Guild Wars 2

Vanguardian.4921:

You must have missed my entire post by making that comment.

Before you give advice, you should think about what kind of people are receiving these advice. Teaching newbie players to go glass cannon is the same as griefing them. Give them enough buffers so they can actually learn the controls, then they can make the decision to go glass cannon themselves if and when they’re ready.

It’s pretty basic so as to not worth mentioning, but if someone is unsure of how to equip their character, they are not ready to glass cannon fractal lv 30. How hard is it to grasp? Now stop derailing the thread.

phlemhacker.1372:

To be honest, I made this post before sifting through a lot of threads, and I definitely do not see an abundance of logical thinking gracing the forums. That said, I still think something like this could be useful. Now obviously, I wouldn’t expect an exact copy of the CSM and I apologize if that is the impression I gave. It could be a group of people ArenaNet finds competent, the community finds competent, or a combination of both. It would be up to them, I don’t make the game I only play it, and they would have a much better insight as to how implement it.

If it’s still by democracy then the current GW2 community is not up to the task. If it’s not by democracy then why have a CSM at all?

Vanguardian.4921:

I’ll take it a step further. Can be done, nah. Viable. In fact, it’s a strong choice. Guardian and full berserker’s is an amazing combo in the right player’s hands. Sure, bad players won’t be able to handle it. But good one’s can. And I’m confident anyone can be good enough to go with it. Also, giving an example of content being too easy, try lvl 30 fractals. From major mobs you can only take 1 (2 at the most) more hits in full defensive gear, as opposed to full beserker’s, So my advice: Learn to dodge, play your angles, and avoid damage, instead of speccing to take more of it. I do tons of challenging PvE and WvW, and there are no facts to prove Berserker’s isn’t a viable and strong option for a half decent player.

I’d like to say something about elitism but that’d be hypocritical.

To everyone else, if you’re looking for advice, do not take his advice.

Can be done =/= is the general norm. It’s about managing risk. Also, you being able to do it only means that the PvE content is too easy for you. It does not mean what I say is not true.

I guess I’m in the minority yet again by liking the fact that sPvP is separate from PvE?

It keeps the community separate. I don’t need those NEED-MORE-PHAT-LOOTZ people playing with me. My gripe with sPVP is I hate capture the point. Commander battles and JQ both failed in GW1, what is Anet thinking?

This is just impossible. GW2 is set from the ground up not to be a loss friendly(carebear) game. Looting a legendary? Yeah, not gonna happen.

If you want FFA PVP, play EvE.

I wouldn’t necessarily relate survivability with time played either. Running full berzerkers require you to concentrate on playing defensively to stay out of trouble, it doesn’t provide enough buffer to people who’d rather play aggressively in big encounters.

I do 0/0/30/20/20 and use HP/pre/vit armor, boon duration runes, emerald jewels and pow/tuf/vit weapons. It has served me really well in fotm with staff as second set, and either sceptor+focus, greatsword or hammer as main.

I find damage a bit lacking for when I do WvW though so is in process of finding a more power oriented combination.

I don’t think the wording is consistent across skills and effects. You have to discuss it on a per skill basis.

I actually quite like the fact that we could opt out of symbols. Though they do have to fix Smite’s animation. It looks too much like a symbol, in big fights, it’s very confusing for allies.

cesmode.4257:

alcopaul.2156:

i hope they show the true level of each persons in the party.

otherwise, if you played badly coz of reasons unknown, you will be suspected of being a low level in your party.

And if your fractal level is shown, and you are a low level, you will be booted without hesitation and this entire change is for nothing. No gear score, no inspections, nothing..is what I vote for. Keep everyone on “equal footing” in eachothers mind. If you stand in fire, thats your own kitten fault and they’ll boot you for standing in the fire, not for your fractal level. Id rather be booted because I screwed up, not because of a number next to my name.

If people boot then they have to wait longer to make a group. This puts choice in the player’s hands. You can’t make a choice without being informed.

