Guild Wars 2

Build templates are being worked on, at the very least for pvp. I’m not sure if they’re working on a pve version, considering it has extra retrictions.

New traits are also coming before the end of the year.

Arheundel.6451:

With the shift in the meta, having an Elementalist on your team flat out gimps you in competitive play. How can we fix this?

By toning down spirit rangers and necromancers.

Vayne.8563:

But since I’m not locked out of content by not having specific gear (with the exception of the highest level fractals),. it doesn’t matter. In other games you HAVE TO HAVE X gear to progress. Not so here.

To be honest, how much of that has to do with design, and how much of that has to do with the lack of challenge? It’s possible that as harder content comes in, the less skilled players will find a need to get better gear.

FFXIV: ARR also does something nice: it allows you to have a homogenized build for solo-playing, but requires you to specialize for team playing. Best of both worlds. In GW2, combat was designed mostly around solo playing, at the cost of many team playing mechanics.

To get attached to a character, I must feel the story, feel the world and feel the gameplay with some degree of intensity and investment.

It’s hard to get attached when the main story is poor and jumps from place to place, with large gaps of nothing inbetween; when exploring the world is all about filling bars or rushing to the next heart/ icon in the map; when there’s almost no adventure going on; when lore is poor and most of the new mechanics introduced are lore-less.

It doesn’t helps at all that the world is inconsistent and doesn’t feels believable. Everytime I look at the armor designs, at the inconsistency between regions, at several new features, I’m consistently reminded that a lot of stuff is very obviously done for the sake of the online shop or for the sake of trying to appeal to as many players as possible. That the entire world is a toy land, with a casino/ gambing sub-theme.

Very rarely have I felt like I was in a journey, or that there was something awesome to find. Very rarely did I find awesome lore details after exploring an old ruins, or an interesting treasure hidden at some corner, or an epic monster where I had to work hard to overcome. Most rewards are crappy or generalized, and champion bosses are either impossible to solo or easy encounters that simply take too much time (for too little reward). Very rarely did I find a hidden cavern where I could say, “wow, what a discovery, I must come here again!”

Likewise, the lack of community-driven tools make this game’s community very cold. There’s almost no meaningful interaction with other players. Watching players in the map is nothing more than watching a character moving and disappearing with a name over their head, and usually dressed with something that doesn’t even fits the game. There’s lack of guild mechanics, there’s lack of team playing, etc.

It’s hard to feel attached to our characters, because the game invests very little on immersion, and has too many design choices that constantly clash with whetever immersion it still has.

Tyria feels like a product more than it feels like a world. A service designed to appeal to every single taste, at the cost of consistency, at the cost of immersion.

Those images are from the wiki.

That being said, considering that some of you think they are so close to the concept art, I wouldn’t mind seeing better pictures. Show me a male human spellcaster that looks good in those armor sets.

No matter how much I try, the maskless twilight helm takes the mystery and intimidation out of the entire set, and I see no majesty in my character as I see in the art. And the winged set always looks like it’s made of plastic, regardless of the dyes I use. Besides, I don’t see how the dye system limits it, considering that it doesn’t limits many other sets in this game that work the same way. In my opinion, the metal plate and the clothes using the same dye slot feels more a consequence of a designer’s /model’s poor judgement than a technical restriction.

Galen Grey.4709:

You just spaming 1 because that what you choose to do not because thats the only option.

If he is “just spamming 1”, and manages to beat as much content as you (not sure if he does or not), then the fault is not the player but the system. Strategy, skill and tactics shouldn’t be “an option”, or else it means they’ll never be needed in favor of easier playing.

I can also make a “healer” build. I can also make a “control” build. But guess what, most of them are pointless, because of the systems in place.

That’s why the person you quoted said that the idea to remove the trinity was good, but the execution was not. In games with the trinity, each of the three roles are needed. Certainly, a game does not need the holy trinity (take a look at GW1, which did not have traditional tanks, and had a lot more than three roles), but if the systems allow any role to beat content, then the majority of people will simply pick the fastest (and easiest) route.

