Guild Wars 2

After a few days of WvW post patch, I can say that the nerfs have actually had a pretty big impact on my already tenuous survivability. If I go even heavier into Vit/Tou I won’t be able to kill anything. I really can’t believe that they nerfed skill based survivability for the profession. It’s sad.

Another week of build testing and if I don’t find something a lot better, I think I’m done until they fix the profession.

oZii.2864:

The problem with ele Dps isn’t the damage it’s the speed but that doesn’t mean there is a problem.

Mesmers auto attack with GS. Staff, sword, scepters auto attacks do terrible Dps and mesmers don’t really auto attack often as there is no need most damage comes from spells if define Mesmer as a caster like ele.

A ele doesn’t have to rely on auto attack because you have enough spells doing damage. Staff fire 1 hits for a lot it’s just slow but it also has a long range. For d/d the damage auto is lightning whip which is just under the damage of thief dagger auto attack (not counting wild and lotus strike). The thing with d/d is that it isn’t really melee in the sense that a warrior is melee or thief. Lightning whips 300 range even though it doesn’t look like it.

What the ele is capable of doing is adjusting on the fly adaptation to any situation. By having access to all the tools you are prepared.

Just from WvW perspective if your guardian goes down and you have any other profession left to provide group support/heals the ele will do that better than the other classes. Having the ele there means that if the main X that does this the best goes down it doesn’t fall apart because the ele can fill that role.

Someone mentioned headway guardian I don’t know much about guards but I know that build is popular. The reason the build can kill anything is retaliation+healing. The damage isn’t all that great and most healway builds I looked at have 1k healing power. Even in the original healway thread I saw people saying that they have trouble killing anything. They can 1vX all day long but so can a cleric/pvt d/d bunker and a regen ranger. You win by attrition healway guardian is essentially a full cleric d/d ele with retal.

I’m sorry, but you are wrong. Staff 1 Fire has among the lowest damage numbers, normalized to Damage Per Second, of any #1 skill in the game. Water, Air and Earth are pretty much the only ones that are worse. I also disagree that our other skills do a lot of damage. We have probably the lowest DPS across skills 1-5, in damage per second, vs. any other profession/weapon set in the game.

Also, yes, my Healway Guardian does more damage. The build seems to kill slow vs. other Guardian Builds, but I still kill things quicker with my Healway Guardian than I do with my 0-20-0-30-20 Staff Ele with balanced gear. The guardian also has at least as much mobility, similar utility and much, much greater survivability.

Aether McLoud.1975:

cheese.4739:

Sid.4609:

Giving the staff a buff doesnt make much of a difference if any other classes get buffed in a similar way.

Um, yes it does?

No it doesn’t. Staff still isn’t close to a viable pvp weapon. It never will be unless it gets either a HUGE damage boost or completely redesigned. And that’s exactly why staff changes in the patch notes don’t even matter.

This is true. Base damage numbers for Staff are the worst in the game. #1 skills for Staff Ele are maybe 6/10th of the average across the other professions, adjusted for skill speed and 45% of the damage for the most potent professions. Most #2-#5 skills aren’t any better. All tend to be below numbers seen in similar skills in other professions, some as low as 1/10th the damage numbers. There are also so effect skills that also have a damage component for other professions that do no damage for an Ele.

Ele also is heavily reliant on 20-30 points in arcane and 30 or more points split between Earth and Water to have any degree of survivability. So, Staff eles, (and Eles in general), don’t really have much room to boost that worst in game base damage numbers via power/precision.

Staff skills did get some nice playability buffs. With out the utility nerfs, they might have been slightly more capable. Unfortunately, the nerfs more than out-weigh the staff buffs and the other weapon sets did not get any compensation.

A 25% base damage boost for Staff skills would probably only be a first step towards finding proper balance. 33%, with some skills boosted by 50%, is probably much closer to where the staff should be.

BTW, Ele #1 skills have almost no finishers among them, vs. other professions which have almost universal access to finisher status on their #1 skills. This also impacts the anemic DPS potential of Staff Eles and the other weapon sets as well.

A big part of the problem is that we can’t sit in one or two attunements. If each attunement was well balanced for a particular mode of play and the cooldowns were shorter, the profession might be what ANet seems to imagine it is. However, the current situation is that we are forced to put together skill rotations that utilize all attunements, regardless of situation or circumstance, in order to be at all viable.

Attunements are hoops to jump through, rather than situational tools for adapting to the tactical environment. If Elemental attunements actually provided a “swiss army knife” of skills, then maybe it would make sense to ensure we aren’t too good at any one thing. That’s not the reality though.

Durzlla.6295:

Fiontar.4695:

darkace.8925:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Being able to do needless stuff doesn’t make Car B better, it actually makes it objectively worse, because cars are supposed to drive, stay on the road, and brake.

What part of the elementalist’s arsenal is needless? Is it the damage? The combo fields? Perhaps it’s the group support? Or maybe the crowd control?

Here’s an idea, if you want to be King of X and you hate the idea of being the Jack-of-all_Trades, perhaps you should choose a class that better suits your playstyle? To use your car analogy, if you want a fast car or something that can haul a boat or something to haul the kids to soccer practice, then don’t buy a mid-sized sedan and complain that it doesn’t do what you want it to do.

Most professions are capable at being good to excellent at any role you might desire. Elementalists lack that flexibility, because the balance between survivability and capability is so precarious that we are frozen into mediocrity. Why can I build for damage, or tankiness or support with any other profession in the game, becoming excellent at my focused role and still maintain respectable performance in the off focus capabilities, while with elementalist I have to sacrifice off focus capabilities entirely to just be ok at my focused role?

That’s the issue here. Jack of all trades, master of none implies competence at those trades, while sacrificing true mastery of any. With elementlist, the balanced approach makes us poor at all trades and the best we can do when pushing an area of focus is to be OK at that focus, while becoming horrible at everything else.

I’d be fine even if we had to work a little harder to reach peak levels of capability, but, unfortunately, we have to work really hard just to reach average levels of capability, which is an important symptom of the profession’s problems.

Yes, every prof can be any role, HOWEVER they can not be every role AT THE SAME TIME, a “DPS” ele can have almost as good of support and control as a support/control ele, just as those 2 can have similar damage to the “DPS” one, all other profs need to pick one or the other and they completely suck at everything else.

If a Guardian wants to have support and control, they gotta give up their damage, an ele doesn’t need to give up that much of their other roles which is what makes them the jack of all trades. This isn’t WoW or some other MMO where Jack of All Trades means they can respec into another role(which isn’t what it originally meant anyway), it means you can do all roles at once with just a press of a button.

