Guild Wars 2

HoT bugs and exploits aside…
In the recent months we received numerous Fixes and Mechanics that addressed the game’s most serious Issues, such as:
The over reliance on Zerker was addressed by reducing the importance of dungeons, having the new jungle areas punish squishy players, and introducing raids where a variety in roles in more important.
The insignificance of Guilds was mildly addressed with the guild missions, and now more with the Guild halls.
Ect….

The Question now is… (HoT bugs and exploits aside) What’s left to fix?
What do you consider an issue with the current state of the game that makes it feel lacking or incomplete as a whole!
Please avoid answers that represent some method for you to easily grind more money or shinnies.

Let me start:

• Now that Support gear is more relevant, we need the option to Save our Builds Instead of having to swap our skills and talents one by one each time.

Issue:(possible exploit)
With Action camera Enabled, walking backwards no longer has a slowed speed, as the character completely turns and runs that way! This might give some unfair advantages in PVP.

Exploit:
edited…

Anyone following the extra credits channel most likelly has an idea of what i mean.
http://youtu.be/yxpW2ltDNow
http://youtu.be/1drDuaQXm_U

For those to lazy to watch here is a breef summary.

The gamers play multyplayer games for different reasons.

• The achievers who play for the sence of achievement.
• The explorers who care more about discovering stuff in the game.
• The socializers who like mostly to socialize with other people.
• And the killers who find satisfaction in making someone alse rage on their computer screen.

Killers love Achivers because they rage the best when they kill them, but hate explorers because they dont care much if someone kills their character, while socializers mostly care about other socializers.

How do you think GW2 tackle those groups?
In which group do you think you belong?

Linen is currently the most rare, as seen by it’s tradepost price
one piece alone costs around 5 silvers.
Please increase the linen drop rate, or add some way to farm it.
Unlike ores, wood and foods that you get from gathering nodes, by going to that particular tiered area, there is no good way to farm cloth.

I wish there where sheeps, cotton, and silk worms in the world that acted as gathering nodes for cloth.

Just like they figure out how many players are around during an event in order to scale it, They should be able to do the same for the In-combat players during an event, to make them and their skills transparent after they reach a certain number.

CHS.5160:

Kite.2510:

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

You remind me of something
Am I the only person in this entire kitten forum who realizes that they are hiding healing and tank classes, something that should have been implemented 3 years ago, behind a 50€ paywall?
Because that’s some pretty stinky pile of bullkitten if you think about it for a second.

Free player… huh?!

• For starters, I can’t consider free accounts as actual free accounts. Limitations are so strict, that it would be better to call them “Trial accounts”. GW2 was meant, and still is, to be a Subscription-less game, but not a F2P game, and by that I mean that you’ll still have to buy the game at least once to play normally.
• Second, the game originally never intended to have a holly trinity. Whatever defensive and supportive skills and atribute there where, wheren’t meant to form a Tank-Healler-DPS role. However since those roles didn’t exist, those stats ended up being considered very useless on most of the Vanila game, so something had to bedone to enhance their usefulness.
• Thirdly, the content that would require these roles exist in the expansion anyway! Your Vanila game will have what it promised.
• Lastly, in a few days we’ll receive a patch that would re-balance all the core classes, so no wories.

1. Recent news about the Expansion and it’s new classes show a much bigger emphasis on healing, with the Druid being a clear healling class. Said that, none of them directly heal players and they are more like “Spraying healing while Fighting”.
2. Yeah… until recently most other attributes where kind of useless. They where supposed to offer survivability, but since most don’t scale any skills and the open world game and dungeons have become to easy, the Berserker (Glass Cannon) stat combinations where the most viable build for everyone. However, like I said, things are supposed to change in the expansion… I hope…

Cyninja.2954:

Kite.2510:

NOTHING in this game should be designed for Zerker.
Players will always find a way to cheese some Zerkers in once they learn the in’s and outs of the content anyway, but at least that way other builds would be more viable.

