Guild Wars 2

Don’t you have your own data ? I am pretty sure you do.
It is from the same index that you can pick out bot patterns and eventually go on to neutralize them.

Any MMO has numerous loot indexes of how many players entered a zone, how many mobs where killed in the zone, how many drops were dropped, how much gold was dropped, how many times the same mobs have been killed, which exact type of mob, etc…

Just saying.

My thief lol’s at Orr, it might as well be an empty clear blue beach with white sand and coconut trees and beautiful island girls bringing me gifts because I am the only male they have seen in yea- …but I disgress.

Doing Orr on my mesmer has been a completely different experience. Getting pulled is annoying but I have enough utilities to run through most areas without problems (including cursed shores) but if I get overly confident I can also get wiped. Hasn’t actually happened yet, but had a few close shaves.

On my warrior, well its a different story, been essentially a massive truck driving in a low speed zone, I can clear anything getting in my way but getting from A to Z takes a while because escaping aggro isn’t an easy thing at all.

I do love the map but on my third time there witha different character so it’s more familiar to me than good ol’ Queensdale (too much green and not enough death…DEATH!!!!……GOOD !!!!).

I’d do anything to ride a dolyak.

But to feed it ?

No I won’t do that, no I won’t that.

Samaul.6073:

For the time being, there are no dwarfs to toss in GW2. I think that Asura would make great siege ammo in WvWvW! I want to be able to load up my treb with Asura and toss them at the enemy.

Just imagine the possibilities:

Asura Elementalist Toss- Fire, Water, Lightning and Earth ammo
Asura Mesmer Toss – Illusion toss, which one is real?
Asura Gaurdian Toss – extra damage to walls
Asura Warrior Toss – a really angry Asura that does extra damage when it hits
Asura Thief Toss – steals supplies from the supply depot
Asura Ranger Toss – double hit with pet and asura
Asura Engineer Toss – napalm area effect
Asura Necro Toss – turns every player in the targeted area into a zombie that then attacks other players of their faction

Make it so ArenaNet!

This is awesome thinking !!!

WvW can be soooo much more than what it is now. Give us crazy shizzle ANet, do it. DO IT NOW !!!!

Since I play a thief (mainly) and I’m hard to see, I like to think my arrows are the same so personally it doesn’t bother me. I quite like the effect.

mulch.2586:

IMO it’s not the solo-thief who’s a problem in wvw at all. No one ever lost a keep or tower to a solo thief.

The big problem with culling is that we can all be effectively stealthed while attacking, and that so much of the meta surrounding wvw is based on cheesy exploitation of the game’s weaknesses. Much better to go play Planetside 2, and keep GW2 for pve.

I agree with you 100%. Group shadow refuge is more of a problem than anything a thief roamer can inflige on a couple of lone stragglers.

Also the mesmer alone can reverse the tide of any battle by simply popping a portal at the right time, in the right place. And all you need to do this is to get 1 utility skill up in your skillbar REGARDLESS the the spec you’re playing.

My mesmer only equips portal in WvW, I hardly ever use it in PVE…mainly indungeons to save time for group but that’s it at a stretch.

We had a WvW fight where one tower was being overwhelmed by zerg at door (no enemy siege equipment lol), with no one being able to come in effectively to build.
Commander comes up with a simple but effective strategy :

friendly zerg hug (with AoEs ready) + portal (right in middle of zerg)+ shadow refuge (just before taking portal so everyone can place themselves properly instead of just zerging out of portal) = so many downed & dead enemies in 15 secs that we do this all the time now.

What is imbalanced is how just 1 utility from one class can turn a small fight around, and even more when two abilities of the same kind meet then a 30+ zerg is reduced to ashes.

I mean if the devs want classes to have super duper abilities that can be used in battles like that, sure…but give one to each class…not just a couple ( it would bring a lot of fun and unexpected to WvW if that was the case, golem porting is getting boring fast).

what you want is to make an engineer specced in grenades.

mulch.2586:

I think GW2 is a very good game for people who don’t care to theory-craft, and like to play very casually.

Based on these forums, I think most of the people who play GW2 have no clue about the math behind their character’s performance. That’s fine, doesn’t stop you from enjoying the game at all.

+1

GW2 is pretty laid back in my opinion, what it offers in my mind compared to other MMOs is a great deal of flexibility.

-Don’t like your spec anymore ? Sure, we’ll change it for a dime.

-What? you want to change your gear now ? Of course sir, no problem at all, you can get a real decent rare set of the TP, crafting or vendors for just a bit of gold.

-You want a full new gear set in a different spec for when it is “one of those times” ? Please just take a sit while we bring you the menu. Today “a la carte” we have karma armors and dungeon sets, alway served fresh !

- You are unsure how a class will perform at max level, with max gear and want to just give it a test ride for an afternoon or two ? Absolutement ! We have great facilities at the Heart of Mists where you can indulge in yourself in tweaking potential lvl80s and see if that is the right choice for you.

They are just some examples. Never in an MMO have I found it so easy to experiment and encouraged to do so. The tax in between is either some gold, or little a bit of time (actually that only applies to exotics, rares are never a problem. And in my opinion the only reason they tax you a bit in between is to make their game just last a bit longer than it would otherwise. Then once you find your ideal build, you can gear it in a myriad of ways. 1 month max to be fully geared, when other MMOs charge you a month for 1 piece of gear.

