Guild Wars 2

Roles should not be dependant on the particular profession you play, they should be primarily dependant on your elite spec. I would just say build, but elite specs have turned into these build-defining trait lines. In Overwatch and in MOBAs, they keep adding different characters, who may have overlapping roles. In my opinion elite specs will, in a way, be the GW2 equivalent to adding more characters.

Maybe we should be talking about the roles of the current elite specs instead, and maybe what sort of specs should be added in the future.

Senario.2038:

I’d be overjoyed if they did Mainhand Sword as a damage spec (with active mitigation. Maybe Stances or physical abilities).

After getting a lot of nerfs for getting a support spec I am hoping that is what we get. That said few things must happen for any damage ele spec to be good in PvE at least.

1) Air auto needs to be very good, no debating this as air is currently the best attunement for consistent dps, without air you get things where your initial dps is good but then you slow down.
2) Active mitigation of any kind, preferably not spread out between the utilities but actually on the weapon. Burning speed is a great example and if we had something similar on mh sword that would be good. Maybe include a teleport+blind.
3) Some sort of new mechanic that would make it worth taking that spec if you wanted small/mobile enemy dps. It has to out match overloads for small/mobile enemies.
4) stay far away from any team utility. team utility will get the class nerfed while personal utility will likely remain mostly balanced.

Things that would be nice and maybe necessary – Buffs to offhand dagger. No two ways about it, if mh sword is an elite then you pretty much must use offhand dagger for dps and it has been nerfed into oblivion. Fire grab is alright if traited (though preferably i’d like it to not be a “trait or do less dps” skill.). Mainly just fix Ride the Lightning. 25 sec, 20 sec traited, 10 sec on hit. Just increase the power scaling on it and make it more dps combined with mh sword than wh lightning orb which is crazy. 8k worth of damage without crits on LO. putting that all on RtL would make the skill too strong. But even if you doubled its power scaling it would still be 4k ish damage short of LO’s dps.

Interesting ideas, but the next spec doesn’t necessarily have to be sword. If it turned out that they were going to add a 2-handed weapon, like greatsword or shortbow, they could make the entire weapon skillset about mobile DPS. Then, they could make the profession mechanic provide some of the active mitigation, instead of having all of it on the weapon. That would help other weapon sets try out dps specs too.

Though, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s sword at this point, since Anet was probably experimenting with the idea before they decided that they needed the tempest to support raid groups.

BlackBeard.2873:

Ele won’t get a main-hand weapon because that requires more work to make 12 skills. Expect another off-hand, as they only need 8 skills.

Work is hard.

I am disappointed with Anet’s track record with the elementalist, but let’s not have too much cynicism. It is obvious that Anet made the tempest as a support spec because they needed several professions to be able to specialize hard into the support role. After all, their new baby, raiding, required it. You can see that many of the first wave of elite specs have support elements.

The elementalist already had mechanics that could be further developed with an e-spec, for further support. They had healing, boons and auras, but they were not used in a purely supportive build, because pre-HoT such a build would be useless in any content. Thus, in order to not have those mechanics fade into the background due to all the other HoT supports, the tempest was made to make these mechanics stronger. It just so happens that warhorn fits the tempest both thematically, and because it is always used for support. Warhorn cannot be a main-hand weapon, so tempest got an off-hand weapon.

Designing a main-hand weapon shouldn’t be much harder than an off-hand weapon anyway. You do need 4 extra abilities, but they are all basic attacks, which usually aren’t that complicated. Also, the professions team (I can’t call them a balance team!) should have more time for e-spec design for the next expansion, since they don’t need to release any new professions after the revenant.

Somehow.4769:

Dawdler.8521:

Somehow.4769:

- remove the heals from water spells but add effect zones. If people wants heals they’ll have to burn some finishers in there. Have the players work as a team to get access to these team heals. Give clever ways to the elem to heal while fighting.

Fantastic, you want to add identity to elementalist yet you would absolutely kitten over the one build that can designate itself group healer in WvW by putting all the load on comboing rather than the massive AoE healing the elementalist can build himself in the water tree. When its 50 people, they arent going to “work as a team” as if its a 5 man tightknit party. AoE is king.

Thats PvE thinking for ya.

I feel like I haven’t made myself clear on that part. What I meant is that direct group healings are a problem in regards of balancing, a problem anet tried to get rid of by destroying elem’s supporting value in both pvp and pve. My suggestion might suck kitten , I admit that, but this is nothing more than a suggestion to an issue that has to be addressed and I am welcoming your own suggestions on my ideas. To be fair, of all my ideas removing diect heals from water is the one that I liked the less because the bonus malus of elements would already suffice in the context of these changes.

Elem should be able to do almost everything correctly, with the downside of not being able to do them at the same time. And there you open doors to balancing.

I also said that I don’t know much about wvw and therefore do not wish to interfere with elem’s balancing there.

Having direct group heals is not a balance problem, as long as they need healing power to do any significant healing. The problem is that if you need healing power for your heals, damage-based ele defences suffer. This is one of the reasons why many players in this subforum recognise that damage-based elementalists need some form of hard mitigation as their main defence.

Anet did not really reduce the ele’s support value, they simply made changes in order to seperate support elements from damage elements. This is why you have changes such as the base healing nerf on WtPA, while increasing the scaling with healing power.

Ensign.2189:

Ganathar.4956:

I have no evidence that this is happening, but it definitely a possibility. Even if they aren’t working together, they are still a limited amount of people, which means that there is less competition. It’s not like they would want to sell all of their supply in one go.

There isn’t any mechanism to control the means of production in GW2 – production of every commodity is distributed with no barriers to entry. Without control there isn’t a mechanism to profitably exert market power – I don’t really care if someone wants to lose a whole lot of money buying high and selling low to ‘control’ a market.’