GW2’s combat should require its own trinity. It should require control builds, it should require support builds. It should require condition damage, etc. When you have systems like defiance that destroy control builds, when you have poor party support tools (mechanically) and those are optional because everyone can be self-sustainable, when you have condition caps and all this, then the game degenerates into a berserker zerg rush. All those contribute to making GW2’s a shallow game. Being self-sustainable doesn’t comes at the cost of anything (why?), while sustaining others directly (with support) or indirectly (with control) comes at huge costs to efficiency. This is poor design.

Again, the removal of the trinity was a good idea, but the execution was not.

It’s not only about a bad choice of dyes, because I’ve experimented myself with much better dyes. It has to do with stylistic details that exist in the concept art and were not translated to the game, and/ or the way they made the dyes work better with some armor than they do with other armor. It’s stuff that could be fixed or tweaked in the future, but unfortunately, I’m not expecting this from Anet.

Everything looks better in the artwork than ingame, is this the first time you started a PC?

I would argue that armor sets like Draconic Heavy or the gorgeous female light armor sets look as great in-game as they do in the concept art.

I think the horns would be much cooler if they looked like the concept art I posted above. The comment about dyes was directed to the whole armor set.

About the second example I mentioned (Feathered Armor), I’ve just tested it with dyes as well, and the color slot that affects the golden plates also affects the color of the clothes. This is lame. The purpose of GW2’s dye system is to allow us to color the different parts of each armor differently. So, why does the game forces us to dye the armored part the same as the clothes part? Not only that, but it seems anet decided to give a plastic look to the armored part, instead of using the metal look found in heavy armor. And, as I’ve said, the in-game hood for that armor is round, which takes away from the style that exists in the concept art’s hood. You just can’t have this armor set look as good as in the concept art.

Kastylx.2579:

Dunno, they look the same to me. the only difference is your graphics, thats what makes them look so bad imo.

Those are pictures taken from the wiki. And no, twilight’s armor does not have have the mask nor the same horns. I’ve been testing it with 100 gold dyes (!!) on the pvp locket, and it’s near impossible to make it as impressive as it is in the concept art.

Mada.5319:

DiogoSilva.7089:

One step at a time. The next patch will bring a lot of neat features. Rewards and new game modes are being worked on. Yes, a year has passed, which is annoying, but things are at least coming.

Source please about the new game modes.

Just search for dev’s posts in this forum, they are working on something similar to a siege base-invasion/ conquest map, and are hoping to make it work.

Spammable auto-evade skills are unfun to play against, and are one of several details that contribute to making this game’s pvp less enjoyable that it could be. Hope they’re redesigned someday.

If we look at the concept art for GW2’s armor, we can see some really interesting sets that look horrible in-game.

Here’s are two examples for the male light armor:

For a game that is so heavily driven by cosmetic gear, it’s a pity that most of the looks that are decent in the concept art were translated so poorly to the in-game engine, at least for us, male spellcasters. I would personally love to see both armor sets above to be revamped to look closer to the original artist’s visions, especially because most male light armor in this game looks very bland.

People mention the over-abudance of CoF armor, and its “childish” appeal to the evil/ flaming/ Sauron lovers, but at least male’s cof light armor does its job well. It knows how to use its details to look stylish, unlike most other pieces whose details only make their set worse. It actually looks good at what it does, in-game.

The male light armor for elementalists in GW1 was mostly poor, but there was some good stuff in there.

Vabbi, which has a mystical/ exotic wizard look:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b2/Elementalist_Vabbian_armor_m.jpg
And the much superior hero’s version:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/6/61/Acolyte_Sousuke_Primeval_armor.jpg
Ancient, which makes them look like scholars:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/a/a0/Elementalist_Ancient_armor_m.jpg
Norn, which gives them a lordly vibe without being busy with unnecessary shinies:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/4/42/Elementalist_Norn_armor_m.jpg
Obsidian, because it looks cool and intimidating:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5d/Elementalist_Obsidian_armor_m.jpg

And then we had Mesmer’s armor, which was godly even for males.

Enchanter:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/2/2a/Mesmer_Elite_Enchanter_armor_m.jpg
Vabbi (weird, but not bad):
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/d/d3/Mesmer_Vabbian_armor_m.jpg
Norn, which makes them look like lords:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/e/e9/Mesmer_Norn_armor_m.jpg
Monument, for an elegant pirate look:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/4/4d/Mesmer_Monument_armor_m.jpg

In comparison, most male light armor in GW2 look really bad. They range from bland cleric clothes to busy, overloaded-with-details-and-straps lady gaga fashion freaks (no offense to those who like that).

We have a “mesmer” look with, say, ascalon catacombs armor, but it looks really bland and underwhelming compared to GW1’s mesmer armor. Or the temple’s armor, which isn’t that bad if you don’t mind being filled with shinies like a christmas tree.

If we look at the concept art, Anet’s artists have actually drawn some really interesting male light armor for GW2. But for some reason, unlike, say, heavy male armor, those looks didn’t translate well to the game’s engine, and look underwhelming and clown-ish in the game.

We have a “surreal” look with twilight arbor’s look, which looks evil, majestic and beautiful in the artwork (with a mask), but somehow translated really poorly to the in-game engine, and the mask was completely removed.

Just compare the mess we’ve got in-game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/0/07/Twilight_Arbor_armor_light_human_male_front.jpg
To the concept art:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/78/Light_armor_05_concept_art.jpg

The “helm”, the mask and the mantle leaves makes for a more impressive look in the concept art. The in-game version we got doesn’t looks half as good.

Same can be said for this “mystical”/ “ancient” look:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/7f/Light_armor_03_concept_art.jpg
Which in-game doesn’t looks half as impressive:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/c/c2/Winged_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Look at how “cool” the hood is in the concept art, versus how lame it is in-game. Look at how ancient and mystical the golden plates look in the concept art, versus how plastic-looking and plain terrible they are in-game.

People criticize about the over-abudance of CoF armor, and its “childish” appeal to the evil/ flaming/ Sauron lovers, but at least male’s cof light armor does its job well. It knows how to use its details to look stylish, unlike most other pieces whose details only make their set worse.

One step at a time. The next patch will bring a lot of neat features. Rewards and new game modes are being worked on. Yes, a year has passed, which is annoying, but things are at least coming.

The team with the bunker guardian at the middle will win over the team without the bunker guardian at the middle, exceptions aside.

JonPeters.5630:

You are correct. This was a technical drawback from the initial implementation of the system that we did not have the bandwidth undo. In order to do I now would require a significant rework of many other things. Not something I would rule out but something we would weigh considerably which means don’t expect it soon.

What if the two-handed weapons used the off-hand slot to acchieve the same goal? Do the current systems support equipping a second sigil on the “empty” off-hand slot and have it count towards the main weapon?

Phantaram.1265:

Skyhammer will be fine. It’s solo queue and it will still have a leader board, but there is no reason to take it that seriously.

For competitive premades, soloQ might be too random/ unreliable to take seriously, but for those who don’t have or don’t like having a specific team dedicated to pvp, soloq will be taken very seriously.

Wolfheart.1938:

How can you be this short-sighted?

He’s not being short-sighted, but realistic. Let’s suppose a normal player only plays through one or two dungeons every day. Which do you think he’ll play after the update? In Cof 1, of course. A normal player will only pick anything that is not cof1 after completing cof 1, and that’s IF they want to complete more than one dungeon path that day.

Romek.4201:

no duoQ in soloQ – thats why it is called SOLO

when wanna join with a friend you still can do it in teamQ as it is now it will work after patch

It’ll still be annoying to face premades just because I want to play with a friend. :P I do hope for a duoQ in the future, but for the time being, soloQ is awesome!