If you have enjoyed the story and just want to see more of it, you can do that by playing other races nd see their arc (true it become the same for everyone at lvl50) but until then it can be quite fun.

Casia.4281:

But what they NEED to be thinking is, how much time will the player spend here?
Having 20 amazingly crafted zones, with varied environments, etc that you spend 30 hours leveling through.
then having 2 HIDEOUS, and annoying zones that you will now spend 500 hours farming, is an incredibly poor design choice.

And honestly, nearly every mmo has done it.

Any journey to hell is always a one-way ticket.

I know that wielding the legendary hammer Juggernaut gives your character a metal skin, but it doesn’t seem like he’s wielding a 2 handed weapon at all….maybe another legendary, no idea :/

Dradiin.8935:

you talk as if there is an Aggro management system in this game like others… Aggro is completely random most of the time…. it can be based on proximity, dmg, healing, who farted last, who voted for republicans, who voted for democrats.
If there was a reliable way for one to manage aggro then your above statements would apply to Glass Cannoobs in dungeons.

There is room for… 1 Glass Cannoob in a dungeon grp. anymore and its.. play whack-a-mole with who gets rezzed next.

I play a defensive build shout heal warr, i do plenty of dmg to grab aggro from some Glass Cannoobs, the key to my build, i dont drop dead instantly.

LEARN TO PLAY IN DUNGEONS, or don’t join in a group.

Glass Cannoobs ?

Is that your opinion of players speccing in damage outpout ? Utterly useless in GW2 ?

Also LOL at your aggro management explanation. True, dungeon bosses have got some weird aggro complex but…oh gee I don’t know…playing attention to the fight might help to see when one might be getting targeted (aka boss turns towards me suddenly….maybe get out of the way?) or boss loves one specific player the entire time (which gives carte blanche for easy damage all night long)

You probably didn’t even bother to read anything I said about party synergy either and how the lack of distinctive roles might affect how well a party performs. Also wammo warriors are still lol. It’s the kind of build you found online when looking for uber OP-iness and that was love at first sight.

My warrior is toughness/crit specced and with less than a 1/3rd of your wammo’s HP, I last just as long, if not longer because we tend to dodge much more compared to wammos since not getting hit is the best kind of heal. Also spamming your heals while to stay alive with the occasional 100B is not consistent damage. It is occasional damage and if overwhelmed by mob in between boss fights you probably would struggle to handle the aggro. You should also thank the glass cannons burning the bosses while you are slowly dying as well. The real damage has got to come from somewhere afterall.

5 glass cannons is bad, but so is 5 wammos. That is why I got 3 different toons with different specs so I can hop from one to the other depending on party composition.

So maybe you should do a few more runs, just to get an idea of how it works. Maybe go online to find someone who made a build for you so you can get to insta-win more quickly ?

Latinkuro.9420:

Swtor had a lot of issues but resource management was one of it’s strong points.

A.net says they take the best ideas out of other games and try to implement them into their game well, guess what you missed a big one !

It’s funny you mention SWTOR because I do agree with quite a few of your points, including ammo management. I was full BM on my 5 characters (knight, shadow, commando, operative and marauder) so I remember pvp quite well :p

If you do remember, operatives were pretty much faceroll from release since they could go for Poison blade->Hidden strike-> stabby stabby->vanish-> stabby stabby all over again and nothing you could as you were quinessentially killed twice in the process xD
They deserved every nerf they got until 1.2 , but the tears didn’t stop and the nerfs kinda never stopped coming, and while I haven’t logged in months ( I probably should just to see how it is since it’s free to play) , I am pretty sure they are still a broken class …in the bad way…nobody would take my operative along for raiding or ranked wzs because they even if the player behind the class was doing admirably, other classes could do easily the same and more.
By all means, balance the all thing but do not nerf stupidly because some players on the forums are going to QQ no matter what happens (I just checked the SWTOR forums and people still cry about operatives lol). My point on this even once a class has been balanced and sometimes broken the opposite ways it does not mean the forum tear ducts have been shut yet, hence I hope the developers at ANet are a bit wiser and more confident in their decision making than those at Bioware.

Also you must remember the ammo management rate being nerfed to the point only 1 spec was worth playing (vanguard did alright, but commando for a while was just a waste of space ). My commando was medic, and I distinctively remember feeling subpar to other healers for quite a while unil they fixed that. So yeah it could go wrong, but the potential for it to go great is undeniable and ANet, like you said, should not ignore such a good idea!

The dynamic of it was great, it actually kinda helped me transit into thief quite smoothly. The trooper’s golden rule was never under 6 ammo, and I stick to that in GW2 since you never know when you might need that extra oomph for emergencies wthether it be escape or final push of burst (why wait for regen when you got it spare already :p ) so I personally would love to see that mechanic implemented to initiative.

I believe it would also really help to clean the tarnished reputation of the thief as most good/decent thiefs tend not to spam their abilities and generally baddies go stealth->heart seeker -> heart seeker-> heart seeker hahahaha i winz ><

Or if they couldn’t do this (because stealing that idea could be quite obvious, they could apply buffs or debuffs according to how much initiative you got saved up.

Always above 50% ? Great ! You get X% extra damage !
Below 50% ? Aww you must be tired…endurance replenishment is put to a halt.

