Guild Wars 2

Capes again. What about those people who want a legendary backpiece but not something that covers 95% of the character for 95% of the playing time?

I would’ve turned all killstreak, glory and speed boosters into MF boosters if I could.

I believe it was a “please remove weight restrictions from armour skins” thread before it was translated into English.

1. Play PvP as usual and receive gold/mats through PvP reward tracks instead of glory.
2. Sell received rewards for gold.
3. Buy cultural armour with obtained gold instead of obtained glory.

Cbomb.4310:

Elite: Well of kitten ation

Any player or enemy who falls into the well becomes a kitten.

DarkPhantomZ.6308:

What is your way of making money In Guild Wars 2? Let me hear it!

…and lose it in a blink of an eye?

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Did you know that a full DPS-traited Mesmer with all phantasms up and doing everything he can provides as much damage as your meta axe-mace Warrior pushing 111111 on autoattack?

Yeah, it’s “balance” you’re asking for.

What’s that to do with anything?

Exactly what it says – that classes who have significantly lower damage, mobility and defence received more tricks to finish classes who’re harder to kill in the first place. And that is the balance.

Dee Jay.2460:

You should be content with the fact that someone is willing to use a 60+ second cooldown just to finish you off.

This. If you want to “counter” a shadowstep skill, make them use those skills before you’re downed. If you let them hold these skills for the entire fight (thus leaving them with 1 utility less or enough initiative) and got downed – it’s a L2P problem.

Hermes.7014:

However, shadowstep stomps leave no room for counterplay, like TheDaiBish said.

It can be countered by:

• moving yourself out of shadowstep position (vapor form, mesmer’s deception),
• your teammates killing/interrupting the finisher in another place,
• timing to interrupt them before/after they shadowstep,
• forcing them to use those skills before you get downed.

Hermes.7014:

What I’m asking is for that type of skills to interrupt just finishers, not every skill, if that’s your concern. Finishing an enemy should require you to stay put in one place.
The way things are now, classes with shadowstep skills have an edge over others when finishing enemies in PvP/WvW.
All I’m asking for is balance.

Did you know that a full DPS-traited Mesmer with all phantasms up and doing everything he can provides as much damage as your meta axe-mace Warrior pushing 111111 on autoattack?

Yeah, it’s “balance” you’re asking for.

Kincaidia.3192:

Sorry, but that’s the mechanic. Instant utilities / steal don’t interrupt channels. If they did, you wouldn’t have a “precast cloak and dagger + steal”, or Ele’s doing a precast of churning earth + teleport to their poor victim, or mesmers… whatever the bloody hell that mesmers do.

It’s one of the only things spicing up the game. Don’t be a crybaby and try to get that little spice removed.

^ This.

If a fantasy world requires you to wave a hand in a specific pattern to make earth erupt and you can teleport without waving the same hand in another pattern but (unlike dodging) blinking your eyes instead, then it makes perfect sense.

Ellie.5203:

No, leave them how it is.. do you know how many times a Warrior has placed his banners right on top of a stack and i have had to pick it up and move it to the side because it makes ressing people (or picking up the cultist hammer in Frac) incredibly annoying when you got banners stuck on top of you.. ! Too many times to count !! (Even when you tell them not to place it on the stack but to the side)

Or vice versa – when you have an ele with fire fields but a banner is too far away to move a bit, grab it and blast with skill 5 for area might.

Foosnark.1784:

Option to disable character dialog for specifically triggered powers/conditions. Self and other disabled separately.

(I want to hear when I’m poisoned, adrenaline full, boons due to finishers etc. but not “For Great Justice!” every time I hit FGJ in combat. I don’t need that much confirmation every time I hit the button. The game seems wrong with dialog volume slider at 0 though.)

Updated 105. Option to mute skill phrases (“For grape justice!”, “I could outrun a centaur!”, necro minion phrases etc.), with option to choose between self/others, triggered powers/received conditions separately.

Snow.2048:

26. Option to display player names and armour always in their respective team color instead of “blue=ally/red=enemy” in PvP and WvW. I’m totally confused every time a red enemy comes from a blue base and captures a blue point – this is a consequence of transferring from a different PvP game which always persisted team colors, and I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem. To make it worse, /team channel is of an enemy-red colour instead of current team color.

