I hope indeed but the past experience I had with update taught me not to be too confident about what I assumed to be obvious.
I also hope that if it was their plan to limit the daily to once a day no matter what they might reconsider it. I’d really want to read something from Anet about this : I’ve been waiting for the fractal update for quite some time and this is really killing the fun.
Giving us the will to play fractals while limiting them at the same time would be cruel :’(
Yeah gold will obviously go up with the fractal level.
Also forget about it being competitive, it has to be well over other aspect of the game in the higher levels because it is the hardest PvE content. Risk vs reward you know ?
Btw they said unnecessary long fractals would be made shorter (dredge being the most obvious one) so it might very well be shortened, not necesssarily nerfed difficulty wise though.
About the daily reward, is it still gonna work for every ten levels or do we have a single and most important (gold) reward per day per account no matter what ? If yes I strongly suggest to rethink about this because it is not only limiting our ability to play fractals but also our will to play with less advanced friends/guildmates because it would either waste our daily or be way less interesting because our daily is already gone.
About agony resistance, the new infused slot seems really unfun to me : each time I use a lv x ar infusion I cannot use that infusion to upgrade later on ? So there will always be a competition between keeping the infusion to get a better one and using it to actually get more ar : this is bad ! Btw is there a maximum on how high those infusions can get ? And also what about our regular ascended infusion slots, do they remain untouched ?
About fractal weapons are you letting them as is ? I thought it’d be about time to change them to appearance appliers don’t you think ? Dropping an item that gives you the right to apply a skin at a roughly 5 gold price (transmutation cristal) is not really that rewarding.
What are mistlocks exactly ? Challenges between fractals ? Changes within fractals to make them more challenging ? Something else ?
I’d like to point out that, even though I’m not convinced about some points I find this update awesome overall !
First, what I enjoy in the living story as it is currently :
Each update can include new features like QoL improvements, skill balance, itemization options etc… This is what actually makes me eager to read all update preview to discover what new things I might enjoy.
The possibility to achieve daily LW achievements instead of overgrindy ones to complete the meta-achievement (even though one might think the latter has no need to be here).
The characters involved in general, I appreciate most of them (including Scarlett for that matter).
The artistic outcome is always really solid, graphics and sound effects, good job on that !
Now let’s talk about what I usually do not enjoy :
The story/grind ratio is not in a good spot at all to me. Tower of nightmares is actually a good example of that : we basically have a 10-15min solo mission, some NPC talks and the new aspect of the map to tell the story. In the meantime we need to do a lot of events (btw, one of the least rewarding activity in the game) to get our achievements done and we need to collect a huge amount of spores to unlock the new recipees. So it’s something like 1-2h for story (when taking your time) and at least ten times that for the grind part which is actually leading to my second point.
Another huge concern for the me is the reward system. Most of the times I don’t feel rewarded at all. Once more, let’s take a look at ToN : completing everything I have to complete will roughly get me a daily skill point. That is actually convenient and, for once, interesting but remember that most of the time we expect to see another miniature or tonic. On the other hand, there is useful stuff to get but they are not proposed as a reward but at a cost : in this update I have 6 new recipees to unlock. If I count the current toxic spore cost, those unlock will cost me around 40g. So in the end what I actually feel and what I in fact fear with each update is that it will cost me more than it will give me. I’ll avoid side notes on miniatures and tonics or on the pressure put on gold compared to other resources but I’ll just say that Liadri was the only well brought miniature in my eyes and that karma has it way too easy, I could still elaborate if you want me to.
Next point is about availability and difficulty to get as well as communication regarding this aspect. ToN will once more be my example but Blood and Madness would certainly be a very good one too. So I have those 6 recipees to unlock and right now I don’t feel like playing the game much(some exams to prepare, other games to try, some dreariness about dungeons and fractal I’ve overdone) so right now those recipees are actually a pain for me. The thing is those are part of potential builds, refusing to get them is actually limiting my build potency so I certainly do not want to do that and become dependent on the market. So I need to get some dungeons done at some point to buy them but I don’t even know how much time I have to do that : will Marjory stay there 2 weeks ? 4 weeks ? Will we ever have another way later to get those recipees ? We never have a consistent answer regarding this and I feel this kind of information is critical. To be accurate I feel like we should never have to worry about aquiring this kind of item.