There are loads of ways to stop the spamming of initiative abilities, so it feels more balanced and closer to the CD system of other classes. I still believe thieves should be able to push out their abilities a bit faster than other classes as it’s pretty much the trademark of the thief (also known as Mr Burst).
But make it clear that if they decide to take the mickey with it, there will be penalties to this type of playing. It would allow the thief to still to do insane burst if he really needed to but this time( awesome for pve), he will make a conscious decision about it having to weight the pros and cons, and ultimately good choice or bad choice will mean victory or death.

I don’t think the class needs a lot of tweaking, but it could be really easy to discourage initiative spammers and reward those who already do not do that.

My hands…..they….they’re burning !!!! OH JESUS CHRISTTT!!!!!!

Also lol I see what you did there :p

Arf kitten I’m just going to spell it out for those who don’t know. Pretty much most thieves go for a trait that grants 3 boon on stealing, on of them being might and might gives you a red glowing aura around their hands. Thrill of crime is a very popular trait.

So chances are if you meet a thief that likes to steal (as gap closer to get to you <3) chances are his hands will go red. So there you go, you actually have a warning coming to you.

To be honest if a thief goes invisible when he’s just charged into you, it means he’s going for your back. CnD only lasts 3 secs, which mean he’s got just enough time to run around you (if you aren’t moving then duh it’s much quicker) to hit so best trick is to simply move/ wait just 1 sec (let him waste his stealth) and dodge for extra win credits. Then thief can’t stealth for 3 seconds which is where you snare/cripple/ root and then lay the hurt on them.

nerf offensive caster OP….

Anonymous The Spy.2491:

Can anyone give me an answer?

I assume that if the items in questions are soulbound to your first characters then chances are that yes….you will lose these unique items.

Best advice for you ? Do no delete….evar :p

Hang on am on windows 7 64 bit….does that mean...7×64×20...8690MB UPDATE ??? ohmygawd hur durrr durrr

Wintersday 2012. Never forget.

Latinkuro.9420:

^^ Those comparisons have nothing to do with what is going on mate.
the root of the problem is both stealth and culling.

There’s a reason you almost never see complaints about stealth in sPVP, why ? cause there it works the way it’s meant to aside from some builds that take it to the extreme and need some minor tweaking.

Culling:
- self explanatory as to why it makes stealth classes OP !

Stealth
- stealth needs to break on damage that is the only change I would suggest, why cause what you can’t see can kill you and right now there’s no way to break their stealth, sure you can spam aoe and hope to hit him, but even in the best games out there that have stealth classes if I hit you you come out of stealth and while in combat you have maybe 1 or 2 emergency very long cooldown abilities that allow you to stealth again even while in combat.

I know and I agree with you, I was just voicing my own opinion on those coming in the thread and pretty much spamming “nerf/remove stealth”.

Nerfing stealth is not going to change culling, and will hurt thieves in PVE. Hence I wrote a little post about why the hell should stealth be removed because some dislike it and how it generally and unfair attitude that could be turned on any class.

As I said many times in this thread, stealth + culling/rendering issues is technically making thief OP. But it’s not the thieves fault and they shouldn’t be punished for it. ANet should fix this issue as it is dividing the community, despite the fact that no oneis really doing anything wrong (exept exploiters but they are everywhere and playing every class so crushing one is not going to get them out of the game anyway).

Black powder = 3 sec, Healing shadow = 3 sec, CnD = 3 sec, Shadow refuge = okay…12sec, a bit more if specced.
I know it’s a bit weird to say but try to ignore shadow refuge, purely for PVE perspective ( no one in their right mind is going to blow their best ace at the first sign of danger). If the developers take off a second or a second and a half from all stealth abilities in order to make up for the culling effect, then we find ourselves with pointless stealth abilities which don’t allow us to escape aggro,etc…

This is what prompted to kind of say “if you just want stealth removed, just say it”.

To those raising the issue of culling and not stealth itself, then I agree with them. Culling needs to go, but doing that by nerfing a class because they badly optimized their engine is not fair in any way, shape or form.

tl;dr- culling yes, stealth no.

At first I thought an honest discussion on the subject could be achieved, eventually meetin on the middle with everyone realising their own strengths and weaknesses but as they say on the interwebs…“haters gonna hate”.

EQ….hate.
EQ2….hate.
Ryzom….hate.
SWG…hate.
SWTOR…hate.
WoW….hate.

GW2 ? …. you guessed it.

It’s okay to hit the little sneaky guy, but it’s not okay to be hit by him. Each and every game ever released which contained a stealth class ends up with a mountain of QQ which inevitably ends up with the said stealth class to be nerfed into the ground.

Last MMO before GW2 was SWTOR, and admittedly the stealth classes were a bit OP at release (they generally are and therefore are expected to be nerfed, it is normal and completely expected) but…oh my god the poor operatives( aka star wars rogues) got beaten and beaten and beaten again so bad by the nerf bat until they became quintessentially unviable to play in competitive PvP or high level “raids”.

And what happened next ? Everybody shut up about it, yet they kept getting regular nerfs just for good measure lol. Also anytime a buff of any kind was mentioned, the forums reawakened and exploded in a gigan-terrific explosion of tears just at the idea of it.

The same story can be found in every MMOs with the slightest amount of stealth.
I used to think for a while that it was because people playing others classes complaining about it were simply unaware of how to counter stealth classes (aka slow/root/snare + kiting until stealthie wants to run which is where you finish him/her off with your big damage…never the other way around as stealthies always save their last ace til very last) but now I’m playing GW2 and that there is only about 15-20 buttons to smash, mostly about 10 or so being involved in performing a decent rotation…I believe these people to be idiots.

