Guild Wars 2

I agree with some of the points in the OP. Here is how I believe ArenaNet should deal with those issues:

• Free transfers cannot go away right now. ArenaNet promised that the game would have a guesting system; when the game was released without said system, there was a lot of complaining around here, and thus ArenaNet promised that server transfers would be free until guesting was implemented. To remove free transfers now would be breaking a promise (something the community would likely not forget) and bringing back something that led to a lot of complaining a while ago. That being said, the guesting system doesn’t have anything to do with WvW. Ergo, if the idea is to allow people to play PvE with their friends, but to prevent WvW exploiting, my suggestion is: until guesting is implemented, someone who has transferred to a new server cannot join WvW until the end of the second week (in other words, the end of the current WvW match, plus the end of the following match). This would help a bit with the issue of queues (since, as ArenaNet has mentioned, there are more people wanting to play WvW at a given moment than they had expected), by keeping server hoppers out of the fight for a while; and it would be a strong deterrent to changing servers for the sake of WvW. Until someone could finally return to WvW, it’s likely that his chosen server would be in a very different situation than what was seen two matches before.

• Simply switching the Outmanned and the Orbs buffs is not enough. The Outmanned buff need to be completely reworked, beginning with its name. Right now, being seen as Outmanned is almost like having a “Fail!” symbol stamped over your character – the game is telling you that you are likely going to lose, and everyone knows it. The name of the buff and its description need to be changed to something else; just to give an example, it should be called something like “Determined”, and its description should be something like “Never surrender, never retrear”, giving the idea of fighting against the odds, not of being on the losing side. Just a raw boost in stats is not enough, either – it should deal with the way supply and upgrades favor the current winner, as well. My suggestion would be to make the “Determined” buff increase some stats, but also increase how much supply there is available in supply camps, how much supply a given player can carry, and the speed in which towers and camps are upgraded. This would help a bit the issue with how hard it is to begin to retake a map that has completely been taken by the enemy. For the records, something I think would be really interesting is, instead of increasing stats, giving a 10% movement speed bonus. Hopefully, this would make players try hit and run strategies, instead of trying to merely hit hard targets.

• Orbs should still give more kind of relevant bonus, though. If all they do is increase loot, they would become borderline meaningless – would anyone here want to fight as hard as people do today to take and defend them if all they did would be increase magic find? The current orb bonus is too strong, so it should be changed to give increased magic find, increased karma, increased experience and something else – something actually relevant to WvW, that would make people fight for it. Something small, like an increased change to get critical hits, but still something.

• There should be benefits in fighting against the winning team. As the OP here mentioned, when the distance between the leader and the other two teams is too big, it’s better for one of the losing teams to try to canibalize the other for second place than to gather together to try to defeat the winner. When there’s something like this – when the leader is very far ahead of the two other teams – fighting against the leader should give benefits. Things like having increased gold, karma and experience when taking areas from the current leader, or getting more items and even possibly siege blueprints by killing players of the winning server, would hopefully give players from the two losing servers reasons to attack the stronger ones.

Those changes should be implemented with caution, since players will always be trying to find ways to exploit them, but IMO they would increase WvW by helping to deal with some issues mentioned by the OP.
ArenaNet should not change how the supply camps are easy to take, though. As they currently are, supply camps have a massively huge importance in making small, quick teams more useful than just mindlessly zerging the entire map.
(For the records, I also like the idea mentioned above of making NPCs attack a server if it has been too dominant over the other two. While PvP players would complain that they want PvP, and not PvE, this kind of system could help the other changes and give players something to do if their servers have 100% world domination and the others have given up.)

Slic.2406:

And yes I DO have to be dramatic, because it IS dramatic. Players are leaving because of this

Honestly, people who leave everything in the game, all the exploration content and the PvE content and the PvP content, just because they see some items as hard to get, didn’t really enjoy the game that much in the first place.

GW2 has never been about the rewards, more about the experience. Which is why the majority of components for Legendaries are not things hard to get – in fact, they are things everyone could get after playing the game for some time:

1) Badges of Honor will come in time after playing WvW.

2) Experience to get skill points will come in time after doing anything in the game.

3) Map completition will be earned eventually by anyone who bothers to explore a little once in a while.

4) Gold and karma are awarded for everything in the game, eventually people will have enough for the Legendaries.

The only exception is the dungeon token part. Everything else can be acquired by playing the game normally for some time. It doesn’t require people to grind, only to continue playing the game.

The frustration in this topic, IMO, comes from the demand to get the Legendaries NOW. They are long term investments. In about one year, I’m sure most players who have been playing since release would easily be able to craft one without having to grind a single time, other than the dungeon tokens.

