Guild Wars 2

Are they going to modify any promotional material to reflect these changes?

An outfit that conceals your face and hair, which comes bundled with a total makeover kit.

That’s our Anet! Coming this fall to NBC!

Would you prefer we bury our heads in the sand and accept Anet’s continuing knee-jerk decisions and severe lack of communication and transparency with its players (you know, the people who are keeping the lights on)?

Sylent.3165:

The issues this expansion.

They added so much, but there is nothing to do.

Rewards are extremely lackluster. Only point to log into new maps is just farming and farming and farming events just to level masteries.

Elite specs are really all that was worth doing and being rewarded for. No awesome armor worth farming for even. I played about three weeks of expansion and I’m just to bored to log back in.

They took the game in the wrong direction for many players

And just wait till they get nerfed into oblivion thanks to esports – that system is sure worth the 100 likes and zero comments ESL posts get on Facebook.

Daralii.8940:

Xillllix.3485:

Why would you do this and not fix tempest useless warhorn and elite skills?

They already got peoples’ money for the expansion, so they go back to not caring or doing anything until they have something else to sell people, then they feign involvement again and people eat it up.

This. Notice the massive lack of red posts compared to the last six months or so.

Anyhow, on topic, I’ve decided to not play my Ele until this issue is fixed or the heat death of the universe begins – not sure which will happen first.

Considering the product isn’t even finished, it’s hard to say.

HaxTester.9816:

This was reported 3 or 4 days ago, what do you expect, instant results? Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

This may be a work in progress. They may be toning down the kittening annoying, screen cluttering visual effects and deploying them bit by bit. They may also be working on an option for certain players to retain the old visual effects.

A simple red response only takes a few minutes.

The biggest issue I have with their refusal to split skills and traits is the lack of consideration for what it takes to acquire equipment. PvE players can sink lots of time and gold into a perfect set only for it to be marginalized (and without so much as an explanation); meanwhile PvP players just have to click a few times and they can easily adjust. This is why I’ve always been hesitant to invest in high end skins. What’s the point of going on that legendary journey towards a precursor if it’s attached to a skill that gets nerfed thanks to a different game mode?

UnbentMars.9126:

I agree with you, but unfortunately it’s not going to change. Every game with PvP and PvE makes changes based on PvP across the board

www.guildwars.com

Methinks this’ll get swept under the rug just like the enchanted booster issue, removing finishers and placing them in black lion chests the next day, the nerf to key farming, bunny ears, and many other concerns.

Ganathar.4956:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally I don’t give a darn about my skills looking impressive. I want to be able to see what my enemy is doing, and I am tired of not being able to do just that.

That’s great and all, but many people do care about visuals and with all these changes the professions are becoming more and more bland-looking. Fireball was one of the primary reasons why I initially got my ele to 80 before any of my other characters. It just used to feel awesome when you threw those impact balls of fire.

No matter what you prefer, there is no reason to not at least support the notion that all of this effect culling should be an optional thing for whoever wants it. If it becomes optional, Anet can cull effects from every single ability without any complaints whatsoever. This is a win-win situation, right?

Anet doesn’t seem to understand what its audience is supposed to be any more. The end game is all about acquiring skins and making pretty characters, but visual effects are ruined out of nowhere. Then they balance the entirety of the game on PvP for esports, but monetize it through gemstore purchases, which are primarily central to PvE. And then there’s the introduction of the NPE, which is aimed at casuals, and then the recent focus on more hardcore content like raids and HoT.

GW2 players have been used to this rampant experimentation throughout the last few years, but Anet’s aims seem to have become much more frenetic lately.

Inoki.6048:

This is just gamble and gambling can bankrupt you.

I’ve seen this happen in many games, people spending thousands of dollars on fictional game characters, unbelievable.

There’s no difference between gambling in an MMO and a slot machine in a casino. Each promises results, but each has a set algorithm to cheat you out of your savings.

Don’t do it.

The true gamble can come weeks or months down the road when the skills, traits, and visualizations associated with your prized $100 skin get ruined thanks to esports.

