Guild Wars 2

Again, the solution is fairly simple. Reduce enemy status from veteran to normal in a lot of cases. Remove or lower abilities on “trash” enemies and cut some of their health.

Um what? If you play overworld PVE on your fully levelled and geared character, do you never get the impression that the standard foes just drop like flies? Particularly with four others to which that applies?
So now we extend that feebleness into the only halfway (nominally) difficult PVE mode in the game? No thanks.
Yes, some mobs need to up their game because they are just gigantic damage sponges, but the way to go isn’t to curtail both their health and damage. Up one of them or lower one but increase their number, the latter of which isn’t a meaningful way to fix dungeons though, as countless dynamic events prove (they’ll just vaporize in a firestorm of AOE damage).
Also fix skipping simply by locking the paths till every foe in the vicinity is dead, atleast in some instances.

Things like this are why no one takes GW2 PVE and PVP seriously. And this isn’t polemic. That they won’t prioritize and sort out basic combat usability features (particularly important for high-end encounters, you know, endgame, or tPVP) more than half a year after getting suggested is part of a larger trend.

I agree that the downed state needs to get recognized as an integral part of regular combat. I find the dynamic it creates an enriching experience and the way a party handles those situations creates a venue to showcase it’s true competence, more so than the fact that the individual members never get downed.

At the end of the day ANet isn’t really in the business of “keeping” players actually “playing” who log-in maybe once every half year, you know? Because that’d be a paradox. Yes sure, it’s unfortunate that you don’t get to play those ~2.5 hours of content the Living Story thing cumulatively was on some rainy afternoon. But the living story isn’t targeted at extremely irregular players, it’s targeted at regulars. ANet has no magic tricks to lure the irregulars into the game, it’s entirely up to their whims when they log in the next time, so they try their best to turn them into regulars via temporary content. To them (and the player base) people logging in every month or even week to experience the stuff, instead of letting the game dust regularly, is much more advantageous.
You see where they are coming from? To someone who logs in every couple months the content would be just something to kill some off-hours, not a thing that keeps them tied to the game for months.

This post is not directed at OP’s efforts, but ANet:
Isnt it (the short form of “is not it” with an apostrophe is getting censored. W. T. F.)? kinda time to abolish the “contested” mechanic? It by now really is 100% dependent on players being oblivious to the fact that one can just look up on which server the temple/dungeon is uncontested, and then freely and quickly transfer there.
When I first heard about the guesting feature (that was in maybe 2009 or 2010) in GW2 I was excited, but in it’s current form it really has done more harm than good.

panzer.6034:

No more than everyone standing around in city in their underwear, which has been an option since the beginning.

Yeah but no one does that. If you pay 800 gems, you want to show that off, like happened with all the previous pieces of cash shop skins, especially if it’s a skimpy bikini, which would probably become the most popular of them all (also you don’t have to manually remove 6 pieces of armor every time).
That wasn’t very good argument.

I’m 100% certain the only reason this isn’t in yet is because they haven’t quite finished the other races’ models yet (or the thing below). Why would you assume otherwise?
The only concern I have with it is if it replaced the regular town clothes slot-wise. I’m not huge on RP or “immersion” (though the Quaggan backpacks bother me), but it’d be weird if I saw someone (or rather, hordes of female characters) standing around in the middle of a city in swimwear. And if it’d be underwater only that’d be dumb as well.

+1 really.
We need more suit-inspired male light armors, both formal and casual.

Hekotat.2497:

After watching wooden potatoes lore video I must support the return of Cantha! The lore and descriptions of the landscape sound incredible. Please do this for us Arenanet.

Talenna.4052:

I haven’t played GW1, part from a brief look around, but having watched Woodenpotatoe’s video, I would love to see this area in GW2.

