Guild Wars 2

Feedback on the forums should also be taken into account.

Gendarran fields twice in 3 hours, and I already did it yesterday, really?

milo.6942:

Devildoc.6721:

The importance of different roles. I don’t mind that there’s not a hard holy trinity in GW2, but GW1 you needed healing, some sort of tank/damage sponge (even if it’s spirits/minions), defensive support (imbagon, prot monk, ST Rit, E/Mo bonder), offensive support/control (interruptors and hexers), and dps. In GW2, thanks to defiant, low healing power coefficients on everything but self heals, and inconsistant aggro mechanics (some bosses target lowest health characters at the exclusion of all other possible targets), and the fact that all damage is expected to be dodged, all party members fill 1 role: DPS.

yea for me too. all the classes feel boring and homogenized in comparison to gw1. the boon and condition system has been reduced to damage/reduce damage system and everything is about damage now. no interesting hexes no interrupts no healers no protters no snarers no team pressure no positioning no reliance on teammates at ALL.

Yeah, in GW1 having hexes and enchants was a big deal, you can’t just umbrella all of them under boons and conditions, interrupts too, it was a deeper system than boons and conditions.

Esquilax.3491:

Looking back, I think I miss Signet of Capture the most. I enjoyed hunting down specific skills in specific locations.

Skill points in GW2 are fun at first, but after a while they just start to feel like another thing I tick off the list for a map completion

The importance of different roles. I don’t mind that there’s not a hard holy trinity in GW2, but GW1 you needed healing, some sort of tank/damage sponge (even if it’s spirits/minions), defensive support (imbagon, prot monk, ST Rit, E/Mo bonder), offensive support/control (interruptors and hexers), and dps. In GW2, thanks to defiant, low healing power coefficients on everything but self heals, and inconsistant aggro mechanics (some bosses target lowest health characters at the exclusion of all other possible targets), and the fact that all damage is expected to be dodged, all party members fill 1 role: DPS.

lordkrall.7241:

And yet back in GW1 people whined about some lucky few got 100p minis whilst other got 50g ones.

People have complained about RNG since release, and now when ArenaNet decides to not have RNG people complain about the lack of RNG.
Which way is it?

RNG is fun when there are multiple desirable outcomes and few if any “booby prizes” and they’re free.

I don’t mind opening presents in GW1 and getting white minis, yeah, it’s not a valuable thing to trade, but hey, it was free and it was fun to open not knowing what’s inside.

When my next few characters hit 1 year mark, there’s nothing to be excited about, I already know what’s in the present.

I wouldn’t mind if there was RNG chance at minis and all minis had the same chance to be received, making none of them rarer than the others, because at least there’s a good chance you’ll get a couple DIFFERENT ones, and if they’re tradeable that could be fun to build a collection out of them.

RNG is bad when there are more booby prizes than desirable rewards, or you have to pay for the RNG chance in some way.

Opening champion loot bags/boxes is fun, because it’s free and it’s a surprise.

Opening black lion chests or other event chests that you have to pay money to do, is not fun, especially when you’re after ONE desirable outcome that’s a low chance.

Free loot bags that are RNG are fun, RNG at the mystic forge for precursors and BL chests for specific skins/tickets is not.

Similarly opening unidentified dyes that you got as drops or harvests from nodes is fun, yes there are some more desirable outcomes than others but the attitude is “let’s see what we get”, rather than ONLY going for abyss with all other outcomes being a disappointment.

on the other hand, crafting rare gray unidentified dyes with cook SUCKS, because you’re investing resources into making it and identifying it, the outcome is probably worth less than 5% of the cost of the resources to craft the unidentified.

See the difference?

Sorry to look a gift horse in the mouth but…

I feel that anet really dropped the ball on this one. While yes, if you only have 1 character, and are PLANNING on making more characters but don’t have anything at level 20 yet, it’s great. But if you have an account full of characters all past level 20 anyway, or only have 1 or so under level 20 characters, it’s kind of a waste to get the exact same present on each character’s first birthday.

I have 6 characters all created on day 1 of early access, so I’ll have 6 copies of Queen Jennah mini, which is not tradeable, sellable, salvageable, and can’t be combined in the mystic forge, and only 1 character that is under level 20. So while I suppose I’ll have 5 scrolls sitting around for the event that I decide I need 2 of the same class for 5 classes I already have… getting a Jennah Mini in every single present is just disappointing.

