Guild Wars 2

Even though it technically is an armor skin, I would consider it more of a novelty item. What Anet probably meant is that they will no longer do this with actual armor sets.

This is very much a case of pick your battles.

Fragmentation Shot was modestly buffed in the recent patch, but it has long seemed to have damage specs that are too low for its rate of fire, which cripples MH Pistol’s usability comapared to Rifle. I don’t think the patch properly addressed this.

The main issue seems to be that the activation speed in the tooltip is wrong. It seems like Fragmentation Shot is supposed to have a higher RoF than Hip Shot but actually doesn’t. The result is that Frag Shot, despite having shorter range and a less useful multi-hit, does significantly less damage than Hip Shot even with the bleed damage included.

This was actually a problem on the Thief’s Vital Shot as well, and that was properly remedied in the recent patch, but this wasn’t. Should someone take a look?

My opinion? Both sets of animations are better than most. They should try to work in pieces of both sets for the Ranger and the Thief, the latter of which has painfully generic sword animations for a class that emphasizes acrobatics.

At the very least, the UI should remember your selected traits when you’re swapping lines around. That’s a major annoyance.

Kageseigi.2150:

Asrat.2645:

Our sustain is fine. Its exactly like it should be: We cant afford to eat a burst and have the tools necessary to avoid it.

Without Daredevil? If so, I can’t agree.

The problem is our sustain is not in balance with our combat effectiveness when compared to other professions. And that’s really what it all comes down to. So until other professions are brought down to the Thief’s level, the Thief needs to be taken up to theirs… one of those things needs to happen.

Sadly, without Shortbow #5, I don’t see why the Thief would ever be chosen in high-level play. And even with it, the Thief still doesn’t seem to be chosen much. If that doesn’t say something’s wrong, I don’t know what does.

Precisely.

The problem with the thief after 3.5 years remains that they just do not have adequate damage mitigation for the way they are designed to play. They never have, and they still don’t. And nothing short of making some traits blatantly OP is going to change this. This is why as a Thief you are forced to maximize offense at all times in a desperate attempt to avoid facing the problem. This makes them appear to be OP to the majority of players who do not possess a high degree of skill in PvP and helps mask the fact that they actually have a lot of core design issues that have never been addressed.

They need some baseline changes to create room for experimentation and varied play. They either need to have higher base health and healing power, or to have their attrition improved in some other way that isn’t just “dodge moar”. Like, for example, having Stealth last longer and drop aggro (for PvE) and/or reducing the amount of damage you take.

The above posters are correct. The biggest issue by far is the lack of variety specifically with medium chest armor. I don’t think light or heavy are nearly as bad.

I also don’t know why they got rid of the townclothes skins. Even if it was for some reason technically difficult to adapt them for combat, they still should have done it. It’s called doing things the right way as opposed to the lazy way.

Supreme.3164:

With so many get out of jail…and the ability to cross the map in half the time of other profession…it’s extremely hard to pretend that thief requires any mechanical or special knowledge

Your only job as thief is to decap empty point and +2 people…you have the best mobility in the game, you have the ability to get the kitten out whenever you want …no matter the number of opponents and unless you’re a total moron….

Is even possible to fail at thief?…ha yes, maybe the try hard that try to 1vs1 specs that go bunker as it’s the only thing they can do, lacking stealth or shortbow teleport, losing to specs that are forced to go full ham on tank role as they can’t stealth and run away at will.

It must be incredibly hard to learn how to avoid dmg..when half the enemy team won’t even try to chase/follow or even target you..tell me more how hard is to play thief..

Guess that to avoid aoe skills that are not even directed at you..must be the hardest thing in this game -_-

Not surprisingly , every time a thief try to play a profession that they think requires no skill..they fail majestically lol, must be hard to talk when you can’t run away at will, you haven’t got either the stealth or mobility to do so

Sorry, but you’re wrong. Maybe you should actually play one. My thief is by far my hardest toon to play effectively.

Trick Shot and Cluster Bomb need modest buffs to both the direct damage and bleed stacking, but I think otherwise the set is fine.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Einlanzer.1627:

nottsgman.8206:

lines? what lines do you mean?

