Guild Wars 2

I’ve made the suggestion before but it always bears repeating. There should be Tier1-Tier 2-Tier 3 Cultural Gliders from an NPC in each racial capital city like the armor sets for each race that are buyable with in-game gold.

I’d agree with your info delivery suggestions if ArenaNet could be accurate with them. It hasn’t been accurate lately. A ton of the hype for HoT from ArenaNet was really misleading. We are almost 4 months after the release of HoT and there are still many items they touted were in the expansion that aren’t even in the game yet. Until their words match their actions I don’t think it matters much. Would I like to see them do what they say? Totally!

With Jeff Grubb leaving, it got me (re)thinking about story continuity in this game. (Happy trails, man! You signed a copy of “Ghosts of Ascalon” for me at ComiCon one year and it’s one of my favorite pieces of memorabilia! Thanks!)

The main culprit behind story continuity and hanging story threads? People leave ArenaNet for other places(see Jeff Grubb). New writers want to make their own stuff. It’s 100% understandable. What happens when you have a story line that hasn’t been finished yet though? It stays unfinished. Then retcons happen. For the players and I am sure the devs too, this is extremely frustrating on multiple levels.

There are many story threads that just kinda don’t get finished or are left hanging for way too long. I think that should change. Here’s my idea(s).

Livia and the Scepter of Orr https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scepter_of_Orr
1.) Stories that haven’t been wrapped up yet need to be. Everything from a workforce point of view for the writing team should be 100% in service to the story. The story is king and we are all its subjects. Before new writers start spinning new tales, existing stories should be wrapped up. The payoff is in the conclusion as well as the journey. You can’t have a storyline that doesn’t get finished. It’s the worst. There are many examples of this in GW1 and GW2. If new writers come on, they need to finish what was started before starting a new thing. Story isn’t new UI direction or achievement reward design.

Eir and the Reforging of Magdaer https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magdaer
2.) Because employees leave, story lines need to be more compact. Doing that gives better assurance to the player that what they are playing through in a story will have a better chance of being completed. Nothing is so frustrating as a player or reader as starting an interesting story in a game or book to never having the author finish it or it taking way too long to be completed.

Rytlock’s Journey in the Mists https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rytlock_Brimstone
3.) There’s a big overarching world story. There are side stories too. The side stories are the victims mostly from a player point of view. Side stories should be be complete tales told in a single season. Use the cliffhangers in the main story. I think having side stories like Anise and Canach and Taimi’s tales are great, but they should be the ones that are the self contained single-season tales. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Countess_Anise Give them a start, middle and end in one season. That way if writers leave or plans change, the story doesn’t suffer for it.

Evennia Goes Missing https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evennia http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Evennia
4.) I think it’s time to put a focus on wrapping up stories that have been hanging for literally years. Writing team: Take an honest, constructively critical look back on the breadth of work from GW2 as if GW2 has been in the rearview mirror for a year or two. Imagine yourself in the future and you have gathered up all the stories that aren’t finished at this point. How many of them are there? How would you wrap those stories up? From a player perspective I can only tell you how totally disappointing it was that a lot of these types of stories were never finished in GW1. I can only guess as to the fate of these types of things happening with GW2 as well. As I can only base it off the disappointment of it happening in GW1, I’d be really bummed if it happened to GW2. I don’t know that I’d ever want to invest my time in another Tyrian story again to only be disappointed further that so many stories go unfinished.

Isgarren Shares His Home https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Isgarren http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Wizard%27s_Tower https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wizard%27s_Tower
5.) GW2 isn’t a standalone product from a story perspective. I am really glad that GW1 story beats have been re-ushered into the mix of GW2. I really think taking the interesting parts of Tyria that have been unexplored up to this point need to be used as well. The Wizard’s Tower. The Isle of Janthir. So many others.

Utopia
I’m tired of waiting to find out about Anise. I’m tired of wondering what happened with Livia. Where’d Evennia go? Why’d Isgarren ignore the tower being constructed in his map and why wasn’t “The Two Towers” referenced during that event in Kessex? What happened to Rytlock and Sohothin and why didn’t we get a payoff in the x-pac for that? Hey Canach, spill the beans already, bro. Consortium, what’s your deal?

Thanks for your time. The TL;DR? People switch jobs. Stories in games shouldn’t suffer or go unfinished because of it. Emphasis should be placed on telling stories faster so that it doesn’t happen. New stories by new writers should happen after hanging stories are finished.