I think a tiered system (1-9 one group, 10-19 second group) is better. This no gate whatsoever approach is too extreme and too exploitable, destroy pugs, and stretch the wealth discrepancy between big guilds and casual players even further.

Sin.5871:

dreztina.4820:

I kind of feel bad for the devs, getting this kind of response to an interview they were obviously happy with. But, maybe this’ll help them understand how frustrated people are right now.

Well, they didn’t decide to talk with us like other dev groups on reddit for Q/A.

To be fair, them talking on reddit is 99% PR fluff with no substance.

Zeldain.5710:

Sollith.3502:

Vix.6730:

I agree on all points. The fighting is hands down the best I’ve seen in an MMO, but AN counters this plus by stapling skills to weapons.

I personally don’t see it as a huge problem, but a bit more flexibility would be nice. I find my self changing weapons all the time depending on the situation, which is what I think they intended for players to do by “stapling” skill sets to weapons; however, it would be nice to have a few more options for my favorite weapons too. Maybe add a second skill set to each weapon?

I think many players don’t see the need (and there really isnt one) to change weapons in combat. And of course forget it if you have your legendary. Unless you want to grind another.

0.o

Depends on what you meant by “need”. If you’re okay with waiting for cooldowns and making engagements needlessly long then yes you don’t need to switch weapons. To be the best you do need to bring the right weapon set for each engagement and switch according to the situation.

On the one hand I think it’s comforting that they are at least addressing the “progression” issue. But then it is only a very minor issue, in the grant scheme of things.

People who play WvW because they enjoy WvW, the battle and strategies, do not need “progression”. “Progression” is merely something to grind, a sort of stepping stones to bring you to the fun. The perfect war simulation should have no such thing as “progression”. But maybe that is an unrealistic vision. Expect more PvE’er incoming in February, and no, they’re not here to play the war, they’re here to grind for their legendaries.

That said, can we at least have Fort Aspenwood (from GW1) back as an sPvP mode? That was what I was thinking about at the very beginning when you announced no healers in GW2. Finally no more WoH+AoE+PnH combo hiding behind a wall healing that kurzick elementalist! That game and GW2 is a perfect match!

They are unlikely to overhaul any system post launch. The best we can hope for is tweaks. Some can be just numerical changes. Purging flames is clearly underpowered, but if they drop its cooldown to be more in line with smite condition maybe people will consider it. Others might need functional tweaks, like hallowed ground is too niche right now. Is there anything we can do to make it a viable alternative to stand your ground? Like say, let it pulse blind on enemies?

Then there’s the spirit weapons, which are technically not utility skills at all. They give extra damage, but no stun breaking, no IMS, no gap closer. Currently the only spirit weapon builds are glass-cannon gankers with no mobility, are we okay with that? Should we rethink what spirit weapons do for us?

Those are changes that actually has a chance to get into the game, and could make guardians less of a one trick pony with dry game play.

Seems like a well thought out idea, but it’s unlikely to ever happen. The whole reason why this boon system was introduced at all was so that they can normalize all buffs into one standard. Back in GW1’s time they had enchantments giving buffs of their own and the enchantment based classes had stronger enchantments. They scrapped that for the current implementation in GW2.

The biggest problems with guardians right now seems to be that everyone is feeling pigeonholed into valor/honor builds because our only viable utilities are either shouts or meditation. The biggest deviation to this is maybe those who sacrifice one slot for sanctuary. It’d be much better if they make our clearly underpowered or underutilized utility skills functional, so we can have a more diverse playstyle.

Actually it’d be great if they dropped both tomes and just give us the 4th skill on tome of courage and the 5th skill from tome of wrath on shorter cooldowns and quicker cast time and we’ll have them all be viable, useful elites.

phlemhacker.1372:

The fact that they decided to make an official forum for Guild Wars 2 when they didn’t for Guild War would indicate otherwise.