Nothing in this game IS designed for zerker.

The content is designed to be doable with the current game mechanics in mind. The fact that people are capable to use said mechanics and play with maximum damage gear is a result of refinement.

The fact that Zerker was the meta for so long on everything means that everything was, intentionally or unintentionally, designed around the Zerker.
Look no further than the “Hard” Superbosses like the Tequatle patch, where besides the technical stuff, all other conditions for failing was “not doing enough damage”.

• Enemies not hitting hard or often enough for players to invest on toughness.
• Healing being Useless!
• Having defensive/supportive attributes not scale defensive/supportive skills (unlike power and conditions that synergies with most offensive skills), thus working better on heavy armor professions who rely less on avoiding damage.
• Also ANY event that appeared with a Strict Timer is a Zerker event!

NOTHING in this game should be designed for Zerker.
Players will always find a way to cheese some Zerkers in once they learn the in’s and outs of the content anyway, but at least that way other builds would be more viable.

Came here to post this!

I mentioned something similar in the audio section when a Dev asked me, but a few hours after I posted my reply, the whole audio forum clossed, so I’m not sure if he ever read my reply.

Currently the music appears to be bound to an area and it doesn’t change when you enter caves, taverns or houses. Also there appears to be a bug, and the track doesn’t stop playing when you WP so you end up reaching areas with inappropriate music playing. As a reasult the music ends up becoming very monotonus.

These simpler versions of the themes are perfect for homes of the individual races and bases where you are supposed to feel secure.

JS music sounds generic after a while.

The JS music of Vanila GW2 kind of sounded as part of the same track.
I’m happy to see more distinct music here.

PLEASE A-net, fix this bug there the music doesn’t change when waypointing.

skullmount.1758:

You sure you want to be swinging from vines in this jungle?

That’s why it’s a mastery.. You have to learn which vines are “the good ones” first!

Obligatory note that vines don’t work that way.

80% of video games “don’t work that way”.

ImTasty.2163:

Is…is that a stock image of a business man swinging on a vine?

Kind of googled it…
I typed Vine Swinging and these where the most obvious images. Decided to put both anyway for fun.

Bartender.1674:

I could see a problem arising when multiple people want to follow the same path

Not really.
As you can see in the rough sketch I did in the OP as a Veteran Concept Artist that I am, All they have to do is leave a bunch of vines in the “Swing hotspot” that few will bother to count, and then have the one you swing be part of your animation.

Vine swinging!
How did you miss that?!
It was such an obvious choice. I was expecting Lord Fahren to meet us that way!

We have masteries for Bouncing on mushrooms, Gliding on air, Communicating with the wildlife, eating the flora, but Something as simple as this is missing. A jungle themed expansion appears to be the perfect opportunity to awake our inner ape!
Please A-net!
It can’t be that hard!?

The mobs are all great…. with the exception of those lizards that drop a field that makes you miss them.
You can kill them on your own if there are just 1 or 2 if you move a lot. But in groups they can lock them selfs into permanent evade mode, and these maps don’t give you a lot of space to move around.

Redenaz.8631:

I kinda like that there’s a decision to be made whether you want to focus on res’ing someone, or take out a mob to let them rally instead. Going for the kill is more efficient, but risky if they’re already taking damage and low on health, and you have to determine if you can make the kill in time. Meanwhile, the downed player has to decide whether they try to heal, or go for the kill, and they have to figure out which enemy is more likely to go down in before they die.

This would all still be true if low-worry mobs didn’t res, but I think it would be less fun. Whether you survive or not would depend on someone helping you, or the main mob going down in time, while you just ignore the minor mobs and hope they leave you alone.

I just don’t see any meaningful benefit, and I think it would make gameplay less fun. People might be opting to go for the rally more often than a straight revive, but isn’t that just as fun or more so, even if it’s riskier?