When you’re in the UI training your character, you aren’t presented with any sort of summary or tooltip about what anything means. The different skill and trait lines, which you have to choose between, are arbitrarily named and in some cases only barely follow a cohesive theme, but you can’t really pick up on what that theme is from the name alone. You’re left to do serious internet research and/or meticulously go through every trait and skill in the game before even beginning to build your character.

I don’t think that’s very polished or intuitive at all. In the original system, you could easily review skills because there were fewer of them and they were laid out better in the skill training panel, while traits were acquired automatically from level appropriate manuals. I honestly think that system worked a lot better.

I’m a fan of systems that deliberately don’t hold peoples’ hands too much. The idea that someone would have to look at everything to know what might be best for them strikes me as a very good thing.

It’s not about holding peoples’ hands, it’s about providing a summary of benefits so people can begin with what interests them most. Jesus what a silly argument.

Deleena.3406:

if you hover over the trait for a sec.the tool tip box will show you what they do

What I meant is any sort of summary about what the trait and skill categories are supposed to do for you. I think that’s the main thing that’s missing.

nottsgman.8206:

lines? what lines do you mean?

When you’re in the UI training your character, you aren’t presented with any sort of summary or tooltip about what anything means. The different skill and trait lines, which you have to choose between, are arbitrarily named and in some cases only barely follow a cohesive theme, but you can’t really pick up on what that theme is from the name alone. You’re left to do serious internet research and/or meticulously go through every trait and skill in the game before even beginning to build your character.

I don’t think that’s very polished or intuitive at all. In the original system, you could easily review skills because there were fewer of them and they were laid out better in the skill training panel, while traits were acquired automatically from level appropriate manuals. I honestly think that system worked a lot better.

Why is there not even so much as a tooltip in the training UI explaining what the different lines represent and are designed to do?

Thanks for the interesting insights!

The new Lion’s Arch is pretty, and for the most part I like it better than the original.

However, the name now doesn’t match the theme at all, which I find to be a little bothersome. Are there any plans to at least bring the Lion fountain back?

Randulf.7614:

Who is to say new weapons would generate hype to say attract new players.
If I didn’t play GW2, if the game added whips and boomerangs and advertised that, would I suddenly want to play GW2? No.
However, I’m a long time player of GW2 and new weapons still hold little interest to me.

I’m not saying new weapons aren’t popular, but I don’t see them doing for this game what people believe. Same with new races. And any benefits either of those would bring, would likely be outweighed by the drain on resources to not only implement, but also to continue to support in terms of skins, story, dialogue, VO etc etc

The goal would be bringing in lapsed players, not new ones. I stand by my assertion that new weapon types would be a very popular addition that would generate a lot of buzz for the work involved in adding them.

dekou.6012:

Electro.4173:

Anet tried to do something different and give us a villain that wasn’t a dragon with Scarlet.

And when they did, people were constantly complaining about the lack of focus on dragons.

While this is true, I think the real reason people were dissatisfied was that the Scarlet storyline was rather bad. When people are dissatisfied and want something more exciting from a story, they often present “solutions” that wouldn’t solve anything, like going back to dragons. Dragons sound exciting (for many), but they don’t improve the story’s quality automatically.

Similarly, I don’t think switching gears away from dragons would make the story any better. Yes, dragon fights have been underwhelming so far, but the problem lies with ANet’s failure to make villains interesting and threatening, not with the dragons themselves.

Pretty much this.

Some of it is just below par writing, but a significant portion of it comes from the narrative structure of the game that makes it difficult to tell a good story, so not all of the blame can be put on the writers. They simply don’t have the best tools to craft a good story within the game. This has steadily improved since launch but is still far from ideal.

This is part of the reason why expansions are a good idea. Doing episodic updates makes it very, very difficult to maintain a story that is grandiose as well as high quality and cohesive. Someone (presumably Colin) all but single-handedly destroyed this game with his insistence that LW1 style of content delivery (especially with most of it being temporary) was a good sustainable model for expanding the unfolding saga within the game. These types of updates should only be used for stories that are smaller in scale and largely autonomous, which is something that is generally not done enough in GW2.