Maybe Magdaer is finished being reshaped? Maybe we get to find out what happened to Rytlock? Maybe we get to finally see what happened with Evennia? Livia? Oh that’s right they never finish stories. They just end abruptly or get left as cliffhangers forever.

My bad.

Heck, I’d rather have her Elite Skill for my Engie and Ele.

I think the Airship would be hands down the best one if you could jump off the ship without having to glitch the jump. Missed opportunity with that. Heck, they should just put an airship pin each core world zone and when you double click the airship pass it puts you in the airship in that zone. They should remove the false walls and just by doing that and allowing people to glide from those makes every core game map instantly more fun with very little to add except an exact copy of the Gendarran Airship in each map with no invisible walls.

I have Rodgort and it’s the same. very short. I also have Predator and while it lasts a bit longer it is nowhere near as pronounced as some of the others. I wish the effects were uniform in how much they pop. Not a big deal, but I have actually seen people say that the off hands shouldn’t be as pronounced. I loled when I heard it.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

Iason Evan.3806:

The amusing part in all of this to me is that we were supposed to get these in 2013 and not behind a paywall. Now we are going to get 3(less/more?)every 3-6 months and they are behind the paywall of HoT? Most of these are skins that were designed years ago and just supposed to be a part of the GW2 pay once for content and not gem shop or even expansion pack stuff. Many of them were designed before ArenaNet ever thought about doing an expansion.

Maybe, and this is just a suggestion here but maybe you should take off your tin foil hat bro. I don’t believe for a second that is what happened

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/ This was a post by Colin in July of 2013. Scroll down near the bottom of the post. There’s no tinfoil hat. Just going by what was supposed to happen and didn’t. Instead what people thought they were getting all the way back then ended up behind HoT’s paywall. Heck, he even goes into detail about how we are going to build the legendaries as well and it’s exactly how it is in HoT.

Gold selling websites. They are all run by ArenaNet. /s

If they wanted to do a safe way of player to player trading they would add in a COD system for the mail. They don’t though because the BLTC is a money sink. Full stop. There’s nothing actually left do discuss after that because it will never change.

The amusing part in all of this to me is that we were supposed to get these in 2013 and not behind a paywall. Now we are going to get 3(less/more?)every 3-6 months and they are behind the paywall of HoT? Most of these are skins that were designed years ago and just supposed to be a part of the GW2 pay once for content and not gem shop or even expansion pack stuff. Many of them were designed before ArenaNet ever thought about doing an expansion.

As to #2 for the OP, ESO has an interesting fix to the sitting in chairs etc. They have an emote that is /sitchair or something and a chair appears. You walk up to a table, type the emote and the chair appears under you and you sit in it. They could do numbered ones. I realize that sitting in the actual chair you crafted would be one of the cool parts of it, but it’s a way to do it that I think would be easier to implement.

I agree with your suggestions. Guild Halls don’t feel like they were designed with community in mind though. Community and fellowship took a backseat to guild halls being about progression and being a gold sink.

That in my opinion was the wrong way to go about it. Progression in a guild hall shouldn’t be about time and gold sinks. It should be about making it a place people enjoy building a space that the whole guild likes and enjoys together. Should some decorations take a bit? Totally!

I am glad they are changing costs to make this a better experience, but there were a bunch of us making these types of suggestions about associated costs over a year ago and we weren’t listened to. With social spaces you have the actual progression baked in. You don’t have to put arbitrary gold and time sinks. When you build spaces as gorgeous as the guild halls are, the last thing they need to be marred by is the necessity of dozens of hours and thousands of gold. Until they change that completely, it will never be about building the space you enjoy, it will always be first and foremost a thinly veiled and arbitrary gold sink that ArenaNet uses as a way to flush gold out of the in game economy which not so coincidentally is tied to ArenaNet’s real world economy.

Hey! It’s back! Just put this set in the game again devs! You said you would now follow through! I have the set and I adore it. I want people to be able to wear it too because it’s a rad set!

AlsoAdelas.4901:

>This speaks to a larger communication problem that has existed for some time in this game. Addressing this stuff 3 months after launch is quite frankly unacceptable.

Sigh. Gaile: I came here to say thanks for listening, watching, and responding.

