Guild Wars 2

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Since the elite PvE players are represented by this forum more than any other, perhaps our Specialist can voice concerns to Anet about not being able to slot lower level traits (e.g. adept in grandmaster slot).

It’s extremely restricting and magnifies dev mistakes (bad traits, bugged traits) as every useless trait greatly reduces your build options.

I don’t think Anet will listen to the unwashed masses of the general forum, but maybe the “elites” of the dungeon forum? (Probably not, looking at the interface they’ve already created for the new system.)

Not that I agree with Anet on this, but I can give you the reason: they don’t want Masters and Grandmasters to ever be worse than Adepts, because that would be confusing for the average GW2 player, since they are supposed to be stronger. It’s a noob trap and they are removing the illusion of choice in order to streamline the game for a more “casual/confused” audience.

Interesting take on it. We have seen the progression towards less and less customization in this game; I guess their “too confusing” quote sums it all up.

I guess there’s kind of two ways to go about development:

1. create interesting traits and allow players to invent builds from these traits;
2. or start with builds you want players to play, break them up into traits and restrict the selection of traits so that players will “discover” those preferred builds.

Anet is obviously doing the latter, which is too bad because the former would make a much more interesting game.

Creating preset heros like LoL or DotA is also easier to balance. Anet should just do that.

Since the elite PvE players are represented by this forum more than any other, perhaps our Specialist can voice concerns to Anet about not being able to slot lower level traits (e.g. adept in grandmaster slot).

It’s extremely restricting and magnifies dev mistakes (bad traits, bugged traits) as every useless trait greatly reduces your build options.

I don’t think Anet will listen to the unwashed masses of the general forum, but maybe the “elites” of the dungeon forum? (Probably not, looking at the interface they’ve already created for the new system.)

Dungeon content is pretty much just as ignored as WvW. Their forum are also extremely disgruntled. However they ended up with a really good specialist who communicates very well with the forum. I believe he sends weekly reports to Anet.

Yet communication from Anet to that forum (whether through him or otherwise) is just as lacking as before.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Get lost. It’s not like we invited DB here. Go cry to someone who cares.

I’m curious about servers being bandwagoned. If the target server expresses disinterest or hostility towards being bandwagoned, does that cause the incoming guilds to go somewhere else? Or have those guilds already had their minds set?

Personally, I’d recommend fighting against being bandwagoned (if possible) because when they leave, it’s a long and painful fall.

For toons created now? Or will we have to unlock them once again when HoT hits?

And what is the new skill unlock system? Is it tied in with the hero points? Or are hero points used for traits only?

In conclusion, should I unlock all my skills right now (I have tons of unused skill points) before the new system comes in?

This is indeed a massive loss to build flexibility. Just look at the current meta builds, practically all of them use lower level traits. This also means that poor trait development and bugged traits will be far more serious than it is now — and looking at Anet’s development history, these issues aren’t going away anytime soon.

That said, they already have the graphic for the new system. Good luck getting them to make changes at this point.

Sanderinoa.8065:

I do have to adress to iris though, illusions don’t get affected by booms coming from the outside in terms of damage, so no, we aren’t gonna give 25 might to illusions to phantasms

Wait, so if a phantasm as might, it has no effect? Or am I reading this wrong?

On another note, with all the talk of terrible grandmaster traits, we’re really seeing the negative side of not being able to take lower tier traits.

He didn’t say it was a 15 minute queue. He said he waited 15 minutes before giving up.

It should definitely not be baseline. Dodge and lose one of your three phantasms? No thanks.

Will hoarding skillpoint scrolls now help out in any way with the new system? Or should I create the new toon now and eat a ton of scrolls with that character?

bearbear.1903:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Warrior’s Deep Cuts (bleeds 50% longer) gone? WTF.

It has been moved and combined with the grandmaster minor trait Attack of Opportunity.

ty, where’d you get this, btw, I can’t seem to find a site that has all the traits listed.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Lord Kuru.3685:

RapidSausage.4620:

I know it’s hard to believe, but many people like to experiment with skills and traits, to allow roughly a single build to be fully functional at level 80 is just extremely restricting and defeats the whole philosophy of what GW2 is meant to be.

Don’t worry about this. With the new, very limited trait system, there won’t be many build options anyway.

Only 540. Quite constricting.

Despite your snarky answer, it is indeed very constricting.

Currently, I don’t have an engineer.

I’ve held off creating one for a long while because I personally dislike the NPE due to having to grind for traits (I don’t have the gold to buy them). And yes, I do want more than just the default meta traits because I like to experiment with builds.

