Guild Wars 2

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

If it does work like that though then Revenants would have no real build options at all beyond weapon and legend. Your bar would literally just be weapon on the left and legend on the right. It defeats the entire point of having slotted skills.

I think maybe you’ve misinterpreted what they and others here have said.

It’s possible each legend’s utility skills are pre-determined and there’s no choice. Though there are little change-skill up arrows above the utility skills on the revenant ui. That suggests there could be a pool of utility skills for each legend and you have some choice. Or it might just mean you only have 3 and can only choose where they go on the hotbar.

It’s not 100% crystal clear but my reading of dev statements inclines me to believe the latter.

Either way I see your point. But think about this. How much freedom is there really for existing professions? The developers have designed traits to match up clearly with certain utility and weapon skills. Sure there’s a lot of theoretical freedom but assuming you want an optimal build (most do) then freedom starts to vanish.

Theoretically the freedom revenants have which other professions don’t is in not having (or at least having fewer) cooldowns. So that means you don’t have to use a particular utility every x seconds to make the most of its cooldown timer. In fact you could ignore it entirely and just use a different utility more. Or even ignore the legend utilities and just use weapon abilities more.

So maybe less freedom in build option but more in how they actually play.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

First of all, shapeshifting is not a norn thing. It is just that all Norn elites are shapeshifts.

Definitely.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

In the end there are two kinds of shapeshifting in this game. Racials like norn skills and avatar of melandru, elite skills which all more or less fail.

Actually there’s two more you shouldn’t discount, particularly as it relates to this topic.

1) There’s potions which cause cosmetic, non-combat transformations.

2) There are a whole bunch of missions where NPC’s transform you into a different form. There are several animal forms plus there’s that one in the sw corner of Caledon forest where you’re turned into a walking tree – my personal favourite.

So absolutely positively 137% shapeshifting is not a Norn thing!

ZaidDyan.3057:

But I think this class will be most highly regarded by the more advanced players who love FPS-like positional mechanics and the energy balance/timing mechanics. I bet the difference between a skilled player and an intermediate player will be massive with the Revenant. Perhaps more so than any other class (maybe on par with engi?).

I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as more advanced but I do prefer to have more control over my character rather than less – which is why cooldown driven is my least favourite form. Definitely prefer FPS. From the current professions mechanics-wise I like thieves best but unfortunately in terms of theme it’s my least favourite.

That’s why I was initially very excited by the revenant. But my excitement has waned. There’ll still be some cooldowns and they’ve said they’ve designed it so the optimal way to play is swap legends as often as possible to take advantage of the instant energy half refill. And they explicitly don’t want to make any allowances (i.e. traits) for players not wanting to play them that way.

Unfortunately the more I read about them the less it sounds like I’d be playing the class and the more it sounds like it would be playing me.

Argon.1563:

Neither of you are right.

No I’m pretty sure Bruno is right.

Jaken.6801:

2. trait points were always behind a level lock. The change was in the first trait NPE and was to make the new reduced trait lines more acessable to players.

More accessible? Originally unlocking was a simple matter of paying a class trainer a small fee to unlock all traits of that tier (i.e. adept, master, grandmaster). The current system requires you to either go do a specific event, mission etc. or pay for the trait individually.

The original system gave players access to their first GM level trait at level 40. In the current one it’s level 80.

It all seems a lot less accessible to me.

Invictus.1503:

The MMO interview confirmed that at least some of the skills will have a cooldown.

Also by dev post here.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Will-Revenants-have-recharge-time/first#post4807705

BrunoBRS.5178:

now if you had brought up zealot’s defense… that skill could seriously see some improvements on how its defense mechanics work (bet you didn’t even know it protected you against projectiles)

Why would any guardian not? It’s right there in the skill description.

That said, I think I’ve only ever used it once for that purpose and mostly just to satisfy my curiosity and see this aspect in action. In PvE at least there aren’t many mobs it would be terribly useful against. Maybe hylek poison darts?