I’m confused, my wvw always has persistent team colors in armor, greens are greens, blues are blues and reds are reds… so does my pvp. Do you mean enemies always red?

To be fair though, more clarity is always nice..

The armors can be coloured, but the names (nameplates) are always red for enemies (even if the team is green or blue) and green/blue for allies (even if they’re red). Plus, some armour (like sylvari cultural) is not that identifiable when auto-coloured. I agree that we also have neutral/agressive mobs which use red/green, but if slightly more saturarted colors are used for nameplates and this is an option anyway, that will help people like me.

Mungrul.9358:

Oh, one of my old suggestions from the Suggestions forum:
We already have the /wiki chat command, so how about adding a Wiki option to the right-click contextual menu?
That way you could right-click an item link or item in your inventory and instantly open the Wiki page for it.

Added as 159. Adding a right-click function to inventory items/item links to search for it on Wiki (similar to /wiki chat command).

So you warriors really lack personal DPS, personal mobility and personal defence, and that’s why you need personal banners?

I see…

ExTribble.7108:

For example, Golem MKII melts with <10 people dropping AoEs and meleeing for double-hits. The moment that stack of 1 spammers on the crates appears, it’s game over. A <5 min fight becomes a >10 min fight for no reason aside from player laziness.

You mean, like mesmers who’ve built up 3 Wardens and have no more access to non-destructive skills but GS 1 and 3 only? Or eles who’re dropping AOEs from range? Or the most melee class called rangers?

The other part of the problem is not with 1-spammers. The other part of the problem is that it scales so much that people agree to play content for 5 minutes but disagree to do the same things for 15 minutes for exactly the same reward as it is simply frustrating.

And the problem will get essentialy worse with the megaserver system as there will no more be 4-5-player Golems, but 30-50-player Golems instead.

biofrog.1568:

So something like the Scarlet’s Veil Skin would be available to all armour levels, I presume? So if I use it on a medium armour guy now, later on I can spend one tranny charge to put it on my heavy character also?

Lazy to look for a quote, but yes, devs stated that such skins will be unlocked for all armour weights.

It’s not fire lines or hitting shaman, it’s a 10-meter area around shaman. I tested it extensively and made a thread about fire shaman HP resets but since no one bumped it and the search function is a son of a cat here, no wonder it got lost forever.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Erskine.5206:

Evan Lesh.3295:

… store far less data inside templates when those happen.

THIS excites me Are we going to be able to store templates? That would really be a big big step!

No ETA on templates. However, the new build tech brings us muuuuch closer than before.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

On the mini map you can see allied players as blue dots. On the full screen-sized world map, you can not. You can not see enemies as dots on either map.

Ok, thanks for info. Yes, seems very exploity to me as well. I was actually surprised there wasn’t a mandatory respawn system when I first ran EoTM; though absence of such a system made sense later, corpse spying still seems absurd to me.

Belenus.9132:

I’m sure this has been covered already, and if this is the case, forgive me. But re: 25. Option to change “hold right key for camera” into “click right key to toggle camera usage” (I’m running with right key pressed 90% of time). — did it not occur to you at all to use the autorun feature? On my machine it is keyed to R and remains running (or swimming) in the direction you are facing unless you happen to change course or wish to stop. Very handy for crossing vast areas of land or water.

And how can using autorun help? I’ve actually bound it away on a distant key since I’m not sightseeing with a notebook on a sofa but fighting while WASDing, doubletap-dodging and monitoring the area.

Crossaber.8934:

I may bring you a bad news, and i hope i am wrong.

[Please note that skins or partials skins that you previously purchased but which you no longer possess will not be unlocked on your account.] copy and paste from feature note.

You’re wrong:)

How does Wardrobe affect my Gem Store purchases?

If any of your characters are wearing or own any piece of an armor set (such as the Profane armor set or the Magitech armor set), all of the remaining pieces will be unlocked in your Wardrobe in addition to any pieces currently on your character or in your inventory.

By “partial skins” they mean 1-item skins like gloves or mantles.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Then that means you CAN’T JUST ZERG HER DOWN. Try getting the fight coordinated.

The problem is not with coordination. The problem is that AFTER the coordination, it simply scales so much that it takes too much DpS to kill regardless of what you do. Same as with other world bosses, by the way – the extremely long Inquest Golem or Frozen Maw as examples – but Lyssa gets the scaling to an extreme degree even if we ignore the champion monkeys thing.