I would not expect a speculator to sell off all stock in one go; hell I would count on them not doing it. Speculation smooths prices over long periods of time, after all; people don’t just dump newly valuable goods down below their original price for the sake of pushing it all out immediately, after all.

Actually, it depends on the commodity. For example, even if Anet makes mithril much more useful, and a beta tester tries to take advantage of it, he won’t be able to. If mithril becomes too valuable, players can go out and mine as much as they want. However, if this happens with something like mystic coins, it is much easier to corner the market, because players cannot realiably get mystic coins outside their daily login rewards.

Ensign.2189:

Ganathar.4956:

I was referring to the amount of people that have the information. If only 5 people hoard all the items, they can set the prices, and nobody can do anything about it until more supply has been generated. If more people knew about the changes, the prices would be harder to manipulate for that minority.

If I’m reading you correctly, you’re saying that people trading on inside information have market power, and are working as a cartel to keep prices above their fair market value?

Do you have, like, any evidence at all that things actually work that way?

I have no evidence that this is happening, but it definitely a possibility. Even if they aren’t working together, they are still a limited amount of people, which means that there is less competition. It’s not like they would want to sell all of their supply in one go.

Behellagh.1468:

Ganathar.4956:

People who say that this does not affect players who don’t invest are wrong. If everyone had the opportunity to invest on an item when a patch launched, there would be more players selling the affected items in the TP. You wouldn’t have only 5 people, who are likely working together, selling the majority of the supply. That means that competition would be relevant, and that the prices would increase by a smaller amount.

To sell the majority of the supply they had to buy it first. And that’s only the supply on the TP. And if the information was first released publicly, with the same lead time, not everyone will be able to take advantage of that information, or even notice it’s posted, and any opportunity will be gone within an hour or two. Certainly more players would get in on it but if you were at work or asleep or out at a movie or dinner, you are just as out of luck as when it was just a leak.

So instead of 5, lets say 5,000 hear about it out of an active player population of 100,000 (yes, yes, numbers … butt) and were in a position to act on it in the hour or two to buy up all the supply.

First, 95% of the active player base unaffected by the leak in the first place since they didn’t/couldn’t take advantage of the information. Second of the 5,000, those who acted sooner than later and had more gold to invest would make more, so it’s not like all 5,000 would split that profit evenly. Third, conversely it also means that those 5 didn’t lose 99.9% of their profit as they obviously had significantly higher sums of gold than most players which to invest. I would SWAG they would have lost only 50-75% of their windfall.

This thread is about players wanting their pound of flesh as most players would have been unaffected even with a public release of any TP related information.

You don’t have to be taking advantage of the market to be affected. If you are a buyer, you would naturally prefer to buy your product at lower prices. If there are less suppliers, there is less competition, which leaves more room for sellers to have higher prices. If a very limited amount of people know about a product that will become valuable, they can buy it all up, which reduces the amount of suppliers.

Of course, the price of the product would rise either way because ANet made it more useful. However, if only a limited amount of people have most of the supply, I argue that the price will increase even more.

Ensign.2189:

Ganathar.4956:

If everyone had the opportunity to invest on an item when a patch launched, there would be more players selling the affected items in the TP. You wouldn’t have only 5 people, who are likely working together, selling the majority of the supply. That means that competition would be relevant, and that the prices would increase by a smaller amount.

Other way around. Increased demand pre-patch from trading on inside information increases price and reduces consumption pre-patch. Post-patch, that supply is released, resulting in a supply that is higher, and a price that is lower, than the counterfactual world without people trading on inside information.

It doesn’t matter if that accurate information comes from detailed analysis, an inside source, or a magic 8 ball. Trading on accurate information about the future value of some commodity increases the efficiency of the market and makes people better off in general.

I was referring to the amount of people that have the information. If only 5 people hoard all the items, they can set the prices, and nobody can do anything about it until more supply has been generated. If more people knew about the changes, the prices would be harder to manipulate for that minority.

People who say that this does not affect players who don’t invest are wrong. If everyone had the opportunity to invest on an item when a patch launched, there would be more players selling the affected items in the TP. You wouldn’t have only 5 people, who are likely working together, selling the majority of the supply. That means that competition would be relevant, and that the prices would increase by a smaller amount.

Obtena.7952:

There is no point to the thread then … it goes without saying that if you don’t do an activity, you don’t get the reward … I mean, how entitled do you want to be here? There is no “it shouldn’t be locked behind raiding”. There is no law or morality what Anet can and can’t do here. There is not a reason for this ADDITIONAL reward of spirit shards to not be locked behind raiding, other than the fact that people don’t want to raid but want spirit shards. Not being interested in a mode of play doesn’t qualify you to deserve rewards as a result of that mode. How obtuse is that kind of thinking?

With the old skill point system, the spirit shard xp reward equivalent didn’t require any specific content. The new system added additional requirements. Also, I see no reason why raiders should get additional rewards from non-raid content. Should we also make it so PvPers get additional magnetite shards when they raid? It sounds pretty irrational to me. If spirit shards are supposed to be an xp reward, then it should be awarded to everyone who playes content that gives xp.

Kyon.9735:

@Senario
The main problem of non bunker builds are self sustain and defense. Eles doesn’t have access to stealth, does not have decent mobility, nor do they have access to low cd blocks. Those are needed to compensate having the lowest base HP and Armor.

In the first place, damage was included as an effect of breaking arcane shield to discourage enemies from attacking through it. However, the damage itself is not enough so I figured that adding a heal on break effect would achieve its true goal – stop attacking carelessly or suffer the consenquences.

I am basing it on experience as I have been playing S/X in duels and solo roaming with rune of defender. When people realized I was using the rune, most decent players stopped mindlessly attacking and actually learned to wait it out a bit.

The next problem is active defense. Since eles can’t stealth and has bad mobility ouyside of FGS, they will have no choice but to bulk up in defensive stats which is a no go for DPS eles. Hence, I added blocks on different traits which would require active play.