Actually, I have to go back to my guardian, because it’s just my second most played profession and provides a perfect example. I can spec my Guardian for healing and utility, while still maintaining high survivability and noticeably higher DPS than my “balanced” elementalist.

Going “Glass Cannon” for an Elementalist is very different than going “Glass Cannon” for my Guardian. My zerker Guardian is going to do more damage, have more survivability and even better utility than my zerker Elementalist.

Going “Full heal/support” for my Guardian is going to provide better healing/support than my “Full heal/support” with my elementalist, while maintaining better damage output and providing more survivability.

Going balanced with my Guardian will provide me with more damage and exponentially more survivability than going balanced with my Elementalist.

What exactly does my Elementalist gain in compensation. Nothing.

All professions in the game give up some capabilities when going focused, but most of the time they can go focus while still maintaining respectable damage/survivability. Not so with the Elementalist.

Thrashbarg.9820:

It’s “Jack of all trades”.

/grammarlesson

Every class can play every role in this game. Developers saying the elementalist should be a Jack of all trades show either a lack of understanding of their own game or a lack of a clear vision for the profession.

(this all basically refers to WvW, we all know that warriors/guardians/andsometimesamesmer are all you need for PvE and tPvP has it’s own little meta about holding and flipping/contesting 2/3 circles for ~10-15 min which is just weird to me)

My engineer packs better support (water fields, fire fields, a light field that pulse heals, blasts, condition removals, various CC, perma-regeneration) and ranged aoe damage (spammable GTAoE with a ton of conditions, I’ve made many groups of 10+ run for their lives chucking grenades off a wall, can’t say the same for meteor shower). The only things my elementalist can still do better are static fields, auras and conjured weapons…..

My warrior can be built to put out massive damage or support (in either role can exceed the capabilities of my elementalist) and has several good hybrid builds that can do both. Static field is good, but earthshaker has a shorter cooldown….. Also: Warbanner. ’nuff said

My thief has more HP and armor than my elementalist, moves faster, can stay invisible indefinitely has 3k attack and over 100% crit damage and auto-crits from stealth. Sure, he can’t lay down water fields, but as long as there is someone who can, the shortbow blast finisher spam is actually doing far more “healing” than the elementalist. Hybrid thief seems to actually outshine hybrid elementalist in nearly every way except fun (for me anyway).

So really they don’t want elementalist to be a Jack of all trades. What they apparently want is elementalists to re-roll as kit enginners. I did, and dang is it fun. Kit swapping is like attunement dancing without a cooldown. Either that or get a staff and be a field slave (preferably an aura share build….. see below…..).

(Ah, aurashare, the one thing elementalists can do that no other class can. Besides conjures, okay, two things. The way traits are arranged, makes the ideal aurashare build impossible. This locks one possible high end build into mediocrity. Imagine if the relevant cantrip traits were spread so that you could only take 2/4, well, that’s aurashare’s problem.)

I like the new traits, for what that’s worth. I’m having fun dusting off my attunement swapping skills while I experiment with new builds, but I can already see going back to engineer for most things. I don’t feel that they have brought elementalist to the level of viability that most other classes enjoy, but they are a start. Currently running 0-30-20-0-20 as an experiment, had to switch from knight’s back to mostly soldier’s to make up the lost survivability from the water line. Even with the added toughness and stability, the hp pool is too low to survive spikes (necro condition bombs are the new meta anyway).

My suggestion for balance is simple. Bump base HP to the level of mesmers. Guardians have aegis and virtue-regen without any traits or utilities/weapons and they also have higher base armor (don’t give me that crap about how it’s not much different either, damage reduction is damage reduction in this game of number vs. numbers more numbers is ALWAYS better, I’ve long lost count of how many times I’ve lived by a handful of HP). Thieves have escape/damage/mitigation built into every weapon, we have to actively choose to have damage or mitigation available and what to put on cooldown when. Elementalists need to trait for water/arcane to get similar regeneration to an untraited guardian, have limited active and no passive blocks.

This is not the balance I am looking for in a game.

I agree with most of this post.

I think our traits needs a much more massive overhaul than what we got with tis patch. You are probably right that we should have the same base HP pool as Mesmers. I think we also need a fair to significant boost to base damage numbers. IMO, Our #1 skills are so underpowered that an across the board 25% boost would just be a starting point, with further upward balance tweaking for many still likely once the dust settled.

The flaws to the profession’s design are just amplified by mildly to woefully inadequate base damage numbers for most of the profession’s skills.

darkace.8925:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Being able to do needless stuff doesn’t make Car B better, it actually makes it objectively worse, because cars are supposed to drive, stay on the road, and brake.

What part of the elementalist’s arsenal is needless? Is it the damage? The combo fields? Perhaps it’s the group support? Or maybe the crowd control?

Here’s an idea, if you want to be King of X and you hate the idea of being the Jack-of-all_Trades, perhaps you should choose a class that better suits your playstyle? To use your car analogy, if you want a fast car or something that can haul a boat or something to haul the kids to soccer practice, then don’t buy a mid-sized sedan and complain that it doesn’t do what you want it to do.

Most professions are capable at being good to excellent at any role you might desire. Elementalists lack that flexibility, because the balance between survivability and capability is so precarious that we are frozen into mediocrity. Why can I build for damage, or tankiness or support with any other profession in the game, becoming excellent at my focused role and still maintain respectable performance in the off focus capabilities, while with elementalist I have to sacrifice off focus capabilities entirely to just be ok at my focused role?

That’s the issue here. Jack of all trades, master of none implies competence at those trades, while sacrificing true mastery of any. With elementlist, the balanced approach makes us poor at all trades and the best we can do when pushing an area of focus is to be OK at that focus, while becoming horrible at everything else.

I’d be fine even if we had to work a little harder to reach peak levels of capability, but, unfortunately, we have to work really hard just to reach average levels of capability, which is an important symptom of the profession’s problems.

That video does make me wonder if this game will ever achieve any sort of actual balance. Let’s just say it didn’t instill any confidence.

My WvW staff Elementalist is geared about 50/50 between offense and defense. I also have a Healway Guardian specced almost entirely healing/defensively. My Guardian puts out more damage, while having exponentially more survivability.

That right there is proof that we have some problems.

In the video, Izzy makes the point that all stats are important to Elementalists and we need to be balanced with our stats to be effective. The problem is that even if we spec totally offense, our DPS is only average and if we spec totally defense, our survivability is some where short of average. Balanced spec just makes us completely sub-par.

I have to work really hard to achieve baseline levels of performance with my Ele that I can achieve with any other profession on cruise control.