I’ve always assumed it was designed that way primarily for PvP.

Nephziel.6053:

Also guardians are quite well rounded they have a decent variety so I’m interested to see where it might go

Agreed. The only thing that stands out to me is their not having firearms. But there’s still lots of other ways they could go.

Nephziel.6053:

But overall, I’m really curious at what the elementalist will get. It’s really a profession that i feel hard to come up with specializations idea (except with specializations pigeonholed in an attunement that would just destroy the “elementlist’s feel”)

I think the most obvious candidate is a summoning spec of some kind. I know eles can already summon but I mean perma summons and maybe also with new abilities in the same theme.

Eg. the new spec’s equivalent of meteor storm might be summoning a horde of imps who attack random enemies for x seconds before vanishing into thin air.

While I know they’re light armoured there’s nothing really stopping the developers from making the new spec more melee oriented. In that case we could see fewer spells and more elemental-infused weapon attack type abilities.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

If you reread the blogpost and interviews out there, Roy says that ‘new tech’ allows these powers.

On the upside, this means that it’s likely the specialisations will have them.

I wouldn’t rule out existing professions getting them either. I can’t remember where I read it but I recall one of the devs said to expect changes to existing abilities courtesy of this tech.

Terrahero.9358:

Energy is not the only mechanic in place to keep skill spam down for Revenant, abilities will also have cooldowns. Not all of them, an example was given for “substained” cast abilities that don’t have a cooldown but drain energy as long as they are active.

I think you might have that backwards. The very clear impression I got – and I’m sorry I can’t find the quote (I think it was a dev post here in the forums)- is that relatively few revenant abilities will have cooldowns. The obvious candidates are healing and elites. Plus some of the stronger attacks.

It’s not just the toggles which don’t have cooldowns.

Photonman.6241:

This makes it seem like energy isn’t going to be that great a resource and maintaining the energy is going to be trickier than swapping to the other legend for more of it.

They have given us some numbers. The current regen rate (which may change) is 5 per second. Safest bet for legend swap cooldown would be 10 seconds (same as weapon). Ele base is 15 but they have four elements. Revenants just have two legends (same as two weapons for other professions).

50% free refill on swap every 10 seconds. Base regen of (5×10) = 50 every 10 seconds.

So legend flipping every 10 seconds would seem to double your rate of energy regen.

Think you might have the wrong forum but yeah, it’s terrible.

I just don’t do it any more.

Broadly speaking agree with the OP, though am more reserved in my judgements at this stage. There’s still too few details.

But it does seem like the developers might be relaxing their no-trinity stance which could lead to some much needed diversity in combat.

Bad news for me it seems. Just read the mmorpg.com article.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9418/Guild-Wars-2-An-Exclusive-Preview-of-the-Revenants-Skills.html

Revenants flipping madly between legends is specifically what they want and they don’t want traits which discourage that.

Test.8734:

It actually annoys me that you lose energy when you change legends while being at full energy.

Yeah there’s that too.

What it means is rather than switching immediately when you feel you should, everyone will end up jspamming random expensive abilities to use up energy.

Test.8734:

But the reason why we likely won’t be able to keep switching legends just to refill energy is the cooldown for the switch, so it won’t become as much a matter of autoplay (switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – spam all skills – end with zero energy – switch – and so on).

I honestly had not even the slightest concern on that note. The fact the energy bar refills to half seemed to me an iron-clad guarantee there’d be a cooldown on legend swapping.

My concern is this mechanic is intended to if not force then strongly encourage just flipping between legends every 10 (?) seconds for the free energy. Much the same as existing classes (except thieves) are encouraged to flip to take advantage of cooldowns.

Ok going from what Randulf said I tracked down the quote.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Making-a-Sylvari-for-HoT

“We don’t want to give away too much of that right now, other than to say that if people don’t have a Sylvari character yet, it’s a great time to make one and have one ready to go for Heart of Thorns.”

