Guild Wars 2

Razor.9872:

Salamander.2504:

Let’s hope the “outlier” shaves include Revenant, now that mesmers and necros will no longer be able keep power rev’s in check (without toughness).

Have you visited the Rev forums lately? I’m not against it, but I can already smell the smoke from the inflamed QQ over another nerf.

Have you ever visited any profession forums? :P Any nerf is taken as an absolute disaster.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

This sadly.

Many of the ideas in guardian design while sounding nice simply do not work well in game because they require things like standing still (symbols) to get the full benefit which the game punishes you for doing or because they try to do things that are done better (often much much better) by other skill types or other classes.

It wouldn’t be bad if guardians could punish or prevent enemies from running away, but guardian’s access to wards is not great enough for that, and it usually screws with their DPS in pve. For example, If hammer 5’s ward was slightly faster and dealt damage on knockback, it would be really cool.

However, Anet rarely (or very slowly) makes large and important mechanic changes to old profession kits, so the chances of seeing anything other than cooldown reductions and more boon/ condi creep are low.

One of the cool things about PvE guardian is that your ground DoTs can reliably hit your opponents, so if you enjoy that kind of stuff, symbol builds are very satisfying (especially greatsword and mace/x. Hammer is really boring, even if effective). kind of like a melee fire elementalist.

Traps are also very interesting to farm, as you can put them in the locations where you know your enemies will spawn.

Sartharina.3542:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Now, I think what you’re most curious about is how things will go moving forward. And it turns out, we do want to restore some of the skills that were reduced in the past. However, some effects, such as Auras, probably will remain as they are now, because the previous versions were considered to be too “loud,” and given the fact that their effect is supportive it needs to have a consistent visual effect across allies/enemies.

I really hope they do change the auras again to something more noticeable. They used to be fun visual rewards for pulling off an appropriate combo – both giving and recieving. And right now… they’re way too invisible. I mean… I might be able to notice one of them if I manage to activate the combo without any other distractions (Such as combat)… but who gets an aura when they’re not in combat?

The loss of the Fire Shield’s “Bubble of FIre” around my character really took all the fun out of the Longbow/Sword warrior I used to run.

I agree, there was a lot of visual satisfaction with old auras. They fulfilled a visual fantasy that new auras do not.

Bring them back for PvE at the very least.

Zok.4956:

Hi,

there are certain things that A-Net has worked on before the spring-update but that did not make it into the spring-update, i.e. changes to the mystic forge. Also I was under the (maybe false) impression that changes to the megaservers were planned for that update.

Will these updates come asap, when they are ready, as latecomers of the spring-update, or will they be postponed until the summer-update (which is more about content) or the fall-update?

Datamining also revealed their intention to tone down guild upgrades.

My guess is that they’ll go in as soon as they are done (aka, summer update). That patch may be a content update, but that doesn’t means it can’t offer QoL changes.

Auras being “loud” is the best thing about them. Old aura effects are one of the reasons for why I find GW2’s combat to be so pretty.

In addition to that, there’s not a big problem with auras being “loud” in pve, because party characters aren’t focused by 50-100 players like boss enemies are. There’s very little happening on the players themselves, so who cares?

Just give us the option to turn ON the old effect.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I hear you mate, but while it’s beneficial to you, multiplied by the thousands of players getting too many rewards, and there runs the risk of not only crashing the market, but also inflation and the ever scary “running out of things to do/collect”.

For the TP market, perhaps, but for all the in-game merchants with fixed prices, the rewards actually feel meaningful now. For me, it’s the difference between being worth it or not being worth it (I was pretty much not playing the game until last patch).

Nike.2631:

That hardly describes this latest patch and the Ranger Shortbow.

I enjoyed the ranger changes, but it’s a problem when only a few professions get changes to that extent every 3-4 months.

At that pace, how many years must we wait to get more than a handful of big changes to our core skills? (And how many patches must we wait until Anet can finally, sucessfully fix the elementalist scepter so they can move on to other skills? :P)

The cooldown reduction on shouts was kind of a “here’s some candy so you don’t feel bad because of all the shiny toys the other kids are getting” situation.

Considering the amount of time I have to spend to complete hot meta maps, and then dailies, and then dungeons/ fractals/ whatever, each single day, the rewards are actually worth it now and they finally feel like they are taking me somewhere. I mean, I don’t even have time to do all that except at weekends.

Nike.2631:

Not unlike how Dragonhunter traps got tons of care and constant reworks while thief and ranger traps were left to rot.

If they’re old, don’t expect anything more than cooldown reductions and aftercast tweaks. That’s how Anet balance works.

Rym.1469:

Some changes were good, many were mind-boggling,

General impression of the patch is the same as for the one before – couple hotfixes to patch some things in the meta, but yet still no balance “Update” that would open up alternative playstyles, allow build diversification, update useless traits/skills or reduce powercreep across the board.