A good example of this was the best update from LW1 that had very little directly to do with the “OMG Scarlet/dragons” story that is been pervasive – the Dragon Bash and the introduction of Marjory Delaqua. To this day that was the most pleasantly surprising update that the game has seen IMO.

Even though it all came out at launch, the PS is another example of why an episodic approach doesn’t really work. It’s stretched too thinly across levels and time for the content that it contains, which makes it really easy to detach and barely even remember, much less care, about any of the characters, etc. The change they made to group the instances into ranges was a smart one, but it was sort of too little too late. At the end of the day, the PS, and most of the LW as well, has not done a very good job of replacing the traditional questing and expansion structure used in other MMOs.

Donari.5237:

Well actually the PS is happening in the past, before Destiny’s Edge got back together, foiled Zhaitan, and went on to the events of LS2 where the focus shifted to the younger biconics. It occurs in pre-Scarlet LA, so old LA is the appropriate one to go to for any part of the story until after Zhaitan’s end.

You can ditch the sepia tone by lowering your Post Processing to “none” in Options>Graphics for the duration of the scene.

I don’t know how easy or difficult it would be to convert the on-stage-talking-puppets cutscenes to in-game chatter as in the HoT story. I know you can skip to end on most of them, which you can’t in HoT, so they aren’t moving assets around during the cinematic. On the other hand if a player could run off to the next location before the scene is concluded, even if that conclusion comes via the Skip to End option, that could well break things. I have a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy to do; if it was, why wouldn’t they have used their new in-game-chat tech during the huge revamp of the PS they did before HoT launch?

The game doesn’t do anything else to try to make it seem like it’s supposed to be taking place in the past from the perspective of your character, which makes for a jarring experience.

They rearranged the narrative structure of the game so there’s a definite chronology from the personal story to the living world. It’s just that there are two oddities that create complications – you can skip the PS and go right into the LW if you want (which is fine, really) and the LW1 changed the world in ways they can’t really go back from.

What they really need to do is implement LW1 in the same way they did LW2 and have transitions actually occur throughout the narrative. If your current story step is the PS or early LW1, you would zone to the original LA. If your current story step is anything later, you zone to the new one. This also allows you to visit the destroyed LA during the appropriate steps. It also allows you to go back to the original LA if you prefer it.

While they’d probably want to decorate both versions for holidays, that doesn’t require much work because they already exist. Since LW-based events are always in the present, they’d never need to implement those on the original LA map, only the new one.

It would work much like pre-searing and post-searing Ascalon in the original Guild Wars.

Cedric Ambidexter.9174:

I have the best armour and stats at the moment, and i’m happy with everything. But I just sat back in horror as I watched a level 15 icebrood elemental in a low-level region remove half my health in a few seconds.

If they ever decide to make a gw3 I hope they get rid of that stupid scaling system, because it really makes the game look like child’s play.

Even if my health suddenly drops from 20k to 1.5k, I would expect a low level enemy to struggle against a level 80. My suspicion is that levels are actually meaningless in this game.

I’ve posted on this topic before, and I’m posting again because this is something that is still bugging me.

You’re in the minority. Most people love the scaling system. How fun is it exactly to rampage through 90% of the game one-shotting everything while facing no threat whatsoever?

The answer is none.

Jaken.6801:

I kinda see a trend here, about topics that seem justifyable, because they are for the greater good , but are completly unrealstic from a economic point of view.

Why invest in stuff that is high cost in creating and creativity, thus taking workforce from other more pressing matter?

I don’t get it?

Isn’t the state of the game proof enough that they need to get the things implemented sorted out first, before they go after the dozens of fan requests ?

It doesn’t matter how obvious these things might be or how much money or subjective interest they would create.

If it doesn’t fit in the shedule, costs, or anything that is actually needed in the development, then it just won’t happen, no matter how much you pressure.

Because ideas that are popular will result in increased revenue for Arenanet. It’s not like they make content just to make content. New weapons would be one of the best things they could do to generate hype, along with new races and new dungeons.

