Guild Wars 2

Salvaging gets you the skin. You’ll only miss out if you sell it.

It was always 10 for me. The wiki agrees: “Rich mining veins can be mined ten times as opposed to three…”

Maybe it’s a hint that they’ll eventually replace the existing personality traits with the main trait lines. They’d just have to give this function to the secondary attributes, which already have personality-ish names, (Ferocity, Compassion, Malice, Concentration, and Expertise).

Of course, the one huge downside would be having virtually no personality until you hit level 30.

I feel that the new trait system is a step in the right direction. Some adjustments need to be made, but it stands to make leveling more interesting, (after level thirty, that is).

Astralporing.1957:

Well, one thing we do know now. CDI was nothing more than a PR smoke screen. The one thing they obviously do not intend to do is to talk with community.

NOPE. The finding-traits-in-the-world mechanic was pulled almost verbatim from what we came up with in the Horizontal Progression CDI. Also, the wardrobe was brought up there so many times, it had to be sidelined to a later CDI, (although their awesome programmers managed to fully implement the thing before that second thread could even be scheduled).

Here’s an idea: divorce attributes from traits. Keep them visually together in the UI, but with separate point expenditures. Traits themselves work as they do now, using trait points. Attributes cost attribute points, which scale with the old system, starting at level 11.

The plus/minus buttons adjust your attributes, while traits are adjusted by clicking directly on the slots. The bulk of the graphical bars representing the trait lines should be greyed out or hidden until the character hits level 30, with only the left edge and numbers visible.

This would also give players a little more freedom when creating builds. The attributes and traits sharing a line present a recommended pairing, rather than a forced marriage.

Yup, can’t run SB on Fort Aspenwood.

I like the schedule system as a concept, but feel there’s some room for improvement. Firstly, make it visible in the game.

Secondly, run two schedules side-by-side, each triggering simultaneously every 15 minutes. This speeds things up, and gives players a choice of which boss to run.

Schedule A contains the 8 high-level world bosses. Each boss runs every two hours, at the same time within the hour. (e.g. Fire Shaman runs at 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, &c.)

Schedule B contains the 4 low-level bosses and the 3 legendary bosses. It runs through all 4 low-level bosses, does one of the legendaries, goes through the low-levels again in the same order, hits the next legendary, and so on. Each low-level comes up every hour and 15 minutes, and each legendary appears once every 3 hours and 45 minutes.

While Schedule A cycles fully every 2 hours, Schedule B takes 15 hours. This means that it takes 5 days for everything to wrap back around to happening at the same time of day, giving players with limited play time a more varied experience.

GW1 had physical arenas in the world where early-level PvP took place, (until the Zaishen moved everything to the Battle Isles, that is). I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to have a tiny map somewhere with a single waypoint, with the area being instanced to your party. When you arrive, it’s a private free-for-all between the few of you for as long as you want.

I’d be happy enough if it actually went away when the target died.

They read pretty much everything, as has been pointed out many times. It’s posting that they don’t do often, and that’s as it should be.

These forums are not a direct customer-service line to the development staff. They have work to do, and don’t owe us direct answers to all our petty questions. We are not entitled to have them publicly agree or argue with us over all the details of their work.

The upcoming one-rune system for PvP has got me thinking about a smoother way to handle runes game-wide. In PvE/WvW, you have six runes, but they’re individually weak and unnecessarily duplicate many of the bonuses that are already on the armor they slot into. Also, the market right now is heavily skewed toward superior runes, with minors being virtually unsalable on the Black Lion.

My proposal is to disconnect runes from attributes and armor, and equip fewer of them.

Attribute bonuses currently found on runes would be stripped out, compensated by a proportional increase in those same attribute bonuses on appropriate armor sets. Runes would keep their “special effects,” which now get the spotlight.

Unlock one minor rune slot on the Hero panel at early levels, then a major slot in the mid levels, and top it off with a superior slot near the end. Characters would thus slot one rune from each tier.