I was looking at base damage for weapon skills yesterday. Elementalist has Slot#1 damage, across weapon sets and attunements, that put us at the very bottom of the list. Most professions do 1.5x to 2.3 x DPS with their #1 skills. Most #1 skills in the game are also 20% proc finishers, while almost none of our 16 possible #1 skills are finishers.

What makes things worse is the fact that most professions don’t need to spec heavily in defensive trait lines and invest at least half their stats in defense just to attain minimal survivability. It’s much easier to stack power/precision, with out sacrificing sustainable survivability, for pretty much every other profession in the game. So, not only is Elementalist base damage pathetic, but most other professions can build much more heavily into Power/Precision, which makes Elementalist damage even more pathetic.

First, I think it’s horrible game design to force a profession to go balanced stats just to reach minimal capability. A big part of customization of builds for various roles in this game come from the ability to lean heavily in one direction stats wise to amplify and support a role or playstyle, with out compromising the playability of the profession. That approach becomes a lot less viable for Elementalists.

Second, if you are going to design a profession with the assumption that all stats are necessary, then base damage for skills needs to be higher, not lower, than average, to compensate for the need to take defensive stats and traitlines to achieve even modest survivability.

Izzy tossed out that a healing specced Elementalist can be the second best healer in the game. The problem is that healing in this game is diminished and even the best healer doesn’t gain much survivability via healing if their base survivability is poor. A fully healing specced Elementalist also is going to have to sacrifice DPS completely for that utility. Which, of course, brings me back to my Healway Guardian, who is a better healer, has much more survivability and can notably outdamage even a balanced stat Elementalist. Pitted vs. the DPS of a healing specced Elementalist, you’d find the gap is exponential.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t bring us back to pre-launch commentary by developers on professions in GW2. We were told that profession choice was more about aesthetic and playstyle choices than raw capability. Each profession may do things differently, but you’d be able to spec any profession to any role and do so competently. Some professions might be slightly better at one role than another, but we would never have to worry about our profession not being viable for what ever role it needed to fill or being excluded from a party invite because of a lack of needed capability.

So, yeah, what ever happened to that?

Sad thing is that many professions in the game do have that degree of flexibility, but then flexibility is used as an excuse for balancing Elementalists to be sub-par at any role they spec for. Huh? That makes sense how?

We know that ANet has to have a lot of talented developers to have produced this amazing game. However, it’s becoming more and more apparent that post launch, a lot of developers have been assigned to things they really have no business being involved in, or positions they really don’t have the capabilities to hold.

The long term viability of the game is being threatened and it’s a very sad state of affairs to witness as a true fan of the game.

Thief has builds that allow them to escape from anyone, anywhere on the entire game field with out being downed, so complaining about the ability to get back in a keep if close enough to the portal when downed seems a little ridiculous.

There is a fairly small percentage of armors in the game that are nice, but there are way too many that are ugly. The gem store armors generally follow the trend. I know they must have a number of artists responsible for armors. I also assume that one or two artists are likely responsible for the best armors and there are some artists that just can’t make armor that isn’t ugly as sin.

This really is the notable weakness in the art dept. The game itself is beautiful and full of detail. Fashion is difficult. A very skilled and talented artist may still have zero fashion sense. It’s well past time to get the fashion impaired artists off of armor and onto something better suited for them and actively search out game artists who have a solid portfolio of fashionable game armor.

BTW, IMO, both Heavy sets are by far the best of the gem store armors. The original medium armor was decent, the new medium armor had potential but was ruined by the chest. Both Light armors are just plain horrid.

As to the Raids, if they achieve raids by making Dungeons scale, like dungeons in Wildstar, from 1 up to raid size, I’m all for it. If it’s “5 or 20”, or “5 or 40”, with no scaling from small to large, I’m not at all interested.

Others have brought up good points about content in general. GW2, at launch, got that fun trumped carrot on a stick as a motivator. Sadly, they seem to have forgotten how they created the core game and the principles it was built around, so it’s not a huge surprise that they might decide to fall back on the old design paradigm.

I don’t know what’s happening at ANet, but I don’t think there is any way the current ANet could create a game any where near on par with what GW2 was at launch.

solarisnox.8521:

Fiontar.4695:

Well. I thank Izzy for taking the time, but I thought it was funny that most of the focus was on builds that have been around for a while and he’s just starting to experiment with new traits. He recognized that a criticism is that Eles have to reply heavily on Arcane and Water, after spending most of the feed talking about Arcane and Water.

In short, things really haven’t changed that much at all and rather than the new traits and changes introducing new tested and tweaked builds, they are just throwing some new stuff out there to see how it works.

I really was hoping this feed would be about showing how many new, viable builds the update has made possible, but it seems that even Izzy has no idea if this has really done anything to introduce new, viable builds. He mentioned one or two builds, not because he vetted them and knows they work with the updates, but because he “read about them on the forums”.

Sigh.

Becoming more and more clear that this last update was just a “baby step” for the game. A step in the right direction, but there is a lot more work to be done. I hope it will be focused more around introducing new viable builds and less about tossing things out there to see if the community can make anything of them.

sadly, I’m afraid I have to agree with you. That’s why I asked for public test servers…so that we can actually do this stuff before it gets put into the game.

Agreed. We desperately need public test servers. I’m guessing their pool of alpha testers has dropped off significantly. Friends and family, people from all around NCSoft, even everyone working at ANet; I’m guessing most of those people play very little on the alpha servers now, compared to pre-launch.

Besides, a stale tester pool just invites blind spots and group think.

And trust me, there has been nothing since launch that would have been “ruined” by early exposure via a public test server. Much more likely a lot of mis-steps could have been prevented.

Why shouldn’t Staff Ele be strong enough to win 1vs1? I agree that as a tradeoff for the support role they should have a tougher challenge 1vs1, but they shouldn’t be handicapped any where near as severely as they are.

When a balanced stat Staff Ele does half the single target damage of a healway, defensively geared Guardian, then something isn’t right.

There is too much mobility/condition removal/stun break in this game for a ranged build to rely on CC to kite as a means of overcoming lower single target DPS. Staff Ele shouldn’t be one of the better 1v1 builds, but it shouldn’t be as horrible as it currently is.

Here is a brief youtube video of housing in Wildstar. ANet will have to work their kitten off to create something that won’t be an embarrassment in comparison:

http://youtu.be/5qyzcwRHcRQ

Wildstar, the next big Western MMO from NCSoft, has dungeons that scale from 1 to 40 people and housing from launch that actually is meaningful content. I figure GW2 is going to have to play catch up at some point, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to match the new high bar that Wildstar looks to set.

