Guild Wars 2

Character slots, bag slots and bank tabs go on sale regularly.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

Thank you for posting this! I was at the HoT announcement Saturday and the traits question was one of the few things I felt was missing. It’s very encouraging to hear that the devs are paying attention to our feedback.

I would love some more clarification on whether the revamp will happen before the expansion release?

What are you including in the word community?

Forum will be full of whine – logically, since the official forums are where people with problems stop first.

Reddit will have a more balance discussion overall, but also be much less polite.

Players will keep playing regardless. There are things that could be announced that would cause a steep population drop, but I think ANet is smart enough to avoid colossal missteps.

If ANet does add serious racism towards a specific group of players, I’ll probably quit.

It works in TES because that’s a single-player game. There are already people bragging about trolling Sylvari in-game, it’s going to get much, much worse if ANet puts canon support behind racism. There would have to be much better control of in-game trolling and unwelcome RP. I don’t think ANet has the CS team to really manage that.

Hopefully the story points out that what happened is Sylvari lost their uniqueness and are now like every other race, instead of going ‘Bad Sylvari OH NOES’. Every race has their dragon followers or evil faction. There’s no reason to single out Sylvari.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

It’s not racism if it’s towards the sylvari.

Salad is meant to be eaten, not reasoned with.

You forgot your /sarcasm tag.

Eirdyne.9843:

Ahh, that makes good sense. I mostly play the games I do through word of mouth by friends. I don’t usually trust much what developers says, especially Anet, because they only say their plans. They aren’t playing the game, they’re making it. So Devs usually have a wildly different idea about their games than the players and their experiences with the game.

My friends are generally of the opinion PAX isn’t meaningful because nothing the Devs usually say to us via the forms is more than vague comment. It’s almost unicorns to get real time and direct communication. So, better to ask friends and other players. We’re the ones playing.

As for 3rd quarter, I never understood that system. Where I work and occupy my time this right now is the final third quarter of the year. Spring is first. So, the financial structure is entirely opposite the quarters I work in and has no baring on physical reality. It’s just human-centric and first world centric at that.

Also, I didn’t think about the armor system. Anet did say it was going to be releasing raids of some sort. As a long-time WoW player ‘raids’ always comes with the accompanied understanding, “Destruction of everything you own.” In WoW you can be completely boxed out of content simply because you didn’t finish acquiring last seasons release. So, really good point. GW2 isn’t that kind of game.

Same issue above clarifies not having to worry about getting an expansion right away if it comes out. It’s not going to have any big impact on the actually effectiveness of my character if it stays true to how GW1 worked.

Alright, thanks all! This was really helpful.

Yeah, GW2 is totally different from WoW that way. I wouldn’t worry about gear – if ANet does do something like that, 90% of the playerbase will leave and not come back. IDK if you were around when Ascended released, but the game took a huge hit then. ANet won’t do that again.

Asking friends their opinon is good, but friends are only a small group of players. So the sample is biased and data is missed. I follow MMO and gaming sites like Massively and Kotaku as well as asking guildmates for opinons.

Quarters aren’t a ‘Western’ thing, all big companies use them or something similar. There’s got to be some way for companies to aggregate information and track performance once they get to be a certain size. Publicly reporting company performance is required of any company on a halfway decent stock exchange.

ANet has actually been very honest in their communications, although you’re right that there isn’t much of it. But I’d rather have less communication than wild promises that don’t work out or devs not thinking before they speak and acting like total jerks *cough*Wildstar*cough*.

Speaking of WildStar – it’s tanked hard. All the news sites and playtime trackers agree that it’s having serious problems. On the other hand, GW2 seems to be having an influx of new players. There’s always someone asking how to do X.

Check out ArenaNet’s soundcloud account, they usually put their music up there: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet

Tarnished Coast, Jade Quarry and Blackgate are all top in WvW.

With the megaserver there’s no way to ensure you land on a specific map instance anymore. Check the LFG tool in-game and see if anyone a party up for the temple. I’ve done a few temples that way.

blakdoxa.7520:

Thanks for the help! So if I understand correctly he has to pay in order to play through the living story parts he missed.

He can play through with you to see the story.

The only thing he has to pay for is the ability to do the achievements.

Windsagio.1340:

Gilosean.3805:

Windsagio.1340:

I’ll tell you however that a level 50 fotm is entirely completable without any stacking at all. Yeah, it takes longer (I don’t ever time my runs so Ihave no idea how much longer it takes), but it doesn’t change anything.

