Guild Wars 2

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Hi folks! Now that I’ve settled in a bit at ANet, I wanted to check in again on this thread. The first Living World episode that I was involved in, “Echoes of the Past,” has now been live for a few days. We’ve all been really pleased that people seem to be enjoying the story and content a lot. But I’d love to ask you all for more specifics. What were your favorite narrative moments? What did you like about the content? About the way it was told? And of course, I want to hear what you think we can still do better on.

Thanks in advance to everyone for their comments. I’m very excited to be part of such a great game, and to work with such an excellent team of creative people.

Leah I just wanted to say that whatever leadership, and organizational changes you made to the writing team really worked. This has been the best Living Story chapter we’ve had, period.

Specifics that I liked:

-The library quest had just TONS of extra lore love scattered about, and some books even had their own flavor depending on what character wrote them. Koss, Nicholas Sanders, and Melonni (who’s an AWFUL poet btw, but I take that was intentional and funny!) all had their own voice, despite being just 2 pages long or so. Your team did a lot with a little with those books. That said aside from some of the books that I mentioned where there was individual voice, some of the other books were a little exposition heavy. Instead of just opening the book and seeing a description of what the book contained such as Vekk’s thesis on dragons, an “actual” passage of the book would have been more effective. So there’s eomthing to improve on for the future.

-Dialogue with characters, less romancey and forced feeling, characters were more focused on what they should be doing, which I enjoyed more. A tiny bit exposition heavy here as well, but to be honest, I don’t really blame you, we have for a year and a half now, been so separated from Guild Wars 1 events and now we had to throw them at people all at once. Players deserved some explanation. Something that should have been happening since Season 2 began considering the origins of the Zephyrites but was largely ignored, most of the exposition and history lessons focused on Scarlet up until this chapter, we were frankly quite sick of Scarlet. Thanks for keeping any mentions of her minimal. Ogden’s dialogue I enjoyed as well, particularly his “show, don’t tell” method for the hourglass and Glint’s lair. In the future, a little less exposition and a little more showing rather than telling, but Glint’s lair did that very well, seeing scenes that leave a little mystery left to them, and gradually coming to an understanding of what was going on by the end.

-Friction between Canach and Caithe was great. I’m glad that not everyone is lovey dovey all the time and that there is still room for ego and disagreement in the world, even between allies. It’s no cause to cease working together, but it makes character relationships more interesting.

-Connection to Guild Wars 1. It felt like the last 2 years, the writers for this game have distanced themselves from Guild Wars 1 needlessly, like suddenly the world and lore that this game was built on was no longer an important aspect of making the world feel real like it had a history and generations of people lived and died there. This chapter brought in a LOT of Guild Wars 1 and reminded us that this is the same world, and it makes the story more rich and real in that way.

Ayrilana.1396:

The warehouse part after reminded me of Indiana Jones.

It should.

Tucked away in the back is the Ark of the Covenant.

Pic related

I personally would prefer waypoints, running across a zone to get to an event and having to deal with mobs trying to slow and immobilize you constantly is pretty annoying. I just want to get to the event where actual fun with other people is taking place, not kill random trash by myself because it was in the way and insisted that I stay and kill it and probably miss the event.

If not waypoints, mounts. Swiftness is not enough.

This living story for once is good, it actually connects to GW1 and makes the game a sequel instead of trying to distance itself from source material as much as possible as past GW2 content has done.

The dialogue and storytelling was done much better than in prior Living story installments too.

Past lore is what keeps a world feeling tangible and alive, that it has a real history to it and people lived and died in this world and they did things that have effects on the world even today. Past LS has seemingly wanted to spurn all of that. This chapter brings it back into perspective.

It really feels like some changes were made in the writing team, and if so, they were good changes.

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

I still think this is a god awful idea, even on large servers people don’t want to stand around ticking siege, losing out on fun fights, losing out on wxp, losing out on loot. It’s a thankless job, and very boring.

White swords mean you only need sentries on keeps/garrisons.

No white swords mean you will basically need sentries on every tower you want to keep. Anything Tier 3 you’ll have to have a sentry on.

Where do you find that many people who want to just stand around ticking siege for an hour or so at a time?

In fact I see an extremely negative thing coming from this change.

Literally watch duty rosters.

Because servers won’t be able to find enough people for sentry duty and the few that do volunteer will be sentry for extended hours which is just stupid, they will resort to guilds having sentry duty rosters. They will draft you to watch a tower or garrison on a schedule, and unless you have a good excuse like work or something, you might just find yourself kicked from your guild for failing to show up for scheduled sentry duty.

Is that what you want from Guild Wars 2? World of Warcraft raid guild mentality where you’re expected to be there on raid schedule or get kicked?

And vice versa…

I play both games so I notice the lack of a QOL thing in one missing in the other quite a lot.

For instance in GW1, the outfits are separated into 2 slots rather than 1, having a head and a body slot. Meaning you could wear a festival hat with an outfit. instead of wearing both pieces of the outfit. It’s not the level of freedom of mix and match we had under the town clothes system, but it’s a fairly good compromise I’d think. Since most screenshots I saw of mix and match town clothes were most of the parts of an outfit, with a different head item. Like the wintersday outfit with tophats, ringmaster hats, and aviator sunglasses, etc.

GW1 measures age in months, GW2 measures age in days. Sometimes, both are handy to have. It’d be nice to see an age in “11 months (355 days).” or something like that.

Another thing that is handy is.. an aggro range indicator on the minimap, it also kind of acted like a range indicator for certain weapons (shortbows, spears, scepters, staffs) Though I don’t know if aggro radius and range line up to the same here in GW2.

Then there’s the obvious skill templates, guild halls, greater control of NPC companions, the ability to not have a pet as a ranger, that I know have been discussed in the past, guild halls a part of CDI, etc.

