Guild Wars 2

A PBAoE has no need to care about aiming unlike other attacks. Having it work for Whirling Defense is a bit weird since movement would interrupt it.

Both of those are also PBAoEs.

You only need 1 slot for infinite number of personal guild banks. Just make free accounts for each and invite the main account into the guild as needed.

mtpelion.4562:

Farming, in general, is discouraged by the game’s design in order to build a game that rewards “play how you want”.

Essentially, the theory is that doing anything should give you lots of random stuff. You can sell the stuff you don’t want on the TP and use the money to buy the stuff you do want (also on the TP).

In this way, all content is rewarding, all players can “play how they want”, and the TP continuously sinks excess currency to fight inflation.

That is true until “how you want” is “getting stuff on your own”.

It’s a great system, as long as you understand how it works. The problem most people have with it is that they have come here from other games that promote farming (in order to trick you into paying a monthly subscription) and expect the system they are used to using to work here. When it doesn’t, it presents as a pretty nasty case of cognitive dissonance which often results in anger being directed at the system.

In this case you have to farm/buy gold or farm other items to sell and use the gold to buy the item you want while incurring the TP fees and taxes which means additional farming to cover that extra cost.

The primary problem with your argument is the assumption that the system is always performing flawlessly.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Actually many will say it needs to be reduced. With so many in multiple guilds, most guilds have little or no interaction, and are members in name only.

By that argument the maximum size of a guild and the number of character slots should all be reduced since there is no way anyone is going to be able to keep track of half a dozen character names across hundreds of members.

There is a note on the wiki about the discrepancy in the log related to not having quickness. An unreliable logging mechanism is pretty annoying.

What it really means is “You have already unlocked this recipe for your account.”

The thing that really amuses me is how ANet likes to say warrior is a class that has problems dealing with conditions and then I compare my elementalists and warriors’ ability to shrug off conditions …

Heh I guess I am too much of a natural slacker to care about that penalty box

It is more like “go forth my minions and go slay the potato while I go make a sandwich!”

The amount of CC can get somewhat stupid because they just give it to everything and have very short cooldown on them for both hard and soft CC. Many mobs’ balance also end up failiing once scaling is in effect.

You can have a squishy mob that hits very hard which is mostly fine but then you scale it to a champion and it stops being squishy and it how hits even harder. It also gains a breakbar so all forms of CC is useless against it as well.

It would have been better to use bouncing mushrooms.

These updrafts are actually smaller duplicates of the ones at the end of the Dragon’s Stand fight.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

The thing I’ve personally seen quite a bit, but hasn’t really been addressed here yet, is that there is no good way through the “Take to the skies or get under cover!” phases. Both the “updrafts”(that aren’t really updrafts) and Braham’s shield are buggy/gitchy, or whatever you want to call it. They will both fail to do what they’re supposed to do and instead cause characters to insta-die.

I don’t think the shield was ever meant to work for players. Someone probably added teh “get under cover” part so it makes sense for the NPCs to be able to just stand there. At least that is the only reason I’ve ever come up with on why the shield never works.

Also because the shield would make the glding completely pointless besides for getting the achievement.

A friend just finished this one a few days ago. Had to go around killing sparks/embers/etc. for a while.

Justine.6351:

I checked my t5-6 leather and I have over 150g worth. That’s from predominately playing wvw, and after I made several armor sets worth of insignia for converting ascended gear, over the past 2 months.

I don’t understand how people are not getting enough leather to do sane amounts of crafting.

That is barely enough for the Dwayna statue I made the other day …

Daddicus.6128:

Ayrilana.1396:

Break bars are a game mechanic so should be included.

Only if they work properly. I don’t remember this mission well enough, but the vast majority of break bars in HoT can’t be broken by a single character. There simply aren’t enough skills available to do it before it regenerates.