Not quite. Making an official forum allowed them to keep the majority of forum goers in one place, where they have absolute control over censorship. Back in GW1 times where there were only fan forums, they had little control over administration of the community, and as such the community was more autonomous.

Vapor form has issues outside of WvW as well… Though if it’s ele running back inside a keep while being downed you’re looking to fix, just make it so that downed people cannot use the escape hatch. No need to change the skill.

This issue is on the back of my mind for forever too. Though I’ve never ever considered it an “exploit.” I mean, kitten?

I’d like to see prints purchased with gold to be unbound, and those bought with wvw badges and from the jumping puzzle account bound.

Rambodacious.7495:

All legendaries do have a specific recipe that guarantees their creation, but yes, like both you and I have said, they aren’t account bound.

I’m pretty sure he means a recipe that guarantees a precursor, not the actual legendary.

Rhysati.4932:

Roles: I’m a huge fan of playing a tank, healer, or support class. DPS bores the snot out of me in games. Unfortunately, dps seems to be the main focus of every single class. I do like that everyone gets at least some sort of heals, boons, conditions, etc to help out with, but it’s lacking in terms of the direct contributions I would like to see. I want to play a healer or a tank. Or I want to play someone focused on boons and conditions to help my team. As it stands, you can’t really do those things as an actual role. For some, this is great, for others: not so much.

The biggest problem I see here in terms of the discussion is that some people have a mindset that having clear roles available means that you must have the trinity. But that just isn’t so. City of Heroes/Villains did things perfectly in this regard. While they had classes that were designed for tanking(Tankers), you didn’t need them. And while you had setups that were focused on heals(Empathy defenders), you did not need them either. Instead, you could work together to form any sort of team together and survive with buffs, debuffs, heals, tanking, damage, etc. Whatever it is your team makeup had, you could play to those strengths to form a competent group. Want to run with 8 Tankers? Go for it. Want to have 8 Defenders? Go for it. Want to have some weird mishmash of Melee and Ranged dps with no real tank or support? Go for it.

If you think there’s no tanks or healers in GW2. You are not exploring the game fully. Before you denounce GW2’s combat as unstructured and chaotic, think back to your CoH/V experience, apply the same framework to GW2. The two systems are very similar.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I prefer promoting people to play how they want rather than punishing them, especially when it comes to gear decisions. There’s already a pro and con to the mf-stat on the part of the player, so why add more cons to it?

There isn’t any more con to be added. The system is already at as bad as it gets, save for another impossible loot table. The compromise improves the system and makes it social. That’s all I care about in a MULTI-PLAYER game.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Yes, the 42% crit rate and 34% increased dmg only applies if I’m using my rifle which I rarely use as I rotate between kits for various support and dmg purposes (rifle is really more for CC purposes)…. But if I’m using my rifle, after 100 shots the increased crit damage at the 42% rate has basically done the same amount of damage as 14.3 additional regular attacks. The longer the fight, the more noticeable the damage is (assuming your stop-clocking it). If you’re farming the bosses for silver drops (since you added that in as I was responding) this becomes noticeable over a decent stretch of time, yet you’re adding more to the problem of inflating prices rather than meeting demand with items.

Though it is true that if everyone follows this MF route then things slow down, but if people are not downing/dying often and getting awesome loots then who cares if we all have mf and it’s taking a little longer?

Like I said above, have a group MF system based on the highest value of any player + the average of the other players (for groups greater than 3, less than 3 just use highest MF value). Maybe it doesn’t have to work quite like this, but magic find can be a handy personal and party stat if it’s designed well.

So people in MF gear being flagged for such [you get everyone’s consent] OR MF applies to whole party [share the joy of loot] actually meshes well with your view point.

Now show some support.

I think the idea of it is quite fun. It’s just people with no clue who don’t read instructions, don’t build sieges, and don’t CC toys that makes it somewhat tedious at the moment. Hopefully after a couple days they will move on so I can actually play it without feeling like I’m the only one doing anything at all :S

No love for MF here, though I am willing to propose a compromise.

