Guild Wars 2

Copestetic.5174:

MrAlanSmith.8329:

On every game MMO, Iv always been the “Healer” Teamworking player but iv read that there is’nt any healer in the game?, I dont understand …

How does this game work?.

Help would be nice on my play style.

It really doesn’t matter. 90% of the content you’ll be running around with 20+ other people spamming 1.

That depends on what content he aspires to play and what his goals for endgame are.

If he decides to play WvW, server choice is a big thing. A high tier server will result in boring play. A low pop server might see a bit more challenge.

SPvP/TPvP is obviously not that at all.

PvE is quite varied. Fractals tends to be pretty skill-based aside from a few stack spots. Every dungeon can be played with or without stack-cheesing. Most of the open world content is pretty good from a gameplay perspective. It’s only if he decides to farm popular events or map bosses that it really devolves into “follow 20+ people and press 1.”

Keep the Phoenix Rifle. You already own it. It looks great, if not better than The Predator.

Also, legendaries lost their bragging rights status at least a year ago. They’re so commonplace that they’ve become played out. No one looks at me and says “nice Sunrise.” No, they see one more glowing surfboard in a sea of glowing surfboards. That’s part of why I decided to go more mundane in my character appearances some time ago – it stands out more and actually shows more character detail for a better, cleaner appearance.

Plus, the kit mechanic makes owning a Legendary on an Engineer much more pointless than on any other class.

Edit: I might suggest a change in your color scheme to match the Phoenix Rifle better. Swap the red coat with a more orange-ish one and change the liquid/glow color parts of your armor from yellow/orange to a red one that matches the Phoenix Rifle.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I owuld personally volunteer to give Southsun Cove a complete make-over, a grossly underrated map that, with a few tweaks and additions, could be truly marvelous.

Southsun makes me sad. It’s a beautiful map that could easily be one of my favorites, but it has failed to become popular even through a significant overhaul.

I, unfortunately, predict that the zone will go ignored until (MAYBE) another rework following living story content involving the deep sea dragon (“Bubbles.”)

UnitedChaos.8364:

Please, please, please make multiple armor sets revolving around this ‘elonian’ style. Probably the nicest set to date.

Oh, I agree. The Arabic themes in Elonian culture (particularly Vabbian) lend themselves to some beautiful armor designs and fascinating profession/race concepts.

I would kill to have playable Djinn and Elonian centaurs, a Dervish-inspired profession, and more Arabian armors and weapons like the pictured one and Whispers armors.

I hope it’s not an outfit. I hope it’s a legit armor.

Click on one of the links, contact their support, and tell them to stop advertising to you.

azurrei.5691:

Yenrah.8532:

Well, imo this game needs a lot more of simple, realistic weapons. Right now we are an 80’s disco on some bad drugs.

Yeah, I mean where are the garden hoes, butcher knives, etc? Who wants cool looking, unrealistic weapons in a fantasy game? I want to spend lots of my fun time acquiring fake, everyday items! Give me realism in my fantasy world!

…

No, I actually agree with Yenrah. The game has WAY too much particle clutter. Weapons that serve as their own personal light show are not cool looking. They’re tacky, cartoonish, and lame.

A good elite weapon skin is one that is special, of course, but only in a way that is innate, attractive, and desirable on its own merits. The thing doesn’t need to be on fire or spewing out bright glow effects.

Is that to say that particles are a terrible thing? No. But there’s a general rule of thumb here. If particles drown out the details of the weapon itself, they need to be toned down. Fire effects are nice, but I should be able to see the blade (like for the Firebringer) instead of having the whole thing overshadowed by an over-the-top burn (Volcanus). A light effect should be subtle, but striking, like for the famous Sting from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings, rather than a complete eyesore, like for Sunrise.

DrAntagonist.8623:

flyingcats.6194:

What you are saying: “Why is the UI so bad?”
What you mean: “I personally don’t like these things about the UI.”

Learn to say things the way they are, and someone might actually listen. Personally, I’ve never had any issues with the UI. I quite like it.