Chillmastor.9234:

The price of Dusk and Dawn is determined by the difficulty to obtain them

Definitely, the only thing that determines the price of an item in the Trade House is the probability of getting it. Players never manipulate prices, or increase prices due to increased demand, or anything like that.

/sarcasm

Calcifire.1864:

would it have been too hard to make four staves? one based on light, one on shadows, one on the elements, and bifrost?

Yes. As seen in how ArenaNet has not made four staves.

Calcifire.1864:

and if you’re going to continue calling me narrow minded, I’ll sum up with this:
I’m asking for a staff that anyone who doesn’t like rainbows can use, you want us to shut up and enjoy our rainbows.
who is the one being narrow minded?

Nope. I’m asking you why are you insisting so much on a Legendary staff when:

a) There are other staff skins in the game.

b) There are other Legendary items in the game.

Do you want more options? There are already more options in the game. The reason why you are not willing to accept anything but specifically a Legendary staff, tailored exactly to your taste, is due to how you are being barrow minded.

He was not stating that it’s impossible to get only 1 tail, but that it is simply extremely improbable.

And yet, if someone does it enough times, it will eventually happen. Just as the OP is complaining that, after doing the same thing over and over, he found himself eventually with different results. Which is the proof of how he is wrong – mentioning “steadily same results” and then complaining about different results in a single day is a joke.

erasculio, please stop saying our views on what a necromancer should look like is narrow minded, if anything, YOU are the one being narrow minded for not accepting that not everyone wants the rainbow sparkle staff.

Not really. I understand very well that not everyone wants the Bifrost – so don’t get it. This comment…

as for wanting a legendary staff, it’s NOT just about the skin, it’s about feeling rewarded in a suitable wat for all of the effort we put into making it

…Is completely nonsensical. If you think the reward for the effort in making a Legendary is not worth it… Then don’t make one.

Why are you even trying? If you want a “dark” staff skin, there are other skins in the game (that happen to be much easier to get, so good for you). If you want a Legendary, there are other Legendaries a necromancer can use. If you are only willing to accept a Legendary staff tailored exactly to what you believe a necromancer should be like… I’m sorry, but that is too narrow of a view.

HolyCowBBQ.6371:

l2r son,

Missed, the point, “dad”. Exotics have a low drop rate to give precursors, as we all know. The OP, knowing that, decided to use something with an even lower drop rate. Those of us who understand probability are not surprised to see the outcome.

HolyCowBBQ.6371:

When you have been doing the same thing for the past few weeks, and been getting steadily same results. You know when something is wrong. Hard to understand?

Apparently harder than to understand probability. You are not going to get the same results all the time – that is pretty much obvious. You have mentioned how today your drop rate appears to be differente, which is pretty much to be expected.

HolyCowBBQ.6371:

go flip a coin right now and see how many tails you get from 20 toss, i bet only 1 right?

The fact you appear to believe that could not occur is proof that you don’t understand probability…

Cayden.4587:

The first thing that seemed like a great idea and turned out to not work for me was the step away from tank/healer/dps or the “unholy trinity” as ANET liked to call it.

Cayden.4587:

The second thing that seemed like a great new feature and turned out to be disastrous is the downed state.

Cayden.4587:

The third thing I thought was going to be good but turned out to be bad was no Raids and Dungeon gear being cosmetic only.

There’s a very interesting article about MMOs in Gamasutra, here which is a nice discussion on how players usually ask for features they have seen in their first MMOs, even if they are not aware of it. Quoting a single paragraph (but go read the entire thing):

In general, players view all their subsequent virtual worlds in the light cast from their first one. They will demand that features from their first world be added to their current world, even if those very features were partly responsible for why they left the first world. They’ll say they hate treadmills, but if their first experience was in a virtual world with treadmills, then they’ll gravitate towards other virtual worlds with treadmills, all the while still hating them.

OP, you want a clone of traditional MMOs, whether you realize it or not. Fortunatelly for you, there are half a dozen of big games like that out there. Fortunatelly for everyone who wants something different, there is Guild Wars 2, too. Your list of complaints is many of the reasons why I like this game.

HolyCowBBQ.6371:

The recipes for throwing in level 80 exotics have not changed at all.

Kaeyu.4569:

edit: yes these were level 80 rare greatswords

Considering how exotic =/= rare…

HolyCowBBQ.6371:

I think I am just gonna leave this game after I spend all my gold on precursor. Instead of doing something to this absurd MF system, you are ignoring it.