But how possible could some of those little things be to bring over to GW2?

and while we’re on it, how possible could it be to bring some little things back over to GW1. The thing I can think of off the top of my head is.. minipet slot. Instead of needing to open your inventory to click to summon your mini every time you change zones, I do like that in GW2 your minis are out all the time. GW1 you even have somewhat of a “wardrobe” system going on with minis being dedicated in the HoM.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, guys. Some of you are unhappy about this change, I can see that. BUT… quite honestly, most of you are sort of (I hate to use the word) ranting (sorry!) instead of offering suggestions.

I assure you, the team leader told me not 15 minutes ago, they will listen to suggestions.

• Does that mean you get everything you want? Probably not.
• Does that mean you should suggest something? Yes, of course! Because they’re expecting player input.

So you want lower increments? Think it through and present a suggestion! You want XYZ in the interface? Post that idea. You would rather see something else? Post what you think about that other thing. Please don’t get into the whole “I’m going to kick the devs and their little dogs, too” because it’s not doing you or us any good at all.

I’m not here to apologize. I’m here to communicate and right now, the communication is coming in without a whole lot of substance. Over to you for suggestions and constructive input!

Prices of Gemstore items go up in increments of 25’s. If you absolutely must stick with this system, 25 should be the lowest denomination of gems you can buy, followed by 50, then 100.

If you have those denominations available, people can at least use it to come up with the number of gems they need for something.

Like say you have an item that costs 700 gems and another that costs 250 gems that I’d want.

So maybe I buy $10 worth of gems with cash, that puts me at 800, I buy the 700 gem outfit and now I want that flying carpet… but I only have 100 gems. I don’t want to spend more cash for just 150 gems, so I might opt to do this with gold… wait.. I don’t have enough gold to buy 400 gems at once.

I guess I just don’t get to get that item under this system.

If you had lower denominations available, I could click to buy 50 gems, and then click to buy 100 gems. There, I spent $10 and some gold and got the things I wanted.

Under this current system? I’m not going to spend the $10, because I can see outright how you’re trying to squeeze me for an extra $5 on top. I don’t like companies trying to milk me like that, so I refuse to do business with them.

This is just an awful change.

I don’t buy gems with gold very often, as I usually have more expendable income than I do in game gold, but..

If an item I wanted was 25 more gems than I had currently, or 50 or 100, anything under 200 gems more than I currently had, I’d use gold, because it was flexible, while buying gems with money I always ended up exceeding what I needed.

Now both options exceed what I need.

Guess this is a good way to convince me not to buy gems, ever again. Period. I’m done as long as the system is like this.

I’ll take my money elsewhere and just leech in game.

What’s next? Raising prices on items by 1 gem so that items are 401 gems, 801 gems, etc, just to trick us into paying for an extra $5 worth of gems every time we want to buy something?

I used to think Arenanet was a fair company.

daft inquisitor.1605:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

No it doesn’t.

I literally had about 200 more magic find than about 5 other people (between boosters, etc) when running around with them, and I saw maybe 2 rares while 2 of them got precursors that night in WvW. Magic find makes no difference.

It makes a significant difference, but your example of using precursors is flawed, because they have an insanely low drop rate to begin with. Theirs was an instance of incredibly good luck, not of being boosted into good drops with Magic Find.

Magic find makes 0 difference in rank up chests or champion bags from Tower/Keep Lords. That’s where you’re more likely to get a precursor than as a random drop from a killed player/veteran guard (where magic find makes a difference)

John Corpening.9847:

Hello!

The adopted devs got together again earlier this week for a lunch meeting to bring feedback from their guilds and discuss their observations. The team has already begun addressing some of the feedback the devs brought back as well as some of the issues that you have brought up on our forums.

here’s some feedback on this

Coming with the build next week, build sites for rams will be trimmed down in size. This is to reduce the visual clutter with build sites, since rams are often built very close to each other, and make it easier to tell a ram apart from other siege when you are building it. There are also changes coming later to label the build interacts with what you are building. So you should see “Build Ram”, “Build Catapult” etc. instead of just “Build”. These were suggestions taken from the discussion on siege trolls.

Good change, in fact the one I’m most positive about. I can’t comment about siege disabler changes cause I’m not sure what you’re going to do yet, just don’t smiter’s boon them.

There were a handful of other tweaks brought up in our discussions that we are planning. These include reducing the number of people who can rally off of a kill.

As an elementalist, this is worrisome. Rallying is important to us as #1, we’re a vulnerable target, we get downed if there is any focus on us at all, that’s just going to happen. We can blow through our ways to avoid damage in about 5s, after that we’re exhausted and just going to get hit that’s end of story. We have paper armor and low health unless you gear specifically to boost those, and if you do, you have next to no ranged pressure. “Eles, necros, suppress that parapet” .. that doesn’t work with 2k damage meteor shower ticks because you have all of about 10% crit chance. So if you want some damage, you’re going to have at most, about 15-16k health, that’s with 10-20 points in water, and vit food, and a little bit of gear to help boost your health while still keeping over 30% crit and 200% crit damage so you can provide ranged pressure.
#2, we aoe, so if we do get downed after we aoe’ed a lot of people, there’s a decent chance we may rally if some people we aoe’d die. That balances out how squishy we are.

If there’s less rallying, that means more running back from waypoints, that means less fun playing ele in wvw, that means eles may just say screw it and go to a class that can have their cake and eat it too, like warrior or necro that even in full berserker gear have 20k+ health. Warriors build tanky as a part of a hammer train, they’re not expected to suppress or bomb areas, so they don’t really have to worry about damage.

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

I don’t like it, it’s manageable on large population servers, but on low population servers they just don’t have the spare bodies to sentry every tower, so they’ll just flip with no warning. Even on large servers, it forces more need to sentry, and sentry is the most boring, unrewarding, thankless job in wvw. While you’re on teamspeak or mumble hearing about all these battles you’re missing out on, and all the loot bags and champ bags from towers your team is taking, all the wxp you’re missing out on.. and all you get to do for an hour is tick siege. If you only have a few hours a day to play and want to WvW, you don’t want to spend 1 hour of your time ticking siege.

We are also going to test out awarding points per kill. PPK was part of the scoring discussion and something we wanted to try. We will be looking for your feedback on that change after it goes live.