Yes, because not having mandatory information to maximize efficiency, always having unnecessary text clogging the screen, and having unnecessary clog constantly is an opinion. If you would read the post before replying, you would see how flawed it is.

It is an opinion. And I happen to very much like the game’s UI. It’s attractive and functional.

Now, would I like to be able to one-click disable tracking on things like the personal story and events? Probably, yes.

Kurrilino.2706:

yeah right guys…………….

if we need 1 more thing it’s farming maps.

At no point have I suggested that the game’s reward system needs to be structured towards making maps based around farming – only that the reward systems of all maps should properly reward players for choosing to be there with unique and better rewards. All of these can realistically be obtained by just playing the game.

Nor have I suggested that existing content should be revamped – only the rewards bestowed by it. I even left the meta event farming mechanic of Dry Top out, because I think that it is counter-productive and would only add structure and numbers-demand where it doesn’t belong.

Will the community abuse it and farm particular spots? Yes. Will the player spread be better and more healthy even then? Also yes. Why? Because instead of the game having 3-4 popular farming spots, every map will be desirable. That’s a huge plus.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I talked to a couple of the devs just now, and they told me this is a subject they’re still reviewing and considering how best to address. It’s part of a larger discussion, as you can imagine, and changes would necessarily involve a few elements, not just condition caps alone.

While there aren’t details on changes or a timeframe in which they would be done, you can be sure that this is being reviewed by the devs and considered as part of the big picture and potential adjustments in the future.

What if we went simple with conditions?

Make every condition duration-based.
Bleeding now deals more damage with each passing second it is maintained (probably up to a cap), starting from a tiny amount. This keeps its feel alive while also providing a greater reward for cleansing the bleeding (counterplay) as well as for maintaining cover conditions. Alternatively, you could go an even simpler (but similar) route and have Bleeding deal more damage to foes with lower health.
Normalized damage on Confusion and Torment to a balanced middle ground.

Now that every condition only has one stack, give everyone their own stack of it.
The primary problem with the condition cap, as far as I remember hearing from a dev reply, was that the game could only support so many conditions on a target. With the removal of high-stack conditions entirely, this cap would be much harder to reach and it becomes much more possible to give everyone individual condition effectiveness.

I’ve come up with a couple basic additions.

Token Infusion
Increases earning of dungeon tokens and regional currencies by 10%. (Rounds up, granting 1 extra Geode for even a Tier 1 Favor event and 2 Geodes for a T5+ sandstorm event).

Grant dynamic events the same duration-based rewards as mobs
Dynamic events that go uncompleted for a longer duration give out more experience, gold, and karma.

Why would we have a subforum on an event that is identical to an event that we’ve already had? Most of the threads would just be complaining about this fact.

Region exclusive weapon skins

Each region would have one exclusive set of weapons that can be obtained by playing any of the maps in that region and randomly obtaining and building these. They are account bound, and can thus be freely used by your characters, but cannot be traded. Sound familiar? This is Dry Top’s Ambrite weapons. And with this change, Ambrite weapons would become the exclusive weapon set for the Maguuma Wastes region (Dry Top and unreleased future maps).

The current playable regions of Tyria:

Ascalon

Kryta

Maguuma Jungle

Maguuma Wastes

Shiverpeaks

Orr

The Mists (WvW and EotM)

With the Wastes already offering a skin set, this change would involve the addition of 6 new skin sets. That’s quite a bit, but it’s entirely manageable, and would greatly improve the community’s opinion of Anet’s recent business decisions (regarding the gem store and weapons).

Map exclusive exotic armor skins

In addition to being able to earn region exclusives, each map should also offer a few map exclusive skins. The combination of the map exclusive armor skins in each region would form a complete, coherent set for that region. These skins would be unbound, and could thus be traded. Sound familiar? For Dry Top, this would be its unique headpieces. These can only be acquired by a level 80 character, as they constitute exotic drops.

Let’s just use Kryta as an example, as it has numerous maps:

Queensdale – unique chest armors

Kessex Hills – unique leg armors

Gendarren Fields – unique boots

Harathi Hinterlands – unique gloves

(Unique helmet – to be added in a future map).

Now, the use of a system like this also adds an extra level of excitement to new map additions, because it implies new armor pieces.