ArenaNet’s main flaw was probably expecting people to understand how probability works. It’s perfectly reasonable to see you won’t always get the same drop rate from the Mystic Forge – “random”, remember? Having a 50% chance for something doesn’t mean it will happen on the second try.

edit: yes these were level 80 rare greatswords

…Why did you waste so much time with something we know has a lower chance to get the precursors? Had you used exotics, there’s a higher chance you would have a precursor by now.

There’s nothing for people who want a “dark” staff.

There are other skins in the game that fit the definition of a “dark staff”. Considering the only difference between a Legendary and any other exotic level 80 item is the skin, if someone enjoys more another skin other than that of a Legendary, the issue is…?

It’s not a matter of us being unimaginative kitten. It’s a matter of Anet’s necromancer spell effects clashing horribly with the rainbow staff.

That’s an excuse, and a poor one at that. I haven’t seen a single person complaining about how Twilight’s black and red blade doesn’t mesh well with all the blue Guardian skill effects that are still very much visible when using the sword.

The issue is that some players assume “necromancer = goth” and they insist on keeping such extremely narrow stereotype despite how ArenaNet has taken great lenghts to avoid it. The OP must feel he had an obligation to get the undead-looking armor dyed black for his necromancer, but most other players understand how silly that kind of narrow perspective is.

The issue isn’t with Bifrost being ugly – it isn’t. It also isn’t badly done (unlike some of the other Legendaries, for the records). It’s simply a matter of it doesn’t fitting a very narrow point of view, that is endorsed by a few players but is obviously not endorsed by ArenaNet itself.

Aphix.9846:

I do not want a common exotic staff, I want a legendary staff.

Nope. You want the Bifrost. Since that’s the only Legendary staff.

As mentioned above, why, exactly, are you complaining? Do you want a nice looking staff? If you don’t think there’s any staff that would fit your (very narrow) view of what a necromancer’s staff should look like… Well, sucks to be you, but I’m sure there’s one skin in the game that fits you.

Do you want to have a Legendary item? Doesn’t make much sense, considering how the entire point of the Legendaries is the skin, but regardless, if you don’t like the staff skin, I hope you are aware that there are other weapon types available to necromancers.

The only reasonable reason for you to say “I want a Legendary staff” is because you want the Bifrost. If you don’t, that phrase doesn’t make any sense.

The staff happens to be one of the best Legendary weapons, for the records. In fact, one of the ArenaNet designers mentioned it’s her favourite among them.

It’s nice. I actually like the way it looks in the dark more than in daylight; the black sphere surrounded by a light glow is interesting. Good to see one more well designed Legendary (as opposed to the scepter).

Account.9832:

Here’s my suggestion:

• Give legendary precursors a (ridiculously small) chance to drop from all named veterans and champions above level 25 (slightly higher for higher-level enemies, but not by much, so that X, Y and Z below would still matter more than level).

• That chance increases by X if the player is fighting the enemy alone (no other players within 2000 units of the enemy for the duration of the fight, no external healing, etc.).

• That chance increases by Y multiplied by the time since that particular enemy was last killed (similar to bonus XP).

• That chance increases by Z multiplied by the time the player spent at less than 10% HP while fighting that enemy.

This is an incredibly bad idea. Here’s why:

• It will make players angry to see each other. People fighting against a veteran would be annoyed if another player appeared, thus reducing their chance to get the precursor. Not only this goes completely against ArenaNet’s goals to make people happy to find other players in the world, but also this would allow people to annoy others by camping the area of the most farmed veterans and staying there, not really killing anything, just to reduce the change of others getting their items.

• It would also make players angry at each other due to how other people killing those enemies would be bad for you. There’s not only the issue of the drop rate increasing as long as other people don’t kill the enemy (so it lives longer), but also the fact that eventually players would spawn camp the easier to kill veterans. Notice how, in GW2, there’s not a single item that is a random boss drop in the open world, exactly so people won’t spawn camp enemies. This suggestion goes against this mentality, found everywhere in the game.

• And, of course, people would flock to the easiest enemies and leave the harder ones alone. Again, expecting ArenaNet to perfectly balance ALL champions and veterans so they are equally difficult or give equivalent rewards is simply delusional. People would flock to a given kind of enemy, use as many exploits as possible to keep their health as low as possible (skills that self inflict condition would become very popular here) for as long as possible, and basically remove any kind of “epicness” from farming those items.

• In the end… It would still be an almost mindless, RNG-based, farming grind. The ideas in the OP would massively hurt the game while not even solving the true issue with the current way to get the precursors.

No offense to the OP, but this suggestion speaks of a huge lack of understanding about the ideals behind Guild Wars 2 and the way players think. I hope it will never be implemented in the game.

