Guild Wars 2

Donari.5237:

I would be much happier to know that others running up will get as much as I do, so I can let loose.

well said, I feel the same.

Guys, It’s nice of you that you’re trying to help, but you see the wrong problem. I could easily burst down the mobs, that’s not the problem. The problem is: people who do this (I don’t, I use autoattack 1 staff without my might-buffs) can grief other players that way. Other players who either don’t know how to burst or who are low-level.

It’s not all about Dragon Bash but it’s about every single meeting of 2 players with different preconditions. DB was just an example.

The thing is: mmos have trained you to think that you alone should be able to loot your kill. The result: battles are all about tagging as much enemies as possible instead of just… fighting. Players with better aoe-skills have no problems to tag tons of mobs in a second while players who use single-target builds have to take what’s left. They can’t focus on a single strong mob, because in the meantime the others tag via. aoe all the trash nearby.

Don’t you see this? Battles are all about tagging more than the other players around, so you’ll never be happy to have them around; except you don’t care about loot.

Jemmi.6058:

I am not a fan of the idea, as it will encourage people to akitten around dynamic events to farm materials.

These creatures do die fast, so I can see how it may be hard to tag them; however, I do not think you need to do a lot of damage to get the full loot.

Which profession are you playing? Perhaps I can suggest a skill for mass tagging.

It really doesn’t matter which profession I’m playing (Mesmer, Ranger, Elementalist, Guardian) since those heavy-hitters (not one alone, 2- a group of them) kills everything alive in an instant.

one thing that comes to my mind: the Karma-system. This system could reward good players (not necessarily the ones who do most damage). They could redesign the Medal System and change the Karma-rewards to skin-only rewards.

Drops would only have normal skins – but you could buy Karma-Crates with Karma for a GOOD chance of good looking skins.

Let me think of it…

ask yourself one thing: Are you currently happy to see other players? Imagine you are lv.30, are you happy to see other players around you?

Other people shouldn’t be seen as competition, it’s in your interest that you help them becoming stronger. We’re 1 Server. We compete as this server-community against other servers in WvW.

I think that “good” players should be rewarded with nice looking skins. The term “good” isn’t measured by how many enemies you killed or how much damage you did, since it’s all about gear. A lv.20 player can be much better than someone lv.80 spamming only skill 1.

About leechers, people who don’t want to fight but still get loot. Personally I don’t know a lot of people who don’t like to fight. Let’s say there are a lot of them… I honestly don’t know a solution about that dilemma yet. Maybe you could help me find it.

havoc.6814:

Others will, unfortunately, leech. I don’t mind anyone getting something for free, but many will stand at meta-bosses doing nothing, just for the free loot. Their presence there will scale the event, making it even more difficult for those who are actively doing the event. That would get rather ugly.

Well as I understood it (Colin explained the system a while ago) players only count as participating (and make the event scale) when they do a minimum damage to the event-mobs. This means: the event scales only for the number of people who actually fight.

Furthermore I don’t think a lot of people would stand akitten next to an epic boss-battle. But let’s say some do… at the moment a lot of players don’t do much either. Newbies may haven’t found out what to do but they are still there and do their best. Is this also “leeching”? Why do you care? The best loot in GW2 is already quite easy to achieve. Reward those players who play well with decent skins, I’d say.

I’m aware of that, but PvE in GW2 shouldn’t be about competition. There should be systems for competition (like challenge missions with speed-run activities for example), but it shouldn’t hit people who don’t want to compete imho.

One of the core-philosophies of this game is the cooperative aspect. You should be happy to see other players.

GW2 has done a great deal to go in the right direction, but there are still problems. Dragon Bash introduced an activity where it get’s very visual: You compete against other players to do enough damage on a mob in order to get it’s loot. While this is imho a big problem in this holiday-event it can also be a problem in the core of the game.

Lv.80 players who visist low level zones are very powerful. Despite backscaling they can do enormous damage to mobs and if there are 2 or more such players it’s difficult to get the participation next to them.

Now we have mining-nodes where every player can get his fair share. Why not take this concept and evolve it to battles? A solution would be to make corpses lootable by everyone around. If you come by too late you can still get your share. You won’t get the xp for killing the mob but you still get loot.

