Guild Wars 2

Jockum.1385:

I was not refering to “farmers” which will always farm the most rewarding content. I was refering to guilds, teams, friends which enjoy playing content together. But you are probably right here: those players have (mostly) left GW2 long ago, GW2 is not a game for casual teams. GW2 is either “hardcore teams” or “open world”.

Depends on your definition of “hardcore”. I raid in a static guild team every week. This makes us pretty hardcore compared to the open world players, but I do not consider us “hardcore” because we’re nowhere near the real hardcore guilds like [qT] and [SC]. It’s all relative. You’re looking at a spectrum and you’re saying it’s all either black or white. It isn’t.

Jockum.1385:

Just see all those conflicts about raids, easymode, raid rewards, legendary armour. These conflicts were fueled by Anet with their decision. Any manager (or parent) knows it. You can’t give half the team a pay rise for no reason and ignore the other half. You can’t give one child an icecream and let the others watch.

The thing is, you need the proper ice cream to keep some of the children interested. Some, because you can’t possibly interest all of them with this new content. It is targeted and designed toward the more invested ones. Imagine giving a child some hard task and rewarding it with ice cream, then giving that same ice cream to another child who didn’t have to do anything.

Berries >>> all the rest.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m asking about this, in case there’s some oddity in the data that might have resulted in eligible people not making the list. From what I was hearing as the review was being done, the parameters sounded really good to me, and in fact erred on the side of generosity. But I take on board you have questions, and I’ll see if there’s anything that could have resulted in a few … what would I call them?.. false negatives?

Thanks for your patience and the information you’re sharing.

Our Analytics Team is awesome, and they’re going to take a look.

Some people in my raid group got compensations and I didn’t. We raided right after the patch together, starting with W3. Escort produced normal rewards, KC didn’t, we decided to try W4 in case it’s a “KC-related” bug. We killed Cairn, didn’t get any loot either and disbanded the group. I don’t see how only select members of the same team can be eligible while others aren’t.

I also submitted a support ticket yesterday, no response, no in-game mail.

2 can’t work for a single simple reason – weapon swap.

For open world PvE I’ve played around with a similar idea, using auras to stack boons on myself and running Bountiful Power. Lines were Air, Arcane and Tempest and I used Leadership runes for boon duration. You can swap Arcane for Fire, though I would get Pyromancer’s Training over One with Fire any time. It’s not like you’ll be lacking Might and to lose both a damage modifier and fire skill cooldowns is too much of a cost. In the end, however, you’ll end up with a build that plays much like the meta builds and is just worse in group play. In the end I ditched the idea and went with a standard fire/air/tempest zerk build using dual daggers. Feels a lot more different than my usual sc/w setup.

Astralporing.1957:

Smaller groups. Devs were specifically asked then about 8 and 12-man dungeons (in the gw1 style) and responded by saying that they consider groups of that size to introduce too much organizational problems that are detriment to fun.
Notice, that most of the problems with raids do come from them being 10-man, not from the difficulty itself. So, no, claiming they are some fulfilment of an earlier anet promises is false. The raids as they are now are something they specifically didn’t want to see in this game originally.

Most of the “problems” with raids come from unrealistic expectations. The organizational issues are a fact, but another fact is many players overcome these because they have a genuine interest in the content. The 10-man format enables devs to be more creative when designing raid encounters, because they have more players whom they can assign specific roles (think of Xera startup or Escort splits for instance). The more effort you have to put in organization is just the price you have to pay for more interesting encounters.

AFAIK GW1 sold expansions. That’s how it can work – you receive lots of new content by paying for it.

zealex.9410:

Nor these are built with rivisiting in mind. These are built to please a demographic which limits the creativity of the raod team. And this is but an ez way to fix that. Btw did it ruin the experience for you of doing 100 nm before doing 100cm? Because for me ot didnt i just never did 100 after that and stuck to 100cm

There’s a difference between comparing 5-man normal mode to 5-man challenge mode content and comparing 10-man challenging to solo easy content.

P.S. Also yes, Balthazar is broken compared to us. That’s why he one-shots you when he finally decides to do something.

Lore-wise Balthazar is a god who has lost most of his power. And he still one-shots you in the story mission. Lore-wise Mordremoth falls in a battle of minds and there’s nothing saying the Commander doesn’t have a superior will or greater resolve. One could also argue the distraction created by the fight in Dragon’s Stand, which is basically all of the remaining Pact forces, is what makes this victory possible.