I’m really tired of these abrupt blanketed changes Anet has been throwing around for the last few months. I thought about working on The Legend today, but now I’m not even going to bother – seems the only winning move these days is not to play.

Duke Nukem.6783:

esports? the gw2 competative combat is literally the worst fighting in an mmo i have ever seen, AND I PLAYED RUNESCAPE, the time to kill is so high its ridiculous and every match becomes about who can cap the points first because GOOD LUCK getting anybody off of them long enough to cap the point before the inevitable 60 second slap fest/rollfest/healfest that is the combat

esports in gw2? give up anet

Sad how this .gif was made nearly three years ago and little has changed:

Daralii.8940:

Don’t you love it when great effects are nerfed in the name of #ESPORTS? :^)

Don’t forget to buy lots of PvE content in the gemstore to continue supporting blanket nerfs and changes.

Celestina.2894:

Daralii.8940:

I’m pretty sure it’s for esports spectating and not for performance reasons, which is even worse. I’m not sure why they would think that it’s particles of all things that’s keeping GW2 esports from being a thing.

Honestly they need to just give up on esports already. That ship not only sailed, but it was never docked for GW2 in the first place.

Or at least do what FF14 does and allow US to select if “visual noise” is reduced.

Visual noise has needed a slider for some time. I’ll never understand Anet’s negligence when it comes to allowing players certain visual options (colorblind mode, UI modifications, and such).

Agreed on the esports fascination as well. I’ve been pondering whether or not to go through certain precursor collections and am hesitant to even start since they refuse to split skills and traits.

You should mark that spot and return in nine months to see if an orichalcum node has spawned!

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

We discovered an issue with the Halloween Festival that we wanted to share with you: The festival activities are not giving Mastery experience for characters that are level 80.

This was not an intended mechanic, but with the festival underway it would be extremely risky to attempt to correct this right now. Weighing the options, it’s best not to take a risk that could impact everyone’s ability to play Halloween content this year and in future Halloween festivals, as well. We will be taking a look at the festival code after the Halloween event ends and we hope to have this situation corrected for next year’s fall extravaganza.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thank you for clarifying that, Gaile. Would you be able to confirm or deny whether or not Living Story instances are bugged in this manner as well? The exp bar to mastery is blocked out like in the Labyrinth.

I’m searching high and low, but cannot find this elusive specter. Guildmates have said he’s located left of the Mystic Forge in LA, but he seems to have vanished since the last update a few hours ago. Would anyone mind posting a screencap of his location? It’s driving me nuts.

What if you could convert those birthday scrolls into hero points? It would make a lot of disenfranchised vets happy.

Now would be a good time to finally introduce a proper split between PvP and PvE skills and traits. I can’t imagine how troubling it would be to go through all that work on a single character to have its elite trait line nerfed for a section of the game that unlocks it instantly.

Looking forward to how this will help Chronomancer ease into using Continuum Shift/Split and reduce the dependency on Chronophasma.

!!!!

I just….

Words…cannot…

Mesmer for three years, and…

https://youtu.be/oASYa-Wkroc

Averath.6283:

I’ve opted not to purchase Heart of Thorns. (Cue White Knights saying “Nothing of value was lost”, because they’re mindless drones conditioned to blindly support what they enjoy like religious zealots). I’m not avoiding the game specifically because they’re reducing the incentive to play dungeons, but because this is setting a negative precedent that will impact the rest of the game as time goes on. When will they start to nerf world events like Tequatl and the rest? Probably around the next expansion when they want you to play the newer content. They can’t have you wasting time and resources on older content. It’s why WoW always ups their level cap, so the older content is no longer necessary and they do not have to keep pouring in resources to keep it up to date. (Which is why Cataclysm was such an utter failure).

They’ve already nerfed core methods of making money, but in indirect, unexplained ways. Key farming was gutted with no proper explanation on when exactly it resets (which is borked), and removing karma boosts from enchanted reward scrolls means less linen/wool in the TP (combine this situation with reduced salvage yields and ascended gear being required recommended for raids).