It’s really hard to respond respectfully to the obsession with second-counting. The pat response is that mabye if you hate playing the gamemode so much that every extra second is agony, maybe you should play another game for a while. That’s not really what’s at issue though. Instead I’ll suggest that you let go of your internet anger and personal forum grudges.

When the game is built around requiring people to re-run content multiple times to get a goal…yeah, people are going to want to do it as fast as possible.

My 1st run of CoF was a lot of fun. My 5th run was still pretty interesting. My 30th – not so much. I just wanted to finish so I could get what I really wanted.

Completing a zone on one character is fun. Completing it on 2 was running through a checklist, because I’ve already done this. Completing it on more…I honestly don’t know if I ever will. And I once leveled a character to 80 in a single zone, I like playing in familiar places. For others I’m sure it’s worse.

We need a bigger variety in play options. We need to be able to work towards long-term goals without needing to repeat content ad infinitum. Until that happens, people are going to focus on optimizing the time spent, because the 20th run through something is fun for almost nobody.

To go real talk for a moment then, maybe you’re focusing too much on that goal then? Everything is optional and almost everything has an alternate method of attainment. MMOs have bred a whole generation of gamers that play for what it gives them, not for the game itself, and in a horiz progression game its even weirder.

1) People like working towards and achieving goals. That’s fun for a lot of people.
2) GW2 is built around long-term goals, which have been substituted for varied and interesting gameplay as a means to keep players engaged.

Horizontal progression is still progression. It just means that previous acquisitions don’t become useless if a player stops playing for a bit. Refraining from actively punishing players for not progressing is not the same thing as making a game not built around progression.

If there was enough here to have fun without working towards a long-term goal, I’d be happy. But there isn’t. My only options to play are:
1) Kill things
2) Run between areas of killing things
3) Buy/sell on the TP
4) Chat

Those are pretty limited. And all the options that involve actually playing the game are built around progression (more items, more parts of the map filled in, higher number in the wallet, etc).

Devildoc.6721:

Silalus.8760:

Devildoc.6721:

Ya’ll get way too defensive about a fantasy race.

I’m not particularly emotional about the Sylvari. I’m just very disappointed to see so many people who think it’s hilarious to make Asura “master race” jokes and explore what it would feel like to use real hate speech by coming up with new, safe vegetable-based slurs.

I thought that’s what you were doing- I apologize, you obviously really are trying to explore the lore and figure out the universe, so I was wrong to assume that.

So that having been said, back to the actual lore- I think I might be able to make this less ambiguous for you.

Devildoc.6721:

I for one find it interesting to have a somewhat self aware but not entirely free construct that feels the pull of their programming and yet can still make some free choices.

The thing is, you just described almost exactly what it is to be a human being. The only thing in that sentence that is different from the human condition, depending on your belief system, is the word “construct”.

And that’s the real world.

Tyria exists in a fantasy world. Magic is the stuff of life. You don’t need any religion to believe a living being can be created. All you need to do is believe in Tyrian life magic- which it would be rather silly not to believe in, since consuming it is the entire reason dragons do what they do, and manipulating it is part of what makes them so powerful.

Rocks, flames, and huge trees seem to just get up and start walking around in this world. It’s not much of a stretch to think that when a dragon creates something that looks alive, it really is alive. Heck, it’s hard to imagine otherwise. And if that something seems to think, love, hate, compose poetry, make mistakes, and all the other trappings of intelligent life, what possible reason do we have to think it isn’t intelligent life? Because the wrong force of nature made it?

What happens when we find out which god created Tyrian humans out of a lump of clay? Does that mean we’ll decide humans aren’t really people either? Is that true in every fantasy world with a known creator? Where instead of human instincts and reflexes and unconscious behavior being the product of natural selection, they are the product of a deity? None of those should be considered real people?

When you put it in context of the world it isn’t actually reasonable to compare Sylvari to AI’s or androids. That’s a sci-fi thing. This is a fantasy thing. They don’t just look like thinking, talking plants- they are thinking, talking plants.

I never said anything about Asura being a master race. I like Asura but they have their shortcomings. I also don’t mean calling them constructs as slurs just.. describing them as their nature seems to make them.

I AM trying to separate them out I suppose as constructs rather than calling them people because their nature of how they came to be and what they really are as Dragon Minions. Constructs describes their “life cycle” more appropriately I think anyway.

Experimentation on people (without their consent, anyway) is always taboo and wrong, but experimentation on other animals is only an ethically grey area, we do it all the time and justify it, and experimentation on machines/devices isn’t even morally wrong in the slightest.

