Guild Wars 2

Tommyknocker.6089:

The only other reason I use this armor is due to the fact that I like to try new builds. Not like we have much of a choice the way we keep being re-assigned into what the necro is (condi fire YUK), so for me it is a win/win with just having to switch out trinkets in order to get the build the way I like it. Needless to say I gave up on alts as they would cost me a years time in laurels just to equip them for a few builds.

With Ascended gear, this is becoming a real problem and will seriously hurt the longevity of the game.

Funny… just a couple days ago I switched from using regular potions of inquest slaying to powerful potions for SEp1. I felt like I was losing more health than usual and then I see this thread!

Expecting the next Living Story to be coherent and well developed is like Charlie Brown expecting Lucy to hold the the football.

But it was awfully boring fighting the same servers week after week after week after week. (Not to mention the problems with servers getting stuck in a tier with no way out.) The random matchups have been much better and with some tweaking could be good — it’s just that they currently allow too large a spread (6 ranks between the strong and weak servers is just way too much).

Expansions would make it harder for people to return to the game from a layoff (if they’ve missed an expansion) — this goes against the F2P/easy to pickup after quitting principle.

Besides, with such quality content coming out of the Living Stories, why would we need expansions?

The small changes to Southsun Cove over time was kind nice and what I’d like to see in a “living” world — but most of the LS has just been pressing ‘F’ 50 times for achieves in zones that suddenly appear out of the blue for just that chapter.

Stooperdale.3560:

Yes the ineffectiveness of blind on champs is a balance problem. My thief can carve through veterans and then come to a halt when a champ shows up. Unfortunately with smoke and finishers a group could apply a lot of blindness if they really wanted to. I think we’re all waiting for a good solution to appear to solve this one but your idea isn’t balanced for the continual blinding of a champion by 10 or more players.

But my idea is the same as the current implementation of blindness — except that you know when your blind will be effective.

Currently, you have no idea whether your blind will do anything at all — your foe shows the blind icon, but still hits you (90% of the time). In short, the decision as to whether blind is effective is made upon attacking the boss whose been blinded.

With my idea, your foe will strip the blind 90% of the time. But if it’s not stripped, it works as blind is supposed to. So you know when your blind will work. In short, the decision as to whether blind is effective is made upon placing the blind on the boss.

Small difference, but huge difference in gameplay — players have better information about the situation and can make more informed decisons.

Currently blindness is only 10% effective when a boss has Unshakeable. That kills an entire game mechanic.

Putting this behind RNG so that you have no idea whether your blind will have effect — that makes it much worse.

If the mechanic is necessary (likely: otherwise we’d be perma-blinding bosses), perhaps it should be changed so that 90% of the time the blind is cleansed immediately, but 10% of the time, the condition sticks. That way, the player can make informed judgements — if the blind sticks, the player knows that the bosses next attack will miss and can act appropriately. Putting the blind mechanic behind RNG prevents informed decisions and makes it pretty much worthless.

Thoughts?

By the way, having silver mob bosses in the Queen’s Gauntlet was really cool because you could actually use all your skills to full effect — I’d really like to see more of that!
(Or a toning down of Unshakeable/Defiant, especially for smaller groups.)

I find the bloodlust area way too busy and dense terrain-wise. I’d rather have an area that’s much more open without so many nooks and crannies.

As for the buff — total garbage.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I just tested on Aetherblades in the JP. I used ele scepter air 1 skill. The last 4 attacks do the same damage 4 times in a row. So I switched to Outlaw potions halfway through the attack, so the last 2 hits should have been 8% more damage.

36 damage
36 damage
36 damage <—- Potion in effect starting here
36 damage

Tried again switching to dredge potion halfway through

39 damage
39 damage
39 damage <—- outlaw potion replaced
39 damage

So at least in the JP, Aetherblades don’t count as outlaws for potion purposes.

Can’t test in the dungeon though since a group would be needed.

Awesome test method!!

Locuz.2651:

I vote for no skip at all. I started running dungeon paths quite recenly (mostly pvped since beta) and most of times i skip the cutscenes. Not since i dont want to see them… but i dont want to let my group wait or get locked out of bossfights.