By the middle of next year (or next month if this trend continues), I imagine the following will have happened:

Weapons that require mystic coins and spirit shards will become account bound on acquire.

Chest running will be severely nerfed by reduced items or time gating (you can open five chests per vernal equinox per account).

The mystic forge will no longer accept karma gear.

Tequatl karma and/or gold will be nerfed. The world chest will be bound to account instead of character.

Champion bags will be based on RNG (without any exact percentages, of course), but Anet will introduce an 8,000,000th currency in its place that gives you a quarter of the previous value.

Given how often they throw out or neglect older systems and replace them with new ones, I’m actually kind of terrified by my predictions.

Drennon.7190:

sicsempertyrannis.3510:

Just to clarify, John, the goal is to make people grind more? Because that’s the net effect here. Take away reliable sources of income and replace them with open world grind.

Here’s the system, simplified:
- remove sources of liquid reward from the game, because there’s no gold sink mechanic (TP sucks up gold)
- drive up demand for materials by “incentivizing” (forcing) acquisition of more expensive equipment in order to complete the newly focused PvE content (ie ascended gear for raids and fractals)
- emphasize content behind paywalls (HoT) by heavily discouraging existing forms of income

The economic side of things definitely fits the new grind philosophy of GW2. From a gameplay perspective, the Mastery system is built to force grind to reduce the rate of content consumption. How does that work?
- only 4 maps, if players can access the content immediately they will blow through the entire expansion in less than a month
- push a lock-out system that requires heavy grind to move to new parts of each map
- level cap remains fixed at 80, but access to the new zones is effectively blocked to people who do not grind out the “new” levels in HoT

Grind is the future for everything in this game.

They go F2P and slowly convert to every other NCSoft cash grab. I’ve spent 10 years of my life happily sticking to this franchise, praising them, and spreading word about how awesome this company and their games are. But this past year has been brutal. I don’t know what changed internally, but it’s disappointment after disappointment. I feel tricked, duped, and cheated.

Same here more or less. This is the only game I’ve played in which I’ve felt embarrassed and apologetic for recommending to friends.

Behellagh.1468:

What? You think everyone runs dungeons? If you just ran dungeons why would you buy the expansion?

Elite specs? Central Tyrian Masteries? New Legendaries?

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

phys.7689:

Zach.2618:

I don’t see how anet thinks dungeon rewards are bad, I mean most of them only give 1 gold. And the most is 3 gold from Arah, what they need is to fix lupi os so everyone can’t just go in os lupi and get 3 gold. Here I was thinking they would buff the 1 gold from some paths to 2 gold or something. Seriously dungeon rewards are already so Low.

the purpose is not to balance dungeon earning, its to remove them, in a soft way. Its meant to be legacy sideshow content now.

Oh btw, both raids and fractal progression tie into masteries, which you only can get if you buy hot! only 49.99

Exactly, they clearly are trying to push people who want to grind out of old content and into HoT. Clearly they aren’t happy with the level of HoT take up among older players. And because Anet are the masters of bad decision making, they seem to think further antagonising their playerbase will somehow endear them.

Wonder how many preorders they would’ve had if they had announced this change before the beta weekends…

Agemnon.4608:

Makai.3429:

Gimme more rapiers and a parrying dagger sword skin so I can dual wield in style. It’s tough finding one-handed swords that don’t look like slabs of metal/cardboard/plant matter/organs/glass/plastic, and Whisperblade has a boring base skin.

Usoku’s Needle (bought one first year not expecting one to actually drop…and in the past month two dropped from Silverwaste bags) has a skin somewhat similar to a parrying dagger. I skinned both my wupwup and Zojja daggers with them for a little while.

And…organs? Stygian blade is meant to be creepy and is perhaps the most underappreciated weapon in the game. It’s understandable why it isn’t popular: if you have that much powerful blood and vicious claws then you’re halfway to your gift of strength for a legendary.

Jormag’s Needle is not nearly as cool relative to its cost. I don’t want to spend all those resources for a silly icicle, but it’s needed for the achievement. It honestly sounds like the perfect candidate for an ice themed dagger legendary. It would have that Magikarp appeal in that the original skin is very underwhelming and even disappointing if you made it without looking up the skin online but make for an amazing legendary by morphing into a more elaborate yet still functional dagger with effects.

