Guild Wars 2

RaynStargaze.6510:

And forcing people to click ready?
I dont want to wait forever to start the game – at least if theres a timer on it people wont go buy their groceries while waiting for q pop.

they should use World of Warcraft LFG system for PvE.
1 – pop up to tell that “5 players are ready – go? Y/N”
2 – people confirm they are still available within 30s (ppl can’t see group comp)
3 – If all say yes, 5 players ported in the map, match starts within 1m,
4 – if not, find the missing persons for group and ask Q2 again

jportell.2197:

Wow no. Just no. Mesmers are meant to confuse the person behind the keyboard and even that doesn’t last long

Yep, I think that pretty much summarises the main point.

Finding the real mesmer isn’t technically hard and everyone can do it after a while (with variable success depending on circumstances)…
But the whole point is that this 1s+ that was wasted finding the real mesmer and targetting them works in their favour as it puts them closer to their next skills cooldown (and is desirable as well, as the class is balanced around this).

Could be just me but it still takes me about 1 or 2 seconds to find who is the real mesmer, especially when they just pop 3 clones at once in a fight involving several people…
Still provides enough time for the mesmer to escape/get closer to their next cooldown.

With what you say I’d never waste some seconds here and there, and that would be too powerful.

So to solve your problem, here is my solution: add several types of target symbols.
From there, once you have figured out who the real mesmer is, put a cross on them and done – the UI doesn’t go in your way again.
Even that would be a bit dangerous as if I lose sight of the mesmer, then they should have a chance to be “lost amidst their clones” again for a second or two.

Frankly, I like the mesmer as it is… It is one of the rare classes I have ever seen in any game that actually confuses the player, as a person, not just add some boring debuff to the character on screen. Brilliant idea.

Astralporing.1957:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Charak.9761:

I also don’t like that Blackgate beat it because that just makes everyone go “Well, Blackgate beat it, it’s doable” and this event won’t get the rework it deserves.

That’s kind of a strange thing to say given that they did it, with massive teamwork, on the very first day it came out. While I understand it’s frustrating, I think people are overstating the difficulty.

Quite the opposite. This required an amount of effort that is only possible when the event is hot. It’s quite unlikely that several hours of organizing people can be duplicated more than few times. Especially since the reward doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Or maybe only people who actually care about completing the event will be coming, and it will get easier and easier to organise.

Only time will tell.
I’m sure the “crowd” will learn eventually, though. The event is just too recent right now, some people (including me) barely had time to play since the update and most people can actually listen to instructions, follow what the group does, etc.

magic fly.2041:

Flamfloz.6732:

This topic is so 2012.

Does that mean that it isn’t relevant?
Not so.
It is still as relevant now as it was then.

What I meant is that I thought that, in 2013, after the game has been out for a year, everyone playing the game understood the “why of the downed state”, and why the game would be probably terrible without it.

Changed slightly, maybe. Removed, no.

This topic is so 2012.

I don’t think #1 is a technically realistic or interesting suggestion at all…
I think it’s the role of the shoutcaster to choose (for the viewer, especially if the viewer is inexperienced) where and what to look at at a particular point in time. This is why being a shoutcaster requires knowledge of the game, so that they can interpret the events for you.
Sometimes they will want to show you a bird eye view of the action (more strategic/team/point based), sometimes they will want to show you a close up view of the action, from the point of view of 1 character (more action/skill/reflex oriented).
I think both views have their “interesting” moments and following only one player would be missing half the game.
Also, from what I generally see, shoutcasters oscillate between the macro (map) and micro (players) pretty well, at a good pace.

As for suggestion number 4, different sizes of capture points (not just “graveyards”) has its pros too.
You can’t really play a “hammer guardian” on graveyard as efficiently as you can on Kyhlo clocktower – because of the size of the graveyard. This provides for some interesting micro play and specific strategies based on positioning, pushing the opponent off point (which is on a side note different from Skyhammer, where pushing opponents off points is an “iWin” button not just a way of saving 3-4 precious seconds).
Which brings me to the next point: your “planks” example is already in game, it’s called Kyhlo clocktower.