Not all event enemies should be pawns. Only those non-veterans that are supposed to be dieing in tens by big zergs. In thoes cases it appears that the system gets, unintentionally by the devs, cheesed…

Even in overscaled events there would always be vetetans and non-pawns that would grand a rally. What pawns would offer is the challenge of fighting large armies without having rallying opportunities passing twice per second.
It would be a good mechanic IMO integrade into the new upcomming raids.

With a common complain about the downed state in pve being that it’s easier to keep attacking a random enemy to rally someone than actually revive him/her, i think that event enemies should have some clear rules about thems.

Trash mobs of overscaled events and generally enemies that have been summoned by normal enemies or are designed to attack in great numbers should be classified as “pawns”.

Pawn enemies rules:

• Don’t grand Xp.
• Don’t grand loot.
• Don’t rally players when killed.
• Have a distinct and easily identifiable icon.
• “Wolfs hunt in pacts, Arisen!”

Same issue.
Human female guardian.
First encountered this problem during the 1rst Beta weekend in the new content story mode, but I just realized that it insist on the old story as well.
Random lines in the crappy talking cut-scenes are mute.

Edit: The most common dialogue to be muted in the cutscenes is the first and the last.

+2
Cutscenes can barely be heard.

Also, during the initial cutscene upon joining the Beta in the Silver wastes, the Silver wastes music was also playing in the background.

I prepurchased a retail boxed form from a store due to “currently living in Hell” reasons.

I’ll be away from my pc this weekend. Do i also get a slot?

I made a suggestion a long time ago on the now closed sound section, about how A-net could use the (now pointless) personality choice of the character creation to make the character speak different lines during gameplay.

CureForLiving.5360:

Teleoceras.1298:

Niyati.4215:

The one thing i didn’t like about the cores personal story was you could do everything solo “but” the final mission to take down Zhaitan. I got 17 lvl80’s and only finished the final mission on one character.

If they pull the same stunt for taking down Mordremoth I’m going to be kittened.

Umm.. you do know that killing Zhaitain can be done solo now? When they restored the storyline, they also turned the Arah dungeon story into a personal instance. I tagged along with a guildie to see what was changed and quite a bit was simplified. The mission took about an hour to complete.

Too bad there are no chests anymore.

None of the story instances drop loot unfortunately.

At least tell me that they bother to redesign the fight so it won’t be as broken!…

As usual, many of you assume that players think the same way you do.
Don’t take the people of this forum as an example of how the potential new player will think. After all we are the ones who forgave the bad PS, or happen to not hate it as much and remain in the game!
We are actually the Minority.

If you want to attract new players:

• You have to think like they think!
• Assume that they have Zero Hype and just trying the game out.
• Think as a new player, what’ll they try first.
• how easy will it be for them to follow it.
• What impression will it leave them.
• And how much this impression will count for the rest of the game!

Stuff like, a bad intro screen, annoying music, lack of intro, and bad storytelling can make or break an MMO even if they are insignificant in the long run.

It’s not the first time I complain about the personal Story being poorly done, but every other time I did, I was met with comments of the “If you don’t like it, don’t play it” type.

With the release of HoT approaching, this issue is becoming more relevant than ever, as it can seriously bleed new players before they even reach the level cap.

A recent Video by WP who rarely does rants, expressed this issue and he is pretty much spot on on the problems.

• The ridiculously easy difficulty.
• Your choice in Orders and personality not mater.
• The bad writing. (Introducing a “new best friend” in every chapter)
• The boring talking cut-scenes.
• Not having substantial rewards besides XP (that recently became useless at end-level) and the occasional BL item.

As much as we hate to admit it.
As much as it looks like a lot of work.
As much as we old players have managed to overcome it.
As much as A-net improved their story-telling in their more recent content.
The original Personal Story is, and will be, the initial experience 99% of the new players, for the expansions to come!