Wait a minute. Did I just say: I get loot when haven’t even participated in the battle? Yes I did. But… how is it rewarding to kill a mob then? Well, you get your loot anyway. Isn’t this BS, he just watched and did nothing… and still gets loot? Yeah, he’s in our team against the dragons, do you remember?

What do you think? Could you live with such a system? Do you think others just don’t earn their loot if they haven’t enough AOE-power with them?

at least we can pick the weapon of choice – it’s nice to have tickets instead of weapon-drops

http://en.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1g4y0p/aoe_looting_aetherblade_and_more/

oh happy days!

Vayne.8563:

people will be forced to pay for it somehow.

yeah but they had a good idea (Braham and Rox’s weapons for gems) and scrapped it… I don’t believe that no one bought those. Why not put in a ticket for 1000gems? People would buy it and reputation would become better instantly. (it happened at F&F, people were happy with these weapons in the store).

I can only assume that this reputation means nothing to NCSoft and money is more important to them, since “few” people spend TONS of money on RNG.

Fox.3469:

that’s not RNG, that’s just bullkitten.

RNG is bullkitten, it’s not a fair system and I don’t know how this could be seen as a good system.

guys, people buy those boxes… as long as this happens it will stay. It’s like that with the new Xbox, people complain but buy it anyway… humans are like the opposite of Skritt: the more we are, the stupider it gets

90 more

• 2 cold potions (1 use only wtf)
• consumables
• zhaitaffy

no ticket yet

I’d say don’t buy the rich coffers, the only way we can show Anet that nobody wants them (well some do xD)

some got 0 tickets out of 10 rich coffers. One in the forums got 3 tickets out of 250 normal coffers. Normal coffers drop from every single mob in the game. Go do events for a few days and kill hoardes of mobs before you spend your money on rich coffers.

Just my opinion

100 coffers:

• some fireworks
• 1 risen holo knight mini
• some consumables
• some Pieces of Zhaitaffy

no ticket though

well this is even better, so we get 2 new systems which reward us for exploring the world, this and precursers

how come that a “mistake” is the single best announcement these forums ever had? Colin, you should consider making mistakes like that more often haha.

looks like the precursor-hunt to me
edit: ok this is not it then

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/DELETE-ME-1/first#post2193682

nevermind, I’m not sure if it was my fault, but when I relogged and entered the mission again I found a npc with a green star on the ship. Not sure if it was there before.

Edit: ah thanks mercury

As I set foot on claw island the mission doesn’t start. The green text says: “join the assault force” but nothing happens when I talk to any allied npc. The first enemies are all invulnerable, with the exception of the champion and a few minions next to him on the left… I haven’t tried to kill him though since it seems too difficult without any npcs aiding me; haven’t tried hard enough I guess.

So I can’t progress through the storyline any more, any ideas?

I have also tried to restart the mission but it still doesn’t work.

Player Character.9467:

Reading and not replying is being as respectful of your player base as all the patch content that fails to make it to the notes. Or how about all the things that seem to only make it to twitter and not onto the ACTUAL OFFICIAL WEBSITE. One day a game company will rediscover the lost art of being engaged with their customers…

you’re not being very constructive here, I’m following them on twitter, facebook and none of these has exclusive information which isn’t released in the forums.

That said there are interactions between developers and players; I assume this happens in their leisure time. They don’t have to do this but it shows the dedication of them imho. I’d just wish they repost their stuff on the forums as well instead of relying on the people to do this. It would give the forums the importance those should have: the main hub for official information and place for discussion with the devs.

I have to admit that to me dungeons also feel rushed. The reason for that is that

• dungeon-mechanics can be broken by gear (berserker) and exploits (among real exploits I also include the clumping of enemies to kill them without any danger). See this for reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZWfW9hOJeI
• the lack of dynamic events in dungeons (it was stated that dynamic events make dungeons highly replayable)

Still, I see a lot of love in the design of the dungeons. What I think has gone wrong is the high complexity which arises when there is no trinity-gameplay. Working with those mechanics as a developer must be a nightmare imho, you can’t simply change something without consequences on another thing.

I think that it’s obvious that there are problems and developers shouldn’t be afraid of arguments and discussion. Sure, some players will be angry and trashtalk into oblivion, but there will be helpful discussions too; in the end we all want a better experience.