Fascinating. I have 7. Hopefully that’ll be enough.

Randulf.7614:

Yes he did say this, but that comment suggests some ambient content or some minor/fun/cool (tick as applicable) changes to the race themselves.

No it can’t be possibly be the latter. Sylvari are already cooler than sin. I’m a freaking tree man with glowing eyes and patterns on my skin at night. What more could they possibly give us?! Laser beam eyes? Rockets shooting out of our butts? Squirrel assassins living in our hair?

Seriously though, cool if true. Sylvari are the main reason I play GW2. Perfectly happy to see them get even cooler.

Palador.2170:

In time, you’ll learn kittenspeak, and mostly just ignore it.

Or maybe develop a purr….

IndigoSundown.5419:

Since I so love losing control of my character in games, and since it happens so little already, you can imagine how thrilled I am at the described functionality of this mechanic.

Try pouring water on your keyboard. :P

PopeUrban.2578:

Every class but thief has the exact same swap-enforcing design though. You will output more DPS by swapping weapons/attunements/kits at the earliest opportunity, unless you specifically trait in a way that rewards you for not swapping.

Rev is no different in this respect, aside from the fact that its base energy mechanics actively reward you for not swapping at the earliest opportunity as a base design rather than a traited design.

Expect to be swapping a lot, just like everyone else (except thieves, who gain no core benefit from swaps due to initiative), if you want to run your most efficient builds.

That’s just repeatedly exactly what I said in the OP.

Except I’d like revs to be more like thieves in this respect. One thing I have to give to ESO. It’s nice to change weapons in combat because it makes sense to rather than just to take advantage of cooldowns.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i’m going by the GW1 norm, where 50% of an energy bar on an energy-reliant profession severely kitten you (which is why a lot of GW1’s strategy comes from managing the flow of energy, not just yours, but your target’s)

What’s with the kittens? I posted in another thread this morning and it replaced something like “as of” with kitten. When I went into edit the post it showed what I’d actually typed but out in the forums kept producing kittens.

I didn’t love GW1 so didn’t play it much. Were there abilities which cost more than 50% of the bar? Is that what you’re kittening? :P

Evermore.5649:

It’s not a balance issue, and I don’t believe it’s a technical issue either unless GW2 servers are powered by hamster wheels.

It’s possibly slightly a technical issue. Information has to communicated from the server to all players. In massive zergs with unlimited condition stacking, stacks could reach insane numbers. That could increase traffic and cause lag.

Though I think it’s probably more a practical gameplay issue. Given the way most conditions stack, in a typical zerg mobs would probably die with potentially 90% of the conditions on them completely wasted.

I agree with you though in calling it broken. GW2 is all about the zerk, the whole zerk and nothing but the zerk. Yet there are professions, weapons, traits etc. which focus on conditions.

Maybe mesmers or their potential chronomancer spec could get an ability which speeds up conditions (or in the case of eg. confusion magnifies its impact) on a target.

Sagat.3285:

Huh wut repeat?

Ele can’t effectively camp 1 attunement all the time,even thief has SB but I do see your point. Traits might fit what you are hoping for, all unique ones affect the mechanic of a class wouldn’t be any different for this one so no worries.

Repeat, no thanks. Why don’t you just read it again? :P

You’re the first person in this thread to even mentioned elementalists so… yeah. But no anyway. Elementalists definitely can sit in one attunement all the time if they trait for it. Fire staff is the obvious example. You can kill things insanely quickly using just abilities 1, 2 and 3. Not my idea of fun it’s incredibly effective both against regular mobs and bosses (where meteor storm is obviously also worth working in).

Re other comments, they seem to be a lot of conjecture. We don’t know that there’ll be any abilities at all which consume more than 50% of the energy bar and if revenants follow the mmo norm there won’t be any. Those kinds of uber abilities usually have cooldowns attached – as we know some revenant abilities will – rather than exorbitant energy costs.