Besides bug-fixes, the removal of loot to avoid exploits, the change in level restrictions, and the recent re-recording of some of Trahearne’s voice overs, there hasn’t been any substantial change to make the story more engaging. I made a suggestion post 2 and a half years ago on how to fix the personal story, and almost everything I wrote then, still stands today.

IMO:
A-net should hire some director who can do in-game mo-caped, cut-scenes (and not just move the camera) to replace the existing talking cut-scenes, and draw some emotion from the scenes despite the bad writing and acting.
Also a toggle-able hard mode that rises the level of the enemies for those who want a challenge would be welcome.
These are the easiest and fastest fixes I can think of!

The key fragments for Troll’s revenge JP, if I’m not mistaken exist only so players wont be taking portal directly to the final treasure. However they are considered unique accountbound items, despite getting new ones every day if you haven’t used the old ones.
To delete these extra items and free space in your inventory you have to type the entire item name, taking into account capital letters.
It’s annoying!

Here are two simple solutions.
1. Allow us to drag-drop the items if we decide to give up completing the JP (very likely, since its very long with no checkpoints.
2. Make hidden stashes not give fragments if you already have them.

Whatever of the two is welcome!

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Old skill points = Spirit Shards
Leveling up + old skill challenges = Hero Points
“Leveling” at level 80 in HoT = Mastery Points

Spirit shards are used to buy stuff for the mystic forge
Hero points are used to buy skills and traits in specializations; the extra 213 hero points will be used to unlock Elite Specializations and their related skills
Mastery Points will be gained by gaining experience and “leveling up” in HoT

So HoT will introduce it’s own currency…
That doesn’t change the fact that we’ll have unused and useless hero points left, unless the Elite specialization costs exactly 212 hero points. (not counting the krait obelisk in the home instance)

How about having a mechanic unlocked once you learn everything, where every extra hero point you have after that will count for your character’s Karma/gold/magic find.
And if something new get added into the game, you’ll have to learn it before getting that bonus again.
Of course that bonus will have to count the percentage of the additional HP you have, so you won’t have people moaning if some new skill reduces their bonus.

IMO the fight is designed wrong.

Having a timer for a failure state will only attract more Glass Cannon builds, especially if the timer is barely enough.

Kythan Myr.4719:

I believe they are used the same as Skill Points in crafting at mystic forge.

Actually, they are limited in number per character, as you can no longer level beyond 80 and champion bags drop instead a special mystic forge currency.
They just sit there!

Kythan is thinking of Spirit Shards. If I understand it correctly, Hero Points will be used for masteries once the expansion comes out. They will be used to learn things like how to glide and increase the duration of gliding. Keep in mind that elite specializations will also cost hero points (as well as their associated skills).

Take the time now to get as many as you can for when the expansion hits.

But won’t the new areas have new Hero points to discover? We’ll back where we started!

It appears that there are much more than those we actually need to learn everything…
I was expecting that, as not everyone wanted to get world completion before learning his final trait, but I’ve learned everything with my alt with barely exploration, before reaching lvl 80, and my main is currently sitting on 213 unspent hero points!

Is there any use for the remaining hero points? or they’ll become another useless currency once you reach lvl 80?

Vayne.8563:

Kite.2510:

The good!
The City is bright and beautiful.
Lots of hidden stuff to discover.
Troll’s End changed to something equally frustrating, but for good JP reasons this time!
Glad to see a dedicated BL and Guild Building.

The Bad!
While the destroyed LA had 3 city centers, (one for PVPers, one for Dungeoneers and one near the Mystic Toilet) this one for some reason has only one again!
It seems A-net is struggling to make bankers useful (despite crafting stations including a bank) and that’s more visible now as a bank is the closest thing to the Mystic Toilet.
Mystic Toilet Being away from the crafting stations, and so is the tradepost, that takes a few more steps that I would bother to take.
This looks less like a Pirate City and more like a Water Theme park!

