Guild Wars 2

Uzunari.1964:

I actually don’t think that you are 100% right. This might’ve been the reason back in the days but since then a lot of things changed – nowadays this (MMO/RPGs) spot has shifted a lot and exists for different reasons (not just the social aspect) and each of them as important as the others.

Heh, caught. I admit, I play MMORPGs since 1999 (EQ1), so I guess many of my views are a fair bit outdated.

Isn’t Hammer weak enough as it is? :<

Havok.6073:

You know, that BROKEN class who’s pinnacle of required skill is to slap some stuff on the ground and burn its cooldowns to be invulnerable to everything .

So… Warrior then?

Natto.5819:

Spellbreaker is anti projectile, so you need to counter with melee. But doing so brings you into range of their new dagger stunlocks. And even if you evade the stuns, they can avoid all physical and condition damage.

Yes, they’re a lot like a GW1 Mesmer.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

Yeah true. Although many players don’t want to be social enough to worry about things such as “starting a guild” or “recruiting like-minded players” or “getting to know players”.

Even though it is, ultimately, the whole reason this genre exists. If not for the social aspects, other games provide far better gameplay for each specific element GW2 has. Its upside is that it provides a lot of different gameplay elements (something for everyone, basically) in a social context.

Mahou.3924:

What is “fresh” in using some dudes or boring gods that only GW1 players would know or care (more) about? Why doesn’t that count as rehashing content or pandering?

This was my biggest gripe with it.

They exchanged an enemy I knew for one I don’t, but which is expected to be known because it was pure fanpandering. If like in GW1 we were all human characters, it would have some impact at least. But just as with the Shining Blade “initiation” (I still think these were test voice recordings done as a non-serious thing and someone just had a laugh using them for an actual instance), this all feels absurd given the scope of our races and the world.

I’d much rather have had a new enemy tbh. Someone built up as a baddie, not someone randomly pulled out of a hat and then they expect me to feel motivated to do something about it.

PzTnT.7198:

I always found the rather extreme amount of elitism in this game to be strange and incredibly off putting. Are the raids really hard enough to force everyone that wants to play one to go with the “meta” of the specific raid allowed classes?

Hrm, no. Although, just as in any other MMORPG, people do kinda have this unwritten agreement that you’re not going to “waste everyone else’s time” by playing sub-optimal.

Which , in class/spec based games, not only means playing well as a player, but also as a character. So that in other words, you might lack the time to farm armor XYZ (Ascended in our case), but at least you run the correct spec / skills. You’re doing your best, basically.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

They shouldn’t bring back a class simply because we are nostalgic for the “good old days.”

Exactly this. New specs need to provide unique elements. Not just “lulz GW1 had it”.

Dreossk.5938:

If it’s like the rest of the game, I really don’t care about the story, I only care about content.

Well then you don’t really need them anyhow. Though it includes 6 maps in the third season, they are individually tiny and highly focused grind-spots, you basically leave as soon as you’re done grinding for whatever thing you wanted from them (and many even before that).

They aren’t anywhere near the production quality of the “main” maps, sadly.

Ithilwen.1529:

As one Dev said of Alacrity, ( paraphrase,) It was too good to be exclusive to Mesmer.
I see that as the probable course for Ambush.

You mean the mechanics of thieves we’re getting? Sorry, bit amused by this, we’re the class used to make sure it’s not a unique mechanic (anymore).

serialkicker.5274:

Huh… What about when you happen to fight animals 5x your size that have thicker skin than ten of your plate armours combined. What do you use then?

Not a larger hammer at least, assuming you accept the magic behind making an animal hide withstand something made to ~easily punch straight through metal. And we do, because well, magic fantasy world.

But a larger hammer? Hardly helpful. Unless you mean a small point on a very very long handle, like a halberd with a point? Because otherwise you’re softening the impact quite a bit with that large impact surface.

Plus, erm… after I took this serious for 5 minutes and looked around… why don’t you just use one of the plethora or super comically large hammers ingame? And stop telling others that their small hammers also being on offer is such a big dealbreaker apparently? I mean it’s just common sense…

Dreossk.5938:

One could accumulate 600g+ just by leveling now?? Anyways, I only ever do one character in MMO so that’s out. It really sucks I guess it means the content is out of my reach, there is no way I’m paying yet again for 5 min quests.

LS2 is worth the money IMO. LS3 just skip, the writing was really shoddy and the last two episodes had super-cringeworthy dialogue.

Just watch a summary or read up on it, faster and you don’t miss out tbh.

Substatic.6958:

For some reason GW2’s raiders are more elitist than WoW ones. Which is very odd, considering WoW ones are far harder.

That one I can explain I think (lead raids for 8 years in WoW), it’s because of what a central status raids have in WoW.

As a result their PvE balance is much tighter (seriously, this is one of the few cases where I would use the words “GW2 doesn’t even begin to compare”, it really doesn’t), everyone has some experience with raids throuhg LFR, and people are used to failing raids.

On top of that, mechanics are clearly explained by an ingame raid guide and you have boss mods making sure the sensory overload of the spell effects (which is much less bad in WoW to begin with) doesn’t get you.

Combine all of that, and players are more used to having to re-do raid fights. Unlike in GW2, where we are used to undertuned events and 50/50 (assuming equal chances) PvP fights, we rage at wiping 20 times in a row in PvP, too. Give it to us in raids, we start looking for someone to blame, so we explode at the newcomers and basically anyone in reach.

It’s far from an ideal situation, though I am not sure whether a change to the solveable issues would help (those being an ingame guide and boss mods). It would probably not be enough, it also needs years upon years of finetuning and experience.

What’s a Dervish? Never heard of one, and we already got 3 classes per armor type, makes sense we’re done for the time being.

serialkicker.5274:

My opinion is common sense, you people are crying because fantasy character wants to have bigger hammer. Hilarious.

Considering you are staving off multiple people disagreeing with you here… I don’t know how “common sense” it is. Or whether common sense means what you think it does. I think you wanted to just say that your opinion is a common one?

And if I equip none of the “class” specs then? And just pick 3 of the remaining ones?

Mostly, if I had to guess, because at their heart all players are nasty. We are kept friendly by game mechanics making it the laziest and most efficient option to work together in a friendly manner.

Add a mode where other players being suboptimal / screwing up / not carrying you makes you waste time, and people will rage and spew bile. See: MOBAs.

Well considering how randomly and nonsensically Balthazar entered the story, it could be back to Elder Dragons in a blink. Or our next major enemy is Rhytlock! No one knows! :o

Samnang.1879:

What’s next?
In game marriage, houses, fishing, open world pvp.

Fishing! Excitement!

Rikimaru.7890:

Yet brits pay in GBP as much as it should be in Euro currently, while we still pay in Euro as much as americans do in USD.
That is not fair, as we would save up money by paying in USD even after exchange fees.

Have you calculated US taxes?

Captain Obvious.6951:

Hammers are giant smashing devices you use to pound peoples faces in!

Not really, actually.

In fact, most games, GW2 included, display Warhammers as massive compared to what they actually are like.

Check out for example this video: https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=QMsVbUUxUTc

Or just google for medieval warhammers. And those were the heaviest 2H weapons used, heavy enough to punch through plate armor. Why make them bigger/larger if it serves no purpose?

zealex.9410:

Im honestly fine theres no need for every elite soec to add a new shatter. I feel like the class is diff enough with ambush skills blur and the mirror mechanic.

Plus the other one already adds a new shatter. More differentiation, less sameyness!

Medatius.6092:

Okay, uhm, I’ve not quite sure waht you’re trying to say, sorry. Please don’t get me wrong I’m not saying Mirage is bad, just that it could be a tad better with this change (even if it’s unlikely that it’ll get implemented, there’s no downside in discussing it, since our feedback was heard to an extent before HoT too)

To me it seems like an utterly needlessly complex fix to a simple problem: Spec might be too weak.

Well, buff it then. Increase damage stats, extend condition duration (if the axe is weak, not the spec), and so on.

Why add a new complexity on top, especially because the underlying premise is a bit flawed (it’s not a downside if a spec is, say, less centered on shattering – it’s just 1 elite spec of many, there might be another one in the future which is all about shatters).

Hrm, meh. I mean for competitiveness ofc I like these things, but does every skill need to be a “kitchen sink” thing?

The average skill nowadays has 3-4 effects it seems, and that’s without traits.

I’d much rather have people have one go-to skill for condi removal, and well, it’s good. But it’s that. Want condi removal, take it.

I suspect the limit to 10 hotbar slots makes this inevitable though, we lack the ability to have lots of single-focus skills, with so few available everything needs to provide a little bit of everything.

Curunen.8729:

You know the more I think of it, the more I’m going to miss normal dodge – more for the animations.

Luckily, they are just a respec away. And since all things point to us still playing boon share in PvE, you’ll get plenty time with the normal dodge

MFranco.9514:

Edit: for ex. raids: Raiding originated in the class of text MUDs known as DikuMUD. DikuMUD heavily influenced the game EverQuest which brought the raiding concept into modern 3D MMORPGs.

Oh the joy of PoC raids for my Enchanter epic weapon :o

Shaogin.2679:

I used to see this response alot when requests came up for things like raids, tanks, healers, mounts etc. All of those things are in the game now despite the strong protest of these apparent WoW haters.

And frankly, good. I hate how people yell insults at anything new just because WoW did it before, no matter how sensible a change it might be.

The insane innate fear of “WoW-ishness” is so crazy in this community.