Good thing for NCSoft that they own both games. Good thing for GW2 fans, because hopefully the competition will get the developers back on the right track. IMO, the last ten months of development has been resources squandered for not much of anything. A little “sibling rivalry” may be just the thing ANet needs.

AcidicVision.5498:

Housing has always been on the docket for those that followed production for years pre-release. Our home districts were supposed to be evolving areas that showed our accomplishments, trophies, special NPCs and vendors. And we were supposed to be able to have guests into our home district to show off.

Seems like they are finally getting around to that stuff.

Sadly, I don’t think that is ever doing to happen. Even if housing is connected to the home district, I don’t ever expect them to deliver on that once much hyped feature.

Every month that passes with out them adding the Laurels for AP system they talked about makes it less and less likely it will ever happen. They hate the prospect of giving you new rewards with established, hoarded currency. Apparently the effort and time you spent in the past shouldn’t ever be rewarded in the future, even when they’ve said that they will reward you later for what you do in the meantime.

Sort of like the boss who hints at big holiday bonuses if everyone works hard, only to have a lot of hard work rewarded with a smaller than usual holiday bonus.

Bread.7516:

thus begins the pay2win train

I agree. The Gem Store has now crossed the line into “Evil” territory. Made even more evil by requiring the already despicable lotto, cash grab, money pit RNG boxes for a chance to “win”.

For the first time since launch I can see myself quitting the game entirely. Another millimeter down this slippery slope or a new MMO even half the game that GW2 is and it will be hard to stay.

I think my financial support for the game has very likely ended.

Sadly desperate move to try to get people to by more rip-off lotto chests. I have to wonder what people who bought Rich Dragon Coffers before they added these in must think?

IMO, gem store has officially crossed the line into “Evil” territory…

I am definitely noticing the impact of the change in WvW. People saying it doesn’t make much difference are just kidding themselves.

Well. I thank Izzy for taking the time, but I thought it was funny that most of the focus was on builds that have been around for a while and he’s just starting to experiment with new traits. He recognized that a criticism is that Eles have to rely heavily on Arcane and Water, after spending most of the feed talking about Arcane and Water.

In short, things really haven’t changed that much at all and rather than the new traits and changes introducing new tested and tweaked builds, they are just throwing some new stuff out there to see how it works.

I really was hoping this feed would be about showing how many new, viable builds the update has made possible, but it seems that even Izzy has no idea if this has really done anything to introduce new, viable builds. He mentioned one or two builds, not because he vetted them and knows they work with the updates, but because he “read about them on the forums”.

Sigh.

Becoming more and more clear that this last update was just a “baby step” for the game. A step in the right direction, but there is a lot more work to be done. I hope it will be focused more around introducing new viable builds and less about tossing things out there to see if the community can make anything of them.

Malcastus.6240:

Glyphs needed a stun breaker, but there weren’t any good candidates for it to begin with, so they picked one with a short CD. Imagine if it was the res glyph.

I am still certain that the utility skill could use a redo, making it defensive in nature (a la GoeH), for it to be used. The RNG factor isn’t helping much and glyphs doesn’t have any defensive utility skills, except the healing one.

GoEP is a horrible skill to stick a Stun Break on. You activate this skill for 30 seconds where you have a chance to proc an effect. In combat, if you are going to use this skill, you are going to spam it to keep the proc effect up as much as possible, not save it for the stun break.

In fact, the Res glyph would have been the logical choice, with the glyph recharging in 25 seconds if no players were revived as a result of the cast. Or, just the base 25 sec, with the recharge being longer if someone is revived. We know from the recent RtL nerf that they can indeed make recast time conditional.

Not only would this have given Glyphs a stun breaker, but the pairing of a short recharge “Oh kitten” effect, with the long recharge “Rarely used, group Oh Kitten” effect would have made the Res Glyph viable for more builds/situations.

They need to give a little more thought to things like this. When a better answer is staring them in the face and they can’t recognize it, then there is something not right with the process.

My staff build seems to be doing more damage in WvW, including against mobs there, so I don’t know what to tell you.

I won’t get into the details of the build tonight, but I just wanted to mention I started running a 0-20-0-30-20 cantrip staff build for WvW today and I’m really enjoying it and the tweaks that were made with the recent patch.

I think it’s a good start all around, but I think more work needs to be done on all the professions to increase the number of high end, viable builds. I see two or three builds now I like that I wouldn’t have touched before the changes, but it still feels like our choices are too limited.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the skin system is like this so ncsoft can profit from the gem store sales.

In games with much more flexible costume systems, I’ve found myself much more willing to buy skins. I also have purchased multiple copies of the same skin for alts, just to avoid the inconvenience of trading them around among characters.

You might be right that it’s their reason, but I think it’s a completely flawed reason.

This has always bugged me as well. IMO they just didn’t want to bother offering them with a variety of stats, so they just ensured you wouldn’t buy them for the stats. They should just be skins, but they want you to also buy Fine Transmutation Stones to use them.

Gibson.4036:

Pifil.5193:

Nice one! I like it a lot too, I think that the light and medium armours are almost like another set of Asuran racial armour and I plan on getting both.

Funny you should say that. I had some of the Asura cultural pieces because I was trying to get something like this look, but they weren’t great. For one thing, I’m not sure why feature items like cultural pieces only have two dye zones, which limited what I could do with them. Also, for everyone’s complaint that medium armor is all long-coats, most of the pieces don’t look like full length coats. They are shorter, or only have a flap on one side, or flap on both sides, but not in the back… strange variations on the long coat. The ones that do look like long coats are pretty bulky.

It’s nice to have cleaner, steam-punk engineer look over the more rugged, rogue (wild west/assassin/pirate) inspired stuff.

The Asuran skin is a lot better than the human one. I’d love to know which armors were made by which artists.

I noticed that the lighting changed after the patch late last night. My game has crashed twice since the patch. I think I crashed 3-4 times between beta and 1600 hours in live, so two crashes following a patch that messed with lighting has to make me wonder if the two aren’t related.

I’ve been playing since the first Beta Weekend Event. Currently something like 1600 hours logged since launch over two accounts. I think my game has crashed maybe four times over the last year plus while playing GW2.

Since the patch last night, I’ve crashed twice. One crashed Windows 8 x64 entirely, the latest just crashed to desktop. Sound stutters, screen freezes, then crash.

Beta testing another game today. No crash, so I don’t think it’s a sudden hardware issue. I think it’s related to last night’s patch. Hopefully the error log on the last crash will be helpful, but I wanted to post here so other players with crash issues will know it’s not just them.