They can be as long as you don’t have other people around scaling things up. Assuming the fight was meant to be soloable in the first place. In the case of Mordremoth during the last phase I have broken its bar solo when scaled for 3 or 4 people. Had to use Tornado but most other classes have equally “good” elites.

To a lesser extent this is why it sucks to have more people around for the wyvern at the end of the noble’s chain and the jaka itzel chain, wyvern matriarch and vinetooth prime.

Ayrilana.1396:

Khisanth.2948:

Are you talking about bosses or phases? There are definitely checkpoints after each boss but there isn’t any on the phases except maybe that last phase but since that last phase is the easiest thing in the whole instance there was never a need to check.

I’m referring to the two bosses that you choose to fight at the beginning. Checkpoints between phases would be a bit too much.

Then why would they need to add any checkpoints? The checkpoints are already there.

If the insignia or inscription is account bound then the resulting weapon or armor is also account bound.

The difference between full exotic and full ascended is supposed to be something like 10% for a power build but on the other hand you also get a lot more benefit out of getting weapons than armor and the trinkets are easy to get from LS3 maps.

felincyriac.5981:

Staff isn’t really used in pve for necro, it has long cooldowns and don’t do very much damage, try a greatsword for a power build (well I see that it’s also being used in condi builds too) and for fractals try scepter/dagger & warhorn (for a condi build that is). Open world you can use w.e you want.

and marks are simply non-functional against certain things

Are you talking about bosses or phases? There are definitely checkpoints after each boss but there isn’t any on the phases except maybe that last phase but since that last phase is the easiest thing in the whole instance there was never a need to check.

mauried.5608:

One of the problems with threads like this is the term “challenging content.”
What is it?
Ive asked this question many times and have yet to get a sensible answer.
The bottom line is that “challenging content” to some players is impossible content to others, as everyone in the game doesnt and never will have the same degree of skill.

Well for starters challenging content must be fair. Once you are dealing with cheating enemies(or designers) there is no point in talking about challenge.

Doam.8305:

mauried.5608:

One of the problems with threads like this is the term “challenging content.”
What is it?
Ive asked this question many times and have yet to get a sensible answer.
The bottom line is that “challenging content” to some players is impossible content to others, as everyone in the game doesnt and never will have the same degree of skill.

Challenging content is side/optional content regardless of how you view it should be in the game.

Using GW1 as an example since they did it properly they had two types of maps. If you played the story path in GW1 it cut through certain maps and certain paths on those maps. Mob density and so forth along that story path was easier because it was made so for people who just wanted story. Then there are maps that don’t even get touched through the story these maps were optional and were faster routes when traversing the maps lacking vendors and any sign of civilization usually people would actually pay other players to run them through those areas on alts. Gw1 also had vanquish mode but the off beat maps had higher mob density with a higher grade as well with greater rewards to be found. You had to travel through them to find elite skills, elite armor vendors, or special instances.

World of Warcraft even has roads but those roads don’t exist in the timeless isles and other locations.

One of the reason why HoT was so difficult and failed so badly was because they didn’t seperate anything they never did the very basic step of separating the story path and making challenging more difficult content optional and on a seperate map. They did it once properly with the centaur farm area the bitter cold area doesn’t count do to elixir gating the area. If they made an entire map with no storybimportance akin to the centaur area or an entire map akin to the bitter cold with a slow map wide degen then that would fix a lot of the issues. A lot of the people screaming HoT isn’t hard simply don’t comprehend the need for basic seperation needed from the story based areas and maps as is done with every MMO including GW1.

That is answering the wrong question.

The question was “what is challenging content?” not “where doesn’t challenging content belong?”.

What it is and where it belong are completely unrelated.

In dungeons half the fight is knowing the battles.

You need to know what you will be facing to bring the correct traits/utilities/elite.

Effortless to extend the life of your game. Increasing the speed as your crafting level goes further away from the recipe creates plausible deniability.

Also … at least it doesn’t take 3 hours.