It’s not ok to be squishy, sneaky and strong. But it’s ok to be tough, loud and strong.

Also it generally is the heavy armor classes who complain about stealth since their archetype suggests that they are tanks, basically tough as nails but pretty clumsy.

Guess what? We are your counter class. And if we decide to act like idiots, we get roflstomped in one hit.

Are you seriously telling me that with all your toughness, power and vitality you can never ever get close to a thief ?

If your answer is yes, then it says a lot about your ability to play the game. A lot of warriors turn around and would say “easy for you op thieves to say, but we havent got the means to counter you”.

Really ? Seriously? I guess you have gone for the typical run of the mill invincible berserker build with no utilities or weapon sets to defend yourself or CC your enemy just a little bit. I mean god, just daze us for 1 sec with your shield and then hammer us with f1…we’ll lose half our life and run away kitten-scared. Simply because we literally just spammed stealth does not mean we still aren’t right in front for you at this very second ( the longer you take, the higher the chances of us turning to table around).

I struggle in sPvP more against good warriors than any other classes because we really do counter each other. You think thieves are ruthless with CnD+backstab+blossom/steal+black powder+ CnD+backstab( 100% guaranteed kill if you sit and take it)…you warriors are just the same when you CC us just bit (thieves hate being cc’d as it makes us panic and usually waste quite a bit a initiative/utilities simply to get free as quickly as possible) and proceed to 100BLADES TO YOUR FACE!!!
You’ve got the means to make our lives hell too, but somehow you almost expect to be able to faceroll everyone without investing the slightest amount in other aspects of character building that doesn’t involve damage…yet tell us off when some people playing the thief class decide to do the same ?

If I can get around you I will win; if you dont let me I will lose.
Simple.

Guys ! Guys ! Just bear with me okay, I’ve got the most amazing idea okay…

How about a desert…okay?… made of crystals….!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!I know right !!!!

“I think I’m having a brain hurricane”

If I hear this…one more time…

Just reached 2000 this week. I think the highest I’ve seen was another plyer with 3200 something only yesterday actually.

With 5000 you are definitely in the lead. This means that if I have 2000 and you have 5000, then….oh.my..gawd….have you no life ? xD

Just kidding really, what’s your secret (please do not say it’s maybelline) to get all these achievements done so quickly ? Is that what you do specifically, to actively complete achievements rather than having them come to you (which is what I do) ?

Either ways, kudos man, ANet should have a title or two for those with high achievement scores if they haven’t already.

florence.1674:

I don’t understand how anyone can accept that “stealth” which people accept as hiding, sneaking or camouflaging manages to translate to “total invisibility” in broad
daylight in the open fields.

It has been the lazy solution to a difficult mechanic in MMOs for far too long.

I hate using that old adage but “would having every class being the same be something worth playing ?”.

In which case, anyone could turn around and start spouting (sorry to say this but) really stupid things : “pets get in the way of the 1v1 fight, remove pet mechanics” or “support classes swim in buffs and this create unacceptable inbalance, remove boons” or “why should we be divided in different tiers of armors ?” or even " Being able to cast magic attacks and raining down AoEs on me is clearly OP. Everyone should be using a sword only".

I know it might sound patronizing a little bit and I don’t mean to, but if we eliminate specific class related abilities because it seems out of control on paper, then we lose the RPG factor in this MMO. In which case, counter strike is more up your alley. All the same, pure skills and definitely no differences which could result in unbalanced scenarios.

I do not see why one class’s special mechanic is less worthy of being in the game than those of others. By all means balance it, fix the rendering, do whatever you have to do to make sure that no one has a clear advantage over somebody else. But don’t come after a certain class mechanic and call it balancing either.

This thread is turning more and more into a war against stealth, rather than a pertinent question about a serious rendering issue.

OP while you are raising very interesting and dare I say philosophical questions about how we perceive games and engage with them, the underlying denominator of all this is the difficult subject of “fun”.

Since “fun” is extremely biased and even more challenging to disect, I think the discussion at hand is ultimately going to circulate around one question : “how long can I keep doing this before getting bored?”.

And I believe the answer to this will be different for everyone of us.

Also if you permit me to midly psycho-analyze you, it seems you get a lot of your personal fun from learning and overcoming challenges :p

Which is perfectly fine !

edit: typo

Ryuujin.8236:

Groovy.6749:

The point is super strength + high rate of crits. If the player knows how to handle his spec, then he should know when to hit hard, and when to retract to kite for a bit (because he accumulated too much aggro).

Except of course if you’re having to frequently step off the gas, you’re actually lowering your DPS anyway. You have higher burst but your overall DPS probably isn’t so different from the tankier player; but when the tankier guy cops a hit he’s less likely to go down

Well that is a very good point, and I cannot really argue against it. But that being said, in the example you’ve given me, the fight will end up with both the glass cannon and the tanky build more of less equalising on the amount of damage…so I guess the role is still viable if understood correctly.

I guess I don’t really have such a problem with it is because my glass cannon is my thief ( I got three characters fitting the typical MMO trinity aka dps thief, support mesmer and tanky warrior) and the second I get aggro I use a stealth ability hence immediately losing the aggro and thus resuming doing heavy freaking damage.