That’s my biggest issue with the last two big patches.

Anet has no dedicated skill/ class update team. They merely have a few guys number tweaking meta builds, with the occasional “here’s a lower cooldown for this underpowered skill” here and there (from a guardian’s point of view).

Sure, the changes done to, say, ranger’s single-handed weapons were cool, but they were too little considering that all professions need the same treatment. Seems like the guys in charge of those changes are too busy with future eltie specs.

Guardian traits are a mess and they have been a mess since the trait rework.

However, it’s clear that those things won’t be fixed anytime soon. Anet has a dedicated balance team that is mostly focused on the meta. They have no real skill update team.

I think your average, non-hardcore player is more worried about usability issues than number tweaks. The tablet requires too much micromanaging, which may be fine with similar mechanics in games like League of legends, where combat is generally simpler, than it is in GW2, where you already have a lot of things to micromanage in the first place.

Most of the suggestions usually revolve around QoL changes that minimize button presses, like auto-summoning (scrap the mechanics for breaking a tablet, have the elite skill put all others on cooldown, and call it a day), auto-follow (if not always ON, then merely have it come closer when you leave its range, instead of having it break) or slighly bigger spells radius for a higher 6 cooldown (so that you don’t need to spam it so often merely to reposition the tablet one inch closer).

In other words, streamline the mechanics, remove complexity creep, etc.

Gemstore weapons are generally more appealing than in-game weapons, and this looks like something out of the gemstore.

So, that’s both a good thing and a bad thing.

To get a gemstore-quality item without having to buy gems is lovely, in case we were talking about, you know, a normal item and not a legendary.

Crovax.7854:

Case in point: The saddest part is that the concept art for ascended armor looks amazing as opposed to the flustercluck we got ingame. I’d even go as far as to say it’s fit for legendary armor!

Just look at this:

Yep, definitely consistent with everything else.

Fun fact: at lower/ medium graphical settings, the heavy ascended boots get a blurry, pixeled look, while the remaining components do not.

coso.9173:

yeah, I meant that male and female armor in FF look at least alike and part of the same set. in here we have the https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krytan_Medium_Armor_Skin Krytan medium armor, where the differences between genders is just ridiculous. females get a tight skin armor with a cool sleveless short jacket. and guys? oh, just ANOTHER long coat, because you know, we really need another one of these…

This doesn’t even bothers me much, as long as both versions are appealing. Sometimes, what works for one gender does not works for another (see: the new Gwen outfit), and bigger changes are justified.

For example, I have nothing against the fact that phoenix armor looks so different for both genders, because, clearly, the female version’s style is too feminine and princess/ fairy like. (And I don’t have anything against players who want fairy armor for their guys, but we’re assuming that, on a broader sense, both variants should satisfy both genders as equally as possible; aka, they should be as “cool” as possible for both tastes). What it truly annoys me, is how the male armor is so uncreative, so effortless, so bland, so unexpressive in comparison to the female variant. So they don’t merely look too different: the male cloth looks straight up filler, as if the designers/ modelers didn’t want to bother with it but were forced to, or as if they didn’t have the time or the budget for it.

That could be understandable in that specific case, as the female variant is the armor piece for a story character, just as it may be understandable that Gwen’s outfit was doomed to fail on males, but generally, this occurs far more frequently than in those specific situations, which plain shows that Anet just can’t do it, for whatever reasons it may be.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

Two weeks ago I posted that we were starting integration and final testing for the Spring Quarterly Update. It’s been two busy weeks. The quarterly update is through QA and looking good. We’re going to announce the release date tomorrow.

As we prep for release, you’ll notice that we’re not doing the series of advance blog posts that we had done for some prior releases. Hopefully that’s not too surprising; I’ve written a few times since taking this role that I think our job is to delight you with what we ship, not with talk and promises.

With everything prepped now, let’s have some fun together and see some hints of what’s coming, and then we’ll see you in the game on release day.

Mo

Hiya, Mike.

Although I agree with you that a job done is more important than talking about it and promising stuff, I still hope that you won’t leave fans completely in the dark in regards to which direction the game is going towards.

Another thing is the importance of fan feedback. Yes, we can say that one of anet’s weaknesses has been to promise too much and deliver too little. But I can also point out that another of the company’s weaknesses has been at revamping current systems without success, getting a barrage of negative feedback, and then having to revamp them again. This is a waste of development time that could have been avoided if fans knew of the future systems before hand and pre-emptively pointed out their flaws.

Doggie.3184:

Yeah, females always get more customization and privileges in vidya games. Maybe he’s addressing that there’s a buncha revealing stuff for any male character no matter the class, and the armor isn’t vastly different in appearance between genders. Some armor here is outstandingly different between genders to the point of being an entirely new concept. Like the Witch/Hexed outfit is one of the worst offenders imo. I wanted a mage hat or a chinese hat too. They’re two entirely different outfits between genders.