So where Sylvari fall into that spectrum is up for interpretation and possibly justified because they are created like devices/machines rather than born like animals, and the nature of their intelligence was unknown at Vorpp’s time

OK, time for some education.

Emerging from a birth state fully formed does not mean ‘is a construct’. If you think back to your high school biology class, you’ll understand this better. The birth process has no bearing on whether a being is a being or not. Beings get born in call kinds of ways. The only way beings don’t get born is in pieces – no animal I know if is assembled by other animals from bits and pieces. Bits and pieces put together are how constructs are made. Sylvari are grown in a birth chamber and inherit characteristics from a mother. Ergo, not constructs.

Also, Sylvari speak and use tools. This makes them not just beings, but intelligent beings.

Vorp didn’t know anything about the Sylvari birth process. What he knew was that these beings talked and could use tools. That’s certainly enough to bar them from use in experiments. I’m not really sure how you can defend his absolute lack of morals with a straight face.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

What’s that saying about two wrongs not making a right?

It’s not even 2 wrongs. The Sylvari weren’t doing anything wrong.

I mean, kidnapping is a separate wrong from torturing someone to death, so I guess we can count those as 2 separate wrongs. In that case you’re correct – neither of those cancels out the other.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Gilosean.3805:

Firelysm.4967:

I don’t know why you guys even complain when you have to 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 what ever you do in PvE? Except in fractal 50 where you have to Jump, dodge sometimes AND 11111..

You play a guardian or warrior, don’t you?

Eles and engineers can’t do that. And they’re the ones getting nerfed.

Hey now, if a guardian is doing that, they’d be providing little to no benefit for their lower dps and should be booted anyway

Nobody does though.

I’ve been playing long enough that I remember when eles got booted just because they were eles – we were the suckiest class for the longest time, it only recently got better, and now all those war/guard players are throwing fits because they’re not numero uno anymore. argh

Honestly – I think part of the reason people complain so much has got to do with visual presence. Eles and engis are flashy. Their fire fields and explosions catch the eye. People know when they’re on the battlefield. The other classes aren’t nearly as flashy, and so it’s harder to track what other classes are doing. But everyone notices when an ele sets them on fire, so it makes eles look more powerful.

Windsagio.1340:

I’ll tell you however that a level 50 fotm is entirely completable without any stacking at all. Yeah, it takes longer (I don’t ever time my runs so Ihave no idea how much longer it takes), but it doesn’t change anything.

It’s really hard to respond respectfully to the obsession with second-counting. The pat response is that mabye if you hate playing the gamemode so much that every extra second is agony, maybe you should play another game for a while. That’s not really what’s at issue though. Instead I’ll suggest that you let go of your internet anger and personal forum grudges.

When the game is built around requiring people to re-run content multiple times to get a goal…yeah, people are going to want to do it as fast as possible.

My 1st run of CoF was a lot of fun. My 5th run was still pretty interesting. My 30th – not so much. I just wanted to finish so I could get what I really wanted.

Completing a zone on one character is fun. Completing it on 2 was running through a checklist, because I’ve already done this. Completing it on more…I honestly don’t know if I ever will. And I once leveled a character to 80 in a single zone, I like playing in familiar places. For others I’m sure it’s worse.

We need a bigger variety in play options. We need to be able to work towards long-term goals without needing to repeat content ad infinitum. Until that happens, people are going to focus on optimizing the time spent, because the 20th run through something is fun for almost nobody.

Firelysm.4967:

I don’t know why you guys even complain when you have to 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 what ever you do in PvE? Except in fractal 50 where you have to Jump, dodge sometimes AND 11111..

You play a guardian or warrior, don’t you?

Eles and engineers can’t do that. And they’re the ones getting nerfed.

Wow, this is a really nice gesture. Thanks, Gaile and co!

Tim.6450:

Nobody considers the idea that all PC will be corrupted? Mordremoth’s sphere of influence is plant and mind, so every PC is succesable to mordremoth in a way. All PC have opened their mind in Omad’s machine so the PC is even more vulnerable. That and it seems the dragon is growing stronger so who knows?

This seems the most likely to me. It makes Moredremoth a bigger threat, means the same story can be used for all characters, and neatly sidesteps the issue of canonizing racism. A better option in-world and for the meta.

TriEdge.5149:

I want them to put PK system so sylvari can attack other races and vice versa

There’s a whole game mode for that, you know.