Either they flag people with MF gear with something visual in the party panel so I can boot those handicaps, or add up all MF from each party member and apply it to the whole group, so everyone is contributing fairly to the game.

I do not think GW2 is a perfect game, but the article seems to miss the mark by quite a long shot. I think a lot of what GW2 is trying to accomplish is simply to allow people to define their own game, instead of being spoon-fed One Way to level, or One Way to battle, like the other MMOs.

Yes, they didn’t explain combat mechanics and roles, because you do what you want. Aside from the fact that everyone has to attack and heal themselves, everything else is totally up to the player. If you felt challenged you can just focus on staying alive, if you want to be the MVP you can try to protect/heal others and buff them as well. The character builds also reflect this philosophy, and in terms of being complicated and hard to learn, there are far more complex games out there, google up a guide if you don’t want to bother with it.

Crafting, could be a disappointment. There are a lot crafting could have contributed to the game, but then plenty games did well without crafting too. It’s not a very high priority but could be a bonus if crafts are empowered to effect the game in a deeper way. Currently, crafting is mostly limited to asset creation, and yet it’s not the only way to asset acquisition. It will be more powerful if its tied to ongoing operational expenses, such as more consumables, including sieges (for wvw) or other structural things (like housing? if that ever gets in).

Story, yes. The story is bad. No surprises for a GW1 player.Let’s drop this already.

Shield of Absorption still block sieges, it’s just a lot more difficult because the up time of that skill is quite a lot lower so you’ll need a lot more guardians, plus the shield last shorter too so you need to time it very precisely. I personally would rather see shield of the avenger fixed to use it’s ability even when not in combat, so that guardians can actually fill a niche in WvW.

Evalana.5480:

If you didn’t have the buffs from WvW, I am positive that you will notice the difference.

The buffs reset every week. We all see it. Difference as in the number of max HP change by like 1000? That’s not even one hit from a minion.

To be honest I don’t think the buffs were all that enticing. I certainly don’t care about it when I do fractals or whatever. And if by PvEers you mean people who does not like to fight other players, basically nothing you can do will make them want to WvW.

What WvW needs is a purpose, and it’s not lucrative loot drops or whatever (keep the farmers in PvE or they’ll flood the forums with 9000 duplicate threads when they get farmed themselves).

WvW in GW needs to feel like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/151l0q/does_anyone_have_a_detailed_account_of_the_fall/

Real politics and meaningful stories of the players, by the players.

If you are a commander, 4+ golems and trebs per raid is actually quite reasonable, and depending on how fast your group move a raid can last anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours. It’s not an invalid concern.

Plus, we all know WvW rewards cannot compare with anything with PvE. The difference is so wide you’ll see it within 3 minutes of playing. It really goes without saying.

Well, with enemies like the dolls it makes playing a mesmer or necro a lot more rewarding I guess. In general PvE the signature abilities of these classes are not utilized at all. Finally you get an enemy that actually needs boon and condition removal to fight. It makes fights more complex.

But classes aren’t equal in GW2, I hope they do something for classes that don’t get boon or condition removal abilities. They’re annoying enough to fight as a guardian, I can’t imagine being a warrior fighting them.

Yeah, I think people who complain are the ones who want to do nothing but healing, or those who don’t want to take care of their own healing. In GW2 everyone must do everything. You have a choice in doing one thing slightly more frequently than others, but you cannot choose to ignore any one aspect of control, support or damage. It’s just not the same as the trinity games.

If legendaries are tradable then all its components ought to be tradable too.

Yeah, I think it’s much better if instead of culling we get all characters besides yourself loaded with a generic model when under high load. Usually when that happens the screen would be too busy and all the characters just becomes silhouettes because the human mind cannot actually perceive that many details rapidly shown on screen.

This whole pretty shiny epic huge battle thing is a fine vision, but let’s be realistic here, the technology is not ready yet.