I’d be extremely surprised if this turns out to be true.

In nearly every way imaginable race is completely unimportant in this game and that’s a good thing. It would be extremely strange for there to be any advantage to having a specific race for this expansion.

That said I have a small forest of my own Sylvari so I’d be fine it did turn out to be true.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Anyways, don’t think “taunt” in GW2 will be like ‘aggro grabs’ in other games.

Taunt is basically an “inverse fear”. It makes enemies move to target and then hit.

I honestly don’t see much of an effective difference and I don’t think ArenaNet do either or they wouldn’t have called them taunts.

My first thought on seeing taunts was is this ArenaNet backing away from their decision to almost completely abandon traditional MMO trinity roles? I hope it is.

There’s a lot to enjoy in GW2 but the game is basically designed so that DPS is king and that’s how everyone gears themselves up and plays. It’s very one dimensional.

naiasonod.9265:

I do a fair amount of dungeons rather regularly, and while I can confirm that my experiences have very infrequently been awful while pugging courtesy of jerks obsessing over turning casual runs into speed runs and troll-kicking others when at the final bosses, that’s been rather infrequent.

Yeah it’s definitely not all, which is why I said some.

What I was disagreeing with was the distinction between PvE and PvP on this issue. For the most part GW2’s community is amongst the best and I tip my hat to the designers on that score. The PvE game has generally been designed to encourage players to help each other and rewards for them for it. It’s fantastic.

The stark exception is dungeons where it can get very nasty, and in a way I haven’t seen in other MMOs. It’s a shame.

Same as every other profession.

Knighthonor.4061:

Class skills are effected by Traits, Racials are not….

Just FYI – I haven’t checked this myself recently but the wiki entry for the Sylvari druid summon still says it’s affected by ranger spirit traits.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Druid_Spirit

Generally speaking I love the look of what they’re doing with this new profession. Combat design isn’t one of the reasons I enjoy GW2. Cooldown whack-a-mole doesn’t thrill me. Thieves don’t have that problem but they’re a bit boring IMO. So when I saw revenants were getting an energy bar I was very, very pleased.

On first glance the revenant’s energy bar being half full on switching seemed benign. I though ok, gives you a bit of juice to get started with when you change. But then I thought about the combat design for existing professions – where there’s a benefit to weapon swapping just to take advantage of skills not on cooldown – and I could suddenly see the same with revenants. You burn through all of your energy on one legend then switch to another – not because it makes sense to switch to that other legend because of what’s going on in combat – just to get more energy.

It’s less like you playing the game and more like the game playing you.

To me it seems like two steps forward and one step back. They give us more freedom to exercise judgement and use abilities in combat not based on maximising cooldowns but on what we think is best at any given moment. Then they have this energy half-refilling on swapping which seems intended to have us arbitrarily switching back and forth between legends.

So I hope they either reconsider this or at least offer traits which change this aspect of the class – eg. make the energy bar shared across legends (i.e. stays the same when you swap) and boost the base regen to compensate.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Go try ranked pvp.
Like dungeons its one of the few places your personal skill level as well as build choice is going to have any impact whatsoever.

I often end up turning the chat off because people are so stupid and/or abusive.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t PvP at all. I play games to have fun, not deal with kittens.

Thaddeus.4891:

Really?

Yes.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

a scaling bonus reward for taking less experienced people through could be kinda cool. There needs to be some incentive to training/teaching – since it is hard work sometimes.

Doesn’t stop someone who’s completed it x times from being completely useless though.

How do you like this idea.

Make dungeons like current dailies. Rather than each and every dungeon path being its own daily, the game could randomly pick a small handful – 3 or 4 – dungeon paths and give a substantially bigger daily reward (gold, fragments, tokens) for completing them And when I say completing I mean fully clearing it.

Also disable the ability to skip cutscenes on those daily dungeons.