Using immersion is worse than saying “because we felt like it” -_-

There is too much that doesn’t make sense for that excuse. For example all the cloth we use are pieced together from scraps. Same with the leather. How does a greatsword fit in a mosquito? Who is the person running around the world stuffing gemstones into trees?

Fulgurite is even worse. It’s one of those silly ‘set it and go AFK things’.

You mean the NPCs actually did something besides stand around? O_o

TEKnowledgy.1760:

Timelord.8190:

@Healix
I will try pingplotter. Thank you!

Make sure you try it on the game server IP game site like forums is different server than the game it’s self.
This here is North America Game server IP: 64.25.38.106 (it maybe different for you)
Not sure what EU server IP would be or if it connects through there aswell if you need to know there is various ways I use an app called “TCP View” to get that info link if you want it: http://download.cnet.com/TCPView/3000-2094_4-10796077.html While in game run it then it tell you every ip connected including game clients ofcoarse.

Just use the /ip command inside the game.

The IP is going to be different depending on which map instance you are in. Although in the end it shouldn’t matter much which specific IP you use as long as it is in the correct region (NA or EU).

EU IPs start with 206.127.×.x instead of 64.25.×.x

Sartharina.3542:

I actually like that the battles reset when you die, and I wish the rest of the game’s checkpoints worked in a similar way.

They mostly do already.

Some things even reset without anyone dying …

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Also, experienced players might beat the fight, but what about a casual player with green/yellow/exotic mixed gear who picks Thief, for example? There’s no way he can survive that. I strongly believe that the story mode should be something everyone can enjoy, but at the current state Hearts and Minds demands either high skill or optimal gear.

Exotics are good enough for everything in the game except high level fractals and even there it is more for the agony resistance than the stat increase.

For the metal forest you need a Ruby Crystal not quartz. Having quartz in your inventory might interfere with it so just put those in your bank.

Edit: Oops forgot about the other tests. For the test it needs a charged quartz not regular quartz.

Yes. I happen to have The Hunter sitting in my bank and I just used it to unlock the skin.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Khisanth.2948:

In the case of GW2 there is also the ambient lighting issue.

Not just in GW2; RL colors are also affected by ambient lighting.

Hehe that is true … there was the thing with the dress where nobody could agree what color it was

Anchoku.8142:

Color is… complicated. Aside from human perception differences, color is an integration of standard spectral eye response, source light spectral content, and object spectral reflection. Ambient light changes the actual color of any object. That is three curves multiplied together.

Add to that the calibration cuve of your monitor, gamma and other curves of your graphics generator, then compare that to the same curves of the developing artists at Arenanet.

Finally, someone had to name the colour at Arenanet and receive approval for the name.

Is it not easier to pick the color you want from the palate and ignore the name?

In the case of GW2 there is also the ambient lighting issue.

In the hero/dye panel my mesmer’s shoes are purple. In world while standing at the flax patch in VB at night they look grayish.

The penalty box could also have been handled in a way similar to https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Echoing_Banishment

Daddicus.6128:

SeanConroy.9580:

I’ve been keeping an eye on this post, and I’ve seen several comments asking for the removal of the penalty box. Unfortunately, that mechanic is intricately involved in the design of the entire instance and removing it is simply not feasible.

That’s unfortunate, Sean. Because, with the penalty box, the mission is simply not worth the time spent playing. I recommend abandoning your other fixes, because they won’t help significantly in comparison to leaving the penalty box.

But, perhaps you could explain WHY there’s a penalty box? I’ve not seen a single valid reason suggested for its existence, and it’s near-universally despised. But, there MUST be a reason for ANet to have spent the amount of time needed to construct it.

Unless you are doing Migraine mode ressing other people isn’t much of an issue …

Speaking of Migraine they should fix the exploit for it as well if they haven’t already.

Discoteka.2758:

Khisanth.2948:

Btw anyone else ever encountered the impromptu PvP bug?

