This is a basis of perception over reality. Players who came from GW1 have a misperception of what a minion is based on their past experience with them. This is not the same thing. Minions are not a core design of the necro they are a special unique utility skill. They are supposed to die, they do their job.
They are reliable in attackign your target as long as you use a single target ability twice (preferrably auto attack). They do a solid amount of damage. I once did a rundown of the amount of damage a minion build projects too, and over a 5 minute period it is the highest damage build we can have if your minions never die (I know they die simply pointing out that if they didn’t they would outdps everything). They have responsive ai (not perfect), and have some very strong skills on short cooldowns.
What you perceive a minion to be (a core skill that the necro can build everything around) and what they are (a unique utility that is there to deal damage and die) are not the same thing. Until you change your perception you wil never see how strong they can be. There is a reason why they haven’t made any significant changes to Minions outside of the really nice buff to Blood Fiend’s heal. It’s because the guys who play them well already cause a lot of trouble. If they are buffed than something has to give.
I can buy that, that makes sense. yes, perception is important but expectations are expectations.
But saying it’s a perception issue begs some questions as to why Minions were designed in this way, and the answer I keep reaching is that if they are truly for utility they are less than useful in application.
My Engineer’s utilities are, well, utilitarian whereas my Necromancer has to be at the mercy of the vagaries of his Minions at all times.( Seriously, give the Necromancer some totems and call us shamans)
The OP raised a good question about Wells versus Minions. I have found that I have more control and therefore less chances of dying when I rely solely on my target and skill selection instead of a inserting an X number of Minions into the mix. (I like Flesh Wurm though, go figure)
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
Except you can’t slap it whenever you want because you have at best a 45 minute cooldown where you are doing the same damage I am doing without my minions except my damage comes back up in 24 seconds and provides multiple forms of CC for single targets.
Simply because you cannot play something to the level you want too does not make them unviable. MM is a very effective playstyle once you learn how to do it. I think Wells are brutal because if I drop them in the wrong spot or someone dodges out of it or the boss gets pulled through it, I just wasted the CD. You never waste a CD with a minion if you know what you are doing.
The point about making minion scale with our damage is ridiculous. I couldn’t imagine how powerful that would be. With the flat damage, I can do as much damage as any other build can without my minions, but now I get added bonus damage for a majority of the fight while well and condition guys are waiting on CD’s to do their big damage.
There are a myriad of reasons not to run wells from playstyle to dislikeing the aoe factor to not wanting to be in melee.
Viable? Sure they are viable, but since when has just being viable been a standard to strive for? We should be speaking about reliable, predictable, and flexible.
Sure, you can say a given WELL might have cool down and the minion not as much, but the well stays where I want it and fulfills its job while granting a tangible benefit by its very existence and a detriment to the enemy.
As for your rebuttal on minions and scaling, well you just further prove the point as to how superfluous they are to the Necromancer profession.
If minions did scale to some degree, they might be more attractive, but they don’t so their very existence is a less than stellar way to replace awesome skills with irregular and often unreliable constructs.
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
He wasn’t saying give up anything. He was offering an alternative and a reason why you can go MM. We are not arguing MM over Wells we are arguing that MM is a viable and effective way to play because of minions scaling.
If you want to use minions, obviously you are giving up wells, I’m not following how that isn’t a valid observation on his statement.
Sure, from a design point, ANet has far less headaches by doing things the way they have and not having to worry about balance issues with minions scaled to gear and stats. Well whoopity-kitten-doo, that doesn’t make minions any more fun to play. /lol
The question of viable and effective, well let’s consider what you give up to have the minions and what you actually gain from having them.
The answer is not a whole helluva alot in the gains department, and as for giving up, well the ability to slap a ground targeted well down wherever I want is superior to me having to deal with minions from a playability stand point.
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
Well if you’re going to talk survival, then yeah, MM would be better because of the toughness from the Death Magic trait line. I still wouldn’t use MM in a dungeon, though, because pet AI is so meh, same with the damage.
My current build is 20/20/30/0 but no Minions. I use Staff and Scepter/Dagger, mostly deal in ground target wells and large hard hitting marks with fear damage.
I find soloing with this build to be far easier and successful than trawling about with a train of minions which require micromanagement to truly be effective.
Minions not scaling is the beauty of them. It means the necromancer can use any gear and still the minions have the same damage. It means my 27k HP, 3k armor necro can do similar sustained damage to builds with a lot more damage investment.