BTW I made a mistake, One with Fire will give an Ele 1 charge of arcane shield upon signet use, not Rock Solid.

TL;DR – All my suggestions are centered around non bunker builds and I tried minimizing buffingbunker builds in the process.

Giving DPS eles more defenses that are independant of stats is necessary. However, I don’t think that Anet is capable of adding enough active defences without making them part of a new elite spec. Anet simply doesn’t make nearly enough changes in their balance patches.

Temporary achievements shouldn’t even be a thing anymore. Hasn’t Anet learned anything from LW1? I don’t see why the Capricorn achievs can’t stay in the game forever. Having newer players have an insurmountable disadvantage in AP aquisition is a very poor decision.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

DoctorDing.5890:

The point of this thread is very valid. Players who have absolutely no interest in raids or raiding and who have absolutely no use for a raid mastery are being “encouraged” to do them just so they can have a use for excess XP again. It’s like asking a jazz-hating metal-head to buy a Robbie Coltrane album just to earn a Metallica bonus track.

The jazzers are saying “Hey, you might like it”, “Broaden your mind”, “You don’t know if you don’t try it” but the metal-head is thinking “But all I want is the bonus track”.

I think it’s actually worse. The metal-head could think, “ok, I’ll try it just to unlock the track”, but then isn’t able because he needs to find 9 other people who also want to do it with him. But those jazzier don’t want strangers and his metal-head friends don’t care…

That’s not all of it. Even if you do manage to find a group for one raid boss and unlock the mastery, you still need the extra mastery points. Bloodstone Fen does not give enough MP to max the raid mastery, which means that the rest of the MP must be gotten either by doing the gold adventures that you haven’t done or raiding even more. Getting gold on some adventures was hard enough for some people, but having to get gold on the harder ones that you have ignored will be even worse.

steve.2945:

With the new PVE content out, you can clearly see how much trouble ele is having. Sure the damage is ok, but the surviveability is just downright bad. Jade bow construct completely decimates ele, and the heals doesn’t measure up to heal any of the damage being done to it. I was completely forced to rely on rebound at times (the heals from that is crap) to using water, my heals still were being out damaged.

Damage ele won’t get better defenses until there is a damage-focused elite spec. Tempest was support, and the devs did everything they could in order to make you have to trait and get different stats for support. This was justified of course, because having a damage build with so much support is not balanced. However, the defenses of the ele come packaged with its support, which means that if you nerf the support capability of damage ele, you also inevitably nerf its defenses.

There is no way that Anet will drastically increase the damage mitigation of base ele traits and skills. If they did that, you would be able to stack the new additions with what tempest has to offer in the form of a bunker build that is more broken than anything that we have ever seen. They can only add new major defenses in new elite specs, just like they did with Daredevil and dodges.

Just accept that you are meant to be a support bot until the next expansion comes. Players in this subforum predicted this outcome from the moment that Tempest was revealed as the ele elite spec.

Iris Ng.9845:

I don’t know why but a lot of people tend to over look :

• Guild Ornate Armor
• Triumphant Armor and Triumphant Hero counterpart

Are they that obscure to not counted?

Also if you compare the game at launch and the expansion at launch, the vanilla game has a lot of cosmetic assets at the expense of little to no endgame content at all. The outrage at the time when people reached level 80 and had nothing else to do but a handful of dungeons and the new WvW mode to keep their interest was very apparent. I remember it very well as I’ve lost quite a few friends burnt out during the long build up of season 1.

The programmers that specialize in developing cosmetic items are obviously not the same as the ones that design endgame content. The fact that they are designing less armors has nothing to do with endgame, and it likely has to do with the gem store.

You are right about ornate guild and triumphant armor though, they are armor sets that are usually not mentioned. However, even if you include those, HoT has not had even a fourth of the armors of the base game. I’m not expecting the same amount as the base game in an expansion, just a fourth.

AliamRationem.5172:

I think you’re all correct. AB multi-loot is obviously a factor as players will spend time on events they find rewarding and participate less in events that are unrewarding. The TD boss meta is horribly unrewarding. You don’t even have to compare it to AB multi-loot. Just consider the fact that you’d get far more loot by looting chak caches in the lanes than by beating the chak gerent – which for some reason just gives you a handful of normal chak caches and the usual Hero chest or whatever it’s called.

Does that seem a bit off? I mean AB clearly doesn’t have that problem. They added exalted chests to the events in the cycle but they are nowhere near the amount of loot you gain for a full Tarir assault completion (especially multi-map!).

Yup, Gerent is pretty unrewarding, even with no multi-loot Tarir is still much better. The only reason people ever did gerent was for ley-line crystals and chak eggs. When people no longer need the currency, it becomes a dead event.

Vayne.8563:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You mean 9 month content droughts and failing to deliver 50% of an expansion people paid for aren’t good for a game? huh… who would have thought…

Really? 50%? By what counting?

They failed to deliver on some of the legendary weapons and the legendary armor so far. The rest of the stuff they did deliver on, even if they changed how that delivery works, as in the case of WvW.

What else haven’t they delivered on besides legendary weapons (and they did give us four of those) and legendary armor?

It definitely isn’t 50% of what was promised by any stretch of the imagination. However, the expansion did release with plenty of problems regarding WvW, fractals and even OWPvE. It also had less zones than what one would expect from an expansion, and the amount of armor sets was especially horrendous. The story was obviously rushed as well.

The biggest killer though was the content drought. It took 9 months to get LW3. LW3 part 1 has more content than LW2 episodes in my opinion, but we still had to wait so long that you would expect more. At least they started adding some unique rewards to current events, because when they started they were nothing but a new source of AP.

slamfunction.7462:

Seyiwaji.4082:

I have been waiting for this.
Now continue to say the game is not dying.

