Guild Wars 2

Conncept.7638:

This is a raiding game now, it’s no longer about “fun”, its a phallis measuring contest between the worst examples of gaming culture.

Harsh I know, but I hate this culture, EVERYONE hates this culture. And ANet advertised their raiding system as one everyone would be able to get into to some degree, preventing this elitist bullcrap.

Then raids finally released, and that was patently false from the off. And they just shrugged and decided they were okay with it; okay with content that appeal to and even fosters and grows the worst among us (and their hangers on), okay with releasing content for the 99% with 1/100th of the play time and rewards of content released for the 1%, and most of all okay with advertising one product and delivering a completely different one after they had already accepted payment based not on what they delivered but on what they falsely advertised.

I’m quite genuinely curious which game you are talking about. Seriously.

Because raiding in GW2 is nothing like you described. It’s more or less the polar opposite of that.

Amaimon.7823:

I’m clicking buy but it doesn’t work.. it says something about the item being accountbound to the finder.. weird..

While I mostly agree, this spcecific example is a pretty bad one, mostly because in this case the account-bound prevented you from spending ~500g on a plastic stage prop. :P

Jericento.3165:

So, Anet has decided that third party DPS meters like Arc DPS are acceptable within the policy guidelines. Okay. Did anyone at Anet stop to think about how much hostility and general nastiness result from people employing such scripts? It encourages elitism and general bad behavior. Yes, we can report and block… but we really shouldn’t have to. As far as I can tell, no action is ever taken on such “reports”, anyway.

And this is different than elitism over LIs before them how exactly?

At least now people are using a metric which actually has some connection to what they want to judge others by, instead of an entirely unconnected one.

So how is this not a massive improvement? Because the elitism and hostility you lament existed way before those DPS meters, just that they used achievement points, or LIs, or even linked gear.

Jericento.3165:

When I first started playing GW2, I liked that it wasn’t a DPS or meta race. Over the years, that has changed dramatically. Now, Anet is making DPS trackers legit and acceptable; so what’s the message? They don’t want the game to be all about DPS, but they’re going to stack the game so it IS all about DPS. If a meta gets out of hand, nerf it!

More so than any other MMO I’ve played before (and I started with EQ1 :P ), GW2 is much, much, much more about DPS only – and has been so since the beginning.

This was an expected and natural result of having all classes be damage-dealers first and foremost. Damage-elitism was one of the first things you encountered back in the freshly launched GW2, running explorable dungeons.

Grimheart.2853:

Organic combat feeling is important, but so is math. I’ve played an MMO with obscure numbers once, I wasn’t happy about it when all the testing had to be done at my expense.

Plus, GW2 only has the math right now, not the combat feeling. So I’ll go with the part we have. :P

Levetty.1279:

The next elite spec coming in 6(?) months is supposed to be dps.

If past patches and releases are anything to go by, more like 12 months. :P

Cynz.9437:

i also don’t understand why condi play is being forced down our throats.

Honestly, as someone who has been in MMOs for 17 years now, it doesn’t actually matter all that much.

Being MMORPGs with class-based setups, there are going to be “optimal” setups. As DoT vs DD is just a style choice as far as your role goes (which is damage dealer), it’s really just about how you want the numbers above the enemies’ heads to look specifically.

Usually, this is not entirely left up to player choice though, rather the devs design this. Some classes (traditionally for example a Necromancer) might deal their damage more through DoTs, while others (traditionally something like a Warrior or a Mage) uses more direct damage attacks.

GW2… let’s say it is a bit “underdeveloped” in this area. It doesn’t even get the basic underlying design of DoTs right (higher damage per time spent casting them in return for lower overall pressure because your damage takes time to be dealt to the target). So yeah.

Still, it is merely a change to the way the numbers above the enemy are printed. That’s all DoT vs DD means for a damage dealer in GW2, really.

Asur.9178:

There’s nothing to think about. Read carefully next time; if needed, go run your own tests.

Did, and not just after you poked me to do so, because frankly that’d be rather bad if I needed to be prompted to test the DoT vs DD Quickness scaling as a Mesmer applying said Quickness now, wouldn’t it? Now will you finally admit that you misunderstand how skills in GW2 work? Or should I … actually, lemme just go over this again.

I got this AA skill here, it deals:

• 274 damage each attack.
• Scales with 68% of my damage stat.
• Hits a single target
• Casts twice a second

Without Quickness, I deal 548 DPS base, scaling with 136% of my damage stat per second.

I got another AA skill here! It deals:

• 322 damage each attack.
• Scales with 88% of my damage stat.
• Hits a single target
• Casts once a second
• Also causes Vulnerability, but we’re probably at 25 stacks already.

Without Quickness, I deal 322 DPS base, scaling with 88% of my damage stat per second.

The first skill hits 50% more often if I have Quickness, right? I mean it’s just a damage attack, now hitting 3 times per second instead of twice.. Now deals 822 DPS, my damage stat now contributes 204% of itself per second to my outgoing damage (not included in the DPS number, as before).
The second skill, again being just a normal simple attack skill, deals 483 DPS now, hits 3 times every 2 seconds, scaling with 132% per second.

Oh did you notice which of them is the condi skill, due to how differently they work under Quickness? Didn’t think so, because they don’t. Quickness affects condi skills the exact same way it does power skills, they happen 50% faster, applying their conditions faster, and (and this is in fact a downside of conditions) will do the same damage per application assuming the target doesn’t die before they tick out (in which case some of the extra applications and hence bonus from Quickness was wasted compared to direct damage, but the effect is entirely negligible).

Is there any reason you shouldn’t just be reported for trolling?

Honestly, of all the tons of issues GW2 has compared to other MMOs, events instead of quests is really not one I’d list there. In general, they work out more than fine, removing much of the artifical-theme-park feel, and instead asking you to just explore, walk around, and feel like you’re part of a fantasy world. Two thumbs up…

… that is, until we get to (as you listed in the top post) the terrible terrible maps the LS3 brought us so far, full of uninspired, unnecessary and frankly insulting events, evidence of the strict clock on which these map must be produced.

It gets worse because there are the repeatable hearts, with elements such as “plant flowers around the town”. Something which could have made for a neat little non-combat event around the town, after liberating it improving how it looks or something, part of a nice large chain.

Alas, probably due to time constraints – something the maps reek of, everywhere; for being permanent additions they feel entirely temporary, as if they were never meant to stay around – the interesting mechanics were gathered up and pushed onto the hearts so there’s no need to build event scripts for them, while events are just copy&paste generic things over and over.

I don’t know… I mean, on the one hand I disagree. Events are awesome. Much more fun than Quests for me. On the other, the specific 5 maps you picked? Yeah… they make me want my WoW Quests back, agreed.

Asur.9178:

Power DPS HEAVILY relies on near, if not 100%, quickness and alacrity uptime. This means, outside of raid instances with good chronos, condi VASTLY outperforms power – condi outperforms power in nearly all encounters as is.

You will have to excuse me here, but where is power inherently better with Quickness or Alacrity than Conditions.

Applying 1,5x as many conditions deals exactly 50% more damage, too.

Ah, I just re-read, and there’s more factual errors in your post. Nevermind in that case, figured you’re just bitter.

Obtena.7952:

Now, once you let that sink in, realize why every single one of these OMG NO BALANCE threads have little impact. I don’t even get the problem … condition meta is making people quit? If that’s true, those players are fickle to begin with; the littlest change make them drift away.

Also if condition “meta” (the idea is ludicrous, there is no condition vs power meta, there’s a damage meta and it’s been there all along, who cares what icon is in front of the numbers over the enemies’ heads? O.o) is making people quit, why wasn’t “power meta” doing the same beforehand?

By giving it an extra projectile?

But frankly WvW has much deeper systemic issues which need to be fixed, and those fixes would (likely) ruin all previously achieved balance anyhow.

Or in other words, there’s no point doing class balance before we have a Darkness Falls at least.