Donari.5237:

I think your first one would be problematic. A lot of story info happens in those scenes (and is also in NPC chatter in the chat box, true) so cutting them out will remove lore. I’m not sure how they could just run in the open world without a lot of work as the visible NPC’s aren’t gesturing, talking, etc.

Oh, I didn’t mean to get rid of the dialogue; I meant modify it so that it takes place in the normal environment. I realize it’s not totally effortless, but I can’t see how the effort would be that extreme either. I think it would be a worthy endeavor.

There’s also one I forgot – PS stories taking place in Lion’s Arch use the original LA map with a sepia overtone. While the sepia tone is a nice effect to represent the past, it’s jarring in the sense that the PS isn’t really supposed to be taking place in the past, and there’s no indication in-game that it’s supposed to be.

IMO, what they need to do instead is try to reimplement Season 1 (I realize this is a major project, but it’s one that needs to happen) and then have a few versions of Lion’s Arch – you go to appropriate one based on your current step in the story. They really should do this with the Kessex Hills and other maps as well, and it would set a great precedent for continuing to expand the game.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Being a realist =/= naysayer.

That being said, I’ll be a naysayer: getting new weapons isn’t going to happen.

Mighty presumptuous of you. If there’s demand, it’ll happen. It’s that simple.

Ananeos.4587:

Why put new weapons in the game when all the classes can’t even use all the current ones yet?

I’m not sure why all classes being able to use all weapons would be desirable in the slightest. Some weapons are thematically appropriate for a class and some aren’t.

New weapon types would be better to alleviate staleness in the game.

Nike.2631:

Einlanzer.1627:

I think it’s rather obvious that they need to be encouraged, rather than dissuaded, and it’s frustrating that someone with as much clout with Anet as Nike (I won’t get into the merits of that) is a naysayer about it. I just flat-out think he’s wrong.

I’m not a nay sayer – I’m pointing out the amount of work actually involved, which will absolutely not be news to the people who actually make these decisions. I’d also suggest that just throwing up a list of weapons is probably something they’ve done themselves a few times so if you want to be persuasive to a Dev to give you what you want you probably need to focus a little tighter and go a little deeper.

Maybe promote only 1-2 weapons along with which professions you’d add them to, and what kind of holes in their existing choices those weapons could flavorfully and thematically fill. Describe the new play styles your candidates might bring about when combined with the tools those professions already have. And be prepared to answer questions about why that couldn’t be done with an existing weapon. In other words refine you proposal a bit so it can excite a Dev reading it.

I think we can all agree that at some point the Balance Team has already had the exact conversation “You know, boomerangs would be cool…” and talked it through and finally dismissed it. You need to say more than “Boomerangs! Make it so!” You need to show them a rich vein of cool that they overlooked .

Oh, I dunno. I think they’re going to make whatever skills they think are appropriate. I was merely offering a few thematic suggestions.

Actually, one of the things I’d love to see first would be empty offhand viability. Every class should have “light” skills for #4 and #5. They either need to add a glove weapon or just have the stats on the primary weapon automatically increase with an second weapon isn’t equipped.

After that, I think making Spears usable on land is a no-brainer. The can use the same models and weapons that are used for underwater combat and just change the skills a bit. Give it to Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, and maybe Revenant.

Then, 2-3 weapons to round out the above selection would be great. I suggested Tomes as a non-weapon alternative for casters like Elementalists, Guardians, and Necros. But it could just as easily be more of a “two handed focus” type instrument that incorporates more than just tomes. The greataxe and the chakram are probably the best two options to round out the above selections first. Options like the Whip and Crossbow are a bit more specialized and, while nice, would be lower priority. I kind of like the idea of a shotgun more than the idea of a crossbow anyway.

Lastly, I would say it doesn’t matter that much if the weapon fills a very specific and unique niche, so don’t get too hung up on thinking that way. It’s the variety that’s important.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Nike.2631:

Lets see… not a single new weapon type in 3.5 years and the Elite Specializations system is built around letting them use and even reuse existing weapons to bring new skills to the 9 professions (i.e. a future Mesmer Elite spec could offer the shield again just with new skills and a different theme than the Chronomancer).

Tomes have been discussed by Devs… as KITS, another way they can bring new weapons into play without having to deal with the ever growing skins issue.