Even those sales short before the end of 2Q 2016, didn’t change anything.
As it is now, this game won’t last long as worthy.

But you know Fan will say: The game is doing fine. That I laugh.

Its not dying. The PvE and WvW maps are still somewhat full with a steady audience. I think this is more an issue with ANet not putting a whole lot on the gem store to drive sales.

They’re in a tough spot, because any major development project, such as new armor (not outfits), maps, and legendaries – the stuff that fans want – takes forever to build, and with very little profit to ANet. So i’m hoping that they continue to build these things in the xpacs. If so, then the xpacs will always be worth buying. On the hand, a constant string of gem store items (that are actually good), might be of interest.

I’m not a fanboy, either. There are times were i have to quit the game for a few months, because “ANet”, but things are great right now, and the game is really fun atm.

Actually, Anet used to put out less gem store items before HoT. After HoT they started adding gem store items in a more rapid pace, while also having sales all the time. The reason why people aren’t paying up simply has to do with the content. If people play less, they will buy less.

Also, at this point I don’t think anyone is excited for black lion weapon skin releases anymore. This is what happens when you saturate the gem store with lots of items of a similar category at a very quick rate. If they actually released less black lion skins and put more skins in the game, black lion skins would be more special, while the game would have more content.

Blude.6812:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Raid Masteries, should not be a factor in the regaining of access to spirit shard generation. I doubt the majority of people will even do raids, but I could be wrong. Even still, I feel they should be their “own thing” that shouldn’t act as a barrier to the ‘average’ player.

^ This. I agree. I was very disappointed when I found out why my exp bar wasn’t increasing while in the fen. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Anets’ barriers.

No masteries should be a factor. In my opinion, a player should be able to choose if he wants his xp to go to spirit shards regardless of the state of his masteries. Spirit shards were obviously introduced to give xp some more value. However, xp is still worthless if you have locked masteries, or if you are lacking MP.

I have no idea how anyone can argue that the design is fine. It doesn’t matter if you raid or not. If for any reason you cannot get any more xp towards masteries, whether they are locked or you have no MP, you should be able to use your xp towards spirit shards.

I wonder if players who only have the base game get spirit shards. If they do, HoT players are actually at a disadvantage here.

Danikat.8537:

If I’ve understood correctly (if I did he didn’t word it very well) he’s not saying each individual armour set takes 9 months but that they can’t release just 1 at a time – they have to release 3 together – 1 light, 1 medium and 1 heavy.

Whereas outfits they can do 1 at a time. I imagine not having to make them separate pieces makes it quicker as well.

9 months still seems excessive to me, but I do know making anything in a game takes forever. I once made a snow overlay for a game – just a static image that sat on top of the landscape (and this was a 2D game as well so it was literally just a picture) and that took forever. I have friends who are much better at it than me who will still spend all day doing things like recolouring a horse.

That’s also what I understood. I don’t think that anyone could honestly think that Mike meant that it took 9 months to only make a single weight.

Their pace is still very slow though, and this is when you compare it to how quickly they made the armor sets during GW2’s initial development. You don’t have to compare Anet to other companies to realize that they are slow, you only need to compare them to themselves.

shalywen.9548:

9 months per armor? is he really trying to be serious? Legendary much longer? and what should justify legendary armors take so much more time since they are armors like others? I see a lot of bullkitten here…one new set of weapons every month or so in the last year, about the same for outfits, cash shop armors came out with about the same interval in the first months after release…so, they don’t have problems to create a lot of items you can buy for real money, but they can’t produce an armor to obtain in game for living story episodes. Seems to me they didn’t have this problem in the past, to be honest, but maybe I’m wrong.

And in the end, if you’re wearing medium armor, you have so much choice to justify that loooooooooong armor development, that you’re stuck with 90% longcoats that look almost the same. Wow.

They are simply not putting enough manpower into making armor sets. It would have taken over 28 years to make all of the armor sets that came with the base game on release, if they took 9 months each. Keep in mind that I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here too. I counted the culturals as half armor sets, because they didn’t have to fit them to other races.

This is not good for the longevity of the game. The primary goals in this game involve cosmetics. They can’t just put new stat sets and expect players to constantly grind them. Most new stat sets aren’t worthwhile as it is. And some players don’t even bother with the worthwhile ones because they don’t care about min/maxing.

Obtena.7952:

Glacial.9516:

As Sartharina said, the problem is when you have more than enough exp for the Masteries, but not enough Mastery Points to acquire them. At that point your exp goes nowhere and is wasted until you are able to get enough mastery points to open up new masteries or you finish all of them.

That’s not a problem though … I believe that’s the intent. If you want that XP to matter, you need to actively get the mastery points. It’s a way for Anet to encourage players to experience the game. If some XP is wasted in the process, so be it.

Except for the fact that it also requires raiding, an activity that the very devs stated they developed as challenging group content for a minority of the player-base. I do not believe that this is intentional. Anet has made plenty of oversights before.

UBcktieDL.5318:

Quick explanoation:

Lava font and overload air nerfs: lowering DPS in pve content.
CD reduction nerfs: mostly PvP/WvW. Geomancer’s training had magnetic wave und 16,7s cd to cleanse 3 conditions, blast finisher+reflect while obsidian flesh secured save stomps. Aquamancer’s training was too powerful in WvW backline builds.
Healing ners: WtPa was too pwerful compared to the other heals. Elemental bastion also had more healing than the arcane alternative evasive arcana

Ele is still a good option for PvE and WvW, but it has no purpose in sPvP anymore. THe full bunkker build got nerfed, but we don’t have enough damage mitigation options for dps builds. The reduced healing also hurts every kind of bruiser build. I am not happy with the nerf, expected some kind of compensation (for example increased damage on some spells like dragon’s tooth, churning earth or fire grab for pvp burst builds)

Ele needs two things in PvP, and increased damage on spells is not one of them. The most important change that ele needs is the addition of a huge amount of active mitigation. Ele also needs smaller delay on their skills on scepter and staff, so they can land once in a while.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

…just a reminder, since it seems forgotten in this discussion: you can purchase gems for gold. This means that any “gem” store item is available through gameplay, because anything you do earns gold, which converts to gems, which purchases gemstore items.