And give up Wells and other far more useful skills that actually do benefit from the Necromancer’s stats.
It largely depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For open world pve nothing beats minions.
I just don’t find that to be true.
In my experience, minions are a drag on moving across a PvE map. They die incessantly and the cooldowns are prohibitive to any “gain” you receive from having them.
Healing them is ridiculously involved because of their selective out of combat regen abilities.
I find a well and marks Necromancer to have more advantages than a Minion Master with none of the headaches. Come on, micromanaging these stupid things?
Using minion specific skills assumes:
A.) They aren’t dead
B.) They are actually close enough to matter
C.) You aren’t too busy with the running the battle (Marks, Wells, etc)
Give me mindless Minions that only fight what I am targeting and that scale or benefit in some way to my Necromancer’s stats.
Guild Wars 1 had this accomplished perfectly. Minion Master, despite the recent patch, is a cruel joke.
OP I am at this decision point atm as well. I like wells, they go where I “tell” them if specced accordingly and are reliable. Even though I despise the tedium of being a staff necro, marks and wells are reliable and proven to be effective as a focus for the class.
In my opinion, as long as minions aren’t scaled in any way with the Necromancer’s stats, they simply aren’t worth the micromanaging it takes.
Thanks to Nemesis.8593…
Take a look:
Guild Wars 2 – Witness my power (build) by Iamoneandiamlegion/Nemesis.8593
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n97xhVrhTL0
The build is fully explained here:
Guild Wars 2 – The definition of glass cannon (necromancer bursting tutorial)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLt4dD93pU&list=PLsfTAd-qhsRxTk0WuXFF1I7qteSilnjcf&index=11
I always wondered why our Banks don’t have the sort and compact function, also the deposit collectibles option when your bank has collectible overflow.
Ha! I saw that the other day in the Asura character creation and wondered the same thing. I thought it might have been an oversight by the art team.
Kind of like all those bald Asura in the loading screen.
Facial hair for Asura would be a nice add.
^Thanks
I must be getting better at Necro, I swap weapons enough now to notice this!
/respect
I really love your videos and how well you can explain the Necromancer class, I had just put together a noobish (I give up) power build that was built around survival -and here you illustrate quite a few things I never had connected the dot on for a particular build type.
Finally I can at least play a Necromancer with the weapons I prefer and get results!
I am noticing in the last day or so that swapping from my two daggers to my axe/focus gets timed out quite a lot, it used to be a fluid thing…there’s a cool down now?
If this hasn’t changed, wth am I just noticing this!?
I actually am having a lot of fun playing this build running around in Orr and in WvW.
Stacking Vulnerabilities and frequent Death Shrouding and Plague Form helps round it out. In addition, Spectral Walk and Spectral Wall are quite handy.
Yes, it’s a very survivable build but has quite a bit of versatility so you aren’t doing just one or two things all the time.
The Nigh Invincible Build for Necromancer"
I have a full set of Mortal armor of Grenth and use all six Superior Runes of Vampirism.
My weapons of choice are Axe/Focus and Dagger/Dagger.
Some interesting points. The trait trees are definitely all over the place, and it seems like the devs weren’t entirely sure what direction to take the necro’s design.
Compare the Necro to the Mesmer, and you’ll notice that every mesmer’s playstyle will use illusions in some way, showing that the mesmer was designed with a specific goal in mind, and their traits all have synergy with illusions too. You look at the playstyles of different necros, and the only thing that’s common across most builds is death shroud (which is a great mechanic, don’t get me wrong).
If I were to redesign the necromancer, I would make life force matter in more ways than one, or make death shroud more malleable instead of always being the same four skills. I would build the class around life force/death shroud interactions, maybe even things that trigger when you gain life force and depending on the amount of LF gained. Minions interacting somehow with life force would be interesting too.
Beautiful post, Looska.
I have a character of every class and with maybe the exception of the engineer, all the trait trees seem to flow and have an integrity of design, the Mesmer being my favorite closely followed by the Elementalist and Guardian.
She* and we did a naked run across tyria twice and it really did take about that long to run across without waypointing or going into cities from ebonhawk, blazeridge, plains of ashford, diessa, wayfarers, snowden, lornar’s pass, gendarran, kessex hills, to the very west side of brisban (varied between how fast peoples loading screens were but between 15-20 minutes).