Both of you, thanks. This makes one realize that bringing Cantha back would exactly not be “old stuff”, or that completely new areas have priority per se, because to a large part of the player base it is a completely new area, and to the GW1 returnees it in effect would be as well because of the story-related changes and graphics.
Not saying Cantha has to be the first of the big expansions, or even the second one, but, as a ramp-up for a revisitation down the line, please acknowledge the place it has both ingame (via some small new content, characters, items etc.) and as a company as soon as possible , if only so we can sleep at night without worrying.

Zabrios.6079:

Obscure One.4357:

The problem with sPvP is that so few people play it because it needs so much improvement and the reason ANet doesn’t focus on improving it is because so few people play it. It’s a vicious cycle that has left sPvP gut-shot and hemorrhaging a hardcore player base with no one working to patch it up. Not matter how much noise we make for a worth while sPvP experience its drowned out by the sound of the PvE playerbase clamoring for more content. I for one wouldn’t mind seeing the whole mode scrapped and completely redone in the image of GW1: Random Arenas, Team Arenas, Guild versus Guild (uh hello, GUILD Wars without any warring guilds? Wtf!?;), Alliance Battles, and Hero’s Ascent arenas (HoH). And lets not forget Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood either.

I agree with nearly everything that you posted, but everybody makes the same mistake. The name of GUILD WARS comes after the lore of Tyria, not the GvG mode. I just wanted to point that out.

Are people getting paid to spout this nonsense? No seriously, literally (literally literally) every single time someone mentions Guild Wars PVP should stick more to its roots name-wise (and I might add, it should not only name-wise), someone with too much time WILL come along and drop that useless factoid, be it relevant to the topic or not. GW was originally a game centered around GvG combat with PVE being more of an introduction to the mechanics. Developing very esoteric lore before basic game concepts and the very central visions isn’t how you approach game development, it’s like saying Anet wanted to model Dolyaks before they wanted to create WvW. They most likely had the vision of a GvG CORPG first, named that fittingly Guild Wars, and then inserted a lore piece to tie everything together.

It’d be a legit waste of time to explain why making it temporary has it’s benefits, and I’m really not in the business for this because the devs themselves already know very well why. I couldn’t care less about convincing one or two random forum posters.

So I’d just like to use this thread to confirm to every passing dev reading it that not every gamer of the silent majority thinks this is a horrible idea. Hell, the only reason I’m posting right now (and did some Guild missions, and did some sPvP, and levelled a character and generally was active a bit) is because the dungeon is temporary. Because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have logged in till the first expansion and only played the by-now deserted dungeon then, together with all the added content updates.

You really need to add an additional zoom step in the new FOV.

You could run a path of old AC in 15 Minutes and get upwards of 1,5 gold out of it. That was clearly not their intention.
Also I have zero doubt that soon players will speedrun it again (and normal/casual players will naturally get better at it as well). It’s a very old cycle, well known even from GW1.

Amodin.1092:

In AC, the new Cave Troll event is a prime example of stupid. I used to love to get this guy up in a group. Now, I avoid it like the plague and encourage everyone else to do the same. It was fine the way it was – fun, challenging, and not a one shot hit. It still took skill, knowing how to play your character and knowing what the mob will do so you could avoid (or try to avoid) being hit. Now, he just fears you off the ledges, or literally one-shots you (and I am nowhere near being a glass cannon type player).

You could just autoattack the old cave troll dead from a distance. There was literally zero danger of receiving damage.
ANet seems to have learned their lesson to not make bosses melee or ranged only, without any adds or other perks.

Freeburn.8135:

That said, is it true that ANet’s intention is that Explorable Mode is considered “elite content”? What does that mean, exactly?

They said it time and time again it in all of their interviews before the release. Explorables are the uppermost PVE “tier”. It’s surprisingly hard to find old articles with google, and I really don’t wanna waste more than the 10 minutes or so I already did trying.
That’s one that kinda concerns it, tho it’s from after release.
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/blog/comments/colin-johanson-on-dungeon-difficulty

Shotting down clay pigeons isn’t fun.
OP, please reply to this: How do you make interrupts, cripples, blinds, dodges etc. relevant to the game when enemies fall dead after 2-3 hits and can’t deal damage?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The odd thing is, I was doing a quest in Straits of Devastation yesterday, and it was a hundred times more fun than any of the dungeons. And it felt like what a dungeon should feel like. The quest was: "Escort Warmaster Leddron and his team to Zho’qafa Catacombs ", which is a chain event that starts with “Kill the Risen noble in the catacombs” and ends with a boss battle with an Eye of Zhaitan, and escaping the catacombs while it all collapses.