Suggestion number 3: clutch play.
The elite skills should be more of that, perhaps. Although most of them are actually more risk-free “panic buttons” aimed at saving your skin rather than “turning points” and “risky manoeuvers”. I think the game could be improved this way, perhaps.
Otherwise, they have implemented clutch play in the maps environments if you haven’t taken notice. The best example of which is the lord in the “Foefire”: risky, but can pay and change the outcome.
Other examples of this are boring though: cannon in Capricorn (yawn, especially considering how hard it is to pull it off – not rewarding at all), skyhammer cannon (a bit too op perhaps, maybe should have limited ammunition), trebs in Kyhlo (OK, but isn’t a “turning point” – perhaps it should give points on repair so that enemy team think twice about breaking it?), the creatures, the orb.
I think they should change those “map features” to make them more “make or break”. They should come at a high cost with high rewards (similarly to the lord).
At the moment, they feel more like sprinkling a few extra points on top of what you have thanks to the capture points (creatures, orbs, etc.).
Then again, on a tight game, it is more than enough points.

cuge.5398:

If we choose to add it back through a stat buff, it should be a 20% more stats distributed to the whole team, so… 5% bonus stats to the 4 remaining members.

On a common berserker build its around
600-700 more HP
5% more crit chance
5% more crit dmg
5% more attack
45-60 more armor

thats definitely something that could be implemented to help a bit with leavers/dcs.

Stat buff isn’t a particularly good idea – it is balanced in fights involving 4v5 (125%x4 vs 100%x5) but the game also revolves around 1v1 on some points, and the losing players might start winning all their 1v1 because of the individual stat buff (125% vs 100%).

Buffing the rate at which points accumulate probably changes the strategies.

Simplest (most boring) alternative is to force one player of the team of 5 in a waiting zone (not spectator mode!), with maybe a rotation on death, and for the game to try to bring another player ASAP so that the game can continue 5v5.

evilapprentice.6379:

Destiny.6738:

Rank has never meant anything. We have a lot of HJ heroes out there on the same skill level as a rank 20.

For sure, this exploit needs a fix, but the community and dev’s should focus on other things right now.

As someone else already pointed out, this has the possibility to hinder any plans Anet has to make glory a more worthwhile currency.

Surely, ANet has some plan that will allow players to spend the massive amount of glory they’ve been accumulating. Let’s pretend a moment that this plan eventually turns into a Glory to Gold or Glory to Gems conversion – now we’ve got a bunch of players who are going to have a detrimental effect on the games economy (and ANets real money cash flow) thanks to this cheating.

Glory to gold likely isn’t going to happen, but that was just an example – people farming glory by cheating are just going to weaken any attempts Anet makes at making glory actually useful for something.

Are you sure about that? You’re right, that’s still a maybe. But I didn’t invent it… see below.

Off to farm some more.

Same response I gave in the other thread:

I hope you guys are aware that Anet is planing to make Honor points a currency that could be (for example) swapped for gold?
There are no definite plans as of yet, of course, but this is definitely something they are doing and if you didn’t get the memo, please cf. the last state of the game.
Alright, I’m off to grind as much Honor as possible before the big change happens.

(rank is meaningless though)

Thedenofsin.7340:

JonathanSharp.7094:

You can argue it’s different all you want to. But as the people actually DOING the work, you’re wrong. Nice theory crafting though!

We have 3 major factors impacting all work we do for balance: time, scope (the amount of balance work we have to do), and resources (in this case, available work hours). All 3 of these pull from a finite pool of resources, and all 3 have direct causal relationships. If you increase scope (do more splitting of skills), then you can increase scope. Period. This means you’re now putting more stress on the other 2 pieces of this puzzle: time and resources. You’ve made more work. So until we extend the normal day to 26 or 27 hours, or put more days in the year (which isn’t going to happen with the earth’s current distance from the sun and rotation) it’s simply not going to happen, or it’s going to degrade the quality of work you DO get out of your hours.

And it’s more work to balance the game types differently. It still takes time to implement those changes. It doesn’t save time just by not worrying about how the changes will impact the various game types.

How about: Hire more people.

If you guys really sold 3.5 million copies, you guys must have at least 10% of the sales in cash reserves remaining. That should be enough to hire 10-15 more developers for at least another year.

I don’t think he is HR! =) I think you should raise a formal complaint to the relevant authorities.

Anyway, whoever has a job understand what his post is about.

Knote.2904:

Not like there’s really any rewards for it, so let em grind their pixels.

Harbinger.8637:

Good to hear you are doing something about it. Overall it doesn’t really matter. If people want to waste their time grinding meaningless and a skill less rank. Go for it lol.