I was thinking more of a run from the Cursed Shore to Frost Gorge Sound.
I agree that there isn’t a huge amount of synergy, but it can be easily worked around with a good build. Despite any real of imagined lack of synergy this class is not broken.
What Necros lack in my opinion are more combo fields and finishers. Give us some play synergy there and I would be ecstatic.
Maybe not broken, just not well designed or as fun as they should be for the player.
It takes about 15ish minutes to run from one side of tyria to the other, from east to west. Compared to other mmo’s where taking a flight path from one area of the world to the other side can take half an hour+ I think it’s quite reasonable.
Gonna have to call BS on that one. I suppose if there were no mobs it might be possible and it was somehow a straight line without any obstacles like zone walls or impassable mountains, etc.
I don’t like the dailies system, I want to turn it off completely in my game.
And after having my monthly reset at 4 PM yesterday just 3 salvage items shy of total completion…well, they can stuff that as well.
I think the best thing for Anet to do regarding transportation in general is take the controls away from the masochistic kittenbags.
Loved that comment!
Yes, what the frack is that Trinity Portal business about? They spent time on adding THAT to the game?
I have always been a fan boy of ANet, but they are totally tone deaf when it comes to the community. With the sole exception of Gaile Gray (and she is mired in the deep problems tackling account related issues) there really isn’t any interface at all.
This is largely why fiascoes like Ascended Gear and diminishing returns system occurred. Often when they are responsive after the fact, it’s still in a detached manner that’s more disturbing then the issue they are attempting to address.
Look at ANet’s decision to use GMT time for Daily and Monthly resets. Sure, it’s good for ANet but not so good for players who get their tasks reset at 4 in the afternoon.
It’s true that some devs listen to the players too much, but ANet seems to have taken that warning to heart a little too much. They don’t seem to looking at how the players are playing the game.
It just comes across to me as ANet intrusively meddling (yes, in game currency population explosion) in how people want to play the game with little care in sounding out the community beforehand.
Tone deaf.
I would say that necro has the most subtle synergies in its trait lines. It takes time and trial and error to find good builds. Here’s two builds for you that actually have quite good synergy:
Spectral crit build (this is a WvW build)
Traits: 10/20/10/0/30 – Spiteful Spirit, Weakening Shroud, Spectral Attunement, Shrouded Removal, Spectral Mastery, whatever, and Near to Death….
Great post! Curiously, I have already settled into a very similar build relying on Spectral Skills and DS. I am no great damage dealer outside of DS but I have huge staying power and survivability and can roam alone with near impunity and offer DS nuking in groups and stacking vulnerabilities.
OP, i have to disagree. Necro class has some of the smoothest synergy i’ve seen. It just takes a bit more than other classes to get used to it. This is one of the main reasons that this is by far my favorite class in the game.
I will concede that some synergy can be gleaned in the Necromancer Trait tree, but I’d hardly call that “smooth” -it’s very rough actually. And by synergy, I am talking about all the working parts not just one or two aspects of the profession working together.
The Necromancer has mostly disjointed mechanics, the Death Trait line is a great example of how contrary one trait line can be to the over whole. It’s not just wasted Trait points like +20 Toughness per Minion for non minion masters who just want to focus on an entirely different aspect of the line.
I also think it was a huge mistake to tie weapon skills to trait lines or have Wells and Mark related traits spread out over at least three trait lines.
I can understand why this may have been intentionally done, but it was not done well or very prettily for that matter, and doesn’t lend itself to any sense of identity of purpose.
The Necromancer was my first choice to play even before the profession was officially announced for GW2; I knew it would be in the game and I knew I wanted to play that profession. I still want to, but it has been frustrating.
Two things come to mind concerning the Necromancer:
1.) The profession seriously lacks a synergistic design structure
2.) This “lack” may have been on purpose, by accident or perhaps, a little of both.
My Necromancer is half baked, he is pretty much stuck in one role and that role usually involves a staff for best results. Wells and Marks, they are wonderful yet boring as freaking hell.
I have tried many, many builds and spent a lot of gold on runes and sigils and respecs. Each time I run into a serious roadblock, a failing in the build to support some aspects of the game and how I play it.
The Necromancer could use a little well roundedness because specializing doesn’t get you very much.