Terrible idea for 2 reasons. #1 it undermines the core gameplay of WvW which is taking objectives and defending them for the tick. It’ll encourage spawnpoint camping
#2, we already have bloodlust, which encourages using finishers rather than just caking the guy in aoes to finish them off. Encouraging a finisher gives the downed a chance to rally, or a chance for their team to throw a bunch of aoes on their downed to save them. If you get points for just unloading on the downed instead of needing to use a finisher, there’s next to no chance of rally.

John Smith.4610:

Cakemeister.5792:

I just want magic find to make a difference.

Magic find makes a huge difference.

Not in the way players see it.

Magic Find makes a difference in mob drops only.

It does not affect drops from chests, it does not affect drops from champ bags, it does not affect rates at getting upgraded items from the mystic forge, it does not affect drop rates of scraps/tickets from black lion chests.

It affects the least important means of acquiring good loot. Corpse drops.

That’s it.

That’s not really making a difference where it counts.

Unless you care to correct me and tell us that magic find DOES affect things like chests, champ bags, and the mystic forge.

The only real use I’ve ever had for magic find? Farming Tier 5 and Tier 6 fine crafting mats.

Because that’s where you expect to get those mats, from mob drops.

People don’t run around killing random trash mobs hunting legendary precursors. They kill meta event bosses that reward chests, and they throw rares/exotics in the mystic forge. In fact, most people don’t even try to get precursors from those boss chests. They only hunt them via the mystic forge, or just buy them. Magic Find doesn’t affect that.

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

Dirame.8521:

Devildoc.6721:

The way I’m seeing it, enjoy lightning rod while you can, it’s going to get nerfed. The potential for bursts is really high and people will cry about being melted by Eles almost instantly. Lightning Hammer and Tornado make lightning rod deadly. Static Field + Gust will also be dangerous.

We’ll see an internal cooldown or gutted damage in a month or two max.

Lol, it doesn’t deal THAT much damage geez. The only way a Staff Ele would kill someone is in a combo where he goes, Static Field -> gust -> Lava Font -> Unteady Ground. And that’s a hard combo to pull off if your enemy can dodge.

Well I see no way to hide it, it’s going to get nerfed so..

okay there’s no ICD on lightning rod so there are some combos you can do that will trigger it multiple times for massive burst damage.

Static field + Gust an enemy INTO static field will trigger Lightning Rod twice, and it can do about 8k damage almost instantly that way.

Tornado when it hits will hit someone for about 4k (electrified tornado) + 3k (Tornado’s normal hit) + 4k, for over 10k damage every 3s to 5 targets, and that’s not even 25 stacks of might and all that.

Lightning hammer … the burst from that will kill people almost instantly. it’s about a 20k burst in 1s.

ROFL. Exaggerate much?

not at all.

That’s not even 16k and it’s at least 5seconds of casting. And it’s on a lowbie PVE mob.

….

Level 80 mob in cursed shore actually, and almost instantaneous. It’s less damage because Lightning leap didn’t crit. It normally crits for between 3k-3.5k in those same conditions.

Windblast: about 1k + lightning rod 4k= 5k
Static Field: a bit over 1500 + lightning rod 4k+= 5.5-6k
Lightning Leap: a bit over 3k damage or up to 3.5k damage + Lightning rod 4k-5k damage (by this time you might be triggering bolt to the heart), from 7k-8.5k damage

That’s pretty close to 20k, stack some might and some bloodlust and it’d be higher.

The longest part to the cast is the 1s cast time on wind blast. Static field doesn’t take long to cast (.75s), wind blast has a 1s windup, and lightning leap though it says 0.75s cast is actually instant it just has a 0.75s long animation.

So the real ’casting" is 1.75s.

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

Dirame.8521:

Devildoc.6721:

The way I’m seeing it, enjoy lightning rod while you can, it’s going to get nerfed. The potential for bursts is really high and people will cry about being melted by Eles almost instantly. Lightning Hammer and Tornado make lightning rod deadly. Static Field + Gust will also be dangerous.

We’ll see an internal cooldown or gutted damage in a month or two max.

Lol, it doesn’t deal THAT much damage geez. The only way a Staff Ele would kill someone is in a combo where he goes, Static Field -> gust -> Lava Font -> Unteady Ground. And that’s a hard combo to pull off if your enemy can dodge.

Well I see no way to hide it, it’s going to get nerfed so..

okay there’s no ICD on lightning rod so there are some combos you can do that will trigger it multiple times for massive burst damage.

Static field + Gust an enemy INTO static field will trigger Lightning Rod twice, and it can do about 8k damage almost instantly that way.

Tornado when it hits will hit someone for about 4k (electrified tornado) + 3k (Tornado’s normal hit) + 4k, for over 10k damage every 3s to 5 targets, and that’s not even 25 stacks of might and all that.

Lightning hammer … the burst from that will kill people almost instantly. it’s about a 20k burst in 1s.

ROFL. Exaggerate much?

not at all.

Dirame.8521:

Devildoc.6721:

Dirame.8521:

Devildoc.6721:

The way I’m seeing it, enjoy lightning rod while you can, it’s going to get nerfed. The potential for bursts is really high and people will cry about being melted by Eles almost instantly. Lightning Hammer and Tornado make lightning rod deadly. Static Field + Gust will also be dangerous.

We’ll see an internal cooldown or gutted damage in a month or two max.

Lol, it doesn’t deal THAT much damage geez. The only way a Staff Ele would kill someone is in a combo where he goes, Static Field -> gust -> Lava Font -> Unteady Ground. And that’s a hard combo to pull off if your enemy can dodge.

Well I see no way to hide it, it’s going to get nerfed so..

okay there’s no ICD on lightning rod so there are some combos you can do that will trigger it multiple times for massive burst damage.

Static field + Gust an enemy INTO static field will trigger Lightning Rod twice, and it can do about 8k damage almost instantly that way.

Tornado when it hits will hit someone for about 4k (electrified tornado) + 3k (Tornado’s normal hit) + 4k, for over 10k damage every 3s to 5 targets, and that’s not even 25 stacks of might and all that.