CrossedHorse.4261:

@Fiontar

For every 100 people I see wanting female armour to show more skin, I see the same number of people saying female armour shows way too much skin and cleavage. It’s an impossible battle for Anet to win.

However, in the case of this particular set of armours, I would say that Steampunk themes often (not always) take cues from the Victorian era in history. Not necessarily a period famed for it’s revealing clothes (though, there were plenty of them if you actually study the period). So to me it’s no surprise that a Steampunk set of skins covers up the ladies a bit.

The one aspect I do object to slightly with your post, is that you seem to suggest that NOT revealing skin is in some way de-feminising? This may not be what you intended, but it does sort of come across that way. I would think there may be people who take issue with this.

Been around the genre forever and that’s not really my experience at all. The “puritans” tend to be a vocal minority, but I see a lot more people complain about plain/ugly armors than complain about “sexy” armors. I’d make a distinction between sexy and crass, or even sexy and a requirement for more skin. The new heavy armor doesn’t show skin, but it does accentuate the female form very nicely.

I take GW2 to task because there does seem to be a concerted effort to de-feminize and de-sensualize female armor designs. Cover cleavage, obscure curves, nix bare legs or arms, etc… There are some sexy/revealing armors in the game. However, they make up a tiny percentage of those available. There are some armors in the game were ANet has gone to absurd lengths to cover skin. There are a couple stunning light armor gowns that would tastefully show some leg if they hadn’t added bell bottom pants under the gown. Who the heck wears pants under a dress? There are skirts paired with the ugliest stockings possible, some that look like they have stuffing in them to make the legs look bulky.

I googled steam punk armor and fashions and almost universally the look features a bare cleavage or otherwise accentuates the chest. These “bibs” aren’t associated with steampunk fashion, they appear to just be a deliberate element meant to de-feminize a-net’s take on steampunk fashion. Almost like someone decided, “Ok, we want steam-punk inspired armor, but not with cleavage. Find any way possible to do steampunk with no cleavage. Oh and no curves either”.

With skirts and dresses, they could just offer shear stockings with out the wrinkles, texture and embroidery so that people who want a more sensual look can dye them to appear bare or look like nylons, while those who don’t want that can just dye them colors that make them look like tight pants or non-shear stockings. However, they go out of their way to make sure you can’t have that diversity.

I’m not asking for the game to start offering fashion in the vein of what can be found in TERA online, but armor that is feminine, sensual or shows more skin in a non-crass manner are much needed for this game and would likely sell a lot better than armors like the current new set.

What makes things worse is that many of the armors in the game avoid being feminine or sensual just by instead being ugly, which leaves a lot of players with more modest taste also feeling like their options are limited.

I spent an hour in the sPvP lobby trying to find a mix-n-mtch for the new medium armor that would work. I realized that the shoulders work with almost nothing, because the front embellishments float way to far forward.

I think the best replacement I found for the horrid bibbed coat is the T1 Human Cultural Armor. Actually works with the other elements of the new set.

The leg armor creates an interesting look with the Krytan Gem Store top, but the new shoulders don’t work at all and the other elements of the two sets don’t mix well.

There are some combos with the bulky medium armors that are ok, if you like the bulky medium armors, which I don’t. Considering I almost never see those looks on anyone in game, I’m guessing few people do like them.

Oh well…

I agree with the sentiment expressed by many. The Living Story has really just been smoke and mirrors attempting to make very little added content seem like it something more than that.

I remember, before launch, one of the devs talking about how efficiently they could add new Dynamic Events to the game. How a single developer could knock out a simple DE in an day, with half the day being for the initial design and the other half tweaking through iteration.

I also remember the post launch interview with Colin, where he said that adding new DEs across the game world, in order to keep every zone feeling fresh and alive, would be a primary focus of their ongoing, free development strategy. He even predicted that by the end of the first year, we could see the number of DEs in the world double or triple!

Well, I guess he got some flack from fans on the failure to deliver in any noticeable way on Dynamic Events. So, the latest is “Oh, DEs, they are really hard to develop. They take a lot longer to develop than normal MMO content”.

Really?

How did they go from being able to develop at least 300 DEs per year pre-launch, boasting about possibly adding a number more first year, some where in the neighborhood of 1,500, to “oh, that content is too hard to make”?

Not to mention that during the five years of development they weren’t just adding DEs,(and story content), to the game. They were creating this massive game from scratch. How have they gone from being so amazingly productive to what they have since become?

For every year of development, based on the amount of play I’ve gotten from the game so far, they managed to produce over 300 hours worth of playability. I think we can agree that with the live updates over the last 10 months, they’ve added just a tiny fraction to that.

Because of the nature of the game, the world and the content, it wouldn’t take an entire game’s worth of new content to extend game play another year. It would just require enough new content to keep the game world feeling fresh and alive. They had the right idea when they announced that they hoped to double or triple the amount of new DEs across the game world. Instead, we get vapid Living Story events and excuses as to why DEs are suddenly “too hard”.

These aren’t the only things contributing to active “playership” loss. The crass disrespect towards paying customers via the long odds RNG chests hasn’t helped. The lack of quality, in game, armor and weapon skins for a game that is supposed to rely on aesthetic rewards as a major carrot hasn’t helped. Retuning the first dungeon from something that was never really a suitable introductory experience into a complete meat grinder for players dipping their toe in dungeons hasn’t helped. Guild Content that was designed to destroy the viability of small guilds also hasn’t helped. (My small guild left the game after the one two punch of the AC re-tune and the Guild Content that felt unobtainable).

The game that Arenanet created during those five years of development is absolutely amazing. I’m still playing almost every day, not because of “content” floated since launch, but because of content the game shipped with.

Post launch Arenanet seems to bear little resemblance to the studio that created this game and I’m still trying to understand why!

I had thought maybe the lack of productivity and design ability was due to most of the company working on the first expansion. However, Colin then told us they hadn’t even begun any work on an expansion. If that was less than truthful, then that statement also has contributed to the decline of the game. If it is truthful and the entire studio has been working in teams on Living Story and other stuff added since launch, then the implosion of leadership and productivity are at the core of the problem.

I really think it’s way past time for a higher up at ANet to provide a mea culpa, explain what went wrong and lay out plans on how they intend to get things back on track again.

As a very long term devotee of the MMO genre, it’s beyond painful to see the first MMO to really start living up to the potential for the genre flounder with the transition to post launch development cycles. Every day I play I keep wondering how a studio that produced this incredible game could so completely lose direction post-launch. Once again, I just don’t get it.