Dusty Moon.4382:

No – then players would be complaining that Lyssa is too easy.

Please stop.

But why do I get better loot from Frozen Maw (3-4 rares) than from Lyssa (1 rare)? Other temples don’t even require 3-place coordination to succeed.

And yes, I’m drowning in dragonite and everyone can get it from other temples as well.

I agree with both posters:

• I like the mechanic because it is fun coordinating the seals,
• I try to ignore this temple if the train is too big because it scales sooo much that it becomes irritatingly boring and frustrating instead of challenging.

So yes, I would be happy if the event took around the same time with both zerg and 5-10 people.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

158. On death on any WvW map, the map view is brought up with no way to exit it other than to return to a spawn point (addresses corpse spying).

Added. Makes sense for me from a “fair play” point of view, though I’m not into WvW and it will most probably enrage those who’re constantly corpse-spying at the moment. But aren’t enemies/allies near you displayed on the map as dots anyway?

tigirius.9014:

dual build system attached to a wardrobe switching feature that allows players to use more than 1 set of armor/weapons for different purposes in PVE.

ui buttons for summoning using items in bags.

(1 mini, 1 for consumeables. 1 for new wardrobe system to switch sets/specs for different builds)

The 1st one is addressed by features 43. Ability to tie armor sets together for 1-click switching. and 28. Ability to pin a bag/several items from it to be always visible – especially useful for nourishments, consumables, weapons, minis. If you imply storing armour sets in the wardrobe, I would say it contradicts with ANet’s pay-for-more-bag-slots model and is unlikely to be ever implemented.

2nd one is addressed by feature 28.

• Legendary Jetpack
• Legendary Angel Wings
• Legendary Devil Wings
• Legendary Branded Wings (just because my mesmer needs purple ones! :p)

…all with a +25% speed boost!

Kaukomieli.6740:

My Profane set just needs to work without the shoes. :P

You will get all skins from gemstore skin sets back on April 15 as long as you have at least 1 skin from the set.

Reported many times, but it’s not “stuck in combat” bug but “stuck in place” bug. The bug is known by ANet but is a “weird repro”, so no ETA on fixing it as far as I know.

Usually happens after leap/shadowstep skills. The /dance emote usually helps you get unstuck.

I don’t like this idea because I’ve already forged a third of the agony ones and re-forging the “more useful” ones would be a huge re-grind.

If such features should ever be implemented, I think it’s at the same time the whole system is introduced.

Happens very often. You can write to support, explain the situation and ask for a ring with another infusion slot. People say that support helps, and that they’ll make this part more clear soon.

hannah mee.7925:

I mean they’d have to be a hell of a lot of karma (maybe 100,000 each) but Tomes of Knowledge have a scarcity and now with Glory being gone and the LS being over they can’t be obtained except by luck via the Black Lion Chest. Experience Scrolls as well, although given on a character’s birthday, have no other means of acquisition. Just seems like these are two items newer players/veteran players making new characters would really like to get their hands on.

Tomes of Knowledge will be dropping at regular intervals in PvP after the patch.

And no, thank you but 10 tomes costing as much karma as a whole legendary makes no sense.

156. “Unsalvageable” in description of karma/vendor gear.

157. Option to turn off contour highlighting and target ring highlighting in no-UI mode (ruins screenshots if a mob/NPC is in the center of the screen and gets highlighted, and makes it difficult to make screenshots with a mini as it often relocates and receives an outline).

storiessave.3807:

What’s the point of playing if you want an instant “I win” button?

If you buy an F1 car, do you win the races?

A level 80 is an instrument to play and enjoy – and win – content. Nothing more than it. By getting to level 80 you win nothing – it’s not something challenging to begin with, it’s simply time consuming. And by leveling to level 80 while not enjoying it, you actually lose.

I’m not against a gemstore 80-up item, but only as soon as you got at least 1 character to 80.

I’m also in favour of more options to buy Tomes of Knowledge – like with skillpoints and karma.

