ArenaNet mentioned they will not fix the (many) issues with Charr and Asura armor because few people play as them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply go over those two races and instead decide to focus on the Norn and the humans for the next content updates (assuming those will happen within our lifetimes).
The human one already happened – Zhaitan was very much their foe, despite the abundance of Trahearne. The rest have a greater effect on the other races.
Don’t know where you’ve been for the last two years, but it already is a karma train. This just means players aren’t wasting gold upgrading stuff that’s only going to get nightcapped anyway.
If anything it makes structures easier to defend, because they’re more likely to be upgraded when that becomes necessary. Yes, it’s hard to take back towers and keeps from a larger server, but those servers are upgrading them anyway – it only makes sense to upgrade another server’s borderland when you have the population advantage to defend it – so it’s not going to make a difference there.
Those stacks act as just another grind until new players can compete. The news post is right – they’re mandatory upgrades until rank 230, and WvW will be better off without them.
In EU there’s a significant random element to deciding the matchups. Keeps it interesting. If enough NA players lobby for similar I expect you’ll get it.
Because it’s not consistent with the rest of the environments in GW2. If the whole GW2 world ran with a surreal theme, it wouldn’t seem so out of place. Right now, though, you’ll be stepping out of the Silverwastes, which looks like a fairly reasonable network of arid canyons, into a place that looks like it has no ground. It doesn’t seem to fit.
it was told that the void area is for the demo … there is something beneath so dont Panic … and obviously you never did the SW jumping puzzle?? it is VERY deep below the surface of SW so the Demo-Map perfectly fits into that theme – SW is not just the canyons
I have a tendency to complete JPs on day 1 of release, including SW. It differs in that you can see the floor of it from the top, and the walls aren’t sheer.
Because it’s not consistent with the rest of the environments in GW2. If the whole GW2 world ran with a surreal theme, it wouldn’t seem so out of place. Right now, though, you’ll be stepping out of the Silverwastes, which looks like a fairly reasonable network of arid canyons, into a place that looks like it has no ground. It doesn’t seem to fit.
Strategic placement of updrafts and obstacles preventing you from going up, I guess. And you just described the reason why it won’t be available in the rest of Tyria – it would mean rebuilding too many maps.
They’ve talked about maps in the plural before. So… I’m guessing this is just one of them.
I am a little bothered by the level design though. I can understand the idea of increased ‘verticality’ but for what we’ve seen so far, it comes at the expense of a natural appearance to the environment – what we’ve seen so far feels like floating landforms atop unreasonably high cliffs.
I like what I’ve seen of the desert borderland (can’t wait to actually play through that one) and the multiple layers seen in the Silverwastes and as far back as southeast Kessex Hills. But Verdant Brink is coming a bit too close to a platformer aesthetic.
I have to second this – not all that easy to find mastery information, and the minutiae of how they work is not self-explanatory either. Compare it to the trait system: you put a point in something, it works immediately. If masteries require you to unlock and then level them, it needs to be explained.
The difference between levelling a specific mastery and skill points should also be explained. And while I’m at it, provide a link from the character customisation windows – where skills and traits are – to the masteries. That’s where everyone’s going to look first.
Looks interesting, in a sense – but I’m seeing a lot of defensive mechanics and not a whole lot to provide some variety for those who aren’t so keen on siege warfare. Still think we should be seeing 5v5s for some bonuses / shrines.
Haven’t seen a single female charr face besides the release faces I could ever stand to use. They’re all cutesy or dozy. Looks like I’ll have to keep waiting.
There are a couple skills that apply the revealed debuff already, and they work very effectively when you time them right.
But stealth in general is not always horribly broken – it just becomes a problem with condition thieves that you can’t target most of the time while they deal damage passively. Same applies to condition mesmers.
A possible solution would be to restrict condition damage output while stealthed… but that could make a number of traits completely non-viable.
Longbow got a DPS boost, and signets now affect both ranger and pet by default.
The result is (at least in berserker gear) a very powerful ranged class with up to 1500 range, but it still dies really fast.
Signet of Stone gives 6 second invuln, greatsword gives a good leap on moderate cooldown, and most will be running Signet of the Hunt (I think that’s the name) for the passive speed boost. As escape abilities go, they’re good, but still inferior to warriors in every way. Conditions will rip a zerker ranger to pieces.
If they were providing additions to WvW that suited all play styles, I’d be fine with this. But unfortunately novelties seem few and far between for WvW.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than nothing at all – but I’m concerned that this map will create balancing issues between borderlands and only offer new gameplay opportunities to siege monkeys.
Tier 1 servers (rank 1-3) are just the most populated – there are organised guilds but it’s not professional by any means. They also contain the largest numbers of new players.
Why would a private section within a PvE map (That’s right, ‘A’ map), as per OP’s request, where FFA and PvP gameplay is allowed, with spectators to enjoy and bet on players (maybe?), where one can duel any friends of any server with food and full gear buffs be harmful to the PvE community?
Hadn’t thought of betting. That’d be a great addition, provided ANet is ethically allowed to do it.