And spare me the talk about “teasers”. It doesn’t work like that. Story mission boss fights are a good example. I’ve never felt any desire to revisit them.

zealex.9410:

They really do. I really like fighting secondary characters and all but its really sad that the raid team is limited when it comes to what lore they put in the raids. Id love to fight some heavy lore characters in there in a 1 man story mode.

If you can 1v1 some epic boss, then how epic he really is? Lorewise, Matthias is so powerful he cannot fully control his own powers. How can you make the fight soloable without breaking the immersion completely?

So no, they really don’t.

In PvE it’s pointless. You can share better might blasting fire fields and using Heat Sync without needing to give up utility skills for the sake of auras.

In WvW I’d say it’s pointless too. You’ll be too fragile to be a frontliner and honestly Empower already covers the needs for might.

In PvP I don’t know, but I suspect you’d be too fragile again.

coro.3176:

These suggestions would only exacerbate the condi arms-race between builds with constant condi application (thief, mesmer, necro, etc) and builds with lots of resistance/cleanse (warrior, ele, etc).

We need less spammable condi and less spammable cleanse.

The problem with having less of both is condi might get irrelevant. And if it doesn’t, then it wouldn’t really change the arms race. You’ll still have people spamming condis and other spamming resistance/cleanses. It might give these people a bit more time to spam other things, but this doesn’t really matter in a large-scale fight, as whatever they would spam is already spammed by others. So why bother? It’s already in a kind of balance, there’s no point risking to trivialize one of the combat mechanics of the game.

P.S. OP, no. Just… no.

Jockum.1385:

As I said: I’m confident they could.

Your confidence doesn’t pay their bills. I’m a game developer myself, and I don’t see how this could work. It’s not the technical difficulties about adding content. These are trivial. The problem is content creation is expensive.

Jockum.1385:

By my experience quite a lot accept it if there is something else to do.
Which was the problem I tried to describe. Raids are not too difficult: less difficult content is missing. If players would be busy they wouldn’t care (or care less) about raids.

And again, you’re confusing “content I haven’t done yet” with “the only content in the game”. And your comparison to “most other games” which aren’t MMOs is completely absurd. All MMOs are huge, they offer tons of content and rely on players spending hundreds, even thousands of hours in the game. That’s because they are also more expensive to produce and maintain. Primarily because of the huge amount of content they offer. You seem to want constant updates featuring new content which players like you can enjoy for a weekend and move on. Ain’t gonna happen. With this time of experiencing the content, the developer can never make the money they spend on creating it.

Copies all of it.

Kallsbo.8964:

isn’t 75 days a ridiculous amount of time to force us to craft daily. I have basically everything needed to craft the staff so instead of letting me enjoy the game and actually play it I’m forced to wait for roughly a quarter of a year until I can actually craft my staff. Is there any other way to get the elder glob residue? I’d definitely spend more recources to get it faster.

Buy Spiritwood planks off the TP.

IndigoSundown.5419:

TexZero.7910:

I dont even anymore.

If 1 hr a day for a month is hardcore, then i have to question what in the other 23 hrs is so important that you still think your 1hr sacrifice means you should be in there with people who are willing to put in that time, when you aren’t.

People in these two camps will never understand each other. Raids are, and have always been, about making a commitment to raids. People who have more to do with their time than play games are used to buying — and playing — games that they can play at their own pace. Most games support that choice because games are leisure activity. Raids are, and have always been, serious business to raiders, and neither raid design nor the raid community are tolerant of an uncommitted play-style.

Well, GW2 also supports this choice. The vast majority of the content can be played pretty casually. It just happens to support the other choice, too.

Meta exists in every game and there’s no point complaining about it being rigid. It will always be. Allow me to remind you can always set up your own group.

And yes, I have entered WvW. I actually still do, on a regular basis. And you know what I see? Plenty of non-DH guards. Core eles and mesmers aren’t a rare sight either. So there goes your thesis of elite specs “shoehorning” everyone into a single build.

Playing since launch registers as “much” in my book. Raids wouldn’t help you. If you’re not willing to repeat the same content, you’d exhaust “easy mode” raids in less time you’d exhaust dungeons. But there is no game which will offer new content at the speed players exhaust it. It’s both too expensive and too slow to produce.

Nonsense. Optimal builds and those “a little behind” are always a very small subset of the possible builds. It was like that pre-HoT, it’s like that now. Nothing really changed.

Jockum.1385:

I play with a casual guild more coordinated “once a week” since ~2015 (we all are playing since release together – GW1 since ~ 2010). We ran out of content long ago.