Take Minions for example, even to make running with minions somewhat tolerable one has to completely dedicate his build to those minions but with very little to show for it in return. Sure, some of the minion abilities are awesome, but if they 100 yards away or dead, it doesn’t matter if they have some ability.
There’s a reason why the Flesh Wurm Minion is truly the best one Necromancers have: it doesn’t move!
I WvW, I dabble in dungeons, I solo a lot, I roam around in Orr; and yet I haven’t found a sweet spot to settle my Necromancer’s build into, and I have come to the conclusion that the Necromancer doesn’t have such a thing.
The Trait tree of the Necro is a schizophrenic mess, there’s no cohesion of design, it’s like a randomized deck of cards after they were thrown into the air.
1.) A profession should be able to specialize and be rewarded for doing so while giving up something in return.
2.) A profession should also be able to generalize and be reasonably good at everything.
The Necromancer is has poor marks in both those areas.
So many possibilities but no real road to get there in a coherent manner:
- Spectral (not fully fleshed out as a skill base)
- Minion Master (yeah, well enough said)
- Vampiric (Nice heals, umm not so great for killing things)
- Conditions (Wells and Marks, Marks and Wells)
- Corruption (kind of cool, too bad it lacks killing power)
Of all the areas listed above, conditions and corruption (or a blend of both) builds have been the most successful overall. Everything else is duct tape and bailing wire.
So, two things come to mind concerning the Necromancer:
1.) The profession seriously lacks a synergistic design structure
2.) This “lack” may have been on purpose, by accident or perhaps, a little of both.
First of all, all NA servers use the same server time. so don’t tell me it’s not based on a solid server time. It’s 4pm server time during standard hours, 5pm server time during daylight. Get used to it.
Second, there are about a zillion things I’d rather anet work on than handholding people who literally wait until the last possible minutes to get things done.
If all the North American Servers use Pacific Time, which is my local time, then that’s even more of a reason to type a couple of numbers in and change the kitten server time system. Makes no sense to arbitrarily have server time be different then actual reality based server time.
Secondly, if we used your logic nothing would ever get fixed or improved in the game because there would literally always be something more important by your methodology.
I don’t know if this will help but on my website I have countdown timers for the monthly/daily reset at 7pm EST time. http://everyonesgrudge.enjin.com/guildwars2
It needs to be put in the game. If GMT for some unbeknown reason is so crucial to use instead of the established server time already present in the game, then GMT needs to become the “official server” time, so midnight in-game is reset time.
monthlies have reset at the same time every month. Honestly, the easy solution is to not wait until the last minute to get things done.
Where the hell you people come from? Most people aren’t walking around or playing games with GMT times dancing in their heads.
In the game you have only two choices for tracking time: LOCAL or SERVER.
Guess which one the game actually uses as a a basis for dailies and monthlies? NEITHER!
It just so happens my server time is the same as my local time, go figure. Why in the hell is this so hard for people to at least make an attempt to understand?
I don’t care how long something has been done, if it needs improving, improve it. If KNet is so attached to GMT, then at least f. f. s. let us toggle on the the GMT time in game.
Because right now, server time doesn’t mean anything.
I could concider agreeing if it weren’t for the fact that the server has reset at the exact same time every single day since the very first. As such, if you haven’t gotten the hang of it by now… That’s really not ANet’s fault.
That’s a crap reason and fails all logic.
What about all the people that started playing the game today?
Or the people that that never bothered with dailies or monthlies until the recent changes, of which there have been many?
You need to reconsider your thinking because it is a deplorable way of rationalizing why things should or should not be improved.
“Narf, we always had a hole in that deck plate, everyone by now should know to walk around it, it’s really not the Captain’s fault, Narf!”
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
Signing this as well. For that matter, why did the monthly reset in the middle of the last day of the month? I was one dungeon away from completion of the monthly, and now it has reset. This is really frustrating.
I’m assuming it reset about an hour and a half before your post. That would be 0000 GMT, 1 March. Assuming that’s right, that’s the time it should have reset.
Great you have assumed the obvious. The issue is that there is nothing in the the game to let you track GMT time. The only options are local and server time, and for me both of those time zones are the same thing. My monthly got reset at 4 PM.
I already agreed with your earlier post that there should be an option to display GMT in-game, and that it should probably be made more clear that GMT is the time zone that resets are based off of. >_>
;)
I was just getting the same reaction in-game chat:
“It’s GMT, eveeeeerrryoooonnne knooooows thiiiis….”