Lightning hammer … the burst from that will kill people almost instantly. it’s about a 20k burst in 1s.

Are you talking PvP or WvW? Because in PvP Static field + gust is just 3k damage, 4k on a good day, and 6 on a very very good day.

I think WvW is where you’ll really see it. PvP they kitten your stats to where nothing really does a lot of burst damage.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Gokil.2543:

While I can’t say I like the fact these skills require channels to activate, I disagree wholeheartedly with the observation they’re worse now than they were before. People seem to forget the fact that the water elemental’s ability is a whopping 7K AoE heal. That’s completely bonkers, even if you have to wait a couple of seconds for it to activate.

Even crazier when you’re on comms with teammates in tpvp and you can call out an on-demand 7k heal for them.

I know it seems good, but the elemental takes a very, very long time to actually cast the heal. It is by far the most unresponsive thing I’ve seen in any game, and the huge cast time that the elemental has on the heal doesn’t help either.

If it actually started casting the heal within 3 seconds after commanding it to, it’d be great.

Delay before the elmental even STARTS casting it, huge cast time that starts with the knockback punch, and then a small radius around the elemental. It just adds up to about as useful as teets on a bull. By the time you need the heal you’re looking at about 5s, till it happens, and with an easily readable animation and the fact that the ele will run to their elemental to give them a group hug, pop a stability and use a knockback/launch on the ele and they won’t get their heal.

Don’t know if I ever posted my ele or not in this thread, searching for my name didn’t show anything so.. here goes.

The LH burst with LR is not slow or really avoidable. Once static field goes up if you try to dodge you’ll get hit. I suppose you could use a blocking/invincibility skill instead.

My normal meteors hit for 6k, 8k if the target is under 50% and I have might/stacks. Meteornado would push 11k or even break it, perfect storm situations up to 13k.

Never said it’d be as high as meteornado especially not aoe, but, against a single target, roaming, LH/LR is deadly.

Pros:
New Search Filters
Not on Awesomiumprocess so it’s faster and more reliable.

Cons:
Selling items is more janky, with no button to match lowest seller and “sell all” Selling a stack of an item before was easy, 2 clicks. Now you need to actually find the price to sell at and click and drag a slider
Buying items in bulk is also more janky, instead of just typing in a quantity and it automatically pulling the lowest possibly prices until it satisfies your desired quantity, and showing you the total amount you’d spend and seeing the prices you’re spending individually on the right… now you have to set a max price if the lowest priced seller isn’t selling enough to satisfy your quantity.
No projected net profit when selling
Transactions defaults to history rather than current transactions
Stupid “get more gold” button., every time I see that, I want to slash someone’s tires. and put sugar in their gas tank.

Lostwingman.5034:

So, with the change to Tornado to be a lightning field, has anyone tested out its synergy with lightning rod?

Well, field play would only be a real issue if you had other Lightning Rod elementalists using leaps through your tornado with lightning hammer.

Wyrden.4713:

warrior hammeer combo stronger.

I don’t know if it’s as fast. The part about the LH burst in combination with lightning rod is that it’s almost instantaneous. Wind blast triggers it, and being knocked back a few feet into static field triggers it again, and followed by a leap while you’re still stunned, triggering it again. There’s no space to dodge or heal out of it. If you dodge while static field is all around you you’re going to hit yourself for about 5-6k because static field will hit you, stun, you, and proc lightning rod.

Jski.6180:

Avead.5760:

You mean something lighting hammer 3 knock back through a static field form both sides and then a leap through it with 2 for the combo would trigger it 4 times?Does it work like that???
And does it even do 4k in max pve stats ? :O It was way less in spvp which they use to balance pvp traits.
It is interesting but so is stoneheart,fresh air and many other traits that you usually dont pick in pvp for many reasons that people complain about since the beggining

Every time you hard cc some one even if they are still cc it will trigger LR so yes that combo should work if the person has no stab because stab is the hard counter to LR.

I was trying d/f LR its not too bad though my build is a bit tankly and i am running the aura runes so i get a 5 sec air aura. I am playing with new ele things in wvw mostly i do not spvp that much. Though i think azren race ele can get more of out LR becuse they have a daze in there ability.

For spvp i would thinking running earth shield or lighting hammer for the added cc you may even get use out of nado once you pop nado vs someone who has no stab it should be an auto win. That and force atm is a hard counter to ranger and ranger is super big now in spvp from what ppl tell me so bit you may want to think about running 6 air 4 earth 4 ar just for the cdr in counter range attk.

No joke if an ele with a lightning hammer gets in melee and pops a static field, pop stability or you will die.

Avead.5760:

You mean something lighting hammer 3 knock back through a static field form both sides and then a leap through it with 2 for the combo would trigger it 4 times?Does it work like that???
And does it even do 4k in max pve stats ? :O It was way less in spvp which they use to balance pvp traits.
It is interesting but so is stoneheart,fresh air and many other traits that you usually dont pick in pvp for many reasons that people complain about since the beggining

yes, wind blasting someone into static field and then lightning leaping at them will cause 3 triggers of lightning rod instantly. There are possibly other ways to trigger it even more times in a row say dropping lightning hammer and being in air attunement to gust them into static field a second time (causing 4 lightning rod procs in quick succession, after the wind blast)

I was doing 4k damage lightning rods with PVE stats yes, but no bloodlust, no might.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Paradox.1380:

Dye Armor
Can Use Wardrobe just open it up
Can use Minis

http://youtu.be/D-On3Ya0_4Y?t=6m10s

This video needs its own topic, it must be highlighted and arenanet MUST see it. The bug with the content guide pointing you to above level content is hilarious and misleading and is worse to new players than any prior system in the game.

Im actually QUITE surprised that there aren’t threads complaining about the guide leading them to zones where they get one shot, but then again, if they are the type of player to need and use the guide, forums are probably WAY too complicated and confusing for them.

I’d be embarrassed if I was an Anet employee working on this system.