CrazyHobo.4038:

Ojimaru.8970:

CrazyHobo.4038:

-ohhhh ok 97 gold isnt as bad as i thought haha guessing i need 400-500 craftmanship on a couple of crafts though eh?

Quivers and Books from the mystic forge do not require any crafting professions.

Oh so i can essentially craft it next time im online eh?

Yeah, the Mystic Toilet (so-called because of the RNG recipes that mean flushing your money away) is open to all.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Sigils don’t activate if the target is worth 0 experience. So ambient animals, target dummies, etc. won’t work.

This seems like a reasonable policy in general, but it’s having a major impact in LS instances. Player builds that depend on on-kill traits like Renewing Justice or sigils like Bloodlust are having a really hard time. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Mobs-that-don-t-trigger-traits/first has more details.

Could this be fixed so that XP is separate from triggering on-kill traits? Or maybe make the enemies in instances worth 1 XP so that players aren’t accidentally nerfed and struggle a lot with content?

darkace.8925:

This equivocation between what Logan and Caithe did is a silly one, in my opinion. Logan abandoned his allies in the heat of battle to save his liege. While his motives were selfish, he’s under no obligation to fight dragons. He is, however, sworn to protect his queen. Caithe, on the other hand, murdered her someone because she lacked the conviction to stand up to her psychopathic lover.

+1

The only halfway decent explanations for Caithe’s behavior rely on her being a weak-willed idiot. It’s understandable that she would be, after being in a relationship with someone as creepy as Faolain, but that doesn’t excuse it or make what happened any less of an outrage.

Facepunch.5710:

Am I the only one besides OP that thinks this is an awesome idea. Talk about living world and making changes that resonate with the players…

Yeah, you are.

RP is an opt-in activity. Kicking random, non-RPing players for RP reasons is bad and doubtless falls afoul of the TOS / kick abuse rules.

If you want to RP, have fun! But don’t try to excuse trolling with it.

Devildoc.6721:

Myraiya.4052:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

It’s funny how he states it’s just a joke thread literally at the very beginning, and some people still take it serious.

tbh, my sylvari is my main and i love her so much. While i really hope arenanet won’t screw up my character for me, i’m getting kinda scared. People who don’t like sylvari have nothing to lose anyways, so they can more easily joke about it.

but thinking about my lovely myra being hated, that kinda hurts my heart. =/

Well, they don’t hate you, just a character, and only for roleplay reasons.

I mean OOC, no problems.

in character, you bet I’m distrustful at best.

The problem is that not everyone maintains that separation. There are a lot of people who just don’t care enough. Or people who use the update to justify behaving badly to a group of players because ’it’s canon’, etc.

I hope ANet can handle this without making Sylvari players uncomfortable. I deal with bullying and bigotry enough IRL, dealing with it in playtime is too much.

kokiman.2364:

I kick them from dungeon groups, but before we enter the dungeon so noone gets actually hurt. I love this kind of roleplay

Not sure if sarcastic or not. If not, I hope you get reported for abusing the system. Because that’s what you’re doing.

RP with people who agree is one thing. This is totally different

Black Frog.9274:

Kartel.2561:

But GW2 is laughably behind when it comes to “expansion-like content”. To pretend it’s been delivering SO MUCH in that regard, especially vs its own predecessor …is simply not credible. Are you seriously comparing 3 small zones in 2yrs to multiple continents? Maybe you’re new to the GW franchise, but even with a smaller team Anet used to be capable of so much more.

One thing absent from this conversation is total population. Opening up new continents, starting areas, etc. creates an issue with achieving critical mass of players in key areas. If the population is low (whatever qualifies as low for their purposes), opening new areas drains old areas and cripples many of the group events or the “social” interaction aspect of the game. If there is a constant addition of new areas, the process repeats itself until you reach a gas-like state of dispersion. Since they started the mega server thing, it’s clear that total population was an issue for some servers and may, in the bigger scheme of things, be a “problem” they’re factoring into their plans.

I think it’s more likely that they will move in a new sort of direction. The point of no return will turn out to be the point at which you “transfer” to a new server with the new content. The LS will take you up to that point and after some critical mass is achieved (so that there are enough people on the new server to run group content) you’ll move over as part of some event. Once there, you can’t go back. This will put your starting story line with Zhaitan and the followups with the original LS content in its own “chapter”/“server”/“zone” (whatever the correct terminology is). Then they can introduce new items and such without wrecking balance and the economy on the old server.

That’s my crazy prediction. Dream on guildwarians!

That would seriously mess up parts of the game.