I don’t understand how anyone can read your post saying that you waited a while to see if it would balance out, you made some mistakes you plan to fix, and you are going to make other improvements, and rant like this.

Do I think the cost of scribing has been pretty ridiculous? Yep. Does it mean that our guild, with 300+ members, two of whom are in the top-20 AP list (and have cash on hand that accompanies that amount of gameplay) and with 20-60 people logged in at any given time, only has a few dozen decorations? Yep.

But seriously, READ THE OP. There’s a reason why it didn’t get fixed the first time, or thousand times, people asked for a change.

The communication issues I am speaking of is two fold. 1.) If the scribing stuff affected ArenaNet’s bottom line because it was too cheap and people were blowing through scribing too quickly due to an error it would have been patched immediately. Tons of people said how expensive it was and it wasn’t even addressed. Tons of threads went largely unanswered or pertinent points that really cut to the heart of the matter went largely unanswered. 2.) Like many other things in game, I believe it was set up as an arbitrary gold sink. It wasn’t a mistake overall. Were there things that were probably gaffes along the way that added to the confusion? Sure. That isn’t what I am speaking about though. When it affects players in-game pockets it takes months to address. When it affects the in-game economy as it pertains to ArenaNet, they address it usually immediately. That’s the issue I have. As a customer, I want to come first. As a customer, I want my reasonable questions answered first. Thousands of gold for scribing was, in my opinion, unacceptable. I am leaving my feedback. I am not being rude about it, and I am sorely disappointed in how the last year and change has gone in regards to that.

In the future my suggestion would be not using new social features such as guild hall crafting as a major gold and material sink as the first priority of the feature. The social features should have been the paramount reason for designing guild halls. I had 20 members of my guild flabbergasted at the extreme pricing of Scribe materials. Guilds can also be screwed over by having their “guild scribe” decide to leave. That was a glaring oversight as well in the design.

I am of the opinion that many of these things were intentionally designed the way they were. Sure, I think there could have been a few mistakes, we are all human after all and not perfect, but there were too many things that ArenaNet went absolutely silent on. If they were mistakes why not address them immediately instead of guilds dumping thousands of gold into this stuff? I had members that defended a lot of this because they had just spent 60-100 dollars on this expansion and were excited about it to the point of being irrational about what this system actually was.

This speaks to a larger communication problem that has existed for some time in this game. Addressing this stuff 3 months after launch is quite frankly unacceptable.

Guild Halls are drop dead gorgeous spaces. It’s a shame that someone had the power to take that beautiful art as a social space and ruin it by making the costs so prohibitive to guilds that want to decorate it. These spaces aren’t in the open world so that other guilds can puff their chests out pridefully to exclaim, “Look how much cooler our space is than yours.” They are private spaces for guild mates and good friends to enjoy making their own and the experience has been marred by making them gold sinks first and foremost for the first 3 months to however long it takes you all to fix the issues in them.

Would it kill em to put in some new Cultural sets? How about Cultural gliders we can earn? They dropped the ball when it came to bells and whistles for what they charged in the expansion.

Armor weights as far as how they look doesn’t even matter at this point. There are medium, light and heavy looks for the outfits. Just release “one size fits all armor sets”. I am at the point where I am willing to settle for less than I expect from ArenaNet because they won’t or can’t meet the same high watermark they set with the release of GW2’s core game in terms of earnable items.

There should be cultural backpieces as well that go with the T1-3 sets and there should be at least T4-6 at this point. So many items the had no problem trumpeting whilst they were shoveling coal to stoke the fires of the hype train’s engine and where is all that stuff 3 months after release? Most of it isnt even in the game yet. Some of it never will be.

Where’s the Shaman set that used to be PvP exclusive that they promised would be earnable over a year ago for everyone? So many times they just keep coming up short. So many people want mix and match items. I have purchased a ton of armor skins on my main account. I have purchased exactly 1 outfit. I can’t make it my own when all I can do is dye it and you have the audacity to charge me 700 gems? Only 100 less than the armor sets that I can do a lot of creative things with? That’s laughable.

I really just want an Elite Spec where my Ranger can shed the pet. It’s either that or finally introduce a way for Ranger’s to have myriad more control options over their pet. It’s been said by the devs that they feel adding too many control options for pets would be confusing to newer players. Elite specs fix that.