It’s kind of like Phoenix gemstore armor (out of many, many other examples). The female set is kasmeer’s, which is beautiful, majetic and truly reminds me of a phoenix. The male set is… a rehash of an existing and bland model, with a few new straps. Yeah…

This is very consistent with light armor in general.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Embroidered_armor
The female version is quite beautiful and worthy of end-game armor (even though we’re talking about low-level gear). The male set is somewhat bland, something there is “lacking” that would have made it truly epic. But this is not one of the worst offenders. It is, after all, low-level gear, and the male set is actually one of my favourite low-level sets in this game. Still, the female set is gorgeous.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Masquerade_armor
Another example where the female variant is gorgeous and end-game worthy, while the male variant is lacking. I actually like the concept art for the male variant (not as much as the female one, but I do enjoy it), but it seems like its style was lost when translated to the in-game model. The stylish cloth edges and pointy-ends in the artwork lost all their coolness in the game model, where they look exaggerated and goofy instead.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winged_armor
This one is quite striking. The female version is gorgeous and beautifully detailed, while the male variant is the opposite, with really cheap, poorly-made and cartoon-ish details. Why is there such a difference in quality between both models in the first place? The concept art for the male version is actually quite cool, so it was not the artist’s fault.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feathered_armor
Yet another in the never-ending list for female>>>>male light armor sets. There’s so much beauty in the female set, where everything seems to be at the perfect size, at the perfect ratio, with the perfect edges and curves, which makes it quite elegant. The male version is a chaotic mess that makes the guy look like a total clown.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exalted_armor
Not so stricking here, but the female version is simply efficient: all the details add up to make it appealing. The male set has those ugly metallic accessories for no apparent reason, and they take away what could have been a fine set otherwise.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nightmare_Court_armor_%28light%29
Another male version that could have been as good as the female variant if it didn’t fail terribly at a few spots. The artwork makes both look really awesome:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/78/Light_armor_05_concept_art.jpg
But again, only the female version is well translated into the game. Why? Why? Why?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phoenix_armor
Look at the effort done to the female set, especially for the floating feathers. Then look at the male version. Look at its boots. Look at its “attempt” to resemble a phoenix. Interestingly enough, the upper part isn’t even that bad (it can look great with the correct colors, and all the tiny details enhance it instead of taking it down), but overall, there’s a clear difference between both.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sorcerer's_armor
Female = Tiny details that are beautiful to state at. Male = Oversized shoulders, and staps, a lot of straps. Look at how much effort was put into the woman’s skirt to make it unique and distinctive, and then look at the guy’s skirt and tell me if it isn’t yet another lazy and boring rehash.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stately_armor
The male version would have been almost there, if the proportions weren’t off. But they’re always off.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Priory's_Historical_armor_%28light%29
I dislike either, but the proportions for the male version are always off. Fat chest and oversized shoulders, again, for no apparent reason.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conjurer_armor
Remember this beatiful, flowing dancer-ish look from elementalist’s marketing trailers? Say hello to the male counterpart, ever-king of oversized shoulders, bland chest armor and goofy I-have-no-idea-why’s-that-there fur.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conjurer_armor
Such a beautiful mesmer armor from GW1. The male variant looks good too, except that anet put in the wrong proportions (surprise!) which makes males look fatter than they should.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profane_Light_Armor_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incarnate_Light_Armor_Skin
I find all those ugly, but I just want you to see the shoulders, guys. The shoulders. Anet’s modelers love massive shoulders on male light armor, and they don’t even try to be subtle about it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aurora_armor
I just wanted to post this as an exception. One of the very few cases where the female version looks crap compared to the male set.

Khyan.7039:

Ticky.5831:

I’m VERY confident if I looked hard enough, I could find something even more ridiculous than the bladed armors in FF14.

There are a lot of set ridiculous in FFXIV.

Some examples :
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_005.jpg
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_006.jpg
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_007.jpg
http://www.finalfantasy-fxn.net/images/media/51ba79a0_Final-Fantasy_XIV_Realm_Scholar_04.jpg

Thess one are more ugly on male : http://d1vr6n66ssr06c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/PvP_Scholar.png
http://40.media.tumblr.com/faeec1c86d1e77bfe150efe472a43125/tumblr_n4iuuyU36B1sgrnkgo6_500.jpg

I can share more but it’s just for show that FFXIV don’t have everything perfect, this game have many many issue with design sometimes like gw2.

Some of those were clearly intended to be somewhat goofy. Nothing wrong with those, regardless of the game where they’re in. GW2 might have a few share of them too, and that’s fine.

My complaints are directed towards gear that is clearly meant to be epic, cool or end-game, but ended up being unintentionally humorous. That happens way too frequently in GW2, unfortunately.