You and your friends having exhausted the group content and group content not being available are two vastly different things.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Better yet, make the Legendary Spikes not account bound. Some of us got plenty of them and would like to sell!

Then sell. It’s a 30s vendor trash, still a decent drop.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t get why people like him so much. He’s the most bland character because he’s blocked behind a generic “mysterious everything”

Perhaps exactly because of that. People can “invent” him, fill the gaps in the ways they would like best, creating a fiction of him which is extremely likable. In fact, most people will be inclined to do that. They do it all the time.

Jockum.1385:

Did he played with other first timers or did he played with PUGs? Thats a difference,
a guildteam can’t be carried by some exp PUGs.

Oh? Strange I recall just this happening for the team I formed in my old guild. A rather experienced pug tanked for us, helped us kill the boss and gave us a lot of valuable advice. By the way, you can’t expect to gather a team of first-timers and make it a static. Some people will dive into it and some will not. You’ll never know until you try it.

Jockum.1385:

The lack of other (team)content isn’t.

Except there’s plenty of other team content. There are group events, there are fractals and dungeons, there are guild missions, there’s PvP and there’s GvG. You can do a lot of things with friends. People aren’t complaining because there isn’t enough team content, people are complaining because they see exclusive rewards they can’t get.

I never said it’s proper. If I have to label it, it will be “efficient”. Which it is, objectively. If you plan to play a class for a long time, sooner or later you’ll want to be efficient.

If you find it fun then please, by all means. But like you said, different people tend to like different things.

You’re not talking about fun but rather optimality. Optimal builds will always be a select few, because of the nature of “optimal”. So that’s a moot point. If you want build diversity, you can have it. You only lose being optimal but you can play what’s fun for you.

Jockum.1385:

@Feanor: the effort anets needs to spend doesn’t matter to players.

It should. It would help create more realistic expectations.

AliamRationem.5172:

Ele can do this stuff solo with the right build!

Of course but… why? It’s group content, you most likely will have other players doing the stuff anyway.

Jockum.1385:

Teamcontent in GW2 boils down to dungeons (not maintained anymore, badly balanced (powercreep)), fractals (2012/2013 content) and raids (hardcorecontent, not meant for casuals). If you spend two weekends you might have already seen every piece of teamcontent GW2 has to offer.

Powercreep shouldn’t be an issue when you’re looking for casual content, should it? And I love how people claim FotM are 2013 content when the last two fractals are very clearly 2016. Not to mention the reworked fractals are also 2016 and the effort to rework a map is very similar to creating a new one.

I get you want more content of specific type, but understand this: creating content is very expensive. Currently ANet are doing an amazing job with launching a LS episode with a whole new map every 2-3 months. That’s nothing short of fantastic. Yeah, it probably isn’t the content you want, but you’re not the only player they have. By the way, lots of open world events are designed for groups. Heck, I’ve even done map completion with friends and it’s exactly casual group content. So wall of texts or no, I don’t agree with your stance.

There’s nothing hardcore about normal mode Nightmare. The new and reworked fractals (Swampland, Snowblind) are more mechanically heavy, but they are definitely nowhere near the difficulty of the raids. The existence of more combat mechanics actually make them a better middle ground, as they can now give players a much better idea what to expect in the actual hardcore content (which is being raids). Additionally, fractals are tiered and lower tiers are a complete joke. So if T4 is too hardcore for you, there’s T2 as middle ground.

Panda.1967:

The very concept of Elite Speciaizations was a terrible idea from the very start. First off the very name denotes that they are better than other specializations. The method of aquiring them requires you to unlock all traits in every other specialization, which reinforces the “better tham other specs” stigma. The player base at large insists on everyone using Elite Specs… This is NOT ok.

Yes it is OK. You’re trying to defend a position of having more freedom of choice when creating a build. The problem is, freedom of choice doesn’t create fun to play builds. Using elite specs to define a playstyle allows the devs to design said playstyle and make sure it’s a fun one, rather than relying on a fun gameplay emerging somehow from a random mix of traits and mechanics. Which more often than not produces broken gameplay rather than fun one.

So no, the elite specs are a good idea. The only problem with them is we have a single one for each class, which makes it feel a bit shallow. But this issue is on its way to be remedied soon™ when the expansion launches.