Duel weilding swords in style is my second biggest goal in game for my warrior behind decking him out in full ascended (just made him shoulders so far) but Jormag’s Breath and Firebringer are a great combination.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll definitely look into those weapons soon. As for organs, that was a touch of hyperbole.

Also, as a point of reference, this is coming from a Mesmer main. I love Bonetti’s Rapier, but dual wielding them looks pretty silly.

Zetsumei.4975:

Makai.3429:

Zetsumei.4975:

Zach.2618:

Nothing to be in a fuss about IMO, it’s not like they were late donating organs to a patient or something causing his death. It’s just a game, if they’re releasing it late it means it probably still needs some polishing and stuff. Better than being sold a broken product.

Again, that’s just making excuses for them. As customers we should not have to choose between buggy or finished. An expansion is different from free updates, they are being paid to deliver a finished, non-buggy product. This is real money.

Anyway ugh no point ranting too much just need to hurry and find another game to move on to.

Thankfully the simultaneous Halloween release will occupy our minds elsewhere.

Wait, I thought we learnt to completely expect recycled content once again, have they said otherwise anywhere? Personally I’m expecting the opposite, they released HoT at that time so that we would be occupied enough to not complain about yet again recycled content for haloween.

Mmm. Good point, that.

Zetsumei.4975:

Zach.2618:

Nothing to be in a fuss about IMO, it’s not like they were late donating organs to a patient or something causing his death. It’s just a game, if they’re releasing it late it means it probably still needs some polishing and stuff. Better than being sold a broken product.

Again, that’s just making excuses for them. As customers we should not have to choose between buggy or finished. An expansion is different from free updates, they are being paid to deliver a finished, non-buggy product. This is real money.

Anyway ugh no point ranting too much just need to hurry and find another game to move on to.

Thankfully the simultaneous Halloween release will occupy our minds elsewhere.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I guess some of you dungeon runners know now how I felt when they nerfed my key running to once a week. ^^

God bless the Nerf.

Seems they nerf everything you and I enjoy, flesh wound. Let’s make a deal to abstain from converting karma to gold, eh? Wouldn’t want to ruin it for everyone else.

fishball.7204:

I’m seriously considering not buying HoT right now since they’ve ruined WvW and now dungeons. Raids don’t exactly tempt me and gimping all the other stuff that I play doesn’t scream ‘buy this now’.

~_~

After reading this I wish I could return my preorder.

Gimme more rapiers and a parrying dagger sword skin so I can dual wield in style. It’s tough finding one-handed swords that don’t look like slabs of metal/cardboard/plant matter/organs/glass/plastic, and Whisperblade has a boring base skin.

You don’t have to be Kreskin to know karma equipment will be banned from the Mystic Forge within the next year.

Eight Samurai.6840:

cranos.5913:

GrimmR.3541:

I guess I’m still gonna do dungeons every now and then.
I loved to do them but I want to get rewarded properly.

For some reason I fear that HoT won’t be what’s needed to keep many of us at this game..

Good thing they waited till after BWE3 and the beta raid hype to give us this great news. ^^

Hah good point!

Anet needs to step in and make an official post to clarify some things. Because they are kittening off the entire community right now. I’ve yet to read anyone saying how excited they are. 99.9% of the posts I have seen on reddit and here are people angry with their lies. If they do this, they need to say now why they are doing it, how they are doing it (with detail), and explain why we shouldn’t worry because dungeons will still be profitable.

They still haven’t said one word about the ruination of key farming or why they stripped karma boosters from enchantment scrolls. Anet generally doesn’t respond to posts related to their economic plans.

Figures they are releasing this info less than two weeks before HoT launches: presumably after most players interested in the expansion have already preordered. Interesting timing, that.

As for the topic at hand, the revised PvP reward tracks already sent dungeons into the earth. This switch-up is just throwing dirt upon a withered cadaver.

