Guild Wars 2

Can we maybe start by establishing once and for all, with proof, whether the patch did what it said or not? As I understand it, it’s contended by GW2 staff on here that it is what it says – 40 ms.

I’ve seen people claim otherwise. Surely someone can pull a video together with a timer and give us irrefutable proof one way or the other?

As for my general picture of the ranger at the moment:

Pets
I use birds exclusively and have few problems with them. F2 and F3 are mostly responsive, but sometimes it simply won’t attack – either auto or with F1. I would also seriously recommend giving them some kind of basic evasion capability – you have to pull them out F3 long before their health runs out to avoid them ‘dying’ because they have no concept of evading long-range attacks.

Spirits
I just don’t ever feel they do anything one way or another. Never noticed the effect. I find them baffling.

Traps
I find them very disappointing, except for the satisfaction of setting up a well executed ambush. I really, really wish one of them did what it said on the tin and actually trapped an enemy, rather than simply applying a short condition to them. I love using Entangle, but it would be more fun to set it up at a distance, rather than what I do currently, which is run into the middle of a swam, hammer 9 and run back out again.

Longbow
Feels terribly ineffective. I’m not feeling the range advantage at all. I get ‘out of range’ constantly whilst standing at what looks like an effective distance. Then I take a couple of steps forward and find myself doing low damage (not what it says it will do at the maximum range at all).

Shortbow
Still spamming 1 mostly. I layer on 2, 4 and 5 as well, but mostly just for something else to do. Didn’t notice the effect of the nerf, but hard facts are hard facts. If the warrior is putting out more ranged DPS, that’s just bonkers.

Melee
Not very effective, but fun against groups, particularly with twin axes. Doesn’t seem buggy, but does seem rather underpowered – I shouldn’t feel that I might as well stick with shortbow when the enemy is standing right next to me, yet it does feel like that’s the best tactic for damage outbut.

My personal biggest issue
The disallowance on sniping/pushing in PvE. One tiny height advantage and the mob becomes ‘invulnerable’. Try to push them off a cliff edge with the longbow, a move that might actually redeem it as a viable weapon? ‘Interrupted’. I like to imagine a gremlin snuck into the developers’ office to deliberately disable some of the most fun and satisfying combat experiences. To my mind, the ranger class should all be about positioning and using the environment. It feels wrong that I’m forced to face an enemy on their own terms constantly.

Vanilla Donut.2583:

If the game is too hard, people will complain it’s too hard.
If the game is too easy, people will complain it’s too easy.

Surely, the legit criticism it’s easy and hard in all the wrong ways. It should be easy to take down an average mob, but not to the extent of pressing ‘1’ and then leaning back in your chair. Knowing to use certain abilities at the right time should be the decisive factor between dying without a scratch and barely making it through alive.

Bosses and dungeons should likewise be hard, but not in the sense of insane health bars and one-hit kills that track your character, which is the trend at the moment.

I agree – simple solution: let players push mobs over edges. One of the great pleasures of combat gaming is utilising your environment to effect a clean kill, so it’s baffling that ArenaNet seem to frown on it. No sniping from on high and no pushing off the edge when it comes to mobs apparently.

This is a simple change which I think would dramatically help improve combat fluidity. Change the double-forward tap animation so that the player, as well as dodging, reverses direction mid-roll, with the camera swinging round 180 degrees.

If anyone here has played the Tomb Raider games, you’ll know how this can be usefully implemented in a battle where you’re trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy. Instead of having to dodge and then turn around when an enemy pulls a melee attack, you have the option of a dodge which leaves you still facing the enemy, requiring him to turn around instead.

I know it’s a big ask, but I’d really like to see ArenaNet implement something along the lines of the Steam Workshop for Guild Wars 2, where users are invited to design and submit cosmetic items for the game, and the developers pick some of them to implement in future updates.

You’d be effectively outsourcing some of the work for free, and my experience of game userbases is that there’s a heck of a lot of talent and imagination to be plundered. It would lead to a potentially far greater variety of available ‘looks’ for player’s characters.

If it was successful, you could even – dare I say it – extend the idea to user-generated map content, so that updates bring whole new areas to explore. The in-story explanation could be the Asura developing gates that lead to parallel universes where Tyria has developed differently.

I’m 29. I have quite a few criticisms to make about some of the odd design decisions, but in general, I think it’s a triumph.

I’ve seen bots. Not so much that it makes playing the game impossible, but they’re around, and they’re obvious. It’s a real issue.

Re ‘Lack of endgame’ – sorry to be uncharitable, but whenever I see this complaint, it seems to be from people who want to be rewarded from slavishly spending four hours a day or more on the game by being given some kind of elite power that they can then show off to other people and use as an excuse for being all puffed up. If you want more out of PvE after getting to level 80, start a new character, pick a different story path and set yourself some new limitations, like “I won’t use waypoints” or “I’ll team up with other players whenever I come across them and offer to help them out with their personal quests.”