They could introduce new weapons, but they’ve got a lot of other avenues they can pursue while still growing the game’s options.

Sorry.

Except they said themselves that they want to add in new weapons in the future with new expansions as the current weapontypes are nice but limited and can’t be switched around forever.

Exactly, and this is not to mention that, frankly, introducing new weapon types would generate a disproportionate amount of buzz with existing and lapsed players relative to the amount of effort involved in adding them and would just give them even more opportunities with the gem store. If there’s that much concern over the work involved, they could make them elite spec only, meaning they are only available at level 80. Although, I don’t think that adding them to vendors and rewards is as much effort as Nike implies it is.

I think it’s rather obvious that they need to be encouraged, rather than dissuaded, and it’s frustrating that someone with as much clout with Anet as Nike (I won’t get into the merits of that) is a naysayer about it. I just flat-out think he’s wrong.

The main problem with the PS in particular, and to a lesser extent with the LS, is that the narrative structure of the game struggles to really anchor players in a way that makes them feel any attachment to the setting and the lore. I think a lot of mileage could be gained out of some relatively insignificant changes designed to improve immersion. Granted, it does entail some work, but the scope is narrow compared to a lot of the work that’s already been done to restructure other areas of the game, and IMO, would provide a payoff disproportionate to the development effort involved.

First – If it’s at all technically feasible, I would suggest just removing the backsplash dialogue sequences and never using them again. They are stilted, awkward, and just don’t work very well. They actually detract from the immersion of the sequences by disrupting the natural flow of spoken dialogue with jarring pauses and forcing the conversation to always be focused on exactly two characters. There’s no need to even replace them with anything, just let the sequences occur in the normal environment while preventing character movement if necessary.

Second – add a section to the Story Journal that provides in-game bios of characters, organizations, locations, and events. The PS is spread out and quick-paced, so you spend much less time with most of the characters and settings than you do leveling in the open world. This makes it difficult to keep track of context in any amount of detail in your progression through the story, which again works against the immersion factor of the narrative framework.

Third – it would be good to “formalize” companions in some way. I.e. adding them to a hud interface and being able to see their abilities, so that you feel you’re part of a party. Note that I’m not asking for a full-blown companion system, just what amounts to a cosmetic overlay so you can identify and keep track of characters that you are fighting alongside during story instances. This would help provide “anchoring” so that you felt more attachment to the NPCs in the game, which would help with story immersion. Although, a full companion system that would allow you to customize your party with NPCs during story instances would be pretty awesome.

The last thing ties into the above item, and it’s that too many characters are used too briefly in the PS. Many of the characters that could be interesting are not only because they aren’t around enough to develop any attachment to them. The only characters you spend any substantial time with are your order mentor and Trahearne, and that’s kind of a problem. Generic units are used too often in place of actual NPCs as battlefield companions. A good example of this is when when I played through the Retake of Claw Island recently and only had Tennstrikes accompanying me. Where were Demmi or Riel instead of all those generic soldiers? Trahearne is of course problematic in that he only becomes believable in his role if you play Sylvari. He really needs to be introduced or at least discussed earlier in the game to be acceptable to non-Sylvari characters.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

People (in large, not universal) loved the execution style.

But people (in large, not universal) hated that it was temporary, and that it would be gone in 2 or 4 weeks.

If they kept their original schedule (one update a month with pre-scheduled alterations showing without patches to add them instead of biweekly) and made the majority of it (like achievements, non-city events and instances) permanent (even if the instances weren’t tied to the story journal), then I think there’d have been no complaints about Season 1.

While it’s probably true that the temporary nature was a much bigger sore point to players than the implementation model, I still don’t think it’s a strong case that it works as well as an expansion does.

Very large updates are much, much better at generating hype for players to join and return to the game. Perpetually doing small updates, even if they are high quality and add just as much to the game over the long term, simply do not generate that kind of hype effectively, and are more likely to just result in a dwindling player base.

Expansions also do a lot in providing Anet with the revenue they need to keep up a reasonable pace of content development. I think GW2 is behind where it should be in content after 3.5 years, and a large part of the reason is because they waited too long to do the first expansion. And when they finally started working on the first expansion, they probably didn’t have the resources to make it as big as it should have been.