GW2 is built on everyone-goes-everywhere. That’s the whole point of upscaling and downscaling. Forcibly splitting the population into a whole new world would have major knockon effects for all kinds of game systems and would be a whole lot of work for minor or non-existent benefits.

I could see completely redoing areas again…but honestly I wish they wouldn’t. What happened to Kessex Hills and Lion’s Arch is still a sore point.

Really, I want end-game content. By which I mean things to do that don’t involve progression.

I want minis to be more than just cute pixels – what about a beauty contest where minis have different moves and try to out-cute each other? Something for players to do! What about adding mini rooms to home instances, decorated with player-crafted items? It can use those ascended mats as well as other mats and generally be a boon for crafters and people who want housing.

What about smaller WvW maps capped at 10 people? More PvP modes? I don’t play PvP much but they’re constantly asking for more modes and maps.

TL;DR I hope they’re announcing major new features to make GW2 a place that feels alive and full of things to do instead of just trying to mimic activity by giving us lots of instances.

The only thing you need to pay for is being able to do the achieves. If you have a friend who has the instances they can take you through them.

The areas, events and gear are all available to everyone.

It’s not inflation. Inflation is something that happens to the whole market. Prices as a whole have stayed steady or gone down. It’s luxury goods pricing, which is a whole different debate.

Precursors have become more valuable because of the wardrobe update, and their price has also gone up because there are more level cap players who can afford to pay lots of gold.

Behellagh.1468:

Hi Chris. I take it this is To Catch a Predator, the MMO edition?

LOL +1

@OP: I think you need to run your forum posts by your parents. Posting anything about where you live on an open forum is a terrible idea. You don’t know who is reading it.

If you want GW2 friends, join a guild in-game and spend time playing with people. DON’T give out your physical location. Lots of friends are online-only these days.

If you want IRL friends, join a church or a club, check meetup.com for groups in your area, check your local community center, etc. Again, don’t post your physical location anywhere.

And seriously, make sure your parents know where you post and what you post. You’ll save yourselves and them a lot of heartache and worry by being open about what you’re putting out in public.

I didn’t know! Off to talk to Tixx. Thanks OP.

EDIT: And just so everyone knows, you can also get free gifts from every Wintersday tree every day. I wish they dropped gifts besides Giant, though.

Ele traits can be game changers. Builds are basically trait-focused. Setting up water and arcana traits will get you a reactive bunker build. I don’t know of anyone running a fire or air zerker trait setup, but you can check the ele forum. I’m sure someone’s tried it.

Copestetic.5174:

Nury.3062:

I think everyone agrees that we need more content,EVERYONE,i don’t know someone who woudl say “No we don’t need content”…and i don’t say that.
BUT WHAT I SAY IS :
We don’t need it delivered in big chunks 1 time a year or 2 times a year.

I just want to see some content not catered to the 9-5 Dad that only plays 2 hours a week.

I think that’s my ( and quite a few others ) main issue with the game; that there’s little-to-no challenge. And the few areas that even remotely require players donning their thinking caps, are less rewarding than just spamming 1 in some zerg. If ANet opens up Cantha, or Elona, or even the rest of Tyria with more of the same issues that’s been repeated here on the forums and reddit hundreds of times the past two years; yes, people will eat through the content, and be back here kittening about it.

Then go play any of the many games aimed at hardcore players. WildStar probably has a sale on. Or, you know, WoW.

Seriously – there are tons of games for people who want to devote their life to it. GW2 was explicitly aimed at more casual players. This might not be the game for you.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey all,

I just wanted to let you guys know that your comments and discussions haven’t gone unnoticed or unread. The team keeps pretty good tabs on the forums, even if we’re not making a lot of regular posts over the holiday break. We had a number of conversations regarding the feedback found in this thread and others.

I don’t think we’re ready to talk about specifics right now (and I certainly can’t make that call on my own with everyone out of the office), but I figured you guys would like a little reassurance that we’re aware of your thoughts on the matter.

Josh

Just so long as you’re remembering this:

Xillllix.3485:

The celestial meta is the ONLY working build on the ele. With any other builds you basically have little chance thanks to all the nerfs the class has gotten in the past 2 years.

Why not fixed the broken ranger damage? Broken shatter damage spikes? Broken Engi turrets in capture points? Broken Lich form 6k auto attack? Before even thinking about nerfing once more the gear elementalists depends on.

If you nerf celestial gear you better improve elementalist traits in return so we dont have to spend 6 points in arcana and water just to survive a normal fight.