The effect of minor runes would be equivalent to current slots 1-2, majors would mimic slots 3-4, and superiors would cover slots 5-6.

Major and superior runes would only be equippable if the runes below them share the same name-type, but you can equip lower runes in higher-tier slots to mix.

This would clean things up considerably, while making lower tier runes more valuable. (To boost the value further and prevent superior costs from plummeting, all the old runes on the market may need to be annoyingly converted into fragments that players must combine into a whole.)

Twyll Blackleaf.9641

Aww, you don’t run via Skype or Google Hangouts?

Not for pre-alpha testing, sorry. I’m still hammering out the core systems, making it truly feel like Guild Wars from the ground up instead of just being GW themed. That requires a hands-on, in-person approach for the time being.

For what it’s worth, I’m in the early stages of homebrewing a GW tabletop RPG from scratch. (I have some experience with this.) If anyone in the Seattle area wants to have a little fun helping test the gears out, flash me a PM.

(Devs are welcome, too!)

This is a great step forward. I’m really hoping the next step is to let players manually choose which instance of a map to go to. That was a great feature in GW1, and I would love to see it return.

Consumables in general should be considered non-combat luxury items. They have no place in the action of a skill-based game, (fire ele powders were never part of the balance equations), so I don’t see any reason to give quick access to them at all times.

What I could support is an option to automatically replace your 1-5 skills with a “pockets” item bar when you are out of combat and your weapons are sheathed. After all, you’re not technically wielding those weapons for the moment. Having just 5 slots for potions, minipets, and such that’s available only in peace mode would sit fine with me.

1. Use what you have. Characters, histories, plot threads: you already have a thousand toys in place. Even my character has a personality, history, and connections in the world.
2. Make my stake in the fight personal. Nobody cares about saving the world. The scale is too big for us to be emotionally invested in. If you want me to care about the cards on the table, make sure I’m betting with my own chips.
3. Get proper feedback. You can’t trust internal responses from non-writers to be sufficient. That’s like a novelist self-publishing when the only other person who’s read the book is their spouse. Find other writers and editors, (game and non-game), and workshop the ideas to death before pushing them out.

ArenaNet did not have any booth space at PAX Prime last year, and I wouldn’t expect them to in the future unless they announce an expansion or side project. They do, however, run panels and off-site parties every year.

evilapprentice.6379:

I like the idea of each class stolen from offering a set item for each slot.

F2 – Direct damage oriented – works well for power/crit builds.
F3 – Condition damage oriented – works well for condition based builds.
F4 – Support – not tailored for either build, just offers some sort of support item.

That way whirling axe isn’t mostly useless for condition build, and throw gunk isn’t mostly useless for a power/crit build.

I was thinking of something like that, but using the existing soft trinity: damage, control, and support.

Also, keep in mind that enemies only have professions in PvP. Stolen items in PvE are semi-random—depending on creature—and pulled from a much longer list: 26 different items, as opposed to 8.

Zacchary.6183:

Because it doesn’t really do much for the thief besides make it a thief.

Or more accurately, it’s the only thing making a thief not an assassin.

Renny.6571:

Untraited, a thief gets a gap closer that also grants one of the following:

• 10 second Chill. Good thing attunement recharge is also affected by chill, yay balance.
• Projectile reflect with massive pbaoe damage. It’s better than a Warrior’s own axe 5.
• Heal/Cleanse water field.
• Longest fear in the game, also pbaoe.
• Longest single target daze in the game.
• On demand stealth+blind.
• All boons.

Don’t try argue any of these aren’t useful in most scenarios lolol.

In general PvE, most of those are useless, if not a flat-out hindrance when playing with a group. I already do enough chill and group healing with my venoms. Long dazes are only helpful against difficult enemies—which are uncommon—and mostly annoy players using confusion or retaliation. That long fear does little more than irritate other players who are trying to attack those targets, especially considering melee.