It’s very easy to make the case that the decision to do the Living world instead of an expansion early on really hurt the game, and that if they had just done a traditional expansion model they would be in a much better place now.

Being purely cosmetic is silly. They obviously need to provide a modest travel speed boost to be attractive. It shouldn’t be as much as it is in WoW. I would say 25% or so – the same speed boost some of the class abilities provide.

They don’t need to be usable everywhere. I think seeing people on mounts in the wilderness would actually add to the game.

Also, using the existing mounts as a reason not to do more is silly – the existing mounts are novelty items more than they are actually mounts.

Nike.2631:

Lets see… not a single new weapon type in 3.5 years and the Elite Specializations system is built around letting them use and even reuse existing weapons to bring new skills to the 9 professions (i.e. a future Mesmer Elite spec could offer the shield again just with new skills and a different theme than the Chronomancer).

Tomes have been discussed by Devs… as KITS, another way they can bring new weapons into play without having to deal with the ever growing skins issue.

They could introduce new weapons, but they’ve got a lot of other avenues they can pursue while still growing the game’s options.

Sorry.

Exactly – they are already adding weapon skills with elite specs, so adding new weapons altogether makes sense. It’s useless and counterproductive to obsess about balance to the point that it slows expansion of the game to a crawl, so that’s a moot point. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with the idea of adding new weapons to the game as they whittle away weapon uniqueness by spreading existing weapons to new classes, and and an expansion is the perfect place to do it. The next expansion better be much bigger than HoT anyway if they want to retain success.

So, boohoo, they have to make some skins like every MMO does all the time. All they need to do is adjust their strategy into making more weapon-unique skins and fewer cross-weapon themed skins. That would probably me more appealing to players anyway.

Aktium.9506:

Einlanzer.1627:

Aktium.9506:

Those are terrible. What we need are the following:

Cestus for Necro/Thief/Warrior
Whip for Mesmer/Ranger/Rev
Chakram for Ele/Engi/Guard

I like how 2 of your 3 suggestions were the same as mine. And there were 4 I suggested that you didn’t. But somehow, mine are terrible.

Trolololol.

Well yes, the suggestions were awful until I suggested them. Besides, you only suggested whip.

Boomerang = Chakram. The same weapon type would obviously have a variety of skins. Most of them would be based on chakrams.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Einlanzer.1627:

No. Expansions are really important for the longevity of an MMO, and their decision not to do them and instead focus on living world updates for 3 years kitten near killed the game.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the content drought that followed did more to ‘kill the game’ than almost monthly Living World updates ever did.

But that may be just me.

I’m going to say that it’s the inconsistency that damaged the game:

• They initially gave us frequent updates, with an occasional world-changing event (Karka Rolls, anyone?).
• They then starting giving us regular content updates and we got used to new stuff two times each month. New stuff that we could only do if we were around then — while miserable for those AFK, they were glorious for those of us present.
• Reasonably, they took a little time to make the next story repeatable for everyone, but still introduced new stuff regularly. Perhaps a little lighter, as would be the nature of instanced-based content with fewer open world all-for-one meta events.
• Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the updates slowed to a crawl, until we learned that there would be an expansion. With all hands on deck for that, we got very little fitting the old pattern.

As anyone who manages people (whether adults or kids), consistency is by far the most important thing in maintaining morale|satisfaction|etc. Setting expectations is critical, to let people know what they are in for, especially if you want to change the status quo in ways that will be uncomfortable (even if, in the long run, they improve things).

ANet did a poor job of managing expectations and was very, very inconsistent in delivery.

tl;dr ANet got us addicted to regular, free, glorious content. They cut us off cold turkey and gave us something that didn’t meet (apparently) even their own expectations.

I really like the expansion. I really hate how they cut off living world to produce it and I am no fan of many of the choices they made in implementing the release. Like a lot of ANet choices, they undermined their own successes by turning theoretical-molehills into mountains that got in the community’s way.

This would hold some water if most people liked the LW content execution style. They didn’t, which is why Anet changed tactics.