I play full glass everywhere in PvE. Packs with elites or champs I most often skip if I’m alone. It’s not that it’s impossible to kill a pack like this, but most likely it would take too much time and generally not be rewarding enough. But if you like to try it for the challenge, there are two possible approaches. First, you can change your build for extra survivability. It will make the fight even longer and I imagine the key would be good sustain – you’ll win by outliving the mobs. The second approach which is more to my liking, would be “getting good” – learning the attacks and surviving by not getting hit. If you choose the latter, be prepared to die often while learning. But eventually you learn and get rewarded by a warm fuzzy feeling you’re playing your class properly. Plus you have the added benefit of not having to swap gear/traits every time you change a map.

Nonsense. You can say dungeons are the abandoned middle ground (which they are), but fractals are getting updates recently. So that’s the obvious middle ground aimed for players who lack the time/dedication to do raids but seek a challenge greater than the completely casual open world. It doesn’t matter if the guild “would have done the two new fractals”. The guilds have done W4, too. It doesn’t mean they stopped playing these. It is impossible to create new content with the speed the players exhaust it, so every content is meant to be replayed over and over again, no matter how casual the target audience for it.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

I would go so far as to say WvW would benefit from revamping all the npcs to make them more meaningful.

Me too.

Coldtart.4785:

It’s another ‘people defend pve in wvw’ episode.

Siege is trash. Npcs are trash. I’d like to at least sometimes get to fight players in this alleged pvp mode.

And yet if they were removed you’d realize the mode became a lot less interesting.

draxynnic.3719:

While they had not previously been shown on-screen in Guild Wars 2, the lore contains numerous examples of human spellcasters performing feats of similar size, scope and power to Jennah’s city dome, alone or with the assistance of magical devices. The writers will know this, and therefore not expect the player base to ascribe any deeper meaning to the city dome than that Jennah is an exceptionally powerful mesmer – which we already knew.

There is some validity to this, however the writers have to consider players who aren’t familiar with the off-screen lore. So should you, by the way. And even if we don’t take the city-wide dome as a feat of godlike power – which is the valid point in your argument – the theory isn’t based solely on it. There has been enough mystery around Jennah since the personal story days, to make the theory plausible.

And don’t try to strawman me. Read your own posts. They are full of condescension toward the writing and you’re basing much of your case on this. To be precise, you cannot argue that the White Mantle were used to “remind us of human prowess” without implying incompetence in the writing.

Finally, come on, a whole raid story and half a living world season just for that? Now that I’d call incompetent writing. It would be utterly disappointing and anti-climactic.

Now that’s a pleasant surprise. Thanks!

I fail to see the problem with zergs. Numbers win? Well surprise, surprise, they most often did in real life too! It is certainly possible to outsmart/outmaneuver a larger opposing force, but (again, just like in real life) it is hard to do so. Like it should be.

You’re actually right. HoT metas in general mitigate the issue, to a degree. Champ trains in FGS and CS still suffer from special snowflakes who just don’t feel like waiting 50 people or joining them.

Lahmia.2193:

On the flip side of that, I’ve yet to see someone in game that actually likes the DBL keep lords. Are they hard to kill? No. Are they a pain in the kitten when an enemy zerg engages you? Yes. And yes I know experienced groups will move away from lords room when this happens, but that just shows they are detrimental to the tactics an attacking commander can use. In other keeps and SMC, attacking zergs can bunker inside the lord room because the lords themselves have very little impact on the fight itself, as (in my opinion) it should be.

Again, it’s just the same with walls and siege. ACs can be just as detrimental to the tactics of the attacking commander. Failing to account for this is just a commander’s mistake. And unlike ACs, lords are located at the same places and have the same mechanics.

Lords having an actual impact on the fight is the best thing we can have. Otherwise they serve no purpose at all. Just spawn the circle directly and increase the timer to account for the time you’d otherwise spend killing the lord. It would make no real difference.

1. There is no problem with TD meta. If you’re having one, try looking at your own self.
2. Yes, I totally start the gerent organization just for myself. Nobody else gets any loot whatsoever.
3. Following the above, my actions are beneficial for me and 50 others. Yours are beneficial to you alone. Good luck trying to imply equality between the two. By the way, I’ve been asked to lead TD events by people who followed me in the past. Probably because I was so selfish doing it.

There’s a bare minimum if you want the meta done. Usually you want at least 15 per lane. 10 will probably get the job done if they know what to do. But you can’t rely on that. So when you’re trying to organize that, you really want as many players on the map to join it as possible.

The ramp up is generally faster on power builds. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind a necro in the party, provided he can deal with his echo on the Saix phase. But from a min-maxing perspective, for fractals it’s better to have an ele. Also, from the same perspective, you won’t be dying at all, anywhere.