Khisanth.2948:

Riku.4821:

Hmm. I’d agree that Arena Net should probably look at their art bible once more.

I bet “Thou shall only make ugly looking hats” is in there >_>

And backpieces. Anyone remembers how many season 1 rewards relied on ugly backpieces?

I prefer FF14’s overdesigned gear because, at the very least, it still manages to be somewhat stylish. I mean, a Dragoon will always look agile, intimidating and kitten, even if you dislike the unrealistic and exaggerated art style. In comparison, GW2 makes heavy armorers downright chubby, fat or just laughable.

It might not have been the most… differing comparison, but I do feel that, considering that both games go for a similar gear art style, FF14 does it better. (I’m not making any comments about that game’s wardrobe or its systems, however. It is, ultimately, a vertical-progression game while GW2 is not.)

If you look at Mistward (revenant’s) gear, it’s a good set. It’s as unrealistic and overstyled as any other, but it does its job well. It looks cool, it looks strong, it looks epic. But then you have other hot gear like bladed and leyline, which are based on interesting concepts but are entirely wasted by ridiculous design, even within the standards of over-stylized art.

Sarrs.4831:

The point is you’re just kinda delivering a backhanded insult. “Yeah these guys are excellent at their job but they’re also completely rubbish”. You get their guard down with “oh he thinks I’m great that’s nice of him” and then you slap them with the glove of “you can’t do your job properly”, and you do it on the back of what you’ve provided as evidence, which is pretty plainly unfair.

Okay, I understand what you’re saying now, and it wasn’t my intention to be unfair like that.

I do think GW2’s art is generally really good, and that’s an honest opinion. I also think that the concept art for armors – the ones we have access to, at least – is also fine, but there’s clearly something very wrong happening during the art -> game transition.

When you look at many of the existing armor sets, it’s easy to blame the artists, but when you look at the few existing concept arts released and compare them to the in-game versions, it reveals hints of where the problem may lie. But it’s hard to get a clear picture of the problem, because then you have examples of models that are technically impressive (the details of bladed armor and carapace are definitely sharper and have nicer colors than those of older armor), while the artistic quality is fugly. But that artistic style might not have been completely intentional, as it can be see from the art for ascended armor, where some details like the shoulders are much more appealing on paper than what we have gotten in the actual game.

Another thing that makes it hard to grasp the problem is that anet is very consistent with what kind of sets are at high quality and which kind of sets are not.

Generally:
- Story character’s armor is really great, artistically and model-wise (Logan’s, Kasmeer’s, new Rytlock’s/ Mistward set).
- Female light armor is consistenly good, highly detailed, creative, with a lot of attention put to detail.
- Male light armor is consistently a rehash of previously bland sets, with unnecessary and random details added in, and the same applies for medium armor.
- Heavy armor is consistently chubby, cartoon-ish and at absurd sizes.

Anet is clearly capable of making great looking armor when marketing demands it, but most of the stuff we get feels either effortless or rushed, unless its female light.

I’m getting growing suspictions that the source of all those problems are technical, because if you look at the outfits that most resemble the armor sets in this game (easy to recognize by verifying if they have or not huge shoulders and a clear and unnatural divison between different components), those outfits are as ugly as most armors; but if you look at simpler outfits, they’re quite awesome and effective most of the time. Especially, when they are not designed with shoulders or other smaller components in mind.

So it might be a problem with Anet’s technology that makes it hard to translate the art into good-looking models. But then we DO have some great looking models that are translated really well from the concept art (draconic, CoF armor, mistward, etc), so I don’t understand.

Ticky.5831:

You’re complaining about overdesign, and then you post Final Fantasy Armors?

Wha????

I’d say that FF armors, although heavily stylized and detailed, at the very least look “cool” and achieve their intended purpose. Go look at Dragoon’s armor and tell me how elements contradict its intent or look like a parody. That’s the difference between, say, dragoon and gw2’s bladed. The former is over-stylized but cool- The later is an unintended parody.

One of the things that I think FF14’s armor is really good at, is keeping the edges and curves really nice, so warriors have this agile and/ or elegant look, while GW2’s armor has a tendency to make them look fat, chubby and with ridiculous shoulders. Another thing it does better is that the details, themselves, do not feel as random.

I was deliberately making a comparison between two games with highly stylized armor design.

Sarrs.4831:

DiogoSilva.7089:

For a game that has excellent artists

DiogoSilva.7089:

• Inability to make good-looking male scholar armor (in contrast, the female variant is usually quite good) since the days of GW1.

And this gem.
Look if someone can’t make good looking clothes for guys then they aren’t good artists. “They’re excellent artists, but they’re completely incapable of making armor that looks good for 1/6th of the population!” how did this get past your internal censors

I am not sure I understand your point? GW2 has clearly really good artists, especially for concept art, map design, monster design, etc. And then it has absolutely ugly armor regardless of your graphical setting.