And the ability to hold matches with any server is an obvious advantage over Obsidian Sanctum. That’s the thing – forget open-world PvP, it’s just not going to work – but providing arenas that can structure PvP modes already being done in the Mists, in places in Tyria that lore-wise make sense (such as arenas in Hoelbrak, Lion’s Arch and the Black Citadel) would actually be really popular, even giving people with no intention of actually participating an interesting spectacle and perhaps a bit of gold when they know who to back.
It actually happened in Edge of Destiny, after all.
The important thing would be to integrate these properly into Heart of the Mists so that people involved in PvP can easily go between them.
Not in the open world, but I would like to see the Bane in the Black Citadel open to 1v1, 2v2, 5v5, 10v10, 15v15 and 20v20 so that there is a spectator arena for free-form deathmatch.
It’d be a reasonable addition to the Adventure category in the expansion.
Even North America spans 5-6 time zones… and don’t forget that OCX/SEA players are forced onto NA servers because there aren’t any other servers for them.
I know everyone server has done this, and it’s more a fault of the map for allowing to happen but it’s pretty ridiculous when the server doing is 6 rank’s higher than your own.
A server should never be forced to play a server 6 ranks higher.
Completely disagree. This has nothing to do with the number of ranks and everything to do with the rating difference. You can have 6 servers all very close in rank – it’s the current situation in T4/5 in fact and it’s very common in EU servers where stacking is less of an issue. Plus, FA’s rating is reasonably close to the server in 7th; SBI’s is reasonably close to the server in 8th. The actual problem is the 300 point gap between 7th and 8th place.
And the others are right – there are other exits, which FA wasn’t camping. Wraith led the zerg out one of those and wiped those spawn campers from behind. Problem solved.
There seems to be ‘sort-of’ grind in ascended gear, in that it takes a lot of time to obtain, but there isn’t a set way of doing it. Apparently that’s a design decision, which doesn’t qualify as strict grind because it’s merely a time investment rather than repetition. It only becomes repetitive if you convince yourself that there’s only one real way to do it – but there simply isn’t. Personally, I don’t care if WvW isn’t the most “efficient” way of putting together ascended equipment – I’ve finished four sets that way just fine.
What I’m more concerned about is casual players who just won’t have the time to complete ascended sets and thus find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in WvW through no fault of their own. I see two possible solutions to that – levelling out the rewards between game modes, so that they don’t have to know exactly where to go to gear themselves up with their limited time; or just capping gear stats for WvW to provide a fair experience against other players without requiring any time investment. Considering it’s effectively a PvP environment, I’d lean toward the latter. It would also help to address some of the ridiculous builds in WvW lately that focus entirely on inflicting or alleviating conditions.
In terms of whether the game is too grindy or not, other MMOs aren’t really relevant. They may provide good inspiration, but nothing can decide whether GW2 is fun except GW2 – if I’m supposed to find GW2 fine because it’s less grindy than Everquest, that’s just a MMO player’s Stockholm syndrome. It doesn’t actually solve any problems that may still be there.
If money is an issue I’m still expecting this would be available through the gem store, so just start budgeting some of the gold you earn to convert to gems. One thing you can be pretty sure of is ArenaNet won’t be releasing this thing two weeks from now, so you should have some time.
When the footprints are still backwards after two years, even having been reported in that thread, it’s hard to imagine reporting more complicated bugs will do any good.
Until the SW event system changes so that it’s not a massive waste of time until repeatedly getting screwed by the RNG every breach, this problem is inevitable.
I don’t actually mind the setup of the map, it’s just the horrendous design flaw at the end of each cycle that makes SW intolerable. If it were possible to collect the things you need for the collections methodically, rather than getting kicked in the balls for not using a taxi all the time to beat the RNG, the map would actually be a fun place to play rather than an egregious grind.
I palm a G600 easily. May depend on the dimensions of your thumb though.
I’ve used said G600 for two and a half years now. Has excellent button placement and helps a lot with the number of skills in GW2. The shift button on the right takes the place of a push-to-talk button on my setup, which I personally can’t live without – so if I was going to try a Naga 2014, I’d need to figure out where to map it.
Generally I’ve found Logitech mice to be very reliable, but the G600 hasn’t been. The scroll wheel has had periodic problems with scrolling by itself for the last 9 months (starting just under two years after purchase) and the number pad has gradually lost responsiveness – one of my buttons has to be mashed really hard to record a press at all now.
Another issue is the cursor skipping across the screen – this has apparently been fixed in newer manufacturing runs.
The biggest issue in my view is the side buttons wearing out, which is why I like the sound of the Naga 2014’s mechanical switches – I had a MS Sidewinder X5 with similar and nothing on that ever went wrong except for the rubber scroll wheel melting. However, Razer’s durability record is pretty poor so I’m still not sold on it – plus I’m a button short for a PTT option.
WvW players do not at all appreciate things in WvW getting broken by LS updates, however. It might be more appealing if anything else got fixed there to begin with – it’s the same maps with largely the same mechanics as were present at launch, so it’s getting a bit stale. Throwing in something they didn’t ask for will probably be taken as an insult.
Do you know how much development time is required to make new content for GW2? What technical requirements must be met in each version? Translation etc. for localization? And how many staff are on each team?