I am more wondering, what’s be the benefit?

MMORPGs hardly need extra exposure.

Levetty.1279:

I mean if we have fallen back to making fun of simple mistakes, then I can only presume you don’t have actual arguments against my points about how weak Mirage is.

Oh come on, I was just poking fun at you! Wasn’t meant as a serious thing.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I want an option to hide players who want to hide my mount

Agreed. I mean come on, compromises for players who don’t want players who don’t want mounts, please!

Oooh, fancy mounts!

• A spider mount, its unique ability is that it can scale walls.
• A gecko mount, able to run over water.
• A chameleon mount, taking on the texture you’re standing on when you stand still, making you non-aggro to mobs while you don’t move and don’t attack.
• Asuran golem-mount, able to teleport 2000 distance in a, well, random direction. :P

Levetty.1279:

We know the mechanics, we have had 6 years of experience in the game to know these mechanics don’t work, we know the damage numbers and condi durations, we don’t need to play them to compare them to what is in this game.

I’d be massively impressed if you have six years of experience, Levetty. :P

jojorne.2175:

With PoF does this means people will forget Core and HoT contents?
Each expansion will replace old content activities?

Yep! Exactly! Just as with HoT, since which the non-HoT zones and activities have been abandoned.

Ok, all joking aside, I am slightly worried what will happen as more and more landmass appears. We got 6 mini-maps (mostly abandoned now, granted, as they were never designed to be “real” maps) with LS3, stands to reason we’ll get another set with LS4. On top of that the expansion zones.

This is fine right now. Plenty population between all servers. But make it 2019, expansion 3, population further declined, and many many zones will start to feel rather … lonely.

That is a bit of a shame though, I always loved it when you had race-specific dialogue. I mean think of how different one of the last HoT missions was between Sylvari / non-Sylvari.

I mean, in theory I agree with the OP.

But… how is this unexpected / unusual / noteworthy?

If anything this creates an important upside to fully segregated gameplay elements: Newer expansions aren’t littered with special “me too!”-mechanics.

Think 5 expansions down the line. Each new zone now wants to / has to / players ask for the following elements:

• Gliding
• Mounts
• Mushrooms
• Updrafts
• Bouncing boards
• Rope ladders
• Moving carnivals
• Ramen shops
• Rafting streams

And so on.

I mean, it sounds cool at first, but thinking ahead this’d absolutely clutter zones with mechanics eventually. As one of the biggest issues I take with modern GW2 (especially after the NPE changes) is how badly it explains (or well, doesn’t) many of its mechanics, I really don’t want potential late-joining or late-returning players to get absolutely suffocated by mechanic coming at them from all sides.

Plus, it adds to the “flair” of each zone-set. And while there might not be dedicated support for these mechanics, they are usable, so it’s not like you lose out on them.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

There’s already dozens of them in the game, nobody ever uses them precisely because they’re boring to look at.

Or do you just not notice them because you’ve been trained to handle the insane flashes of light the game usually produces if someone so much as draws their weapon next to you?

Honestly, the Human race has always been the “core” race. It’s the one all outfits / armor / designs are made for, then get adapted to the other races.

Which is why they usually work 100% ok on Norn, nearly 100% ok on Sylvari, and if you’re Asura or Charr you keep asking for a gem store race change item.

SgtOVERKILL.4701:

Horrible Idea. Rip all your veterans which are your player base. Working on useless stuff that nobody asked for, thanks anet.

Considering how these “veterans” are behaving in this thread, I’m not sure it’s a loss.

The game now is much better than at launch, even though development wise it is worse off IMO.

That is to say, for the amount of improvements made, an even larger amount of potential was wasted in not touching up related or older systems instead or in addition. Now ofc, this is a now thing, can’t know whether right tomorrow that’ll change.

Still, as for the main topic, the game is way better than at release.

Ranael.6423:

-For the sake of homogeneity, it is time to introduce a stat for outgoing healing (called benevolence or altruism maybe??) for which 10 points grant 1 % of additional healing to allies. Rev traits could also be reworked with this in mind and you could introduce new stat combos for dedicated healers.

This stat exists, it is called healing power, though it’s scaling is somewhat influenced by the specific skill in question.

Now all joking aside I get what you’re after, but it feels weird to me. If anything I’d say let heals critically hit. Because well what you say only hints at that we need scaling-percentages for heals reworked. Maybe even flattened (X% energy → Y% scaling, basically healing-power-scaling-per-energy-spent).

starlinvf.1358:

The narrow meta is symptomatic of the players, not systemic to the buildcraft.

But see, in theory this is correct, yes. Only this assumes an infinite amount of resources to use for balancing purposes and game design.