Avead.5760:

Funny thing is that the glyph was like that all the time.Just you not having any control of the skills made you not counting on them at all.. so you didnt really mind that they were so unreliable.Like the healing from water ele.Pls tell me a god that could use that skill consistently??! Most of the times i were “Heal me you kittening piece of kitten” and nothing would happen.
Now that you know when this skills will happen you can witness by yourself how unreliable they are..Thats the only change! Casting time isnt that long imo and its not what makes the feel of the skills bad. still think its kind of a buff though

Devildoc.6721:

People actually thought it was going to be a good damage skill, very funny.

This has to be a bug..For the love of god i hope it is

Well I’ll tick lava font for about 4k damage, and add a 4k fireball into their face every couple seconds as well, or I’ll fiery rush into them for about 5k damage.

I’m actually thinking Tornado + Lightning Rod might be viable instead, though Anet will probably gut Lightning Rod once people start getting melted by it in certain ways and complain.

Dirame.8521:

Devildoc.6721:

The way I’m seeing it, enjoy lightning rod while you can, it’s going to get nerfed. The potential for bursts is really high and people will cry about being melted by Eles almost instantly. Lightning Hammer and Tornado make lightning rod deadly. Static Field + Gust will also be dangerous.

We’ll see an internal cooldown or gutted damage in a month or two max.

Lol, it doesn’t deal THAT much damage geez. The only way a Staff Ele would kill someone is in a combo where he goes, Static Field -> gust -> Lava Font -> Unteady Ground. And that’s a hard combo to pull off if your enemy can dodge.

Well I see no way to hide it, it’s going to get nerfed so..

okay there’s no ICD on lightning rod so there are some combos you can do that will trigger it multiple times for massive burst damage.

Static field + Gust an enemy INTO static field will trigger Lightning Rod twice, and it can do about 8k damage almost instantly that way.

Tornado when it hits will hit someone for about 4k (electrified tornado) + 3k (Tornado’s normal hit) + 4k, for over 10k damage every 3s to 5 targets, and that’s not even 25 stacks of might and all that.

Lightning hammer … the burst from that will kill people almost instantly. it’s about a 20k burst in 1s.

The way I’m seeing it, enjoy lightning rod while you can, it’s going to get nerfed. The potential for bursts is really high and people will cry about being melted by Eles almost instantly. Lightning Hammer and Tornado make lightning rod deadly. Static Field + Gust will also be dangerous.

We’ll see an internal cooldown or gutted damage in a month or two max.

The delay on the “on demand” skills is really bad, makes it not really worth using. Only elemental worth using at all is earth elemental for the same reason as you always used it.. to take hate from you and let you do ranged damage while it tanks when soloing.

FGS fiery rush’s last hit hits for about the same as a lava font tick, slightly higher, but you’re not getting the fireball damage on top of the lava font hit.

People actually thought it was going to be a good damage skill, very funny.

Novalitus.7382:

Hey guys,

I’m a returning player myself. I love the way the game looks and I love the gamestyle of it. They have done an outstanding job on the design.

Whenever I fully devote to a MMO I spend a lot of time and money on it.

This is what I intend to do with GW2.

However reading the recent forum topics and looking at the publisher’s recent decisions and changes to the game, I am finding myself facing a big question:
‘’Will this game change further into something ugly?’’
and
‘’Will this game still -be- there after 6-12 moths?’’ (thats how long I expect to take to be fully geared etc).

Because I don’t want to make a mistake I made with another game, where I heavily invested time and money in it and just as I was hitting endgame, the game closed.

This patch is the “NGE” of GW2 (NGE being the “New Game Enhancements” update to Star Wars Galaxies that watered down the game and led to it falling into obscurity and eventually being shut down)

I think it’ll drive away more players than it attracts. The fact that Arenanet is basing this decision on what works in China was a bad one.

We’re not Chinese. We don’t like the same thing that Chinese players do. We have a different culture and history. You can’t use an umbrella solution and assume “all people are the same”. I’m not talking race so don’t accuse me of racism, I’m talking about the culture in which you were brought up in, they’re distinctly different.

To Chinese players, maybe they do feel that the game being like this gives them more of a sense of progression.

To me at least and it seems to a lot of other western players, we consider locking all these features away to be watering down/dumbing down the game and insulting to our intelligence. Especially when anet’s expressed rationale for the change was not bringing us into the same gameplay as China is going through but to “help new players understand the game”. It makes it feel like pic related.

LordByron.8369:

Devildoc.6721:

It makes collections something that can only be done by the rich.

You might wonder “so what’s the problem just save up the money and buy it?”

The problem is it’s simply not worth it. You want to do the Uncanny Canner collection? Sure. the last two collectibles will run you about 44g. Doesn’t sound like much I know, but your reward for completing the collection is a 20 slot bag., something only worth about 12g.

You’ve made a system where the fun is robbed by the already wealthy people of GW2 working the market to get even more wealthy, and the carrot to chase is just not worth the hassle.

F, please apply yourself, see me after class.

This is how the developer in charge sees the problem:

LordByron.8369:

LordByron.8369:

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

If by “really perceived” you mean that you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken, then no… I don’t care.

referring to market manipulation.

I might argue is impossible to debate the issue there since there are too many interested in preserving all as it is since they are guilty of what is happening.

P.S. you might also want to see the 10000% price spike after announcement.
With obvious relistings.

P.P.S: with this i mean that non tp players only chance is to make him know there is indeed a bad perception about the market manipulation.
Don t know how unfortunately.
I hope he read some of latest topics about it

The thing is that arenanet employees and a privileged few playtesters on the beta servers either took advantage of their knowledge or shared their knowledge with their friends/guildmates to take advantage and manipulate the market. That’s called insider trading in the real world, it’s illegal and if this were a real market John Smith and the rest of the participants would be in federal prison.

This economy is a joke because the demand side of the equation is basically under direct control of John Smith.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I understand the problem.

If you could buy this stuff 1 silver on the trading post it would be meaningless, you’d have the collection finished in a day and there’s be nothing left.