With that scheme, players could continue to earn rewards at the same rate but it would remove the need / incentive to speedrun. Bonus would be that new players could actually get to see dungeons – including those delightful cutscenes.

Fernling.1729:

PvE side is probably what they meant. People are fantastic in PvE areas.
PvP is just as bad as any other game with PvP.

Agreed except for dungeons. The fact that speed running them is the easiest way to farm gold, fragments etc. can really bring out the worst in some people there.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

How can utility skills change a playstyle? Isn’t the playstyle mostly defined by your weapon skills?!

It varies by profession and build. Engineer is the most obvious example, I think.

Equip no kits and you have a single weapon, 3 utilities and 4 toolkit abilities (one will be healing). So there’s no weapon swapping at all. No juggling cooldowns across multiple weapons.

Equip three kits and you can be the polar opposite. You now have 4 weapons with no swapping cooldown and you can be juggling cooldowns across all of them to maximise the long cooldowns.

BrunoBRS.5178:

well, now they’re dead :P

Dead? Where do you get that from?

Going by the wiki entry, some husks have been found which appear dead. They may or may not be. There’s also no reason to believe that those husks are all of the druids.

Their being spirits doesn’t necessarily make them dead either. It’s one possibility but I wouldn’t call it a certainty.

phys.7689:

no offense intended, and it isnt everyone, but the fact that more than half the people in a thread were supporting kicking people for watching cutscenes during a story dungeon (which means its unlikely it was advertised as speed run) Heck even the guy who is supposed to be your representitive to anet said that kicking people for watching cutscenes in a story dungeon, which by the way is intended to be for story, and has less rewards than other dungeons for this purpose, is perfectly cool.

That told me a lot about the dungeon community, although there were some people, like yourself i believe, who said it probably was kitten move.

I see your point but I don’t think it’s fair to judge the dungeon community for it.

My view – pretty much every run is a speed run. Unless specifically advertised in the LFG as not a speed run (almost never see that) then it’s a speed run. I do hate that I’ve only done one dungeon run where I’ve had the freedom to watch the cutscenes but I figure I’ll watch them all on youtube one day.

That sucks a bit but it’s not the community’s fault. This is absolutely a game design issue. As I and have others have pointed out dungeons are a primary source of gold, fragments and other key resources. As much as it sucks for players new to that dungeon it’s also not unreasonable for players to want to get their shinies as quickly as possible.

phys.7689:

now maybe the OP was lying, or whatever, but peoples argument in the thread amounted to, my way or the high way, because i said so, they kept talking about what the others should follow what the group says, and ignored the fact that it only takes 2 people to kick someone, so its not even necessarilly a majority that wanted a kick.

You don’t really say about what, but I haven’t lied. Not my style.

So to run through the possibilities – no I’m not an idiot, unskilled, under-geared etc. I’ve done many successful speed runs without incident. I’ve been on the receiving end of abuse once and it really wasn’t my fault. kitten often happens – in games and the real world – the idiot who kept screwing up chose to loudly and aggressively blame someone else.

What drove me to start the thread was a conversation with a random player after doing Tequatl where they were asking about the best ways to make money and wouldn’t even consider doing dungeons because of their experience. And I know what they’re talking about because while you don’t see it in every run, you see it often enough. It’s both worse than what I’ve seen in any other MMO and almost the polar opposite of what you see elsewhere in the game.

Seera.5916:

Mirta.5029:

don’t say it until you’ve tried it.

Caeledh never said they didn’t try.

Thanks for beating me to it Seera. You’re right. To Mirta consider taking your own advice. Try getting into or starting your own group at my play times.

Obviously I’ve tried it. One time I sat there with only one other player joining for almost half an hour (longer than it takes to do the speed run) before we gave up and joined a zerker group – pretty much instantly.

So like I’ve said repeatedly I don’t join those groups by preference. At some times of the day it’s my only option.