Now matter how high your graphics are, that crafted armor will always look undetailed and made of plastic in comparison to the female version. Even the dyeing is poorly implemented, and you can’t separate the “armored” parts from the cloth. The feathers look like a plastic toy no matter what. And the stylish curves and edged from the hood and from the body outline have been lost when translated to the model, to the point that what looked stylish on paper looks a mess in the game.

I can also give the example of nightmare dungeon armor for scholars. The artwork is AWESOME, the in-game model is a disaster.

There’s is clearly a problem with GW2’s armors, and it may not even be the artists fault, but a problem that probably lies when concept art is translated into the game. But then again, some armor sets are translated really well into the game (the draconic set looks about the same when you compare the model with the concept art), and others lose so much in the transition, that they become laughably goofy when they weren’t meant to be.

Seera.5916:

Go read the reviews of the Dynasty Warriors sequels. Games who make sequels that are just “new skills”, better graphics, etc etc, are not very well received. Because all they’ve done is edited a game. They didn’t make a new game.

You could take GW1’s fondation and go much further than merely “edit it”. The progression systems, the map systems, all those things could have been completely revamped. Do you think a GW1 with 80 levels, masteries, traits, events, public maps with meta events, world bosses, WvW, PvP leagues and an updated and more streamlined combat system with better technology would be an “edit”?

You can create a completely different experience based on the same foundation. Anet simply decided to go even further and remove most of what made GW1 good as well.

Anyways, I’m not saying that Anet did wrong. Tust that there’s a middleground sofmewhere between “an edit” and “a complete and unrecognizable overhaul”.

EDIT: And if we look at reviews, we can also take into consideration Dragon Quest’s reviews, which are generally high, or Final Fantasy’s reviews during its golden era (FFVII is “merely an edit” of FFVI, which is “merely an edit” of FFV, and so on), etc.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Why would I want them to completely remake the same game? If GW2 were exactly GW1, I wouldn’t have bought the game. And I say this as someone who really loves GW1. GW2 has its imperfections and its problems, and so did GW1. Plus, it was never meant to be the same game as GW1.

Well, one option could have been to take GW1’s gameplay and improve it, make it more modern and up to current standards. Expand on it, keep what worked and improve what it didn’t. Evolve it, but with a complete new coat of skills to keep it refreshing as well. I think that’s the kind of thing that the OP and others like him wanted out of GW2, and to be honest, it would have been pretty sweet move too.

I agree with Crinn, complexity without depth has a negative impact on enjoyment, and depth can be achieved with simplicity and elegance. MOBAs are also a good example of that.

Complexity creep is a real problem with GW2’s combat. There’s always too much information being delivered at the same time during combat. Too many hidden passive effects, too many (and tiny) boon and condition icons coming and going on your UI, too many skills being used without some some sort of window where nothing happens, too many variables.

Because we are human beings and not robots, we can’t interpret so much information at a given time. This means that your average player will kill or get killed without fully understand why or how it happened. This means that, in order to be a good player, you need to have a lot of knowledge about the meta builds and what they can churn out every second. It also means that any viewer will not understand what is happening during streams.

In other words, GW2’s combat is really poor at communicating to the player what the hell is going on, and complexity creep is one big factor for that. Without heavy knowledge of existing builds and of what effect is attributed to each abstract skill animations, a player’s success is automatically crippled. This also makes the barrier to entry huge in GW2’s pvp.

The funny thing is, GW2’s combat was designed to prevent all that. During the transition between GW1 and GW2, anet simplified plenty of mechanics (hexes and enchants into boons and condis), and attempted to make combat more visceral through animations. This attempt, however, didn’t go as far as it could have (many animations are still way too abstract and poor at communicating what they’re meant to do), and was then crippled by new mistakes (the over reliance on passive traits, the lack of energy bars or other mechanics to control the pace of the game).

SlayerSixx.5763:

OK, first things first. Stop mentioning riot. Riot has been absolutely nuts over champion “identity” since the latest season began. They’ve been so enthralled to the point where they’ve created some monstrosities T.T (man-with-shotgun-who-shall-not-be-named).

The difference between riot’s balancing and anet’s is night and day. That does not means that riot doesn’t makes mistakes, but they’re so much better at it.

With League of Legends, we are seeing old champions being revamped or improved to be up to standards, with kits that offer more opportunities for outplays and counterplays. Their strengths and weaknesses are getting better defined, and there’s a lot more visual communication that makes it easier to understand what is happening, both for streamers and for normal players that are learning their and their opponent’s champions.

In GW2, we mostly see number tweaks in balance patches, with little to no regard to how ineffective old mechanics are at contributing to an healthier game. Playing gw2’s original profession kits is like playing old and outdated champions in League of Legends.