Let’s make WvW a notable exception, as it wouldn’t benefit from more maps and forcing players into any particular map to obtain its skin rewards would only hurt WvW as a mode – not help it. In the case of WvW, divide its skin rewards into WvW Armor Boxes that can be obtained in any of its maps – including EotM, for those PvE players who tend to not care for standard competitive WvW in the first place.

Map exclusive weapon skins

Each map would also have one extremely rare, unbound exclusive exotic weapon. I am not suggesting an exclusive set for each map, as that would be ridiculous. No, they do not have to form a coherent set. In fact, they shouldn’t. Keep them to the unique, eccentric flavor of that map.

These exotic weapons can be cheaply upgraded to Ascended Tier, account binding them. This makes for a pseudo-ascended tier of weapons that can be traded, but which require a notable sacrifice that is in the form of commitment, not a major drain of resources, in order to be upgraded to best-in-stat performance.

Dynamic event rewards

With the new system, each (SUCCESSFUL) dynamic event would reward you with a random green-or-better piece of gear. These can include everything from standard greens to exotics, including map-exclusive exotics and precursors. Of course, the chance of a particular reward diminishes as its value goes up in order of (from most common to rarest): green, rare, exotic, region exotic (weapon or armor), map exotic weapon, precursor. Don’t count on dynamic events being a fast way to farm for these, but the change would make DE’s more comparable to other farming sources.

Hidden chests

Each map would also carry hidden chests which require (universal) lockpicks to open. Chest locations vary by overflow server and change with each daily reset.

Karma

Karma would then become the universal open-world currency. It could be used to purchase region and even map exclusives at downright exorbitant prices, but it would also carry value for a series of new, much cheaper items, including region currencies, lockpicks, unique recipes, and other valuables.

Overall

Through the addition of map-exclusive and region-exclusive skins and currencies, coupled with an increase in the value of karma, my hope is that Tyria’s open world content would flourish and would receive a wider range of play with a more evenly spread playerbase than Tyria has seen thus far.

Tyria is gorgeous, but is there really much of an incentive to explore it? The unfortunate reality is that MMO players do not tend to play content for its own merit. They want the carrot and they want to chase the stick it’s attached to for the shortest possible time. The result of this? 90% of the game’s PvE content – its large, detailed maps and often-exciting dynamic events – are neglected.

It’s often said that Guild Wars 2 needs more open world content. Well, the truth is that it has an overflowing bounty of it, but this content is so underplayed and the community is so poorly distributed that the addition of new content would only serve to worsen the population spread of the world as a whole.

So, no. The solution is not more. Not yet, anyway. First, we need unique incentives to explore every nook and cranny of Tyria, participate in its wealth of dynamic events, and overall choose to play the content that we desire while being uniquely rewarded for this.

Dry Top is love, Dry Top is life.

In this new map, we see a huge potential for a new and improved open-world rewards system. Let’s take a look at its reward mechanics:

Rotating sandstorm that dynamically changes the events offered by the map and encourages player cooperation with constant content.

Widely spread event spawns and randomized treasure placements encourage exploration of the whole map.

Unique map currency.

Exclusive skins associated with this map.

How can we apply these mechanics, beneficially, to the overall game?

This would be a several step system involving:

- Regional currencies

- Region exclusive skins (account bound)

- Map exclusive skins (which can be traded)

- A renovation of existing systems to support these.

- (Unrelated) An increase in the value of Karma

Regional currencies

The map-exclusive currency of Dry Top, Geodes, is promising, but it would be unwise to add a unique currency to each map, as the result would be a massive bloat in currency types. On the other side of the coin, making Geodes a currency universal to every map would be similarly unwise; Karma already fulfills this role and to make Geodes a global currency would only serve to undermine its value.

The solution, then, is to create a new unique currency for each region. These can be spent on Karma vendors in that region in order to purchase exclusive items and Lockpicks.

I want to build a set of ascended gear for my Elementalist – primarily for WvW and solo PvE. That’s quite an investment, and I don’t really feel like spending such a heavy amount of gold on a set that is less than optimal for WvW (roaming and zerg) play.