I’m happy that there is diversity in content difficulty and appeal (you are more happy with overworld PVE quests like this one; I more with the current dungeons) so that lots of players can enjoy the game on their own terms, but you aren’t. Why?

K ANet, it’s more than half a year after game launch and in the first few months I was always willing to give you the benefit of doubt. The game was young, the inflooding playerbase massive.
But now, I just don’t know. How would you react if Toyota still sold cars with defective pedals (or such that didn’t even start up!) half a year after the problem was brought to light?
I’m irritated. I had to abandon a party in the middle of an intense Fractals run just today simply because somewhat better conditions yesterday after a week of unplayability lulled me in, thinking it had been ameliorated. Then the already bad ping came crashing down around 20:30CET.
This isn’t the first time it happens, I’d say it happens every second major patch at least. Seems like a systematic error.
Please fire your staff responsible for content updates/network harmonization.

In the case that said staff is reading this post right this second (Hi!) I affixed the diag, tho I’m not sure if it helps because overall I’ve done this about two ot three times already and you kinda get cynical about it, because evidently it never results in a lasting solution.

I’m a casual player and I love the new difficulty. The notion that casual = averse to difficulty or unskilled needs to die.

Also keep in mind explorables were supposed to be the “elite” content. Story mode, with all it’s issues and feel of being kinda neglected, was to be the beginner difficulty for dungeons, even at the lower levels.

Lagging as well. Drakkar Lake, Switzerland. New issue.

aern.5023:

Now I really dont know what to do. First, I wrote ticket to GW2 support and they tested and they sait that problem is in my ISP. So I contacted ISP, they tested my connection and found no problems.

Ha! They seem to have a sense of humour (being the least cynical right here of course). If after certain patches there are pages upon pages of sudden lag reports rolling in, it can be said almost certainly that the problem lies on ANets end.

Rather predictable that the playerbase demands power creep instead of an actual rebalancing of conditions. You know how else this can be accomplished, much easier even than reworking the entire skillset of the game? By raising the value of conditions. Give bosses block skills, dodges or temporary boons like Protection. (Sure they work on some cond skills too, but unlike with a melee player your damage isn’t wholly negated because you still should have cond stacks left on the foe.) In dungeons or if they’re powered up in Events, unlock for them cond removal skills to use, so that it stays hard to maintain a full stack of conds. And most importantly, give them more crowd control skills that especially affect hard-hitting melees, like weakness, cripples/freezes/immobilized, blinds, launches, knockbacks and -downs, or simply have the player need to retreat due to received damage at PBAoE range. The value of conditions would rise dramatically if all of this were the case. You don’t even have to tweak numbers to fix conditions.

Honestly, with unlimited or individual stacking, how do you imagine it would be NOT the most prudent thing to do to just whittle them down with conditions while circle-strafing? (And yes, I’m mostly referring to Necros and Rangers because Cond Thieves and Sword Warriors generally inflict much less conds.) That logic does not presume that the boss has means to actively prevent non-cond damage, as if it was a completely static object, a red bar that is to be drained the fastest with the highest DPS, and everything between me and that goal needs to be fixed by the devs. This is just hurtful to GW2’s combat concept and would be more fitting a notion for WoW-era MMOs.

Rennoko.5731:

Why is it so hard to understand that being a zerker/knights class build for any class is great for any dungeon and any composition, while building for conditions isn’t? Condition class players are not asking for a free lunch, they are asking to be allowed to eat at the same table.