At least there’s plenty of good heavy armor models.

Look at how awesome female light armor is. Then look at how bad male light armor is. This is a cosmetic-driven game where I, as a male spellcaster, can’t find any motivation to search for and earn light armor skins.

As always, female light armor is amazing, male light armor is bland and boring.

Olba.5376:

That’s gonna kitten off pretty much everyone who likes hoarding their karma. After all, if you get it directly added, I won’t even have the choice to use a Karma Booster, Ice Cream and a Guild Karma Boost on it. And considering that those add up to over +60% karma, that’s a ton of Karma lost.

You do still get the choice. You can always boost your karma bonus before getting a karma reward.

Yes, in the end, it’ll mean a bit less karma nonetheless, but I’d take better game design over higher numbers.

Edit: after reading it again, I think the jugs of karma are not deposited. That you still get them and have to drink them separately. After you drink them then they go into the karma pool.

The removal of jugs of karma was just a suggestion. Nothing has been said about these.

I also like opening things, but I prefer opening loot bags with unexpected surprises the moment I get then, than cluttering my bank with 10 different types of karma items while waiting for the next opportunity to maximize karma gain and click 300 times to consume them all in one go.

Anet doesn’t even needs to remove those items from our bank. They can simply remove them as rewards, and add direct karma instead.

It also sounds like it’ll appeal to players who like challenging content. Anet has been recognizing that the game needs more of that, as shown by recent devs posts. And coupled with a massive section revamp in a city’s map, and I’d say it’s there to stay.

I would be disappointed otherwise. Hopefully, we get an official confirmation soon.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Diogo, yes and no. People stack karma boosters to use those jugs. Although they could just run around with the boosters on I suppose (wouldnt that just kitten people off)

True, but stacking jugs and clicking 300 times is not exactly better game design than directly getting the points account-wide. The later is more streamlined.

It’s probably permanent, considering that they have revamped one part of DR’s map just for that.

I wonder, if karma becomes account bound, will karma jugs still need to exist? They could always remove karma jugs from the game, and add direct karma points to your account.

I hope there’s no stack limit for tokens, neither. I’d love if the game automatically converted the item currencies into non-item versions of the same thing.

Next week, GW2 will certainly become a better game.

In GW1, quests were a great source of lore. They required you to explore the maps, not in the sense of getting to the next heart for the extra % map completion, but by building a new adventure within the world for you to go through. They added new enemy encounters alongside that new adventure. And they contributed to the story, with actual NPC dialogue, and “primary” quests that allowed you to follow the story inbetween story instances, so there was no gap inbetween.

GW1’s quests were the source of new adventures. GW2’s hearts have little to offer but repetitive bar-filling tasks.

I didn’t know there were this many vocal people that enjoyed hearts. They work well in low-level areas as a tutorial and guiding system, but as the game goes on, they become a chore.

Outside of their initial guiding function, hearts are just a bad version of events, or a bad version of traditional quests. Unlike quests, hearts can’t properly tell a story or create an interesting scenario – they’re just there, waiting for you to fill the bar by doing repetitive and mindless tasks. They never create new obstacles or challenges to overcome neither. And unlike events, they can’t be enjoyed with other players, they do not scale, they never get to an epic level.

The only good thing about hearts is how seamless they are, but so is the much superior dynamic event system.

Well-designed traditional quests at least have a structure. They can tell a story within their own structure (sometimes even with cutscenes!), they can have a controlled pace and gameplay flow due to their structure, they can offer moments of higher or lesser intensity, or higher or lesser danger, etc. They can have a beginning, an ending, a climax, and so on. Hearts? The worst kind of generic mmo quests: kill x enemies wandering in the open world, or gather x things on the ground. Once the bar is full, it’s over. No sense of adventure. No sense of story or lore. No sense of danger. No sense of excitement. Nothing. Just generic grinding.