The Ugly!
The biggest WOW moments with the old LA where:

• The moment I found the hidden Wispers base inside the rock behind a hidden passage.
• The tents that looked like Waves.
• The Ship turned into a bar/hotel being the tallest building there.

None of them Remained! Not even the Wispers Hideout that was spared from the destruction!
I would like to visit those again, even if it’s just as an instanced area during the old Personal Story.

The old personal story stuff is still the same in the personal story. Any new characters coming through will see the old areas.

When was this implemented?
1-2 months ago I did some Personal Story for an Alt, and it took place on the destroyed LA.

The good!
The City is bright and beautiful.
Lots of hidden stuff to discover.
Troll’s End changed to something equally frustrating, but for good JP reasons this time!
Glad to see a dedicated BL and Guild Building.

The Bad!
While the destroyed LA had 3 city centers, (one for PVPers, one for Dungeoneers and one near the Mystic Toilet) this one for some reason has only one again!
It seems A-net is struggling to make bankers useful (despite crafting stations including a bank) and that’s more visible now as a bank is the closest thing to the Mystic Toilet.
Mystic Toilet Being away from the crafting stations, and so is the tradepost, that takes a few more steps that I would bother to take.
This looks less like a Pirate City and more like a Water Theme park!

The Ugly!
The biggest WOW moments with the old LA where:

• The moment I found the hidden Wispers base inside the rock behind a hidden passage.
• The tents that looked like Waves.
• The Ship turned into a bar/hotel being the tallest building there.

None of them Remained! Not even the Wispers Hideout that was spared from the destruction!
I would like to visit those again, even if it’s just as an instanced area during the old Personal Story.

I don’t want Ascended to be to far away that Exotics, as GW2 is all about making different builds. Since Ascended are hard to get, If the end game is designed for people who have ascended, it won’t be easy to have multiple builds.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on Drytop.
I love the map! It has unique mechanics, unique currency, unique loot to get with that currency, and a fantastic meta. But the more I play, the more some flaws become more obvious.

First, the map is pretty much separated in 4 areas as are the parts in which they got revealed. As I like to call them, these are the Crash site area, the northern canyon area, the middle desert and the upper desert.
The event’s in middle and canyon tend to be a bit un-even. Most of the zergs for ether on the crash site, or sometimes in the upper area, while the others remain relatively empty, save for a few explorers and farmers. I think it has more to do with the “nearest event” compass that was added after the map’s release, that when you are in these unpopular areas, it tends to show events on nearby areas.
A good way to solve this is to add a couple of extra events on these areas, if the quest compass can’t be changed.
I would also suggest a slight change in the WP locations. The Restoration Refuge Waypoint should be a bit northern to provide faster access to the canyon area. The Repair Station Waypoint should be a bit southern, not just to provide better access to the map but mainly to be further than the Vine Bridge Waypoint in turn should go to the northern part of Azarr’s Arbor. And finally there should be a WP near Ley Line Hub, as that area tends to be to far away from everything.

Second, there are a couple of unpopular events that end up being time consuming and tedious. Namely:

• “Challenge and spar with Nochtli” is very hard without a horde of players dropping stabilities. IMO, the AI needs to be tweaked so she’ll be using less launching attacks when down-scaled.
• “Protect Serene as she recovers crystals lost in the crash” needs to change her speed to running when she reset her position after a fight, as every time she sees an enemy, she rushes to him, takes minutes to get back and by that time, more mobs have spawned.
• “Shut down the Inquest experimentation into Aspect crystals” is 2 event’s in 1, so they tend to take lots of time. Since the first part doesn’t involve champions, it can be soloed just to have the unsuspecting player realize that he can’t complete the second part by him self.

I’m ok with a character slot…

Here is how the armor reduction for vulnerability could stack.