Just as the OP said:

“the balance cycle of gw2 is equal to a doctor giving pain killers to kill the pain, only to ignore what is causing it. If you want to stop the pain, you cure the problem, not conceal it”

Players have been saying this to Anet for years, but 3 years after the game is out, we’re still getting balance patches like the last one. What hope is there for us players?

If I’m not wrong, those aren’t all the april changes we’ll get, but simply some tweaks to prepare players in advance for what they should do or not do until then.

GW2 has had the weirdest development cycle of any mmorpg I’ve seen, and there was so much potential wasted.

- 1st year: anet mostly dedicated themselves at setting up new festivals.
- 1st-2nd year: anet came up with the living world concept, but made the mistake of making it temporary for the sake of an ideal that didn’t work in practice (the idea that temporary content would make the world feel more alive).
- 2nd-3rd year: they finally hit a sweet spot when it comes to adding new, permanent content with ls2 and HoT, but it does not feel enough after so many years.
- Since launch: anet spent more time reworking the existing game than adding new content. This wouldn’t have been a problem if most revamps were well executed, but the first trait rework was a disaster, the daily reworks have brought as many new problems as they fixed old ones, the newcomer’s experience was shallow and unengaging, etc.

TL;DR: Anet spends too much time working on new features instead of new content, and they aren’t even very successful at that.

I enjoy tweaks to existing features, but I would like to see a 50:50 or 40:60 ratio (in favor of) new content, instead of the 70:30-ish we have right now, and I would wish that future system/map revamps actually succeeded often, which they rarely do.

Wander.5780:

I couldn’t have said it better myself, the elephant in the room is the endless gem store junk that keeps being released. You can’t have a legitimate excuse as a developer for allocating development time elsewhere because you can’t focus on legendarys, when you’re using development time to pump out new glider skins and outfits every other day.

It’s the “gemstore junk” and the expansion that brings them money and pays their salaries, so they can’t merely stop working on it for the sake of an ideal.

Ultimately, the choice is about more content vs less content but more legendary skins.

Sird.4536:

Legendary weapons provide months of content with the journey, living story in the past has only lasted 2/3 days.

A few days getting the new collections and months and months repeating old content to farm for materials is not exactly more new content than living world or anything else.

Look, I like the legendary journey, although I think it could have been even better, but it’s still mostly made up of huge money sinking tactics and has a relatively small amount of new content. I would like to see new legendaries too, but the number one reason why I stopped playing GW2 is because the game either needs new content or old stuff fixed. What’s the point of getting new skins if all you’re going to use them for is to go back to SW and farm?

AysonCurrax.3254:

Better Decision, as in: have less staff work on the next expansion, and instead have them work on the current one to deliver what was promised.

Isn’t that what they are doing with the april patch and the 3rd raid wing?

There was literally no need to put legendaries on hold to improve work on Living World and whatever else.

If there was no need, they wouldn’t have done so. Why go for an extremely unpopular decision, unless it were absolutely necessary? I don’t think they’d want to go this way if they had a better solution.

They could have pulled those resources from somewhere else.

I imagine that they also did that, but we’ll never know as it would relate to projects that are not of public knowledge.

If that still doesnt hit home, imagine what it would be like if they only gave you 2-3 new elite specs, and put the others on hold till the gods return to tyria.

I think the difference between elite specs and legendaries is gameplay. Elite specs bring a lot more gameplay variation than collections, it affects all players and is not gated behind huge money sinks, giving it broader appeal. Those things set both features apart.

AysonCurrax.3254:

I honestly don’t get why so many people pat them on the back for coming out and making such a “tough” decision, when in reality, they could have made a much better decision. A better decision for us, that is. The One they took only benefits themselves.

What better decision? The game is greatly lacking new content at the moment. New patches usually bring a lot of new features, a lot of new shinies, but little to no content. Are legendaries so important to the point that most players should be forced to replay old content over and over just so a small niche is happy?

I understand the frustration, but content should always have higher priority than 12 skins.

Amurond.4590:

MashMash.1645:

If 6 devs that were working on Legendaries are going to be so useful to LS3, then the 6 devs from raids should also be moved over to LS3.

Raids can wait. They are played by a small fraction of the playerbase compared to LS, and LS3 is the priority.

When all the things promised are caught up they can go back to making raids.

I’d be interested to see the numbers/statistics behind people who participate in raids vs people who own legendaries. Some justification I have seen is that only a small percentage of players own legendaries. I’d like to see how it stacks up the percentage playing the raids.

The raid team is also producing content faster, I think. We’re getting 1 new legendary inbetween 3 raid wings. And we’ve gotten the first 3 new legendaries after years of waiting, while the raid team is relatively new.