Give more control over pets in an Elite Spec. No new players would have access to Elite Specs. Moreover they would also have the option to use Druid or standard Ranger and it wouldn’t be a problem. Mostly though, I just want to see my Ranger be freed from the confines of the problematic pet AI. The two options I see as the best course of action for this is allowing us to dismiss it completely as a player or giving us the controls.

I’d say that the AI could be massively improved, but the AI hasn’t changed enough since launch for me to see that as a reasonable change that will ever come to this game.

I’d really like to see Festival rewards implemented that just reward the players. The money from selling the gambling envelopes doesn’t feel like a reward in the classic sense. I’d like to see “Win 5 matches and get a tier 1 backpiece”, “10 wins, Tier 2” and so on and so forth. The way it’s set up now makes it feel like the festivals are more in service of your own economy than they are for players enjoyment.

The Festivals need to return to having more to do as well. The absence of Liadri and the Pavilion are a bummer or something new. Halloween was great, and had some cool rewards, but again it mostly felt like a gold sink in service of your own economy. I feel like this type of reward system would never have happened in GW1 where your real world economy wasn’t tied to the game’s. Food for thought for future titles.

What it sounds like you really want OP is the ability to keep people or yourself up with a spammable heal while you look at health bars the whole time. GW2 isn’t that game nor should it ever be. Run Zealot’s or the equivalent. Be a healer while at the same time being an asset to your team with decent damage to boot.

Have you thought about going with a set of Giver’s? It’s a great healers set.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recipe:_Ventari%27s_Warfists This is the stuff you’re looking for though. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ventari%27s_Nomad_Inscription

I know you want the healing to be the highest, but you can still do great until they add it.

I wouldn’t say “hate”. I strongly dislike what they did with core features of the base game. Namely, destroying dungeons and hiding better rewards in fractals behind the HoT paywall. Super gross tactic from a company that 5 years ago never would have dreamed of doing something like that and had a player base that would have held them way more accountable than the player base that exists in this game does now.

With the inclusion of raids there is an even greater need for skill splits. I liked this patch though. You all covered a lot of things and addressed some issues.

• I am not a HoT owner, so the return of core specs being viable in PvP is a good thing to see. I really felt like buffing the Elite Specs when HoT came out so that HoT owners were really the only ones who could truly excel during the first PvP season was a bad choice.

• The biggest esports titles are for games that don’t have a paywall. Going f2p with the core game and moving the meta behind a paywall was baffling. It’s good to see you are moving away from that.

• No inclusion of new Legendaries 3 months after HoT’s release is disappointing.

• No new story content 3 months after HoT’s release isn’t persuading me into thinking I should get HoT either.

• Lack of new earnable armor is disheartening. Moreso when there is zero lack of gem shop stuff and you can set your clock to its release. Where’s the content for a 50 dollar x-pac?

• The lack of the Pavilion event for Lunar New Year is a bummer. Festivvals used to be chock full of content. What happened?

On a related note, not being able to do Toypocalypse with a pre-made group for the second straight year was a bummer. That’s why I was hoping for the return of the Pavilion.

There is an issue that precludes this one as well with legendaries. They were supposed to be out in 2013 and not behind a paywall of an x-pac. This is one of many reasons why I refused to purchase HoT.

those are some HoT singles.

It’s refreshing to see the base professions get a buff for the most part. Pushing e-sports and hiding elite specs behind the HoT paywall seemed counter-intuitive. I always thought the core idea behind e-sports was that you tried to get as many people as possible playing it by making the cash barrier to entry as low as possible so that word of mouth could spread about your game like wildfire and gamers could decide if your game was e-sports and then, VOILA! If they liked it, it was e-sports!

I’ll check out the shatterer fight for sure and I may check out some PvP. I have some Ranger ideas with what they’ve done.

Skill splits still need to be a thing though. The PvE Mesmer got jacked because of how they were in PvP. 3+ years later and ArenaNet continues to be stubborn about so many things that should just happen.

If you go to the patch notes section and click on each one and look at the times for the top entry that will give you a good indication of when they usually patch the game as there is always a time stamp.

All the best builds since HoT came out have been HoT builds. Hiding pvp behind a paywall isn’t the best idea. The f2p switch would have been a good time for them to let the core builds be as viable in PvP as the HoT builds and they could have sold the Elite Specs a la carte to players for PvP use. That would have been the way to go. They also should have had 2 Elite Specs be available for free each week on a rotation so that players could play them(just like MOBAs do with heroes/gods/characters etc.).