So, yeah, I can see “it would be great to get it as a drop for X”, but “unfair, gemstore items not available through gameplay” is not really such a valid complaint, yo.

That just makes everyone focus on the activities that grant the most gold. So now you have people grinding Tarir over and over again, because gold is the only thing that matters.

Before I got the Chak weapon skins and some other TD rewards, I had motivation to kill the Chak Gerent. However, after I got those rewards I stopped, because the gold that you get is abysmal. As you can see, in this case the in-game reward made me play in-game content that was not efficient at generating gold.

This is basically the reason why adding a small amount of in-game rewards is disastrous. The bigger the disparity between in-game and and gem store rewards, the more you are encouraged to only grind the most efficient content for generating gold. This reduces the variety of content that you play, which leads to more boredom, which then leads to people leaving the game.

If there were more in-game rewards, it is likely that more gem store items would be bought with real money for two reasons:
1) Player retention would be higher
2) Players would be more focused on acquiring in-game rewards, which would leave less time for gold grinding, which would make buying gems with real money a more appealing prospect.

Hesacon.8735:

Cirrion.8951:

They should just allow you continue to collect reward track points outside of WvW maps (with the contribution decay in place still of course).

This.

Balthazzarr.1349:

You know… the big light finally just came on… Yes.. ANet has now made it so that you get rewards for simply being IN WvW… you don’t even have to do anything other than move once in a while to keep from being booted by the timer. omg that is sooooo not well thought out! Getting the goodies via the good ol’ WORK in WvW and NOT time spent makes a lot more sense, prevents abuse, and ensures that the people in WvW are actually doing something useful.

ANet if you are reading this thread… PLEASE reconsider this very poor way of rewarding people for doing nothing.

Then you get into the debate of k-trains vs. roaming vs. scouting/defending. Right now k-trains give way more wvw exp (which also gives loot), whereas roaming gives less and scouting almost nothing. Having two rewards systems that both operate the same way is silly.

The rewards tracks gets around the disadvantage to scouting or defending by allowing commanders to delegate participation to those willing to hug siege and watch for movement.

Reward track progress could still be delegated to scouts even if you got it directly from capturing objectives.

Mirta.5029:

Danikat.8537:

It is your opinion that HoT didn’t meet your personal expectations. Please don’t presume to speak for the rest of us.

they objectively couldn’t deliver what they have promised.

The expansion was supposed to come out with a full raid and a set of new legendaries out of the box. So many months in, new legendaries got outright canceled and the raid is only getting finished right now.

Actually you got that completely wrong. Anet outright stated before release that the raid and the legendary weapons would come in staggered releases after the expansion. The only problem is that we might never be getting the weapons.

Vayne.8563:

Crimsonstar.3120:

If there’s a few months between Living World season 3 episodes, they have to give a LOT of rewards and content to do. A new zone or two with a lot of events (Basically a larger new version of Silverwastes) for people to be content for a while, as well as a longer amount of engaging story content.

And what MMO do you know that provides that much content every 2-3 months? I don’t think people have realistic expectations.

Anet have had since HoT launch to prepare for the LW3 releases. If LW3 release had started 2-3 months after HoT I would agree with you.

There doesn’t need to be a PvE way to get GoB. The major problems with the change were that the warning was lackluster and that people who earned their badges got potentially stripped of their rewards, and now have to earn their GoBs for a second time.

XTR.9604:

Patch notes from April 19 2016.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-19-2016

Also, once the reward tracks feature exits beta testing, the Gift of Battle legendary crafting component will no longer be available as a vendor purchase and will be earned via its own reward track.

Everyone was informed on April 19th, 2016. That is 2 months you had to get it and DECIDED not to.

Read patch notes or just be uninformed, don’t blame ANET for your choices.

First of all, people not interested in WvW don’t read the WvW section of the patch notes for obvious reasons.

Secondly, Anet conveniently forgot to announce when the feature would exit beta. Sure, some people who were in the WvW votes and in the forums knew about it, but most players wouldn’t even have the slightest clue.

vesica tempestas.1563:

in software development, you would split that nail up into 3 nail so 3 people can hammer it. The real problem is finding developers that can hammer straight without constant guidance.

True, but there is content called dungeons and fractals, that hasn’t had any new releases for ages. The raid team would be naturally good at making instanced content. Having them make new dungeons instead of allocating them to LW3 would be a good option.

Actually, I suspect that this is exactly what they are doing. After all, Anet did say that they wanted to make fractal mechanics more like raid mechanics. The first new fractal in years is being released sometime after the final raid wing, coincidence? If the next raid is part of the next expansion, the expansion team may have started working on the maps that the raid team will use when making the next raid. Having no raid to work on, the raid team would just focus on fractals for a bit. This is all speculation of course, so take it with a grain of salt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this was happening.

AliamRationem.5172:

I’ll have to take your word for it that LFR saved WoW raiding. As I said, I absolutely hated LFR and I was not alone in that.

I’m not a “hardcore” raider, but I used to be. I can only imagine what raid leaders in WoW have to put up with as far as turnover rates since LFR. It was always the death of guilds: burnout. Now by the time players begin progression raiding, they’ve already completed all of the bosses multiple times on easier modes. Hitting the wall at that point is a motivation killer.

But I suppose if you never intended to engage in challenging raids, it wouldn’t bother you to stop at the lower tiers. So perhaps it makes sense from your perspective. Like I said, I enjoy the current raid tier even while my guild is progressing very slowly. But I seriously doubt I would bother with it if I had already run through it on several tiers of easy mode.