I think what has to be said by them is the direction Anet don’t want to take. They should clearly say: “sorry, what you’re suggesting isn’t the way we want to go with GW2 because…”. There were some suggestions about the defiant-system and how this could be removed; I’m sure there is a reason for it and different problems that would arise but there was no word from the team on this.

Yes, dungeons were supposed to be reworked, but what if Anet want’s to work on the defiant-system before (which takes time I guess) before they rework the dungeons with a new mechanic. We don’t know so we have to trust the team. It would help with that if they would talk to us though…

A developer talked ingame to a crowd of people.
Here’s what he said (dungeon-related stuff highlighted):

(Q:) Will we ever be able to go to Cantha?
(A:) (Paraphrasing) Cantha is definitely not cut from the game, you will just have to wait and see.

(Q:) Will we be getting more dungeons?
(A:) We will be continuing to work on our dungeons.

(Q:) (Follow-up) Old ones…or new ones?
(A:) Both!

(Q:) Will we ever see anything like raiding?
(A:) Our answer to raiding may very well be in the works!

(Q:) Is there anything being done to get people to want to spend time in their respective capital cities?
(A:) Yes.

(Q:) How is the LFG coming along?
(A:) Coming along great. We’re sorry for not putting it in sooner, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.

(Q:) (In whisper) Can you say anything at all about raid style content?
(A:) It is something I am very excited about and will be unique to GW2

(Cap of the exchange from above.) http://i.imgur.com/ExzO5dg.jpg

(Q:) What are your day to day duties?
(A:) (Too long, but, here is a cap of the answer:) http://i.imgur.com/WrOaCRb.jpg

(Snowcrash saying he was lead producer:) http://i.imgur.com/Sj45hX0.jpg

Source: http://en.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1g0zqb/tc_fireside_chat_with_former_lead_producer_in_la/

I disagree, Cameirus. They show dedication to the game each time they talk about new stuff and answering in the forums, I just miss them in the dungeons-department. I feel like the focus on living story really hurt this part of the game. They may be working in the background on dungeons, but no word to us leaves people wondering what’s going on. New suggestions come in quite often and having the devs ignoring the dedication of the players by not saying a word like “I like this idea, but there are problems with…” or “this isn’t the way we want to go forward with GW2”… some one-liners like this is just a real pitty.

Anet wants our feedback, but we’re not getting theirs.

I agree that it’s kind of weird how the devs talk about the game outside of the forums. A developer answered some questions to people in the game which was VERY interesting… but why not simply use the forums? I really don’t get it. Stuff which is this heavy dungeon-related should be mentioned in the dungeon-forums imho.

Here’s what he said (dungeon-related stuff highlighted):

(Q:) Will we ever be able to go to Cantha?
(A:) (Paraphrasing) Cantha is definitely not cut from the game, you will just have to wait and see.

(Q:) Will we be getting more dungeons?
(A:) We will be continuing to work on our dungeons.

(Q:) (Follow-up) Old ones…or new ones?
(A:) Both!

(Q:) Will we ever see anything like raiding?
(A:) Our answer to raiding may very well be in the works!

(Q:) Is there anything being done to get people to want to spend time in their respective capital cities?
(A:) Yes.

(Q:) How is the LFG coming along?
(A:) Coming along great. We’re sorry for not putting it in sooner, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.

(Q:) (In whisper) Can you say anything at all about raid style content?
(A:) It is something I am very excited about and will be unique to GW2

(Cap of the exchange from above.) http://i.imgur.com/ExzO5dg.jpg

(Q:) What are your day to day duties?
(A:) (Too long, but, here is a cap of the answer:) http://i.imgur.com/WrOaCRb.jpg

(Snowcrash saying he was lead producer:) http://i.imgur.com/Sj45hX0.jpg

Source: http://en.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1g0zqb/tc_fireside_chat_with_former_lead_producer_in_la/

Csele.1647:

the game feels abandoned at some points…. ..

It feels abandoned to me in the dungeon-sector, yes. There are a lot of problems, a lot of threads and a lot of suggestions… and no sign of a dev. I know Robert and his team is probably busy with the living story, but come on… no one else there?

Imho Anet made one big mistake in creating Legendaries the way they are: Making it possible to achieve a longterm-goal in a short time.