I have this issue mostly when reaching the Masterwork tiers, as those are the ones that require the most of the hard to get materials. Since we level up rather quickly, by the time I have finished getting all materials and crafted everything for a given tier, it’s almost time to begin crafting the next tier…

AngryToaster.5190:

If you’re afraid of people being unable to get groups, that’s happening right now.

Do you really want to make it even worse than it already is?

These people, can NEVER (unless they literally win the lottery) get a precursor because due to the rarity, the price will continue to go up.

Uh… That’s not how economy works. Prices don’t continue to go up infinitely. The issue right now is that the demand and awareness about precursors has increased last week, after both the first Legendaries were crafted and ArenaNet published an article about them, so we got a price spike. Players playing the economy are abusing the system to artificially inflate the price of those precursors, and are in the process of learning how high they can push them. Right now, though, Dawn is going for 205, which is a drop from the 400+ people were asking for the sword a while ago.

If you think the price is too high, don’t farm to buy it. Simply don’t buy, and hope others realize the same thing. Without buyers, those selling will eventually reduce their prices, like they are doing right now.

For those thinking the OP is talking about Legendaries that have never been crafted:

• Here is a video of the Predator. Watching the video in high definition, the rifle does look rather nice, with a very detailed texture; I also laugh at the comment about “firing a sniper rifle from the hip”. However, it’s IMO lacking if compared to the greatswords or the hammer or the staff, due to the lack of secondary effects. It should either have some kind of footsteps or, preferably, give some kind of aura to the character. ArenaNet should have added a faint blurred aura around the character, similar to what we see in that other Predator

• Here we have pictures of Frostfang. I would need a movie to have a more educated opinion, but for now it feels like a disappointment. One handed weapons are already harder to see than two handed weapons, so having all that work to craft a Legendary one handed weapon instead of a two handed doesn’t feel like it’s worth it. The one handed weapons should be extra awesome to compensate… And Frostfang isn’t. The frozen footsteps are interesting, but the lack of particle effects is just too much. The skin itself doesn’t look that nice.

• Here are pictures from Meteorlogicus. Like the axe, I still haven’t seen a video, but the pictures look disappointing – I would expect more effects like bigger clouds, rain, thunder and so on.

The greatswords, the hammer, the staff and the sword are IMO great. A guy has crafted the mace and promised pictures here but if I were going to craft a Legendary right now, I would avoid the one handed weapons.

Account.9832:

How this system benefits anyone is beyond me.

This has already been explained, but I will repeat it.

A system that allows people to use tokens for all dungeons is incredibly bad. It would hurt players who want to play the game more than players who want to grind the game, as most players would just keep doing the easiest dungeon over and over. Asking ArenaNet to make all dungeons perfectly balanced so they are all either at the same difficulty or have a perfect equivalence between reward tokens is delusional, especially considering how creative players are regarding ways to find dungeon exploits.

If people were just speed clearing the easiest dungeons, we would have people playing only a couple dungeons at any given time. Someone trying to find a group for other dungeons would be left spamming “LFG” at walls.

Meanwhile, people would speed clear more than one dungeon multiple times per day, and thus would get their dungeons tokens even faster than they already do today, basically removing the time sink aspect from those tokens. This would make the current system basically pointless.

In other words, universal tokens are, as already explained in this topic, a terrible idea.

Here, if you like bolding things so much, I’ll bold this for you: it’s your choice if you have chosen to grind the game instead of helping your friends or trying to have fun with them. Don’t blame ArenaNet or ask for a system that is detrimental to the game just because you would rather help yourself than play other dungeons with people. The system is fine as it currently is.

Zogyark.4597:

@ Erasculio – You’re just talking out of your kitten right there. When the class is designed around darkness, black and green looking spells/marks and telling a person that he’s stereotyping the class and that he should step out of the box it makes you look like a fool.

IMO, the only foolishness is in claiming all necromancers should be wearing black and red, with goth hairstyles. I’m sure a lot of people like to be sheep, but we have been given options for a reason. If you do not enjoy an option because it does not fit your narrow stereotype… Your loss, your problem.

What happened to Fissure of Woe, Underworld, Domain of Anguish type content that was the only way to get the rarest items in the game?

That’s not true. Ecto farming was one of the least skill-required things in the game, and even if it did require skill, it made no difference, considering how people could simply mindlessly farm or buy gold and just buy everything they needed. There was not a single item in GW1 that was a symbol of skill.