However I have made some sacrifices to ensure my survivability, donning some vitality here and there but maintaining hefty amount crit and power, also I specced in shadow arts which gives thieves a nice toughness boost alongside better stealth (yayyy for me and the group since I can pretty much rez anyone for 0 to full guaranteed) every 30 seconds, which is great support when you think about it. Sitting on almost 15k hp and still delivering 6-7k hits without much trouble.

But as jefzor said, thieves can afford taking on this role better than other classes so my opinion on glass cannons might be a bit biased which I’ll admit to :p

knight.8926:

The teleport back skill(the one where you set a circle on the ground that teleports you back) gives stealth as well. I don’t know if it’s a render issue due to sudden teleportation but it’s there and it’s also giving them perma stealth if done consecutively

I hardly ever use shadowstep, I much prefer infiltrator arrow as I’m quick on the mouse and it permits me to have space for another utility but if I remember correctly, it is just a teleport. So it must be a rendering issue.

If the engine struggles to cope with rendering in general, then anger shouldn’t be towards the thief class but towards the developers and testers who didn’t do their job properly.

I bet half of these thieves exploiting the culling don’t even realise it and are just spamming their stealth skills one after the other because they just don’t want to be seen (thieves know being seen means being killed, sorry).

I’m even willing to bet they only get killed when for some reason they stop stealthing (which means no initiative and all stealth skills on CD). It’s not to say they are bad thieves, just that they are currently a bit unexperienced. Good stealth specced thieves always got a stealth left up their sleeves OR at the very least know they can handle themselves while one is about to pop back up.

I am saying that because while SOME thieves know culling exists, we do not see it on our screen hence it is a bit harder to work around it when if we don’t know whether we have been rendered or not. But I am sure some types got it worked out.

My point remains that the average thief does not count on it. This of course does not negate the fact it brings them an distinct, unfair advantage. But shooting the messenger will not fix anything either.

The point is super strength + high rate of crits. If the player knows how to handle his spec, then he should know when to hit hard, and when to retract to kite for a bit (because he accumulated too much aggro).

The idea behind a glass cannon is pretty good actually, it just requires a bit of finesse to pull it off effectively and continuously.

Also I don’t think the glass cannons are “actively” griefing their team. 10silver+ for amor repairs isn’t the way to go.

I believe the problem lies with how roles are assigned in the dungeons.
Who is supposed to keep an eye on the aggro, who is going to watch out for group conditions and drop in some support when needed, who is going to make sure that red bar keeps going down, etc…
In my opinion, part of the problem lies with ANet’s design, aka removal of trinity. I mean if you’re going to remove a major part of how groups in MMOs synergize because it’s dated is a GREAT idea….but if you leave that gap unfulfilled, then it is not revolutionary at all. It’s clumsy. Most players do not know what to expect from one another, and generally 95% of the dungeon strategies limits itself to “everyone DPS the boss fast!!!”… If the dungeons encouraged to assume a certain temporary role (each role giving a slight buff according what role is picked) then it could work very nicely.

The other problem is running with PUGs. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you aren’t. Not much more I can say on that.

Overall, glass cannons isn’t the problem. The absence of group synergy is.

EDIT : Also you can not honestly tell me you’ve never played alongside a glass cannon before who performed his role admirably.
On the opposite side of the table, I have seen “tank” builds who quintessentially refused to dodge, planting themselves hard in the group and therefore being downed making all that survivability “useless”.

Columba.9730:

Well if they cannot fix culling they need to adjust stealth.

This would only wreck PVE for legitimate thieves. Doing this might sound like the easy option but this sort of general punishment is not fair when the players behind the class are not responsible for this. This isn’t us exploiting a certain build or actively pushing to get the most out of an exploit. A lvl1 thief who never ever played GW2 and logs in for the first time ever in wvw WILL benefit from this problem when he uses his heal unintentionally EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The point is, he doesn’t mean to. The game has a technical “broken” issue and “breaking” a class to fix it is not the answer.

I admit to currently being a stealth/condi build which works wonders in dungeons and PvP, and if I were to lose a second or two on each of my stealth abilities, well sure I COULD cope but it would take a lot of fun away for me of playing my class.
Just the same as a mesmer COULD cope losing some distortion or a warrior COULD deal with losing time on endure pain.

My point is they devs need to take care of this prompto. This is turning the community on one another when, really, no one did anything wrong.

Columba.9730:

Ignoring the perma stealth problem won’t make it go away. Sory.

As I said in my earlier post, any class can go for its own “LOL” build, doesn’t mean you need to damage a heavily relied upon aspect of said class.
If a gameplay mechanic is broken and exploited, then fine.
If it’s a technical/graphic mechanic that’s broken, then it isn’t fine.

I know what I am going to say is going to brush some people the wrong way, but thieves NEED stealth. It’s not just for picking our fights and all the cheesy counter arguments one might put out, but it is our most important defensive ability.

Would you like it if I took away the toughness/ heavy armor of the soldier classes ? What if I took away the meat shields of “pets” classes such as ranger, necros or mesmers?

My point is, yes, any skill or traits can be used for more than its original purpose ( being smart and adaptive about our own class skills is what makes a player good or bad) but it doesn’t mean it still isn’t fundamental to this class.

Without it, we are just crappy DPS who are begging to be one-hit shot.