Dave.2536:

GW2 seems to have intentionally chosen to not segregate its casual and hardcore communities.

I never use those terms – because it’s obviously a derogatory distinction decided upon by the so-called hardcore crowd – but yes I do see that problem in GW2.

There’s a lot of content which by design lends itself really well to most players. Then there’s other content which lends itself just as well to the more competitive crowd. Then there’s content like dungeons – mainly due to speed runs – which the game encourages both crowds to do thanks to how much gold, tokens, loot they dish out. That’s probably at the heart of this problem.

One of the few design mistakes I think the game makes (in various ways) is trying to force these distinct communities together.

Let’s be honest, dungeons are a form of daily. They’re on a daily account cooldown.
Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if instead of dungeons being speed-run’able there were other daily PvE (including dungeons) and PvP targets which dished out comparable rewards.

That way everyone could play content they actually enjoy for those rewards.

I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided I don’t like the 50% energy refill on swapping legends. I’m taking a glass half empty view on that one.

Why? Well with giving revenants a resource bat they’ve moved away from the GW2 norm of combat playing you rather than the other way around – executing skills just because they’ve come off cooldown, weapon swapping to take advantage of skills not on cooldown etc. Giving a resource bar makes combat more strategic. You execute abilities because it makes sense to do so, not to squeeze the most value out of cooldowns.

The energy bar being half full when you switch legends seems intended to encourage arbitrarily swapping legends to take advantage of the energy refill, rather than because your other legend is better suited to the current state of the field of combat. That’s a big shame.

Personally I hope they rethink this or at least offer traits which alter this mechanic – eg. to give us a single shared energy bar which remains the same when you switch legends and maybe boost the base regen a little to compensate.

BrunoBRS.5178:

traits are modifiers, not whole new skills.

That’s true for many but definitely not all. Some traits radically change existing skills, eg. elementalists inflicting burns on crits plus inflicting blind on burning. Suddenly you’ve got an eyeful of blinding coming out of nowhere thanks to traits.

BrunoBRS.5178:

they aren’t tree monsters. they became tree monsters (which is a one-way ritual, before anyone uses it as an argument for plagiarizing norn skills)

No. Basic tense. They are tree monsters now, ergo they ARE tree monsters.

Iason Evan.3806:

Instead of being “locked” I think there should be choices for utilities that are tied to the Revenant’s chosen Legend.

I think that’s how it works. I had interpreted it the same you way did but someone pointed out that the utility skills in the screenshot all have switch-utility-skill arrows above them.

Thornwolf.9721:

If they go by what a druid is , they would have nature magic , the ability to heal themselves and others(( as literally thats in the real nature of druid lore. )) And the ability to speak and have packs of animals follow them, as well as the ability to transform into lycanthropes and other “Man-Beasts”. The Druids in guild wars really haven’t ever had a spotlight on them; So its safe to say that this stuff should be in their skill capabilities . Its not a “WoW” Thing , its just WoW uses real druid lore to base that class off of.

That’s definitely not safe to say.

Based on what little we do know about druids in GW2 lore, apart from being focused on nature, they don’t seem like any other druids I’ve seen.

GW2’s druids are … tree monsters. The developers have explicitly said player druids will have plant based based attacks. All current signs point to druids being more plant than animal focused – which rangers already are.

I’d bet heavily on GW2’s druids being relatively original and not a carbon copy of anything we’ve seen before.

raubvogel.5071:

Whats with melee vs ranged. Some content should been done ranged other in melee without a weapon switch it is impossible to do certain content. e. g. Champion Risen Drake Broodmother

We don’t know that each weapon will be exclusively melee or ranged like they are for other professions.

Conncept.7638:

True we don’t know how it works yet. But from what I see of it so far, this is how thief’s initiative should have worked in the first place. Using your thief skills to both gain and spend initiative, requiring active play

I think we know it doesn’t work like that. The polygon article goes into more detail.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/2/18/8061219/guild-wars-2-profession-reveal-revenant-pc-mmo-arenanet

I’d definitely prefer no cooldowns but I was expecting them on elites.