I’ve become targetable as a sylvari when Mordremoth starts calling to me.

It is possible to get stuck on the wrong team.

It would also require additional infrastructure for uploading and disseminating to other players(so it can render correctly on their client).

There is also something to be said about maintaining a consistent style.

AliamRationem.5172:

Khisanth.2948:

Yes and no …

If I walk near a smokescale with my ele and do nothing the assault skill will be fatal

If I do the same with my guardian it will barely leave a scratch

On the other hand there were things I’ve done on the ele that was fairly easy but it was a struggle on the guardian because the game was throwing a horde of mobs at you.

Sometimes it looks a lot more like the devs do not understand how the mobs scale in their own game. One of the WM necromancer’s skill that normally does ignorable damage can one shot you when it is a lv83 veteran.

Perhaps. But it seems to me that without the trinity the system is set up with flexibility in mind. There is no reason the elementalist must be squishy. They do have the lowest health and armor, but you can use stats, traits, and utilities to mitigate these weaknesses. It’s the same for any class. I don’t have extensive experience with all of them, but so far everything I’ve tried has the option of breaking the mold and mitigating their weaknesses. That’s something that trinity games with their rigidly defined class roles don’t offer.

The meta generally does not encourage this, so it may appear that the game has poor balance. But it strikes me that this is a result of players attempting to use a build that assumes some degree of support from other players when they are playing the game solo. Not that you can’t use a glass build for solo play, but if you consider ele too squishy you should probably explore your options a bit more.

You’ve missed the point there. That was simply to illustrate the differences between the two character’s build.

The point is that going further in either direction of more defensive or offensive is always an improvement.

Btw anyone else ever encountered the impromptu PvP bug?

The updrafts are mostly transparently/white. Not being colorblind isn’t really much better off there. The sparkly effect on the floor isn’t doing it any favors either.

OriOri.8724:

A mote could also work. I had forgotten that they existed in some episodes honestly. After you beat it once you can just mote straight to the mordremoth fight. Even when the bugs are fixed though, there is still flights of fancy achievement to worry about, so having to redo the entire instance every time you screw up once is aggravating to say the least.

Its the only HoT story achievement I don’t have, and the only reason I don’t have it is because of how tedious it is to constantly redo that instance over and over and over.

You do not need to restart the whole instance for Flights of Fancy. At least according to the UI. Restarting the fight with Mordremoth will reapply the “you qualify for this achievement” icon.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Svarty.8019:

In my opinion, GW2’s Dodge mechanic is the best thing to hit combat in MMOs thus far.

Having said that, from an overall (PvE and WvW) perspective and in my opinion, the rest of the combat system doesn’t feel satisfying. Overall damage numbers felt too high at release, but after all the power-creep, the game-play is a frustrating disappointment.

Combat feels panicky and random. Too often, huge spikes mean a mashing of self-heals way too early in the battle. From then on it’s a case of sustain (self-blasting waters, stealth-resets), which some classes are capable of and others are not.

That’s my experience of combat in GW2.

Are you sure this isn’t a byproduct of the “all damage, all the time” model that is strongly pushed for PvE content? If you build for nothing but damage, and take only damage increasing utility skills, it’s maybe not such a surprise that damage is hard to deal with, and only some classes have the luck to deal with it?

Meanwhile, occasionally in my guild people follow the advice to use a “WvW” meta build, and suddenly … they find they are able to do things that were formerly impossible, because those builds don’t just focus on damage, they also include damage avoidance, self-healing, and damage reduction gear, traits, and skills.

Yes and no …

If I walk near a smokescale with my ele and do nothing the assault skill will be fatal

If I do the same with my guardian it will barely leave a scratch

On the other hand there were things I’ve done on the ele that was fairly easy but it was a struggle on the guardian because the game was throwing a horde of mobs at you.