I hope you guys are aware that Anet is planing to make Honor points a currency that could be (for example) swapped for gold?

There are no definite plans as of yet, of course, but this is definitely something they are doing and if you didn’t get the memo, please cf. the last state of the game.

Alright, I’m off to grind as much Honor as possible before the big change happens.

natsos.3692:

You rejected deathmatch mode from the game launch with lame excuses and now we see that more than half of the Competitive community(WvW+PvP) craves it.

On top of that you don’t want to build a 5×5 room with a few pillars in the middle again, with bad excuses, and you want to add “Secondary mechanics to make it more intresting” while nobody asked for it.

Personally, I don’t want deathmatch.
Also I do not want classes to be “purely” balanced in 1 v 1 (but roughly equivalent in power/usefulness). Might as well copy and paste all classes if that’s what you want.

The games that did this before generally ended up with washed out classes.

While it might be a case of chicken and egg for PvP, I still think the first egg should be laid by ANet personally and then people would gladly follow ANet like chickens.

Ultimately, it is up to them to take the game in the direction they want – and from what I have seen in the last SotG, they have a few good ideas in the pipeline so I’m “cautiously confident” (and of course, I’m sure they receive suggestions and listen to them).
All in all, still having fun with the game though (in the various game modes).

Tyler Bearce.3427:

That’s a possibility, though this bug has proved tricky to fix, as it seems to only occur on the live servers.

Maybe we can transport people further in the room so that they cannot interact with the door anymore once inside?

Although it depends if the issue is that the server receives two interactions notifications on the same object “skyhammer door” from the client from people spamming to enter the room (F F F F F!!!) and one is registered as “outside” then the other one “inside” because of server delays…
In this case make two objects skyhammer “door 1” and “door 2”, entry only and exit only… Oh! whatever. Not my business anyway!!!

I’m always happy to see my teammates helping me, except when we end up fighting the poor enemy at 5 vs 1…
Then I know something isn’t quite right and I expect the map to switch colors within the next few seconds.

Don’t mind at all assistance from 1-2 roamers though, I thought it was part of their role to come where they are needed?
Get that kill quickly, move on and let one person down the poor enemy. Makes people available to go elsewhere.

Julius.1094:

AI clutter/gameplay too easy
1- Polish tab targeting so it prioritizes players, tabbing through all players until targeting minions (would treat mesmer clones as players, but not phantasms).

2- Make spirits 50% smaller (except spirit of nature), necro minions 50% smaller, turrets and flesh golem 30% smaller. These simple changes would make them less obtrusive to vision with no impact on their function.

That’s great until you want to target minions/turrets specifically.

1 – “About Tab target”: A “fairer” solution would be a default “Tab target” to players/clones and a CTRL or ALT modifier to Tab to target only pets.
I don’t care of pets at all, except when I do. And then I want to be able to select them as quickly.

2 – “About Spirits 50% smaller”: if they normalise the size of all characters, it shouldn’t be as much of a problem (or maybe make them 15-20% smaller, but not too small).
If I want to select them, I should still be able to click on them.
Instead though, I think they should put the names of players/clones in “Bright red/blue” (current color) and the pets/minions/phantasms in “Dark red/blue” (previous pvp team colors).
This way you can still have all the names but ignore the darker colors most of the time (unless you specifically want to look at them). Would probably help PvP shout casters too (maybe?).

This way you would know roughly where to strike (the “brighter” color) if you’re in close combat, and you could still target the pets should you want to.

Also, not too sure about the endurance regeneration rate. While some classes can indeed dodge roll slightly too much, for others the current amount of dodge is just fine. Instead focus specifically on those dodge rollers as others have said.

It’s lucky forums users aren’t held accountable of the idiotic things they sometimes write as much as they hold Anet accountable.

Harbinger.8637:

Flamfloz.6732:

Useless minor traits line for Guardian: Valor line.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Valor

The three traits are more or less useless:
- Virtue of Courage is recharged when you rally : a “downed” trait. Nuff’ said.
- Gain might when you block attacks: you really don’t have that many blocks as a guardian.
- Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%: so you basically gain a random chance to block a useful attack but a more likely chance to block an auto attack. CD 90s.

The minors on this trait line are so bad… And they have a “mediocre” synergy with each other and with the major traits on the line as well.

I fail to see how gaining Aegis after you rally is a bad thing. Also if you’re traited with Indomitable Courage or Shielded Mind this is extremely useful.