Besides the dungeon runs, a person could literally just buy gold with real money to purchase all the materials

Plus 100% map completition, killing people in WvW or doing the jumping puzzles, and so on. The Legendary components are already better than most items in most games simply because many cannot be bought. As far as measuring skill goes, there are very few ways to actually measure skill in a PvE game.

lackofcheese.5617:

However, you don’t have much justification to suggest that the price is, in fact, being “artificially inflated”. The current price is reflective of the very low odds of getting a Dusk or Dawn on the Mystic Forge; if the odds were higher, the price would be lower.

Every time you make a transaction on the TP, it is done without coercion and with bilateral approval. Every time two players participate in a transaction, both players agree to that transaction and are hence equally responsible for it.

Both of your points have the same fault – you are trying to defend those playing the market while ignoring how they can sell the precursors to each other and thus artificially increase their prices by going above the real demand for those items. Someone who bought Dawn for 60k and sold it for 150k, realizing the prices are still going up, is also going to buy Dusk for 150k and try to sell it for 450k. The only players who will be able to afford this are the other players who have played the market, are not interested in actually buying the precursor itself, but would rather continue to speculate on the price of those weapons and see how far they can push them up. Considering how rare those weapons are, it’s not surprising that a few players can almost have a monopoly, by quickly buying any cheaper precursor in the market and trying to sell it for a higher price.

In other words, it’s basically an exploit that only helps to create a false gap between players who play the game normally, and would never be able to afford those prices, and the market players who have artificially inflated the price of precursors.

I’m sure you already know all of this, though. Do tell me, how many Dawns are you selling today?

The October 7th patch introduced a bug at the jumping puzzle within all Borderlands, making it impossible to be completed (the Vault door won’t open, even if you have all the keys). After yesterday’s patch, the bug is still there. ArenaNet very rarely updates the game more than once a week. Ergo, it’s likely that this bug will still be there for some time.

To those going to reply, “So now people will play WvW instead of jumping puzzles!”, you need to get a clue. The Borderland Puzzles are an important source of siege weapons; if 5 players did them, that would be 10 more siege weapons for your server, which is far more than what most of those reading this have ever bothered to buy themselves.

As a bug introduced in a very recent patch, and as one more bug to the already filled with bugs WvW, this should be fixed relatively soon.

I really wish people were smarter than this. Zerging all the time only works in low tiers, when you are fighting against unskilled servers who can’t do anything better than zerg themselves.

Why You Should NOT Zerg in WvW:

• The reward system has the same issue that PvE has: when you have too many players killing something, each individual player does not hit the minimum threshold to actually get credit for the kill, so you get no reward for it. Against NPCs, you are rarely going to get anything – be it loot, or even experience. Against enemy players, considering how most of the real kills zergs do is ganking a lone player who’s found moving around or who has overextended, you also won’t get any reward. Which means, if you think you are going to get a lot of Badges of Honor – sorry, you’re wrong.

• When doing events, the only thing a zerg is useful for is taking towers. Stonemist takes more than just a zerg, and even a keep than be defended against a zerg by a half decent team with siege. In the opposite direction, anything smaller than a keep is just a waste of power – a group of 5 players could take supply camps and all other small targets as quickly as a big zerg, netting more rewards for each individual player since they would get more credit for each individual kill.

• When you hit the enemy zerg, if it’s bigger than yours or if they are better players, you will lose. If the enemy server is actually good, not only they will defend against your zerg, but they will also take advantage of the fact you have clustered the majority of your players in a single place on the map, and will send small groups of players to take back most of the things you have just captured, at the same time. The zerg is not capable to defend multiple places at the same time, so the zerging team is going to lose much of what is has captured faster than it can recapture it. Congrats, you are just giving more points to your enemy server instead of actually doing something useful.

The only real issue with zerg in WvW is how so many players don’t understand how much of a fail a zerg is. The game has already been balanced to make zergs less effective overall than smaller groups of players roaming the map with one or two larger and organized teams taking the bigger targets.

Pandeh.5248:

Oh and I love how you didnt do anything about the players that exploited the 65 lvl rare bug.

That doesn’t have anything to do with the current issue.

The problem are the players playing the market. The guy who used the exploit to get a Dusk and sold it for 50 gold is rather irrelevant right now; the guy who farmed to death and got 150 gold, bought all Dusks in the Trade House, then sold them for three times the original price and continues to do the same thing, artificially inflating the price of those items, is what’s causing the real issue.

In other words, it’s greedy players that are inflating the price of the precursors. ArenaNet took some steps to keep the greedy players in check by adding the DR system, which helps to keep the gap between the grinders and the normal, sane players not as big; but there’s no DR in the Trade House.

IMO, those players buying precursors for cheap and then selling them for 3 times the buying price are actually hurting other players, and should thus be dealt with. Since I doubt very much ArenaNet would do this (we all know how greedy players like to whine, see all the complaints against DR), they should at least add a cap to the selling price of the precursors.