You also provide no answer to my points regarding resource allocation (more raid tiers = more resources locked up in raids) and elitism. LFR didn’t address those problems, but made them worse. Of course, resource allocation isn’t a huge issue over in WoW. Blizzard has plenty to go around. But here it’s a different story. I think what we’d up with is a solution that makes everyone miserable. But I could be wrong.

The main problem with WoW LFR is that it is the primary way to get geared for higher raid difficulties, which in turn get you geared for even higher difficulties of the same raid. That certainly leads to burnout. A massive mistake was when Blizzard decided to make LFR gear better than dungeon gear, while dungeon gear should have been better, with LFR simply being a story mode if you are unable to raid. WoW has a total of 4 difficulties and the casuals of GW2 are only asking for 1 more difficulty.

Since this isn’t a gear-based game, most of the reason for burnout isn’t there. All that Anet would have to do is make an easy mode with a few new rewards, and casuals would play it. Of course, the new rewards would also be available to normal mode, so that raiders wouldn’t have to do easy mode. This way, more players would get introduced to raiding and if they want more challenge and greater rewards, they can progress to normal mode.

Alternatively, they could just make some sort of content in those maps that takes place after the raid story-wise. I think that it would be a shame to let those maps go to waste by keeping most players out.

Sarrs.4831:

Ganathar.4956:

Good guess, but it doesn’t excuse Anet suddenly making old rewards harder to obtain, which conveniently extends the legendary process during a content drought. If they want more people in WvW, they make it more rewarding in terms of gold gain, while also giving it new exclusive rewards. I’m simply not a fan of making people work harder for already existing content just to create playtime out of nothing.

They’ve given it multiple new rewards over the last few months, including Triumphant Armor, a return of Hero’s Weapons and a second round at the one-time tracks. They’ve increased the amount of gold you get by not only implementing the reward tracks, but by increasing the amount of gold you get each rank-up.

They’ve already done both of the things that you suggest. They are not making this change in an attempt to alleviate the content drought; they’re making this change because the Gift of Battle’s prior implementation did not do its job. The motives of them making this change now have no basis in making older content harder to complete, but because the feature was brought out of beta.

The GoB may not have been doing it’s job, but countless players have gotten their legendaries without playing the intended amount of WvW now, so I see the change as pointless. If Anet wants legendaries that truly show mastery of every game mode, they need new ones that nobody has ever obtained in an easier way.

cranos.5913:

Speaking from experience here as someone who primarily PvEs and knows PvErs. This only leads to afk behaviour for hours on end and with the current server linking that means just more queue spots filled with ppl doing kitten all to help the match up. Ridiculous, horrible change that won’t make anyone actually actively play wvw the way ppl might hope.

The AFKing is mostly a result of a flawed participation system. Reward track progress really should be awarded immediately whenever you contribute. The current system is not only exploitable to keep your ticks going, but it also has two other problems. For one, it encourages even dedicated players to remain AFK when they are done playing, in order to get a few more ticks in until their participation runs out. It is also anti-casual, because a player who is in for 4 consecutive hours will get more reward track progress than someone who plays the same amount in 8 30 minute sessions.

Finally, I noticed that exotic daily chests only give 1 WvW reward potion. Why is this? The PvP versions give 2 potions in the exotic daily chests, while they are usually quicker to complete. WvW players should be getting 2 WvW reward potions per exotic transcendent chest.

Tomiyou.3790:

Ganathar.4956:

Tomiyou.3790:

Wow, most of you guys clearly have no idea that raids are HoT content and that the maps were made during the developement of the expac itself. 6 ppl can’t do tha much content alone so quickly. They probably only did boss machanics and balance post HoT release, everything else has already been done prior to release.

That is something that I have been suspecting for a while. However, if more devs were working on the raids before the expansion came out, then the complaints about raid content taking up too much development time would actually be valid. The typical response to complainers is that only 6 people work on raids. Many would wonder why Anet spent so many resources on content designed for a small minority.

I believe catering to both casual and more hardcorish audience is needed for the game to grow. I mean, even mobas have that (causal = unranked queus, you still get the rewards, “hardcore” = ranked queues to determine who is a better player). I do agree that the content drought is unhealthy, but updates are on their way. Let’s just hope Anet delivers. Having both playerbases is healthy, making the game cater too much to casuals is bad and vice versa. And don’t say HoT catered to hardcore part of the community only, cause it certainly did NOT completely (raids are the only thing).
Also, I am very sad that Anet hasn’t decided to make 2 raid difficulties (even tho I am perfectly comfortable with the current one). Adding an “easy” mode to them would allow people who simply aren’t good enough to raid to obtain legendary armor, tho at a slower pace and the legendary armor skin without any special effects (or maybe reduced effets), we need to keep some things exclusive for the feeling of prestige. The bosses would have some mechanics removed, less HP, less damage, etc. This would promote raiding, as I have a feeling people have fear doing it based on what they heard from other games. This also means more content for the community without any real investment for Anet. One can only dream tho

No, now that raids have already been released they shouldn’t make Envoy legendary armor available from easy mode raids. They could add easy mode raids, but the legendary armor set needs to stay behind the most difficult iteration of that content. The best solution to legendary armor is to simply introduce a different set during the next expansion. WvW would be the best game mode for it in my opinion, but any mode is fine outside of raiding.

Jayne.9251:

OriOri.8724:

Jayne.9251:

OriOri.8724:

Jayne.9251:

Dear me. This thread makes me appreciate WvWers. Some of the comments are just unbelievable, coming from adults.