Rym.1469:

Abyssal Chill – Can we please stop getting traits like this one? “When you apply X condition, apply Y condition”. These traits allows the condition perpetuum mobiles to exist, when by hitting with one non-significant ability players actually apply a lot of pressure and burst with dozens of various conditions. The trait itself is solid power-wise and surely does add some more gameplay to Condition Rev with Chill application, but I’m just not a big fan of this design.

It’s even worse than that, IMO.

One huge problem GW2 has which has gotten significantly worse since release with both elite specs and the constant stapling-on of extra effects to existent skills is Clarity of Purpose.

In a well-designed setup, most active effects you can produce do one thing, but they do it well. One button press → one effect → one purpose → one thought. Allows for tight and fast-paced gameplay because each momentary decision only has to compare one aspect of each possible action.

GW2 is anything but that. Many many skills do 3-5 things, once traits are taken into account often even more. Plenty traits staple effect X onto Y, others then staple something onto X, and so on. Or worse, “Every 20 seconds, when doing X, also perform action Y”. Note that each of these actions in itself has 2-5 effects.

It’s just a mess. Coupled with the constant barrage of skills, we have 5-10 effects hitting us every 1,5-2,0 seconds from just one enemy. Between direct damage, debuffs, conditions, CC, boons on them, healing, etc. There’s just so much.

So yeah, I agree, those traits are just among the worst ones imaginable, but the problem is so much more widespread.

My biggest “I want that!” is the Mesmers in Bloodstone Fen.

They are invulnerable (and unspottable) while their illusion (singular) is up. Once defeated they come out of stealth, cannot trivially re-stealth, and can be easily killed.

Done properly this is exactly how I thought a Mesmer would be: fragile, but very very difficult to nail down.

zealex.9410:

ehhh if only it was what they marketed it as, character progression passed lvl 80

But that’s exactly what it does?

I don’t get the criticism. It effectively allows you to keep collecting XP and “skill points” (mastery points, but same acquisition, from the map) to “level up”, gaining new powers in the process.

Factually no different to gaining levels in 1-80, tbh.

Vayne.8563:

So much of the new content is centered around hard content.

As someone who came over after M59, EQ1, DAoC and WoW, honestly I don’t get this part.

It is true that some of the new content (read: raids) is more difficult than previous content. Yes It is also true that HoT-and-onwards mobs in general (though they toned it down a lot after ep1) are more difficult than vanilla mobs.

But even including that, GW2 is so enjoyable because of how leisure-super-easy it is. Everything. The raiding, the FotM, the mobs, I can pull groups of veterans and basically just hammer all my buttons to defeat them, and it feels fantastic because of how powerful it feels.

What about this is difficult? The very absence of difficulty is why I (now lacking time to properly invest into a MMO) came to this game to begin with. :o

SlippyCheeze.5483:

This already exists in the form of masteries. It will further exist in the form of a second elite spec, expanding each class to have three main “forms” of play associated, not just two as we have today.

You wrote “three” and “two” accidentally, instead of 2 and 1.

Only two classes regularly use their non-elite spec, and even for those it’s a very specialized thing just that the use case is more common, narrow as it is.

Elite specs are a ginormous power creep compared to base classes. Base classes are factually outdated now.

The whole lack of customizability coupled with their stance against modding (and frankly, lack of a modding API) is just feeling like a good ol’ 2001 MMO again.

I thought we evolved past this

Honestly at this point I am very much in favor of removing the extra floating, because it just looks like a bug.

Nothing more or less. It just doesn’t look like intended behavior. To be fair, neither do a lot of things about Legendary armor (all 3 armor types), and this starts at something as acceptable-ish as the Heavy helmet combat pieces. Even those look like a graphic bug.

And don’t get me started on Asura clipping their toes. On legendary armor. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Faaris.8013:

Is that how you live your live your life??

Just kidding. Reason to hurry would be a goal like “want to get the gliding skill” or “really would like to use that thermal tube/rope mastery, so I need to get those mastery points.”