Well, I did buy the Heavy Armor on one account and am totally happy. (I hide the helm. It may go with the set, but I personally don’t like it).

I also bought the Light armor, for the helm and shoulders, for the second account. Getting a better look at the other parts, I just don’t see using any of them in a mix-n-match. Good thing I really like the helm and shoulders. However, if this set had been a lot better, I would have bought at least one more, possibly two.

The medium armor. The way medium armor works, the chest piece is key. The cut of the coat is nice, but it is 100% ruined by the bib. A bib? Really? I know it has another name, but the forum will censor it, so I’ll just call it an ugly, outfit destroying bib.

If I can find the item codes some where, I might try to preview the individual pieces to see if there is any mix-n-match potential, but if there had been no bib on this set, I would have bought two. If these are limited run, I might have bought three.

So, if the light and medium sets had been better, I would have bought 5 to 7 skins total. Given the poor job on those two skins, I’ve bought two skins total and may, possibly, buy one more.

Thanks again for at least trying. I really appreciate that you are selling new armor skins on the gem store. I would have expected at least 4-5 sets for each armor class by now, but at least it’s a start. Please, though, next time, better skins, ok? Also, please drop the puritanical, anti-feminine sensibilities and get some tasteful/functional/sexy armors into the mix?

We have enough “blah” female armors to cover the next four years…

Morrigan.2809:

Fiontar.4695:

Morrigan.2809:

but I love the boots O-O
I think the armour sets have a lot of potential if you mix and match and I think dyes will do a lot for them.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
At least it will bring some varied aesthetics to the game since people are quite creative- just see the huge mix and match armour thread.

I am also really glad that they will be for direct sale- now my hope is that you can use various elements from one set on different characters, faint hope but still…

I love to mix and match. Unfortunately the chest pieces for medium and light are, imo, just bad. Sadly, for medium, the chest piece always dictates the degree to which any look will be “coat like”. The shorter coat here is nice, but the rest of the piece is just horrible. It really does look like any woman wearing this coat must don a cushion strapped across their cleavage, with a well starched overlay under the coat from waist to neck to ensure that there is no expression of femininity.

So many have been hoping for more medium chest pieces that are either very short coats, or not coats at all. Very sad to see this short coat ruined. Not much else worth adding to a mix-n-match, imo, which is sad.

BTW, we already have boots similar to these in game. Over-sized, bulky and appearing to be so inflexible that one would probably have no range of motion for the ankle or the foot. Try walking around in fully clamped ski-boots all day and see how well that works out for comfort and mobility. These look more like torture devices to me than viable footwear!

But I particularly like the medium coat too..
Seriously though- I am trying to figure out from your post what kind of armour it is that you would like to see and consider feminine- I would love it if you can give me an example of what you like.
I am a woman and I play female characters- I consider all of them attractive as well as sexy and they wear a wide range of cover from evening gown revealing to from fitting full cover and some in between.

For medium armour that is not a coat or anything bizarre there is always human T1

For me it all depends on how I see my characters e.g I find the current store skins hideous on all of them while I rocked the lvl 9 Beetletun med trench coat on my Engi until I was lvl 60.

As for foot torture I am wearing a pair of Doc Martins atm

As to what kind of armor I’d like to see, this is closer to what I would like to see for Light Armor and the medium armor concept art I’d love to see on the gem store, respectively:

Dagraan.2854:

eles under water can apply burning thats right burning under water, 2 blinds, 2 drops and 1 float a stun, crazy amount of bleeds a pull to skill and not to mention underwater, water attunment is insanely OP almost having mesmer status under water on just 1 attunment.

and not to mention a warp
eles are arguably one of the best classes under water, now think how many classes would kill to have all that on 1 weapon? not even counting utilities

What are you talking about? Elementalists have horrendous damage under water. I have two accounts, Elementalist is the main on one and Guardian the main on the other. When I do the underwater kills daily with these two characters, the degree to which Elementalist is kitten for underwater DPS becomes obvious. The Guardian can complete the same task in the same locale in close to a third the time.

Often, when fighting regenerating skale and other foes underwater, my Elementalist can’t even overcome the regen!

This is the way it has been since launch, with no improvement.

My theory is that someone thought it would make sense to debuff fire and buff water due to the watery environment. However, since Water does a lot less damage than fire, debuffing fire and buffing water by similar percentages vs. land damage did not result in proper DPS output.

Like most Elementalists, I do everything possible to avoid underwater environments with my Ele, which is a shame because I generally like the underwater play.

Sir Morgan Malory.2069:

Buffs to Elems appear impressive. But most buffs Staff skills, which was only usable in a few situations. D/D elems didn’t get anything and that is >80% of the community. Buffs to specter and focus were much needed too.

That’s the point of the re-balance patch, even if the patch isn’t completely successful. The point was to increase build diversity while also making professions that have been deemed under-powered more viable.

For elementalist, I think they did a pretty good job, but I hope/expect more changes for balance and build diversity for all professions moving forward.

I really like the Heavy armor skin on female characters. Superb.

For me, the Medium and Light armors are absolutely ruined by the de-feminizing kitteney. The ugly boots don’t help matters either.

I really like the apparently Chandra Nalaar, (Magic the Gathering Planewalker), inspired helm and might buy the light armor just for the helm. Too bad they didn’t borrow more of Chandra’s look for the rest of the skin.

Seriously, though, who at ANet thought adding a “kitteny”/bib to the light and medium female armors would be a good idea if the goal was to make the armors attractive enough to drive sales?

I would buy more than one set of each if they offered a variant with flattering bosom, rather than de-feminizing “kitteny”/ bib. Might not be a bad expenditure of resources to provide such variants.

BTW, pretty silly that the name for a piece of clothing is censored by the forum. Kitteny equals something that starts with a D and rhymes with tricky. Maybe I should just call it a bib, because that really captures how silly they look.

1.
a. A woman’s blouse front worn under a suit jacket or low-necked garment.
b. A man’s detachable shirt front.
c. A collar for a shirt.
d. A child’s bib or pinafore.

I have been begging for armor skins on the gem store and want to support future direct skin sales, but I agree with others, the artist(s) who made these skins have made it extremely difficult to buy them.

I will likely buy the heavy set, but the other two are so hideous on human females I just don’t think I can buy them. Especially since both could have been nice, but were ruined by the front of each chest piece. It’s almost like someone made a very deliberate effort to ensure these would be considered ugly by as many people as possible.

Ursan.7846:

I’m not sure whether posters here are actually interested in serious discussion, seeing as people are tossing generalities after generalities without explaining/providing evidence for anything.