All I’ve been able to find are links to various combinations of the typical soldier’s/knight’s/valk/cav combinations that are used, but what is the standard here?

Outfits suck because they can’t be mixed with other sets. They literally hold no purpose and would be better implemented as armor sets.

Gibson.4036:

Once you hit max MF, essence of luck become consumables.

Fine EoL: +10% MF for 30 minutes
Masterwork EoL: +25% MF for 30 minutes
Rare EoL: +25% MF for 1 hour
Exotic EoL: +50% MF for 1 hour
Legendary EoL: +50% MF for 3 hours

This is the best suggestion here, though I’d actually lower the durations / adjust effects, because a player’s ability to earn essences far outstrips their ability to spend it at those.

Fine: 10% for 5 minutes.
Masterwork: 20% for 5 minutes
Rare: 30% for 10 minutes
Exotic: 50% for 30 minutes
Legendary: 100% for 1 hour.

Also, add it to some crafting / mystic forge recipes.

Bad idea.

Now, if you were to have completion of one map reward 3-5 laurels, that would be a great idea.

Tweaked Etheus with some new armor pieces and he’s looking better than ever.

(Falconer’s Coat, Arah Gloves, Ascended Shoulders and Boots, Seeker’s pants, Strider’s Mask).

They need a larger redesign than that. Shouts are a horribly broken concept – none of them packs any meaningful synergy with the others and they all have terrible effect-to-cooldown ratios.

Guard simply doesn’t do much. It’s good for nothing more than pet protection and a Nature’s Voice proc. The stealth mechanic on it is laughable.

Sick Em is decent and doesn’t really need much.

Protect Me is simply inferior to other invulnerability skills because, unlike the others, it has a large cost (lose pet dps/skills while also heavily damaging the pet). It doesn’t really have any meaningful advantages to bring it up to par.

Search And Rescue is just….. it’s silly. It is a skill that misses the mark so much on every level of its design.

What we know about the Tengu inside the Dominion of Winds is that they struggle with Destroyers inside of their walls.

So, I’m predicting that the Dominion will open up following a Destroyer-themed story update. It would take some serious desperation to get the Tengu to drop their (entirely understandable in their case) racial distrust and open the gates.

Because it would be a terrible elite if it didn’t.

Plus, it’s also a PvE property that allows it to cc bosses through Defiant.

moi.4398:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

moi.4398:

reinforever.8902:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Swap it with Infusion of Shadow, Cloaked in Shadow, or Shadow’s Embrace. Done.

Can I just make love to this post and idea in general. This is genius.

Those traits as minors would be too OP imo .

They may need minor tweaks, but even that would be better than having a minor trait that is a direct hindrance.

True . We all agree on the fact last refuge is kitten . Funny because the idea of the trait is good : Vanish when you are low . Good on paper , sucks on field
They could just make it more active like give the trait a manual keybind for active it ( F2 for example )

The result of that would be highly strange for a minor trait. Sounds much more like a Grandmaster. Speaking of which, I think a better trait concept (though probably not for an Adept Minor) would be “Last Refuge: When you drop below 25% health, ignore Revealed for x seconds (y second cooldown).”

It wouldn’t remove the Revealed debuff, nor prevent you from inflicting it on yourself. On the bright side, Revealed Training would still work with it. On the negative side, triggering Revealed near the end of the Last Refuge duration would be dangerous.

moi.4398:

reinforever.8902:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Swap it with Infusion of Shadow, Cloaked in Shadow, or Shadow’s Embrace. Done.

Can I just make love to this post and idea in general. This is genius.

Those traits as minors would be too OP imo .

They may need minor tweaks, but even that would be better than having a minor trait that is a direct hindrance.

“Through The Eyes of Etheus” (so named for my main character), is my Guild Wars 2 blog, which focuses on suggesting major renovations to the game in hopes of providing ideas and shifting it in a better direction.

I started it recently and plan to update it over time, focusing on major topics such as rewards, endgame content, wvw improvements, and pvp. Basically…. pretty much everything. As that happens, I will bump the thread and add the new topic to this post.