I’ve played ele from the beginning, and can still remember months of being the laughingstock of PvP and kicked from dungeon runs. I love the class, but we have very limited options for effective gear and builds.

I think people are complaining partially because we used to be terrible at everything. It was a huge shift in the meta when eles became effective, and it caused people to blow ele effectiveness out of proportion. So now cele ele is popular because it gets talked up so much. shrug There probably is room for a little tweak, but that’s true of lots of classes. And I definitely don’t want to go back to NO viable ele builds.

theoutsider.7849:

That is pretty much what it all comes down to. This game would be so much more fun if there were frequent updates and balance changes like in other popular PvP games.
Instead, Arenanet just keeps it stale and boring.

No. No, it would not.

There are many players who don’t want to have to tweak their builds all the time. They just want to the play the game. Remember, PvE and PvP skills are supposed to be the same. Any change for PvP probably has knockon effects for PvE. Constant changes so that high level PvPers are always forced out of their comfort zone would be a huge mess for PvE and WvW.

Any of the JPs could be a daily, just like vistas are.

Emotes and How to Dance could be one – encourage people to communicate and direct players to the emote system in case they didn’t find it before. Emotes and How to Dance would have to be together though so that people wouldn’t need to buy something from the cash shop to complete the daily.

I kind of liked the revive daily. It was nice to see the game put emphasis on working together.

Guhracie.3419:

I’ve seen many players expressing the opinion that traits are entirely optional. The game is gutted for me right now. My holiday money went to other games. I wonder what their metrics say about the best/worst of 2014 thread.

That’s terrible, and what I was afraid of with this new system.

There are a bunch of professions where the traits are half the point. I mean, an elementalist without traits has a hard time doing…anything, really.

If we really do see more players considering traits ‘optional’, then PUG dungeons and fractals are going to start getting much harder just because players won’t have all the traits they need to be effective. And we won’t be able to tell if that’s why a party is having a hard time, because it’s not like we can ask people to link their build (and I wouldn’t want to open that can of worms anyway).

Also, what happens when non-traited players start complaining about content difficulty? Or new content updates. If lots of characters are running around without traits, then that has to be taken into consideration when balancing story instances and areas.

I go to the TP first unless I need mats. Some blue and green armor sells nicely , especially cloth armor.

Otherwise I agree with Yargesh.

That picture is adorable.

Anyandrell.6238:

Spook.5847:

Not choice; cattle chute. Learn when you are being herded/controlled, please.

Thank you! Not everyone wears blindfolds after all!

Somehow, the distinct lack of cattle prods and electric fences makes me question your opinion.

Seriously – we now don’t have to do dailies at all to get laurels and MC. And we need to do fewer dailies to get AP. And each daily gives a single reward.

To me, ANet clearly uncoupled the currencies from the dailies so that people wouldn’t feel pressure to do them. You’re not missing out on anything by not doing dailies, unlike with the old system.

nGumball.1283:

To me, your reasons as to why you can’t block or avoid them seem like excuses.

They seem reasonable to me.

OP doesn’t want to disable a game feature (emotes) or take lots of time to parse offensive chat and block individual PCs. I’d probably have the same reaction if I ran into ERP repeatedly.

ERPers should keep it private. I honestly can’t imagine a reason to not keep this kind of thing to party chat.

I’ve run into this sometimes. Perhaps they’re just there at the same time you are regularly?

Asking them to take it to party chat is a good idea. ERP should always be in party chat at least IMO. If they’re not willing to do that…honestly, I can’t think of a good reason to not use party chat in a public space.

If the OP is feeling especially irritated, they might try RPing interrupting them. How would an innocent beachgoer feel accidentally walking into someone’s makeout session? It might be funny.

When I first heard about the new dailies I was pretty skeptical. After the trait system mess and the almost-but-not-quite NPE changes I wasn’t confident in more system changes.

But the new dailies work quite well, actually.

The big difference between the new trait system and the new daily system is that one removes player options and one provides more options. Yes, I said it – the new dailies give us more options. We don’t have to do the dailies at all to get laurels and Mystic Coins anymore.

Before, I had to do the dailies to get access to some parts of the game (Laurels and MC mainly). Now, if I don’t have time to go do something out of my way, I don’t need to. I get the important progression currencies anyway. BUT if I do want to explore, the dailies can be a guide to what content lots of people will be doing. So I have more freedom, and a suggestion list of where I can go to play with other people.

The daily changes seem like a thoughtful attempt to revamp a system to be more player-friendly. I just hope the trait system gets a similar makeover so that the traits are a natural part of leveling again.