Calcifire.1864:

you aren’t complaining that mesmers all have the fabulous stage magician look, you don’t complain that warriors always go for the “giant spiky metal armour” look, or guardians all being knights in shining armour.

I am. I am complaining about any kind of unreasonable stereotype that leads people to just look like the same.

If you were going to design a character to be a vicious, incredibly smart madman, would you make it to look like something as silly as a child’s clown?

Yet, we have the Joker, one of the most famous comic book characters in the world.

Being capable to go beyond the obvious and to leave stereotypes behind is a good thing. It’s often the difference between being mediocre and being great.

all the legendaries seem horrible in comparison to the greatswords

Uh… You have never seen all Legendaries.

Whenever someone claims that all Legendaries are ugly (or pretty), they are just talking nonsense. No one outside ArenaNet has ever seen all the Legendaries. And no, 3D models without particle effects are far from being enough to know how those weapons look – as a fact, you can barely tell the difference between Sunrise and Twilight based on those models, while we all know those two are very different from each other.

Now, the OP has a very narrow view about how a necromancer has to look like (I’m sure he has a “very unique” look on his character), and he expects the game developers to actually follow his limited opinion when designing the game; needless to say, I’m happy they didn’t.

For those who want darker staffs, there are multiple other staff skins in the game. Considering how the definition of “what looks better” is completely subjective, it’s rather obvious that, for some people, non Legendary skins will look better than Legendary skins.

For those who really want to have a Legendary weapon, there are other types of Legendary weapons in the game, and since no profession is restricted to a single weapon type, everyone has multiple choices of which Legendary to get.

The only issue here, IMO, is player ignorance – the ignorance in assuming that they know how all Legendaries look like (which is factually false) and the ignorance in assuming that their characters can only possibly use a single weapon type (and, of course, the ignorance in assuming that all necromancers should wear black and red while showing Goth hairstyles and being emo all around the place; limiting yourself to obvious stereotypes isn’t exactly the healthiest thing in the world).

DarcShriek.5829:

Are you judging all the events on these three?

Nope. The meta events are more interesting, but they are meta events, so I would expect them to be better anyway. What annoys me is how the other events are less interesting: they have little impact on the world, and most are simply not as cool as the event about the Asura gates. There was a lot of potential in the area due to how it’s filled with multiple factions, but it doesn’t feel like the events actually change the world. IMO, Kessex Hills was more interesting…

I think Stormbluff has all the big PvP guilds from GW1 – War Machine, The Last Empire, iQ, Treacherous Empire, and so on. They are way better than us at Isle of Janthir, definitely tier 1 material.

It’s annoying to know that this likely won’t be fixed at least until the next Monday. Between the loss of jumping puzzles and being on a relatively weak server in WvW, I guess I won’t get any Badge of Honor this week.

Here’s my opinion on the Dynamic Events found in Brisban Wildlans

• Defend the Seraph camp until reinforcements arrive: this is an event that happens at the Hidden Lake, in the Seraph observatory. I’m not sure if it’s bugged or if it’s just an odd design, but I have often used the waypoint to reach the camp, only to find it lost to bandits; said bandits are also endless, as killing one of them makes another respawn. I guess this is part of the dynamic event, with people failing to defend the Seraph camp, but it feels weird – in other maps, when a camp is taken, the waypoint becomes contested and the friendly NPCs vanish. In this case, the waypoint continues to work normally, and the dead NPCs remain there. I have also never seen the dynamic event to retake the camp from those bandits.

• Defeat the sinister triad (Group Event): this is rather underwhelming. This event is one of the few Group Events in the entire map, but it has little to no impact in the area. Comparing after the event is done to before it has been completed, I have seen no change in the map – no new NPC, no new anything. A group event being completed should have some impact on the world, from a new vendor to maybe that fort nearby actually opening and allowing players to in there.

• The event with Tekki tinkering with an Asura Gate: this event is great, and a lot of fun. I loved some of the enemies we fight in this event, the dialogue is great, and the event conclusion is amazing. The only odd thing is how it does not count for the local heart, “Assist Ulta Metamagicals with their Asura gate research”. The event consists basically in doing one of the tasks listed in the heart description, so it should count for the heart completition.

As a whole, the events in Brisban Wildlands feel a bit underwhelming; they appear to have little to no impact in the world as a whole, despite how there are some extremely cool looking areas in that map (the Inquest laboratories come to mind). I wished there were some deeper events about dealing with the alliance between the Inquest, the bandits and the Nightmare Court.

I’m not surprised to see that most of the name calling in this topic comes from Thief players worried about their favourite profession’s most imbalanced mechanic being nerfed.