Even in extremely narrow designs (WoW after the removal of talent trees for example, or with vanilla trees), perfect balance is usually agreed to be impossible. Even the best of balance will still lead to clear favoritism by the community, and in WoW, even with the much much larger money and manpower Blizzard throws at that game, 2%-3% were all it took for one DPSer to be rolled by everyone and their mother.

Guild Wars 2 has… I’d guess easily x1000000 times the possible build options? And yet the balance is so problematic even between the handful of “meta” builds that even speculating about how great all these combinations could be is just … absurd. IMO. There is no value in the variety, and there hasn’t been for 5 years now.

If anything, a narrower choice system would lead to less players running around with extremely weak setups, then clinging to them because of the time invested. Setups they end up with as a result of a deluge of options, a lack of clarity, a lack of balance and an absence of explanations.

As the game hasn’t significantly changed in this regard in, well, 5 years now (and to be fair given the raw amount of options I don’t blame the devs for this, again, WoW struggles to handle a teensy tiny fraction of choices with a much larger company), I don’t see how this would ever improve.

Because while yes, on paper a ton of options and custom setups would be nice, in reality first having 5-6 good setups per class and then as developers end up sitting around bored in the office breaking up elements into new choices, that seems much more sensible to me.

Katastroff.1045:

This game has drifted very very very far away from the epicness of the original GW, where the pvp was alive and balance, faction battles were fun, stuff was working as intended and bugs were getting fixed.

I hate to rain on the parade, but other than the PvP I don’t remember any of that. Sorry.

I don’t get the inherent disliking of mounts, seriously.

The only “sensible” argument I’ve seen (or well, the one I would readily agree with) is that they might bring with them the issues they brought into WoW.

But, to that end there’s 2 issues with that logic:

• Land mounts were fine in WoW, it was flying mounts which had a distinct problem because they removed the sense of danger. This is further trivialized because in the open world, GW2 just doesn’t really have much danger any more. Which is sad in itself, but there’s also nothing mounts could take away.
• The mounts we’re getting sound quite unlike the ones in WoW. Ours seem to be more like an “exploration class”, a specialization you pick to determine your MetroidVania style exploration upgrade. Not a way to fast-traverse brought forth from necessity like in WoW.

Because every spec but your own one gets all the cool stuff!

Fact!

Every expansion, every MMO, every time.

FiestyFrog.5472:

I’ve sunk so much gold into making food and equipment for both wvw and raids that i doubt that i’ll have enough after the patch the change my gear. I’m a pretty casual player so if this update goes live i’ll probably just stop playing.

So… if you’re a casual player, why did you (apparently) make 1000s of food in advance? I mean I always carry 20-40 of a food, and make some more when I drop under 20.

I’d love if they switch to Discourse. Very neat and very pretty forum system.

I am still not sure I’d not go a step further and remove a lot of customization in favor of just having simple picks from a dropdown. I understand build templates are more or less the same thing, but it’d also massively simplify the spec/trait setups and remove a lot of things which can break.

What I mean is, we have millions of options. And yet we pick from a dozen of “builds”. These include runes, sigils, gear stats, traits, skills, everything. So… why are all of these separate options? Why don’t things such as stats, traits etc all get folded?

I’d probably go with Skills, Weapon, Traitlines. Traitlines don’t have further picks inside them, they also each give a fixed amount of stat bonuses and/or procs (to replace sigils/runes). Depending on traitline. So all I have to do to swap things is swap out the traitlines and maybe equip a different weapon.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Does PoF stand for Point of Frustration? Because that’d capture the impact of GW2 expansions and specifically elite specs on the game XD

Persistence of Flatulence, actually!

Saraneth.6021:

Yeah that’s not how it works. YOU CANNOT PLAY THE BUILD YOU WANT! Go meta or go home!

… and?

I mean, I fail to see the problem here? As long as each class has a raid-viable build (which they don’t, that’s a bigger problem), that’s fine? You want to go raid, you build the raid build, an go kick bosses around.

Ameepa.6793:

But I like the UI as it is :/

Notice everything I listed is optional. The big problem with the current UI is lack of customizability/modularity/options.

For those who like the current design, any new features should ofc be optional. Small things here or there, some they might enjoy (do you for example use the colored borders around items in your inventory? ), others they could leave be.

Yet other players like me who think the UI is both too busy and keeps too many information away from the player would be able to move important things close to the center while hiding other things entirely.

Hopefully there won’t be any new dungeons, in any case. I mean Fractals and Raids are bad enough IMO, in the sense that the less a MMORPG relies on instanced wipe-it-out content, the better.

I play for the persistence and the full spontaneous social exposure, not for instanced content which ends up being a weaker implementation of what dedicated games do.

For example for dungeons, if I were much into them, I’d be playing an ARPG, PoE for example. If I were into sPvP, I’d be in a MOBA (well, I am, so I guess that means I was into sPvP? On paper?). Those do team-vs-team worlds better since they focus on it.