So here’s the question:

• If I create a new engi right now, and level to 80 using tomes, will this leave me in the best position when the new trait system comes? (As I understand it, this will get me a bunch of “hero points,” so that I’ll have a big leg up.)
• Should I bother getting any traits now? Will that give me a step up for the new system?
• Note that I have no intention of actually playing this character until the new system comes in as I don’t want to go through the NPE… I’m just trying to position myself in the best way come the new trait system.

Yes. If you were mix-and-matching gear to reach specific levels of stats for different attributes, then that gear will likely be obsolete. I believe you can always vendor Ascended gear for a gold.

Warrior’s Deep Cuts (bleeds 50% longer) gone? WTF.

RapidSausage.4620:

I know it’s hard to believe, but many people like to experiment with skills and traits, to allow roughly a single build to be fully functional at level 80 is just extremely restricting and defeats the whole philosophy of what GW2 is meant to be.

Don’t worry about this. With the new, very limited trait system, there won’t be many build options anyway.

Traits:

Just look at the current meta (DnT build guide for example), almost every build either has adept traits in the master slot or go into more than 3 trait lines. Removing the ability to do both these things means you essentially have to trust Anet to create good builds for you. But as we’ve seen, they have very limited understanding of their own game (particularly compared to the thousands of players), so good luck with that.

Skills:

Your skill choices are extremely limited. Your heal is generally set in stone in that there’s an obvious one that’s best. Your elite is set in stone. You need a condi clear/stun break. That leaves you with 2 skill slots. Moving traits to skills means the effects of those traits will never be seen again.

Gear:

One of the biggest dev mistakes was linking stats to trait lines. It’s good that’s gone. But where will condi duration or boon duration come from now? A condi build fully traited in the condi duration line will instantly lose 30% of its damage.

Conclusion:

play the way we want you to play is the new motto. From the effective killing of rune customization, to outfits, to the new trait system — it’s a pretty natural progression.

So HoT will essentially be NPE for everyone, including 80’s who currently have everything unlocked?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think Lord Kuru was being sarcastic to make a point. Unfortunately (besides being clear about that), it’s based on a misunderstanding of the upcoming system. Right now, we have the illusion of more choices because so many of them would only be used for the sake of being creative, not as part of any practical build (however misguided or wild that build might be).

If ANet adjust things even half as well as they implied, a far greater fraction of the new (but fewer) build permutations will be useful to a larger fraction of players.

I’m willing to wait to see the implementation before saying that ANet got it right or that they screwed it up.

I can use your exact argument in favor of LoL/DotA champs: just replace the “right now” in your post with “with the new trait system,” and replace “If Anet adjust things even half as well as they implied” with “If Anet tailor makes builds for 100 champs.”

As for “wait and see,” we know Anet’s glacial pace of development/balance: if the system turns out bad, it’s going to stay that way for a very long time.

serenke.4806:

Lord Kuru.3685:

For both those who complain about “elites” skipping mobs and those who complain of “noobs” glitching bosses:

Make your own LFG stating the rules you wish your party to play by. There’s no need to argue with, belittle, or grief your party.

Argue with, grief? No. Belittle… yes. If you cannot complete content without exploiting, then be ready to take some heat.

Look at how many of the top soloers defend glitching Belka so she remains stationary.

We’re moving towards it, why not jump to it directly? Anet creates 100 builds and we get to pick one that we want our character to play. We won’t have to worry about what traits to use, what skills to use, or what armor style to use: it’ll all be preset for us!

No more of the confusion that’s customization.

Nike.2631:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hi all,

I’ll be pulling your questions out of Twitch chat, this forum post, and posts all over the forums and having our design team address them.

First the math:

• Right now a single trait line take to 6 points has 418 possible arrangements of traits. Ignoring anything other than 6/6/2 set-ups (and there are many other combinations that have well regarded examples) that gives 31,450,320 traits combinations per class.

• The new system allows a total of 27 arrangements per line. If you like two adept level traits, tough, you can’t have them. Ever. Being locked to exactly 6/6/6 means there is a total of 10 possible unique line combinations bringing the total number of trait set-ups per class to 196,830 (27^3×10). Add another 196,830 for each elite line they introduce.

• At HoT launch including the one elite spec-line per class we are going to drop down to one-eightieth (1/80 or 1.25%) of our current range of choices.

This is not subject to discussion. This is math. Almost 99% of all potential Build Diversity will be annihilated (and I’ve hedged heavily in favor of the new system by ignoring 6/4/2/2 builds and other non-standard but fun/effective set-ups).

Now THE QUESTION:

Was getting rid of bad choices really worth wiping out 99% of all choices?

Nice numbers. Consider also this: just by picking something very basic as a playstyle, (for example, condi build or not) drastically reduces your options.

• If you’re not a condi build, then the trait that increases bleed duration is worthless to you. 27 options in that trait line goes to 18.
• If you are a condi build, then the trait that increases bleed duration is a must-have. 27 options in that line goes to 9!