They should have added something like a laurel-requirement on the Legendaries, so that it simply takes some time to get them. This way people wouldn’t feel they have to grind 24/7… if you can only get the weapon in a minimum of 12 months people would accumulate mats automatically. A Legendary would show how dedicated a player really is instead of making it possible to buy gems with RL money and turn those into gold to buy it.

well a lot of arguments aren’t coming out of thin air… not saying anything is quite frustrating to the people who want to help with suggestions how to make it better.

bullettohead.9715:

I always wondered if the devs actually tested the dungeons half the time, to see if it was fun. I’d love to swipe one and jump in a pug run and watch what happens. I think it’d be an eye opening experience for quite a few.

Most of the time, it feels like they don’t.

I’m sure they to, but think of it: we players have MUCH more time to play those dungeons… most of us are probably better at those dungeon than most of the developers who build this dungeons (no offense to the Anet-team). Anet works around the clock (not meant literally ^^ ) on GW2 and I’m sure they can’t play the dungeons nearly as much as we do.

Imho they need some hardcore-dungeon testers to set the bar for the explorable modes quite high enough.

That’s how I see it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think that’s a terrible idea, I’m sorry to say. Enemies have too much stability already. And all of the bosses have defiant, making control skills almost useless, and destroying the idea that anet originally advertised for their new trinity of damage/support/control.

I’m not against the idea of hard mode dungeons, but I would address the issue differently. I would like to see difficulty progression for dungeons as seen in Fractals. Starting from really easy (allowing players to learn the dungeon) to very hard (with much better rewards and new mechanics).

hey I like your idea, I knew that I don’t really have a good idea how to do those hard mode dungeons, but others probably do, that’s why I made this thread. I have never played a lv.40 fractal but if you see this working because you know it, then I’m all for it. Would you prefer dungeon-specific agony then?

since obviously explorable mode dungeons are not difficult anymore (or never have been?!) and everyone got the prestige-armorsets for the “hard”-paths for little effort I’d suggest they implement hard-mode versions of explorable modes with new skins.

They way I’d suggest to implement those: balance each one for lv.80 players (and not downscaled lv.80 because downscaling obviously has big problems and doesn’t work the way it should work).

Also add more stability to enemies since it’ so easy to clump them up and this way totally break any mechanic they would require. Manually removing the stability on the mobs enrages them which makes them hit harder – devestating for pure berserker-builds.

what do you think?

correct me if I’m wrong, this sub-section has seen the last developer-comment 7 months ago by Izzy about magic find. This doesn’t look like Anet cares about dungeons (supposedly the hardest content in the game) any more – seriously: no time for feedback for such a long time??

I don’t mean no disrespect but saying the game is community-oriented and not answering any posts in the dungeon-forums makes it quite difficult to come up with constructive feedback and keep the motivation up. How about an AMA then?

I get that devs are busy and don’t have much time, but imho there should be time enough to reply at least once a month on the most replied thread.

I miss epicness since the fractals, something old and evil… not some company which makes slaves or some dredge who build a powersuit.

Astralporing.1957:

Portals might be too much, but a town crier? As long as it wouldn’t be announcing the events with pinpoint accuracy, it could work (so, no “shatterer has landed, go kill it”, but more “valiant vigil forces in the Blazeridge Steppes are marshalling their troops against the Shatterer , and are asking for volunteers” sometime before preevents get started).

a portal to the entry of the zone from where a npc starts running towards the event (similar to the outbreak-events in WvW). It’s really necessary imho. Today I played in this area to the north of Ebonhawke where I found this Ogre-Chieftain event. No one around and I had no chance of doing it alone. Why not spawn those portals in the main city (when there is actually something to do there) so that a few players come and help me. Don’t forget: those events happen anyway – town crier or not, so I can still explore and find those by accident.

Those criers spawn portals for random upcoming events, so the journey can’t be predicted and you’d see a lot of the world, stuff you missed, and now and then surprisingly a big dragon event. Take away those dragon-timers and a lot less people would participate in those encounters, making them challenging again.

Seriously: No to APIs, I hate that the game is somewhat played in a cheating-way. Tons of lag for people with older systems, the dragon gets zerged to death without any real strategy. People should play more different events instead of only the same 4. Give better rewards for those big eventchains and people would find out how much fun content the game actually has.

I’d also make these expeditions a daily achievement:

• use the crier-portal & beat the challenge

What happens: people who run around in the world find much more players helping them in those big forgotten eventchains. People on the map far away from the big event chain would see a group running behind a crier and find that big event that way.