Sometimes it looks a lot more like the devs do not understand how the mobs scale in their own game. One of the WM necromancer’s skill that normally does ignorable damage can one shot you when it is a lv83 veteran.

You need around 2 stacks per HoT legendary unless you are getting your clovers some other way.

apharma.3741:

I’d just like to say this is good to hear especially that there won’t be much change mechanically as I feel it is a decent boss fight with focus on mechanics more than press 2 to kill or DPS as fast as you can.

Funny you mention that, apparently some of the bugs can be triggered by doing too much DPS. :P

Tiscan.8345:

Zephyra.4709:

While I appreciate the apparent proposed changes Soon™ I can’t help but die a little inside when I remember the release date of Heart of Thorns alongside the current date that ANet has decided to even consider fixing that lovely part of the game.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns release date: 23rd October 2015
AKA: 508 days ago from today (14th March 2017)

508 days.
508 Days.
508 DAYS.

Five. Hundred. And. Eight. Days. And. It. Still. Full. O’. Bugs. Mah. Boy.

For real.

Pfffft… thats easy to top Since release there is a bug in the game where characters suddenly stop moving. They pretty much freeze mid-movement and you can’t move in any direction until you let go of all keys. Oldest reports on the forums on that bug are from 2012 and its pretty annoying and happens “kinda often”.

Or that “nice” visual glitch where the “ghost-bird” that appears when you use the Swoop-skill on Rangers never disappears. That bug is even mentioned on the wiki since September 2014… and its in the game for much longer (at least mid-2013).

Not to mention all those nice bugs in EoTM that have been in there for years (broken NPCs @ Tytone, ways to glitch into Spire & Inferno, supply-camps being shown as “full” while they are empty, etc.).

Lets see how long it takes them to fix the broken NPCSs in “Into the Labyrinth”

A visual only glitch isn’t really comparable. If there was a glitch in the H&M fight where Mordremoth turns into an actual potato I don’t think it would matter much.

Amaimon.7823:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Amaimon.7823:

simple solution

Solutions might be simple to describe; that doesn’t make them simple to implement.

If age old games can do it, I can hardly picture why a modern company like anet couldn’t

GW2 is apparently held together by bubble gum, paperclips and duct tape judging from how even the simplest thing is always an impossible task.

Maybe ANet should check if Richard Dean Anderson is available.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Haleydawn.3764:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_back_item#Back_items_with_selectable_prefixes

Simple as visiting a vendor for quad stat pieces.

You have to farm the currency for the particular map the vendor is in, too.

or complete the WvW/PvP reward track for those maps although you need to complete get far enough into the relevant episode first to unlock those tracks.

Giving it the Precocious Aurene treatment would probably be a useful improvement. After each section is done it can have a checkpoint. Then you can resume the following section at a later time for whatever reason. Even if a few bug fixes still get missed at least it will only require restarting from the most recently completed section.

AliamRationem.5172:

I’ve heard this is basically abandoned content, but it seems to me that these could be enjoyable if they weren’t designed so poorly that players refuse to actually play through them!

Every dungeon I try is either a 10 minute affair of rushing past hordes of trash to reach the bosses or failing to do so because 1 or 2 players get killed along the way. I can see why they do it this way. First, because they can. But also, the rewards seem so poor that taking the time to clear all that trash simply isn’t worth it!

Wouldn’t it be better to just remove the mountain of trash and replace it with a few forced encounters along the way so that players can’t bypass it and actually play through? Then adjust the rewards so that this isn’t a complete waste of time?

That is more of an issue with people failing to adapt.

With the elite spec power creep and breakbar damage multiplier it is easy to steamroll the mobs as well. Just did this today in TA with 3 people. With 5 it would have gone even faster.

Heh … even the HoT ones do not have HoT stats. They have already said they don’t want people who do not have HoT to have HoT stats so the answer is probably “never”.

What is this? Someone realizing that they can avoid using waypoints even if they exist? Is this a dream?