Another concern is about the theme of the updates. ToN for once is doing pretty good. Let’s just say I saw way too much machinery and really not enough Guild Wars. I’d love to see stuff about cleansing Orr or Ascalon, about the Underworld, about Tengus, about the Mists, … When I saw the fusion alliance, the clockwork invasions or the etherblade path in TA I didn’t feel like I was playing Guild Wars. Too much machinery, not enough blades, magic and core lore.
If I can give you an advice, reward the players with exclusive time-limited items for taking part and getting through the whole story and keep any grinding goal for unnecessary stuff like achievement points or extra (subsequent) resource gain. This way players wouldn’t have to feel stressed about deadlines and wouldn’t feel to have to pay for their rewards.
Next release will probably let us enter that tower and face the big bad gey hiding behind Scarlett, hopefully. Maybe the kraits will manage to gather their obelisk’s shards and summon that horror :o
I’ll love it if it’s an actual new dungeon !
Looks like next tuesday might be more exciting than today, wait and see :p
On the one hand not using auto targetting is really annoying : constant button mashing or enemy clicking. On the other hand, using it leads to some troubles : inability to use the “untargeted versions” of some skills and unwanted targetting (dash skills and shouts are the main issue).
Why not allowing something in between ? I think a targetting mode that targets anything one of your attacks hit would be fair compromise. I thought the option telling “auto promotes target” (I’m translating from french, the actual text might be different) was doing this but I couldn’t even understand what it was doing…
8) Celerity.
This is not in a good spot in PvE to me : very rare, often with huge drawback/cooldown with very short durations. The only decent celerity skills are the mesmer’s well known Time Warp and a ranger utility I forgot the name of. This is probably the funniest buff you can get, I’m sad it can never really be part of our builds because of (I assume) PvP constraints.
9) Hall of Monuments.
Getting in the EotN the first time was a cool feeling but now having to get there either by keeping an item or getting it again each time is a pain. Why not making the rewards available in the hero pannel like achievements rewards once you’ve talked to the EotN NPC ?
10) Events.
Completing events is not rewarding enough. To earn enough money to travel to a distance place once lv80 requires to complete roughly 3 events. This is already showing how unbalanced things are quite well to me. Wandering in a map just to earn your life making events should be a viable option ! It would also make leveling/exploration way more satisfying. I don’t know exactly what the numbers should be but I’m quite sure they’re not in a good place ! Right now I think that gold is way too low, experience is fine and I’m not so sure about karma.
11) Karma.
There are not enough options to spend karma, this resource is more or less stockpiled and used when : you need an armor set that can be bought with karma for a reroll or you need more shards. Weapon cultural skins are nice but not enough to apply pressure on the resource. Basically, if you don’t need to gear another character, have enough shards and completed your drunkard title you just have orrian boxes to spend your karma and they are not that interesting.
In a nutshell, I don’t know which options we should get to spend out karma but I’m quite sure we need more.
12) Fractals.
I know an update on fractals is on the way but I’m still mentioning it. Fractals are the highest difficulty content of PvE and are one of the least rewarding which is insane ! During a lv48 run that went wrong I spent more than 90min and because I didn’t have enough luck I didn’t get anything at the end. At the end of the run, after salvaging, selling and repairing I found myself to have earned roughly 7 silver coins. I can earn way more than this by harvesting a single orrian tree…
Another awful part of the fractals is the RNG that is happening : getting 5+ weapons without having any of those used in your build can become frustrating. Getting an o so wanted ascended weapon with undesirable stats is really bad too but still better. It’s high end content with already a quite small chance to get anything ! Why not make it so that when you do get something it is actually useful ?
Last thing on fractals : bugs, bugs everywhere ! Some useful, some awful. They need some attention.
13) Transmutation crystals/stones.
Basically : too many stones are found, too few crystals are found, not enough stone use, way too much crystal need. Stones have to stop being useful because you cannot go on playing and stay lv80 forever with every used character. Please allow us to use those “rare drops” ! Crystals are required everywhere : cultural weapons, cultural armors, fractal weapons, exotic skins you want with specific stats or keeping a pricy rune when changing armor/weapon. One might already argue that not having a maxed stat armor when you pay ~120g the set is already criminal but the fact that there seems to be no other viable way to get the o so required crystals other than the gem store is really not fair.