We’re never going to stop players who find ways to abuse a certain mechanic of their classes. I mean,if permastealth annoys you that much…how do you feel about mesmer portals? Does golem porting tastes nice to you ? Where is the line drawn ?

Besides aren’t we supposed to discussing culling instead of permastealth thieves ?

Mr Quinn.9815:

I’m getting repeated emails from bluehornet.com, on behalf of GW2?

You are receiving this message because you signed up to receive Guild Wars 2 newsletters.

Yes, I signed up for a “newsletter”, however, the sales pitch email is NOT a newsletter, it’s spam in my book as the emails are being continually repeated, as such I have reported said mail as spam, but dare not “unsubscribe” for fear of a hack attempt.

?

Unsuscribing won’t blow up your computer. Doing it should be fine. Probably might as well email/contact support to forward a complaint if you feel it’s been an hindrance (not taking the mickey, it really is up to you as a customer to see if you deem this unethical enough to write a complaint).

Also that is why I never tick the “send me newsletters button”, your personal details always tend to end up somewhere else they shouldn’t be.

Columba.9730:

I understand that the culling bug is difficult to fix, and you guys have tried. However, it’s giving thieves huge benefits right now as they can perma stealth because of it. At what point do you plan to adjust stealth cool downs in wvw to compensate for the culling bug benefits that thieves get, or do you even consider that an option?

Thank you.

First off permastealthing is a pretty draining and uncommon thing for thieves to do. I’d happily say 1 in 10 does it. Sure it is irritating, but just the same as warriors who specced in this invincible build spamming endure pain while loling at you. There are always going to be those players who go for those cheesy builds in any games.

It resolves around taking not the most effective spec to achieve this, and then to cast black powder to finally to keep spamming heart seeker (3 times is needed to keep it up nicely) through the combo field in a timely manner on and on and on and on again, while using utility stealth skills to tie it all up when you are getting yourself too drained. Mess it up once and it goes wrong, hence exposing you (giving you a 3 second window at least to attack said thief) because of vanish debuff and also probably a little bit longer so said thief can replenish some initiative.

But do not take this as me disagreeing with you on the fundamental issue, culling IS a problem. Maybe a difficult one but still an issue that severely needs addressing.
Thing is the typical thief does not actually count on it. To me, on my monitor, the way I appear and disappear is the same as when I PVE. When my stealth is down, I feel exposed as much.

Obviously culling means it isn’t the case. It means I gain an steep, unfair advantage. I know how frustrating it can be when I hop on my mesmer or warrior and see the culling effect from the other side of the coin.
And this gives an even worse reputation to this class I really love. Stealth is always going to make thieves/shadows/rogues/assassins/operatives unpopular due to the fact stealth is a rather difficult utility to counter (AKA the “where am I?!?!?? muhahahaa” effect, which I can’t deny I’ve always loved).

Any good, fair-game thieves would agree the culling needs to go. Besides if a thief wanted to be unseen for longer, he’d find legitimate ways to do it.

Just thought adding a thief point of view on this matter might help show that all “honest” players of every class are supporting this issue being raised.

edit : typo

I think there is a difference between wanting to take part in the economy and wanting to make it your kitten. It is quite ironic that the current global economical crisis is kind of mirrored in GW2. You got the same kind of wealth gap, and the same kind of attitude on both sides AKA “Y U NO SHARE?” and “TROLOLO POOR NABS”…

Like plasma said, it’s just a game. Most of us, if ever going for a legendary, are going to craft it ourselves. Just because some people raise the valid question of how much gold is too much gold does not mean it’s an invitation for trolls to come out of hiding with snooty remarks.

If you like playing commodity trader in the game, that is your right but do not expect people to think it says something meaningful (either ways) about you.

Working 9 til 5, what a way to make a living…

Right now it feels more like begging for free gold in the map chat when trying to clear the story modes of certain dungeons of the game (hello Arah for example). This seriously affects the quality of the experience for old and new players alike.

New players find themselves locked out of finishing the story arc of the game, which shouldnt happen. No matter when you bought the game, you should be able to get from A to Z without any difficulties or constraints (not referring to the actual game difficulty but rather technical or flawed-design difficulties).

Old players should be able to re-experience the story through new characters if they desire so.

I know a designer acknowledged that this was an issue that needs to be addressed. However there hasn’t been any word on the subject since roughly two months. Has there been any progress on the issue ? Are we supposed to be keep spamming in LA and Cursed Shore, praying that 4 other people might feel indulge you for whatever reason while the gates of Arah are still open ?

We were told our time as players was valued by ANet. But being unable to, for example, finish the game’s story or fully explore the back story of Destiny’s Edge (which I remind you is the backbone of the entire plot) really contradicts that statement.

The obvious issue is that there is no motivation to complete any dungeon story more than once (or at all). I personlly have more or less fully geared up an alt doing CoE runs while having NEVER run its story mode even once. Story mode needs more incentive than “being a forever pass to explorable mode as long as one of us five did it once”.
Surely that is the sign of something gone wrong in the design of dungeons. Cannot be very nice for all those involved in crafting the story aspect of the game to know that an entire quarter of dungeon content is getting completely ignored.

I would really appreciate if someone could clarify what we players can expect to be done on this matter.

Thank you for reading.

Awesome.6120:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

did you report him? Because we do ban for that type of behavior.