In GW1 I STILL log in every month to check for new presents, and it’s exciting to open them not knowing what mini you’re going to get. Here you always get the same present so you’ll just open, deposit collectibles and bank the booster and either keep or destroy the scroll. The surprise is gone, the excitement of getting a gold or green mini is gone, the mini has 0 value in game, unlike GW1 birthday presents where some minis are worth a small fortune.

It’s too late to alter 1st birthday presents.. but hopefully next year they realize GW1 had a better system for birthday presents.

Esplen.3940:

Garenthal.1480:

thefantasticg.3984:

Again. Silliness. Your reasoning is weak opinion at best. Bottom line is if you don’t enjoy it don’t do it.

What nonsense! Why should players avoid fresh content when it is the very thing preventing the game from becoming stale in the first place? Most of the complaints are valid and very apt – content is being pumped out far too quickly, is temporary and you end up competing with or being screwed over by other players which is a direct violation of the supposed core values of the game that the developers are swift to bring up whenever they talk about their vision for the future, past and present.

I agree. Whenever a new car comes out, I MUST have that car. I don’t care that it’s a waste of time because I don’t like cars, nor do I care that it’s useless for me to sell my car to get that new car. It’s new and it prevents my cars from becoming stale.

Note: Car is synonymous with content.

The difference here is that car is available for a lot longer than 2 weeks, and if you miss buying it brand new, you can still buy it years later used.

Extremely flawed analogy.

Esplen.3940:

Ant.3415:

Wrong, if you aren’t successful in the event you do not get credit for Vorpp’s achievements.

That’s wrong. I’ve completed all the meta-achievements and a lot of the Invasions I took part in (including the final 13/13 one, which was in Mount Maelstrom for me) was a failure, not a success.

It seems there is a bug to it, because sometimes and for some people it advances even in failure but for others it does not advance. Peg one more reason this event was poorly designed AND poorly implemented.

frostyraziel.1854:

It’s a matter of opinion. I like the update and the Lost Shores is in my top 3.

The reason why Lost Shores was bad was because it was extremely laggy, a lot of people got bugged out and disconnected and had massive framerate issues because of the number of people that were in the area. If you were on a lower population server it may have been good but on somewhere like Tarnished Coast or Jade Quarry it was a mess.

So many people crashed that anet had to go out and hand out rewards in the mail to make up for people crashing and dc’ing. So people who got the complete event done managed to get multiple rewards.

One friend of mine got completely turned off from the entire game because he crashed at the beginning of the last phase of the ancient karka fight and didn’t get the reward and for some reason it didn’t get counted by anet and he didn’t get a reward in the mail, so to him it was 3 hours of lag and slideshow and frustration with culling all for nothing.

Gibson.4036:

As for the ten minute mark, if you have a guild you can ask for an invite from a guildie who is doing the event, which will pull you into an active overflow.

That’s been tried, you get messages that the overflow is full or the world that they’re in is full.

Maybe when these are permanent it won’t be such a big deal to have everyone on a server concentrated on one map but right now during the limited time event, you can literally be thrown into an overflow 5s after the invasion is announced and people start waypointing in.

I’m wondering why the achievement sounds were changed in the first place. These new ones just don’t sound like they mesh in with the rest of the game sounds. Every time I hear them I’m wondering is someone trying to message me on facebook or did I go to a webpage with adult advertising with pop up ads that make noise in another window or something. They just sound very artificial. I liked the old fanfare better.

BobbyStein.2315:

Hermes.7014:

I feel six feet tall!

I think the original version of that line was, “I feel four feet tall!” which I think is funnier. I’m debating changing the line to that the next time Steve Staley comes back for recording.

I actually like the six feet one, I think Asura are pretty close to 4 feet tall so being buffed with might making them feel a few inches taller than normal doesn’t scream overcompensating the way being as tall as an average human man does.

As a man who is 6 feet tall I find it hilarious that an Asura considers it a great height to be what is fairly average for humans.

I have to say the Asura male voiceover lines are the most entertaining in the entire game.

I’m very glad that I chose a male Asura for my Elementalist, I just love the attunement lines, they have real character to them “Severe weather warning!” and “I have ignition!” are my favorites.