They trade that in with their survivability. A party of all-Cond Necros or all-Cond Rangers is much more resilient.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Cantha was my favorite GW1 region to work on. And I worked on every GW release. I know a lot of the dev team loved it and would love to revisit it. I kinda agree with critickitten about the negative aspect of tight corridors. Most of that came from hitting technological limits while trying to keep the epic quality of the concept art. I think we could do some really amazing things with those themes in our new engine. Certainly nothing is ruled out. I certainly encourage anyone to express your desire for a Cantha region in GW2 in a positive and friendly way. It could be years away, but it’s worth asking for.

While it’s understandable that you didn’t have time to reevaluate and refit the concept to make it maybe a bit more palatable to those groups, I do sincerely hope you won’t bend to petty nationalist quarrels like that forever.

I’m interested if ANet has, after the departure of Soule, already decided on a new lead composer and if the new pieces you get to hear this event are by them. Would be great if someone could answer this.

OP might have a somewhat poor grasp of the English language in his usage of the word “worst”, or maybe this is his first video game, who knows.

“Pet down!”
“I’ll revive you soon”
Telling, huh.
My main is actually a thief, and fittingly I never hear phrases from her except for the generic ones.

When I failed multiple times, I took that as sign that should analyze my mistakes and try to avoid them. For example, I often fell of the second ledge-part because I kept my camera behind my back instead of adjusting it sideways, which makes it easier to gauge the distance.
Perhaps that approach would help OP more than hoping for ANet nerfs.

wolfpaq.7354:

You realize at least one of the people he wrecked was also a thief right?

If thieves are so powerful how did one OP thief take out another OP thief + 5 of his friends?

I … don’t see how this disproves his point. Even if we hypothetically assume OP is a very skilled player, that doesn’t change the fact that he works on a baseline that is vastly skewed, i.e. an imbalanced class. For the purpose of this argument this means that other thief simply didn’t utilize those skewed assets as much.
By your logic two guys coming to a fist fight with guns aren’t imbalanced just because one wasn’t able to aim properly.

Oh, just now realizing how stupid you sound when you cry OP when what you are viewing is skill? Typical.

Right. Would you talk as vitriolic like that to a person you meet in real life?
So why are you on an official company-maintained forum?

I’m just puzzled – why do I never ever have issues with thieves in sPvP, but in WvW they seem utterly broken?
I’m playing one myself, with a non-glass cannon build. Am I not allowed to have fun unless I put 30 points in Shadow Arts and equip Toughness gear? I’m not complaining about their squishiness, I appreciate the playstyle that comes with it and in fact have zero issues against any other classes than other thieves. Rather, the damage that is attainable with them in WvW seems completely out of whack. Just a few minutes ago I was hit for a 7k damage steal followed by a 8k CnD, without vulnerability, by the same one thief thrice (it was in different places, I didn’t just run blindly to the same spot again after respawning).
That just kills it. My fun, my will to WvW, my will to play GW2. Are two-shotting classes that require zero skill (Just spamming abilities F1+5, and when it’s not dead yet 2) fun in ANet’s eyes?
As I said, I’m genuinely puzzled. Is it possible through consumables or guild buffs? Then nerf those, make them scale inversely rather than linearly or remove/revamp them outright.

Edit: Aaaaand a twelve thousand damage backstab by the same thief. He had no might boons or consumables, but 9 stacks of the power sigil, and an Assassin’s Signet (unknown if activated). Done with WvW for today.

I think some suggestions in this thread miss the point.

Larger gold drops: That would just lead to more inflation? The only thing that’s expensive and unaffected by that is cultural armor. Grinding your way to a legendary or gearing up your alt won’t become a single purchasing power adjusted copper coin cheaper. Better chest drops, particularly unique dungeon skins, are perfectly reasonable however.

Able to play the dungeons single or duo, or with henchmen: This is exactly what ANet tried to avoid this time around. That content is supposed to be strictly multiplayer. They need to include a better LFG tool to facilitate that though.