How strange. Instead of just letting the group kick the afker without wasting their time you would rather they report him, wasting more resources for you guys? What is so hard about not booting everyone from the instance if the first guy in leaves?

I thought that as well.

Why put strain on their customer service people when a simple fix ( I say simple, I don’t know how easy that would be to implement) would pay off in the long run for both players and your co-workers.

Without meaning to sound overly awful, it seems that ANet is quite content with its current PVE/Dungeon optimization (aka low rate of bug fixing and accomodating player issues) and does not see the need to work on any forms of improvement…

That is pretty lazy imho. Great game, but seriously lacking in certain fundamental departments.

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely an issue as the game matures and we are working on ways to make running story mode with someone worthwhile even if you have already run it so players just reaching these dungeons can more easily find groups to play with. It will probably take some experimentation before we find the right motivator.

Jon

Just saw that a mod/designer replied to this thread.

Any words of progress on this issue since it’s been over two months now?
For players like me who make alts, the absence of solution on this front is kind of worrying. Are we just to play one character for the entire duration of GW2’s lifespan and be thankful that we managed to finish the story just even once ?

Right now it feels like I am more likely to ask for 10golds for free in general chat and get it …than complete the story arc of the game you designed. That is seriously flawed.

Some kind of answer would really be appreciated…

In the same bag as everyone. No one is doing Arah story on my server, I know it’s wintersday event but seriously ? Are the players supposed to wait for weeks before they might get the slightest chance at finishing their story ?

I’m actually lucky that I already did it on my main ( finishing storyline on my alt now).

Back in october when I first did Arah story for the first time I had no issues finding a group, of course I know it was because a lot of other people were at the same stage and the game was still new.

But does this mean that for anyone who didn’t start playing back when the game came out doesn’t deserve to finish their story ? Or having to wait like second class citizens ?

I tried gw2lfg.com, tried LA, tried CS (obviously), tried guild ( when someone is up for it, there isn’t enough of them, and when we try to find a PUG we come back empty handed).

I can live with it since I finished the game on another toon already, but i DO feel bad for the newcomers who haven’t.

I hop ANet is aware of how certain zones/dungeons can feel deserted or unfriendly for first timers/alt people because these are the people who are going to carry your game when some of the early players flock away (migration always happens in every game).

It is weird that ANet thought it’d be a good decision to suddenly make the solo story require to finish a DE group chain and on the top of that a dungeon. I know it sounds great on paper, but in practice what we are left with spamming desperately or seeking help on 3rd party website.

I remember them saying something about how they value their players time, no matter when they log in, etc… I do wonder what happened to that.

Currently waiting for the message suppressing to turn off…kinda feel like you got no choice to spam since the devs made it unappealing for anyone to run storymodes more than once, and then punished for trying to find a group. I hardly find asking for a group in general in LA 5 times in 5 minutes excessive considering the crazy amount of fractals spam.

/rant over

Krew.3081:

@pownguin

Maybe the reason you didn’t win, cause you have friends who will bash others videos that put a lot of hard work into it, and dislike there channel/video.

That’s a bit harsh :/
I scrolled back on the thread and he just said he didn’t think he’d win because he’s got anxiety and probably didn’t pull off a great video because of lack of exterior help…before going on to congratulate both winners.

edit : typo

RedBaron.6058:

When I saw Legendary weapons being sold at TP I just laughed. The cash cow mentality had reached new heights!

So, now, you can get a Legendary weapon for being a legendary player or having a legendary wallet.

LOL top marks !

Seriously though back on subject, you are right and wrong at the same time. I have had my main at lvl80 since early october and essentially been hoarding gold since.

When I finally decided to make an alt, I spent roughly 45-55 gold (ingame generated gold) to level 6 crafts + doing story quests inbetween and got to level 80 in 3 days.

So it is possible to get an lvl80 in a matter of days while playing “genuinely”, without playing to win as you put it.

However it is perfectly possible for someone to literally just spend god knows how much on gems, then convert it to gold and do the same as I did. Am just saying both can be done. But do not let this hinder your enjoyment ingame. This game is not an aggressive gear treadmill by any means, so pretty much everyone equalizes fairly quickly at lvl80 . Should the game be gear competitive I probably would be saying something else.
At least you value your characters and know how to play them in many various situations, something your friend cannot say. Cherish what you have and your experience.

Some are going to pay to win, others aren’t. To quote EA, “it’s in the game”.

…what love is….I want you to show m-

Woops, very deceiving title :p

On your question I’d say it’s probably because activities are instances with a set limit for how many can enter. Allowing people to enter in bunches might conflict with that, and they way they coded it.

But you are raising a valid point. I would have loved to do the jumping puzzle with my mates but we got split in 2 groups. We were all on mumble so it was still fun as we were still “in touch”, but would have been better if we actually were together.

Maybe a kind community coordinator sees the validity of this question and brings it to a designer who might give us a proper answer to this question.

EDIT : thanks Urthona for the link

Technically you open a thousands chests and never get a pet.

You could also open 3 and get all of them.

Statistics do not change the nature of RNG, which is to stimulate random odds.

This is similar to gambler’s luck, each time you try your luck you do not actually raise the odds. They are the exactly the same each time you roll the dice, it’s simply a human logic fallacy.

What is the point of my post ? Random is random, so don’t waste too much money on it as whatever will be, will be

I have a full MF set alongside my “real” gear set. But I never wear it for two reasons :

The first is in my experience I get pretty much the same loot with or without MF.