Just like someone above said, you can’t call your game e-sports. Players decide that. It’s been three plus years. That ship has sailed. I personally have loved the PvP in this game at different times. I do however think they mishandled Elite specs as it pertains to PvP.

Poe-tay-toe/Poe-tah-toe. There are multiple pronunciations for many words. Oi-ster/Err-ster. Let’s call the whole thing off!

This should have happened ages ago. With outfits that can have the appearance of literally any armor weight, this totally makes sense. really we should have been able to transmute the look (not actual armor value) of any armor in the game to any other piece of armor. Heck, one only need look at that awesome outfit arenanet gave us that looks like a full set of heavy armor. It’d also make having all the cultural sets more attractive as you could transmute the look on to any weight type.

The biggest reason to do this though is because of ArenaNet’s complete unwillingness to keep releasing actual armor sets. At least with this we would have more options for looks even if they aren’t new options.

what about the armor set from pvp they said was coming back?

the return of earnable armor sets? i don’t feel like there were nearly enough in the expansion that had a premium price tag of 50 dollars.

new fractals would be good.

a dungeon revamp would be welcome.

new mini dungeons.

new jps.

a whole entire set of new legendaries before 2020 would be dope.

the return of fun would be fresh too.

Yes.
/12DeadBabyQuaggansThatPeterFriesKilledWithAButterKnife

midnight tea.3681:

Next expansion will likely come on a flesh-based USB that you can fit inside their ears which will optimize performance while whispering soothing silent sounds of the abyss to their primitive amygdala.

IDK what Padme Amidala has to do with GW2, but rock on, bro!

Hey OP, just wander zones and things will just happen. Complete those things and watch your XP bar go up. Don’t look for quests in the old school MMO sense of the word. Just play. Don’t grind mobs. There aren’t quest givers per se. You will explore and then an event will pop up. Once you get used to how GW2 plays you will most likely enjoy it.

Actions matching words. Honest communication. Under hype, over deliver. Permanent content. Better matchmaking. Dungeon overhaul. New Fractals. Faster overall game story progression. Waiting 2+ years to see how a single, minor story thread ends is awful pacing. Skill splits.

I think a lot of people regard HoT as being high quality for what’s there. ArenaNet does very high quality stuff across the board and puts a lot of work into their games. I would say there isn’t enough there though. For the price point, it’s really light on breadth.

I feel like it didn’t ship as a complete package either. From what I gather, the end seems really rushed. For the price tag, it feels like it falls woefully short in the quantity department. I think if it had been a kickstarter and was tagged as a work in progress, it would be more understandable. When they did the announcement they oversold what they were selling and then with each subsequent announcement it felt to me like they were taking stuff away from the game, not adding on to what they had initially announced.

People like me who love the base game got screwed. Dungeons got nerfed 2 weeks prior to release and I don’t get as many rewards for doing fractals as my friends who own HoT. Fractals are base game content, and they hid stuff in it behind HoT’s paywall without adding any new actual content to the Fractals to justify putting base game content behind a paywall. It’s deplorable.

Calydro.7268:

maddoctor.2738:

Calydro.7268:

Legendary armor did not come with HoT. Armor added after release did not come with HoT. What kind of moronic logic is this… honestly. Don’t be stupid.

Then I’ll repeat the question:

Suppose that in some months we will get the second expansion, let’s call it HoT2. Any armor sets released between HoT and HoT2 will be counted for HoT2 or HoT1?

And nice attitude there.

I should have been more clear. I’m saying that those who think armor that is yet to be released counts toward HoT content and the $$ people payed for it are the ones using wonky logic.

When i put $50 down on a game, I don’t expect to have to wait an entire year for that investment to be fully realized. Nor should I have to. The reason that companies do this, and there are several developers who have used this strategy (Turbine comes to mind), is to keep players’ eyes on the future, the months and years ahead. Certainly they (the players) will want their moneys worth, so they will wait for that new content to be released, and Arena net has just turned a player into a long-term micro investment.

Its nothing more than a ploy. They shouldn’t be lauded for doing it and excuses shouldn’t be made for it. That was the subtext behind my original post.