This doesn’t mean those stolen items don’t have areas and builds where they’re useful, but I hope you understand that for many players, their utility is highly circumstantial.

The Steal mechanic is underused by many players due to the lack of control over the results. My proposal is to update the mechanic to let thieves steal 3 items, and choose which one they want to use.

• F1: Steal
  • This immediately gives you 3 items, filling the F2-4 slots.
  • Press again to drop all items and reduce cooldown by a few seconds. Sometimes you just need access to the Steal command again, for its stun break or other properties.
• F2-4: Use item
  • The items stolen would still be semi-random based on enemy type, except that you get a handful, (literally), to choose from. When you use one of them, the others are immediately tossed aside.

This change would have a relatively small impact on balance. The goal is to give players some choice and control, making Steal more tactical, practical, and desirable.

I’m guessing the achievements were patched in shortly before, but they took them out before dataminers could ruin the surprise.

I have to agree with the general sentiment here. Unlocking traits in the world is great; this is exactly what we came up with in the CDI, and they’re applying it brilliantly. However, the trait point and tier scaling is bonkers.

Character below 30 will have nothing to play with but skills and equipment, and will have virtually no access to secondary attributes, (and their profession’s unique primary attribute), outside of runes. This strips out too much of what makes the game tick, not to mention taking away the fun of having points to allocate when you level.

As for Grandmaster being on 80, no thank you. We already have enough to concern ourselves with at that critical point. Let us grow into our GM traits, instead of suddenly having full access right at the end.

Here’s my suggestion for a middle ground:

• Adept @ 20
• Master @ 45
• Grandmaster @ 70
• 1 point every 5 levels until Lv60, then 1 every 4

Recalibar.6482:

Schizo.1375:

That’s funny that you think anything is as simple as one line of code.

You’re right. It’s not a line of code. It’s a Boolean.

There are multiple teams feeding new code and resources into the patch pipeline on a daily basis. A lot of what they put in is back-end tweaking that affects them more than us, and doesn’t need to be in the patch notes. Some of it is code or resources that have been finalized but not yet implemented for consumption. Even a tiny change will often cascade into others in order for it to work right, and every file touched on has to be re-downloaded in full.

Mastermavrick.2439:

Thanks for the update thou may i add PLEASE do a small alpha tests on patches some bugs like this are a real irritation. (and yes i know you probably do run them but maybe with not enough people for error chance/finding)

They’re doing all the testing they can afford, given what we pay them.

I’m a big proponent of turning the HoM into a HoM(e) away from home. The Hall of Monuments is supposed to be the center of our personal legend in Tyria. Let it fulfill that roll.

In GW1, we saw banners and objects strewn all over to celebrate our accomplishments. This can be re-implemented without much fuss, and we can just as well have memorials to our losses, (Tybalt, Lion’s Arch, &c.).

The Scrying Pool showed us cinematics from the past, which could replace the video-playing objects clogging up our inventory. It also gave us visions of what was to come; this would be an excellent way to tease future releases without making players leave the game and access a website.

Although the greater Eye of the North once held several merchants and other useful NPC’s, they don’t need to return. Markets should remain social places, not lonely instances. That doesn’t mean we can’t house a few people here, but they should be our personal guests, allowed into our private Fortress of Solitude according to the needs of the Living Story.

I don’t want to wait until we’re hunting down Jormag for this place to become interesting again.

To my ears, a lot of this boils down to how the pet would work best if it was treated like a no-hand weapon slot that can soak up a few hits, but gets bogged down by the pet sprite needing to move independently around the field, instead of having a “fixed” position relative to the player or target.

I don’t think I’m alone in wanting Season 2 to implement permanent changes to the world, with instances accessed as a branch of the Personal Story. Just imagine being able to take a month away and actually pick up where you left off!

I know, I know…If wishes were fishes.

illutian.7630:

Autumn Frazee.3158:

Thank you for reporting this, we realize that is is difficult to get full maps during non peak hours or that it is hard to get a full overflow to coordinate for these fights, we are currently working on easing the difficulty of the Assault Knight fights to better allow servers to participate in the Hologram Fight.