A shame they can’t balance without them – with eg. something like an extra energy bar for the better skills, or just a much higher cost for them – but it’s still better than most other professions (for my tastes).

Electro.4173:

I think Revenants will still have access to racial skills. In fact, I think the only reason those arrows exist on the utilities is because of racial skills.

Oh I see what you mean. I must have gotten my wires crossed somewhere.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

But what about racial skills though? It wouldn’t make sense for them to suddenly require energy for no reason.

Since a Revenant’s utility skills are determined by the legend they’re currently channelling I take as implied they won’t be able to use racial skills.

DiogoSilva.7089:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

A class whose primary mechanic is energy management. Huh, go figure.

And yet, that’s one of the best mechanics they could haven given to it.

I’m 100% in agreement.

Personally I’m not a fan of cooldown driven combat or the cooldown on weapon swap. It can feel very whack-a-moley. I’m so thrilled we’re getting another profession which uses an energy resource instead.

In terms of crafting I’d just reached the point where I had to decide which of my existing characters I should focus on for ascended weapons and armour and this blog post has settled it. Guardian it is, starting with hammer and mace.

Awesome seeing that blog post this morning. I love this design. It’s minus several pet hates from other professions. As excited as I was to hear about the Druid, there’s a very good chance Revenant could become my main.

Conncept.7638:

It sounds like the Revenant may get less customization than other classes. As per usual your first five skills are determined by your weapon, but unlike other classes they said your second five skills are determined by your legend.

IMO it’s questionable how much freedom of customization other classes really have. Traits, weapons and utilities (by design) match up into a limited number of optimal builds. From there you have obviously have the freedom to tweak a bit.

Seems to me like Revenants are just saving us the effort of the utility part of that equation. Yeah I think some freedom will definitely be lost there. But we effectively get two sets of utilities we can choose to equip so it may balance out.

Seera.5916:

If you join a group that you don’t fit the requirements of don’t be surprised if you’re kicked before the dungeon even starts. And people have the right to ensure the people who join meet their LFG requirements.

I assume that’s in response to Giraffe’s comments re AP? If so I’m pretty the point they were making was how meaningless the AP statistic is. I think they’re right – it’s not much of a measure of player competence – but I agree with you and go a little further. Not only do I respect their right to set stupid standards but I thank them for flagging themselves as people whose company I would probably not enjoy.

Marthkus.4615:

Let’s not mistake arrogance with skill.

Toxic players tend to be bad at the game.

The really good players could just solo the dungeon anyways so things like a pugs AP/gear/skill/experience is completely irrelevant.

Agree on the first, second I don’t know, third… maybe. I’ve solo’ed sections of some speed runs and have soloe’d the last boss in one of the twilight arbor twice. But I think it’d be difficult for a single player to solo a whole dungeon.

Mirta.5029:

And don’t be afraid to host. Nobody will bite you for it

There’s also no guarantee anyone will join. Just to repeat what I said earlier, my playtime is often during quiet times of the day and zerker speed runs seem to be far more popular.

runeblade.7514:

I think that “its a nightmare to program” is just a cop out. I really don’t think anyone can have a say about the programming unless they know ANet’s code from inside out.

Speaking from personal professional experience, that is often true. Sometimes that’s just IT speak for “I don’t want to do that”.

But you definitely don’t need to know ANet’s code to have an idea of how they might do it. At a mechanical level what I’ve suggested is incredibly basic regardless of the game’s specific code. That’s not to say there couldn’t be complexities we’re unaware of but I think it’s fairly safe to say it wouldn’t be difficult.