Current Topics

Introduction – My Name is Etheus Rook

The Five Types of Guild Wars 2 Players

The Current State of Guild Wars 2

Open the Armory!

Let’s Talk Endgame

The Explorer’s Guild Demands Better Pay

But, in all seriousness, my main issue with the Norn and Sylvari is that they have taken the place of better options for a playable race (and ones with more history with the series, at that). Tengu. Forgotten. Mursaat. Centaurs. Hell, even Hylek would have been more interesting and well-founded.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kamui.4038:

Those two characters need to be killed off.

All characters need to be killed off.

Starting with the asura. Snaff already went so we’ll just continue on . . .

I have a strange relationship with both the Asura and Norn. I occasionally find them downright hilarious, but they’re usually intolerable, and I find their anatomy to be just plain hideous to look at.

Basaltface.2786:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Thanatos.2691:

This would be hilarious! 10/10 would implement.

Commander + Trahearne = <3

. . . I will pay money for this to happen and be on YouTube.

Though let’s be honest. We’re all holding out for Logan/Rytlock.

you just know those two come together at the end…

Quick. Someone edit the CoF story cutscene where Logan saves Rytlock with “And I Will Always Love You!”

Honestly, I’ve always wanted the ability to make my characters’ own NPC romantic lead (with the same character creation system) or to choose one of my other characters to be their canon romance.

TexZero.7910:

Grind.

Funny though for a game without grinding to get something you sure gotta do that frequently.

It’s called an optional aesthetic – and a high rarity one at that.

It would be perfectly acceptable for this thing to require two years of grind. Why? Because you don’t need it at all. It provides you with no advantage in any way, shape, or form.

Grind only contributes to a game’s design philosophies if it is a mandatory part of the player experience.

Cufufalating.8479:

FYI straight up moving traps to WS would ruin pretty much every trap build there is.

Why? Because you could not longer take EB for cleansing, you still couldnt use SotF because of too few utility slots to make it work well enough, condition reductions food / runes would still be impracticle because you need the +duration food and either traveller or trapper runes… so basicly, as far as condition removal goes.. such a change would completely screw over every trapper.

Perhaps then it would be best to re-swap the trap and wilderness survival traits to their current positions. With that, the only change would be a large improvement to Survival Utility traits, and I’d like to think that this would be of great benefit to the Ranger.

Lucentfir.7430:

Fun read, however personally Radiant Retal might be a little too strong if it scaled on both power and condi damage, it would make Carrion Guard a lot more popular. Now a few things I’d like to touch on the updated focus skill, a blant flat heal would be boring but rather it would be more reasonable to have 1 extra block and bounce on Ray of Judgement, and Shield of Wrath.

Kindled Zeal rework, the result of that change would be the same as the current problem between Amplified Wrath and Kindled Zeal, they both serve the same purpose but one of them is better than the other. Amplified Wrath already does it job well with Carrion specs for burns. Changing Kindled Zeal doesn’t add any sort of new flavor or build defining qualities that Amplified Wrath already does.

Burn baby Burn/Searing Flames really doesn’t need that change, with the amount of attacks, lingering AoE and such you will always put out burning in such little time through VoJ. Idealy to make the trait a little more worth slotting it needs to have its own separate ICD per player, so it isn’t bolted down to 1 player every time it procs.

On next attack traits, its been proven unless you’re letting off 1 hit burst like thief backstab, next hit % damage modifiers are quite bad, if however it was duration based, like how Warrior’s Signet of might works(Comparison here is unblockable attacks in place of damage amps) for about 2-3s that would be much better, however you’d need to tweak the percentage down a bit since medi burst guardians are already quite strong in the DPS department already when going that route.

Defender’s Flame as a minor master trait would be too powerful imo, Amplified Wrath guard would get a master a free major trait slot out of that change, paired with 2 points in zeal for Fiery Wrath it really does become free 10% without having to do much to up keep burn procs.

Superior Aria change, as much as increased shout range is nice, moving Superior Aria to Master slot would be a bit of a nerf overall, since there it will compete with Two handed mastery, which GS/Hammer/Staff users benefit from and need since the CD on those weapons are a bit high, mainly hammer though.