You were and will be able to grind Tomes of Knowledge in PvP, you could farm them during LS events in LA with another character, you can sink gold into crafting – so why not let people buy it straight away from the gemstore with real money or the same gold if they already know how to play the game? You simply read forums, choose a build, buy lvl 80 exotics – and then go out in PvE and learn the profession in a couple of hours through content you enjoy.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

At least 3-4 characters already at level 80
100% map completion on at least one character

• screw people who invested all their time in their main
• you make it sound like doing hearts is something challenging

Got another one. I transmuted and deleted a Profane armour skin piece by piece on my first low-level char because I had no idea what to do with it and it took up too much space in the inventory.

DDCarvalho.2071:

I usually value my time much higher than my money, specially when my money is 50$ spread in a period of 19 months.
To continue playing a game you don’t like just to “recoup the investment” seems to me like a case of “throwing good money after bad”.

But maybe you are just a lonely troll looking for attention in the forums. If that is the case, virtual hugs to you. It gets better if you get better.

Ah well, I just went and put a [sarcasm] sign there.

• Altered 30. Phantasms and Weapon Master.
• Added 32. Underwater Mimic.
• Added 33. Underwater Skill Range.

My thread about temporal curtain and why it works the way it works currently. This has been discussed and suggested so many times already, and it is still considered a “good topic for debate”…

soistheman.7208:

-snip-

• Option to turn on highly-visible outline of your character in zerg. What purpose should it serve? I can understand why we need to see the target, but all character skills are in the UI, not your character model.
• Different icons for dead and downed player. Very much yes. For PvE as well. Added as 148. Different icons for dead and downed players and NPCs; preferably identically to the way minimap shows them – skull/downed icon (too many times in mass events you can’t see whether you’ll be ressing dead or downed until you start, and it’s to easy to start ressing dead when you actually had a downed player who is always a higher priority). 149. More vivid color for downed player icon (often difficul to tell NPCs and players apart when post-processing is set to high and it significantly alters screen colors).
• OOC weapon swap for ele and engi. This has been discussed on forums, and after playing ele for some time, I can say that giving an OoC swap to engi and ele would have to be balanced by a third slot for other professions, which in turn…
• Queue system for joining on hard-capped map. They will not add it simply because they’re rolling MegaServers out to solve the harcapped map problem itself. Will this ruin Teq/Wurm raids for many guilds who’re not tough enough? Sure, and it’s being discussed a lot in the MegaServer thread – infortunately, only by players.
• Improved party kick system. What specifically? Kick on opener leave problem? More votes to kick?

GuzziHero.2467:

Well, camera would be bound to mouse movement, as with most FPS/TPS games rather than MMO. However, this would preclude the use of the cursor for clicking items/menus. Leftclick is currently used only for running. In the system I would personally prefer, leftclick would reveal cursor for use (adjustable to be either toggle or hold on-stay on, and rightclick (or releasing leftclick on a menu/object) would select/open/perform that function.

I think I can’t see it working with left mouse – both left and right clicks are used for interaction with the UI. Leftclick can also used for casting targeted skills and casting skills by moving mouse and clicking skill buttons. Which more or less leads us to feature 25. Option to change “hold right key for camera” into “click right key to toggle camera usage” (I’m running with right key pressed 90% of time). I will however list 150. Option to rebind right button camera mode to another button (with toggleable/holdable option, as in feature 25).

Guhracie.3419:

I’d like a “compact” option for bank/guild banks (the latter with the proper permissions attached), like there is on the bag dropdown menu.

Yes, I thought I had that one but missed it. Listed as 151. “Compact” function for Bank and Guild Bank (with proper permissions) similar to inventory.

Guhracie.3419:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I never use the “merge bags” option because then I can’t tell where my “normal bags” end and “invisible bags” begin I would use a compact layout if it created individual sections for the different bag types.

I don’t mean merge bags, I mean “compact” which smushes everything together. Including items that are stackable.

He’s talking about another in-game feature “bags shown/hidden” which merges all bag slots into a single non-separated array of bagslots.

Added 152. “Bags shown (slim mode)” in inventory which shows bags as a table but keeps their names in slot-sized placeholders (will help to save space by eliminating half-empty rows in “Bags shown” mode). May be a replacement of feature 29.

Realist.5812:

Many of the suggestions promote laziness in combat.

What some people call “laziness” I call “quality of life”. Are you using airplanes, cars and TV remote controls? Laaazy, you should walk more! :P

Realist.5812:

Number 2 making thieves even easier to play? Lmao.

Because, really, only warriors should be made easier to play. Screw eles, mesmers, engis, thieves and any other non-heavy classes who have to actively use ground-targeted skills to compensate for lower passive survivability.