An easy fix would be to change the ‘buff zones’ for the Red Knight to also remove conditions on you.
…I haven’t faced the Green or Blue to see what they do.

It’s poor design to make a World boss mob reflect all conditions…knowing that most of us have builds that do passive (ie on Crit) conditions that do damage.

All three have the same mechanics.

Even if you don’t inflict conditions on crits, many players carelessly lay down combo fields around the knights, leading to most of the damage I personally take during these events.

Only bringing it to ascended tier requires 500 crafting, which is the reason 500 crafting exists in the first place.

As interesting as a high possibility of failure can be in content of any scale, it needs to be considered forbidden when designing “primary” events. For example, the core story moments of a Living Story release should always be easy to access. If a player only has time for one run-through during the whole two weeks, that attempt should almost always succeed in moving them through the main story arc.

Make the knights’ toughness and condition resistance, (and reward level), drop as the timer ticks down. Just say that their power cores are getting used up. It should still be very hard to beat them all within six minutes. By twelve minutes, a moderately populated overflow of players on average builds should have no excuse for not being on the threshold of success. At fourteen minutes, they practically crumple at your feet, but the rewards are paltry. No matter what, you almost always get in to fight the holograms.

The holograms should have a similar mechanic. An honest effort will be able to punch through eventually, but coordinating to take them down fast will yield the best loot and achievements, and maybe a little extra dialogue.

Mechanics like this should be used for any event where success is necessary for progressing the story. Optional events can have as high a failure rate as the designer wants.

Hebee.8460:

TC main failed cause blue went insta heal to full at 5-10%.
Red & green died though.
I got 6 gear champ boxes and a Static core

Other then the insta full heal/fail – I like it

Blue healed up on FA as well.

Has anyzerg tried moving from one assault knight to the next when it’s almost dead, leaving a few behind to finish it slowly? There seems to be a strong buff applied to remaining knights whenever one dies, but splitting up to fight them all outright at the same time doesn’t seem to work. Would whittling them down to a fragment then waiting to kill them off produce better results, and maybe let us get the 6-minute achievement?

I had to make myself a wallpaper, (sans letterboxing), to remember the moment…

As far as Orr is concerned, I don’t see this arc taking us there. Even if it did, there’s an entire half of the Orrian landscape we haven’t explored yet. Relax.

Keneth.6490:

lordkrall.7241:

So you would rather not be able to play at all but rather wait hours upon hours in queues?
Because that is basically the only other option.

Funny how those aren’t the only two options in literally every other MMO in existence.

Yeah, but the third option sucks:

• Distribute players between multiple instances (overflow)
• Have one instance, which can only fit so many players (queue)
• Have one instance, with unlimited capacity (unplayable)

Honest, I’d be happy if I could just sell them for 1c a piece. Or better yet: consume for luck.

Behellagh.1468:

Systems like that are notoriously tough to balance. The chances of a particular combination being overpowered compared to the rest is highly likely even though the individual powers seem balance.

I’ve seen ones that are both harder and easier to balance. Anyway, I didn’t claim it was a “better” system, but just one that’s fun to muck around with as a concept. I’m a big fan of breaking things into modular pieces.

Here’s an idea I’m toying with for some potential tabletop fun, which could also have made an interesting alternate design route for the digital game.

Instead of bundling a predetermined set of concepts in a static profession, they could have made a series of building blocks which players fit together as they desire.

Certain aspects would have to be chosen at character creation:

• Class (Soldier, Adventurer, Scholar)
  • Determines armor type, weapon stances, and Endurance regen
• Primary Mechanic
• First Weapon

The universal dodge mechanic would be replaced with a pair of reaction skills determined respectively by your primary mechanic and off-hand/two-handed weapon. (e.g. Dodge, block, parry, barrier, shadowstep, etc.) Reaction skills all cost Endurance, which lighter armor classes acquire faster.