Going to add one change to Honor line it would be to give Force of Will 15 to 25% – Condi duration, so it has a little bit more of being a incentive to pick up against condi specs over something like pure of voice which basically means you convert 1 condition into a boon based on 1-3 shouts on you have on your bar.

Kindled Zeal I’d make it into something like transfer a condition when striking a burning foe, while having like kitten ICD. Another idea would be striking a burning foe procs 200 damage for X amount of boons your target has or remove/destroy 2 boons and do X damage per boon removed with a ICD. A alternate version of the last one i brought up would be, based on how many conditions you have on you. It will have power scaling but notsignificant power scaling just a small bit like retaliation scales. Comparable trait with this would be Necro with Terror.

Other than the list everything looks quite good!

My merging of Amplified Wrath and Kindled Zeal was less to “add new flavor or build defining” than it is to merge two redundant traits and open up more room for build variety through new traits elsewhere. Perhaps it’s not necessary and Kindled Zeal already serves to solidify condition/hybrid Guardian builds as a viable build type, but I can’t help but think that they are still lacking. Certainly, Kindled Zeal is the hybrid trait and Amplified Wrath is the pure condition trait, but the latter really didn’t do the job, and, by merging them, I would like to think that I’m making both builds (but especially hybrid/Carrion) more viable.

Radiant Retaliation is a bit of an issue. It’s just plain bad in its current state. It certainly needs something to serve its role as a hybrid or condition damage guardian grandmaster. It may just need a drop on the condition damage ratio (with both power and condition damage factoring into it), or perhaps it needs something more complex, like a Bleed infliction when you are attacked under the effects of Retaliation.

A few notes.

Numbers are all rough estimates.
I’m not paid to balance. Hell, I’m not even paid. All I did was make rough estimates to create some semblance of reasonable, but not necessarily ideal balance, and I think I did a relatively good job of that.

I had a goal of creating more viable builds for all weapon sets.
And I did. While “Range freak” may be an initial impression, going off of the Marksmanship line, this is largely because the Marksmanship line is literal in its theme. I actually created MORE utilities that are dedicated to (such as Skirmisher’s Mobility, Momentum, and Hunting Knife) melee or that are useful for all weapons (such as Quick Attack, Swap Master, and others).

It is entirely possible that I would still need to shift or create new traits in the Marksmanship line for melee builds, but it is, if anything, better for melee weapons now than it was before. And I may go back and tweak it again, because Greatsword is my favorite weapon, and I’d like to see more out of it.

The idea of Force of Nature being overpowered is actually rather laughable.
Minor damage that doesn’t affect the original target? The only time this skill even ramps up is when multiple foes are clumped together in melee range. This is 95% useless in sPvP/tPvP (where such balance is truly relevant), mediocre in WvW, and only truly shines in PvE content (especially stacked dungeons). It is a little ironic to accuse me of not furthering the Ranger’s viability in dungeons when one of the traits that you criticized does PRECISELY that.

I made a point of keeping a lot of the unique existing traits.
Yes, even if they are underpowered (like Malicious Training or Stability Training). Most of these may find love in certain situational builds and would be fixed by a numbers tweak or merger with another trait. I certainly did not want to lose the potential build variety that they may contribute to. I merely lacked the experience with these mediocre traits to really bring out significant changes to them.

On Beastmastery

Most of the new traits would probably need numbers tweaks, but some of the changes (or ones similar to them) are flat out necessary. The Minor changes particularly stand out as being well… needed.

http://etheusrook.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/aetherion-talks-guardian-traits/

This is a link to a post from my new blog, which is aimed at providing comprehensive suggestions and (hopefully) towards providing Arenanet with ideas to improve the game.

This is merely the second of eight (one for every profession) trait rework blog posts.

*No, Guardians are not unviable. No, they aren’t even bad. They do, however, have a ton of poorly designed traits – as is the case with every profession. They, like everyone else, could benefit from more and better options. This is aimed at doing just that.