Also added:

153. Option to display world map at 90% opacity (useful for many cases when you get attacked by a random mob who walked/spawned next to you, and you have to close map, kill mob and then search for the waypoint again).

154. Warning when buying a 2nd identical accessory/ring on a character who has the same unique trinket equipped, so that the player sees he will not be able to use it (case reported too often in the game and forums). Additionally: an in-game explanation of what “unique” is. Alternatively: removal of “unique” mechanic.

155. “Type in item name” confirmation box on deletion/salvaging/mysticforging of all precursors and expensive named exotics.

I used to think about how GW2 would’ve looked like if all AoEs affected both sides.

I came up with that it would be interesting enough to try out, but a completely different game.

Gery.2718:

I think he was being sarcastic guys

Yeah, seems I should’ve attached a [sarcasm] sign. (:

Rym.1469:

If your worst experience is buying the game, why do you still play it and post on forums ?

The 50$ (30$ if discounted) for 19 months of play was too much of a price to easily forget.

EDIT: /sarcasm

Stupidest? I think choosing heavy ascended coat from the ascended box instead of light. I was tired and not concentrated enough, but since it was cleric’s, no big deal actually.

Henrik.7560:

I bought a second of the same ascended and soulbinded it not knowing one can be equipt at a time… (facepalm)

Or wait for the patch, you’ll simply reequip it on another character once ascended is made account bound.

Nage.1520:

Good ideas OP, but I’m operating under a different set of suppositions than you are.

First of all, the changes you’re, in my opinion, won’t solve the future problems Anet has. What if this was the groundwork for coming out with an expansion?

Anet has said, and shown, that they’re worried about dividing the population to finely. One of the things that worries them most is the introduction of new maps. When that happens, as in most games, everyone will be on the new maps. Anet doesn’t want to necessarily make every new map as good to go to as every other new map, because that would again divide the player base. The world is too big. The world will get even bigger with new zones.

People are treating this mega server technology as a one off suggestion, instead of a step in the development of the future of the game. WIthout knowing the rest of what Anet has planned (and we honestly won’t know that because they’d be foolish to tell us this early out), we can’t really make suggestions like this.

On the surface, suggestions like this might seem good…but they can’t take into account the rest of what the game designers have in the works. This isn’t the end of the story, this is the beginning of the story.

It’s like trying to suggestion a war strategy without knowing what all the forces are doing. You might get a lot of people agreeing with you, but none of us knows for sure exactly why this has been implemented the way it has…we can only guess.

My guess is that when new zones, or an expansion comes out, they’ll need technology to get people together in old zones.

Because at that point, most people are going to move on to the expansion content.

Valid points, but:

• You can always have MegaServers as “enhanced overflows” over the main server during single-map LS events.
• When the world gets bigger, make the servers proportionally bigger or merge them. Map population will even out if all content is equally interesting. If your soup is not salty enough, you put more salt, and not turn the fire on and boil it down to the moment there’s enough salt for the water left.
• What ANet has shown conern of IMO is the way how to mask content no one plays, at the cost of a lot of content which people do play and turning it into a certain ‘“comfortable”’ zerg-fest.
• Whatever content they introduce next, it doesn’t negate the fact that bosses are fixed now and that it kills a big part of the game for many players. Living world world bosses turned out to be yet another temporary content which people can do only in a limited timespan, about what people have for long time complained they do not want to.

Yenrah.8532:

Lishtenbird.2814:

• Totally removes the Queensdale train.

No. Why should? frostgorge train exists with no events at all.
It would only assure they dont get even more rewards for doing train, apart from champ boxes. Just one time, like normal players.

• karma
• cheap XP for leveling while watching TV

If those are removed as nearly infinite rewards from the QD train, people will switch to other places and start moving around the world. Ah yes, I was assuming that the karma and XP for events are also turned into once-per-day or rapidly diminished for repetitive completion of the same event.

Realist.5812:

Lishtenbird.2814:

And here’s what it led to. Instead of “not penalising” lvl 80, it’s encouraging lvl 80 players to run AC over and over again because you get the same lvl 80 rares from it as from engame content. And do you know who it is “penalising” now? Low-level players who can’t afford mid-level materials because they’re more scarce thus more expensive than lvl 80 materials. Reason? ANet’s WHACK! balancing style – making significant changes in one go and taking months for “tuning” with another WHACK!