I’m finding Dodgy Crowd infuriating for the simple fact there is no restart node like in the Glint realm level. I’ve tried practically every combination of consumables and have extensively followed Dulfy’s guides, but this is virtually impossible for me. And this is coming from someone who has mastered Hotline Miami and its sequel.

Daddar.5971:

Players were able to get the weekly key on Sunday… up until they re-enabled the raid. After that players who did lv 10 PS did not get a key.

This seems correct. I successfully did a key farm on Saturday, and tried one a few minutes ago, but did not receive my key. Awesome timing to abruptly switch the game up as always, Anet.

I would break my gemstore boycott in a heartbeat if Ritualist Norn armor were to make an appearance.

As someone who has mained Mesmer and Necromancer since beta, I greatly appreciate Robert’s attention. His creativity and dedication to improving our professions has revitalized my interest in GW2.

Thank you, Robert!

I’ve been running Rabid weapons and armor with Rampager’s trinkets for a touch more precision. Currently I’m using Aristrocracy runes since they came with the CM Rabid armor, but these will probably get swapped to Undead.

I used to dismiss Thief because glass cannons didn’t appeal to me. Playing Hotline Miami and its sequel, however, changed this.

Now if Anet would just release animal masks and a baseball bat skin to the gemstore, all would be right in the world.

Something that irks me about the way Daredevil’s special dodges is being locked into one based on the GM Major selection. A Thief should be adaptive to change based on his/her immediate situation, and being unable to use two of his/her elite bonuses lacks fluidity. Also, as stated in this thread, players should be able to access these abilities from the onset.

My suggestion is to add F3, F4, and F5 profession skills to the Daredevil and mold them in a similar vein to the Elementalist’s attunement swap or the Revenant’s legend swap. These skills can be called Stances for the sake of nomenclature, and will allow a Daredevil to switch between the unique dodges when necessary.

Something like:

F3: Lotus Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Impaling Lotus: hurling damaging daggers, dealing multiple conditions to enemies.

F4: Unhindered Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Dash: removing conditions, gaining swiftness, and rushing forward to evade attacks on dodging.

F5: Bounding Stance: Enter a stance, which turns your dodge into Bound: leap into an area and deliver a massive blow to enemies.

Much like attunement or legend swapping, each Stance would be on a cooldown for balance purposes. The GM minor Endurance Thief could be changed to give the Thief something extra, along with reduced cooldowns, upon swapping a Stance.

With this change, the Daredevil GM major line can be modified to enable the player to specialize in one of these dodges. Effects could include adding a short-lived stability and/or AoE blindness on Bound, brief resistance and/or AoE cripple from the starting point on Dash, and a minor condition duration increase and/or an increased radius or target ceiling on Impaling Lotus. These added effects would only trigger on a successful evade to promote skillful play and would have a fair ICD since Daredevil has a lot of access to endurance.

Of course, balance is balance: this is a mere template for how Daredevil could be improved. All in all, I feel this would help the elite’s current status by giving the player more options and promoting tactical dodges for a greater effect.

Will Duelist’s Discipline be fixed in this update?

Robert Gee.9246:

tobascodagama.2961:

Silverkey.2078:

Do they mean the focus now stacks swiftness?

Not quite. I think they mean that it’ll always set your Swiftness to exactly 12s?

It means that Temporal Curtain will always apply it’s full swiftness duration (12s) the first time you pass through it. Previously if you had swiftness from another source it would not apply. There are a few other details but I’ll leave those until Tuesday.

!!!
Every time Robert posts in our forum, this immediately springs to mind:

https://youtu.be/oASYa-Wkroc

Smashing good work as always, Dulfy. Did Anet get to the skill balance portion of today’s presentation?

Renkencen.6127:

Ok sure in the game, they don’t hypnotize but the word does related to visual and Mesmer can make illusions.

I’d argue that non-physical interrupts and slow count as temporary hypnosis.

We’re playboy duelists who have a passion for fashion and flair.