If you want to get the drops yourself, you can do content, casually, without focusing on it and fill in collections as you.

Encourages people to do that content so they can get stuff to sell if it drops. Working as intended.

The problem is it’s RNG and utilizing events that have 30 minute to 3 hour timers on them. You get ONE chance to get the item to drop, and there’s a really good chance that even if you camp this event and do nothing else that you will never see the drop.

It’s like saying you don’t see a problem with the current way of getting precursors, which is get extremely lucky with RNG, or pay someone else for getting extremely lucky.

In fact, precursors are better off because at least they can drop from pretty much anything.

Vikkela.7261:

Do not buy any of the expensive collectible items now. They will not be able to control the rarity of the items when the places of drops becomes public knowledge, you’ll see the prices go down.
Have patience

the items have always been super rare, so they’ll be easy to control, like precursors.

Spiderbite.8049:

false.
perfect execution to continue chasing the carrot

Not even.

Who’s going to chase a 12g carrot that costs 44g to catch?

Who’s going to blow 40 black lion tickets to catch a 5 black lion ticket carrot?

Who’s going to make all the ascended armor in the game for an 8g exotic?

at first I liked the idea of scavenger hunts with rewards, finding things and collecting them. Sounded like fun.

But as I’ve been trying to do some of them, I get stuck by the same thing every time: There’s always at least 1 part that drops via RNG and is really rare, and due to leaks and insider trading driving up the prices, these things all cost a small fortune on the TP. Their rarity allows them to be controlled by a few in the landed elite, able to control the prices. It makes collections something that can only be done by the rich.

You might wonder “so what’s the problem just save up the money and buy it?”

The problem is it’s simply not worth it. You want to do the Uncanny Canner collection? Sure. the last two collectibles will run you about 44g. Doesn’t sound like much I know, but your reward for completing the collection is a 20 slot bag., something only worth about 12g.

You’ve made a system where the fun is robbed by the already wealthy people of GW2 working the market to get even more wealthy, and the carrot to chase is just not worth the hassle.

F, please apply yourself, see me after class.

Ever since this feature patch hit I’m getting error messages of connection timing out and client lost connection with the login server every few minutes. It’s making the game unplayable. Didn’t have this problem before today.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Logos.1306:

guys new info

some Renown Hearts will change after patch.

Taking food to feed cows were too complex, so now you only have to F-click the cows.
Taking water buckets were too complex, now you only F-click the plants.
and so on..

so yeah no more fun thinks like running with water and other like that. Now we just F-click everything because this game want to be PEGI 3

I would really laugh my kitten off if they actually did this.

Actually, based on WP’s preview… they are doing exactly this. No more feeding cows, no more watering plants. Just hit F. No more low level gathering. No more low level dodge roll or conditions from foes.

It makes me want to smack anet, but if leveling through 15 is distinctly faster, then perhaps the tutorial might not be quite so bad. I’m going to reserve judgement until I can try it myself tonight. I’m going to make a new ele (which was my first class) and take her out to QD and ‘relive’ my first days of play, so to speak, and see how I feel about the new process.

They removed dodging on low levels too!?

That’s just ridiculous, dodging is probably THE most important system in this game.

Maybe mobs in the early levels should have really long tells, and tooltips come up saying “this attack is going to hurt, use (keybind) or double tap a direction to dodge!” I mean.. going 15 levels without having to dodge is going to make players WORSE at the game

Tasty Pudding.3764:

It is not so much hand holding as that there are 80 levels and they needed to add a sense of progression across all those levels instead of a burst to level 30 followed by a trickle of trait points for the last 50 levels. If you want to get everything by level 30, then there is no reason to have a level cap higher than level 30.

They should have just made the cap 30, or 40 at most.

Dragging it out doesn’t do anything positive.

Shen Slayer.3058:

Creeper.9360:

One of the big issues IMO is the high level cap. It should have been closer to what GW1 was and at most around level 40.

No…it should be increased to about 100. Give us more things to do and maybe stick around longer.

Raising the cap creates more problems then it prtends to solve, and solves none.

GW1 showed that you can keep the same low level cap for years and continue to add new skills, new classes, new content, everything people think requires a level cap raise, they did it while staying at level 20.

Level cap raise means they don’t expand on how much content they have available, they just replace it, making the old level 80 zones dead ghosttowns, while everyone is in the new level 100 zones.

Note we’ve been getting a few more level 80 areas, but people still go to FGS and Orr, because it’s still max level content.

Level cap increases do nothing but give the illusion of progress, while introducing new ghost town zones, new leveling zones that get used once and then left, and unnecessary power creep.

jamesg.7128:

I wouldn’t call it insulting, most MMOs have some sort of unlock system.

What I don’t understand though, is how to reconcile this with a player using the same weapon for 10 levels, again because he doesn’t know any better apparently and then trying a new weapon for the first time.

Consider that he decides to now try that scepter that’s been in his inv. for the last few days and bingo all 5 skills are unlocked because he’s already lvl 10.

I guess he’ll start having seizures or something from information overload.

Oh man, you’re right. That’s 5 skills all at once when they switch, Anet don’t you see your players are going to foam at the mouth from too much at once! You have to spoonfeed us Anet, and make the airplane noises!

Chrispy.5641:

The Complexity of Gw2 is already on a level comparable to Console games with less buttons than a keyboard, and GW2 is nothing compared to GW1, which itself is nowhere near as complex as an MMO like WoW or Everquest.

I’d argue that GW1 was more complex than EQ/WoW. The limited action system forced you to plan out your build for the content you’re doing and to synergize with your teammates.

WoW is more gear driven and the only real “complexity” to it is the efficiency of your keybinds.

Draknar.5748:

Devildoc.6721:

The only bad part about Tequatl’s roll out is that you have a 150 person PuG.

The problem was not the fight mechanics at all, the fight mechanics were great, it’s the fact that it was on an open landscape zone rather than an instanced dungeon.

Expecting 100+ people who just randomly join the map to be on voice communication and work together in teams is a bit of a stretch.