4thing the trait system rework. I play games to have fun, and repeating content that I may or may not like for the nth time to unlock a game feature is not fun.

Account wide trait unlocks would work with the current system instead of having to unlock by character. Or making most of the unlocks easy and something that’s part of natural play at the targeted level. But the current system is a waste of time or money.

Klinch.2964:

A lot of these ideas lead to people wanting the ability to do some work on one character, and transfer that work to all other characters on the account. It really blurs the line of why even have multiple characters other than class and pretty dress up.

A good chunk of an mmo is to show off how much work you put into the game. I personally don’t want to play a game that shows no difference between a 200 hour played account vs a 1000 hour played account.

Stuff like this dumbs the game down, no denying that. Gw2 is already reaching that danger zone of too much convenience for me. Add more “features” like this will make me put this game down for good.

Someone playing this 5 hours a week is a very casual player.

To me, the point of a game is to play the game and tacked on stuff that makes playing the game inconvenient is irritating. And I think there are more 5 hr/week players than you think in the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the majority.

I’m genuinely curious – what is it about the game adding in extra work that makes it more attractive to you?

I was pretty creeped out by the mini already. I mean – she’s the Sylvari’s mom, who wants a creepy pet that looks exactly like their mom following them around? Wouldn’t it feel like a weird form of slavery or stalking?

And for other races, she’s the head of state for another nation. It would be like the PM of India walking around with a pet that looked exactly like the British PM. War could easily ensue, doing something like that.

All of the looks-like-NPC minis are bad, but this one is really creepy.

NonToxic.9185:

I don’t know what game you’re playing, this one is a gear grind too. The gear grind is different, in that the linear progression grind like that of the FF games is more constant and impactful, but GW2 is a gear grind game too.

Why do I make gold? To buy silk. Why do I buy silk? To craft gear.

Why do I run dungeons? To get tokens. Why do I get tokens? To buy exotics to forge for a precursor, to sell for gold(gear) or make a legendary(gear).

Why do I play WvW? To kill some enemies. Why do I kill enemies? To get their bags. Why do I want their bags? For the gold inside. Why do I want gold? To buy silk. Why do I buy silk? Gear.

Do I really need the gear? No, I can play in exotics and exotics are easy enough to come by. But what do I do in the exotics? Run dungeons for money and tokens that I buy _ with?

People have made this game more than it is, and I mean that in a good way. A fun guild and talkative friends are fun to play with. But the game without these people is an RNG slog for the end game: a legendary.

Or is there some other end-game I’m missing? The ignored WvW mode perhaps? I am venting now, so I might as well finish. I reached the end of my PvP reward track today and then I stared at the other tracks and thought ‘I don’t need any of this stuff…‘. The only reason to start a new track is for the weapon chests, which I open as greatswords and throw into the forge before saying ’Shucks, another pearl sword’.

I’m so darn bored.

Yeah, we need more things to do after finishing the story. Especially since trait and NPE changes made leveling alts a lot worse.

But we don’t need an expansion. If LS updates started adding more system-wide features that would be enough. Things like:

1) Playing with minis. These are great, but underused. Let us have Pokemon-style beauty competitions or something. Add a story we need to do to get Mini housing added to our home instance.

2) Home instances – let us customize this. Let people spend gold or karma on it so rich players have new things to do with their money besides play the TP, and include story options so players don’t have to pay (i.e. let players use gold or karma to shortcut an event chain or something). We’re never going to have Ultima-style housing, we get it, but we should have customization options.

3) Add more ways for players to show off collections or something. Collections are OK, but they could be great.

These are just off the top of my head.

I think if ANet took the time to add more things for people to do after finishing the story, at lot of worries about an expansion would go away. People are right that there are parts of the game that don’t seem finished or need to be expanded, and these areas are especially visible post-80. But I think ANet can deliver them with an LS format just as easily as an expansion.

Also – I don’t think ANet has the capability to deliver an reasonable expansion. ANet seems like a company that’s top-heavy to me, and I suspect there are many fewer devs than people think. There is also good reason to believe that old design choices are really impacting current development (ex, current Toypacalypse). ANet’s QA is known to rely on temps and be poor, and is obviously barely keeping up with the current quick-release cycle where players provide a lot of the QA. A longer release schedule would make it worse (QA doesn’t necessarily improve with more time if the right processes and experience aren’t in place). Quick updates like LS that can be focused on a set of subsystems and any bugs addressed quickly are probably a better fit.