Also Guardians have a plethora of blocks. Shelter, the many ways of applying Aegis, Shield of Wrath, and Protector’s Strike. You can get double digit might stacks from Shelter alone.

Valorous Defense synergies well with Might of the Protector, Wrathful Spirit, Shattered Aegis, Unscathed Contender, and Pure of Heart.

For the most part Guards have some of the best minor traits. Only one I find underwhelming is Zealot’s Speed. I mean it’s called speed, so you think you would drop the symbol of swiftness not wrath.

Well having Aegis is never a bad thing as such, but in truth there is still a good chance that you are going to block an auto-attack with it so it feels a bit underwhelming (especially if you have been downed by a group of players – which is likely).

As for the rest, it is true that guardian CAN get a plethora of blocks if they choose to (but don’t have them necessarily), and when you are going for a DPS/meditation/healing signet build then this entire set of minor traits in the Valor line becomes mostly useless – but it is true these traits can be useful if you are going bunker and look for the traits that synergize with it.

Xom.9264:

@Darnis, you keep ducking and refusing deathmatch format because you know you are not good at the game you play gimmicks only useful in conquest mode.

How does deathmatch promote build diversity?
I would imagine it’s all about DPS because the winning objective is: killing the opponent (death + match).
Are people actually playing anything else than thiefs in this game mode?

Useless minor traits line for Guardian: Valor line.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Valor

The three traits are more or less useless:
- Virtue of Courage is recharged when you rally : a “downed” trait. Nuff’ said.
- Gain might when you block attacks: you really don’t have that many blocks as a guardian.
- Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%: so you basically gain a random chance to block a useful attack but a more likely chance to block an auto attack. CD 90s.

The minors on this trait line are so bad… And they have a “mediocre” synergy with each other and with the major traits on the line as well.

With double meditation build (with JI) using sword/focus and scepter/shield you can chase people efficiently… well at least kill them after a while.

Just run after them with your tennis racket (scepter) and use 3 (immobilize) switch to sword and hit them from close, then use sword 2 to catch up when the immo run out, switch to scepter again and play tennis again. Rinse and repeat.
Top up with some JI when they take too much distance.

It’s a bit boring though and if you don’t deal enough damage it can last for quite a while.

MightyMe.1356:

So pay attention guys here it is: “Every second that the thief is abusing Stealth, is a second he will not attack or capture nodes.
In other words, he’s not helping his team AT ALL, while occupying  a Player slot in their team”.
In PVP, a stealthed thief is a dead thief (well, up to the moment he la da that nasty Backstab combo on you).
If it was WvW, if the Thief stealthed away from you it sucks because you get no lootbag/exp and he continues with his camp slaughter rampage.
However, if a Thief stealths away from you in PVP, it works to your advantage!
Every second that the thief is hidden and thinking “oh, he won’t see this one coming, I’m gonna get you…” Nd almost every thief thinks like that, because this is what we like about being a thief the mos . It is our joy, you are buying time for your team, the node ticks more points and your team has the upper hand.

This is why people should never talk about introducing FFA or deathmatch in pvp… This would be a complete joke for half the classes.

Frankly, I don’t think they are doing that many things wrong personally, and I’m globally satisfied with the game.
They have a few “big wrongs” though that make the PvP too fast and too confusing, and; then the whole PvP system breaks apart.
Where people want fights based on counters, strategies they have fast button mashing…

The fear I have is that the problem might be too deep (inherent to the system) for them to be able to tackle it but this is another story.

About the various complaints I see:
I think people in general are adverse to change, so they will complain first before trying to find a solution (e.g. the rangers).
Also people rarely express themselves to show how happy they are – only to complain about something they don’t like. So that’s that.
And I suppose the PvP community is a more aggressive/competitive one, which is only fair – that’s why we PvP after all!

I guess all in all, when someone complains it is because they care enough about the game to want to change it! Better than just leaving I suppose…

Does the OP even play guardian to say that shelter is not balanced?
And, imagine that, with the guardian “elite” skill – it amounts to a whopping 3s+ of invincibility.

You forgot that guardians can also pop Aegis to block 1 (one) of the next skills of the 3 people surrounding them who are probably spamming skills like crazy.
I calculated this with a scientific method (not…) and Aegis will add 0.001s of invincibility.

In conclusion, Guardians have a grand total of 3.251s of invincibility, then the guardian drops within the next second.