My point is that in most random groups you will see 1 or 2 guys who would like to see them. And since its only a few seconds in most cases it shouldnt be that big of a deal right?

I had 1 group where i was watching a cutscene and when i came out of it I saw two guys spamming something like “skip it you f in *” in caps. So id rather want those few seconds to be unskippable so i can immerse myself in peace without having to worry about what happens if i dont.

So because you want to watch the cutscene, you want to force everyone else to have to watch it also? Is that not exactly like the people you are complaining about who want to skip and pressure others to skip as well?

Best: Queen’s Gauntlet (the 1v1 fights, not the 1st floor zerg), Wintersday JP (does that count?).

Worst: Everything else was terrible.

Colly.4073:

A new Dev Team

I’d pay for this.

On topic:

• More finishers
• Siege weapon skins
• Tower/Camp skins for when your guild claims them.
• Gate skins/Wall skins/cannon skins/burning oil skins for when you upgrade a tower.
• Dolyak skins/sentry skins for when you upgrade a camp
• WXP
• Ascended weapons

Anyone else noticing lag spikes (very short, but definitely noticeable) at or around the hour? (I usually feel them around 3-6 minutes after the hour.)

I run a dungeon solo almost every day and when I get a lag spike then look at the clock, it’s almost always 3-6 minutes after the hour. I run this dungeon at wildly different times of the day and very frequently get this lag spike, so the issue doesn’t seem to be tied to any particular hour.

These seemed to have started when Scarlet events started on the hour, but are still around even after the events are off the hourly schedule.

Glenn.3417:

Nuclear and bio weaponry isn’t, just saying (darn those moral issues).

I seriously doubt its the moral issues stopping anyone. Rather, these weapons are so devastating that, in the end, their use hurts everyone: serious collateral effects as well as retaliation.

Unfortunately, a WvW server is not as organized as a whole nation and anyone can grief, so we require Anet to step in and stop this behavior.

Anet can easily stop this behavior by putting an ingame report option for griefing. If someone gets enough reports, Anet sends them a warning explaining what they did wrong (in case the guy was just clueless — this does happen from time to time). If they do the same thing again: ban.

But of course, this assumes Anet cares enough to put resources into stopping the griefing. The only way I see Anet putting any effort into this is if it gets so bad it begins to seriously affect matches. Maybe the griefers/spies will come out in force in T1 when the Leagues start and ruin the matchups — that’s the best we can hope for, unfortunately.

Anet clearly has the WvW population data. And despite evidence of poor programming practices, it’s unlikely their code only allows transfer fees to depend on overall server population.

Conclusion: They are simply unwilling to base transfer fees on WvW population.

Why? Put your tinfoil hats on and speculate!

Finishers for gems should have been in the game from the start. It’s a obvious way to make money. That they weren’t probably points to the fact that Anet doesn’t spend much resources thinking about WvW at all.

Konrad Curze.5130:

no, quite the contrary, theres actually less reasons to spawncamp
servers dont have to look at the glicko screwing their matches. its a fixed +1 +3 +5 system.

servers that win will get +5, no matter if they won the match by 1 or 100k points difference

actually I’d say that in blowout matches some servers will rack a 100k difference fast, and once their win is guaranteed, log in a lot less in WvW and dedicate to farm PvE to not waste time.

I hadn’t heard this (Do you have a source?). This is good. In fact, I think overall server rankings should be done in this way — with even less disparity between #2 and #3 so as to increase incentive to double team (so +4 +5 +10 perhaps.)

Let’s say a server that’s near the top of its League wants to win the League’s first season. They’ll want as many points as they can get.

Does this mean they will seriously spawn camp mismatched opponents?

Currently, when we have a large mismatch, there’s a bit of spawn camping, but nothing that lasts too long. After a bit, the stronger server leaves the weaker to recap their towers only to come back a bit later and take everything back. After all, the strong server is going to win anyway and no one really cares about PPT. Plus, karma train!

But if a server wants as many points as possible, they may spawn camp and not leave at all. If this happens, will the Leagues be a worse disaster than imagined (especially for the weaker servers)?

Kind of a cool idea, but this puts me against it:

Nuzt.7894:

those that stacked can rot in their que [sic].

style.6173:

Well, it will be interesting to see if ANET figures this out and puts T1 in its own league. No server 4 to whatever can compete with 1-3.