• Vulnerability:
  • 1 stack = 2% armor reduction
  • 2 stack = 4% armor reduction
  • 3 stack = 6% armor reduction
  • 4 stack = 8% armor reduction
  • 5 stack = 10% armor reduction
  • 6 stack = 11% armor reduction
  • 7 stack = 12% armor reduction
  • 8 stack = 13% armor reduction
  • 9 stack = 14% armor reduction
  • 10 stack = 15% armor reduction
  • 11 stack = 16% armor reduction
  • 12 stack = 17% armor reduction
  • 13 stack = 18% armor reduction
  • 14 stack = 19% armor reduction
  • 15 stack = 20% armor reduction
  • 16 stack = 20.5% armor reduction
  • 17 stack = 21% armor reduction
  • 18 stack = 21.5% armor reduction
  • 19 stack = 22% armor reduction
  • 20 stack = 22.5% armor reduction
    … and once on 25% requiring 25 stacks it’ll start being raised by +0.25% per stack.
    … once on 27,5% requiring 35 stacks it’ll start being raised by +0.125% per stack.
    … once on 28,75% requiring 45 stacks it’ll start being raised by +0.0625% per stack.
    … and finally it’ll cap on 30% requiring 65 stacks of vulnerability.

Pross:

• The players will feel no downgrade from the old system.
• Vulnerability will become relevant for single players and PVPers thanks to it’s raised initial effectiveness.
• Enemies who have enough hit points to allow the condition to build many stacks are bosses with lots of players, where the tiny rise in armor reduction will still be relevant since more people will be benefiting from it!
• The cap goal will be higher, allowing the vulnerability skills of more players to be relevant!

Cons:

• Bigger stress on the client? (since they raised the cap of the other conditions to 1500, I can no think of it as an issue.)

Daniel Handler.4816:

This kills no uniqueness. The point is to increase damage. Also ranger or thieves have a trait that raises the effect of poison to 66%.

I hope you don’t believe that a change like that cannot happen just because some profession has a skill or a trait that’s incompatible with this change… A-net just changed half the gameplay to incorporate these new changes!

BTW I thought of a better way it could work.
I’ll update my opening post with it!

It looks like A-nets solution for all condition issues is ether “Make them all Dots!” or “Keep the 25 stack Limit!”.

Confusion now is another dot, that does a bit less damage when a skill is used.
Vulnerability still caps at 25.
While poison now stacks for more damage, the healing reduction is the same regardless of 1 or 1500 stacks.

This kind of kills most of the Uniqueness most conditions have!
Why not give Diminishing Returns for conditions effect you don’t want to get very high.
For Example:

• poisons: (these numbers assume that poison remains a rare and strong condition where skills don’t give more than 1 stack.)
  • 1 stack equals X damage and 20% healing reduction
  • 2 stacks equals 2X damage and 32% healing reduction
  • 3 stacks equals 3X damage and 39% healing reduction
  • 4 stacks equals 4X damage and 43% healing reduction
  • 5 stacks equals 5X damage and 46% healing reduction
  • 6 stacks equals 6X damage and 47% healing reduction
    …. and the healing reduction wont go beyond 50%, but there still be contribution to it from other players.

The numbers can be cooked for poison to also be a weak skill. It’s simple math and algorithms.
Besides, if an enemy is strong enough to gather enough players to rise the poison to the sky, then I believe is acceptable for the heal reduction of that enemy to reach even 60%.
__________________________________________________________________
EDIT:
BTW I thought of a better way it could work.

• poisons:
  • 1 stack equals X damage and 20% healing reduction
  • 2 stacks equals 2X damage and 25% healing reduction
  • 3 stacks equals 3X damage and 30% healing reduction
  • 4 stacks equals 4X damage and 32% healing reduction
  • 5 stacks equals 5X damage and 34% healing reduction
  • 6 stacks equals 6X damage and 36% healing reduction
  • 7 stacks equals 7X damage and 38% healing reduction
  • 8 stacks equals 8X damage and 40% healing reduction
  • 9 stacks equals 9X damage and 41% healing reduction
  • 10 stacks equals 10X damage and 42% healing reduction
    …. and the healing reduction wont go beyond 60%.
    To reach that cap, it’ll need about 20 players, so those percentages can only be reached on overscaled bosses and world bosses.