Yaki.9563:

So I pay a subscription and play a game that when they do update, contains actual content for me to participate in on a regular basis.

Yeah, you get new content which destroyes the old content. As great as the Lich King or Illidan were, no one plays those today anymore because you’ve outleveled that content. In GW2 even the starter-areas are still relevant, we’ve seen this with Flame and Frost.

Yaki.9563:

Since I quit several months ago there have been updates, but nothing has really changed. I see no reason to come back and play more. So I pay a subscription and play a game that when they do update, contains actual content for me to participate in on a regular basis.

well you missed quite a lot of fun stuff, Molten Factory was the best dungeon in the game and SAB was tons of JP-fun.

I agree that all of that should have been permanent, but saying that nothing has changed is just not true. A lot has changed during those living story sections (and has been removed too )

ColinJohanson.2394:

As always all of your feedback and comments are greatly appreciated, we’ll continue to adapt and grow this strategy and concept as we go. As we’ve said before, we’re trying something very new and different here, and in some ways we’re learning along with all of you how we make a living world style game work.

I just wanted to say: respect to all the devs who are constantly criticized (sometimes rightfully, sometimes not) and nontheless work hard to please us.

I know it’s not feasible for the devs to reply in the suggestion forums what they like and what they dislike about certain ideas/suggestions, it would help us to know what you’re looking for though. Therefore I’d suggest: give us some ideas in which areas of the game you need new ideas urgently.

It’s just frustrating to write walls of text and no one replies on those suggestions.

Nike.2631:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

My hope would be that it is done by guilds, and that players can use the API info to time when the queen is up to go do it like they do the dragons now.

My hope would be you quit relying on junior woodchuck web programmers to create windows into information you want available to those of us who merely pay for your game – put a proper check box into the options so we can see the timers from inside the game!

I partly agree, there should be a gameplay-mechanic to inform us of those events. Not some timers which are totally breaking the illusion of being in a fantasy world imho. Create an NPC who opens small Asura-portals to the next upcoming event-chain so that people who haven’t found every event in the game have the chance to experience something they maybe haven’t before. Main cities would be a good location for those NPCs since those are pretty dead at the moment. Add some minigames and events to cities too, so that people have something to do while waiting on the next portal (which should spawn quite often because there are tons of event-chains / bigger events in the game).

Thanks Mastruq, I’d be happy to see some suggestions from you.

Anet released a lore-related video yesterday and it’s comments and number of people (less than 2600) who have watched it is quite telling https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WDe0griKlFI

I don’t like that stuff like that is considered supplementary since the info in the game is easily missed in the latest content. It should be ingame for everyone to experience, not only for 0.09% of the playerbase.

why would people who already have legendaries be favoured to get another one / more money? The biggest nonsense I read in these forums.

it was not stationary but during the event I played it it barely moved 5 meters.

My suggestion: give people more mid/long-term activities – things that need a bit of time-investment so that the time to the next content-patch doesn’t seem so long. Once a month would be quite enough if the result is better content.

examples:

• hard-mode events: you speak to the nearest heart vendor to unlock a hard-mode for events: your character get’s scaled down to a specific level and you have to survive the existing event without being killed. Add small bonus-objectives for the hardmode-player, like killing x enemies of type y or not letting any npc die. Reward with zone-specific skins.
• random expeditions: to guide people to the start of events they might have missed. Hearts are one kind of guide, this would be a new direction without adding a lot of new content (it’s already there but unseen by most): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/expeditions-to-world-events/first#post2109070
• new content in your home instance which keeps players busy: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Living-Story-enhances-the-home-instance/first#post2056809
• even more incentives to do events: do 15 unique events in a zone in a week to get a zone-token. (kind of a weekly zone- achievement): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/incentive-for-open-world-events-zone-weekly/first#post2057231
• new kinds of rewards and bonus objectives for events: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Event-variations-reward-ideas/first#post2022192
• dungeon secrets which reward exploring: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/flameandfrost/on-randomness-of-drops/first#post1967620
• open world collectible sets: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/collectible-gonna-get-them-all-effect/first#post1970563
• incentives to do each single one of the jumping puzzles in the game. Non generic. Like a specific weapon-set token you get after you’ve completed all of the JPs. Then choose one weapon from a new set. Make it reset after one completion so that you can get another token after the first round. So someone who wants, for example, the new skin for his dual daggers would have to do each JP in the game twice. Once for each weapon.
• Guild mission signifiers. Guild missions are great, however hard to find ongoing ones. Make those easier to find: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Guild-Missions-signifier-NPC/first#post2134172
• some solo-progression ideas: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/hybrid-of-Guild-Missions-and-Solo-progression/first#post1929686