Shorter timers: The reason behind the timers is to incentivize people to run the other paths. Shorter timers would lead to the longer/harder paths becoming even less desirable, particularly to Pugs. I might add that by design longer paths should offer better rewards.

Easier story mode: You probably remember them harder than they were because you were likely less experienced and less geared. More importantly, the story mode is meant to ease players in the “harsh reality” of the endgame. It’s not bad if they struggle for the first few times and have to adapt, have to leave their comfort zone. Tearing and healing is how muscles are formed, if you allow an analogy.

Dante.1508:

Zero rewards in Story dungeons = waste of time bothering.

What about fun? Unlike explorables you aren’t supposed to farm them. I remember ANet having stated somewhere that story mode isn’t even meant to be repeated more than once per char.

I’m sure the people behind the dungeon design played a lot of GW1. Remember The Deep? Fissure? UW? Domain of Anguish? I miss that experience. You know, that feeling of exploring an insanely hostile territory, to cautiosly journey from quest to quest, and where every player death was meaningful.
In many ways the current dungeons remind me of old dungeon crawlers, and not in a positive way. The way to go is too often: Enter that room, kill everything in it, (seldom) solve puzzle, progress to the next one, repeat. There’s just something off about it to me.
Basically, one of the issues I have with dungeons is that they are way to linear. I’m not asking for future dungeons to be all an open area with several quests that can be done in random order leading up to a final confrontation, like the GW1 elite reas, but I’d certainly like to see some of them.
Related to that, the current dungeons with the possible exception Arah are too short. Way too short. I don’t know of a path anywhere that can’t be done in half an hour if you know the strategy. I did CoE for the second time just yesterday with a quasi-PUG party that was mostly second- or first-timers as well and we barely clocked 35-40 minutes each for the first two paths. We didn’t have a clue!
Once again, half-hour dungeons have a place, but to an experienced player they’re a snack instead of a full menu.

More specific points:
*As often requested, bosses desperatly need phases. 99% of bosses in the game are one-trick ponies that become tedious after the first few minutes. Only a tiny circle of them keep you on your toes, like Subject Alpha. For some particular encounters a gating mechanism would be neat, so that spawn rushing is discouraged and players have to coordinate a hardrez of a defeated player.
*The silver “trash” is absolutely fine. I love it. Finally a enemy in a MMO, that isn’t a boss, where it’s actually worth to use single target CC or DoTs against, because they present a danger instead of a nuissance that dies in the blink of an eye due to focus fire and AoE. Their current sturdiness is perfect.
*I think we need much more content that requires communication. Fractals was a good start for that.
*I’d like a return of persistent environmental effects like in the elite areas mentioned at the beginning.
*More “Cave Troll” events.
*I don’t think a hard mode would be a good idea. Segregates the player base too much.
*A random idea I had is a dungeon that features two (or more) unrelated parties, either with coorporation (in a select few spots; the rest of the way they’d be seperate) or rivalry (i.e. not PvP but for example a race to the final boss).
*If there’s a well-known AI/engine exploit, like porting Magg through the lava room, I think it needs to be actively fixed. It just leads to a cheesy experience and shouting at players that aren’t familiar with or don’t want to partake in it.
*As for rewards, I think token drops are fine, but most armors are ugly. Seriously. While this is subjective, it’s pretty evident that there’s a tendency when you visit the picture threads that people comparatively seldom brag or express their happiness about finally getting their dungeon set, compared to cultural gear or even crafting sets.

You want to keep them strong? Fine, each should drop GOLD coins on death. Otherwise they really are just something to skip over, like feces littering the dungeon.

I just wanted to single that sentence out as a (no offense) degenerate mentality, and I hope Anet knows how to deal with it. Dungeons really shouldn’t be looked at as pure loot/token piñatas.
Personally, I find it fun to engage those mobs, but I see how players running them over and over (I’m doing it myself with CoF and AC) makes you lose that fun quickly. But that doesn’t mean the content should become a non-issue, that would lead to it become even more of a mindless grind, like a Skinner box.