You think the WvW players are being any more mature than the PvE players? You must have been reading a different thread. The WvW players were the ones spouting off such gems as

“I had to suffer so its only right that you have to suffer too”

not the PvE players

No I think the point was that legendaries shouldn’t be something given away like candy. If you want it, you need to master both game modes. It makes getting one extra valuable because you put in the work, whether it’s in pve that wvwers hate but follow the rules, or in wvw, that pve players flatly refuse to do.

You’re not seeing the dichotomy?

The bottom line is you have a choice. Put in the work and get the shiny, or just don’t get one. It really doesn’t have that much impact on your game play by not having one.

I agree that Legendaries should require effort to craft yourself, I don’t think I ever said otherwise. But this change was the wrong way to go about doing that. For one, why does ANet expect me to be content with having to put in an extra 7+ hours of WvW specific play for each legendary I want to craft compared to the people who crafted them before this change and could buy all of their GoB? Why am I expected to be content with being required to do extra for the same reward? Why does ANet think that the people who were saving up their badges instead of buying GoB right away to save inventory space (because with all the bags and junk we get inventory space is a premium for most players, a lot can’t justify wasting a space to hold a GoB indefinitely while they gather the rest of the materials to craft the legendary) will be content with their work now being negated? They put in the work at the time to earn a GoB. They did and you can’t deny that. So why was it taken away from them?

Yes. Crafting legendaries should require you to participate in all game modes and it should not be easy. But this was a particularly poor way to force that to happen

Why does Anet require WvWers to go into pve and complete content/grind pve for theirs?

WvW isn’t a punishment. It’s actually quite fun if you spend more than an hour in it. It’s teamwork and strategy unlike any dungeon you’ll crawl. My best guess is this is Anets way of trying to get people to try all content.

Prior to this game I hated hated hated anything pvp. But I never really truly tried it prior. Just had an opinion, without testing it for myself.

Anet forcing the OCD in me to get map completion forced me to hang out in WvW for a couple of days while I got my POIs. Couple that with a welcoming map commander who helped me to get them, then I felt obliged to stick around and pitch in for the team.

Now I cannot think of any game mode I love more — simply because other players are unpredictable; it keeps the game fresh, and forces you to think. And there’s something utterly gratifying when you stake your first enemy after faceplanting (learning) so many times before. It leads to wanting to learn/hone your class further and then eventually handle 2v1s with little to no effort. And that invests you into your character further.

Good guess, but it doesn’t excuse Anet suddenly making old rewards harder to obtain, which conveniently extends the legendary process during a content drought. If they want more people in WvW, they should make it more rewarding in terms of gold gain, while also giving it new exclusive rewards. I’m simply not a fan of making people work harder for already existing content just to create playtime out of nothing.

Tomiyou.3790:

Wow, most of you guys clearly have no idea that raids are HoT content and that the maps were made during the developement of the expac itself. 6 ppl can’t do tha much content alone so quickly. They probably only did boss machanics and balance post HoT release, everything else has already been done prior to release.

That is something that I have been suspecting for a while. However, if more devs were working on the raids before the expansion came out, then the complaints about raid content taking up too much development time would actually be valid. The typical response to complainers is that only 6 people work on raids. Many would wonder why Anet spent so many resources on content designed for a small minority.

Mira.4906:

Everything in this game is given out too easily. I believe they said years ago the legendaries were meant to be long term goals. They were too easy to get then and they are too easy to get today, just a little longer with a few requirement changes. I propose they add some spvp reward track requirements to the legendary crafting so you can show off your mastery of all game modes not just 1.

If you want to show off sPvP mastery then get the Ascension. Adding additional requirements to legendaries that people already have won’t make them show off anything, as you have no way of knowing if they were crafted before or after the changes. Besides, the old legendaries can be bought, which makes such ideas even more redundant. If you want a legendary that shows mastery of every single game mode, just ask for a new one.

We need new rewards and new content in this game, not adding more work for rewards that have been available for years. Anet needs to stop reworking old content and focus on new content instead.

Substance E.4852:

Ganathar.4956:

Substance E.4852:

Astralporing.1957:

Jahroots.6791:

Palador.2170:

If they want to make sexy and revealing looks for one, then make it for both. If they want to make a fully protective look for one, then make it for both. Is that really too much to ask?

It might be, actually.

For one thing, I don’t think the demand for ‘sexy/revealing’ armour is the same for both sexes. There’s always an extremely vocal group that challenges the status quo in these topics, but in-game you’ll see far more male characters of the tough, cool or stylish variety than anything else.

Of course… since there’s a huge imbalance in options available.

While it would be nice to have some more skin showing on male outfits, there isn’t some big, untapped market.

Significantly more people used the lich outfit on women in both GW1 and 2 despite the armor being almost symmetrical while a little more revealing on men.

Do you have statistics to prove that? In the end it doesn’t truly matter though, because the raiment of the lich has those weird animal legs on males. In my opinion, most wouldn’t use it outside of Halloween just because the legs look weird. People who want revealing male outfits don’t want to change their leg structure as well.

On females the raiment of the lich has normal legs with very high heels. GW2 doesn’t have many options for such footwear, so it does stand to reason that it would be quite popular for female characters.

I’m quite certain it’s because of the side boob. People that had an opinion were upset that women got “kitten me boots” rather than goat legs like men got when the GW2 version first came out. I don’t recall a single post lamenting that men got stuck with hairy animal legs.

PC people are often the most vocal, and of course they would throw a fit over high heels. This doesn’t mean that most people like the goat legs. Don’t get me wrong, they are great for Halloween, probably even better than the female version. However, for general use I believe that people would go for something more human-looking.

Substance E.4852:

Astralporing.1957:

Jahroots.6791:

Palador.2170:

If they want to make sexy and revealing looks for one, then make it for both. If they want to make a fully protective look for one, then make it for both. Is that really too much to ask?

It might be, actually.

