Guild Wars 2

Chalk it up to another “foundation” that was abandoned, sacrificed to the god, “Iterate”.

Now, whenever they roll out another blog post about some great idea, and how it is going to be a foundation for exciting new things going forward, I sigh. At this point I have almost zero confidence that we will get anything beyond one elite specialization for each profession, or that there will be any development of guild halls beyond what we get at HoT launch.

We’ve been sold the “hey, this new thing is the beginning that wil let us do amazing things going forward”, only to see little to now maturing of that idea because a new one catches ArenaNet’s attention.

Dante.1763:

Nope. Everytime. To tired to bother reposting any of the arguments against here. Give this thread a day or two and it will die off again till somone makes the next mount thread. And then the same people will come in saying Yes or No. Like it happens every single time

Isn’t it beautiful to have something to rely on?

Sins.4782:

After these changes, if you want to fully unlock your characters, you’ll have the choice of either doing hero challenges in open world, or… doing hero challenges in open world. I really don’t understand how you guys can’t see that this is a huge kittening step backwards. Forcing players to do content they don’t like to unlock skills and traits that are used everywhere is a very bad thing, and certainly not fun.

Agreed.

This seems to be the history of development in this game. We keep bouncing back and forth between more choice and less. Smooth progression, and grindy.

While the first trait revamp sucks, so does this one. So many people keep comparing this to our current system, conveniently forgetting the one we had at launch.

All signs currently point to ArenaNet not caring whether they erode player trust by setting back progress and requiring that we earn it over again.

History also shows that they are not firmly committed to their early statement that WvWers could completely progress their characters without leaving WvW. Some design choices over the last three years have taken steps in that direction, others have taken steps away.

Buying gem stuff with gold isn’t supposed to be cheap. The system is supposed to make most players consider that their time is better spent throwing down a little real cash every now and then.

Ashen.2907:

People who bought this game perhaps in part because there were no mounts should not be affected in the manner you describe.

That argument holds absolutely no water when it comes to GW2. We have enough design reversals in the last three years that the idea of staying true to some idea of why people chose to buy the game is meaningless.

People who bought the game in part because of easily reached BiS gear plateau were thrown under the bus for Ascended gear.

People who were sold on dungeons with story and three explorable modes were left in the desert when ArenaNet quietly stopped developing dungeons.

People excited about ArenaNet’s hype around min-games now run past the tavern brawl, shooting gallery, and portal to the polymock arena no longer even noticing they are there.

The Extended Experience got dropped in favor of crowdsourcing development through the API, guild missions seem to have been abandoned, possibly Fractals as well.

You have to remember that ArenaNet loves their “iterating”. Anything you have your heart set on can be abandoned or torn down and rebuilt in a completely different way.

“Nothing is off the table.”

Read a book. Take up a musical instrument. Lose 15 pounds. Train for a half marathon. Take one of the free online courses offered by MIT. Explore a new art medium. Do a detailed study of biblical eschatology. Learn a language (maybe ASL!). Spend concentrated time with a family member. Get to know your downtown. Try a tabletop RPG again and remember how awesome they could be.

Or, conversely….

Make sure you max out skill challenges on all characters. Stock up on 60 tomes for your revenant. Make sure each profession has a cosmetic look that fits the new elite specialization. Make sure they all have ascended weapons (but skip ascended armor unless you’re a masochist). Stock up on time-gated materials you may need to build an ascended weapon for your Revenant. Make sure you have enough Karma to outfit said Rev in exotic gear on day one. Do GW2 Forum pvp.

Palindrome.8904:

- Farm humanoids in the desired level range. Loot bags will give scaled cloth and you will get some lower level armor.

Palindrome.8904:

- Farm humanoids in the desired level range.

Palindrome.8904:

- Farm humanoids…

Does anyone else find that phrase disturbing?

Shades of Soylent Green….

Agreed. Thanks for bringing it back up to page one. It’s a real issue.

You’ll have everything unlocked in PvP, so you’ll only need to PvE to get up to speed for WvW.

Scrolls of knowledge = skill point (soon to be hero point)
Tomes of knowledge = level

So tomes will still work, scrolls will be converted. You can get your new character to 80 just fine without PvE, but if you want to unlock all skills, traits, and elite specializations, you’ll need to do PvE.

Leaven.3704:

I suppose that’s true, I just associate them with each other, as they’re both part of the ‘revamping’ that ANet is doing to the game

Agreed. It’s like some of these changes are the appetizer for the main course that is HoT.

After you’ve discovered your host is serving you Salmon Mousse that’s gone bad, it’s hard to be excited for the Filet Mignon to come.

You can still level to 80 with your tomes.

The problem is that you will only have 400 hero points to spend on reward tracks to unlock skills and traits. That might be all right if you’re content with one build, but if you want access to all traits and skills, you’ll need to do skill challenges to get 65 more. And if you want the elite specialization, you’ll need to do more skill challenges. Some people are estimating about 100.

SkyShroud.2865:

Race change involve personal storyline change and that storyline has a huge impact to your character progression. Unless, they reset your storyline entirely when you do a race change.

A huge impact?

I don’t see it. At level 80, the game seems to assume I’ve completed the personal story whether I have or not. I’ve run into a small amount of dialogue in the LS that caters to my race, but doesn’t reflect any of the small number of choices I made during the personal story, including whether I stopped half way through or ever started it to begin with. The only thing it really impacts is my story journal, which could be wiped if I choose to race change.

As far as cultural armor, it all costs the same per tier no matter which race, right? So it could just convert to the equivalent armor of your new race. Or it could become account bound and no longer equipable by your character after race change.

As to racial skills, hero points could be refunded to a race changed character so they have to respend on the reward tracks and make the choice of whether they want the new race’s skills or not.

Maybe people are right, and the coding for race goes too deeply into the game to be easy to change, but I have no idea why that would be true. It’s largely a cosmetic difference.

Rauderi.8706:

It’s just as worrisome as why we can’t just make butter. It seems that Bandits and Flame Legion have advanced culinary technologies that we must loot them for. They’ve also discovered how to make clothing from nothing!

Don’t forget the chocolate. I’m concerned that bandits and Skritt don’t obtain it from shade-grown sources.

cadmiumgreen.8712:

You mean consensual tummy rubs between adults, followed by a rousing round of chasing the laser pointer.

And finished off with a mutual tongue bath and anal gland sniff?

ekarat.1085:

Just a quick check — do we know for certain that each Skill/Hero Challenge will give only 1 Hero Point? You have a valid point, which is why I suspect ~165 sounds like too many, unless they are a lot more abundant in HoT, there are more ways of getting them, or you get more than 1 Hero Point per Challenge.

I’ve been wondering about the whole 100 number myself.

They’ve said they want to add more elite specializations. We only have about 190 skill challenges in the entire game at the moment. If it takes 165 to get all the core unlocked plus the first elite, there would have to be a huge increase in the number of skill challenges per zone to make future elite specializations possible.

CrimsonDX.4821:

I love the more evil looking areas: Orr, the Brand, Flame Legion places. I really hope we get some areas that look like DoA from GW1.

Huh. I find Fireheart Rise to be one of my least favorite places in the game. All the burnt and smoking becomes monotonous after any length of time. I try to get in and out of that zone as quickly as possible.

The concept art is great, but the zone doesn’t read as dramatic as that to me. It comes across as dusty and drab, which is pretty realistic for a burnt area, but not very exciting. I keep wondering how a group of Charr, no matter how much they love fire, manage to exist in such an area.

I love the atmosphere of Frostgorge Sound, with its wide open, frozen vistas. It also has some beautiful underwater areas.

Mount Maelstrom is epic with the volcano, jungle, and Infinite Coil Reactor.

I love the transition of Timberline Falls from snowy mountain down green foothills.

The canyons of Drytop are beautiful receding into the distance, and the oasis was wonderful to encounter the first time.

Extreme.8350:

then why not play norn u can make a chick look like arnold schwarzenegger

I’ll just leave this here.

ades.1386:

What????… In order for that to happen you would 100% have to totally redo every single skill in the game, redo animations and rework targeting, Seige weapons would have to be redone, auto targeting would not exist calling a target wouldnt work… I dont see a way this could ever happen.

I don’t know, ArenaNet seems to have a fondness for completely reworking things.

Ardid.7203:

IMO both males and females should be able to use feminine, masculine and unisex clothes, and mix them as the player please.

I’m imagining the possible clipping issues. 8O

RoseofGilead.8907:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

But isn’t the goal to look heroic?

Most actual heroes are pretty average in the looks department, I’d bet.

Well, technically, with the whole fireball-shooting and great sword throwing, they’d be closer to “superheroic”.

Donari.5237:

You don’t have to repeat the exact same things to get back to the exact same place, you have to do some different things to get to a new place.

No, I had to go do something different than I originally did to get to the exact same place, complete unlock of core skills and traits.

Future leveling and gaining of traits and skills will be so much nicer than they’ve been under the NPE/world event trait unlock system that it boggles me people would rather keep the current system rather than invest a little sliver of time in stepping onto the new path.

I wouldn’t rather keep the current system. It’s terrible. I wouldn’t have minded keeping the original system, however. Nor would I have minded if they had offered some sort of grandfathering system.

I know, people have a lot of reasons why grandfathering is impossible. But it’s not impossible, it’s a choice on ArenaNet’s part. Yes, they want the new Hero Points to be a limited pool, and yes, grandfathering would mess with that. It’s still a choice to value their new limited pool idea over the trust of their players that we won’t have to go back and earn something we already have just because they decided to redesign.

No, I don’t believe I’m owed anything. I do, however, worry about the longevity of the game if player trust continues to be undermined.

No, Leaven, you’re not the only one. At this point, unless HoT is crazy cheap to start with, I’m thinking I’ll wait until it goes on deep sale to pick it up.

Having to go re-earn unlocks for my characters has left me pretty “meh” about GW2.

Donari.5237:

Was it fair to horse and buggy manufacturers that the automobile stole their clients and they had to swap over to car chassis production to stay competitive?

Not sure how real life tech advances apply. It’s a game. The vast majority of games are designed around the concept of being fair.

But that’s all moot. Philosophical arguments are just that, and what really matters is how far ArenaNet can undermine player confidence and still maintain an active player base willing to spend money.

Each time they reset progess and require it to be earned again, they erode player trust. If players get to the point where they feel their progress might be lost at the whim of the game designers, they lose motivation to play and pay.

Lian Olsam.9541:

that’s horrible… i dont wanna do the skill challenge with 9 characters….
where is the sense to force player already know the game to go around the map to do useless and boring stuff again?!
i hope anet will change their mind

You’ll have 400 points just from being level 80. They’ve said 465 will completely unlock the core skills and traits. And you’ll get the hero points from any skill hero challenges you’ve already done.

Not that I’m defending the change. It sucked to have to go back on several alts that had access to every trait and get them up to 65 skill challenges just to keep them where they are currently.

roachsrealm.9284:

makes sense to me.. necromancers deal with life force and death. object contain neither of these. I’ve never seen a necromancer’s minions have trouble tearing apart objects.

Are minion builds condi-based? I don’t have a lot of knowledge of Necros.

I’d think inflicting dry-rot on wooden objects would fit right into Necro’s style. Entropy in general, even.

roachsrealm.9284:

I think only burning makes sense here. there is no need to convert other conditions.

So the professions that apply burning get some relief, but others like Necro are left out in the cold?

Conncept.7638:

This is incorrect both culturally and anatomically, Asura are live birth mammals complete with breasts according to the developers, and they actually use gender-specific pronouns more than other races, such as geniusette. If anything clear and proper gender definitions may in fact be more important to them than other races, possibly because their gender isn’t as obvious at a glance. The ‘lacking gender dichotomy’ thing is something people have assumed and perpetuated since launch solely because of how Asura only have male armor, with no real lore to back it up.

They may have mammary glands that produce milk, just like, one would assume, the Charr. That doesn’t mean they have breasts similar to a human female. You only have to look at the models to see that. My housecats are female mammals, but would still be unable to fill in the bustier/corset shapes of much of the female armor in this game.

And gender specific pronouns are a cultural artifact that has nothing to do with whether a species is sexually dimorphic.

Not to mention, it’s clear both races do have some sexual dimorphism. From their face shapes to Charr tails, there is differentiation between sexes. But they don’t have the sexual dimorphism of humans, which is what a lot of the game’s female armor is built around.

Diovid.9506:

Gibson.4036:

Ardid.7203:

Why? I understand the Traits being reset, but why the Skills?

Skills and Traits are both now earned with the core mastery tracks.

The mastery system and traits/skills do not have anything to do with eachother. But the new trait unlock system does have everything to do with the new skill unlock system.

Sorry, miswrote. I meant “reward”, not “mastery”. Will go back and fix.

The point is that you use hero challenges to unlock both along progression tracks within the same system. So skills and traits need to be reset.

Adngel.9786:

Really are we going to have this issue repeated on a new topic every day?.

Honestly? Because there hasn’t been much else to talk about.

When meaty info is released, everyone comes to the forum to talk about that. When we’re all waiting for the next specialization reveal or guild hall info, we get “we need a release date” and “so how about those mounts?” posts.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Every object in the game would have to be set up for this to work.

You can’t poison a weapon rack.

You can’t confuse a weapon rack.

You can’t blind a weapon rack.

You cant bleed a weapon rack.

You cant stun a weapon rack.

etc.

Someone’s going to have to set immunities to every single object in the entire game…. unless of course they just do the lazy thing and allow all the conditions in the game to affect every object…. which would be really dumb imo.

It looks like you probably just responded to the OP, since the answer to one of your points is contained farther down in the thread.

On one hand, I can already poison a rock elemental, bleed an ice elemental, and confuse an ooze. Given that there is no great hue and cry about the immersion breaking nature of this, why would it be impossible to bleed a weapon rack or poison a gate? Are you calling for ArenaNet to go back and set up immunities for all creatures to fix these nonsensical condition applications?

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be terribly complicated to just have the name switch when a condition is applied to an object. When Necros poision a door, it instead becomes rot. When Mesmers confuse a centaur weapon rack, they insead warp it. When an Elementalist burns a totem, hey, they still burn the totem.

Ardid.7203:

Why? I understand the Traits being reset, but why the Skills?

Skills and Traits are both now earned with the core reward tracks.

Request for MarkoNS:

Please consider titling your post so that it reflects the contents. A huge number of posts are “requests for Anet”. It’s nice to get an idea from the title of what’s contained in the thread.

KyreneZA.8617:

Also, if they are Charr or Asuran, or known to be AFK I let them bleed out. No amount of XP could motivate me to revive in those cases.

You’re missing out. Revive those AFKers enough times and they’ll come back to find themselves naked and needing to waypoint out to an armor repairer.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

As for spirit shards, we should be able to get them relatively reliably from champ bags if they don’t change the drop rate of scrolls (since scrolls are becoming shards).

Oh, goody! I needed more reason to champ farm.

MiniEquine.6014:

but seriously, you might be able to benefit from it to some degree even if you have a personal guild with no one in it but you.

I sure hope so. I hope we can get a basic guild hall with minimal effort, and leave the big shiny stuff to the large guilds.