Apparently, the only economy they care about is the Legendary, Precursor and related markets. Pretty much the entire rest of the economy has deflated completely, with vendor prices providing the only floor.

Lodestone Market:
Charged: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24305
Destroyer: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24325

Quite stable since January, with a slightly decreasing overall trend.

Superior Runes:
Divinity: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24732
Scholar: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24836

Quite stable since Jan/Feb, Scholar is pretty much stable since Feb, Divinity has slowly increased.

Exotic armor market:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/155
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/2128

Incredibly stable since March.

Named Exotic Weapons:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/31053
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/31077

Remarkably stable!

This “the entire rest of the economy has deflated completely” effect you speak of, I do not see at all.

I thought Anet was supposed to be taking the in game economy seriously and managing it to ensure that it remained healthy and vibrant? At this point, it’s hard to imagine it being run more poorly, short of this economy’s polar opposite, which would be run away inflation.
GW2 economy is in the equivalent of a “Great Depression”, with the exception that Luxury Goods have been placed in an island of protection so that the wealthy can have things to haggle over and profit from while the rest of us languish in the pig sty.

From every indication, there is a healthy amount of trade that goes on. Millions (perhaps billions?) of items are moved daily. A majority of the game’s items are created, traded at above in-game vendor prices, and consumed. Please describe what you mean as “languish in pig sty,” because there’s a huge amount of activity. And isn’t that the biggest indicator of a vibrant and healthy economy?

The majority of items are sold at above vendor prices? The majority of items created in the world are consumed? I think you are way off on both counts.

Drop rates and availability/scarcity of items in the game could have been and should have been tweaked on an ongoing basis to create a many tiered economy. The tools are there. The economy is essentially global, so tweaks can be made with out concerns that the results of those tweaks will have disproportionate effects on some servers and not others.

We’ve historically seen a few major gluts on the AH addressed with temporary Mystic Forge recipes. This points to a couple problems though. First off, that those gluts were allowed to occur shows lack of inattention to the economy and, second, there have been many items since those corrective actions that have developed even worse gluts that haven’t been addressed at all.

I stand by my assertion that GW2 has one of the worst economies I have ever seen in an MMO. That they supposedly have people tasked with running the economy just makes the shortcomings even more shameful.

I’ll concede that the priority is probably gem sales, rather than what’s best for players, which may account for some of the issues, but I’m not sure that the current economy is even very conducive for gem sales.

Apparently, the only economy they care about is the Legendary, Precursor and related markets. Pretty much the entire rest of the economy has deflated completely, with vendor prices providing the only floor.

I thought Anet was supposed to be taking the in game economy seriously and managing it to ensure that it remained healthy and vibrant? At this point, it’s hard to imagine it being run more poorly, short of this economy’s polar opposite, which would be run away inflation.

GW2 economy is in the equivalent of a “Great Depression”, with the exception that Luxury Goods have been placed in an island of protection so that the wealthy can have things to haggle over and profit from while the rest of us languish in the pig sty.

Morrigan.2809:

but I love the boots O-O
I think the armour sets have a lot of potential if you mix and match and I think dyes will do a lot for them.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
At least it will bring some varied aesthetics to the game since people are quite creative- just see the huge mix and match armour thread.

I am also really glad that they will be for direct sale- now my hope is that you can use various elements from one set on different characters, faint hope but still…

I love to mix and match. Unfortunately the chest pieces for medium and light are, imo, just bad. Sadly, for medium, the chest piece always dictates the degree to which any look will be “coat like”. The shorter coat here is nice, but the rest of the piece is just horrible. It really does look like any woman wearing this coat must don a cushion strapped across their cleavage, with a well starched overlay under the coat from waist to neck to ensure that there is no expression of femininity.

So many have been hoping for more medium chest pieces that are either very short coats, or not coats at all. Very sad to see this short coat ruined. Not much else worth adding to a mix-n-match, imo, which is sad.

BTW, we already have boots similar to these in game. Over-sized, bulky and appearing to be so inflexible that one would probably have no range of motion for the ankle or the foot. Try walking around in fully clamped ski-boots all day and see how well that works out for comfort and mobility. These look more like torture devices to me than viable footwear!

First, thank you Arenanet for making Gem store armors, the first new sets since launch, for direct sale. I can’t say thank you enough and pray that there are many more to come.

However. I can’t let that get in the way of offering an honest critique of the armors in question.

I can see why many find them ugly. I personally like most of the Heavy set for human/norn/sylvari females. The boots are ugly, but the boots are ugly on all three sets, so the disappointment is universal for the foot ware.

IMO, the light and medium sets had potential, but were ruined by elements so ugly that it’s hard to understand what would motivate an artist to design them that way.

Most female armors in the game that have been “ruined” by hideous elements seem to have been designed that way in support of prudish/puritanical/anti-feminine design aesthetics. The near obsession with making sure that as little skin as possible below the neck should lay bare, or that the female form be barely discernible, is getting old and is ruining the aesthetics of the game.

Do we really need metal chest plates that look like electroplated washboards on Light Armor? Or an ugly bib, apparently fastened over some sort of broad cushion and held in place by a half tied bow tie for the female medium armor? Really? I’m actually expecting burkas to be the next volley in the war against the feminine. (It’s almost always patriarchal societies looking to subjugate women that impose the more de-feminizing modes of dress upon women as a means of controlling that which they fear).

The Frankenstein’s Monster inspired boots just cement the impression.

Please, enough already. 85%+ of the armor skins in the game could satisfy the most conservative and restrictive tastes in feminine fashion. I’m not asking for skins as risque as the sometimes over the top armors from TERA Online, but the lengths to which most armor skins go to avoid anything less than 90% coverage is absurd.

I know there are, thank goodness, some clear exceptions to the rule in the game, but they are few and far between.

Armor skins don’t have to show a lot of skin to be attractive, but too many armors, these included, seem to be rendered ugly due to a deliberate strategy of ensuring they aren’t the least bit “sexy” or feminine, at any cost.

I have been dying to buy new armor skins and have been prepared to spend money outfitting numerous characters to reward the offering of attractive armor designs for sale on the gem store. These armors are not them and, with the expectation of maybe one purchase of the Heavy armor set, I can not spend money to reward you for offering ugly light and medium armor sets clearly designed to be as unflattering and de-feminizing as possible.

Can we end the aesthetic war on femininity and, gasp, sensuality in armor design? Please?

BTW, all three armor designs could have been saved. It’s not like the work on them is entirely horrible. You can see the potential. Well, the boots are pretty horrible work, but most of the rest could have been rendered attractive sans obsessive fear of femininity.