Frankly I wouldn’t be against discussing the skill “shelter” in the future, but not in the current damage heavy meta.

Now, now spirit rangers…
Come here for a hug… and I will crush your weak body! HAHAHAHA!

On a positive note, if you win a fight don’t let anyone tell you you are unskilled now.

Guardian mobility/ability to catch up is “fine” and even “good” if you really chose to commit to it:
- Sword2, GS3, Scepter3, Staff3, Mace3
- SY, Retreat, JI
But yes, the price to pay for “catching up” with an opponent might be a tad high and sometimes it feels that you have to make a few unnatural choices.

As for the damage, it is about fine as well in the grand scheme of things, but I think because the damage from other classes is through the roof at the moment we have neither the survivability nor comparable damage and so we all feel a bit crippled, I agree.

So I feel like we have the bronze medal at everything at the moment, and it is a bit frustrating.
Not sure that upping the damage of GS is THE solution though, I’d rather wait and see the changes to other classes first as we might just end up OK after a batch of changes.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Flamfloz.6732:

An 8v8 spamfest on the middle point is – believe it or not – the wrong way to play conquest if you are trying to win.

people who play in 8 vs 8 hotjoin do not necessarily play to win, they play, because they want to play 8 vs 8.

please accept that.

Oh but I accept people playing HJ don’t play to win – I never said I didn’t.
And I don’t think anyone here is contesting the right of people to play “HotJoin” the way they want – given the fact that HotJoin is here for pure fun and played without any spirit of competition. That’s fine (and I’m against removing HotJoin, since I play the mode often).

The problem, as outlined before by others, is when people bring bad habits they’ve learnt in HJ in SoloQ – where people are expected to be globally more competitive.

noobftw.9654:

Flamfloz.6732:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Mrbig.8019:

The point is not if you enjoy it or not.

yes, it matters. i play a game to enjoy.

I don’t mind HotJoin (actually plays it), however yes I have a problem when people are getting in the way of “my enjoyment” of SoloQ by being terrible players.

This is where I see the point made by some posters that “HotJoin” teaches you some bad habits.

But that’s the nature of the beast I suppose…

Lol, again the self righteousness of a soloQ’er.
First of all, wth are you worrying about carrying hj nub? If a hj nub happens to join up soloQ 5 out of 10 times hes gonna be you opponent and work in you favor to help u get higher in the leader board(thats why most u play soloQ not? ) Only the other 4 out of 10 times u will have to carry him. Ofc it would be statistically unfavor for you if u yourself is a nub.
Secondly, please stop all the nonsense of hj is the wrong way to play conquest. As a matter of fact, arena is the wrong way to play this game since there is nothing to ‘arena’ about. Just stop pretending this game is competitive and you will suddenly have the best casual pvp game ever.
Lastly, I started this game since beta and still stayed and enjoyed this game till this moment. And now you are telling me I should just ‘pro’ the game up, and then quit it like jumper, xphe did? Thx but no thx. You are the ppl who is playing this game wrong, not me.

And you are? Since you seem to have quite a strong opinion about me and know me “so well”, I’d assume we’ve met in game…

An 8v8 spamfest on the middle point is – believe it or not – the wrong way to play conquest if you are trying to win.

I didn’t tell you to “pro” the game up, merely that “your enjoyment”, as important as it may be to me (and you can rest assured that your enjoyment of GW2 is my primary concern whenever I connect to the game!) can sometimes get in the way of the enjoyment of the game of other people who – because they chose to enjoy the game in a different manner than yours – would be affected by your possible “lack of competitiveness” in game. And I am specifically talking about people in soloQ here.

After all, someone might enjoy sitting during the PvP game (it is the way they enjoy the game), yet someone has to give in if their “enjoyment” gets in the way of the enjoyment of other people.
So no, I don’t think the good solution is necessarily for everyone to lower their standard of “enjoyment of the game” to the lowest common denominator (which would be the person who sits through the entire game of SoloQ).

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Mrbig.8019:

The point is not if you enjoy it or not.

yes, it matters. i play a game to enjoy.

I don’t mind HotJoin (actually plays it), however yes I have a problem when people are getting in the way of “my enjoyment” of SoloQ by being terrible players.

This is where I see the point made by some posters that “HotJoin” teaches you some bad habits.

But that’s the nature of the beast I suppose…

I still play to win, but in HotJoin, people leave/come back/change teams so winning has little to no importance indeed.