• The character models are stiff and inexpressive.
• They sever the flow of a dramatic scene, such as when characters stop mid-battle to have a (often long and drawn out) chinwag.
• They limit the ‘role-playing’ element to a possible five characters (one for each race) since all the other nuances of your character are abandoned for the dialogue. Some people will like how their character is portrayed, but many will feel: “This isn’t how I imagine my character to act.”
• Their main use seems to be info-dumping. This is exactly the wrong occasion to utilise precious voice-acting resources. Voicework should be reserved for entertaining character development, not explaining status changes or the political/historical context of an event.
• The dialogue, as I understand it, was not written by professional writers but by the team who developed the personal story aspect. It is, unfortunately, sub-average even by the standards of RPGs, which, even at their best, struggle to attain the heights of well-written books. I understand that it’s very difficult when you’re dealing with multiple paths, but I’m concerned that ArenaNet is far more alive to standards of technical/visual quality than it is to narrative quality. This is disappointing to me as I enjoy the lore of Guild Wars 2, and lots of the incidental dialogue. The games I remember most fondly are nearly always the best written (thinking Planescape Torment, Grim Fandango, both Portals etc).

I have no problem with the concept of a main character who isn’t the player – I actually think this makes a lot of sense, since the incoherence between personal quests and the rest of the world is caused by your being constantly treated as a bigger deal than you are.

But Trahearne is just a very badly written, badly acted character. I presume the voice actor is an American trying to ‘do’ an English accent? Because he’s got the kind of voice that English people would associate with a stuck-up rich dude ordering his butler about. It’s entirely ill-fitting on a supposedly humble bookworm unexpectedly thrust into the limelight.

The other problem is that he’s so criminally ineffective. At that bit where the Pale Tree Avatar gives him Caladborg, I wanted my character to say, “Hold on, you’ve just been watching us fight, right? You realise all he does is blow some kind of black dust on people while I fight off five enemies at once with three different weapons?”

I’m just starting out with an ele character. The answer to your question, I think, is that you’re not underlevelled but that applying a warrior mentality to the ele is going to get you killed. The ele is a much harder class to use effectively.

dimgl.4786:

Again, this is also not the point. I like the waypoint system, however, and you may not agree with me, using many waypoints is simply not a good design choice for several reasons:

I disagree. Waypoints are a very good design choice because they allow you to come to the game with different mindsets and not feel shortchanged.

If you want to journey somewhere entirely on foot, you can do. However, if you are deadset on gathering a certain material for crafting one day, you can use the waypoints to jump between areas that you’ve previously scouted out. This doesn’t ‘break immersion’, since you are immersed in your chosen task, and you don’t want to be breaking off every five minutes to talk to another NPC while you take the long road between places you want to be in.

It’s also a great choice for playing with friends, since the waypoints allow you to find each other quickly and conveniently. You can then opt to embark on a ‘no waypoint’ style adventure. But removing them completely, or making them less convenient would mean that very often, playing with friends or guildies wouldn’t be worth the effort. One look at the distance you’d have to travel and many players would say, “Eh, another time.”

Again, I just feel like it’s catered to casual players so they can feel like they’ve gotten something done every time they log on.

What’s wrong with that? We don’t all have a squillion hours of free time and we don’t always like trekking back and forth over areas we’ve already spent a lot of time in.

He was supposed to be the getaway driver.

I bundled myself into the car with the cash and yelled, “Step on it, Trahearne!”

“Indeed,” he said. “The future looks bleak indeed if the forces of Her Majesty’s Constabulary are as dogged as their legend foretells. I fear our travails will only become ever more burdensome as we proceed.”

“What are you talking about, Trahearne? Put your bloody foot down!”

“But how could it be that I, a mere scholar of the mystic arts, am to effect such a manoeuvre? My mother has entrusted me with the legendary semi-automatic Caladborg, that I might wield it against the coming tide of rozzers in the battle that is fated to ensue.”

“Look, Trahearne, if you don’t start burning rubber soon, we could both get thrown in the slammer!”

“[sigh] If you go to gaol, my friend, rest assured that I will be right by your side, for it seems that our destinies our entwined. Do not despair. We must press onward. And fear not, for my necromatic servants are, I venture, too intellectually impoverished to turn Queen’s on us. I suggest we do not linger, for hark, I detect the far-off caterwaul of police sirens.”

…. and so it went on.

Next week I’m taking him waterskiing.

And one with a shortbow and her raven, Nook.

Two shots of Shoudoutsubame, one with twin axes and her snowy owl, Egg: