In the original Guild Wars, Dragon Arena had proper matchmaking, great rewards, and was just fun. It wasn’t perfect, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The Guild Wars 2 equivalent however is completely unbearable to me, which is sad considering it’s potential.
Why I don’t like it:
• Most games seem to snowball horribly.
• Once a team gets ahead and zergs with all the power ups you become mostly helpless. Power ups can be picked up by players who already have them so good luck getting them reliably on the losing team (and have fun continuing to lose).
• The default auto-attack is so completely worthless you can’t even hit players directly in front of you reliably. If they start killing you before you can pick it up the better auto, you’re as good as dead.
• There’s no movement penalty for attacking and the projectile speed is high so it’s often extremely difficult, if not impossible to Line of Sight or escape from someone who is auto-attacking you to death on more health if you don’t have all the skills.
• No rewards. Literally no rewards. Unless you win 10 games. Then you get a mediocre reward. It feels like a complete waste of time. The Winter Wonderland JP was fun and amazingly rewarding where as this game mode gives you nothing.
• No matchmaking/queue. Teams don’t have to be perfectly balanced in terms of numbers and there’s no reason to not just leave if losing (no dishonor, etc.). Players can eventually get auto-balanced onto the enemy team, but this means that a player who had a guaranteed win now gets a guaranteed loss. Players entering the game mode also have to put up with being placed on the losing team halfway through a game for a guaranteed loss. There is no reward for losing and being steamrolled is not remotely fun, so this just wastes players time rather than balancing the teams.
• It’s buggy. Players who are 5 feet in front of me on flat ground are often “obstructed” while they have no problem killing me.
All that being said, the skills are cool, I like the arena design, and there is a lot of potential fun to be had. It’s just frustrating when some of the problems listed above get in the way. Dragon Ball just needs some loooooooooong overdue improvements and polish. It’s just sad ArenaNet seems to ignore improving recurring content. Wintersday and Halloween saw few major changes as far as I could tell. Some things were added, but stuff that already existed was left pretty much the same, despite having potential to improve.
Can get into Fractals either. So much for my dailies….
Originally, there was no “participation credit” mechanic and people complained the folks who swooped in at the end of a meta chain got the same credit as those who did all the pre-events. ANet has been iterating solutions to this issue ever since LS1, with varying degrees of success.
A problem with participation persisting past a person’s previous IP is that people would then build up participation credit and swap maps as often as possible to gain extra rewards. While there are counters to that, they are easier said than done, especially since the main goal in enabling persistence is to ensure that people don’t lose credit if they DC, so it needs to happen seamlessly for short-durations, which is exactly what happens when people try to swap maps for extra rewards.
tl;dr everyone (including ANet, probably) would like to see participation persist after DCs. Alas, it’s not as easy as it sounds to implement that, without creating other issues.
Well, all Verdant Brink IP’s are in sync, so there’s no way to get extra meta-event end chests. The meta event progression chests could then be capped at a certain amount per meta-event cycle to prevent switching to a new map with more meta-event progression for more chests. Then the only advantage to switching maps would be finding a map that’s more populated and active, which is exactly what I want.
As for DC’s, a separate system entirely is needed to stop those from being ridiculously punishing (e.g. DCing 15 seconds before receiving a meta-event end reward chest).
About every 3 years.
Why does participation have to be bound to a map’s IP? If your map is closing or you decide to taxi onto a better map, you lose all participation. This makes playing on empty maps even more unrewarding because if an opportunity to transfer to a better map arises you lose all of your progress. This is sometimes manageable, but if the meta is close to ending you definitely get punished for transferring to a different map IP.
Kind of a quality of life change, but I really wish this could be changed. During the odd hours of the day it can be difficult to get on a good map. It’s just hard to feel incentivized to play HoT open world when the mega server system puts you on an empty Verdant Brink and there are no taxis available.
it is like that for last year as well, live with it.
Because asking for content to be good is too much. Okay.
It has steamrolled ever game I played. One team just gets ahead and unlocks all the skills and then the enemy team doesn’t stand a chance. There’s no punishment for leaving,. so people leave and unbalance the teams… Then if you’re on the winning team you get auto balanced onto the losing team for a guaranteed loss. And sometimes when joining you get placed on the losing team instead of a fresh match. What a waste of time.
IThis lead to players quitting, and the actually participating players volunteering for the undermanned team for a free win credit.
Volunteering doesn’t give free win credit in my experience.
I have always wanted this. Would be amazing.
I haven’t bought an outfit in ages and probably won’t ever purchase one again. I want to be able to customize my appearance and outfits just mean you have to look like everyone else. Meh.
PSA: infinite gliding is no longer infinite
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Gilburt.9146
I don’t understand why people with infinite gliding unlocked still have to pay the endurance. The endurance cost was only added to prevent people without infinite gliding unlocked from cheating to glide infinitely, but apparently we all get “punished.”
I’ve died a far amount because of this change because I’m used to using up all of my endurance to glide faster, then I try to briefly drop to lower myself, and then fall 30 meters to my death. Some day I’ll get used to it…
Agreed. Legacy of the Foefire is now my least favorite map because the Lord is impossible to defend in a team fight. Your team has to worry about killing 3-5 enemy players. The enemy team just has to kill a single NPC that doesn’t dodge, barely heals, barely moves, and has no downed state. Broken.
I wouldn’t complain.
Yay, now a skill that does nothing after 2 seconds, will do nothing after 1 second. Good thing they increased the cool-down to keep it balanced. They could have added a 1.5s immobilize to the end effect, but no, that would actually make Shatterstone compelling and useful.
I wish Anet actually knew how to give scepter some love…
Yes.
/15char
Shared Inventory Slots are now available starting at 700 gems each in the Upgrade category of the Gem Store. These slots will allow an item placed in them to be accessible by any character on the account. These slots will appear at the top of your inventory once purchased. Each account can have up to 5 Shared Inventory Slots at this time.
Sorry, but it clearly states that a slot is for a single item…
Priced fine for me. Far superior to owning duplicates of the Salvage-o-Matic, Royal Terrace Pass, Permanent Bank Access, etc. If having expensive items available to all of your characters at any time isn’t worth 700 gems a slot (560 gems if you buy all 5 together), then don’t buy Shared Inventory Slots. They’re fine the way they are.
While the other maps have problems, I think Dragon’s Stand is the worst of all the Heart of Thorns maps. Here’s why:
1. You can only get on a new map for about a 20 minute window every two hours. Since Dragon’s Stand takes at least an hour to complete, you’re out of luck if you get on at the wrong time and don’t have much time to play, or don’t want to wait over an hour.
2. It has the least replayability of all the maps. All 3 lanes are fairly similar, which means regardless of where you go there is not a lot of diversity compared to other maps. On top of that many of the events repeat throughout the lane.
3. Most of the content in the lanes is just face-roll damage spam in a zerg. Meh. Some events are fun, and the bosses have some interesting skills, but most of it falls flat for me.
4. If another lane fails at their blighting tower, you have to spend 10-20 minutes running in a circle hoping the pain will end.
5. The Mouth of Mordremoth fight is, and I can’t stress this enough, BORING. SO BORING. MY GOD IS IT BORING. Most of the fight is spent standing around, attacking inanimate objects that don’t affect the bosses health, attacking champions whose deaths don’t affect the bosses health, getting insta-killed by the occasional Wyvern, watching Mordremoth smear your allies corpses all over the islands while being impossible to damage, and watching Mordremoth float while being impossible to damage. The only phase in which it actually feels like you’re doing something is the mortar shell phase…
6. As if the Mordremoth fight was not boring enough already, the Mouth often bugs out when it reaches 0% health forcing you to wait an additional 2 minutes before the unskippable cinematic starts…
7. Once you kill the most boring boss in the game, you only get 15 minutes to explore the map before it is closed, even if you finish 30-45 minutes before the maps are scheduled to reset. If you’re fast and only interested in getting all the Noxious Pods, then this is barely enough time, but if you want to explore the map and/or are slow then it is not.
8. The areas where Noxious Pods spawn are kind of annoying (though this is not the worst thing about this map). :/
9. Leystone armor, one of the unique skins offered from this map, is almost exclusively available through low-RNG drops from the Noxious Pods. Yay, grind.
Discuss.
Get matched up against a full pre-made.
Lose 500 to 20 because they’re superior in every way.
Lose 2 points because they have an amber paired with a ruby.
Great system.
If they just made it 25 uses for 250 gems (about 41 gold, so 1.6 gold per use) it would actually be worth it to buy to recover most upgrades that are used.
[rant]I just want to know what was going through their heads when they made it 250 gems FOR A SINGLE USE. Who the hell would actually pay for that? The only reason to use an upgrade extractor would be to save money by recovering an upgrade, but they make it cost 4 times as much as the most expensive upgrades… This item infuriates me because it’s so nonsensical. I used to hope for an item to remove upgrades without salvaging and then when they finally add one this is the trash we get.[/rant]
(edited by Gilburt.9146)
When you regularly speed run this puzzle you can find all kinds of small shortcuts, patterns in the exploding presents, timing of the snowflake respawns, etc. There’s absolutely a puzzle aspect to it.
Not really. You learn to roll when passing a snowman. That is basically it.
If that’s all you can think of then you have no idea what I’m talking about.
When you regularly speed run this puzzle you can find all kinds of small shortcuts, patterns in the exploding presents, timing of the snowflake respawns, etc. There’s absolutely a puzzle aspect to it.
Not really. You learn to roll when passing a snowman. That is basically it.
Yeah, you obviously have no idea what I’m talking about if that’s all you can think off.
When you regularly speed run this puzzle you can find all kinds of small shortcuts, patterns in the exploding presents, timing of the snowflake respawns, etc. There’s absolutely a puzzle aspect to it.
Going forward, GW2 needs to abbandon this “challenging group content” kitten and “e-sport pvp ladder” system and just focus on what MADE GW2 special.
Its a game, people can play at their own leisure for fun, with nothing overly complicated about that at all.
Because screw the players who actually want the game to be interesting and challenging, am I right!!!! Even now most of the game is extremely easy. Dungeons are easy, Low level fractals are easy, Core Tyria is easy. Heart of Thorns is more challenging for the average players, but much of it’s content is still relatively easy and completable with PuGs. The most significant ascended gear is trinkets/rings/amulets which are EASY to get. Ranked PvP, legendary weapons, ascended armor/weapons, coordinated groups, etc. ARE NOT REQUIRED to play almost all of GW2. Stop being so selfish and realize that the hardcore players want something to do as well.
This fix has absolutely nothing to do with the meta event. While an acknowledgment that they are aware of the problem and are working on a fix would be greatly appreciated, interpreting a bug fix to a mission as them ignoring Nuhoch lane is silly.
Fair enough, but I just wish Nuhoch lane would be a priority as it’s really what is holding back this map more than anything else. Very frustrating that it hasn’t been addressed yet, and they’ve had plenty of time. :/ But yeah, an acknowledgement that they were working on it would at leats make me happy.
Reduced the difficulty scaling for “Collect chak eggs so the ogres can research them,” lowering the time it takes to complete with large groups of players.
Thanks so much for fixing Ogre Lane, which was already considered an easier lane, rather than Nuhoch Lane, which is borderline impossible to complete. I’ve failed the TD Meta every time I have tried it, and it’s almost always because Nuhoch Lane failed to get the Gerent to surface. How can you guys be so out of touch with your own game???
And why is it a 2 hour wait before you can try again??? It doesn’t take nearly that long to complete the events in preparation for the next Gerent… This map, which is one of my favorites, is a ghost-town in part because you guys can’t fix it after more than a month….
/endrant
December???? Seriously?
Couldn’t agree more. I love dungeons and think they have a ton of potential, they just need some attention. Dungeons could be as interesting as the new content, but they need some upgrades to make them more challenging, which would take work (but far less than designing content from scratch).
I also desperately want new dungeons. Raids will be fun, but I want 5-person instanced content that takes place on the world map (and is hence more relevant to the current day lore). I’m not exactly going to be able to find 10 people to play super challenging content with every night. Each campaign should have at least one new dungeon (or more) along with a new Raid.
Seriously, I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t even get myself to play one of the meta-events because I know I’m just going to crash and all of my time will have been for nothing. Even if you’re in a party with friends it doesn’t matter. The maps fill up and you have to spend 10 minutes spamming to join on a friend with no guarantee at success. It’s ridiculous. You can also just be unlucky and crash 10 seconds before the meta-event ends and miss the reward even if you manage to get back in. What’s the point? The last time I did Dragons Stand I crashed and when I made it back in I was to afraid to participate in the epic boss fight because I might just crash again and lose everything. My friend crashed 1 minute after I did and it took him 5 minutes of spamming join to make it back in (barely in time to get the end reward).
How can you release content that depends on people staying on maps for long periods of time to build up a reward through participation and not have a system in place to reserve their spot and rewards if they crash/DC??? If you disconnect you can’t even queue to get back in, you just have to click (over and over again) and pray…. This has been needed since Tequatl was revamped and why you wouldn’t take the time to add it before releasing the expansion is beyond me. At the very least you can leave our characters on the map for 2 minutes so I can have a chance to sign back in and still be on the map without having missed any rewards….
I don’t just want at least some of the dungeon rewards returned, I want the dungeon rewards rebalanced (why does HotW 3 reward the same as CoF 1???) and I want dungeons to be updated to be as challenging (or at least engaging) as Heart of Thorns content. Dungeons have a ton of potential to be the BEST 5-person content in the game, but they haven’t gotten love from Anet since launch. AND I WANT NEW DUNGEONS (even more than Raids)!!!! :P
Seriously, almost no one does dungeons compared to before the nerf. What a waste of content that has such great potential…. TA Aether is one of my favorite dungeons to do in the game. Why not make all dungeons be as fun/interesting (maybe not all as challenging for pugs of course)…
No.
/15charsblabla
Thanks for your waste of space post. Don’t bother next time.
You were having a lot of fun doing Hero Challenges, getting satisfaction from finding them and completing them. How is that gone? Could it be that the activity itself was not fun, just the reward?
Yeah, they should just remove all rewards from everything, because rewards aren’t satisfying at all. Rewards/achievements aren’t satisfying at all. We should just start with everything unlocked. Would not ruin the game at all… I said the satisfaction of seeking them out was gone, not that the game-play wasn’t fun.
When I consider alts, I’m very glad for the change. I’d also like to have the spec sooner for playing with in the jungle. Besides, they’re not going to put it back the way it was.
There are better ways to cater to people with alts than to make everything faceroll easy and effortless. E.G. It’s easier for people who have played the game for a while to level alts due to Tomes of Knowledge, etc.
As a pvper whose forcing myself to glide off cliffs and die from gliding latency to get my tempest shoulder skin, I polietely disagree.. some people don’t have the time to grind for masteries to get mastery gated hero points, nor the pve skills to solo champions.
I don’t have time to PvP, I should just get all PvP exclusive skins handed to me.
250 Hero Points is way too easy. Because people have already complained about Hero Challenges being required to unlock some of the base-profession skills/traits, there are now a ridiculous amount of leftover Hero Points from the completion of the central Tyria map. I already have the central Tyrian map completed 100%, so with the reduction to 250 Hero Points I only have to complete FOUR Hero Challenges in Heart of Thorns to unlock my elite specialization.
This is RIDICULOUS. All of the satisfaction of finding and completing new Hero Challenges is gone, and I’ve barely even started on the second map. What happened to elite specializations as a form of character progression? I was having a blast completing Hero Challenges and now that I ALREADY have my elite specialization (along with 73 extra Hero Points) it doesn’t even feel like an accomplishment.
Please at least partially revert this change. Either unlocking the elite specialization should require more Hero Points (320-350 total), or at least some of the Hero Points (80-100) in the base game should be required to unlock the base-skills/traits of a profession. I never asked to be handed my Elite Specialization for free and now thanks to senseless whining Anet has gone back on their word.
All that was ever required to unlock the Elite Specializations was to play the game and and since it was possible to unlock each elite specialization piece by piece people got to play their elite specialization while exploring the new Magumma zones. I can understand making the elite specialization cost maybe 350 Hero Points so people without map completion could quickly unlock enough of their elite specializations skills/traits to start trying it out, but 250 Hero Points is ridiculous. Playing the game you purchased to unlock your elite specialization IS NOT GRIND.
This blog post is infuriating. Dungeons account for a huge amount of the base-game’s “end-game” content and instead of committing to improving dungeons (which is both necessary and A LOT less work then creating completely new content) they have opted to pretend they don’t exist and simply nerf the rewards (that’s how I read the last paragraph). Why does the PvE in the base-game have to remain awful while the PvE of Heart of Thorns is more fun and engaging? With HoT being so small the base-game is still going to be the majority of the content (and the first content new players will see) and knowing that Anet is committed to ignoring it, rather than improving it, just SUCKS.
I love the idea of dungeons and want more challenging 5-person content to experience the lore of the upcoming expansions and knowing the only 5-person content were going to get is fractals is such a let down. I like fractals, but they aren’t going to be directly related to the current events in Tyria and that’s why we need dungeons too… Raids will be fun, but if you just have 5 people it sucks that you are limited to Fractals for new end-game challenging content.
Very disappointed Anet is taking the lazy route of ignoring their old content instead of improving it…
Wrath of Justice is the only thing that could possibly make Perfect Inscriptions useful for me, so the fact that Perfect Inscriptions doesn’t affect Wrath of Justice is disheartening. Please fix.
With so many guardian traits effecting symbols, it’s kind of a let down that neither of these weapons have symbols. Every Mesmer weapon set has a clone/phantasm (although these are more directly related to their class mechanic), so why not let every guardian weapon set of a symbol?
All some symbol related traits are worthless with these weapons. Smite could easily be turned into a symbol with minor changes (the way it pulses damage doesn’t necessarily even have to be changed) and this would make it useful with damage modifying traits in the zeal spec. Sword would be more difficult to give a symbol, though I would be okay with a symbol skill replacing Zealot’s Defense personally. Neither of these symbols would necessarily have to pulse boons either.
Worthless in its current form. 180s cd for a skill that takes so long to cast it in place that you couldn’t possibly succeed casting it in almost any PvP situation where it would be helpful.
Frankly, it should have it’s heal reduced to a flat amount, perhaps 5k, so it can scale with healing power (healing power should be good for something in this game…), the passive radius should be 360, it’s cd should 75s (give or take), it’s cast time should be 2s, and you should be able to move while casting. Then it might see some place in sPvP over Renewed Focus. Maybe.
Just a simple question.
I understand giving the base game to new players who buy HoT for free, as that obviously makes it easier for new people to start playing. However, if new players get the base game for free, why can’t veteran players get a new character slot for free?
New players will buy HoT and have immediate access to the revenant, whereas the current playerbase will pay $50 and still have to worry about spending an additional $10 on a character slot. That just doesn’t feel fair.
I don’t understand why it’s even a trait. If power guardians don’t have to trait for retaliation to scale off of power, why should condi guardians have to waste a trait slot on it? Retaliation should just be redesigned to always scale off of the sum of a guardians power and condition damage (perhaps with diminishing returns past a certain point, if sinister stats make it too powerful, for example). This would make retaliation useful for power guards, condi guards, and even celestial guardians.
And yeah, at the very least this trait should not have to compete with a grandmaster trait that every condi guardian would want. Frankly since it’s ONLY changing which stat retal scales off of, I believe it belongs on the adept level if it really has to be a trait… :/
I’m very disappointed with the Radiance grandmaster selection as there are now two traits for condition guardians and absolutely nothing for a zerker guardian. :/ I want to be able to use the Radiance line as a power guardian and not be forced to take a GM trait based around signets.
I just spent an hour in Arah Path 1 and lost internet connection when the last boss was at 10% health (my connection had been stable for the entire night until then). By the time my friends noticed I was gone, the boss was dead and I had missed out on the entire dungeon reward.
Why should all my efforts be immediately forgotten just because I DC and miss the last 5 seconds of the path? I’m not posting just to QQ, I simply want this to be changed. If you disconnect, your character should remain in the instance (and possibly open world maps?) for 5 minutes (at least) to give you a chance to earn your reward. An unlucky DC shouldn’t cost you the entire reward for the path. In the original Guild Wars your character remained in-game after a disconnect and it should be the same for the sequel. I’ve missed to many rewards from random disconnects.
Please do this. The Tomes aren’t that effective now anyway and these new skills would be a lot more interesting. Tomes could work, but it would be better to redesign them and add them back in later with an elite specialization.
Maybe rework Ele elite skills too? Pretty much none of them are useful as of now and it would be a shame if the only good Ele elite belongs to an elite specialization.
I don’t understand why specializations are anything more than a fighting style. A Chronomancer is merely a mage that manipulates time, they don’t by definition have to have any particular goals or ambitions. Why does my guardian, when he chooses to specialize in combat with traps and a longbow, all of a sudden have to adopt new background and ideology that I don’t identify him with?
I guess we’ll just stand on ledges and pewpew like the Rangers.
How to Withdrawal Forward:
This is how I consistently do it in one fluid motion.
1. Bind Free Camera to a key. Bind About Face to a key.
2. Complete the following actions in this order:
[Press and hold Free Camera]->[Press About Face]->[Activate Withdrawal]->[Right Click]->[Lift Free Camera]
Note: I usually just hold the run forward key throughout this process.
Explanation:
Holding the Free Camera key down prevents your screen from turning with About Face. Pressing About Face sets you up to Withdrawal forward. Right click locks your screen in the direction it faces so you can lift Free Camera and still keep the screen facing forwards.
(edited by Gilburt.9146)
Dragonhunter makes no sense as a specialization name and Chronomancer does. The Mesmer elite specialization name does make sense. Why? Because you specialize as a Chronomancer to manipulate time. Do you specialize as a Dragonhunter to hunt dragons? No. You will hunt and fight all types foes, not just “big game.”
Also, there is nothing innately Guardian about being a Dragonhunter. Why couldn’t a Warrior or Ranger hunt dragons? There’s not really any reason Dragonhunter fits the Guardian anymore than it could fit those professions. Why wouldn’t an armored master of combat or master of the nature want to hunt big game? They are arguably even more suited to the name than Guardians.
Personally I would prefer Sentinel as it fits the theme of defending from a range with longbow and setting traps.
Edit: Also, lol at the OPs argument. “These names are used elsewhere at some place and some time: therefore they are bad.” What?
(edited by Gilburt.9146)
Sentinel, Seeker, and Warden would all be good options that would be well suited to the longbow/traps I feel (with sentinel being my favorite).
One thing I dislike about Dragonhunter is there’s nothing innately “Guardian” about it. Why couldn’t a Warrior or Ranger also be a “big game hunter?” What does dragonhunting have to do with guardian over other professions? And why are guardians “big game hunting?” It sounds more like a hobby.
It won’t stop me from playing the game and I doubt it will be changed, but I just don’t like the idea of my guardian being called a Dragonhunter. I’m doing more than just hunting dragons and certainly doing more than “hunting big game.” The name of the mesmer specialization perfectly fits what the specialization does: manipulate time. Dragonhunter does not. I’m not just hunting dragons, I’m fighting humans, Sylvari, Skrit, dragons, etc. It’s not like it’s a specialization you select only when you want to slay large foes.
The new Chronomancer elite is essentially a ground-targeting AoE field that pulls foes towards the center while dealing damage. This is what I have always wanted Tornado to be, rather than the weak, cheesy, situational transform that it is. Elementalists have so much damage, but none of their elites are very useful for securing that damage. I wish so much that Tornado functioned like Gravity Well rather than being a transform.
FGS and Tornado are both auxiliary skill bars that almost always reduce your damage. Tornado even can make you more vulnerable to incoming damage as it removes your access to utility skills while only providing minor buffs to your survivability. Meanwhile Glyph of Elementals is only particularly useful in 1v1 fights and even then it is still easily killed (Not to mention the fact that it is inferior to Supply Crate while having a similar cool-down).
It’s time for Elementalists to get an elite skill that actually has synergy with their profession and it’s just a shame the only chance they will ever have for such an elite skill is through an elite specialization as Anet has more than demonstrated that they are completely unwilling to improve (or redesign) the existing Elementalist elites.
Conjure weapon damage is too cheesy. Lich Form and Deathshroud 111111 spam are fine though…. :/
Yeah, it’s not there. Searched for it multiple times after looking up the location.
Overall I like the new dailies. I like the idea of them directing players to specific areas of the game that I normally wouldn’t feel motivated to go back to. I want more of them at a time however. I like the idea of being directed to a particular jumping puzzle by a daily (otherwise I don’t feel motivated to do jumping puzzles as there rewards are pretty insignificant). I would also like dailies for a particular path of a particular dungeon. This would make them more akin to the Zaishen quests of GW1 which I liked alot. Why not have a daily for a particular dungeon, jumping puzzle, events in a particular zone, etc. every day?
And the main reason I hate solo Q is still in the game. Ty Anet.