Think about all those traits that you’d never consider using. Think about all those traits that are not even an option because they’re bugged.

Also, every dev mistake or misstep in creating or implementing traits will have huge negative impact on build diversity, particularly with balance updates coming at best twice a year.

Of course these issues exist currently in the game, but there’s so much more flexibility right now: with the ability to use lower tier traits in a higher tier, the problem is greatly dimished.

I mean seriously, 9 choices in that line just because you chose to play condi?

Anet really dislikes player customization because it leads to builds and gameplay that the devs have not thought of. The trait line changes is very much in line with that thinking.

And we’ve seen evidence of this before: the change in rune bonuses made it so that if you don’t use all the runes from a single set you’d lose a ton of stats; mix-and-matching runes was forced out of the game. Less variety and options for the players, but Anet got what they wanted in less build diversity.

Perhaps Anet should just make 3 set-in-stone (non-configureable) builds for each profession that you can choose from, give each of these builds a unique name and advertise to the masses that “now there’s 27 professions!”

I’m sure everyone will gobble that up: “even more choice now!”

For both those who complain about “elites” skipping mobs and those who complain of “noobs” glitching bosses:

Make your own LFG stating the rules you wish your party to play by. There’s no need to argue with, belittle, or grief your party.

Don’t do it unless it’s for the skin, bragging rights, or something to do because you’re bored.

Absolutely do not craft it for the rewards from eating bloodstone dust. Mawdrey is horribly expensive to craft while the rewards from eating dust is roughly: a blue, a green, and a couple pieces of “sell junk” items — you will never even come close to recovering your investment.

Sounds like they’ll be changed from structures to “creatures.” So they’ll take boons also now?

It’s a problem with the dragon’kittenbox introduced a month or so back. The hitbox is now quite small and on the top of the dragon’s (always moving) head. You can no longer hit it with melee weapons and many aoe skills . Use ranged skills that shoot targeted projectiles.

The reason they create outfits and not armors is to save on work and effort. It’s very likely there isn’t anything under the pauldrons.

Kaleban.9834:

J Eberle.9312:

Dungeons wont have anything in the future except more bugs and ‘fixes’.

Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of players stating what ANet will NEVER do.

Compare the original manifesto to the current SotG, or the idea that they would NEVER do an expansion in favor of the LS release method, etc., etc.

ANet is a business, and is in the business of making a good game for the money. IF it makes economic sense to expand the options for the player base (minimal programming effort for maximum return on player involvement and retention) then yes, ANet will do it regardless of what a few players think should happen based on emotional responses and unfounded opinion.

IF it is relatively easy to program a solo mode for the dungeons, then it makes no sense to not do it, full stop. Expanding options for the player base while simultaneously “reinvigorating” old content is never a bad thing.

And spoj, I SPECIFICALLY stated that it would make the most sense to add a solo mode, while simultaneously adjusting rewards to make soloing the group content an attractive option. Soloing group content would attract the hardcore players, the solo mode would attract casual players, incidentally the largest gaming demographic that nearly every developer in existence is trying to entice.

Anet is looking for players even more casual than the ones who would be attracted by easy-to-solo dungeons. Look at the newest content they’ve put out. They’re just one (very small) step above: “Autoattack while not standing in orange circles; stand in white areas when they appear; collect reward (as long as your map is skilled at taxiing).”

Perhaps they should just delete EotM and put the resulting server resources into real WvW. Maybe that’d alleviate some of the lag issues.

Anet: if you make the unsoloable dungeons (COE lasers, for example) soloable, you’re effectively adding content for hardcore players with very minimal dev effort.

Seriously, this might be a very cost-efficient way to keep players in the game a bit longer.

Anet refuses to do parties properly so we have the “mob rules” system we have now. People get LFG-jacked all the time, we see regular posts in the dungeon forum about it. Clearly there’s not enough deterrent (there’s none actually).

Rising Dusk.2408:

I think the best solution doesn’t take the skills away and keeps in the spirit of the skills… I just think reflects in their current incarnation are too bloody strong. The worst solution is to simply make it so the projectiles cannot be reflected/absorbed at all; what ANet did with Malrona, for instance, was depressing. I would much rather see an evolution of reflect skills that keeps them relevant anywhere projectiles can be found, but not contributing too much to overall DPS to the bosses. A good example of them done right is the Grawl boss, IMO.

I think we can come up with some good solutions here, and I’ll make it a point to report it along to ANet after we’ve given it all some thought.

I think it’s really important to consider how much work any reflection solution would take. We know for a fact that Anet is only willing to spend a minimal amount of effort on dungeon-related content.

“Fixing” Lupi’s reflection by making it unreflectable/unblocable takes next to zero work so it’s probably Anet’s default solution — as we’ve witnessed with Malrona. Any other solution players come up with must compete with this amount of work.