If most of the hearts were completely scrapped in GW2’s maps, and were substituted by story instances, story/ lore/ mechanically unique quests, or events, GW2 would only be better for it, IMO.

Either Anet expands and improves the system, or I don’t ever want to see it again.

DiogoSilva.7089:

What we need is a Game Balance/ Combat System sub-forum, where Anet and the community can gather to discuss about those issues without being lop-sided to a specific class or restricted to spvp’s context.

The story treats the player as a hero no matter where he goes, and suddenly Trehearne pops up, and everyone starts calling him the hero instead. It’s nothing like in real life, and it’s nothing with the story scale going up. It’s simply the writing that attempts to appeal to the player’s ego every single time in the most obvious way, and suddenly the writers remember that it’s a better idea for a NPC to get the credits instead for mmo reasons. GW1 did it better – and yes, even with Kormir.

If money sink is a problem, Anet can always make all town wps free and compensate by increasing the warp fee of explorable areas. There’s a lot of benefits by making towns free to go, like removing unnecessary loading times and adding more incentive to visit the racial towns.

Alternatively, this section could be called “Combat System” as well.

It would be for just a week, I think. That being said, temple is one of the funniest tournament maps, imo.

Can we geat leap skills and all variants to not be affected by auto-targetting? It’s currently near impossible to use skills like Ride the Lightning to escape if you have that option turned on, but turning it off creates many annoying situations for some of us. Especially when a target comes out of stealth, I don’t need to manually target them again.

Also, for the sake of streamlining targetting, and this might certainly affect balance, can stealth be changed to hide but not lose targetting? So when a targetted opponent comes out of stealth, it’ll automatically target them again if they were the last targetted foe. And mayben to not be so harsh to thieves and for the sake of some extra strategy/ defense, stealth could only drop targetting completely if the stealthed character moved far away from their opponent.

What we need is a Game Balance/ Combat System sub-forum, where Anet and the community can gather to discuss about those issues without being lop-sided to a specific class or restricted to spvp’s context. The discussion for Warrior GS, among other issues, would probably be better if pvers could contribute, considering it needs balance in both sides of the game for opposite reasons.

Burning is fine as a “bursty” condition, but that’s why it shouldn’t be in the necromancer in the first place, imo. Or at least, not the way as it is now, which can be very reliably and frequently applied.

Yeah, pretty easy to tell. Play necro, see what effect you have on a team fight with x/x/x/30/30 ele round.

But you see, I’m not a top-tier competitive player who’s willing to playtest every single class I don’t want for the sake of winning. I’m a mildy-competitive player who likes to stick to one or two classes for fun, and tries to do their best based on what the I know and based on what I see on the battlefield. If a specific class is too strong against the majority of the players, but its power is justified and “balanced” due to a few obscure details that only the top tier multi-classing players know, then there’s a problem with pvp’s design.

About a bunker elementalist, in my opinion, I don’t think their party support is that much greater than a valkyrie-burst ele. What else can bunkers offer to the party that a 30/20/20 burst ele can’t? Slightly higher healing? That’s nice. Extra condition removal on switching to water attunement? That’s nice. But there’s not much more than that. Bunker eles lose damage to gain plenty of self-defense through cantrips, boons and cleansing. The exception is if they pick the aura-sharing trait over the cleansing trait, which gives allies auras and swiftness/ fury. But that won’t help them versus current necros, and they’ll be left with about as much condi-cleansing as 20-water burst eles.

Fresh Air eles have less party healing and vitality or toughness for stronger coordenated bursts and more damage.

I think the best way is to rework the passive traits into something more active, that require a specific utility type, skill sequence or similar. Something that can be visually predictable, where it’s possible to react to or counter. The same applies to the really powerful perma-vigor traits.