Lachanche.6859:

GankSinatra.2653:

Thats because GW2 is all about outplaying the enemy, the skillceiling is so unbelievably high that after 2 weeks you’ve still only scratched the surface.

Also, the most important part is to listen to your teamleader on which node you have to move to. It takes another 2 weeks to master this ability. The learning curve in this game is just insane its no wonder other people can auto attack you down.

Well said, an outsider may think that winning a duel by autoattacking is easy but that’ s only because he lacks the experience to tell what’ s really going on, the truth is that gw2 is not a game for everyone, only truely skilful players can be effective with what the masses call “meta builds”.

On a serious note though, I think a truly skilled player with their favourite class (and their favourite build, not necessarily meta) should not let himself be defeated by a “meta build” handled by an outsider. Mashing button works, but isn’t that effective against someone who knows what they are doing… YMMV depending on class weaknesses, procs, etc. (but on average this should be true).

KrisHQ.4719:

My brother and I have both played this game for a year now, so as I said we’re up to date with everything. I tried creating a ranger and went with the spirit build, and we arranged a duel against his mesmer.
Even though he did everything he could, and tried to play as intelligently as he had learned the past year, I pretty much auto-attacked him to death and won with full HP. A build that I had JUST made and never practiced. I’m 100% positive that I could have won against him only using auto-attack and utilities.

Maybe they should add a test called: “do I win with auto attack?” as a QA process then.

Please add an option (checkbox) “Normalise Asura size for PvP” that makes your Asuras, your team Asuras AND opponents Asuras the size of “humans” on the player screen.

Everyone is happy:
- Devs don’t remove the Asuras,
- People who want small Asuras deal with them on both sides,
- People who want big Asuras don’t have to deal with small ones but have their screen obstructed more as well.

It probably would take about 4 hours to develop that feature since a tall Asura is already the size of a human, and it would be a first step in the right direction.

You’re talking PvP then? I tried a “bleeds + well” build, and it works OK (I stack mainly condition damage and toughness).

The great thing is that you are so tanky that you have a lot of time to apply bleeds and when multiple people are attacking you on point, you can just spam your wells and bleeds at your feet, and you will definitely do some decent damage before you go down.
Also you can kill pretty easily the popular pet builds that everyone is running these days.
Cons: slow to build up, your escape plan is to die on point.

It is very good to cap points:
- Spam 1,2,5 on scepter when afar
- When enemies are onto you, empty your scepter (1,2,5) then swap to staff and use 2,4,5
- Spam all your wells on point (for prot),
- When all of this run out, use “death shroud”, spam your siphons,
- When you’re out of luck, use your elite and use the blind.

It worked OK, and you’ll outlast people on point and as you apply bleeds everywhere people will start to drop slowly (I normally AOE bleed people instead of stomping them)

BUILD:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQaV6daia87JApCYP9g7xFP6BxDnMA-ToAAzENpay1kpJZT2mGVs+YGA

What is the playstyle associated with your build? Do you tend to hold points or play “healer”?

Regardless, I would empty the “valor” line to free 10 points and remove “purity” and “valorous defense” – as you really have a lot of condition removal already.
Then for 5 points you can get “signet mastery” to recharge your heal and condition removal quicker, and you can push further into another line.

I feel that other builds could achieve any purpose more efficiently than your build (although to be honest I’m unsure of the purpose of it right now).

Zsymon.8457:

Make two versions of GW2, one version free to play, the other version with a
$25/month fee. Offering superior content and skill balance in the pay version,
and slowly having the content changes come over to the free version, with a
delay of a few months.

Because really, two people to work on the most important part of the game (skill design/balance/bugs), is just horridly understaffed

A server where people get updates before the rest, to test them on a massive scale?
It’s called a pre-patch test server. You get them for free in most games and most people are happily testing the skill balance on these just to “get ahead” of the competition.

Does GW2 have those? Would probably more efficient than two developers trying to test those skills.
I think a public test server “a la WoW” where the developers can test their most extreme ideas and >>>don’t have to apologise<<< for it would be the best.

Your idea is bad, because you give basically “Beta” content to the paying player base, whereas the rest of the crowd (non paying) gets content that has been “tested and approved” by the fools who are paying their fee.

Public test server:
Player: gets ahead of the content, so is happy.
GW2 team: test their thing as required, so is happy.