For example, changing how reflection behaves game-wide (making it not depend use mob’s power) requires at least some thought as to how the change would affect other aspects of the game WvW/PvP — as well as other PvE mobs/encounters. It may (or may not) be a great suggestion, but regardless, it’s something that takes some man hours to work through so speaking practically, it’s an unfeasible solution.

This is why I always recommend not complaining about lupi’s wallsploit at all because the enormous risk of Malrona part 2 is not worth it. If people want to use it, let them — and if you don’t like it, make it clear in your LFG.

And back on topic: the funny thing is that the real effect of this Necrid Bolt bug is that it encourages more people to use the wallsploit.

Jack.5012:

I’ve had this happen to me a few times, however I doubt it’s anything to do with any reflect limit, it only happens to me when I’m stood inside the hitbox of the mob itself, so I think it’s because the projectile hits you before it hits the feedback due to you overlapping with the projectile as it’s shot?

I think this must be it… I do have everyone stacked up in one place (including myself) from LOSing them. Didn’t even know this overlapping issue was a thing!

I’ve been soloing CM p3 lately… the first boss is Sureshot Seamus plus a few of his minions. I believe everyone is a projectile user at the beginning of the fight (when Sureshot is at 100% health).

I used feedback on them all together and noticed oftentimes shots manage to hit me — despite the fact that I’m standing in the feedback bubble. I believe the same thing happens if I use wardens (with reflect trait). Why is this?

I kind of recall hearing about a limit on the number of reflects a skill can do.. not sure if that’s a real thing though — but it would seem to make sense in this case because there’s a lot of projectiles in this situation.

Embrace The Bold.7619:

On a serious note I don’t think anet will ever tell us about dungeon fixes unless it’s something involving a game breaking bug.

Hence the thread…

In any case, I take it Aldus Stormbringer and Lupi haven’t been fixed in this latest patch?

There are some progress stopping bugs introduced a month ago that might prevent you from finishing it in your limited time: for example you simply can’t get all the achievements because of a bug (which prevents you from getting some gear), and the final fight in the final chapter has a really badly bugged boss, where your weapon may do zero damage to him.

Dasefex.4810:

Find out for yourself https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-14-2015

lol

Were there?

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

I recommend against guying this pack. There are progress-stopping bugs still in the content that make it either impossible to complete (challenge mote issue) or extremely hard to complete unless you know the workarounds (last boss last chapter).

I suppose reading the thread before posting is too much to ask?

There is a red post that quite clearly states that the pack is currently removed from the store due to a technical issues that needs fixing.

It is also worth mentioning that none of these bugs effects the story itself but rather just the achievements. So unless you only buy it for the achievements (and thus the armor set) there isn’t really any reason to not buy it.

Perhaps you should be the one who reads more carefully. There is no place where “technical issues” means the bugs we are talking about — it could well be problems with delivering the content to buyers.

Also, if you cared to read my post about the issues before spouting out, you’d know that one of the bugs I specifically noted is a story bug.

I recommend against guying this pack. There are progress-stopping bugs still in the content that make it either impossible to complete (challenge mote issue) or extremely hard to complete unless you know the workarounds (last boss last chapter).

Meryn.6875:

Lord Kuru.3685:

I’d be nice if they made all paths possible to solo (COE laser room prevents solos, for example). The chances of them actually doing this: 0.

Would actually like to see these kind of events to be “scaled”.
Youre with 4 man? 4 consoles at CoE lasers. 2 man? 2 consoles.
Same goes for CoF gate, 1 person only gate controller. 2 man gate controller + totem.

Yes. This would be awesome. But it’s pretty clear this is way more work than Anet would be willing to put into dungeon content.

I’d be nice if they made all paths possible to solo (COE laser room prevents solos, for example). The chances of them actually doing this: 0.

Cbomb.4310:

We do know we’re eventually getting the Abaddon fractal at some point. When we voted for Thermanova they promised that regardless of which we voted for we’d eventually get both.

I recall them saying exactly the opposite: that they would definitely not create the fractal that lost.

The funny thing is that they filled in QL’s bridge because attackers were able to kill siege in the tower. So maybe they’ll do a sloppy fix for this just like with QL?

Follow up question:

Let’s say you were a game dev and you created a mechanic that said, “Spend 10 supply at a time when building siege." In your design, how many hits would it take to use up all your supply if you had:

1. 13 supply.
2. 15 supply.

Let’s say you had Build Mastery maxed so that you can “Spend 10 supply at a time when building siege.” Here are a couple math problems:

1. If you had 13 supply, how many hits of your hammer uses up all your supply?
2. If you had 15 supply, how many hits of your hammer uses up all your supply?

Considering they’re practically removing underwater content from the game, I don’t think Largos playables are going to happen.