JonPeters.5630:

Agreed. Signet of the hunt needs to and will go to 25%.

Jon, your team really needs to rethink putting such IMS signets in the game at all, at least those with such a significant boost.
I simply don’t see how making a skill essentially a requirement for WvW, and irresistible for general PVE (i.e. except dungeons) leads not to less choice and a poorer experience.
Of course, in sPvP due to the nature of the maps it’s much less pronounced and other skills are able to compete with IMS signets, but it has such a huge effect on the aforementioned formats that I’d reconsider if it’s worth it.

Can someone, anyone, at Anet riddle me why they thought it’s a good idea to put stealth in a game with massive rendering issues? This is a serious question, since this has gameplay impacts. It’s not about armor clipping fluff.
I get mass-battle WvW, but this engine can’t even handle a thief unstealthing without several seconds (!) delay on a 5vs5 sPvP match. What’s up with that?

Just a thought that came after I got attacked for the circa 100th time by a “stealthed” thief.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

That’s as low as a level 80 can get.

The toughness viewed in isolation is, but I have a reasonably high amount of HP for a thief (16k) and play cautiously, porting in/out, using rupts/blind/weaken, etc., unlike someone speccing full glass cannon solely focused on outputting burst damage.

Incurafy.6329:

How many times do you whiners need to be told that WvW doesn’t count because Anet only balances in s/tPvP because that’s where everything is on a level playing field?

It’s impossible to balance WvW because it’s not designed to be a small combat zone. It’s WORLD versus WORLD versus WORLD; the name alone implies hundreds of people, not 2.

Your argument is really begging the question. Yes, they don’t currently balance around WvW, but what is to say they shouldn’t? After all it’s advertised as a central feature/endgame component of the game.
I’m in no way asking to turn this into a competitive format (that’s what I’m playing sPvP for), but they should just to look at some skills that were clearly designed around PVE where mobs have health of literally several million points and how they factor in in a PvP format.
WvW balance is hard, but not due to the reason you listed, but instead because of the vast diversity of players that range from stat capped players all the way down to low-levels only wearing blues or greens without runes. But If two players on the same levels wearing the same gear level are facing each other in WvW in a one-on-one (or any small skirmish), i.e. a situation where skill should trump anything else, I honestly don’t expect to be two-shot by them because of outrageously inflated numbers.

http://i.imgur.com/w65r1.png
Explain this bulls***.
Full exotic. My toughness was 916 – a bit on the glass cannon side, but except for the small CnD stack I didn’t have any vulnerability and I don’t think the attacker had much might because he was alone.

This should simply not be possible.

Daecollo.9578:

I really hate the CnD / Backstab Mug Steal Combo, but now that people are actually building bunker we can’t really kill anyone, once we get our stuff down we lost, because we can’t really get away that easilly.

We don’t have access to any other builds… we don’t have any group utility or boons like other classes get.

So basicly we all spec the same.

Please don’t extrapolate your own lack of creativity and inability to 1v1 others without the gimmicky Backstab setup to others.

MrTastix.6842:

Game balance is not just about fiddling with numbers. Continuity of class complexity and strategy also plays a role in it. This continuity is broken with the Elementalist since it’s so much more convoluted to play.

You should realize that this is your opinion and move on. Your “convoluted” and “unrewarding” is my “insane variety”. No other class has two knockdowns, weaken, stun, several combo finishers, bleeds, ally heals, burns, chills, etc. all at your fingertips like a D/D ele, no freaking one, bar some Engineer loadouts.
The real “issue” at hand here is that Ele is a class that has a high skill ceiling, and unless you hone and master your gameplay the potential can’t be brought to the forefront, not in the slightest. And that’s fine. If every class played as faceroll as Warrior (PVE) or heartseeker Thief (lowbie PvP) I’d be bored to death very soon.

Theplayboy.6417:

Pairs of people log in to empty servers then then flip capture points back and forth and get 350+ every round. Does that seem right to you?