I’ll use GW1’s dhuum skills as an inspiration to change dhuumfire:
- Applies 1s of burning to nearby foes when health drops to 75%, 50% and 25%
(Requires being hit, can be countered at range);
- Alternatively, just have the trait apply a Fire Aura on himself. Why not? It’s easier to counter, as it’s visually expressive and will require a conditional effect to spec. It can be stronger in certain situations (aoe burning spread, might-stacking), while being easier to deal with. Besides, fire aura makes far more sense in high-hp + DS necromancers than it does in evade-dependent elementalists;
- Summon a dhuum minion that can apply 1s of burning over time. (Can be targetted and destroyed);
- Make it work like a GW1’s touch skill: can only be activated at melee range. This means necro players will have to decide between being at 1200 range safety, or going melee to maximize their damage;
- Applies burning on moving foes or on non-moving foes. Has interesting synergy with torment, although maybe it’s too close to it.

Mammoth.1975:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Mammoth.1975:

Unbiased as an ele main who hates full water can be about condition classes.

In my opinion, a bunker elementalist overloaded with condition cleansing is worse at countering the condi-spam necros than a glass cannon.

That’s nice. Never played a necro huh?

No. That was entirely from an elementalist’s point of view.

Mammoth.1975:

Unbiased as an ele main who hates full water can be about condition classes.

In my opinion, a bunker elementalist overloaded with condition cleansing is worse at countering the condi-spam necros than a glass cannon.

Either Mists and WvW shouldn’t have a portal to LA (instead, they would teleport you to your last location), or warping to LA and other cities should be free. As it is now, it’s free as long as you’re willing to go through a lot of loading times, which in my opinion, is not good design.

Also, while in a town, all other towns should be free of charge. You can already go from town to town with asura portals, so this would save you unnecessary loading times. The alternative is to have players pay for asura portals as much as they do with warp points.

D/D or D/F has access to 3 auras. There’s a hidden Fire Aura by using the earth leap skill on your fire field. Staff can also apply aoe frost auras with every self blast finisher on their ice field, which can be gotten from Eruption, earth dodging with evasive arcana and arcane wave.

Add a “Game Balance” forum section, where players can discuss it while taking into consideration all aspects of the game.

Because the balancing team posts more often in the pvp sub-forum, it’s hard to discuss with them about balancing issues out of pvp’s context, without going off-topic.

Acchievement rewards aren’t that worth at the moment, so I doubt players are going for them. Maybe for dailies, which are less time-consuming, but that’s it. I’ve been spending as much time in pve as in pvp since the game is out, and I have about 300-400 acchievement points from pvp, out of my 5500 total. I’m excluding dailies, but, yeah…

Magnetron.5823:

How about making rush the same mechanic as the sun mechanic in the airship map. That you have to press it 1x to activate it and a 2nd time to hit it. So you can choose how far u want to go.

That’s a pretty good suggestion, imo.

I have a lot of fun with how smooth and active the combat system is, and how it’s very fun to play even in 1v1 situations. However, team synergy, build customisation and over-reliance on about two roles are issues I strongly have, and wish this game can learn from GW1 someday.

The pvp infrastructure I don’t enjoy. Even though leaderboards, single-match tournaments and the soon-to-come soloq and dishonor mechanics are all excellent, they took or are taking their time to come. Outside of them, there’s no build templates to streamline experimentation and diversity; salvaging and talking to NPCs for every single little thing is a bit annoying; and lack of different game modes are a real issue, although there’s more map diversity now than before. Custom arenas are cool but restricted – they need a lot more options for funnier custom matches. And hotjoin, unfortunately, just do not work very well, and are having a negative impact. I would much prefer a 5v5 unranked solo match in its place, and let a few custom servers take hotjoin’s place.

Sorry if I wasn’t entirely positive, but what keeps me tied the most to this game’s pvp, outside of casual combat fun, is the potential it has to become better.

It would be interesting if tab targetting ignored all pets, with the exception of clones. Tab targetting through pets should be an optional keybind feature.

Maybe Dhuumfire would work better as a skill than as a trait.

Like for a future weapon skillset.