*No, this is not intended to shift the Guardian’s balance state up. It is meant to be accompanied by similar reworks to everyone else.

http://etheusrook.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/etheus-talks-traits/

This is a link to a post from my new blog, which is aimed at providing suggestions to Arenanet and improving Guild Wars 2 in all areas.

This is merely the first of 8 major profession trait reworks that I have planned.

*No, Rangers are not underpowered right now. No, we don’t need buffs. I do, however, strongly feel that we are riddled with bad traits and that EVERY profession (and the game as a whole) could benefit to a major trait overhaul that includes new traits.

*Keep in mind that this is not intended to push the Ranger’s balance state up, as it is meant to be accompanied by overhauls to everyone.

Esmee.1067:

Guild Wars had 5 challenging and long end-game areas; Fissure of Woe, the Underworld, Urgoz, the Deep, Domain of Anguish. Each could take an inexperienced group a few hours (and a speedclear group less than half an hour.) Guild Wars 2 has 14 different Fractal Instances, varying in time they need to be completed, 8 dungeons with 3 paths each, some take long than others, but it’s a considerable amount of content nonetheless, even though we chose to avoid any slow/challenging paths on a daily basis, such as TA Aether and Arah p4 and the community has adapted the Speedclear meta much more than in Guild Wars.

I’m just going to quote this because it’s blatantly false.

Guild Wars 1 had 18 dungeons in Eye of the North alone – most of which were longer than GW2 dungeon paths and ALL of which were more challenging than most GW2 dungeon paths.

Guild Wars 2 has 24 dungeon paths, most of which can be finished within 10-15 minutes.

Guild Wars 1 had 6 endgame “raids” (here being used as a term for elite dungeon). These are Sorrow’s Furnace, The Underworld, The Fissure of Woe, Urgoz Warren, The Deep, and The Domain of Anguish.

Guild Wars 2 has one equivalent – high end Fractals. Certain Arah paths could possibly count, but they were clearly not designed to match these elite dungeons, nor do they reward on par with them. Aetherpath is nowhere near an elite dungeon, and it certainly doesn’t reward on the level of one.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 has two less professions now than Guild Wars 1 did it it’s whole life. That’s 20% less professions for those counting.

Guild Wars 2 has five times the races Guild Wars 1 has ever had. That’s 500% more races.

Guild Wars 2 has more variety in this manner than Guild Wars 1…and did so from launch.

And each of Guild Wars 2’s professions has what… 20% of the skills of a Guild Wars 1 profession? That’s about 80% less skills.

Guild Wars 2’s non-human races all suffer from rampant proportion and clipping issues that kill their armor variety. Additionally, the extra races lower the number of total armor sets per race by increasing development time. It’s a poor tradeoff.

And let’s not ignore the fact that ALL Guild Wars 1 content was endgame viable, thanks to hard mode and much more effective rewards distribution.

We’re also dealing with about 80% less PvP modes.

fellyn.5083:

My initial reaction : Great, more stuff that we don’t actually have to play the game to get.

So, they’re just like every other weapon skin that can be traded? Good to know.

The only issue with BL skins is that their ticket price becomes blatantly kittened after a month.

Swap it with Infusion of Shadow, Cloaked in Shadow, or Shadow’s Embrace. Done.

Hildegard is part assassin, part dispossessed knight, and all out for blood.

While playing Guild Wars 2, my headset produces a constant heavy static sound in the background, ruining my experience and overshadowing the game’s music. While in skype with a friend, he described it as “there’s an excite bike guy in your mic.”

I haven’t been able to fix it by adjusting any of the sound settings. I would appreciate some help.

The Skald – a heavily armored bard class that utilizes the shouts that are a common theme to the heavy professions while also packing the ability to weave complex battle arias. Clear inspiration from the GW1 paragon as well as traditional bards.

Done and done.

I get the feeling that pretty much everyone would like to forget that underwater combat exists.

No one enjoys having half of their already small selection of skills locked out. No one enjoys being shafted into specific weapons with no choices. Few people enjoy meleeing targets in an underwater environment; the z-axis makes things difficult. And no one enjoys the fact that enemies clip through freaking walls, making them impossible to hit until they happen to come back to you.