Without actually knowing what their personnel can produce in ideal circumstances it’s a bit presumptuous to call them “lazy”.
I’m actually looking forward to the next season. Really enjoyed S2 so far – I don’t think we’re quite there yet but the story experience has improved drastically since S1 and release. Just hoping for side-quests to start appearing, personally.
I’m not convinced of the need for an “expansion” to replace S3 since they’re basically different sizes of the same thing. There’s no reason S3 or S4 etc. can’t introduce new races, classes, continents or whatever – either way it’ll take the same amount of development time to make them, just with a different delivery method.
And then if we have to pay extra to unlock a new race, class, etc. – so be it. There’s no downside to having a Season 3 unless you really don’t want new story content.
Music, for a start – GW1 and 2 have always had good themes, and even without Soule doing the continuing score it’s still holding up well.
The combat system may not provide the level of control seen in many single-player RPGs or the diversity of GW1, but it holds up very well among MMOs for its fluidity and relatively few balancing issues.
The presence of a non-humanoid race that don’t look like creepy anthropomorphic furry things is a plus – except that their footprints are still backwards…
Perhaps most importantly to me, it takes very little time to bring a new character to the point that fights in WvW are not determined by gear. Very few fights fall within the 5% margin between ascended and exotic. Build selection – and controversially, consumables – determines the outcome in the majority of cases.
Humans: Won’t ever play a human if any other options at all are available. I made one, finished the racial story for the achievement points, then deleted it within 4 hours. Yay for level 20 scrolls.
Norn: I’ll be honest, the real reason I don’t play a norn is because there’s no 6-foot beard option. Were this added, I would. Serious.
Asura: They’re footballs on legs. Just no.
Sylvari: I’m actually really fond of salad… and I don’t play with my food.
Charr: Footprints backwards. Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr throws keyboard out the window
And… the classes.
Warrior: Boring class played by boring, talentless people. I could x8 this for every class but for the warrior, it’s the best I could come up with.
Elementalist: Why can’t I just specialise in a certain element? Why doesn’t Earthquake actually knock down bridges? How the kitten do you play a d/d? Just too frustrating.
Ranger: Refuse to be associated with bearbows in any way. Lucky I even play the same game when they’re on… though if I followed this list strictly, I suppose I wouldn’t.
Necromancer: Corpse explosions not big enough. Death Nova was a thing in GW1. Not being able to wipe entire groups in a hail of body parts depresses me so much I might end up a minion myself.
Guardian: Logan’s a tosser and I’m rubbish at running the meditation build.
Engineer: It’s basically a fashion crime in a class.
Thief: Too easy.
Mesmer: Where’s Backfire? The real one?
It sounds great even when it will be much more difficult to make then it was in gw1. Only problem is player base in gw2 is faaaar more casual (I wish there is some word even for casual casuals) then it was in gw1 and whole dev team will drown in tears 5 minutes after this feature will launch:-D
Releasing it simultaneously with a new PvE map intended for the casual audience will help with this. It’s just having the less experienced (or less masochistic) players sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else play with a shiny new toy that’s going to lead to griping.
We’re actually not that different from infants, now that I think about it.
Just because raids and dueling cause problems in other games doesn’t mean they have to be implemented in a problematic way in GW1. I don’t see the merit in providing open-world dueling in all PvE zones because of the weird scaling, but there are venues in level 80 areas – the Bane in Black Citadel for example – that could work as controlled environments for duelling and even OS-style GvGs. (Actually, with the amount the NPCs talk about the Bane, I’m surprised it’s merely an offcut used in a single story mission. Could be a major attraction.)
And with raids, there are ways to provide challenging PvE content for larger group sizes without introducing gear power creep or limiting encounters to DPS checks.
The library wasn’t really exposition though – it just provided a lot of background lore for the types of people who were interested. If you’re going to do a lore dump, that’s a perfectly acceptable way to do it.
Caithe’s past, on the other hand, felt like an excuse for a gameplay sequence when a cutscene might have been more elegant. Of course, the problem with cutscenes is they add to development time and take away from gameplay time, but that’s one element I’d have been happy not playing – and it’s not too tricky to make a brief text summary for those who’d rather skip it. It would have built the tension over Caithe’s actions more than when the player feels like he/she did them him/herself. And it would have given an opportunity to highlight these misgivings in dialogue with the Pale Tree, which I feel may have been enlightening.
Just kill their elementals until they give up and let you do the heart. They’ll cry a lot and threaten to report you (don’t worry about that, if anyone gets banned it’ll be them for abusive chat), but the one thing they’re interested in is money and they’re not going to keep farming the ambients you need if you’re getting some of their loot.
The point of WvW isn’t to get shinies, it’s to beat the other servers. The problem is, that’s largely out of a player’s control, and the process of helping out is not often fun.
WvW needs an overhaul so that there’s always something interesting for players to do, they can make a meaningful contribution while doing it, and it doesn’t seem wasted because it’ll all be wiped on reset night anyway.
That’s an unenviable challenge to meet, but after this amount of time I’d hope it’s been given some thought.