These new numbers fit a nerfed poison better, their fast initial scaling ensure that you can reach the old numbers easier by your self or fellow PVPers, and still leave room for improvement if more players are around.

NO SEASONED PLAYER IS GOING TO REVIVE SOMEONE FOR THAT FUNNY AMOUNT OF USELESS XP.

Obviously!
What I’m saying is that now that new players will come into the game, I believe there should still be a number comming out, even if it’s another useless currency.
Think “10 points of karma” useless.
As long as it exist, new players will be more inclined to do so.
Is a psychological thing!… A Skinner Box!

The impression the blog posts gave me, is that leveling will stop after 80, and all we’ll get after that is chance to loot currencies.

Endless Soul.5178:

Well, then it’s a good thing I like to revive to help players instead of just seeing numbers float up into the sky.

Me 2.
But I also like being revived as well.

I don’t like how you’ll stop getting XP after lvl80.
GW2 had a theme, that everything you do rewards you, including harvesting nodes, crafting, reviving and discovering.
If leveling after 80 is gone, and all you get instead is a chance for this new currency when killing mobs, then there are no longer rewards for those mentioned above..

No mater how insignificant those rewards where, they made players bother to do the above mentioned actions.
IMO there should always be some number coming out, at least when you revive someone.

Wanze.8410:

Kite.2510:

How many people actually bothered to read that, I’m not asking for the MF and all it’s functions to be gone completely, but rather to be replaced with mechanics spread around the world.

It seems your thread got a bit derailed by an off topic argument and as I was rather active in that argument, I apologize.
Getting back at your initial suggestion, I fail to see point of it.

First you are complaining that you have to talk to an npc, exchange one currency into others and then use the forge. Your solution is to spread that service to several npcs all over Tyria?

Thanks but no. I paid gems to use the Royal Terrace because it was all the services i frequently use in close proximity. I dont want to have to to load into one map somewhere in Orr in order to use a function that currently is covered by the forge and then have to wp into bloodtide coast to use another function.

I believe that we are a bit spoiled.
In RPGs, going to specific places to find some legendary blacksmith is usually the norm.

Besides, I only mentioned Orr as the final step to get your legendary weapon (you don’t craft those often, do you?), and with that I also mention it shouldn’t need all those gifts and combination pyramids. All you should have to do is find a precursor, pay up-front the necessary gold or skill points, have the necessary achievements completed that would otherwise give you gifts.
As for your VIP lunge. If they are going to implement this, I believe they would also have a version of those NPCs for those who paid gems to have things closse.

Personally I would rather have to travel to Labyrinthine Cliffs to have a Bazaar merchant directly exchange my mats with a higher tier for some gold and skill points payment up front, than have to look at guides and wikis on how to deal with all those combination pyramids.
It’s needlessly complicated and confusing to newcomers.

How many people actually bothered to read that, I’m not asking for the MF and all it’s functions to be gone completely, but rather to be replaced with mechanics spread around the world.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Cyninja.2954:

Because the mystic forge is designed as a huge gold sink. Nothing more, nothing less. That and some people really like gambling.

Changing any of this drastically would require alternate gold sinks to get created.

I have yet to manage to give Zomorros gold donations.
Its a material sink.

An indirect gold sink then? When someone buy or crafts 1000 gold worth of weapons to throw in there, they start off with an equity (if that’s the right word) of 1000 gold worth of items and may end up with zero equity.