I didn’t find it helpful because it completely missed the point of why they even have an in-game clock at all -one that doesn’t even allow you to display the real game time.
Yes, because games are like life and should be just as frustrating, right?
I don’t whine when something goes wrong, I adapt. It’s much more frustrating shouting at a wall than to go around it.
Yes, because it’s always a good idea to eat that soup with the fly floating in it.
Umm, the level cap will be raised in expansions
Will it? Why? Would that be benefitial to the game concidering its current level design? Their last game never did.
Yes, it’s been mentioned in several dev interviews, here’s one source:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/19873-level-cap-increase-in-expansions/
“Q: What of the level cap? Have you guys decided whether you’re going to be increasing the level cap in future expansions?”
Colin: “Yeah. The level cap will be 80 on the initial release of the game, and we absolutely would increase it further into the game, probably through expansions is the most likely place we would do that.”
I will make the assumption that you are new, and therefore forgive your not knowing and say welcome. For the rest of us this has been a simple fact since launch so it stands to reason that it would work this way.
It’s asinine. At the very least let us display the actually game server time which appears to be GMT. When my server time is 4 PM, I have no reason to expect it to be reset at 4 PM. Midnight is the customary time for rollovers. Allowing us to at least display GMT in game might alleviate the stupidity of the system, it is entirely unintuitive at the moment.
WTF have just server time or local time as an option if it means absolutely diddly squat for the players?
I don’t care if ANet uses Mars local time for timing its resets or has done so since the Eisenhower Era, I just want to be able to have it on my mini-map because local server time means absolutely nothing.
It’s best to do things before the last minute, in all areas of life.
Yes, because games are like life and should be just as frustrating, right?
Signing this as well. For that matter, why did the monthly reset in the middle of the last day of the month? I was one dungeon away from completion of the monthly, and now it has reset. This is really frustrating.
I’m assuming it reset about an hour and a half before your post. That would be 0000 GMT, 1 March. Assuming that’s right, that’s the time it should have reset.
Great you have assumed the obvious. The issue is that there is nothing in the the game to let you track GMT time. The only options are local and server time, and for me both of those time zones are the same thing. My monthly got reset at 4 PM.
You can set the time displayed in the options.
No you can’t.
You can only set local time or server time.
Server time doesn’t mean crapola.
My monthlies reset at 4 PM server time and I had that displayed on my mini-map.
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
Umm, the level cap will be raised in expansions, there will be new dungeons and more Ascended Gear, and most likely a new Tier of Gear although presumably not every three months.
This game has a progression curve but the makers of the game are ambivalent about how to approach the process so we have what we currently have…a plodding course of stepping stone progress versus a smooth treadmill.
Would you prefer to be slowly flayed or fiercely abraded in a brisk manner?
Yes, I just made a post that at the very least we should have the option to have the GMT time displayed instead of local or server time.
If actual server time means nothing then screw that! We don’t need to see it.
We need the time frame displayed that the resets are tied to as a reference while in-game.
I don’t give a flying-fig what time frame ANet wants to use, but at least make it so your players can be track it at a glance. It’s common customer oriented thinking.
Yes, I have my mini-map clock set for server time, the only other option in settings is local; it just so happens my server time is the same as my local time.
So I am 3 salvaged items away from totally completing my Monthly for February and it gets reset.
After trying to sort out what happened the “helpful” folks in chat tell me about how everything is keyed to GMT time. Sure, I can understand that but it doesn’t help trying to keep in-game time for such things when the only options are for local and server times.
If you are going to time player activities using GMT reference then we should be able to have that time displayed in-game.
Because right or wrong, thinking you have eight hours to salvage 3 items to complete your monthly sucks when it turns out to be wrong.
The daily/monthly system now still seems a little lacking.
Lacking as in, “they suck”? As long as THEY decide to use dailies and monthlies as tools to lever players into content the player would not otherwise choose to do, I wouldn’t like to see more of the same with a weekly.
It used to be your daily was made up of things that all players do normally and routinely. Now we have dodging? Why not add jumping or better yet, jumping puzzles!? (Oh those are monthly aren’t they?)
The point is that it goes against how some people like to enjoy the game. Successful “dodging” on lower level characters with lower level mobs is irritating simply because how the fights are and combat skills.