Vexus.5423:

Counters To Stealth Thief

None of those is a counter.

1. Moa when you can target him for a second, even if he is not rendering, the ability will still hit

If you can target him, he’s not under stealth. This isn’t a counter.

2. AOE knockdown or knockback

Irrelevant, since any half decent thief isn’t going to use stealth and remain still in place with a sign saying “I am here” so you can AoE him.

3. Use a mace instead of a greatsword, you bandwagon tools

Completely irrelevant. For a Guardian, using a greatsword would actually be more useful than a mace against a thief.

4. Use AOE damage abilities – yes it hurts just as hard when stealthed as when unstealthed

Again, irrelevant – the thief is not going to stand still where he was when he used stealth.

5. Talk with your teammates over voice comms and plan a burst attack the moment he’s targetable (oh wait, you’re not on voice, you’re unorganized and crying about dying to an organized group?)

I wonder, has anyone here complained about dying to an organized group? And regardless, this so called counter is irrelevant – the thief would simply be gone instead of staying to fight an organized group.

6. Get any kind of immobilize/stun which you should already have anyway

Those don’t work if you don’t have a target.

7. Dagger Storm? Run in and melee the slow-moving spinning free target who is not dodging for 8 seconds

The title of this topic isn’t “Dagger Storm is bad due to a lack of counters”.

8. AOE fear -> Immobilize -> Burst the Thief

Same as “counters” 2 and 4, fails for the same reason.

9. Walk backwards while autoattacking (the bare minimum effort you need to do)

Making a thief laugh isn’t going to defeat it.

10. Cast any sort of invisibility/stealth on your teammates and surprise the Thief who now has no target with 5 people jumping him from stealth, reversing the role

So if you can’t fight them…

There is no counter to stealth in the game. This makes stealth different from all other mechanics seen in GW2. As such, it needs a counter. Making stealth break on damage may be too little, considering how it would still keep stealth very powerful, but it would at least add a decent counter.

Rusty.7942:

Yes I know its random

(…)

The definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I actually think the definition of stupid is observing the expected outcome of a given action and then complaining about it.

The issue isn’t just with capping points, though. It’s with how, unlike every other mechanic in the game, there isn’t anything a player can do to counter stealth. Doing damage in an area in order to try to make the thief go away is far from being the same as countering stealth.

Just to give an example: imagine a group of 3 players finds a single enemy. The enemy could try to fight (and more likely die) or run. If he runs, the 3 players can use immobilize or speed buffs to get him. If he uses Swiftness, the other players can remove the boon or use Swiftness themselves. If he uses stealth…? Then there’s nothing the other players can do. They could try to guess the direction the player would go and blindly spam attacks there, but the chance of hitting even a single attack is extremely low, and a single hit is not going to have any significant impact.

In other words, all other professions could be countered. A thief, in this situation, could not.

Now apply the same reasoning to a 1vs1. There are few situations in which the best outcome for someone attacking the thief isn’t just making the thief flee, which is far from being significant in WvW. I have often seen a group of players killing another group, only for an enemy thief use stealth, move away and stay in hiding while waiting for his enemies to leave so he can revive his entire team. No other profession would make the defenders spend so much time trying to find an enemy and hoping he isn’t just going to use stealth again when he’s seen, or just stand still on the bodies of the defeated enemies while allowing the thief to go elsewhere and do whatever he wants.

For all other mechanics, the targeted players can be active and actually counter them. Specifically and exclusivelly for stealth, a player can only be passive. I’m sure some people here would enjoy that, but I do not – I would rather change stealth to allow active counters.

If a ranger sends his pet to attack you, you can kill the pet. If a guardian uses Justice to burn you, you can remove the condition. If a warrior uses Eviscerate, you can deal with it as you would deal with any other attack.

If a thief uses stealth, you…?

Stealth has no counter. While it runs off by itself, there is nothing a player who’s fighting against someone using stealth can do. In PvE, this is a minor nuisance. In organized PvP, I have no idea, since I have never played it. In World versus World, this is a massive annoyance.

This isn’t even a matter of having specific skills to break stealth. That would be a very bad counter – anything that specific to counter a single mechanic from a single profession would not be worth it. The counter needs to be something all professions can use easily.

In other words, stealth needs to be broken at least by doing damage to the hidden character. Finding the character to hit him is already hard enough, which keeps the stealth mechanic useful, but stealth itself needs to allow the player fighting the hidden character to do something in order to counter it. If not for the sake of PvE and sPvP, at least for the sake of WvW.

The select few who EXPLOITED consistent recipes for creating the precursors are the ones dominating the market and causing this extreme instability.