The problem. This is a game, not a cinematic. You do not sacrifice functionality to craft a picture. Like seriously, this is the only game that does it this way. Other games like EvE and TSW go the function-first approach, because in order for a game to be fun, it first needs to work.

Holiday themed sieges are festive enough for WvW. Heck, make all tower/keep lords look like Tokk, or all the guards into toy soldiers.

It’s annoying enough that there’re people asking for mesmer portals inside the JP every 3 minutes using our already busy team chats. Don’t add any more distractions that has nothing to do with anything. If people want to hunt skritt, they do it in PVE, not WvW.

Honestly, if they are going to pigeonhole us into boons, at least make spirit weapons give us boons. The Vigorous Precison nerf puts a lot more pressure into our utility slots forcing us to use shouts. We had no viable alternative to “Stand Your Ground!” since forever and now the other 2 slots must be shouts too, what’s with that?

So they realized not enough people are setting up sieges (or having a clue, for that matter). I hope the breakout events are meant and set up to be a tutorial, rather than further dumbing down siege mechanics.

It still seem way too exploitable. Either people are going to farm the events and the newbies/casuals it attracts or if that’s not worth it then wait for the event to end and then retake the tower. It accomplishes the objective of keeping the action up after the entire map is taken over but at what cost? Just how many people do you expect to be suckered into this stupid circle capping loop?

Good luck and hope to hear news about February soon.

IIRC, the last I heard of the lunatic court (last year, I didn’t join the one this year in gw1) they were trying to find a way to keep Mad King Thorn permanently in this realm instead of only allowed one day per year. They have enlisted players to help them with rituals and stuff, and that’s basically the halloween event.

It looks like we haven’t been formally introduced to the lunatic court in GW2 yet, so it’d be interesting if they finally showed themselves.

@viktorgraves: Then you can rest well on the fact that this modification will not change the way you participate, but it will improve your user experience by putting the area map in a window you can access from anywhere in game, including outside of WvW, you can utilize it in a few ways:

1) You can make the best choice when queuing for a map. No more blindly queuing for a borderland that is already overloaded when another one is in dire need of organized people.

2) During play, you can keep taps on the entire map by keeping the report window open, giving you relevant information in real time for quick decision making, without the hassle of having to switch out of the battle field. No more pressing M only to get ganked or eating the dust after the action is over.

This is the kind of smooth user interface you’d expect in 2012. Everyone will benefit from it all around.

Kuari.8106:

…ok, to 1, that should be the point. People should want to knock them out of first place. They are winning the match at the time, so regardless of the pie chart, they are the ones with the edge. Just because they aren’t holding a lot at that moment doesn’t mean that they weren’t the strongest for the majority of the time up until that point.

What you said is part of the reason I made this post. I’ll give you and update on what happen afterwards. Team last place has built enough force to take down our stonemist castle. Fortunately it is what I predicted would be the case, so we were able to get it back easily.

The score is not “an edge.” It is the result of an edge in the past. It does not give you an accurate idea of the present or the future. The strength of the opponent’s forces are indicated by their current map objective and orb holding. This gives you an idea about how many people are online inside WvW and how organized (this is important) they are.

Strategic planning is complicated enough without irrelevant information clogging up our reports. Also, I’m tired of people quitting when the first sign of falling behind shows up. This is the reason why you are seeing the population differences. It is because of people quitting, not because there’s no one there. Last week we were obliterated by ET. This week there’s no one for us to kill. WvW will stay this way for the foreseeable future if no change is made.

Too much emphasis on total score in the WvW report screen is discouraging players from participating and confusing players who are playing.

We really do not need to know what scores the other servers are on. Even our own score is only relevant for counting the PvE bonus and server ranking.

Yet countless times I see many players making play decisons through the score, such as:

1) Deciding to hit the higher scoring opponent, when the lower scoring one has 2 more orbs than them, and is holding a larger piece of the objectives pie chart.
2) Deciding not to play because the score gaps are too wide, even though an enjoyable experience is possible regardless of score.