Nike.2631:

…And each one of them would need at minimum 40 skins and better if there were 90-100 because of all the sets that need to be supported.

This ship has sailed long ago.

No it hasn’t. Anet needs to significantly ramp up their development efforts, which includes new skills and skins, if they want to attract and retain players.

Aktium.9506:

Those are terrible. What we need are the following:

Cestus for Necro/Thief/Warrior
Whip for Mesmer/Ranger/Rev
Chakram for Ele/Engi/Guard

I like how 2 of your 3 suggestions were the same as mine. And there were 4 I suggested that you didn’t. But somehow, mine are terrible.

Trolololol.

Greataxe, Pike, Tome, Shotgun, Whip, Boomerang.

That is all.

The simple truth is that the majority of MMO players like mounts, even if the majority of GW2 players do not (which I doubt is true.)

They aren’t going to win many more mount-hating converts, but they have a chance to win a good slice of mount-loving converts.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

One additional problem I’ve thought of is the matter of scaling. If a substantial portion of a new expansion is leveling maps, then those maps can’t have mobs that give a level 80 with full exotics/ascended gear, all skills and full trait lines the same sort of challenge that a leveling person with crap gear and some skills and traits will have.

If full level 80s try to do events with low levels in leveling maps, they end up roflstomping the mobs/events and the low levels can barely tag the mobs (as seen by what happens when you mix low levels and large numbers of max geared players during event dailies). In addition, the high level players can to get to events/mobs faster, either because of speed boosts or already having the waypoints. It’s one thing to have the occasional level 80 in with the low levels. It’s another to have a large population of high levels trying to do the new content alongside the new people. The new players are going to be frustrated when they can’t tag mobs and can’t get to events because the high levels are doing it all and the max levels will be frustrated because everything is so easy.

TL:DR Because the leveling maps will have to be set for how weak the new people are, that means they can’t be harder in difficulty than vanilla maps. That means a substantial part of new expansions will be trivial for max level players.

Super-challenging content in the open world shouldn’t be the norm anyway. It’s okay to do it with the occasional map, but not okay to do it with all maps or even the majority of maps.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The Vital shot delay issue is not on aftercast, it’s on the pre-cast (the aiming animation).

After using Unload, the Unload after cast delay plus the Vital Shot pre-cast delay makes the whole set very clunky to use due this extended delays. In order to make the set functions smoother is to have the pre-cast delay from Vital shot reduced instead of the after-cast. However, the transition from Vital Shot to Unload did receive some improvements albeit not enough since the transition from Unload to Vital shot also needs to be smoother.

No, Vital Shot has a very standard activation time, it was the aftercast that was the serious problem. It now effectively deals about 25% more damage than it did before during any particular span of time, which means you don’t have to rely on Unload as much and can get way more mileage out of the set’s other skills when they are needed.

It’s icing on the cake that Unload was given a utilitarian purpose that synergizes with Vital Shot rather than stealing the show from it. This change has been needing to happen since launch, and I’m elated it finally has.

DeanBB.4268:

I am always in favor of new maps. Best to keep them in the same level increments as the rest, if sub-80’s were added.

I just don’t see an advantage to adding sub-80 maps though. There are already plenty and if you buy an expansion in Anet’s model, you get all previous content.

I wouldn’t mind some permanent evolution in existing maps, such as additional bosses (Ashford, as already mentioned) or event chains or whatever.

There is definitely an advantage to adding sub-80 maps. The leveling experience is one of the best features of the game, and lots of people like to level alts. The more variety of content there is to progress through while leveling the better the game as a whole is. This is especially true if new personal stories are added for new playable races, which they should be.

To make things even better, sub 80 maps don’t become obsolete once you level past them like they do in other MMOs.

simplesimon.2084:

The only way I could see that happening is if they added a new race with a city, personal story, and differnt zones going all the way from 1 to 80

Which is exactly what they need to do. It doesn’t have to be quite as large as the original game, but it needs to have new zones covering the spread of levels and at least two new races with new PS.

Balance is precarious, and is never perfect.