I disagree with that. Someone in GW2Guru making the Legendary Hammer mentioned how he saw a guy buying all the hammer precursors and immediately selling them for three times the price. This wasn’t someone who crafted a lot of precursors – this was someone who made a lot of gold through other means, such as by farming, and used it to artificially inflate the price of the hammer.

This kind of thing is why Guild Wars 2 needs a DR system – otherwise people who farm a lot would be able to drive all prices up, as seen perfectly in this example. The issue is that the DR in farming doesn’t prevent people from playing the market and abusing the Trade House like this, to make insane amounts of gold way too easily.

Now, I’m sure the guy buying all the cheap hammers and selling them for three times the price must be patting himself on the back for being so smart. Meanwhile, he’s actually being detrimental to the game by artificially inflating the price of the precursos. IMO, by itself this deserves a punishment, but since I don’t believe ArenaNet would do anything to punish him, here are ways to fix this problem:

1) Add a cap to the price of legendary precursors. Since ArenaNet can limit the price of items in the Trade House (which, for the records, is a great way to keep inflation under control), there should be a cap to how much gold someone can sell a precursor for. Otherwise, adding more precursors to the market would only lead to more of what’s already happening – a guy would buy all of the cheap ones and resell them for a very high price. By itself this is not enough, though; ArenaNet also needs to…

2) Increase slightly the drop rate of legendary precursors in the Mystic Forge. This needs to happen concurrently with the step above, otherwise those currently hoarding the precursors would simply not sell them, waiting for an increase in the price cap. With a cap to the price of legendary precursors in the Trade House, plus making those items a bit more common, hoarders would still try to hoard, but they would not be able to resell the legendaries for an insane profit anymore. Meanwhile, more non hoarders would be selling, thus assuring that the precursors are traded at all, and that there is a flow of precursors in the economy even with hoarders doing their best to hoard as much as possible and keep those precursors in storage hoping ArenaNet would eventually increase the selling cap.

Yes. In the Isle of Janthir Borderland map, at least, haven’t tried in any other. You may want to specify in which map you are.

Most of the roaming teams I meet are entirely made by thieves, from 2 to 5 of them. I have seen a team on my own server using the group stealth skill to ambush people. Again, I don’t know if it’s because Koreans really like them, but I keep seeing them more than any other profession when fighting War Machine, The Last Empire, and so on.

I’m still getting butter all the time. It’s fine for chocolate, but the butter is kinda annoying still…

You are assuming the split is not already in the game. In one of the PC Gamers interviews, ArenaNet mentioned some splits are already there, they are simply keeping quiet about them.

The truth about the DR system is:

All those complaining that DR hurts their farming and etc simply do not deserve to get more gold than normal players who just play the game. ArenaNet should punish farmers and other grinders, who create a massive gold disparity when compared to players who are not going to waste their time grinding, but instead would rather have fun.

I wish they would nerf farming more, and reward playing the game normally more. If you want a grind-based MMO, there are many options for you out there.

I’m not sure if it’s simply a matter that they are easy to notice, if it’s a matter of Korean guilds being fans of the profession, or if they really have taken over WvW, but it feels like almost everyone I meet in WvW, both on the enemy side and on my own team, is a Thief.

Does anyone else have noticed this? Any idea what is causing it?

I’m sad with the increased recharge to Symbol of Wrath. Leap combo finishers are awkward to use, considering how you need a combo field at the end of the leap, so the reduced recharge to Leap of Faith wasn’t worth it, IMO.

I’m happy with text-only signatures. If we could use images, the current requests for image-based signatures would just change to “Please let us use bigger images!” until people got signatures measuring 1900×1200px.

The only thing that bothers me is the big empty white space below our names; it feels like this space was meant for some kind of feature that is still waiting implementation.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Obsidian Shards and dungeon tokens are both Account Bound now. (We are fixing the issue with existing items not being converted to Account Bound)

Thanks Linsey, this is a very big help :-)

Arasuki.6094:

why is this wrong? this is a valid tactic imposed.

That’s more or less the same as saying that in soccer it’s a valid tactic to kick your oponent’s legs. The fact something could possibly be done doesn’t mean it’s good sportsmanship.

I have seen a lot of players in the Borderlands jumping puzzle basically trolling – not even trying to do the puzzle, but standing near one of the chests and using pushbacks to make people fall. Some mesmers skills are incredibly apt at this, and since those players have their back to the wall, unlike those trying to reach the chests, they are very difficult to counter. Between this and using mesmers’ Portals to quickly move allies up there with them, it may not be an exploit, but it surely is griefing, just as bad sportsmanship is.