I’m glad my little four person family guild can at least afford to build the guild vaults, though we’ll never do a guild mission. I hope guild halls function similarly.

dkspins.4670:

What I do know is that the uncertainty of a confirmed date of release has helped me decide between ArenaNet’s HoT and FF xiv’s Heavensward. ymmv

The vagueness, plus the annoyance of having to go out and do skill challenges for each alt to make sure they don’t get nerfed, has lead me to try out Marvel Heroes for the first time.

skullmount.1758:

Gibson.4036:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-a-first-look-at-guild-halls-at-the-e3-pc-gamingshow/

Yup. I want to hope for a lot of concrete info, but I highly doubt it. Colin has a habit of being extremely wordy, vague, and skirting the question.

But I’m sure there will be a couple of very pretty pictures.

Manuelito.6081:

As for trinkets, we have alternative ways to get them (i.e. laurels, Guild Commendations, WvW tokens, etc.), so I do not see the necessity to bring JewelCrafting up to 500. It would be redundant.

Redundancy is good.

It gets us back to the “Play how you want” design goal that ArenaNet expressed early in the game’s life. Players should have many different ways to approach rewards.

Being able to craft Ascended accessories would be a boon for players who don’t want to do guild missions (hey, they were fun the first several dozen times) or be gouged 50(!) Ecto by the Laurel merchant.

Back items are already crafted via the Mystic Toilet.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-a-first-look-at-guild-halls-at-the-e3-pc-gamingshow/

Build templates would also help, if there’s just no way to make conditions affect objects. If I could quickly swap out of condition builds to go mano a mano with a door, it would be a reasonable workaround.

Still, I’d rather have doors that could be set on fire.

Problem is, neither race has the sexual dimorphism of humans. With the way most female armor is designed in this game, there needs to be female human like breasts for them to work.

mcwurth.2081:

Diovid.9506:

- Break bars.

what is this?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Breakbar

In response to the “oh well, suck it up” response that is being offered, I’ll just point out that not everyone will just suck it up.

The more ArenaNet decides to monkey with core systems and completely ignore lost progression, the more people will just decide it’s not worth playing the game any more. I didn’t go farming skill scrolls just for Revenant, but I did go back and make sure to get at least 65 skill challenges done on all of my characters. All but one already had access to every trait and most skills.

It took considerably more play than an afternoon. And it left a sour taste in my mouth, and I haven’t played much since.

Tommyknocker.6089:

A nice compromise would be to allow a “rot” condition on objects so as to speed up the process IMO.

An excellent idea, for those literalist immersion people who hate the idea of a bleeding door. Let conditions just have a different, appropriate name when applied to objects.

Bleeding → Structurally Unsound
Burning → Burning
Confusion → Warping
Poison → Rot
Torment → Stress (in the original, engineering sense)

BrendaEM.2096:

I also feel this bad thing, thinking about it all, with the coming of the expansion, and ArenaNet destroying of the Seven Wonder of Guild Wars 2, like a male cat killing all the kittens to make the female more receptive of its offspring.

I agree. LA made with ships, the Great Collapse, and the Zephyr Sanctum docked above Labyrynthine Cliffs were some of the most interesting places in the game. Now we have a new LA that looks like some sort of fascist capitol architecture, the shiny, sanitized Queen’s pavilion, and the Zephyr Sanctum is a smoking ruins scattered across Dry Top.

But the world can evolve!

Woohoo.

If they were going to do something to grandfather or refund, I expect they would have announced it by now. We had a long thread already with this concern, and it received no ArenaNet attention.

And this is one of the reasons that Ascended was such a stupid idea. A firm, easily achieved gear ceiling allows for players to constantly adapt without a huge loss in time and gold. Instead, progression addicts convinced ArenaNet that we needed a long, expensive crawl to BiS gear unprecedented in any of the tiers leading up to it.

Ah well. Three year’s water under the bridge.