Multiple stances are available for each weapon, changing its skill bar entirely, (including the reaction skill). Each armor class has its own set of stances, for balancing purposes. Your secondary weapon set may be the same as your primary, but with a different stance, if you so desire.

Utility skills, (including healing and elite), would be divided into a number of equally broad sets, such as signet, shout, or trap. Unlocking a set lets you buy and use those skills. Each primary mechanic and race has its own unique utility set, which you start with. Instead of having specific elite skills, any utility skill can be put in the elite slot – giving it an appropriate boost, but increasing its cooldown.

A handful of additional weapons and utility sets would be unlocked during character progression. Orders could each have a utility set, but only if order selection occurred much earlier in the personal story.

Trait lines would be customizable. Each line would be bound to a primary attribute, (including one related to your chosen primary mechanic). You can choose which secondary attribute and non-racial utility set to assign to which line. These three aspects determine the minor and major traits available.

Alternately, they could have combined pre-made professions with generic skill groups as I’ve outlined here, unlocking each weapon/stance and utility set for just two or three professions. It thus becomes the mixture of skills that is unique to each profession, instead of the individual skills themselves. (Sets bound to primary mechanics, however, would be profession-specific, and racial sets would still be available to all professions.)

Random tabletop-specific notes: Utility sets should mostly be accessed one at a time and when out of aggro, as they would represent a sort of “kit” that requires hands and/or attention. Weapon stances might contain passive effects. Each order and racial subgroup, (college, legion, etc.), would have their own utility set, and these would not be excluded from trait lines. Lionguard and Zaishen would be additional orders.

Have you tried using an “okl;” setup? It keeps your right hand where it would be if you were typing, like “wasd” does for us righties. That would give you a lot more keys to bind, if it’s comfortable.

Would it be easier to change the traps themselves to gain a unique benefit from Critical Damage/Ferocity?

e.g. (trait) Traps can crit when applying conditions. This converts xx% of your Ferocity into Condition Duration for these stacks.

If nature-bound hunters aren’t supposed to use guns, you might want to tell that to all the ones who do. They’ll be so embarrassed to discover that their centuries-long traditions of running through the wilds, firing bullets instead of arrows, are misguided. Oh, the egg on their faces.

This should be posted in the Game Bugs subforum.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs

Judging from the battle-map poster released today, it looks like Escape and Attack events will coexist. It makes sense for the assault to occur alongside continuing rescue operations.

Also, I have a feeling that the Escape/Attack content will remain in place until the start of Season 3 in the spring, similar to how Wintersday ran for two months. (The ending of the blitz and progression of LA to its next activity phase is unlikely to be implemented as a non-Living Story release, unless they close off the map entirely.)

The word “ultimate” defines the last item in a list or series. It is one of the most commonly misused words in English, but ArenaNet used it correctly here.

(Dons flame-proof suit)

If you want Allie to respond to what you’re saying: say something she hasn’t already responded to.

Some people are doing a good job of that. However, much of the last umpteen pages is criticism stuck on repeat. They’ve already heard that, and it isn’t helping us move toward solutions.

Awesome-but-controversial ideas like this are the exact reason why I want to tie profession mechanics in with the subclass concept, as the main non-aesthetic component thereof.

Let players flip their Beast Mastery trait line over to Aspect Mastery, changing the whole mechanic with it. Click. Bam. Build changed. That’s all we need.

(Not to say that it should be easy to unlock, but that’s another CDI.)

Q: Would adding rifle, (or another weapon), to the ranger’s repertoire as a burst-damage option be an acceptable stopgap while the broader mechanical issues are being worked on?

I don’t think she’s saying that any change to damage is power creep. However, bringing the ranger’s overall damage output up would be. It’s a matter of adapting how and when they do damage to match outside factors, (general mechanics, enemies, other professions). Those outside factors themselves may need to be updated if the ranger’s problems are determined to be rooted in external causes.