Daecollo.9578:

Is there going to be more incentive for people to go back and explore the world? Special mobs that spawn? Special Loot? Anything?

The new invasion events happen in 13 different areas of the world and events happen all over each area. I’d hardly call that all staying in 1 area while the rest of the world is dead, you just need to find the right area for the hourly invasion, it’s a different one each hour.

Yeah I think if your party tags it in time you can still get credit. But if nobody in your party tags it until its half dead, tough luck

Not true, there is a cutoff for how far down it is by the time you start attacking.

If you do 100k damage to a champ that is 50% down when you start doing damage to it, you won’t get loot.

I’ve actually done this.

I’ve also just pegged at a mob with a shortbow on thief, as long as I started hitting it early and did a very meager amount of dps to it, I got loot.

There is a threshold to how much damage you have to do, sure but it’s fairly low. But if you do that damage too late in the mob’s lifebar, it does not matter how much damage you do, you will not get loot.

You have to tag within about the first 5-10% of the champion’s healthbar.

You can do all the dps you want to at a boss 25% of the way in and get nothing, you can autoattack 2-3 times on a champ when it first spawns and die and still get loot when you come back and its dead.

Invisty.6435:

Undercutting: What is the problem?

eating listing fees as losses.

When you have all of 7g to your name, losing 2g in listing fees isn’t something you just shrug off.

Articluna.4509:

Long story short; If you don’t want to be undercut by 1c, then don’t undercut yourself 1c. More you undercut yourself, still staying within (your) comfortable profit range, more likely you’ll end up winning.

I don’t undercut, I match the current lowest selling price.

Wasn’t Kiel Elected? Why isn’t her minigame in the rotation? I enjoyed Aspect arena.

Nike.2631:

I don’t sell anything I buy, and I use nothing but buy orders to get my stuff.

Buy orders are for ANYBODY who understands just how incredibly massive and fast moving this market is, not just flippers.

I’m a harvester, and I don’t get off on the idea of being somebody else’s serf, so I’m a big proponent of “reverse undercutting”. I rarely list worthwhile-but-enormous-volume items for the current lowest offer. I have a good feel for where most of the items I coincidentally farm sell for at the peak of their cycles, and I list them at those peaks and then just ignore them till they sell. You can have all the mithril ore I dig up you want, as long as you pay 50c each. It might not cost that now, but it will sometime in the next month, and I don’t need the money now-now-now, so I just post them for 50c even when the going rate is around 26c… Undecut me all you want, the tide will rise and mine will sell. I have high but hittable values for probably 50 items in my head and I just stash them and stash them and stash them at those high prices and then giggle when I log in and find a stray gold or 2 waiting for me at the Black Lion because something finally cycled to the high tide mark. Keeps my bag space clear, gives me the most money a harvester can hope for from each item, and ain’t nobody buying my stuff with the intent to flip.

Like I said, I did keep track of the item I was going to sell and it has never been below 3g that I’ve ever seen. Suddenly now it’s under 3g or just barely over for 3 days in a row.

SeasThyDay.7398:

I think you’re only thinking of yourself here. Do you honestly believe YOU would benefit from there not being a re-listing fee? My guess is all those under-cutters would be overjoyed by the fact that they can endlessly undercut you.

You can try to race to a price floor but eventually it’s not going to be profitable for them.

The problem with confusion is that confusion was supposed to replace hexes like Empathy and Spiteful spirit and Visions of Regret, punishing for doing certain actions. However the result is inadequate unless you stack a full 25 times and have full condition duration build, and then it is easily cleansed.

The problem is that potential at 25 stacks with full condition duration builds, then anet’s rationale is to make the base effect extremely weak and short duration.

Empathy lasted 14 seconds, and that was just through putting all your points in domination. There wasn’t gear (aside from raising domination stat) that improved hex duration. Confusion base times are 3-5s normally, meaning that with maxed condition duration (capped at 100%) you’re looking at 6-10s of confusion, and because stacking more does not reset the timer, they roll off, so actually getting 25 stacks of confusion is a feat rewarded by about 2-3 seconds of that confusion being stacked, which is like, one attack at that high of confusion.