GiraffeRampage.6420:

I agree definitely, no other mmo that i have played has been as mean and brutal towards other players especially to new players who stumble into an exp dungeon for the first time. Not even WoW is that bad during heroic dungeons, people are extremely helpful. The fact that a majority of “elite” gw2 players kick other players out of dungeons just because their AP arent in the thousands is ridiculous which is an absolutley terrible way to judge skill. Im a newer player and my brother is the one who brought me into gw2 and hes been playing since 2013 but his AP’s are only in the 900’s because he plays casually and he still gets kicked just because of that.

I’d totally forgotten about the AP snobbery. It’s definitely distasteful but I suppose that’s what you get in a game where the main form of end-game numeric advancement is a completely meaningless one like that.

To some people, having one bigger than yours is the most important thing in the world :P

Iyeru.5240:

In Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, their latest dungeons focused more on anti-speedrun development than anything. The story dungeon alone has 6 anti-speedrun gates (Literal walls, not counting the bosses) and the last boss has a mechanic that disallows people to speedrun / facestomp him (or else you wipe if you activate the run-saving item too early.) I’m glad developers are stepping up to the plate doing these things.

That’s interesting. I didn’t play that one beyond a few beta weekends and hadn’t been keeping up with it. It is good they’re trying to address that.

@Seera

I’ve done the same when doing a dungeon for the first time too. My first runs were ok. It’s not rocket science. The nastiness has generally not been directed at myself.

I’ve only been on the receiving end of wrath once that I can recall. I was playing a guardian in a comically bad group and somehow ended copping the blame for everyone else’s screw ups. It was hilarious. One player in particular kept running ahead of me so I couldn’t wave down the poison blooms and everyone else behind him had to choke on the gas. Then at one point that player says “GUARDIAN EQUIP STAFF, ATTACK 1”. I just about wet myself laughing.

@Aberrant Yes you’re right and I typically avoid those groups if I can. But at quiet times of the day it’s that or sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting forever.

@Mirta Definitely. Now that… that other game has dropped its sub I’m sort of on the fence about what to play. But if I stick with GW2 then I think I’ll have to do that.

@Electro Thanks I didn’t realise that about the weapon skins. I’ll edit that correction in.

Re comments about difficulty of programming – no I don’t think so. For suggestion 1 they could:

a) Modify the existing code which checks for racial armour and marks it as unwearable for other races. Would just need the addition of a check to see if the player owns the matching skin for their current race. Simple.

b) As far as rendering goes they could either change the database value to the current race’s armour ID when performing the check in a) (potentially wasteful) or manage that entirely client side. Create a generic racial armour ID and apply that to armours. Player race is obviously already communicated to clients. The client would just need to display the respective racial armour for each race. Easy.

Andred.1087:

Problem is that there is a highly sought-after and expensive achievement for unlocking all the cultural armor skins individually, so… yeah…

I think perhaps you should read my post again. I did not in any way suggest, imply or even hint at anything which would in any fashion impact on that.

Generally speaking I think GW2’s designers have done a really good job of creating a pro-social play environment. Design really encourages players helping each other out.

Except for dungeons. I wouldn’t say my experience has been universally bad in dungeons. It’s generally been ok. But in terms of both frequency and severity, GW2 easily tops all other MMOs for dungeon nastiness.

There is a definite upside to being able to farm dungeons quickly for gold, fragments, tokens etc. But the downside is that there are a lot of very uptight and impatient players who have mega rage meltdowns at the slightest hiccup.

I was speaking to someone earlier in the week who was asking about the best ways to get gold in map chat and I naturally suggested dungeons. But they’d tried that and seen one of those meltdowns and were so not keen to see any more.

I think this aspect of the game’s design might need more thought.

EDIT – Idea for fixing :

Make dungeons like current dailies. Rather than each and every dungeon path being its own daily, the game could randomly pick a small handful – 3 or 4 – dungeon paths and give a substantially bigger daily reward (gold, fragments, tokens) for completing them And when I say completing I mean fully clearing it. Also disable the ability to skip cutscenes on those daily dungeons.