^ Big ups to you for stating your opinion and reasons behind it. I totally agree and have been proactively trying to communicate this for a while as well. When I didn’t get any confirmation of a number of concerns I had with HoT, I decided to forego my purchase of it. The intrinsic value that ArenaNet used to offer their customers no longer seems to be the way things are handled anymore.

There isn’t a “side” to balance. Skill balance affects all game modes despite the fact that all game modes are completely different from one another. Until they do skill splits for the various modes in this game, it will always be this way.

The reason I want to see skill splits in the game are for build diversity reasons. Let’s pretend ArenaNet decided to do skill splits and released their first update for it using Elementalist as an example. Scepter/Focus was really nice for Eles in PvP. Staff was great for WvW. Dagger/Dagger ended up needing a shave in raids and Scepter/X and Staff were great for general PvE.

They have a chance to make a lot more builds viable across all game formats and take away a nerf happening in one area to affect gameplay in another at the same time. It’s unreasonable to think that this is going to be less of an issue going forward as well with more Elite Specs entering the game, not to mention the changes coming to WvW, new raid wings, and whatever new flavor of the month PvE thing they are cooking up.

I for one would love to have a reason and also more options for all of my classes. I’d even start playing again if they implemented skill splits. It means they can be more exact for each format. Is it perfect? Not a chance, but it would be more precise and I think that’s something everyone should get behind.

I can’t wait to see what the balance changes do to raids. You know, the balance changes for PvP that will affect raids. 3+ years I’ve been asking for skill splits. Instead we keep getting new modes that need their own balance. Nothing wrong with getting new stuff. It’s very welcome, but in this case it’s gonna throw some gunk in the works.

A ton of us have also been asking for the ability to save trait and skill templates for over 3 years. A feature that GW1 had and it was fantastic. I guess they are just trying to figure out how to monetize it.

I get ArenaNet needs to make money. I think there are ways to do that which happen to be a little more friendly to the customer that also are financially viable to the company than this is. 5 slots just ins’t enough and it’s grossly overpriced in my opinion.

This game has moved away from the “friendly to the customer” as a value proposition and into this weird mobile market style cash grab shop system. Heck, 50 dollars for the expansion and they didn’t include nearly enough armor sets to earn in game and had day 1 outfits in the cash shop.

They’ll listen if you start voting with your wallets. Until then though they’ll just fleece you for whatever they can. That didn’t use to be the case. Their actions matched up with their words. It’s too bad really.

This thread tells the story of what the real issue is. All the best builds are behind the paywall of Heart of Thorns. There isn’t a core profession build that can compete. That isn’t how you build a competitive game much less build up an e-sports empire. Each core profession needs a build or two that can compete in the current build rotations.

Skill splits are a must. The mechanics of Elite Specs and Core Professions shouldn’t be nerfed in PvE because of PvP. Why should the fun of the bulk of the player base(PvE players)who also happen to be the bulk of the money going into ArenaNet’s coffers be mitigated because PvP is broken? It shouldn’t.

Looking at the issues with Profession mechanics and calling out one or two Elite Specs as the culprit is myopic. Core specs for every class should be just as competitive and skill splits should be in place for this game to thrive.

I think there is room for both and like both but I do not agree with the lack of earnable armor being implemented in the game for the last year plus. There isn’t a good balance of it at all. One of the reasons I didn’t buy the x-pac is because ArenaNet was very mum on how many earnable sets of armor would be available with monetary purchase of the expansion. When I saw how lacking the premium priced 50 dollar expansion was in the earnable armor category, I was glad I refrained from buying it.

It doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. There should be myriad options for the duration of this game’s lifespan in the armor and outfit department.

I am wondering why a maximum of 5 account slots were chosen as the number instead of 6? 6 makes sense because of the nature of ascended items. With 6 we would have been able to store a full set of ascended armor to use across multiple characters or even 1 each of an ascended backpiece, 1 amulet, and 2 of each of ascended jewelry to share across our whole account.

Any plans for the future in expanding this number?

The fact that you can’t even share a full set of ascended armor(not to mention weapons too) or a full set of ascended jewelry+backpiece is awful. That’s without mentioning that the price is too high. Marvel Heroes gives you like 20-30 slots of shared inventory for free and that game is f2p.

I am of the opinion that this price is way too high. Take that feedback how you will.