in short: there can be a lot of new activities without having to create a lot of new content. Just use the existing stuff and make it more accessible and/or add bonus-objectives with new specific rewards. In the end it’s the rewards that make most people come back. For proof see how many grind the Legendaries, which is a very tedious activity. People do it anyway.

Just add new skins for all big activities and people will enjoy them much more, since it makes those activities more meaningful. Skins for completing long-term achievements, skins for completion of Jumping Puzzles, skins for finding a specific number of events in a zone, skins, skins, skins. Or even better: new kinds of rewards like new bags (which for example have colored slots so that they can be easier spotted in the combined-bag) or unlock a new kind of progression (like collecting environmental weapons for permanent use). People want to feel rewarded, especially in mmos.

I don’t mean no disrespect when I say: I’m disappointed with the quality of the latest content.

There are honest statements from developers who mention that there was not enough time or there were not enough ressources to do this and that and I respect that. Anet’s credo was “when it’s done” and I certainly can’t feel it here, a lot of things feel rushed to me.

• generic non-rewarding rewards from npc-vendors after a challenging (to coordinate) pre-event chain (Karka-queen).
• very bland Meta-Event with a boss-battle which shows no sign of originality (throwing eggs to reduce a shield isn’t that interesting really)
• using the same 3d-model for a boss which was used quite often on the island – it’s like just fighting a bigger version of a veteran with more health.
• the lack of cutscenes (in the first part of the Last Stand Event) which ties in with…
• a mess of storytelling. How many people are aware who Canach is and what he has done?

I feel this all could have been much more. From what I’ve got from user posts people expected:

• new armor skins OR at least something rewarding from the new vendors. People don’t want to buy anything from them, look how the price of Karkashells dropped http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37897
• A Meta-Event which would be on par with the planed reworking of the world-bosses to be much more interesting
• A new creature which uses the tentacle / sclerite-theme (and probably much bigger – like the fractals-metaboss)
• an evolution of the cutscenes from Flame and Frost. It was a good start last month and people seemed to love it
• I didn’t expect the lack of storytelling at all.

I certainly can see that the team spent a lot of thought into this, since they improved on some aspects from Flame and Frost.

• the achievement-rewards were really customer-friendly. You didn’t have to play PvP to get the backbags. You didn’t have to do every achievement. This is really a step forward in the direction of the new daily-achievements
• the hated RNG-boxes now drop in the open world too. (still, people hate RNG because the droprates are simply too bad) A step forward indeed. The +200% Magicfind is helping here too. The intention was a good one but in the end RNG was still a letdown imho.
• permanent content. This is what we wanted. Thanks for listening, really appreciate! People who made a break find more content to do instead of standing disappointed and leaving soon after.
• a new scavenger-hunt. Seriously, we love that stuff. Everything that rewards people for exploring the beautiful world is a good thing. This should get much more attention really, since dynamic events are the core of the game and spread all over the world – but a lot of them never seen by anyone because there’s no incentive to explore. No real rewards other than the nice scenery for high level players.
• challenging enemies & events. I know karka and those drakes aren’t new. Still they haven’t been nerved and are as challenging as they’ve been. People really learn to fight those beasts which is a good thing. The events where Karka take over the camps are great, the waves feel quite threatening most of the time and it’s not a no-brainer. I’d love to see events in that difficulty in the future too. More chains would be nice though – telling a story.
• an interesting mini-boss. Canach received quite a lot of criticism but when you look at the comparison: in Flame and Frost we got Cragstead where you’d have to defeat wave after wave of enemies which was kind of boring. Now instead you had a new mechanic which had to be learned. This is a wonderful thing.
• a new mini-game. I loved it because there was a learning-curve which was imho nicely paced. I was quite bad in the beginning but when I got the hang of it I was quite successful dodging five other people and evading those big Karkas.