Also, we’re named after Mesmerism, which is derived from Franz Mesmer who theorized animal magnetism. His secondary passion for astronomy may also have a connection to GW2’s Mesmer and its ability to manipulate space and time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

As for butterflies, the designer of the profession may have researched Project MONARCH: a supposed CIA program, which involved mind control.

Some believe butterflies also symbolize metamorphosis and mimicry:

http://www.magicoflife.org/symbol.html

“The Greeks likened the butterfly’s constant flitting from flower to flower to the restlessness of the mind: constantly changing from subject to subject. Indeed, the Greek word for butterfly is ‘psyche’ from where we get our word ‘psychology’ – the study of the mind.”

Will the new iAvenger have a different look or attack animation than iDefender?

Nova Stiker.8396:

I hate to be a thread Necromancer here but um…

Can we just sell these? Please? Or at least give me a good option other than key farming!

So far it appears these DO NOT affect Masteries in HoT so I don’t really have any decent use for them. At least let us trade 20 Tomes for a Black Lion Key or something!

From the tomes alone you’ll have 2.3 years worth of key farming!

Tuthan.3250:

Makai.3429:

As a dedicated key farmer, this hurts really bad. Despite the grind and bad luck, it was, at the very least, an alternative. Like others have said, Anet is unlikely willing to give us a straight answer to the reasoning behind this change, and it’s sad they’re still employing time gating as a quick fix to a problem that they’ll sweep under the rug: never forget Continue Coins or players having their karma boosters removed for no given reason. With all of these frenetic, unexplained changes, I have extreme reservations about using the gemstore or even playing the game beyond getting my daily metrics treat – what’s the point if my accomplishments will be rendered useless on a whim?

In any case, looks like it’s time to add another column to Spreadsheet Wars 2.

I don’t understand why some people upset about this change. Key farming was not what Anet wanted in GW2. They designed the personal story reward as a bonus to your story completion. If players want keys, they should buy gems (or convert gold into gems) then purchase keys on the gem store. Period.

For me it’s because another option – another activity – has been practically removed from the game. My enjoyment of key farming wasn’t so much about gold (though I stand to profit immensely from hoarding a bunch of skins over the last couple years): it was about doing something off the beaten path, completing new records, teaching guildies different ways to shave off a few seconds from a run, etc. In short, it was a nice way to enjoy something other than checking boss timers, pressing 1, or trying to remember whether or not I completed Tequatl within 24 hours.

Etybagig.6012:

Really still no official word? I’ve pretty much stopped playing since it seems like 1) they really don’t care and 2) my items aren’t safe. I mean why even play this game if you aren’t sure if your inventory will be the same from day to day. Sorry but I just really don’t want to feel like I’m playing the lottery every time I log in.

This. Tuesday afternoons have become increasingly stressful as of late and I see no reason to purchase items with real money when they can be modified for any reason and without a concrete explanation.

As a dedicated key farmer, this hurts really bad. Despite the grind and bad luck, it was, at the very least, an alternative. Like others have said, Anet is unlikely willing to give us a straight answer to the reasoning behind this change, and it’s sad they’re still employing time gating as a quick fix to a problem that they’ll sweep under the rug: never forget Continue Coins or players having their karma boosters removed for no given reason. With all of these frenetic, unexplained changes, I have extreme reservations about using the gemstore or even playing the game beyond getting my daily metrics treat – what’s the point if my accomplishments will be rendered useless on a whim?

In any case, looks like it’s time to add another column to Spreadsheet Wars 2.

Fhaeris.9237:

Here we are again: to balance pvp, they kill us in pve. Back to square one.
They kittening never learn and don’t care. kitten HoT.

Quoted for truth. The devs keep highlighting Mesmer as a skillfull profession, but skillfull is more of a hindrance in PvE environments: especially open world. Instead of taking the time and effort to carefully summon, evade, dodge, interrupt, shatter, wait for illusions to recharge after combat, and such, I can just slap HGH, Juggernaut, and a bunch of elixers on my Engineer and earn far more rewards by just pressing 1 and the occasional 4.

As a side note on this split topic: Does anyone else find it a bit counter-productive to balance the game around PvP while financing it through gemstore purchases, which are primarily PvE-focused?