Except Tequatl was never meant to be a zerg fest world boss where everyone shows up at the last minute and hopes to win.

It was supposed to be a pre-planned event, much like a raid, where you prepare ahead of time, establish roles for groups, get on voice chat, etc.

When it was released everyone kept trying to treat it like it was Svanir Shaman or something and complained it was too hard and needed too much communication.

Ask anyone now that actually does Teq and you will know that it is extremely easy to do withOUT voice chat communication. You just need to get in a properly organized map. Look in LFG for taxis to Teq some time. You will be pleasantly surprised how easy the encounter is.

That’s why I said the mistake was in making it open landscape content..

Had it been behind an instance portal where guilds could form up their organized raid, go in, and fight, it wouldn’t have gotten criticized at all.

You’re also forgetting about how it was all overflows, people on low pop servers guesting to high pop servers, people on the map who weren’t even doing Tequatl they were just leveling in the zone or whatever, etc. It was a mess.

Less people are clammoring to do the content now so it’s easier to get on an organized map that knows what it’s doing.

I’ve done the fight successfully a few times, I do appreciate the mechanics and complexity, I just think making it open world was a bad idea, I was only able to complete it weeks after it was released when the initial hype for it died down and people learned what they were supposed to do and there were less people flooding the zone so you weren’t on a guaranteed fail overflow even an hour before the fight.

Firebaall.5127:

wwwes.1398:

Firebaall.5127:

The fact that they can be sold/bought makes them not only RNG. It doesn’t matter if it was a lucky drop for the original owner. If they ONLY came from the forge or as a drop then you’d have a logical leg to stand on.

Listen to yourself…. “I refuse to do that” (purchase off the TP). Entitled, does not a legendary make.

What they’re saying is actually considering more sides than you are. I don’t like the idea of spending hours and hours and hours grinding more gold than I’ve ever gotten before, strategizing and saving… then handing it over to some other player who got a lucky drop. It’s crappy, I’d much rather spend hours grinding and just throwing it into a gold sink.

If it were clear that all accounts were wired to provide similar levels of “luck”, then it might not be a problem, but that is not the case. And I don’t want to subsidize someone else’s burgeoning career flipping stuff on the TP.

A legendary should represent amazing luck or amazing work. If you want to buy enough gems to purchase one, that’s amazing support of the game. Giving everybody the best items in the game because they feel they “deserve” it, is hogwash.

The kittening and moaning of entitled players is ridiculous. The facts are, if you aren’t lucky enough to have one drop….you can still earn one. You’re not excluded by anything but your own laziness, or general lack of effort.

You’re just paying for someone else’s luck, that’s the part I refuse to do.

I’d rather work for it, like I worked for the other parts of the legendary. I did dungeons, WvW, world bosses, I grinded T6 mats, I salvaged a ton of stuff for ectos, I completed the map.

Those aspects, while grindy, were fun.

having to either get lucky, or pay someone else who got lucky, that’s not remotely fun, that just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

That’s like someone walking up to your door one day and saying “hey this ticket says I won the lottery and I’m to go to your house to collect my winnings. Pay up!”

wwwes.1398:

What I do know is that whoever is making these plans has no freaking clue how games work, I’m almost certain it’s the “dreamers” at the company and not the actual developers. When Tequatl came out, it failed every time. But they didn’t nerf it, players learned and taught each other, and now he is beaten every single time he comes out, it’s just a matter of whether people can get organized fast enough.

Lesson is: gamers ALWAYS whine that stuff is too hard, and then they adapt. That’s every freaking game since the beginning of time. You don’t listen to the whining, you respect them enough to tell them they’ll be fine if they just keep trying. I feel so bad for the new players in this system, they will be so far behind everyone else that they’ll quit.

The only bad part about Tequatl’s roll out is that you have a 150 person PuG.

The problem was not the fight mechanics at all, the fight mechanics were great, it’s the fact that it was on an open landscape zone rather than an instanced dungeon.

Expecting 100+ people who just randomly join the map to be on voice communication and work together in teams is a bit of a stretch.

Undeadkemea.4865:

Well truth be told. I am kind of starting to understand why dungeons are so hard with random people. Maybe I joined groups which are Arenanet’s target audience. Perhaps skill nr 9 and 10 were too much to handle in Ascalonian Catacombs and that’s why Senior Kohler is wrecking face so hard :P

Let’s see how the collection stuff turns out though, it’s already upsetting the market pretty hard, especially for miniatures.

Some of the items for the home instance treasure chest leaked, the prices skyrocketed to the hundreds of gold.

wwwes.1398:

I love how condescending people are about the game, “you don’t understand, the newbies aren’t like you and me, they don’t know any better and they’ll love whatever they’re given”. It’s like, just because we all loved this game when we played it doesn’t mean we’d have loved this new game.

And it DEFINITELY doesn’t mean that all the veteran players should love having to deal with this nonsense if we want to make a new character. No, this is not just a feature for new players, it is a hindrance for old players.

That’s what I mean by this change being insulting to people’s intelligence.

I mean me? I think that a new player can figure this stuff out, I have faith in you, you’re intelligent reasonable people who can troubleshoot and problem solve, you’ll mouseover some icons, read some tooltips, maybe read a guide, but you got this, and you’ll practice until you get better and better.

Anet seems to think you’re incapable of doing this and thinks they need to not only spoonfeed you, but make airplane noises at you while maneuvering the spoon.

I’d be insulted as a new player.

Stooperdale.3560:

I don’t really care how insulting this is. Doesn’t this just really break weapon sets until the all the skills are unlocked? It might be alright for warriors to bash things with auto-attack but thieves need skills 4 and 5 to make their weapon sets work!

One of the better design features of the game was that the weapon sets worked from level 1, without utilities , without traits. Now they don’t work.

I couldn’t imagine leveling a new thief now without black powder until level 10. That was my main defense. Learning to conserve dodges took longer to learn.

Firebaall.5127:

I don’t think there’s any reason to hand out precursors to people that feel entitled to them, merely because they want them.