So ideas for improvement could include either or of the following things:

increase base duration: increase from 3s-5s to 5s-8s, meaning 10-16s duration when built for it, gives you more time to stack, and 25 stacks will have 5s duration or so which is a lot harder to just wait out.

make confusion stack duration rather than intensity, increase its base intensity to do substantially more damage than burning. This would make it less of a thing for just bursting down someone who manages to get off a skill right when someone’s 25 stacks of confusion land on them, and more of a pressure condition like it was in GW1.

GW1, empathy and related hexes only killed the stupid, most people reacted to being hexed with spamming their chat window that they’re afflicted so a teammate could remove it, and took no action while hexed to avoid taking damage. It was essentially crowd control. Empathy took about 10% of most player’s life per tick, so if Confusion at full condition damage was doing 2k or so damage per tick with duration stacking, that would more closely fill its role in GW1.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Sorry about the titles. This was kind of an oversight. I am nearly certain that the Gauntlet will return. Possibly as part of the activity rotation someday. Ideally we’ll extend it with more tiers of bosses, gambits, and achievements (and titles). I’m not sure if its possibly to retro-actively associate a new title with an old achievement but I will investigate. If so perhaps we can add some titles when the Gauntlet returns.

Is it possible perhaps in the future when it becomes an activity on rotation to have the fight not take place in the domes with wire floor? Not having the camera zoom in on our backs when obstructed by the glass dome and having a solid floor for the aoe circles would improve my enjoyment of the gauntlet a ton.

Katz.5143:

You have a valid point about real world sportsmanship. But also, you don’t sabotage the other competitor in real life sports. If you are running a race, then you RUN your best race. You don’t put in things that cause the other runner to fall or otherwise interfere with them. In fact you get penalties in games if you do that type thing.

So how does this video game relate to real life sports? I don’t see that it does.

Sports are all still games man. They may not be video games (but lets not forget EA makes a lot of money on sports videogames), but all sports are games, originally done for enjoyment, but they are also competitive activities. Let’s not forget there is a trending increase in the number of “e-sports” played by “cyber-athletes” in which people are competitively playing video games professionally, they have sponsors, and playing competitively is literally their job. US Congress recently passed legislation allowing professional gamers to qualify for the same visas that other professional sports athletes qualify for. It is becoming a bona-fide thing to consider some video games on the same level as professional sports.

We glorify professional athletes because of their skill and physical condition, but when it comes down to it they are grown men and women playing games, they’re just good enough at it that people will pay money just to watch them do it.

Arenanet right now is doing a paid PVP tournament, with sponsored, professional teams, as a side note.

Anyway, sportsmanship applies to ANY competitive game.

As for the fake powerups and hindering other competitors, it all depends on the sport. Do you think Nascar drivers all stay in their own lanes and just see who can gun that accelerator with a heavier foot? No. They use their skill at manuvering their vehicle to block their opponents attempts at passing them. They’re using THEMSELVES as an obstacle that would wreck their opponent’s vehicle (among many others). In football there’s an entire team designed at obstructing their opponent and attempting to hinder them. According to you sacks should be illegal.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It seems there are still people who are missing something here: The Queen’s Gauntlet isn’t meant for everyone. If that were the case, your arguments might have some merit. <puts on straw hat> It’s like complaining that you (as a male) aren’t allowed to play on a girl’s basketball team. The Gauntlet separates the good players from the bad players.

A part of the challenge to this content is the knowledge of how the mechanics work. The other part is playing within the mechanics. I see the red circles, and I know almost exactly when they’ll 1-hit me down. But in the middle of the battle, I always panic, and end up dodging a second too early, instead of timing it. Half my dodges waste my endurance due to poor timing. I blame only myself for these failures. People need to start looking in the mirror before casting blame on Anet.

The camera and visibility issues are valid complaints though. The fight would still be hard even without visibility issues. Believe me, I’m still struggling to get her below half health even after I stopped relying on vision for the red circles, I kinda just look at where the red haze is and if I find myself in the middle of it, I just blurred frenzy, otherwise I just know it’s on a pattern and avoid the quadrant I know its going to hit next.

Astralporing.1957:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

For the Queen’s Gauntlet, one of the preconditions is not to get hit by the big attacks.

The conditions for the Gauntlet ignore all but two of combat mechanics. The only things that do count are dodge, and DPS. Everything else does not matter.
It is not a good thing in a game that was supposed to have more tactical combat engine, with more options and viable strategies. The challenge here is on pure arcade level. Guess what? Arcade games do it better – there’s no reason to try to copy them so slavishly.