I actually think Anet’s balance paradigms are cautious to a fault. Only getting a balance update every 3 months, and most of those changes being minor number tweaks, is arguably worse for the game than knee-jerk balance changes that happen all the time are. I also think they are bit too lackadaisical with making sure power creep is controlled.

Overall, I like more of the changes than I usually do this time, so I can’t say I’m terribly unhappy. Lack of mesmer nerfs was probably the biggest faux pas.

The main thing is that applying the set’s utility features now doesn’t tank your DPS nearly as hard as it did before. As a result, the whole set has become much more usable in a variety of contexts.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Einlanzer.1627:

No. Expansions are really important for the longevity of an MMO, and their decision not to do them and instead focus on living world updates for 3 years kitten near killed the game.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the content drought that followed did more to ‘kill the game’ than almost monthly Living World updates ever did.

But that may be just me.

Yeah, the content drought brought about due to their procrastination in developing an expansion.

Honestly, I like it the way it is except that the elite specs are too strong.

What they should do is tie certain benefits to unlocking the elite spec rather than running it. For example, you should acquire the ability to use the new weapon types just by unlocking your elite spec, regardless of whether you’re running it in your current build. The fact that it doesn’t work that way is not only kind of unbalanced, but also a nuisance to deal with.

Redenaz.8631:

There is a LOT that I’m pleased with, but I’m especially pleased to have effects LOD. It’s a small thing, sure, but I main an Elementalist, and I’ve seriously missed my old Fireballs these past few months. Fire darts just never felt right.

Oh yeah, totally forgot about that. That’s a big one too.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

graymouser.4698:

But simply the statement: “we don’t need horses because we have fast travel” is a 1oo% non-argument for me

We should base ourselves on immersion and lore when making a decision on horses.

It’s the ‘immersion and lore’ argument that doesn’t hold any water, sorry. In RL horses for travel all but disappeared because of the automobile showing up… cars are faster, easier, and cheaper to use. If cheap and accessible teleportation were to become widely available, automobiles would go the way of the horse.

Well, in GW2 there IS teleportation, as well as modes of travel that are cheaper and easier to use from an immersion standpoint. Horses/mounts are absolutely irrelevant in this context.

From a business standpoint adding in mounts would be time and energy spent making something that’s NOT special in comparison to other MMOs, and thus just ‘reinventing the horse.’ Faster travel that is special to GW2 (such as teleportation and gliding) is a much better use of ANet’s labor than being derivative. It’s that fact that gives the “we already have teleportation” argument more validity, even if you (and others) feel it’s a non-argument.

~EW

This doesn’t hold water because you can’t teleport just anywhere. You telport via waypoints. You would still use vehicles to travel the wilderness between waypoints and for visiting waypoints for the first time.

STIHL.2489:

Obtena.7952:

The opposition is pretty easy to see actually. You have a developer that can’t deliver on Legendary weapons. You must see how pushing for mounts is less sensible.

Two Words: Gem Store

Indeed. it should be a relatively easy way for Anet to pick up a good deal of easy cash. Look at the glider skins, for crying out loud.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Einlanzer.1627:

make it feel more immersive.

Yes….staring at some random animal’s kitten is soooo immersive while trying to get the to NPC they are standing on, in, or otherwise in the way of.

/sarcasm off

That’s… really not that much of a problem in other MMOs.

People are continuing to conflate immersion with realism.

Etienne.3049:

Einlanzer.1627:

Not only are they perhaps the funnest collection item in a lot of MMOs

That’s very subjective.

Einlanzer.1627:

but they also enrich the setting and make it feel more immersive.

They only help immersion if there are animals that make sense as mounts (dosmesticatable, strong enough to carry an armored Norn, faster than walking), there’s probably a reason so few species have been used as mounts on Earth.
Horses appear to have gone extinct some point prior to Guild Wars (Prophecies), and I’m really not seeing any animal in the game that would work as a mount.

Subjective, yes, but a commonly held opinion. Not just mine. Try seeing what would happen if they removed mounts from WoW, they most popular MMO of all time.

Also, “immersive” doesn’t mean the same thing as “realistic”. It means that it helps serve as an anchor for the setting.

The grief was legitimate, but this was a great patch, so you’re naturally seeing some of the negativity subside.