Heh, I think you accidentally forgot or duplicated something. :P

But hrm… I dunno. GW2 just isn’t that MMO. It’s a MMO I enjoy because it is less structured and more “walk around and see what you find”. If I wanted the more goal-driven design, I’d still be playing WoW (same with if I wanted to do raiding a lot, they just do it a lot better plus they allow modding their UI) or even FF14. But that’s the beauty of it, I can have different games for different desires, and GW2 is the one I use for open world unstructured exploration.

It suits itself well for that with the general “light” and “casual” approach and the general plethora of random disconnected things thrown at us.

Ashantara.8731:

The GW1 setting was something like 14th or 15th century Earth, so add 250 years to that and then tell me again that in the 17th/18th century we had choppers, machine guns, alien-movie type of armor and the like…

GW1 was also, frankly, a really meh game built around a handful of cool ideas. Yes I understand there are people here who have a host of fond memories for it ,but do keep in mind that for most players of GW2, it’ll mean squat all.

So, rather have a good art-design than a classic one. Also, GW1 != 14th century europe, unless they had giant fire cauldrons to summon a pocket apocalypse from. Not sure, ofc. Might be.

The point being, in universe, 250 years could easily have seen Magitech come into the world, we already had all kinds of magical nonsense before.

Uuuuh. I just walk around and explore? Why would I be in any hurry to find things?

Ashantara.8731:

What is it with the increasing amount of sci-fi and high-tech designs the design team has been pushing down my throat as of late? Buildings, weapons, armor, utilities etc.

Well the world advanced 250 years. Magitech is everywhere. For science!

Abelisk.4527:

Mesmers have neat condi cleansing so against Necromancers they have 0 issues. The thing about Mesmers is that they constantly apply huge stacks of confusion and torment coupled with doom and in some cases bleed from geomancy, as well as vuln, immob, and cripple.

And?

It’s not like anyone else can’t kill you in 1-2 seconds flat in this game.

Overall combat balance is so borked, it feels so pointless to complain about how my Mesmer might be too strong in 1v1 (lol at the whole concept, tbh, this is a class-based MMO, what are you expecting?) or how my Revenant might be too weak at ~everything.

Abelisk.4527:

It’s impossible to outrun the shatter at its current state.

that’s-the-point.jpg

I mean seriously, what are you expecting when you read the trait? What do you think the use case is?

Curunen.8729:

If I was able to do it, I’d make all weapons hybrid, or at least have skill options for power, condi or both allowing the player to decide how they want to use the weapon and not saying “you can only play this with a power build” etc.

I hate restricting weapons to either power or condi. It limits build possibilities.

Fully agreed on the limitation, but I’d go about it a different way: I’d remove stats on gear / items / runes / sigils.

The focus on conditions vs power then becomes a matter of class, trait and weapon design.
And as a result, maybe some classes are always about conditions. Or maybe not. Or some weapons are for conditions, some for power, some a mix. But you wouldn’t shut out part of them with your gear choice.

wolfyrik.2017:

Holograms? I’m calling it, new class utlity will be third set of utterly worthless AI.

Could make them stationary and attack on their own!
Or could make them follow us around while projecting AE effects!

The possibilities are endless!

Lucentfir.7430:

I think people are still forgetting that HoT was more of a framework expansion than a actual content expansion. As in the content placed in HoT was more for future workings. and feature rich, Examples are Guild Halls, Raids, new skills/spec system(E-Specs), progression system, and Legendary Crafting(Precursor crafting). I definitely have my hopes up for the next expansion being more content rich now that we have good systems in place. A good indicator of this is also the quality of maps released through LS as well as story. So I’m going to say it’ll probably do better than HoT.

You mean they can now expand on things in the future?

Like how they keep adding new precursor scavenger hunts, or how Guild Halls are going to be “worked on” the same way they’ve continuously added new Guild Events since those came out? Or how the new mini-zones all have new adventures as non-combat content since HoT brought in the tech for that?