If those 6 developers are put in a team that can consistently produce new content for most players to enjoy, most players would win with this. I mean, for every legendary journey designed, you could have 3 smaller collection quests instead, without massive money sinking behind it, thus having broader appeal as well.

Likewise, I hope the art designers behind legendary weapons aid existing artists/ modelers to speed up the process in which we get new non-gemstore gear.

Well, yes, let’s wait for the blog posts related to the april’s patch, and see how it goes. Hopefully, they’ll be online in one or two weeks.

Dinks.2478:

Has anybody noticed how none of the people defending this because “it makes sense to focus on LS content” keep ignoring the fact that there are people developing a new expansion when they haven’t even finished this one that came out 6 months ago and are starting to cut features?

That’s kind of not true. The april patch should be heavily dedicated on improving HoT’s content, and we know that most of the promised features are still coming, excluding legendary weapons.

Testudo.4620:

I appreciate your willingness to be the bad guy in this situation. I’d much rather have new living world content than more HoT legendaries that I’ll never be able to afford. Shrugs, I guess I don’t see the big deal that’s making everyone angry.

It’s easy to understand why people are mad now, but hopefully, it will make everyone happier with the game in the future.

shinjin.3924:

while gw2 keep losing players.

GW2 is losing players because there is nothing new to do (and, well, because of anet’s screw ups too), and not everyone cares about legendaries. From that point of view, this is good news, because it should (SHOULD) translate to more content more often.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Nero and Onevstheworld, you asked if this means that LW can come sooner than July.

Full story episodes have a long lead-time. But I don’t think LW content has to be all about the episodes. So… maybe.

But I’m not here today to make predictions or promises. I’d rather we start by shipping, then talk about what we shipped.

Mo

What about additional story content/ sidequests?

Traditional MMOs usually do that through quests/ dungeons. New content, new bosses, new stories that are not directly tied to the main plot.

One of my biggest problems with GW2 is the lack of new content. There’s way too many “feature patches” and too few “content patches”. There’s way too many “old systems revamps” and too few new maps/ events/ stories/ etc.

Mike, when I was reading your post, about halfway, when you said that your goal was to give us always something to do, my first reaction was “but not everyone wants a legendary, and for those that want it, not everyone wants a short bow!” Then I read the part where you confirmed that the legendary journey would be over, and I’m actually happy with that decision, even if it is very controversial.

That being said, I think there are flaws with the current living world systems that need to be fixed/ improved:

• There’s a lack of additional story content outside of big living story seasons/ expansions.
• There’s a lack of linear sidequests that can tell stories. Collections are cool, but they’re heavily non-linear, with interesting lore but little narrative, and are, well, more about collecting stuff than doing an actual adventure.
• Most of the content being developed is targetted way too much at niches. Raids are heavily social-driven, fractals are heavily agony-grinding driven, etc. I would like to see more content that can appeal to a larger majority of players (generally, new maps with new stories do that), or see existing content be made more accessible to non-hardcore players (removal of agony and much improved LFG for raids, in my opinion, would go a long way towards that).

Nick.7621:

This is why I hate forums, a bunch of idiots like the guy who posted this. Conquest is the best game type for sPvP because of the following reasons:

1. Rotations. Knowing how to rotate is what wins you games.
2. Player vs player interactions for a node. Unlike Stronghold where you can bum rush the Lord.
3. Far more entertaining. Better than watching pve such as Stronghold.
4. They already tried other game modes such as team death match (Courtyard) and nobody liked it.
5. High tier pvpers don’t enjoy Stronghold. AG tried to get a Stronghold tourney but no one wanted to play Stronghold.
6. Conquest is the only game mode where player skill is required.

I can resume your post in one sentence:

“Conquest is the best pvp mode because all other maps are even worse!”

Champion’s Dusk, Courtyard, Spirit Watch and Skyhammer are flawed maps. Conquest only works the because its remaing four maps are actually decent/ good.

reikken.4961:

the game mode is more complex in LoL, yes, for sure
but the combat? most certainly not. If it seems close or greater in complexity, that is only because the simpler combat makes it easier to analyze the fight on the fly and make more informed decisions

And in the end, that’s a good thing. GW2 is more complex in theory, but when you get bombarded with condditions, boons, fields, particle effects, pets, stealth spam and active defenses everywhere, it becomes impossible for the human brain to follow all that information at the heat of battle. A lot of GW2’s complexity is then lost as gameplay gets to revolve around basic instinct, build knowledge and knowing what skills to use when you have no idea what is happening.

LoL’s simpler combat allows for clearer complex scenarios, while GW2’s is just bloated.

reikken.4961:

And combat itself is much more complex in GW2.

Champion skillset is, but combat as a whole, I’m unsure. MOBA’s game mode is far more complex than conquest/ stronghold, with deeper map design, AI and an entire mid-combat progression system.