The second point is especially important.

There are a lot of people complaining on the forums about impossible odds with some worlds holding 100% of all maps. This is not because of a significant population difference between the servers. Most servers are full or semi-full, and, when the scores are favorable, gets a queue. Last sentence points to our problem—we do not just want people when the scores are favorable.

The first point demonstrate the problem further.

Actual server strength is not determined by the score. The score only determines how long they’re able to keep their edge against the other 2 servers. However, at any given time, you can estimate the opponent’s strength by the objectives they are currently holding.

And yet, this information is hidden behind an unintuitive interface.

In order to fix this problem a few things need to happen:

1) The points accrued by each server should be hidden information, used for server rankings and bonus calculation only. Additionally, at the end of each match up cycle, make a report on server rankings. This is the only time when it matters, and it doesn’t matter whether this report is done on the forum, wiki, or in game, or as part of the blog updates on the game’s official site.

2) The orbs are not adequately representing their significance. They represent +5% stats each, and require a more threatening presence on the report screen. The more orbs, the more substantial the graphic should be.

3) The pie chart and the objectives ranking are also important information that is currently represented by an ineffective infograph. The Pie chart needs to be replaced with the actual map (same as when one presses M) with all the actual objectives represented real time. This will also allow people to queue for the right map when they are outside of WvW.

4) The pve bonuses window shows good incentives, but they have nothing to do with the actual fight, this information can take a lower place.

Graphically, a proper WvW report window should look like the attached pic (I’m no artist).

illusions shouldn’t really leave corpses behind IMO, it’s weird sometimes when you look at the minimap sometimes you see allies’ dots nearby but they’re actually dead clones.

I think the mesmer as the slowest traveling class is a design decision, because they are the ones with portal.

Mesmers do have a passive speed boost, it’s just only available in combat when you have illusions up. At least on that end there are more or less on par with the rest.

Wait, illusionary persona allow you to shatter without having illusions out?

It’s not just the confusion aspects, but I think butterflies are also used as an example for chaos theory, which also fit the theme of the mesmer. The butterflies are easy enough to get used to, if you want flashy without butterflies consider guardians, they have doves instead.

People actually like Magister Sieran? To me she’s the most flat character ever. Almost all of her dialogues can be summarized with “OMG it’s an adventure!” even til the very end. Usually it’s nice to have an excitable character in the library, but is there anything else at all that she cares about? People who are excitable usually gets inspired by things and people around them, and they like to talk about themselves as well, but that doesn’t happen with Sieran. She only has one objective.

Trahearne’s voice acting is IMO incorrect as well. From the way the story is written and the way other characters spoke of him Trahearne is supposed to be a charismatic person but he doesn’t know about it. So why does he talk in that emotionless monotone voice? One of the features of charismatic people are the way they let emotion out through their voice and mannerisms to infect others with the same emotions they’re feeling. If Trahearne talks like that the whole time I can’t believe everyone would speak so highly of him at all, they’d feel miserable around him. It’ not the case that he’s controlling his tone either since he doesn’t know he is capable of this. From the very beginning he should have had the heroic, bold voice of the player hero, even though his interest is solitary and intellectual. I think part of why people feel bad that he stole the limelight for some part of the story is that it feels out of place. Nobody actually wants to be led by this weirdo.

And then there is the issue of sideline characters that only appear once and then disappear. There’re tonnes of them, and there are also tonnes of characters in the world that are just there as background. This is not immersive. The sideline characters (at least the ones that doesn’t die right away) should take the spot of some of the generic background cardboard cutouts in cities or out in the field. Give them some background, maybe even a job. Heck if that’s too much work just queue them in the cycle of roamers in the cities. As it is you probably only need 1 “before” and 1 “after” dialogue and that’s it. That way they will actually exist as characters, and not just a plot device.