For one thing, I don’t think the demand for ‘sexy/revealing’ armour is the same for both sexes. There’s always an extremely vocal group that challenges the status quo in these topics, but in-game you’ll see far more male characters of the tough, cool or stylish variety than anything else.

Of course… since there’s a huge imbalance in options available.

While it would be nice to have some more skin showing on male outfits, there isn’t some big, untapped market.

Significantly more people used the lich outfit on women in both GW1 and 2 despite the armor being almost symmetrical while a little more revealing on men.

Do you have statistics to prove that? In the end it doesn’t truly matter though, because the raiment of the lich has those weird animal legs on males. In my opinion, most wouldn’t use it outside of Halloween just because the legs look weird. People who want revealing male outfits don’t want to change their leg structure as well.

On females the raiment of the lich has normal legs with very high heels. GW2 doesn’t have many options for such footwear, so it does stand to reason that it would be quite popular for female characters.

Jayne.9251:

OriOri.8724:

Jayne.9251:

Dear me. This thread makes me appreciate WvWers. Some of the comments are just unbelievable, coming from adults.

You think the WvW players are being any more mature than the PvE players? You must have been reading a different thread. The WvW players were the ones spouting off such gems as

“I had to suffer so its only right that you have to suffer too”

not the PvE players

No I think the point was that legendaries shouldn’t be something given away like candy. If you want it, you need to master both game modes. It makes getting one extra valuable because you put in the work, whether it’s in pve that wvwers hate but follow the rules, or in wvw, that pve players flatly refuse to do.

You’re not seeing the dichotomy?

The bottom line is you have a choice. Put in the work and get the shiny, or just don’t get one. It really doesn’t have that much impact on your game play by not having one.

That would be valid if there weren’t already a bunch of players who got the legendaries with the old way of getting the GoB. There is no way to tell who actually put in the “work”, as you put it. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to increase the time players need to complete existing content, because there hasn’t been new content for a while now, and that is never okay.

Anet can make the next legendaries require as much WvW as they want, but changing the rules on existing ones is not the way to go. They should be producing more content and rewards for WvW, instead of gating already existing rewards further behind it.

We have plenty of capes already. They start from the bottom of your character’s waistline and go all the way down to your feet. So many buttcapes to choose from!

But seriously, I can’t see capes being easy to design with the way armor is made in this game. I don’t think that they will ever be introduce in GW2.

The real problem is Anet moved the goalposts on the acquisition of existing weapons. They should be focusing on pumping out content and new rewards for the game modes that they want to support, instead of increasing the requirements for weapons that many people got previously with easier methods.

Instead of using cheap ways to extend the process of acquiring old legendaries, maybe they should have made WvW legendaries. Or if that was too much work, they could have just added new reward tracks with finishers or even a second WvW armor set. That is the sort of stuff that would encourage me to play WvW. In fact, I started playing after the latest patch because the changes for earning reward track progress + the new WvW potions enable me to get the Triumphant armor at a reasonable pace.

I just don’t see how anyone can support such a blatant attempt to extend the lifespan of very old content.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m all for equality but if they let male armors be as skimpy as some of the female ones, I’d be a little fearful of all the max-size max-hair male norn trolls running around in less than tighty-whities and boots.

The expression “Put a shirt on!” exists for a reason :P

What is wrong with a male norn fashion meta? It even fits their society.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ganathar.4956:

Diversity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it would be completely immersion-breaking. With all of that fighting and running around, I can’t see any character being chubby.

In Japan, Sumo are some of the healthiest and athletic people on the planet. In wrestling, The Big Show can do a moonsault.

Don’t they have a very specific training routine though? Does any culture in GW have anything like that at all?

draxynnic.3719:

I just did a look-over, and there are only about a dozen female light armours that I would consider ‘skimpy’ (although there are others that are a bit risque without going there – Inquest comes to mind).

Only four of those, however, are similarly revealing for male characters: Zodiac (which I’m not sure really counts, since it’s not really skin you’re showing but blue whatever-it-is), Feathered, Flamekissed (Feathered reskin) and Primitive.

Primitive is not revealing on males, you might mean tribal. Sadly, Anet keeps forgetting to reintroduce that set, along with other unavailable ones. I can understand that making armor sets requires work, but having armor sets ready and not using them boggles my mind.

kamedin.4698:

Ganathar.4956:

Diversity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it would be completely immersion-breaking. With all of that fighting and running around, I can’t see any character being chubby.

-cough-waypoints-cough-break-cough-immersion-cough-

There is an explanation for waypoints though. I want to know how you will explain a chubby adventurer.

Diversity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it would be completely immersion-breaking. With all of that fighting and running around, I can’t see any character being chubby.

Abracadabra.3296:

Urdfexe.9147:

Gilburt.9146:

Yeah, well there are plenty of options for you and very little for players who don’t want their female characters to have revealing armor…

That is simply not true. There are several female armors that show no skin at all, not even the face, and more that show only the face.

This is the case for my female warrior – her armor is very modest. Of course, I think that’s pretty easy with heavy and medium armors. Probably not so much for light.

Light armor is about 50/50. About half of them are conservative and the other half are revealing.

Ellie.5913:

Why can’t we all have some sexy non-concealing armor, female AND male? We had it in gw1, why not gw2 also. Whoever made the armor in gw1 REALLY needs to come work for gw2, we have a serious lack of sexyness here. ( in the dances too, gw1 had super sexy dances as well)

Because that would require actual form-fitting clothes instead of buttcapes and trenchcoats.

siliconsmiley.1369:

Guys don’t forget that these are the experimental armor sets, similar to the first step in making a legendary weapon. The experimental weapon skins are atrociously bad and look pretty much nothing like the final product. I guessing/hoping that this is the case with the experimental armors also.

Yes, but usually you add more stuff onto the experimental weapons to make them into precursors, and then you add even more to make it a legendary. That means that this is the base of the legendary armor set, so the buttcapes will likely stay.