That is actually false for every fight in the gauntlet but Liadri.

Every other fight is made MUCH easier if you utilize control skills and things like projectile blocks/reflects and other defensive skills.

I’m actually impressed most by the fact that these fights can still be hard, WITHOUT utilizing the defiant mechanic that makes every other boss in the game dodge and DPS, maybe some reflects.

Liadri is the exception because in the first phase you cannot damage her, or CC her aside from throwing Moa Morph on her which just makes her charge you while still invincible.

Phase 2 you could technically stun and daze her to make her whip attacks much less dangerous, it’s just that there are multiple one shot mechanics during the fight making it best to just keep moving and attacking from range and dodging.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Its not a problem at all if you just sell to a buy order and not attempt to be greedy and squeeze every copper you can out of it… after relisting fees you end up losing more money than you would have generally if you would have just sold it to the buy order to begin with and you save time waiting for the gold too.

again, buy orders are done by people flipping. THEY’RE the greedy ones.

About the “hands off policy” that’s why I think the best idea is allowing you to alter the sell price of your listing without relisting and losing posting fees. That would be the best way to handle it.

Katz.5143:

I feel it is poor sportsmanship to use the traps to mess up other people. I feel that is saying that you can’t win honestly, so you are sabotaging the other players to make up for your lack of skill.

However, they are in the game so obviously they are supposed to be used. They are obviously “intended” and the game developers I’m sure consider that to be part of the strategy of the game.

My point is, we may have different opinions on what is good and what is bad sportsmanship.

Throwing a match and intentionally letting another competitor win has never been considered good sportsmanship in any sport. Though I guess you can expect people who play video games and have never played any sports, who considered PE their least favorite class, and always got picked last for any team game at recess would have a warped view of sportsmanship when they’re doing a competitive activity.

Khisanth.2948:

kitten answer … fill buy orders! No way for anyone to undercut you there.
I am only half kidding. When I craft stuff to sell I usually do it only when I can still make a profit while selling to the highest buyer. Sometimes the difference between buy and sell is just so high that it is not necessary.

Custom offers are almost ALWAYS done by power traders who are flipping items. The same jerks who are undercutting you by 1c are putting buy orders 1c over the current buy order.

As long as they can still flip it for a profit.

Nike.2631:

Reality check: other people have the EXACT SAME goods as you do – and if they are willing to take a lower price for it, their product moves before yours does.

Your choice of price is not sacred. It deserves no special protection.

Yup, I know, and the things I’m selling, I tracked the prices of and they’re always just a little over 3g. I matched lowest price, suddenly I"m undercut, and that guy is undercut, and that guy is undercut, and now my listing is buried under 20+ other listings. The price difference between mine and the lowest is only about 12s. But if I remove my listings I lose about 2g in posting fees. That’s the stupid part of it, the posting fees.

If you could adjust your sell price without losing posting fees this wouldn’t be an issue.

But you can’t.

You eat the posting fees because someone undercut you by 1c.

If it wasn’t intended, they’d have put a fence up by that cliff, removed the wind crystal, or made it so that if you crossed the finish line from that direction you didn’t win but instead were taken back to the prior checkpoint

If they didn’t intend for there to be “cheats” light travel wouldn’t be in it.

the Visibility issues are the only ones I have with the challenge. I don’t consider a camera that obscures your FoV or a wire floor that aoe circles don’t show up well on to be challenge I consider that to be cheese.

Surprised this got buried so fast, I wanted more discussion on it, or does this mean pretty much everyone agrees that visibility limitations are artificial difficulty?

They have no plans in raising the level cap, according to Chris Whiteside (was talking to him in game in LA), and between him and Colin and Mike O’Brien, that’d be the people who would make those kinds of decisions for the future direction of the game.

Guild Wars 1 had a level 20 cap for its entire history and still does, Guild Wars showed that you can add all the benefits of new content, skills, classes, gear, story based missions, dungeons, all without increasing the level cap and making peoples’ prior gear obsolete. I would expect Guild Wars 2 being capable of demonstrating the same things.