IMO, a lot of nice skins going completely to waste because someone decided to make the tickets RNG only.

I hope everyone is getting tired of this, so we can say goodbye to RNG chests as the primary method of getting skins. The only thing worse than the RNG element is the actual odds. They were incredibly stingy when they didn’t really need to be. I know I would have spent a lot more time, effort gems and gold going after the numerous skins I would have liked to have for my characters in the odds had been 10 times better. With the odds as they are, just not worth the stress, bother, gold or cash.

They could have made the premium coffers have 1 in 20 odds and the normal coffers 1 in 200, made more money, taken more gold out of the economy and made a heck of a lot more people happy.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Fiontar.4695:

Seems like a very simple thing for ANet to provide and make a lot of people happy. If they don’t, it’s really out of spite more than anything else.

I’ve stated this before and I totally agree the timing was poorly planned. However, I’m fairly certain things are not as simple as point, click, here you go more fireworks and hats. These types of events were probably programed into the game well before the event. I really doubt they are doing it out of spite. Most people seem like they don’t care if they actually see the fireworks, they just want the hats. I wish they would just mail the hats to everyone that didn’t get them, seriously. That’s probably not that simple to do either.

Sorry. Who am I to say spite. It might be spite, but I shouldn’t have said that.

I think it’s a bit easier to change a few variables and have an encore than you think, though. Yeah, the band aid approach would probably be to just mail them to everyone.

For me, personally, they all have elements I like and might mix and match, but the only one I would consider buying to wear as a set is the heavy set. For the medium, the white collared shirt and semi-bow tie ruin the chest armor. The boots for the medium and light are poor and clunky. The gauntlets are all nice. The shoulder armors are all decent. The light helm is cool, the other two, not so much. The light armor skirt is ugly and yet another skirt that decides we can’t see bare legs. The light armor top doesn’t fit light armor at all, looks more like medium or heavy armor.

If sold on the TP, once again, a step in the right direction. I might buy one of each, Heavy as a set and the other two to “part out”. There are a lot of armors in the game uglier than these, but the medium and light are still not on par with my hopes/expectations.

PolarisNova.3867:

My only complaint concerning the new armor skins, is that there is only one per armor-group. I would have liked to see more armor skins in the gem store……more variety. I would likely buy them all.

Come on ANet stop being stingy with new armor skins.

I pray these will be direct sale, rather than needing an RNG box token to purchase one. I agree, we need a lot more variety of skins in the story. I really expected we would have at least five skins for each armor class by now available via the gemstore and at least as many skins for each weapon. This is a good start, assuming they are for direct sale, but we need a ton more!

Closing in on one year and look at all that new, permanent world content?!?!? Ummm…yeah… That looks to be a year well spent…

On the plus side, the content the game shipped with has provided even more game time than I optimistically imagined prior to launch. The downside is that the promise to double or triple the number of DEs in the game world never materialized.

They have made improvements to PvP and WvW, I don’t want to downplay that. However progress on story and world PvE expansion have been pretty much non-existent.

Warrior and Thief are clearly the favored professions. Extreme survivability, excellent mobility and extreme damage.

None of the other professions have advantages that make their weaknesses/strengths balanced vs. Warrior and Thief.

For some professions, too much weight is given to ranged capabilities as a counterbalance to lower dps/survivability. Same goes for AoE damage. AoE skills are too often balanced by horrible single target dps.

DPS-Range-AoE-Survivability-Mobility-Utility. Those seem to be the six attributes GW2 professions/builds are balanced around, but the balance between them is skewed and some professions are overloaded with the attributes most overpowered in the game, while others are stuck with underpowered combinations.

We were once told that profession choice was more about how you did something and style, rather than a question of capability. Presumably any profession was to have builds that were viable for any role. Well, it hasn’t worked out that way, has it?

Bazookajoe.5624:

1. ) Dungeons are boring, lack of “exciting” and “meaningful” loot.
2.) Bosses are tiny and often overshadowed by larger scale characters.
3.) Waaaaay too many 1 shot mechanics. Takes away from interesting gameplay.
4.) Zero personal progression and a severe lack of “Reward”.
5.) Once you hit the gear wall, and have all exotics……. thats it…. lame.
6.) No large scale organized PVE, dare I say raids…… Inc Flame.
7.) Sorry excuse for world bosses with zero exciting loot.
8.) skins are only sooo exciting for soooo long….. /sadface.

1.) I agree on the loot. Loot in the game is boring. It’s not just because of the way stats are distributed. The dungeon skins that do exist are mostly pretty bad and boring. There are few exceptions. ANet also failed to deliver on variety of skins. Prior to launch, they talked about having at least two skins per armor class per dungeon. They also talked about story mode providing a token for a cool weapon skins, with each dungeon offering a skin for each and every weapon.

Cosmetics in lieu of stats can work, if the skins are sufficiently desirable and vafriety is offered. ANet has completely dropped the ball on this.

2. Agreed. Most bosses are underwhelming. Mobs are very well done in the game in general, but they completely failed on producing “big kitten monsters”. We have a few huge, immobile world bosses, but very few BAMs.

3. Agreed. Someone seems to think annoying and overpowered = challenging and fun. Seems like poor design to me.

4. & 5. I don’t completely agree with this. I’ve played over 1600 hours and continue to find play worth while with out gear inflation. It might be nice if we could have some expensive, balanced but viscerally very cool skills to unlock once we hit 80 and start accumulating excess skill points. I also wish there were a lot more cool skins about a quarter less difficult to obtain than legendaries. Alternative rewards can work, ANet just hasn’t done much to make the concept work.

6. I personally loath raids. I’m fine with offering options that I don’t personally care for, but I’m wary because other MMOs with Raids tend to make raids the focus of ongoing development, at the cost of the other 90% who don’t like raids. Now, if they could pull off what Wildstar is promising, dungeons that scale from solo all the way up to raid size, then I’d be fine with that.

7. Touched on above. The game needs exciting BAMs. The game needs more exciting rewards, but that doesn’t have to mean stat inflation.

8. I’d be much more excited about skins if they worked much differently. Too many skins are less than stellar. Too many skins are too rare to be something you actually work towards. Random luck does not equal rewarding effort. Once a skin is applied it’s character bound. I’d prefer more flexibility. Too few skins in general.

I’d like to see the entire skin system revamped and have them used more as rewards you work towards and collect.

I do think they should expand the choices each day, but making all the choices available everyday would be to unwieldy.

It’s not about making dailies super easy, it’s about providing enough choices that players can do their dailies through ordinary play, rather than having to adjust you play plans to include a region or type of content you didn’t want to play that day.