Zone specific dailies would be a bad idea as well, just as underwater fighting. The dailies should be set for a level of play that everyone can complete. They really were fine before they were changed.
- For Great Justice! and all the other repetitive player character sounds.
Do we really need to hear that shout every time all the time? If I have it set on auto, do I really need to hear it from my character repeatedly forever for hours?
- Dailies not so routine anymore or community friendly
Looks like I will never be able to do a monthly achievement since dungeons and other such unlikely things are added. But did you have to make dodging a daily, really?
Remember that game where everyone could help kill mobs and no one complained because we had a game design that didn’t allow kill or loot stealing?
Guess what? Now we have players that pull a bunch of mobs so they can get their mandatory dodging out of the way. See the problem? Dodging doesn’t belong on a daily task list. Really, it doesn’t.
What happened to play the game your way? Dailies should not be used to coerce players to do content they would not otherwise do. I use to be able to log on and knock my daily out in 15-20 minutes by just doing normal things in game, now I have the other tasks cluttering up my plans.
Please, stop social engineering my play time! Or at least have the decency to let me turn the screen notification monthly/daily off, because I don’t want it in my game.
Loaded question, OP
You said easy, no the word is achievable by everyone. Yes, max stat weapons in GW2 should have a wide path of access via horizontal progression:
- Buy Exotics for Karma.
- Buy Exotics for Gold.
- Earn Exotics through Dungeon tokens in any of 8 different dungeons.
- Earn Exotics through WvW badges.
- Craft Exotics through mob drops / mining.
- Throw rares into Mystic Forge.
I was thinking: KitteNet, KNet for short.
It’s a pattern that plays out far too often, their willingness to do this now with so little community involvement speaks volumes. I left Rift, a good game, but a game with gear progression. I came to GW2 because I knew upon reaching 80, I’d not be chasing gear, I could just play the game. Horizontal progression allowed a variety of ways to acquire the best gear in the game. Ascended gear will not.
But, for the sake of argument let’s say they do allow a variety of ways to acquire Ascended like exotics are now:
- Buy Ascended for Karma.
- Buy Ascended for Gold.
- Earn Ascended through Dungeon tokens in any of 8 different dungeons.
- Earn Ascended through WvW badges.
- Craft Ascended through mob drops / mining.
- Throw Exotics into Mystic Forge.
We would then be exactly where we were before ANet decided to add Ascended thus completely nullifying the entire purpose they sought to achieve.
No, Ascended will remain acquirable via narrowly proscribed ways. If ANet does open up on the acquisition it will because they know they screwed the pooch and will need to backpedal.
it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one)
That’s a a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Calling something not a “treadmill” then indicating that the sole purpose is to make the effort take longer is completely bewildering.
Adding a mandatory stat with a passive effect that keeps you from dying outright…adds to the fun and challenge in the dungeon? How so? It sounds like a cheap gimmick that has absolutely nothing to do with skill, only grind tolerance.
I think we need to come up with a secret name for ANet.
Does it have an Infusion slot?
The gate is fine where it’s at, seriously. Lion’s Arch is the hub of the game, and I’d be more worried when it becomes empty.
Welcome to Guilds Wars of Wowcraft, pardon the dust, we are renovating so your stay will be more like where you came from!
Yeah, difference a few days make, ain’t is funny?
Because they don’t add anything of substance to the discussion and there is no offtopic section.
Therein lies the conundrum. There is something of substance in every loss of active players to any MMO, it is highly cumulative in effect, no doubt, and easily ignored until the frog starts to boil in earnest.
It’s essentially a lame attempt at image control. Yes, many farewell posts are also lame, but I’d rather see them individually evaluated versus having some wet blanket policy forbidding them.
Hello everyone,
please refrain from making staff call outs in your thread title. We understand that you wish your thread to receive the attention it is due, however using ArenaNet in your thread title does not aide in making this happen. Therefore, that part has been removed from the thread name.Greetings
Yeah, ANET needs to change their policy, it has the overt tendency to hamper open discussion. It’s one thing if actual abuse is being focused at an ANet staffer, it’s quite the other if they are simply being addressed. The chilling effect and backlash to such policies will eventually spiral outward into circles of discussion outside of ANet’s control.
(edited by Kuldebar.1897)
I expect acknowledgement from ANet that the direction they are taking GW2 isn’t even close to being universally popular.
Whistling past the graveyard of MMO’s doesn’t help.