Please rework the balance around stone/crystal rarity and stone/crystal need !
14) Ranger.
Most trait are not appealing, pet death is too punishing (cooldown becomes awful) compared to how easy it is to get your pet killed (basically whenever you try to use it). Pet health buff was a nice move but was not really enough I think. It’s not even really a suggestion because I’m not sure how you can change the ranger to make it work.
I tried to stay concise but could probably develop if needed. Do not hesitate to argue some of my points if you think I’m wrong : I’m open for debate.
Intro : I’m mainly a PvE player so everything I’m going to say does not concert PvP or WvW as I’m not experienced enough to judge them. This is simply a list of things that bothered me through the last couple of months and didn’t get attention or weren’t properly fixed to me that I noted on a little paper until I find the motivation to write it down here, which is now.
There’s no particular order.
1) Mesmer’s scepter.
You know it’s not good as I noticed in your stream on last patch so I don’t need to explain why. I think you should move the clone production on one of the other skills and use the auto-attack to justify this weapon in a condition based build (maybe bleed-bleed-confusion on hit ?). Right now the auto-attack is super slow with slow projectiles, it just feels super boring regardless of effectiveness, please also take that into consideration.
2) Fast Ground Targetting.
Your new feature for this is good but you forgot something quite important : mouse clicking on skills. As soon as one of the FGT option is active, any click based activation will result in an instant use on the character’s feet which is lame because it prevents people like me who are using the pointer to do a lot of stuff from using this option. I think both instant and semi-instant modes should handle mouse clicks, may it be optional or not.
This is kind of a big deal for me !
3) Hydra queen.
This meta-event isn’t fine to me : having to do 3 times the same event for the final chain to happen a long time after is just super annoying. It could be a nice world boss to kill every now and then but as it stands it’s just a pain you have to endure once for your achievement.
4) Town clothing.
Once again I know you’re looking at it (from the anniversary bash discussions). You had a great system in GW1 where every event would get its set of costumes that gave you access to cool looks for all your character everywhere. This justified the price because it had value and was something you unlocked and could benefit with no restriction then. Town clothing is GW2 aren’t working (at least for me) because : they have very little to no use (I don’t care about the look I have in town because that’s not where the interesting stuff happen), they are just equipped on character and bound to that character which means that if a better town clothing comes out you have to throw away you previous investment and that rerolls can’t benefit from unless you pay more.
In a nutshell town clothing are to me a huge mistake : you had a winning formula with costumes, fair trade for you and your customer. If you wanted to change that formula it had to for a better one. Please do not forget them. It could be a good source of revenue for your company and give your artists lots of stuff to imagine and create
5) Gem items.
Overall the BLTC gem store is full of unwanted items like silly consumables : who would pay gems to get a single-use black lion guy ? The only current things suitable for gems right now are infinite mining tools (but they should be unlocked for the account), infinite salvager (same), armor skins and transmutation crystals. Miniatures are okay-ish but the RNG nature of those is really not helping : who wants to use real money for an ingame gamble ? Yes, gold can be used too but when thinking about gem I think you should try to get money because that’s how your company lives, isn’kitten
I have also trouble understanding why you have so many temporary items on gem store. A reason could be that you want to limit people’s time to farm in game to afford them but since they usually stay there for at least a month I can’t see the point. Remove items that don’t have success, do not remove interesting items like mining tools or town clothing (who will probably be super interesting once fixed)…
6) Custom playlists
This feature is really good and I enjoy chosing my own playlists a lot but I think some more soundtracks are needed. The main issue lies in city and ambient playlists. Main cities are almost always using ambient/night playlists and it is (at least for me) impossible to create a playlist that could suit shiverpeaks, kryta, maguuma, orr, ascalon, lion’s arch, the grove, …
It looks like your game already makes the distinction when not using custom soundtracks so it shouldn’t be hard for you to give us the ability to have a different playlist for each region and main city.
(I do love the game soundtrack ! I just love tons of other soundtrack I love customization :p)