If and when we get an expansion, expect new elite skills, new utilities/heals, new weapons (some classes getting access to weapons they did not have before, like maybe Engineers getting hammers, but also some entirely new weapons with entirely new skills), maybe new races, new lands, new dungeons, a new personal/living story, and maybe new classes, but don’t necessarily expect a level cap increase.

I sure hope there’s not one. It’d be refreshing in the face of other MMO’s making you scrap your gear and restart from scratch every year.

Surely there’s a way systems can make limitations to undercutting, such as making a minimum amount below the lowest priced item you can undercut by, or better, allowing people to adjust their listings to match the new lower prices.

I get screwed over every time I try to sell anything on the TP.

If people all match the lowest current price, almost all of those items can sell. However if people continually undercut each other by 1c or 1s each, listings get buried and may never sell.

You’re left with losing out on posting fees and paying posting fees again, or just letting it rot and hoping someday the price goes back up.

It’s a really crappy system, and it robs more money from normal players than it does power traders.

Either of those two options or make a secure trade so that we can trade outside of the TP without getting scammed.

Avatara.1042:

It is a little mini-game inside another game, not some massive sporting event. Letting people get first was for their achievement and title. They only needed it ONCE, yet you did not let them get it. It is you who acted poorly.

I mean seriously, comparing it to professional boxing…are you for real?

The point is the sportsmanship comment, and yes, a game is like a sport, because sports are games, it’s all related and sportsmanship is important in ANY competitive activity, not just major professional sporting events.

A football team only needs to win the superbowl ONCE so thakittens players can wear the superbowl rings and have photos of the team taken with the Vince Lombardi trophy, does that mean a team who’s already won the Superbowl should throw the game in order to be good sportsmen?

What kind of football team wants to have that trophy handed to them? It becomes meaningless.

Achievements or not, these minigames are competitive activities.

If you want to say I was mean or not nice for not letting people win, that’s fine, but to butcher the concept of sportsmanship to claim not throwing a game is poor sportsmanship is just wrong.

SteepledHat.1345:

Even if you do achieve greater dps as a mesmer with full phant build and 3 phants you are overlooking the fact that mesmer must shatter those phants frequently to survive.

Not necessarily, it really depends on if you need a burst of damage, emergency damage avoidance from distortion, or you’re working on those defiant stacks to reposition a boss. The confusion is generally pretty bad.

If you need none of those things and you’re in a situation say a world boss that you can basically afk, 3 warlocks staying up and casting will contribute more damage than shattering and starting over with the cooldowns.

It then becomes 3 warlocks doing 16-22k damage each every 6s (48-66k in other words) while you sword autoattack and blurred frenzy when an attack is telegraphed.

mtpelion.4562:

Devildoc.6721:

Look guys, throwing a fight or a game is bad sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is all participants competing at their best.

To hand victory over to someone might be “nice”, but it is also insulting/condescending, and poor sportsmanship.

How do you think some world class champion Boxer would feel, if he knew his belt was not earned, but given to him, because his opponent threw the fight and didn’t give it his all?

Poor sportsmanship is not being a graceful winner or loser, being a cheater, not respecting your opponents, and throwing the fight, especially if you get a kickback from it.

The concept of “sportsmanship” sadly died a very long time ago. Personal honor is meaningless in today’s society, we care about getting away with as much as possible, and the anonymous nature of the internet makes that easier than ever.

As for the boxer example, his only concern is winning. If his opponent took a dive, all that means is that his opponent gave him the belt and the money that goes with it.

Likewise, GW2 players are only concerned with getting the achievement, title, and reward.

Granted, there are a few players who do it for their love of the game, but it will take a while for the reward seekers to work their way out of the system before those types of players can compete with only each other.

Well, maybe modern boxers, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t just about the money the athletes wanted to be the best at the competition legitimately. All that hard training and practice goes to waste if you’re not competing someone who trained hard and practiced hard and gave it their all. A competitor, a sportsman, doesn’t want to face an opponent who takes a dive, they want to face an opponent who is highly skilled and gives it 100% and they still overcome it.

Look guys, throwing a fight or a game is bad sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is all participants competing at their best.

To hand victory over to someone might be “nice”, but it is also insulting/condescending, and poor sportsmanship.

How do you think some world class champion Boxer would feel, if he knew his belt was not earned, but given to him, because his opponent threw the fight and didn’t give it his all?