And if ectos are the source of the problem, ANet can a) tune them to be salvageable at lower levels, b) adjust rather map (which are the issue) than dungeon drops, c) leave a chance at lvl 80 drops as Yenrah suggested, or d) even make any rare/exotic gear drop only match players level while leaving the rest of the gear on the map level.

What? You mean how the price increased when ascended armour was introduced?

The price didn’t increase when they made loot better, it stayed the same. Ascended gear/crafting is the plague on the game, the player demand drove those prices up.

All mats increase/decrease as per the populations demands.

If on the other hand, they revert it to how it was, or increase the chance of low drops, then, those materials will be in higher supply, lowering the price significantly, meaning the drops you’d get are worth even less than now.

I have no problem with them making silk/wool/cotton/linen easier to obtain via drops/loot bags, since you can’t harvest them, but not at the cost of getting lower level gear.

If your drop is rolled to be low level, it never has a chance to be a level 80 exotic.

• You make it sound like you will never get all those mid-level materials for your ascended crafting whilst currently you have to grind gold to buy it from TP and the ascended is considered the main grind in the game precisely because you can’t get the materials the usual way.
• I’ve suggested an option for lvl 80 exotic, you missed it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

What they need to do is convert almost all low level zones into level 80 zones. Downscaling has been an epic fail.

And… what will it fix if there’s nothing to do there?

Yenrah.8532:

But there is an easier way to achieve that without much risk for the economy.
Yes, directly increasing rewards, but making them one time per day for every specific event. Just like it is for the worldbosses.
When you’ve done all interesting events in the area, you have to move to another map or change the character.

• Makes some sense story-wise.
• Totally removes the Queensdale train.
• Can’t say for sure how much it helps as we have no data concerning the amount of events being done several times.
• May make population aspect worse by removing from the map those people who would’ve farmed the otherwise; discourages players to help others by doing the same event for the second time for no reward; on the other hand, they may simply rotate around the world.

Realist.5812:

They made level 80 gear have a chance to drop in low level zones AND dungeons so people actually go there without being penalized.

Why would you play in a low level zone or dungeon if you’re going to get level 50 useless rares for example? For lower level materials? That’s not worth the trade off of not getting level 68+ rares and exotics.

And here’s what it led to. Instead of “not penalising” lvl 80, it’s encouraging lvl 80 players to run AC over and over again because you get the same lvl 80 rares from it as from engame content. And do you know who it is “penalising” now? Low-level players who can’t afford mid-level materials because they’re more scarce thus more expensive than lvl 80 materials. Reason? ANet’s WHACK! balancing style – making significant changes in one go and taking months for “tuning” with another WHACK!

And if ectos are the source of the problem, ANet can a) tune them to be salvageable at lower levels, b) adjust rather map (which are the issue) than dungeon drops, c) leave a chance at lvl 80 drops as Yenrah suggested, or d) even make any rare/exotic gear drop only match players level while leaving the rest of the gear on the map level.

Stalvros.9217:

In addition, mounts make your guardian looks cool? XD

Yeah, a norn guardian on a moa looks cool.

A good QoL idea.

But I think we’ll never see it as it renders Endless X Type Fixed tonics less valuable by making Random ones too convenient.

I will be happy to see them account bound. I leveled an alt with Tomes of Knowledge and crafting, passed skill scrolls trough the bank and am happy to create a working build now and start playing the content I want instead of grinding experience in content I don’t want to do for 2+ weeks while wasting time on reequipping gear.

6. Make visiting cities worth doing.

• Polymock, battles of minis – hosted by different cities, cities have a racial influence on available pieces/minis/skills/arenas.
• Roaming one-day-per-city merchant who provides “hot deals” on popular items (salvage kits?) or sell a limited daily amount of hard-to-obtain materials (obsidian shards? ascended mats? random sets of temple armour?), possibly after a chain of successful city pre-events (“Put sleeping pills into gate guards’ wine.”, “Distract guards and escort the merchant to the city square.”, “Deliver bribes to the city council members to allow the merchant to trade.”).
• Trackable and rewarding (karma? food and crafting materials? city map tokens?) city events (similar to Wintersday dolyak escort).