Oh wait, that never happened either! :o

I have exactly 0 expectations in regards to seeing new work on anything of these. Because if ANet can do one thing really well, it is to throw 15 things at a wall, have 4 stick, then promptly abandon all 4 and instead work on one which didn’t stick.

In a certain way, Revenant is very versatile. It’s equally undertuned at everything, so no part of the class is missing out!

zoomborg.9462:

As long as it’s melee or has some sort of cleave then im good.

Interesting, I would have said the exact opposite. I’d prefer it as a 600-range single target power weapon.

The reason being that we already have a melee range cleaving power weapon. A second one hence has no purpose other than immediately make one worse depending on current balance.

There could be a point to it if Sword 3 were changed to be defensive in nature (making Sword a fully defensive weapon), but that’d be meh for anyone who isn’t a mirage.

Hence I’d rather have a mid-range power weapon, and maybe use the lack of cleave as a balancing part to high single-target damage.

Sombrero.9204:

As a matter of fact the current season of living world (season 3) is of very good quality. We already got 5 new very interesting maps, new content and all this just before the release of a new major expansion.

Interesting.

Those maps are quite a large part of what sorry state I think the GW2 development is in. I am mostly hoping the exp2 maps are better again, HoT had 4 rather cool maps, LS3 has 3 really really bad throwaway maps, one pretty good but still throwaway map (Bloodstone Fen) and one really cool map which sadly again is built for anything but longevity (Draconis Mons).

Overall, the maps are just… they feel as if they were designed to be temporary, tbh.

Personally I’ve already stopped caring about GW2 for the most part.

But then, I did about a year after release. That isn’t to say I don’t play the game fairly actively (though only an hour a day, if you were to average it out), but I’ve given up hope the game can truly go anywhere, and hence I’m not overly committed. I like my guildies, a lot. But if someone were to show me a MMORPG where I can talk them into switching to, I’d be gone in a heartbeat.

It’s not even shiney. It’s new, yeah. But it looks so laughably bad during combat (and on Asura/Charr in general, but that’s just business as usaul) that I don’t see the point getting it.

I mean it’s nice if you have absolutely nothing else to do I suppose, but honestly at that point I’d rather find another game

cyn.2157:

it’ll certainly be a while, if they ever do, because it would (presumably) be a different legendary armor/design available through another game mode (my money would be on Fractals, because they seem to like them – or maybe WvW, since that was such a big draw originally and has had such a dry spell – and it would benefit so much from it).

And with them already having confirmed that there won’t be another set of legendary armor…

(or at least, there’s no plans to ever create another one, though the plans might ofc change in the future)

Okhu.7948:

There sure is a lot of scummy people in this post. “You raid and you have a kid / family? WEW I FEEL BAD FOR THEM, WoW those neglected kids! But don’t be rude to us about not being able to raid. We’re entitled afterall :’(” Do you people even read before you type your toxic comments to people?

This is especially funny/sad if you consider just how casual GW2 is, even when raiding. I was a raidleader for 8 years in World of Warcraft, and in a very casual guild, and I easily spent 3x-4x the time on that than I do for active raiding here.

The one to Rule.2593:

I actually care about them which is kinda rare for me, who wouldn’t be upset if their lover just left without a goodbye for who knows how long?

Same.

In fact I’d much rather have episode 6 be about caring for our friends (and nothing else), getting Braham back, talking to Rox, trying to get Jory and Kas back at the same table, removing Taimi as the principal plot device, that stuff, rather than it being about the mess they have now.

Yeah I agree with TexZero.

It’s quite badly implemented. Which is even more jarring because everything not about the god is extremely well-done this episode. And everything about him is terribly done. Really weird. As if it was some last-minute change to the storyline.

Scipio.3204:

It seems like their answer will be no team at all instead of a new one, meaning they don’t plan to create more Legendary Armor sets ever again

Bit disappointing (would prefer to get a better re-implementation in the future. But honestly, okay. Rather have the people work on actual armor and invest the time used on ugly combat transformations on Asura/Charr support instead.