Literally more than 99% of hot-join players do not participate in the thing you described and should be punished for the remaining fraction. Does that seem right to you?

Confirm Bjarl not hitting pillars.

Zynthetic.2954:

[…]

So your personal stance on the issue defines what is a majority/“legit fans” and what a minority/“apologists”? Pathetic. You’re exactly what the OP is addressing, thank you for illustrating an example on the changing board culture for everyone to see.

Also did ever the idea come to you that that one dungeon and gear tier is exactly meant for that “vocal minority”, as you call them?

Way to neuter the literally only dangerous CC monsters have right now.
The KD duration is fine.

Bedouin.6490:

At least clear the frikken exclamation point after it’s checked.

This.

I have not a single clue why people are stating they’d pay 20 dollars or more for a change. It wont come faster if you do that.

Also, please include a trial period, this is very important. Many changes can’t be properly gauged unless their tested under real conditions.

The human T3 medium shoulderpiece needs work. When walking it appears to be floating, it feels really out of place.

Ryan.6951:

Go re-read linsey and chris’s blog post and forum post. At the end of the blog post linsey states explicitly that this is only the beginning. The first tier. Not the first pieces… the first tier…. and that as they release more content they will release more tierS.

Why did you explicitly specify the term “first tier” when it’s not even used in the blog post, and flat out contradicted by Chris’ post?
Her statements are rather vague marketing speak, but sound much more like that they plan to, parallel to adding a new Ascended gear class (gloves, amulets, etc.) every few months, expand their own diversity (skinwise) within the tier if you ask me.
His statements are that they do not want a gear treadmill, and that they don’t want to add a new tier every three months. Of course you could very cynically interpret that they want to add a new tier only every half year, but really, you are treating this as if it were in a vacuum, that the ArenaNet people are instinctually driven towards a gear treadmill, outside any considerations for their own philosophy, instead of having carefully evaluated it but were only able to release it now, some weeks after launch.

this thread is about the fact that arenanet spent over 5 years carefully designing a game with horizontal scaling instead of vertical, then took it out at the knees less than 3 months after launch.

That GW2 wouldn’t be as horizontal as GW1 was known since their first announcement in 2007. The first ten weeks of GW2 weren’t horizontal by a long shot either. It’s still one of the flattest of any MMO and will remain so.

Ryan.6951:

What is the reason that doing a complete 180 on their manifesto is now required?

Before we can resume this discussion, you need to lay out to us how they actually did a “180” on their manifesto, for the sake of both reader clarification as well perhaps to order your own thoughts.

Ryan.6951:

Well there are already tons of costmetic bridges, so this “gap” is artificial. There is no gap. So they’re not filling a gap, they’re adding tiers of gear, the first of several with lots of room to grow.

No, and I this is where the massive paranoia on this forum stems from. You cannot extrapolate from two data points that this will lead to additional tiers being added, and that this isn’t the final tier forever.

Shoros.3172:

Well, ANet promised that Exotic gear will stay “the best” gear. That you only shift around your stats, not your “overall” power. They have now officially broken their promise.

ANet stance was always to never promise and announce unless the thing is completely sure to make it into the game.
If you are really convinced they said that, I’d like a source.

And you are wrong: this won’t keep the game alive, this will kill it.

You really believe that? Honestly?

Nabrok.9023:

First step would be to drop the ascended gear stats back to exotic levels. Second step would be to allow all existing exotics to become infused.

That would make them completely undesirable outside of the Fractals (and possibly other select content) though. As it looks right now, you can’t customize them with jewels and importantly runes, only infusions. And they are much less easily attainable than Exotics.

The only thing Asc gear has over exotics for general PVE right now, to compensate for this rather significant downside, is a miniscule stat increase, and frankly, unless you’re a complete min-maxer I don’t understand the outrage over that.

Omega.1473:

This was the one game that got rid of the bottomless pit of casual player inferiority and it was great for 3 whole months. As a casual player, I could actually participate in dungeons, gear up to max, make an impact in WvWvW and feel like I actually was having fun and completing things.