3. Let players know what is happening in the game and where it is happening!

• Would developers like to know why many people cosplay in hub cities and not play the game? The answer is simple: they don’t know what to do. Yes, they can go do a dungeon, but they may need a party and it gonna be long and unrewarding if they’re bad at it; they may go do a personal story step, but it’s unrewarding and so single playerish that it’s boring (and at some points it’s over anyway). They will not go explore because you have to walk through half a map to even stumble upon an event, and the one you stumble upon will most likely be unsoloable – and not worth the time anyway. In other words: this is a multi-player game, yet there are little means provided to us to “multi-play” as a whole server, and doubly so for players in small friend-only guilds (who are unable to read guild chats of larger social guilds they may join).
• Solution 1: make all major events always displayed on the whole world map. You open the map – you see one of the Balthazar chains being done – you hop on, contribute, everyone wins. If the map is hardcapped, just overlay it with some kind of red tint and make the event icons disappear.
• Solution 2: make a world event tracker similar to map/local event trackers. At any moment in time you can push the “Active world events: 7/50” button and see a list of events all over the world. It can be a UI button, an event tab in top-right corner, an “event fairy” summonable NPC, an inventory “asuran broadcasting stone” – whatever it takes to tell people what they can do.
• Solution 3: make a /world chat channel so that people can interact with others and write “We’re alone at Grenth pre, come help or it gonna fail!”, or “Tequatl turret defense set up, need DPS people!” without leaving the map (and risking their slot/losing progress from a contested waypoint) and wasting time cycling through cities.

4. Make dynamic events worth doing.

• Directly increasing rewards looks like an evident solution, but there will always be something needed to offset inflation which comes with it.
• So probably cosmetic rewards is the way to go, and this can be done with PvE regional reward tracks which lets you gather several types of map tokens in these zones which can be than traded to unlock unique non-tradeable map gear and/or dyes, and possibly traded for other materials (laurels? karma? ascended mats?) once you have too much of those.
• More entertaining (harpy love buff!) and useful (fire elemental powder!) consumables introduced every now and then may increase the interest for events just a bit more.

5. Make exploration worth doing.

• Precursor crafting which requires you to gather materials throughout the whole world of Tyria.
• Mystic forging unique skins from non-tradeable items found in different places on the map. To simplify the process of creating skins for developers, this can be limited/combined into a region-specific coloring component used to craft/forge skins of different colour (similar to the use of Knight cores) – e.g. Maguuma zones for green, Shiverspeak for blue and so on. If extended to having matching colours for each profession, that would be GREAT – just imagine colouring your Cobalt purple, or making a Whisperblade red, or… you got the idea!
• Map bounties – bosses which are never displayed on the map and harmlessly roam around it and often change locations but once triggered by a group of players, transform into a worldboss-like creature at their current location and become an event with a guaranteed reward.
• Followers of Nicholas the Traveler – NPCs roaming around maps which provide daily rewards (map tokens? karma?) to those who manage to locate them.
• Growing dyes – using specific places in different places of Tyria to grow plants which can be then harvested for dyes of specific colors (after a period of time and probably some materials from nearby dynamic event merchants).
• Unlocking new traits – just listed the Feature Pack feature here as I see it as a good example of what can be done.
• Gonna catch ’em all! – unique collectible minis/polymock pieces tied to maps.

While obviously increasing the average population of unpopular maps, the MegaServer system:

• fails to make these zones interesting to visit once they’re explored for map completion,
• introduces world boss schedules which effectively kills the concept of Living World where players’ actions are what matters most,
• limits people who have a specific time slot available to doing the same content over and over again,
• turns peaceful experience of many zones into zergy content where everybody does the same only thing.

I actually doubt that at this stage ANet decides to drop the MegaServer system (which undoubtedly drained a lot of resources and will make so many things easier for developers) despite tons of negative feedback from players, but as I still want to hope that feedback matters, I’m opening this thread and suggest that we discuss possible solutions to the actual problem, instead of accepting a measure to mask it away.