Does this mean any new Legendaries will be hidden behind the paywall of the next expansion? Are they coming this year? I’d love a few reasons to buy HoT. I really would. All my friends and guild mates stopped playing it 3 weeks to 6 weeks after release though. That doesn’t inspire me enough to think there’s a lot of depth there.

I’d love to see Elite specs be sold a la carte for use in PvP. I am interested in Elite Specs as they are the current builds that are viable in PvP. Is ArenaNet thinking of making core builds that are just as viable in PvP as the Elite Specs? That seems the best course of action for a game company that says they are committed to esports.

There’s really solid stuff there and some really disappointing delays and some glaring omissions. New Fractals. That’s fantastic. New raid wing? Awesome. New x-pac in development? Great news.

Dropped ball stuff? WvW changes coming way too late. What about the new legendaries? Not even a word about it either way. Last year, ArenaNet said that stuff was coming. Are they being put off til next year? Any news one way or another would be great.

Overall, I think this is a step in the right direction. Content coming out to keep us busy while we wait for a new expansion. Hopefully ArenaNet can build on this in a positive way.

What about new armor sets to earn in game? There’s a distinct lack of new armor sets to work towards.

Is there a strong push to bring base game specs back into the fold for PvP? I didn’t buy HoT and have no interest in it. I’d be interested in buying HoT specs for use in PvP but only if I could buy them a la carte. I was pretty hopeful hearing the higher ups say that esports s a strong focus of ArenaNet’s but when you all hid the best specs behind HoT’s paywall, any credibility to what was being said was thrown out the window.

I think the best course of action to make the game competitive across the board is to do a few things:

1.) Skill Splits

2.) Make a Core Spec or two as viable as Elite Specs for each profession This does a few things: Increases population in PvP and hopefully opens up an option for a solo queue/team queue split again.

3.) Bring back solo queue <- This is my personal top priority.

I would like to see a return to core design with a lot of new maps across multiple climate types. What do I mean by “core design”? Going back to the theme of how maps were designed when GW2 launched and through S1. There should be hearts to complete, but repeatable. Map exploration under the core design was so much better than with Southsun, Silverwastes, Dry Top, and from what I hear, it’s better than in HoT maps.

Tengu as playable with new zones to level that race or any of the existing races in. GW2 needs high level areas for end game. There’s no argument from me there, but the design of HoT only lent itself to group end game which is detrimental to the game in the long run. What do I mean by that? When populations dwindle in HoT in a year or two, it will be hard to do everything there that the expansion at launch offered people to do. You can’t hang your design hat on that kind of design in the long run because people will move on leaving some content in those zones as unplayable and that’s a shame. Core maps are playable forever because so much of the content isn’t reliant upon having a large number of people to do stuff there and still have fun.

I don’t want to see anymore temporary content. So much of the first two years of this game introduced content that isn’t playable anymore and it’s a huge shame. Make new content like the Marionette or Aetherblade Attacks or Battle for LA, but leave it in as permanent content to be played over and over.

• New Fractals

• New dungeons and a dungeon overhaul to make the old dungeons playable again with fresh rewards to compliment the existing ones.

• Myriad number of new weapon and armor sets that are earnable by playing the game. If we are paying you for an expansion we want some of that money to go towards rewards in the form of new armors and weapons that we can then earn in game. I for one am not going to buy an expansion that gives me next to nothing on that front and then brashly offers day 1 outfits in the gem shop.

• Honest communication. This one is #1 on my list. Actions need to match words. Don’t tell me new legendaries are coming and then reduce that to a handful of legendaries in a blog post that then gets reduced to 3 that come out after launch. No more waiting til two weeks before an x-pac is released to tell me you are nerfing dungeons after you have my money in your coffers. Don’t release a broken legendary system and then take months to fix it. Honestly communicating with your customers is paramount to a good experience for all parties involved.

• Way less gold sinks in the next x-pac that have to do with guilds. Let our social time be a time of team building, camaraderie, and fellowship. Guild Halls are these gorgeous spaces that were marred by overzealous people trying to empty our in game wallets and it sucked all the fun out of it for me and my guild.

It’s almost like they need to work on what they are communicating matching what actually is being done to the game. 2015 was littered with examples of ArenaNet saying one thing and then either not following through on it or just flat out not doing what they said they were going to do.

Until they fix it they should just send IV to people that have completed the first 3 parts. It’s ludicrous that it was implemented this way and tested and passed like that.