Djinn.9245:

Feanor.2358:

Djinn.9245:

Yes, that is what I was referring to. Commanders often start asking people to leave the map far before the meta starts.

Well, you might want to consider their point of view. I’m trying to organize the meta for dozens players. If there are enough “stubborn” people who don’t give a kitten it will simply fail.

I do care. I care that I was in the map before most of those other people taxi’d in and I am in the middle of an event chain.

You’re taking the selfish stance. That’s fine. But don’t expect to get any sympathy from me.

Alga.6498:

When is Queen Jennah going to get married to a king, in order to the Krytan Royal throne will move on?

Depends. If we assume the “Jennah = Lyssa” theory, then – likely never. But then we don’t really need to worry about mundane assassination attempts. By the way, the long history of Jennah not getting married kind of gives more credibility to this theory. It’s an unusual behaviour for a queen, especially with unclear line of succession.

Blaeys.3102:

You are oversimplifying the issue. People post because this is something they feel passionate about – not simply to “bump” a topic.

With all due respect, people who are asking for easy mode raids couldn’t possibly be passionate about them. It would be the same as saying “I’m a huge Ferrari fan, I only wish they made cars at 20k price tag, preferably vans because I have a large family”. You can’t be passionate about something when you’re missing it’s whole purpose.

People who are passionate about raids are those who play them on a regular basis. That’s why we play them, because we enjoy the content and have fun experiencing it. The rest may be passionate about many things, but raids aren’t one of them.

Sun Lian.4075:

And you can sustain yourself pretty well compared to other classes, maybe that’s why some people only want eles, druids and chrono’s by their side because they can’t actually play so well themselves and they need the support.

Errr… Support or not, if you can’t play well you’d better pick a necro, not an ele. That’s why 4N1D comp exists. Ele takes more effort to both stay alive and deal decent damage. The reason why people only want this comp for fractals is, when you do play it on a decent level it’s much more efficient and faster than the necro comp. It’s not that you can’t deal decent damage in the long run on a necro. It’s that in fractals you can often burst everything down fast enough so a necro becomes less efficient simply because he doesn’t have time to ramp his damage up.

NeHoMaR.9812:

it’s not “subjective”, it IS annoying for 100% of players

If only claiming something in caps would make it true. I like Desert BL lords exactly because they aren’t just another punchbag. There goes your 100%.

draxynnic.3719:

1) It’s not incompetance. It’s actually the opposite – ArenaNet finally showing that they remember some of the lore that hasn’t previously been shown “on-screen”, as it were, and that humans can do more than simply being the victims.

“Finally showing that they remember” implies incompetence already. So yeah, it is.

draxynnic.3719:

2) In the personal story, yes, but it’s made very clear in raids, and to a lesser extent episode 1 and season 2, that the White Mantle were a lot more powerful than they had previously been given credit for

Which makes them a plot device, because they were specifically made a bigger threat. This only happens for a reason. A storytelling reason. Consider their role in the story. They didn’t really succeed in anything. They tried to bring back Lazarus and failed. They tried to attack Divinity’s Reach and failed. They tried to study the Bloodstone and failed. Caudecus tried to overthrow Jennah and failed. All of these story threads are more or less over. The Maguuma bloodstone is destroyed, Caudecus is dead, Lazarus is actually Balthazar who used them and abandoned them to pursue his own agenda and Queen Jennah isn’t contested for the rule over Kryta. If anything, her political power is larger now, after Meeting of Ministers.

There isn’t anything left for the White Mantle to do. Their leaders are all dead, their order is in ruins. So what plot purpose did they serve? There’s Balthazar, of course, but they didn’t need to launch an attack on DR for that story to resolve. Balthazar betraying them could just as well lead them to ruin. However the attack did happen and it all revolved around Queen Jennah.

draxynnic.3719:

3) Logan isn’t the ‘consumer’, but the plot effect of Jennah showing off is that Logan (finally) realises that Jennah really doesn’t need his protection and thus he is free to take another assignment elsewhere. Any requirement for Jennah’s display of power to have a greater plot “purpose” is discharged by the character development it created in Logan, without the need for the audience to start forming conspiracy theories about how a character that is well established as a powerful spellcaster must actually be a god just because her power has stopped being an Informed Ability (for the purpose of the game itself, see #1) and has been shown on screen.

Fair point. I’m not saying she’s must be god, I’m saying she might be one.