That’s my Point!
Why do we have to buy/get random crap and fill our inventory, just to make this thing work.
Why dont we just pay the Gold/Karma/Skillpoints/Rat-tails directly?!
Then If A-net thinks that some mats-items exist in abundance, just bring the Bazaar back for a month, or better, have it stay permanently. It was a Brilliant way to sink over existing items, while creating some very interesting lore in the process, rather than have to come up with a way to throw them to the mystic toilet as well!

She is just there to sell you stuff for skills, that you use them less than 3 meters away from where you bought them.
Why don’t you have the actual conversion spend skill points directly, rather than having to buy some random kitties from a nearby merchant, that’ll most likely stay in your inventory because could only buy them in stacks of 5 and you needed 4.

As for the mystic toilet.
I believe the nickname says it all. It’s just a lazy excuse to use many special functions and transformations in the game on the same spot, with a lot of rng, and requiring lots of random junk, just because it only accept Item stacks in fours.
Every function the Mystic Forge provides, is a wasted opportunity for some other area to have some unique funtion in the game.

• Want to change the tier of some mats? Have an NPC in bloodcoast that exchanges mats for other tiers at the cost of skill points and gold.
• Want to infuse an Ascended from fractals? Have some sciency Asuran guy do it near the fractal game for Shard of Crystallized Mists Essence, gold and/or skillpoints directly. Dont make us buy or craft all those random stuff.
• Want to improve the Vine backpiece? Have it be a mini game at your home instance where you’ll have to come every day, and besides using a different of it’s mats, also water it to eventually grow to the tier you want it.
• Want to craft an Legendary? Have some old warlock in Orr take a look at your achievements (not items) and if you are worthy and have a precursor, proceed to summon the ghost of Lisa or Colin Johanson, perhaps have it trigger an event that must be beating to make it appear as a more important occasion, and then hand you the Legendary.

There is not much fun to have a general toilet where you dump 4 stacks of things to have 1 that may (or may not) be better come out.

Is there any heart that can give me Silk?
I’m building my first Ascended armour and I’m about 150 silk short.
Like most people I have about 1M Karma stacked doing nothing.

Current issue:
Up until now the WvW is a zerg fest where 3 massive zergs are running around the map, concurring empty forts. They have good reasons! The best rewards in WvW come from beating champions of enemy forts, and players have little reasons to stay and defend any base, once it’s taken. A-net have experimented with multiple ways to make defending an option, but especially with their recent post, we now have no reason to stay near any base as it can now upgrade it self.

Solutions:
Here are the solutions. Implement a morale mechanic for the NPC guards defending a base, similar to the original Guild Wars.
Events should pop-up nearby or inside a base, that require Player input to be completed, similar to the recent Silver Wastes map. These events could vary, from defeating some veteran or champion mob, to gathering scattered supply to build weapons.
Special conditions for these events:

• They must not be visible as events to enemy players who don’t own the nearby fort (obviously).
• They mustn’t hinder the player’s ability to ignore the event at any time to face an enemy player. Such measures could be…
  • Bosses being hostile and even using knockbacks on enemy players approaching, thus discouraging them from getting close (and possibly stunlock) a busy player.
  • Events take place behind the base’s walls, unless it involves the reparation of those walls.
• Their rewards should scale depending on the number of bases a server owns.
• A possible huge attack from enemy players to the base should pause or cancel the event without any penalties.

Completing these events should also increase the “morale” of the currently weak guards of the nearby base. This increase could offer a simple stat boost, to the guards getting new abilities like pulling or immobilizing if the morale reach high enough.
Letting these events fail or leaving a base barren from players should cause the morale to drop or even reset.

Result:

• Players will be as rewarded for staying near a base as those attacking and capturing new ones.
• Guards won’t be as useless.
  I can already see A-net implementing various mechanics in the newer map, that could easily take the form of morale boosting events.

What do you people think?

I would rent Voice Actors and Animators and Re-do the personal story…

I’ll be looking at that butt for the years to come.
Might as well be a nice one.