it”. How many players do you think this game will lose?!
1%, if that. The reason why so much is being put into PvE is because most of the WvW population has already walked.
I’m not sure there’s much they can do without spending years on it, either. Without a system that allows guilds and alliances to make their own stuff and build empires, it’s just a bigger and more complicated version of the point-capping bore of PvP. The remaining players make WvW somewhat interesting despite the system being fundamentally flawed.
(edited by Ben K.6238)
If the keeps and towers weren’t flipping very much it’d be a problem. At present it’s just a waiting game… I guess.
I always did WvW map completion first before I started with the rest of the game so it never got to that point. Worst part of the grind is getting all those lodestones… or I suppose the precursor if you insist on getting Twilight just like everyone else.