If Anet wants to implement a scavenger hunt for legendary precursors, let them make NEW precursors for NEW legendarys…………ones that pertain to the new method of obtaining them.

I disagree.

There always should have been a better way for precursors. As it is ALL precursors are RNG.

Even if you pay an exorbitant amount of gold to purchase one directly, it came from RNG. It’s luck. You’re paying someone’s lottery winnings out of your own pocket. I refuse to do that, and playing RNG with the forge isn’t fun at all.

Making Mawdrey was somewhat fun, even though it had time gated aspects.

jweez.7214:

At the risk of getting ate alive by saying this…I kinda like this change. : |

I’ve always felt that gw2 front loads you with everything a class has to offer and there’s no anticipation for that next great skill/trait. And no real chance for you to really learn all the pros and cons of the ones you currently have.

That being said this does suck for those of you who level a lot and are adept at getting into a new class. Maybe anet will come out with a middle ground to help ease the burden on your guys side of the things.

Me I think this whole problem could be solved by reverting to a level 20 cap like Guild Wars 1. Maybe level 30.

Guild Wars 1, the leveling to cap was just kind of a tutorial, you leveled very quickly, got your max AR armor and weapons, and started capping elite skills and doing elite areas, and in factions and nightfall at least, most of the missions were based at level cap. Level 20 (cap) was just the beginning.

Guild Wars 2 it seems like they inflated the cap without really thinking it through, the complaints of “after level 30 what’s the point in leveling, I have all my skills unlocked already”. That is part of the decision making regarding this feature pack. To make leveling seem more rewarding on your slog up to level 80.

It used to be, leveling up to about 30 felt great, sense of progress up until then, and then you felt like you plateaued all the way to 80. I understand and agree with those complaints. However the solution IMO is not to STRETCH OUT unlocking skill slots and utilities and elites, and traits, bur rather to compress the leveling system to a lower cap. Level 40 is as high as you should need in this game, absolute maximum.

Yet the cap is 80. That was a mistake.

I find it unbelievable that people want the cap RAISED as it is. Level cap raising brings with it more problems than it pretends to solve.

Shen Slayer.3058:

HAHAHAHAAHA….imagine leveling a mesmer now. I’ll quit the game before I have to do it again.

oh god, mesmer at low levels was torture. I ended up just grinding crafting up to level 40, suddenly it became fun and is one of my favorite classes.

I can’t imagine trying to play mesmer now with only skills 1 and 2, I don’t think I’d make it to level 4 before I was bored out of my skull and deleted.

Rauderi.8706:

Devildoc.6721:

Point is they’re unnecessarily gating CORE FEATURES OF THE GAMES COMBAT SYSTEM behind higher and higher levels.

I’m saying that’s backwards, as I’ve never known anyone who got overwhelmed by game systems early on, I have however known people who quit games because they were doling out skills and systems too slowly at too high of levels and they actually got bored.

I know I’d have gotten bored by level 10 of only being able to use 4 skills and a self heal, no weapon swap.

Exactly this. I’ll just out and say it. WildStar. I hit 13 in the beta and was bored, bored, BORED with my character. I had all of 5, maybe 6 skills, the bullkitten amp system which had hidden item locks, and a wide swath of nothing to do.
The most boring part was the limited skill bar, though.

I was actually proud of the fact that GW2 had a fair amount of flexibility by the same point. By level 10, I had two weapon bars full of skills, a self-heal, and two utility traits. Thirteen skills available, with additional swaps for utilities. That was actually empowering.

This late-gating garbage has got to go. -_-#

That’s about how far I got in wildstar as well, it was a really boring game, all I could do in the world was quest, kill, and vistas basically since I picked explorer. I don’t understand the thought process with dividing up your extra landscape content into different “paths”.. in GW2 terms imagine you chose your order at level 1. Priory characters could do vistas and points of interest, whispers characters could do jumping puzzles and mini dungeons/hidden chests, and Vigil characters could do meta events and skill challenges.

If you were priory or whispers, you couldn’t get skillpoints. if you were Vigil or Priory, you couldn’t do jumping puzzles. It’s restrictive and makes the game boring.

I hear Wildstar is down to 4 servers already.

Not at all surprised.

Alienmuppet.1942:

This guy was level 2 at the beginning of the vid and level 3 by the end, so not sure where you get level 10 from. Also, since day 1 we’ve started with only 1 skill, then as we use skill 1 to kill things, skill 2 would come in, then skill 3, etc. So not sure what the problem is, unless I’m missing something.

watch her mouse over the skills, you’ll see the levels they’re unlocked at. Skill 3 is unlocked at level 4, skill 4 is unlocked at level 7, skill 5 unlocked at level 10. Utility skill 1 is unlocked at level 13, Utility skill 2 is unlocked at level 24, Utility skill slot 3 is unlocked at level 35, and the Elite slot is unlocked at level 40. They removed the arrow for swapping weapons completely (must be too confusing) so I didn’t see what level they bumped weapon swapping up to.

Point is they’re unnecessarily gating CORE FEATURES OF THE GAMES COMBAT SYSTEM behind higher and higher levels.

I’m saying that’s backwards, as I’ve never known anyone who got overwhelmed by game systems early on, I have however known people who quit games because they were doling out skills and systems too slowly at too high of levels and they actually got bored.

I know I’d have gotten bored by level 10 of only being able to use 4 skills and a self heal, no weapon swap.

The problem with the downed system is simple.

Downed changes your skill bar in a time when you don’t have time to mouse over each skill and try them out and LEARN your downed skills. You’re dying, you’re under pressure. Not the time to learn a new system.

Downed system is flawed as it gets.

To effectively tutorial the downed system you have to have a controlled setting where your character is in a downed state but not being actively attacked and their life isn’t ticking over time, so that pressure is removed and you have time to look at your skills, see what they do, test their ranges, and experiment, the way you can with other skills.

It’s like getting Moa’ed by a mesmer in PVP. What makes that polymorph so effective against inexperienced players is you’re throwing an unfamilliar skillset on someone in a time of pressure where they don’t have time to experiment with the skills and see how to use them.