Poor sportsmanship is not being a graceful winner or loser, being a cheater, not respecting your opponents, and throwing the fight, especially if you get a kickback from it.

From my perspective, a challenge is based on a player observing a pattern, or seeing stimuli/tells, and reacting to it, a challenge tests their reaction timing, their memory, their strategy, and their ability to improvise and recover from mistakes (if the challenge allows for recovery, some are unforgiving), and their dexterity at playing the game.

MOST of Liandri’s fight involves that, there’s strategy in mauvering around the clones, since you can’t just dps her down, there’s a pattern to he AOE’s, quite obviously the unforgiving nature of the fight tests dexterity and reaction time, and that’s all fair good challenge, I wish I could enjoy it.

However I’ve always considered things like low or no visibility, unhelpful UI, poor cameras/angles and RANDOM instant kills to be Artificial difficulty.

Now some people will even say that shadowfall is random and hence artificial difficulty but there is a pattern to it so I will throw that out.

However, I consider the bad camera in the arena (if Liandri spawns a white vortex at the edge of the arena, good luck, you’re going to need it), along with the wire floor making the aoes difficult to see to be artificial difficulty and I ESPECIALLY think that Liandri’s attack that blurrs the entire screen (unless you turn off post processing) to be straight up artificial difficulty and INTENTIONAL artificial difficulty at that.

I do want designers to have a take home message that this is not a good source of challenge, if you pay attention to your players, almost across the board they recommend turning off post processing. You might even consider that cheating (like turning up the gamma in a dark jumping puzzle room, now, dark jp rooms can be legit challenge IF you have a mechanic involved in them to use a torch, or a timed lighting up of the room that is on a distinct pattern, as long as the area is done in such a way that you don’t HAVE to jump while it’s dark but can in fact wait for the pattern to bring the light back).

If players are looking to EXPLOIT a challenge, they’re not finding the challenge fair or fun. Remove the blurred screen attack, it’s pointless to leave in because people turn off their post processing to avoid being affected by it and it is raw artificial difficulty (since it prevents you from seeing something that will instantly kill you, and you can’t just wait it out, you have to act, and act blind).

Personally, I’d also like the arena floors to not be wire, but solid, so the aoe rings show up better, and I’d like the walls of the arena pulled back from the edge of the actual playable area, so tha you can get a decent FoV, either that or make the walls of the arena invisible to players in the arena, so the camera never gets obstructed.

There’s shortcuts all over the track, some of them are RNG based, like some of the lightning jump routes only active certain times.

Let’s not forget that there’s a powerup that can take you from 12th to 1st if you get lucky.

So yeah, if players are smart enough to take that last shortcut, take it.

It also screws over people who are sitting at the side of the finish line waiting for their cronie friend to cross and get first place.

I was called on bad sportsmanship for winning a race and not letting someone else win.

I’d like to know when the definition of sportsmanship was let the other team win, because from what I know, that’s called “throwing a fight” or “throwing a game”, and is the exact OPPOSITE of sportsmanship.

Know what absolutely kills me about the legendary mobs in the pavillion?

A lot of their projectiles are set to unblockable, meaning they can’t be reflected.

If Anet targets projectile reflection and negates its effectiveness.

It will literally dumb down the game to zerkers, max dps, and dodge, there will literally be 0 depth to the combat then. Right now the combat’s only slight inkling of depth is well timed/placed reflects.

It’s something to do with the wallet.

Hexxen.7216:

Can she be Moaed while having her shield up? Kinda like taking a necro outa Lich form? I imagine not but if so I might be able to beat this even when dealing with an extra enemy or left over tornados or fire rings from previous fights which seems to be the common occurrence when I try.

She can but then she rushes you in phase 1, immune, chasing you…. not a good situation.

Btw guys, all I see in your examples of how “good” mesmer “dps” is is ALL BURST damage.

When people are talking about mesmers having one of the lowest dps’ in the game, they’re talking sustained. Yeah I know I can iwarden/jump in/blurred frenzy/dodge/mind wrack/signet of illusions/izerker/mirror blade/dodge/mind wrack and get a lot of damage out really fast, but then I’m left with autoattacks for a solid 10-15s, after I just blew everything in under 10s.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Use a staff, cast 2 illusions with your skill #3 and one clone from your skill #2.