1. Revert gear loot tables to be always map-level-dependent instead of player-level-dependent.

• This will straight away fix the problem of overpriced medium-tier materials while having silk, mithril and elder wood markets oversaturated. To compensate for the drop in silk income, Bolt of Silk recipe can be changed to 2 scraps per bolt from 3 (should I remind developers that light ascended armour is 3-4 times as expensive as medium or heavy, while light armour classes are the hardest ones to play in PvE?).
• If you want specific materials, go to the specific zones and farm, and you do not have to rely on getting salvageable items anymore. This will stabilise the market and make it how it should be: lower tier materials are easier to obtain, thus become cheaper. The current system punishes new players far more than veterans by making medium-tier gear and crafting unreasonably expensive. Plus, getting lvl 80 gear from lvl 10 spiders never made sense in the first place…
• This will also partially address the issue of the highly toxic Queensdale train, as a portion of players will relocate to higher-level maps, and can even form champ trains of different tiers for farming specific materials at different maps.

2. Introduce several new world bosses to each low-level zone, and to each mid-level zone as well.

• If Wayfarer Foothills had 3 world bosses with 3 guaranteed rares per day instead of 1 Frozen Maw with 3-4 rares in chest+daily, then the map would’ve been visited far more often and in different places, and I’m pretty sure it would’ve still worked even if the total time for these 3 events was about 30-50-80% more – simply because a) an accomplishment still counts and b) slightly lower but faster and guaranteed rewards are still fun. The same goes for other maps.
• The reason why we need “world bosses” and not simply dynamic event chains is 1) because we need a guaranteed reward worth participating for and 2) because we want them to be trackable. Which brings us to the next point…

Ashen.2907:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Eeeeehh…

Nope. By “dead weight” I mean players who’re contributing to the event as much as if they were dead bodies; another poster once described them as “20 AFK players hidden on the bottom of a lake”. And by no means “randoms” or “casuals” who’re trying to enjoy the event at their best are a “dead weight”.

There is more than just the one event taking place in any given zone/map. It does not do your position any good to insult or negatively label people who may very well be in the zone playing the game as intended by pursuing hearts or other events. It creates the impression that you believe that you have a monopoly on the, “right way,” to play the game and that anyone who does not play as you do is deserving of scorn and ridicule.

I am not saying that this is intended, but thought you might want to know how it comes across.

I’m perfectly aware of it (and I even have a whole thread about it); there’s “play how you want”, but that works both ways. 100 people want to slay Tequatl; 10 people want to do hearts; 10 people want to forget their chars at waypoint and go watch TV. 20 people “play how they want”, 100 people “fail to play how they want” because of the first 20. Who is to blame for it?

ANet. For designing the boss to require a whole map of suboptimal players but introducing counter-productive goals and failing to provide ways to access it as an instance so everyone is happy.

Star Ace.5207:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Pretty sure people already posted it, but…

How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.

“Bravo” for calling people you don’t know “unremovable dead weight.” News: not every random player is an idiot who must by necessity ruin your meta world events just by being there. Some despicable attitude right there.

Most probably you’ll be able to accommodate your 100+ “leet” friends on the map there anyway. That’s what has been announced at least, as far as I understand it. The few remaining players won’t affect your run, and may indeed even be helpful if you just opened your mind about other people other than your friends being perfectly capable to play, adapt, and do well (of course, in your mind only your friends and guildies are good enough for you-everyone else must suck and won’t be “carrying their weight.”)

Eeeeehh…

Nope. By “dead weight” I mean players who’re contributing to the event as much as if they were dead bodies; another poster once described them as “20 AFK players hidden on the bottom of a lake”. And by no means “randoms” or “casuals” who’re trying to enjoy the event at their best are a “dead weight”.

The reason why I’m saying it is that I’m not a part of TTS, but a member of a “PUG megaguild” Piken Square Dragon Hunters – and by several events I’ve been to I can say that people who’re taking space in the map (AFKing at waypoints or doing whatever they do there) but not participating really hurt the mostly casual players who’re trying to beat the bugged Tequatl (no damage from megalaser) on a hard-capped non-taxiable map, but who lack experience and DpS. I’ve been to runs we succeeded, I’ve been to runs we didn’t – and I can tell you that to fail at last seconds after a 40-minute organisation and waiting feels just as bad as listening to trolls who stayed at Durmand Priory during Marionette on a hardcapped map and AFKers during Knights event in LA.

And with the Megaserver system, it may get significantly harder to find a mostly empty map to fill with suboptimal – read “casual”, “random”, non-l33t – players who beat their bosses by numbers rather than by skill. Yes, the highly skilled guilds will manage it anyway; but will “casual” guilds? Not anymore.