MadRabbit.3179:

This is now the second round of changes to the scepter and I called it two weeks before the patch that the changes would be just worthless as the first set. Which they were.

It’s actually the third or forth if we take into account all similar attempts to make scepter viable since launch.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Yes, the game would be better if ArenaNet goes in and improves on a lot of combat design and mechanics. But they can’t even get combat balance right, let alone ‘improve’ combat.

No company can get balance right if the core balance mechanics are not balance-friendly in the first place. That’s why Anet has been walking in circles for so many balance patches.

How do you “balance” so much condition/ evasion/ on-cd-skill-use/ passive proccing/ AI spam in this game? How can you make bland and uninteractive skillsets strong without ruining pvp? If you buff them, they’ll become cheese because of their design flaws. if you don’t, they will be underpowered instead and no one will pick them.

The problem with Anet’s balance patches is that they are overly-reliant on number tweaking, and that method, by itself, has proven to be unpopular and insufficient for years. This last balance patch proves that they haven’t learned with their so-so-at-best balancing record, or probably that they do not have the budget nor the manpower to pull off larger mechanical changes. And that puts us, the playerbase, in a position where we just stop believing that things will ever get better.

If you compare Anet to Riot, for example, Riot is consistently updating old champion kits with new technology and healthier class design (more opportunites for high plays, more innate counterplay, higher clarity, well-defined strengths and weaknesses, etc).

As long as Anet’s balancing patches continue to be about “let’s buff this instant-cast skill’s damage by 10% in the hopes that an inefficient skillset is going to be viable”, we won’t go anywhere.

ErazorZ.5209:

Anyone stating gw2 is one of the best PvP games out there doesnt really know what PvP in its essence means. Gw2 is one of a kind. Thats where it shines. But currently its becomming more and more Moba like. Wich is REALLY bad.

If balance was at the level of League of Legends’ balance, it would be lovely. Riot actually puts effort into updating old champions, consistently communicates with their playerbase about what they do and why they do it and gives top priority to healthy pvp mechanics.

Anet buffs skills regardless of how healthy they are to the game. They buff pets for the sake of build diversity. They buff instant-cast skills indescriminately. They buff low counterplay skills just as much as they buff any other skill. They rarely attempt to mechanically retool said skills to be healthier. Their consideration for an healthy pvp environment is tehre for half the changes they make, but it isn’t there for the other half.

The changes done to elementalist’s scepter this last patch are just more of the same as we came to expect since launch. Random number tweaks in the hopes that it will hit the right spot. The main issues with the weapon (DT has no CC support so it can hit, AAs too weak, no meaningful active defenses) remain ignored, but hey, they buffed an instant-cast skill’s damage and an instant-cast trait’s damage!

mysterion.1276:

+1 best meta by far finally skill>op brainafk tank faceroll builds stacking.

“Skill” would have been the case if the balance team were to actually dedicate their time to retool existing skill sets and traits and add into them more playing potential, counterplaying, windows of opportunity, clarity and risk/ reward tactics.

Do you see the balancing team do this? Perhaps somewhat vaguely at best, yes, they do, at least as much as they can by opening an excel statsheet and tweaking numbers, which is to say, not much, while core mechanical and design issues keep getting ignored.

Agemnon.4608:

I mean there are mechanics within the class that are useful so they’ll never really be underpowered. Try generating a burn or chill combo field with a thief. As for mesmer they have polymorph, portal, and alacrity.

I think people are getting overly dramatic about nerfs while ignoring the good their classes still have. The removal of celestial just means they’ll have to commit more to a certain role.

I don’t know what is the current state of the elementalist, but I used to main one back in the day, so I want to reply to your point. The profession had 2-3 peaks of popularity since launch, and both were tightly tied to two things: strong access to boons and healing & ability to slot in a wide array of stats. Before celestial was buffed at the time, elementalists were out of meta. And before elementalists were out of meta at that specific point of time, their healing/ cleansing traits were yet unnerfed and they could slot in valkyrie amulet + zerker jewel + the old divinity runes, which was the closest thing to celestial stats back then (outside of celestial itself, which was underpowered).

The reason for why the profession is so reliant on so many stats is simple:
1. most of the elementalist’s active defenses rely on healing (heal spells) or toughness/ vitality (auras). They have less evades and less blocks than your average profession, they have the lowest hp/ toughness of them all, and they lack any defensive profession mechanic like stealth or clones+stealth.
2. most of elementalist’s damage is hybrid, so it relies both on power and condition damage. The exception was/ is scepter burst eles, but for those, weakness #1 is even worse.

In other words, the profession is broken. It can’t deal good damage without heavy investment in stats. It can’t defend itself without heavy investment on stats. And it can’t have both because celestial is out.

But I don’t play ele anymore, so I have no idea what their current state is nor if the new amulets help it out or not. However, I doubt the profession has changed that much for years.