Okay, who am I kidding… not going to happen anyhow.

Yeah, fully agreed. This is so utterly disappointing. Come oooon. This is the best your team can do? Then you need a new team

Especially if this mess took 2 years to cough up!

Harper.4173:

GW2 being multi-racial was a mistake.
They shot themselves in the foot from a development standpoint – having so many character models that you need to make the armor fit and work for means every piece of armor is going to take a LOT more time to make.
And in a skin-driven game – that’s a problem – and a big one at that.

Oh definitely.

Much as I enjoy playing Asura, mechanically you can see the devs are stopping most of their work after humans, and norn are just lucky enough to share the same body and sylvari can share most armor due to a very similar shape. Asura and Charr with their more unique frames lose out as always.

You’re right, in hindsight, making it 1-race-only would have been a much much better choice.

Yeah I didn’t want to use the actual name for spoiler reasons, and they’re mechanically quite similar. TYVM!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

My theory. It’s an unfinished, buggy forum without the usual bells and whistles due to conflicts with the company that did the forum design before launch and the subsequent termination of contact. In addition, no one at ANet knows the forum code well enough to make substantive changes or fixes.

So basically like all the issues GW2 has on a code level nowadays? :P

mrstealth.6701:

But I don’t see it as something that should be allowed to continue. Don’t punish those doing it, just fix the game to where it’s not a possible/viable thing to do.

Exactly, if this is unwanted by the devs, make the turrets only last 45-60 seconds or something, or any other desired amount.

But as long as this is using your skills in the perfectly intended fashion, it’s a problem on the devs’ side for designing 5 minutes lasting stationary pets which attack without a command being required.

These sound real enough, because they’re small tweaks to problems which would require redesigns instead. But these would then ofc just pave it over again for another 2 years or so.

Out of curiosity, are the two Wyverns the final fight? Done those yesterday, but wasn’t sure whether I missed something.

Now that I’ve seen them ingame, there’s one entirely unforgivable thing IMO:

• You again screwed up Charr and Asura.
• No tail flap/hole for Charr.
• No toes for Asura

I mean yeah we get it, the message is clear, play a human-type race. I already deleted two of my characters and remade them as Norn, I do get the message loud and clear.

But could you be just a tiny bit less obvious with the whole “nudge them off the races which are annoying to develop for”? This is legendary armor. This was supposed to be the grand big thing. The epitome of armor.

And yet like 90%+ of them in the game, I can’t even use the shoes it comes with and will be using the same 2-4 skins of all in the game which actually work. Well done. I’m disappointed to a degree I didn’t think possible.

Hrm, I was more thinking like the custom coolant flow analysis plugins my dad used to have at work before retiring, to properly construct coolant pumps. The base software was off the shelf, but you realistically couldn’t use it for their purposes without their plugins.

For designing a game item, I would suppose that you have custom-built plugins which can automatically do some of the texturing and underlying structure for animations for you. I mean this is a MMO, you need a lot of items, so makes sense to automate as much as possible. Probably also got a “generator” which starts from a template and with some simple choices does some of the initial work for you.

Yeah but someone must have written extensive plugins for specific use in GW2, right?

That’s why you have tooling programmers in game companies, they do that stuff for the rest of the team, custom plugins, entire software, etc.

Uh, I don’t see the problem?

I mean you are using your class skills as intended, placing 1-5 turrets around. Is that not how the turret skills work?

Xenon.4537:

I want this more than the new legendary armor… how sad is that?

Well it’d probably look significantly better by virtue of there being a lower limit to looks.

I’m also baffled that of all the possible leather / hardened leather / padded leather / light mail armor types imaginable, they go for trenchcoats.

The one stupidly impractical armor-design out of all of them, if you wanted to actually use it in a fight. Unbelievable. I bet the problem was that the people who wrote the tool they have to use to make the armors made the very first one a trenchcoat to show off an early idea for an Engineer, and then never bothered to implement a second type into the tool before leaving.

And the tool is written in undocumented Haskell, ofc.