As it stands now, it is going to be a boring 7 weeks for 4-6. There will be some decent fights here and there, but for the most part, it will be a blowout.

ANET would also be really smart to move T1 into their own league. Let’s be honest. The whole point of the league is to get PvE types to try WvW. If the matchups are not fun, they won’t come back.

If they make T1 into its own league, then guilds will continue moving to T1 from the lower tiers. If enough core guilds leave a server, disorganized pugs will be all that’s left. That greatly diminishes the fun of WvW in the lower tiers. If enough people from the lower tiers quit WvW, there probably isn’t enough people in kitten justify Anet even supporting the game mode at all.

Everyone wanted to move to T1 and this is what we got out of it. Currently, it’s a good move because T1 pretty much is always matched up with T1 so you’re pretty much always getting competitive fights.

But with the leagues coming, T1 will be guaranteed to match up with T2 more often, resulting in many unfun blowouts. Hopefully, this will persuade people to move to other tiers. (On the other hand, this could just kill WvW altogether!)

We’ll see!

Chessrook.8643:

Bosses like the spider? There’s no need for stacking. As far as I know, anyway. Like I said, I’ve done it dozens of times in the past (Had to for my Gift of Ascalon) and never seen the stacking until today. I don’t know anything about any revamp it got though, and for me dodging and moving around and spending the time to rez people is more interesting and more engaging than standing on top of four other people, hitting 1, and Akitteng for 3 minutes. Rewards for no effort, yay, just what I always wanted…

Playing with zero armor would definitely be more interesting and engaging than your chosen playstyle. How would you feel if someone in your party insisted on playing with zero armor and complained that you want to do it the “easy way”?

World ranker is the way it is because Anet wants you to spend laurels on WXP — the fewer laurels you have the more you feel compelled to log in every day to get them.

Pray For Kosmos.5849:

I need shards (all of them) for my legendary. Anyone wanna organize? JQ.

NSP does all the temples (unless bugged) starting at around 5:00pm pacific time each day. Balthazar is usually the last; generally done between 6:30 – 7:00 (rough estimate).

I have no idea how Asurans fit their three toes in some of those boots shaped for human feet. (See: many of the dungeon armor sets.)

Lots of people like to zerg because it’s zero pressure. If you get wiped, it’s not your fault — you’re just one of many. If you win, you have the loot bags to prove that you contributed!

Zenguy.6421:

DevonCarver.5370:

3) The buff is something we will continue to think about. There are alternative frameworks for the buff that I think we will at least look into.

This was two weeks ago and is the only indication that Anet are giving any consideration (however small) to alternatives to the bloodlust buff.

8 days ago Devon Cater posted this (in a thread about the upcoming WvW league):

To head it off at the pass, there have not been drastically declining WvW numbers, or even marginally declining numbers. WvW continues to be as strong as it has been over the past several months. We made some decisions internally and were able to accommodate changes that it didn’t seem feasibly originally and that’s why the changes that are going to be announced later this week happened.

None of the announcements since then have related to the bloodlust buff.

Anet have made a number of posts indicating they base the success or otherwise of content changes on participation in that content. Given that WvW participation has not dropped since the introduction of the Bloodlust buff, Anet have most likely assumed that the buff is in fact fine and that our complaints about it are mere noise.

What’s missing from this is consideration as to why, after introducing all that new WvW content, there has been so little change in WvW participation (Devon would surely have said if WvW participation had gone up). Either the new content was a waste of time or there was something in that content that is undermining its value.

Right now, Anet seem myopically focussed on increasing rewards for the winners/leaders as their way of improve participation in WvW (if we offer big enough rewards the leagues will be successful). More nuanced approaches, such as improving the commander system (to make it easier to organise players on the map) or removing unbalancing buffs, do not seem to be on their radar. I look forward to the day when they are.

It’s very very possible that WvW population has not declined (if you believe this) because though the huge mismatches have caused a lot of WvW players to quit/take a break/play less, they are replaced by PvE’ers karma training.

It’s like saying Frostgorge sound must be an awesomely fun zone because so many players are always there, when in fact, a large percentage are just grinding the champ train.