TL;DR I’d rather have more LS updates with more features because I think we’ll get higher quality results that way. I think delivering a few features in each updates is a viable way to improve the game, and I don’t think ANet’s QA is structured to handle long release cycles well.

Wanze.8410:

JustTrogdor.7892:

rapthorne.7345:

I’d like under water combat a lot more if things didn’t aggro you from half way across the bloody ocean.

Just saying.

I think you might have meant to post in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-happened-to-underwater-content/

This topic is about precursors on the TP, not what people think of underwater combat.

The old topic didnt exactly stay on topic either and here we are already talking about Joe Montana driving demand in his Kia Soul.

+1

Gaile Gray.6029:

I opened this with… concern.

But Eudaemons, you made a bunch of us smile… even if you’re just a tad wacky.

I’ll be sure to put “more skimpy male outfits” on the Escalated Topics that I send to the developers.

Or…

maybe not.

Seriously, if you could get the armor designers to make more varied armor (more modest female options and more…entertaining? not-modest?…male options) that would be great. It feels really weird that most women in Tyria are half naked and most men are covered head to toes.

Oh, and the trenchcoats. There are way too many trenchcoats and leather pants outfits. My Charr thief is really tired of it – being covered in leather makes her fur hot and uncomfortable.

Minos.5168:

The issue with this, in my opinion, is that Guild Wars 2 is setup entirely differently than GW1.

The fundamental differences (i.e. GW2 having live servers with mobs having respawn timers, rather than instanced servers) make “Vanquisher” stuff near impossible to implement without completely writing new code for Hard Mode.

Secondly, GW2 implemented scaling as a way to try to keep old zones relevant. (And Ascended crafting functions similarly, by still requiring low-level mats.) This isn’t the same as Hard Mode, obviously, but I think it greatly decreases the chances of it happening.

Last, but not least, Hard Mode in GW1 was fairly simple (code-wise) changes.
Buff all monsters to appropriate levels and armor. Give change the skill-bars of low-level monsters giving them elites.

TL;DR: What you’re asking (giving champs better moves, server-code changes) would require a lot of work. I don’t think it would pay off in the long run.

QFT

GW1 and GW2 are completely, utterly different. What the OP is asking for would be like asking EVE to add WOW-style instanced raids, or asking Fallen London to add 3D. It’s not only out of scope for the design, it’s fundamentally incompatible with the technology and would require a total rewrite.

I really can’t emphasize this enough. This will not be happening unless ANet spends months or years on only this, and may not even be possible.

NonToxic.9185:

I already find myself logging in, checking the BLTP, and then sort of shuffling my inventory until I log off. If the market hasn’t moved, my guild isn’t hosting an event, or there’s nothing going on in WvW, I’ve got nothing to do.

Another year of that? I’m going to be leaving. I suspect it will be like last year, where they release some piddly crap and a hyped up balance and ‘feature’ patch that I come back to check out. Will next year’s ‘feature pack’ have enough to make me check it out again after this year’s Massive Shrug? That’s the question. The path of least resistance is what’s holding me here for now.

My forum posting has gone up like 500% in the last two weeks because I’m so kitten bored in-game.

Exactly the problem. People are used to a hype-release cycle for casuals and gear grinds for hardcore. GW2 is deliberately a different type of game. We’ve gotten quite a bit – not an expansion’s worth, but close – but since we haven’t had the expansion hype people aren’t feeling as excited about it. If ANet worked on press releases / marketing and released a few more QoL features I think people would be happier just because of buzz.

shrug There’s lots of reasons to be unhappy about GW2, but ‘we don’t have an expansion’ doesn’t seem like one of them. We’re definitely getting new stories and features. The development pace isn’t out of line with what I’d expect from a studio of ANet’s size, really. And the quick release schedule has benefits – we get bugfixes pretty fast. I’m not happy with all the updates, but ANet is obviously very invested in GW2’s future and continuing to update it.

Adry.7512:

Gilosean.3805:

We’ve gotten almost an expansion’s worth this year, tbh. New zones, nice story for a game, tons of new skins, upgrades like the wardrobe, the trait rework (which I think is stupid and bad for the game, but it counts) and the NPE. A lot of stuff was added or updated.

ANet’s real problem is that MMO players are trained to expect an expansion. Without that hype, I’m not sure how they’ll draw the players back. Some kind of large LS release with major press releases?

was that suppose to be a joke? cause i didnt find it funny, at all. thats a really bad joke -.-

Then why would you think it a joke?