Watch the 3k-4.5k numbers go up as you auto attack and use your number 5.

are you kidding me?

you think 3k-4.5k damage is good?

Holy crap.

Okay, just for a little bit of background for you..

my warlocks hit for 16k just with conditions on the mob alone, if I also have might they can hit for well over 20k each. On world bosses where they’re pretty safe from being one shot, yes, I can have 3 warlocks sitting out there while I sword autoattack and blurred frenzy and do a lot of damage consistently.

Take that to a dungeon where #1, there usually aren’t maxed out on every condition in the game to give it 90% damage bonus, and #2, there are a lot more attacks that can one shot them, and having more than 2 phantasms out at a time, much less 2 of the same phantasm is very rare.

as for “they have more health in pve” yes, I know, in PVP they have 2k health, in PVE they have 7k health base, +40%, they’re still about 10k, meaning they still get 1 shot by PVE bosses. You cannot hope for them to survive and do sustained dps in dungeons or fractals. 10/10/0/25/25 relies on phantasms staying alive and continuing to do damage, but they also lose 20% crit damage and 10% crit chance. The result is less burst damage for certain, and the gain to sustained dps is rather dubious as you do lose bleeding and you do lose damage on your crits adding up, for a few seconds off recharge time.

Silver.4798:

I main a AH based guard, she has 3300 armor so every time I run arah GL is evidently intoxicated by my fine fine norn behind. He will spectral walk, 100% of the time, without exception, to me and me only. And that’s fine generally the pugs I run with figure they will just stay away from me in p2, I focus on kiting and dodging while my group ranges GL happily from a distance.

Where I did see a difference is p3, when I still take some of the aggro but not all. He hits everyone at random it seems

Did path 4 on my Ele finally just the other day, we did an experiment.

Full zerker guardian, and I was mostly zerker with a few pieces of valkyries and 1 piece of PVT in my back, so I had 1300 health more than he did.

He went for the guardian almost every time, unless I got hit by his big aoe or a tick of his aoe lifedrain, then he’d target me with the next attack, without fail.

So give it up to anet for making sure tha zerkers is the most useful stat combination for
E V E R Y T H I N G.

Even tanking, wear zerkers.

GG.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I voted for Ellen because we know about Abaddon. We know how and why he fell. We have lore we can reference. We don’t have every nitty gritty detail, but that’s ok.

The reactor on the other hand….. we know practically nothing, and I’d really like to know more beyond ‘well it blew up and it was an inquest experiment.’

In addition, I’m really not sure how they could make the Abaddon fractal and truly do it justice.

We know plenty about the reactor. We know it was an inquest facility, we know it has rooms dedicated to frost (Jormag), Jungle (Mordramoth), Water (Whatever Bubbles’ name is), and Fire (primordus), similar to how CoE’s Infinity Coil reactor has zones for each of the 6 dragons. CoE is literally the successor to Thaumanova, they’re continuing the same research there. If you think Thaumanova is a mystery, you need to investigate the world more and read between the lines, rather than needing someone to hand you all the lore and info on a silver platter.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Kirschwasser.3972:

I actually realized it shortly after posting it, but didn’t bother changing it assuming that my point would ultimately get across anyhow.

My point ultimately was that I had no issue finding groups to go to Underworld with and I wasn’t doing SC and I see absolutely no indication of this taking over dungeons aside from the forums.

Perhaps you had a larger friends list than mine, and used fewer pugs for UW. I liked to PuG, for the sheer enjoyment of meeting new people. Before SCs it was easy to find pug groups (won’t say they were all good, but much easier to find). After….poof, gone.

As for the SCs of the GW2 dungeons…I saw a little bit here and there before. Now, its starting to crop more. On here, on gw2lfg . net/com, even in the map chat lfg calls. I’m starting to see it more and more, and its very disheartening. I can still find ‘regular’ groups for now…

I was never able to complete UW for the statue after Dhuum came out. by that time it was all SC’s, and they all wanted you to have 350+ gstones to join the group. You could know the build to use, even have practice at using it solo in UW, but it was never enough, unless you wanted to blow plat on Gstones to trick the groups.

sinofmercy.7019:

Beat her finally after 70+ attempts with my mesmer. My setup was GS scepter/focus, weird as that was. Never thought I’d use that combination like, ever.

why scepter/focus rather than scepter/pistol or scepter/sword?