The second reason is I made a lot of efforts to get my actual main set, and if I don’t wear in dungeons or high levels zones…then why the hell did I farm it in the first place ? So I may get more gear that I won’t wear ?

Yes I understand it is supposed to make me more rich but I’m already geared best in slot…what is the point of all this farming in the long run ?

( I am not trying to be dismissive of other people’s point of view, this is purely my perspective on this).

What can I say. Friendship IS magic.

@plasmacutter

I can empathize with you.

I have stopped open world farming quite a while back and now make my coin running dungeons (hello CoE and charged stones/lodestones) and doing my daily ori runs on my 3 alts (which nets me an average of 3g pretty easily) , which is fine as it covers my expenses quite nicely but I do miss getting my loot from just running around the world ( which I thought was the game was all about : DEs, exploring and getting rewarded for it).

I also believe ( I am stressing this, I haven’t got anything to back it up) the issue only affects some players as otherwise that thread/issue would have received way more views than it has(40 thousands IS a lot but when over 2 million people bought the game, it’s just a drop in the ocean), and probably would have been officially acknowledged by ANet. This doesn’t mean the players suffering from the DR are imagining things, just that this might only be affecting a small minority.

However this doesn’t really matter whether it affects everyone or just someone, the issue has been raised and vocalized. ANet’s absence of answers on the subject is going to make it hard for the players affected to feel appreciated or valued. It’s common sense, and nobody can genuinely argue otherwise.

No communication on an issue that has been raised for a month is pretty bad. It doesn’t matter whether they turn around and tell us that it’s in our head,accidental or intentional.

Dialogue is crucial when a complaint is being raised. ANet is shooting itself in the foot by not answering its customers. No matter how trivial the issue may or may not be. That’s called customer service.

If you feel that you have been mistreated as a customer, I cannot argue that you haven’t.

Grevender.9235:

they are awfully powerful, but so cute
of course I even crafted a doll mini, to never forget how terrifying they are

Wintersday 2012. Never forget.

plasmacutter.2709:

There is a word for what DR is doing to a wide swath of legitimate players:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.

I’d rather have the bots than be denied the ability to be self-sufficient and work toward a precursor.

I think the comparison is a bit over-the-top, that itself being a euphemism considering you are drawing parallels between genuine human catastrophies and loot drops in one game. I am just saying that because it isn’t worth getting the thread locked because we are feeling frustrated (legitimately to a certain extent) over the issue discussed here at hand.

But I do see where you are coming from. I would just hope things stabilize in the near future and we get more options to make some coin (other than dungeons, which is fine by me but definitely boxed-in).

Seriously. Nerf them.

Even my brave dolyak companion couldn’t do anything about it. What madness is this ?

THIS… IS… unexpected ?

I agree with you OP, the old skin looks much better. I was going to say it was just because the second picture was taken with lower graphics, but regardless of that, the model seems to have been dumbed down

I’ll check it ingame to see for myself but that would suck if that was indeed the case.

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Lord Kuru.3685:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

If I’m having fun, I win.

Wrong! it’s when you:

crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.

KROM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My guildies and I agree on this, but they are norns and cannot cry (of joy) so I am crying for them.

krixis.9538:

OMG that glass cannon thief just killed my glass cannon keyboard turning unkeybound char.

I AM MENT TO BE THE HERO OF TEH WORLDZ HOW DARE HE KILLZ ME.

thats normally what happens

That’s made me laugh.

I even bet they charge in while humming “I can be your hero”by Enrique Iglesias…

Mister Mustard.7203:

That post was almost entirely tongue-in-cheek, mainly to symbolize how ridiculous I feel the quoted arguments are.

I apologize if you took it as rudeness, and I’m not sure how arguing for the opposing view is unconstructive. What is rude and unconstructive, however, is flatly dismissing my comments as “QQing” and invalid. Just so we’re clear.

When your argument does not revolve around editing the “opposition’s” point of view without offering any insights yourself, other than generally hinting at a class as OP then your comments will stop being taken as QQ,or if you prefer “forum whining”. Glad we are clear.

From the small amount of information you have provided, you believe thieves are either rolling balls of death spamming HS til they are dry of initiative (then what after ? You didn’t elaborate) or they are condition specced. That shows to me that you either have never played a thief, or have not experimented with yours very much.

You also talk about initiative, and how it is encourages spamming.
Indeed there is no stopping a thief burning of of his initiative pressing 2 or 3 but where does that leave him afterward?
Unless of course you are facing a player that is just happy to take it, it is a very basic and may I say "stupid"build and won’t work on anyone with a bit of a brain.
Also to really be an effective enough method of taking down his opponents the said thief would have to invest heavily in power and precision, which leaves him with no survivability. Very risky build with little chance of paying off.

You also talk about “easy” thief is. Well you are correct there, thief is pretty easy. But so are pretty much all of the other classes (hello ele, warriors,mesmers and guardians) , I mean how hard is it to handle two weapon sets and a bunch of utilities?

The only people I believe when it comes to calling for nerfs are those working at ANet. I hope you noticed that in this conversation I haven’t been “defending” thieves or asking for a buff. I said there is more to them than a baddie build revolving around spamming 2 buttons.

You believe otherwise. I guess that is where we continue discussing or we agree to disagree if that is too much to take.