How exactly is Asc gear needed in dungeons (or WvW) that don’t have Agony foes? Don’t tell me the ~60 point stat increase with all 12 pieces is significant enough. I PUG explorable dungeons all the time in green gear, I was never once asked to ping, just to name an anecdotal example.

MMOWarrior.9312:

Ask Turbine how this same sort of system worked for LotRO… dungeon gating.. locking off content/items except for a select group and type of player (raiders)… it turned LotRO into a ghost town… if fact it did so much damage to the community that they eventually pulled the system out of the game..

This is actually a valid concern, however we know nothing of the frequency of Agony mobs, particularly those that will be added after Lost Shores. Maybe they’ll be concentrated on a select few elite monsters in a dungeon or two. It’d be unfortunate if some close minded PUGs would lock you out on those particular ones, but I doubt the rest (i.e. most) future endgame content will need it. ANet isn’t dumb. They realize the casual, particularly new, players won’t attain Ascended gear any time soon, and will design future content around it.

The ring has a stat advantage over an exo ring of 5 respectively 3 points, plus the infusion slot of which we don’t know much yet. If we extrapolate that on all 12 gear pieces (plus their runes/jewels, but without infusions) the stat increase can’t be more than 100.
As an opponent of a classical gear treadmill, I actually like the concept, believe it or not. First of all the items will be, by the sound of it, rolled out over a multi-season time period, perhaps even years.
Many new high end enemies will inflict Agony. With your standard gear, they’ll be still doable with a bit extra effort, but each new piece of Ascended gear you acquire will cause them to progressively lose a bit of their aura of dread and enigma. It’s a nice replication of the Infusion mechanic against the Mursaat in GW1.
We also can not infer from this step that ANet will regularly introduce a new gear tier with major content updates. Maybe this will be stat-wise the final destination for the rest of the games life, maybe the penultimate. But it very much doubt this tier will be buried under a half a dozen higher tiers in a few years. It’s better to implement something like this early in the games life rather than later so that is perceived as the norm that was intended from the start, rather than the newcomer that only got added to artificially lengthen the games half-life.
Last but not least, everyone, even game devs, deserve some benefit of the doubt. Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic about this.

They’re not only too easy, they are also too short. If most paths in the L60+ dungeons (not to mention the three lower level ones) can be done in under 30 minutes with a group of medium proficiency, you know somethings up.
ANet apparently dropped the notion of storymode as “regular difficulty”, and explorable as “hard mode/elite content” somewhere along the line, due to concerns of casual players being locked out of the rewards. Fair enough, but instead of adjusting rewards for the story mode (at the point of writing: a hat. Big freaking deal.), they half-arsedly levelled the difficulty between the two, with effect that story mode in many places remains actually harder than explorable.

And no, this isn’t about the exclusivity of gear, and I think most speaking out against this agree with me here. It’s about not snoring off while doing the supposedly only challenging PVE content this game offers.

@kgptzac.8419
I don’t think ANet will add normal mode/hard mode any time soon. It fractures the playerbase way too much, and for some dungeons PUGs are already hard to find.
And please refrain from labelling everyone that doesn’t agree with your opinion elitist, thank you.

If you have a decent group every path can be done in under 25 min.
I find the bandits actually one of the most fun and engaging dungeon foes. Rather than devolve them to the difficulty level of the rest of dungeon trash, make the opposite the case.
It’s a perfectly fine low-level dungeon. Though it’s a bit curious that the first three dungeons are actually the most appropriately fine-tuned in regards to difficulty, and that the dungeons, even when gear is taken out of the equation, get easier as you progress (save for Arah, which I can’t comment on yet).

- Probably no hope of ever letting us disable the terrible skill queue.

How hard can it be to let skills automatically cancel other skills when activating them? Man, it’s a joke, if they’re aiming for a MOBA-style e-sport scene when they don’t even prioritize simple fixes dramatically enhancing PvP combat like this.