Zenguy.6421:

FearedbytheGods.8617:

WvW is ‘supposed’ to be unbalanced.

People keep posting this as if it is gospel. Why?
Why is WvW supposed to be unbalanced’?

Sure, WvW will never attain the levels of balance that sPvP aspires to, nor would we want it to (the constraints that would impose on WvW wouldn’t be worth it).

But equally, we don’t want WvW to have too little balance because that leads to too many bad match-ups – and who wants that?
FYI, we have lots of bad match-ups at a time when the mantra has become “WvW is supposed to be unbalanced.” – Coincidence?

It’s time the mantra changed to “We need an appropriate level of balance in WvW, because that’s what it will take to get better match-ups more of the time."

I think you misinterpreted his post. What he means is that Anet wants to make WvW more imbalanced in order to push all serious PvP players to sPvP (because: esport!).

Luvpie.8350:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Hate this idea! A large part of the WvW population imbalance issue comes from guilds bandwagoning into T1. People know this, yet no one is willing to spread out.

There’s no incentive to spread out if T1 is always matched with T1 because it’d always be pretty competitive. But the way the Leagues are designed now, T1 is guaranteed to have many weeks of uncompetitive, unfun matches with T2 servers. The incentive to spread out in order to make matches more fun for everyone is much much greater.

You give people too much credit. Most people will quit instead of moving to lower tiers to balance. T1 guilds/players want the stagnant ‘competitive’ 24/7 fights with lag/queues. Let them complain in couple months and then tell them to kitten off and transfer or stop kittening Instead T1/T2 players are more likely to stop playing over next 7 weeks because of boring matchups then transferring to the outmanned server.

What you say may very well be true. WvW is in a very tenuous position right now and this cure may kill it.

But if T1 becomes its own league, what will happen is that more and more guilds will transfer there. Slowly, servers in other tiers will lose all their core guilds to T1. Without core guilds to hold things together, the gameplay is much diminished. We’d likely see fewer and fewer pugs participating in WvW in the lower tiers as a result.

Why would T1 people care about this? Well, I can see a point where the lower tiers just collapse population-wise so that the overall WvW population becomes so small (T1 can only hold so many players) that it’s no longer worth it for Anet to support it any longer and the whole thing is shut down (or just left to rot with no support).

Of course, it’s also possible that gear treadmilling may kill WvW before this all comes to pass, but that’s a story for another time.

I would love this feature! Has it been confirmed that you can do this?

(I’d want this to work because I don’t like the look of many of the Legendaries; however, Legendaries are guaranteed best-in-slot stats. I’m fully expecting more tiers of gear/level increases to be coming and the idea of having to regrind for the top stats sickens me. So in the end, I’d prefer one big grind to possibly very many smaller grinds. And yes, I do feel I have to have best-in-slot gear because of WvW.)

Anet are fools for turning GW2 into a traditional MMO. It just means that when the next newer, and thus inevitably shinier, MMO comes out, people will leave in droves because there’d be nothing unique about GW2.

Hate this idea! A large part of the WvW population imbalance issue comes from guilds bandwagoning into T1. People know this, yet no one is willing to spread out.

There’s no incentive to spread out if T1 is always matched with T1 because it’d always be pretty competitive. But the way the Leagues are designed now, T1 is guaranteed to have many weeks of uncompetitive, unfun matches with T2 servers. The incentive to spread out in order to make matches more fun for everyone is much much greater.

The default is 20 tokens per run. And a bonus of 40 tokens (for each path) the first time you run it each day after reset (5:00pm pacific time).

So basically, unless you love this dungeon or just can’t wait to get your armor, it’s gonna take you quite a while.

I believe they are increasing all pet/minion health (this was either in the preview notes for Oct 15 or the leaked ones) by something like 70%.

So instead of being one-shotted, now they’ll be two-shotted.

darkace.8925:

Benjamin.8237:

Ascended was never meant to be part of the game, however Anet wanted the end game gear to be hard to get. They wanted people to spend months rather than days getting Exotics, so they added ascended after. There shouldn’t be any new gear for the next however many years after this. So err, deal with it.

That’s absolutely false. You couldn’t be more wrong.

“Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.” – Colin Johanson

Aha — there’s the now infamous quote! I can’t believe people still believe the excuses that Anet has given for introducing Ascended gear.

The fewer alts we play, the quicker we burn out on the game. All these alt-unfriendly features are going to hurt the game badly in the long run.

WXP for laurels does not help at all. Laurels are just as alt-unfriendly as their supply is limited severely limited.

champ.7021:

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Probably just a matter of them having ascended everything else already so… armor time.

this is why im bringing it up. this is the last chance before they put this into the game and after this is updated theres no going back. Anet will not take it out and its all too sad that people are fine with it. I dont understand how. Can you imagine the grind it will take to get the pieces. If anet makes the whole set one craft then i wouldnt mind it and that would be at least a compromise. But if they make every single piece a separate time gated craft it will really suck.

Last chance? No. It’s already too late.

As for those who are arguing that Ascended gear is necessary for fractals (because of AR), Anet could easily have added infusion slots to Exotic gear. Fractals and AR were merely a (very flimsy) excuse for introducing the Ascended gear grind.

Calys Teneb.7015:

However, I would remind you that ArenaNet’s playerbase currently outnumbers its employees at better than one million to one.

Let’s see…. GW2 has sold how many copies? 3 million? 5 million? Something like that. So Anet has 3-5 employees?

Seriously though, Anet does indeed release a LOT of bug ridden content.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Every time I read one of these top # reviews I cannot help but wonder just how much real $$$ the games at the top of the list paid for that position. It may be a jaded way of looking at things, but life has taught me honestly and pride are usually overruled by greed and ego.

This. Game review sites all seem really corrupt.

Supplementary lore outside of the game is fine. The problem is when there’s not enough in-game in the first place.

Shiren.9532:

I think Kristen said she wanted to give males and females the chance to choose similair kinds of hair styles. If someone played a male character, it sucked that they didn’t have beautiful long hair, at the same time, it might suck if the dreads type hair was only given to males if a female sylvari wanted them. I guess the same thing goes for rugged hair styles. Females should have access to that option as well. Sylvari seem to bend the rules a bit more with the difference between males and females. It seems like the focus with the sylvari was to open up new options with greater variety that didn’t exist (males with long hair, new plant types etc).

So why not make 6 new hairstyles and have them available to both males and female sylvari?

Just because it’s unbalanced doesn’t mean you should go and make it more so.

AKLbow.2463:

ARTHUSIMON.7481:

Basket of Boxes.1976:

Why didn’t you just have the other team spike him and continue on with your GvG, you guys whining about it is just as bad as him complaining.

He did get spiked…by the guys fromthe third server that wanted to watch the fight xD

I just wanted to add…. I spiked the GM.

That’s why NSP is awesome.

I wonder if they’ll remove the hairstyles that are least used when they put these new ones in — just like with Twilight Arbor F/U path.

I think a lot of the issues with temporary content can be alleviated by bringing them back on a rotating basis — say, every month. Just make up some silly lore excuse (time travel, whatever) for their presence.

That way, the content isn’t lost forever — which may satisfy those who missed the content, and we don’t have so much content that people become too spread out (seems Anet is — justifiably — worried about this).

As for Ascended gear — as someone said: Pandora’s box has been opened, and there’s no closing it now. It will be what eventually kills WvW and perhaps the whole game.

Looking at how Anet interprets their metrics I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet interpreted all the PvE’ers karma training during awful mismatches as WvW doing well.

As evidence: their recent TA/Forward Up debacle… “TAkittenis the least run dungeon in TA, so let’s get rid of it” — despite the fact that it was least run not because it was a bad dungeon, but because it had serious issues with the final boss.

If no revamp — and I don’t mean “revamp” in the Anet sense (i.e. “delete”) — then one button crafting would be a good change.

Crafting dowels, then inscriptions, then item part A, then item part B, then the final product is a lot of work that provides zero entertainment value. Especially since the crafting UI, with all items listed together, is just terrible.

azizul.8469:

Crystal Desert wouldn’t mind fighting in the bronze league. want to trade position with us, NSP ?

Seriously? CD would be karma training all towers on all maps for all seven weeks of the league. Would you really find that fun?