The last one in particular should have been patched out before release. Instead, we have underwater combat that feels like an alpha-product.

sirian.4981:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

sirian.4981:

As an additional downside, do you know how computationally expensive it would be to render capes in a game like GW2? Its far more than current back items. In large fights everyone wearing a cape could seriously cut framerate.

So not only do you need to create well animated capes, but you have to optimize it so it works well when you have 50+ capes on the screen. Thats a lot of graphic developer time that could be spent on something else.

We already have the fix for that. It’s called not having your character model limit + quality at highest and highest.

Do you see why “Introducing capes means everyone has to lower their graphical settings when capes are on screen” might deter Arenanet from introducing capes?

Who in the world plays with maxed out model limits and qualities in the first place?

The only time these settings (and the graphical “struggles” created by capes) would even matter is in zerg situations. And in a zerg, graphical identity becomes a non-thing in the first place. Which means that, even without capes, you’re probably going to either:
1) Reduce the number of players you see and keep their quality up, preserving some sense of identity (this being the case in PvE zergs)
Or
2) Kill the quality of models to instantly identify friend from foe and reduce any possible lag (in WvW).

At no point would capes create a situation that isn’t frequently utilized already.

sirian.4981:

As an additional downside, do you know how computationally expensive it would be to render capes in a game like GW2? Its far more than current back items. In large fights everyone wearing a cape could seriously cut framerate.

So not only do you need to create well animated capes, but you have to optimize it so it works well when you have 50+ capes on the screen. Thats a lot of graphic developer time that could be spent on something else.

We already have the fix for that. It’s called not having your character model limit + quality at highest and highest.

Well, that rather killed my desire to play Ranger. Spirits were my favorite skills.

BadHabitZz.1856:

For male character something Arah-like for female character something like this

I’ve got you covered. I also wanted to recreate something like Saber for a female Mesmer.

http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/Chris_Lionheart/gw112_zps2095c8f8.jpg
http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/Chris_Lionheart/gw111_zpsa64f84c5.jpg

I like flowing parts. That means that any armor I pick, regardless of whether or not it is light, medium, or heavy, is going to have flowing lengths of cloth or leather.

Light is relatively easy, as it is almost entirely comprised of lengthy cloaks and robes. Picking parts is all about tailoring them to my character’s specific look. I tend to prefer part combinations that create a regal, assassin-esque, or Arabic feel. Light armor has a lot more flexibility than it is given credit for. I’ve created everything from a paladin lady who is reminiscent of Fate’s Saber to a straight up Arabic mage.

I’m a huge fan of trenchcoats, cloaks, and capes. That means that I’m right at home with the medium armor selection, though I tend to prefer the cloaks that lean more towards a scout or a soldier look (such as Falconer’s or HotW) than towards the rufian theme that a lot of the game’s coats utilize.

I find heavy armor to be much more difficult to work with than the other armor classes. I HATE seeing my character’s hindquarters, so that automatically rules out 90% of the leg armor selection. I hate large shoulder armor, so that rules out a significant chunk of the game’s shoulders. Basically, I tend to stick with armors that are intricate/ornate, have a sleek design to them, and pack, at a bare minimum, a “butt cape,” if not other flowing parts as well. That’s a really small selection, and finding a right mix-and-match combination to meet it is almost an exercise in futility.

Aside from that, I also tend to stick to a rule of “subtlety.” Essentially, any complexity in my armor would come from trimming, patterning, engravings, and other such attractive decorations. I avoid particle effects like the plague. The game has enough distracting, tacky visual clutter without me glowing like a lamp post or shooting flames out of my forearms.

Despite standing a mere 5’ tall, Etheus is an imposing Ranger. The look is a combination of a few sets (Falconer’s, Strider’s, and Illustrious) that keeps to a sleek feathered-leather scheme.

The four weapon system of Guild Wars 1 was a bit more arbitrary. Skills weren’t tied to weapons (though a few skills required that a certain weapon was equipped to use). Basically, having four weapons in Guild Wars 1 only provided stat versatility (damage, speed, range, shield bonuses, focus bonuses, and mods) as opposed to actually giving you more skills to play with.