You see, there are quite a lot of improvements which proves that the team is at it with heart and they want to design the best content they can. I really wonder how much more this content could have been if they’d had more time and ressources. Sure, if you ask people how often they want new things they’d say more often rather than once a month… but in the end it’s the result that counts.

one question to the designers of these boss battles: have you ever played other mmos with raids? If not, please try it. It seems you have no idea how fun boss-encounters can be, even without the holy trinity (most good boss encounters ignore the trinity).

who actually enjoyed this battle and why? Seriously, you just stand there and dodge out of the red circles (which most of the time are hard to see because of all those particles) and constantly press 1.

the best raid bosses in other games won’t require the “holy trinity” so it would be very possible to get ideas from those. It would be wise to learn from others strenghts and weaknesses instead of making all mistakes by yourself and learning much slower.

quite telling that games like WoW have more movement involved in boss battles (not talking about dodging) than GW2 in those.

I’m pretty disappointed too, the OP put this criticism into a very well designed post.

I fell like Roberts team just hasn’t enough time to develop a interesting boss encounter. I liked the pre-events very much, you had to coordinate with 3 other groups to get the camps clear.

If I’d have to decide what Anet should learn from this living story part I’d say:

• add more like those pre-event to the other bosses. For example: the Shatterer spawns only when 4 areas are under players control. This would pretty much change the whole look-at-dragon-timer-and-wait-for-the-volunteers-to-do-the-pre “disaster”.
• work on real mechanics for bosses. There must be a way to create interesting encounters for more than 30 players…

e.g. learning a rhythm of deadly aoe in order to survive. Best example: Heigan the Unclean http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060913222517/wowwiki/images/d/d8/Heigandance.jpg
this could wipe whole raids when they don’t know the mechanic.

So create this real risky battles and reward them with real good rewards. And be creative with rewards. Always rares is boring – add a chance to get a nice skin. The argument Anet had for not implementing specific skins was that players should feel free to play wherever they want. This isn’t true at the moment, players go to those specific meta-events which reward guaranteed rares. Why not giving them a nice skin with a 1:10 chance? (but only if it’s a real risk, not like it is now)

I thought they show off with this battle what they will and can do to the existing meta-events in terms of challenging rewarding content. I like the pre-events and the coordination involved very much… but the battle itself:

• the same model as the champion-karka… very disappointed
• no interesting mechanic at all… not even quite a bit. Throwing eggs… come on, is this the best you can do? Is it really the time-restrictions

…if it’s the time-restrictions, for the love of god please Anet, spend more time in making content and make it real good. This is just another auto-attack Meta-Event, and because of the lackluster presentation (no unique boss-monster) one of the worst imho. Despite the very good build-up.

I’d make collectibles out of them with a new slot (like the utility slots). Once you’ve found one it is unlocked (similar to Ranger pets) and from now on you can switch them in and out (like Engineers kits) whenever you like. There should be a cooldown instead the weapon braking. This would bring

• more utility in the PvE game
• a collectible mini-game
• now there could be those puzzles the OP is talking about, because you can take the environmental weapon to any places in the PvE-world instead of only in that area where you’ve found those.

I’d also suggest, to make this new slot an unlockable once you’ve done a very huge challenge.

I agree, they have such decent faces for their art but use only boy-faces in the game
http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-11/art/gw2-human-orrian-battle.jpg

also Norn & Human need more beards imho; I favoured the GW1-Norn and there isn’t 1 beard which resembles those.

Havana.8625:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

can you elaborate? Do you want a guaranteed yellow item for each drop?

Like many players, I also hate RNG and I can testify: I have never heard any player demanding a guaranteed yellow from every drop. That is ridiculous.

In Guild Wars 1, they realized how annoying RNG is, so they came up with a different system for DoA. Instead of giving a guaranteed high level item for every single drop, they gave tokens you could save to get an armbrace, and then the armbraces could be used to get the very hard to get skins.

You seem to think there are only two options: rares everywhere or the ridiculous gambling RNG system they have now. There are others.

haha no, I’m aware of that… it was only an example. We have dungeon-specific tokens at the moment, so I’m fine with this system in dungeons – but it’s harder to create a token-system for the open world. I’d actually like it: give each zone zone-specific tokens that drop from mobs. —> zone-specific rewards. But only for event-mobs and not for repeating the same event in that week. Now people would actually go out there and look for events. There would also be a hardcap per week so that people won’t feel forced to do this.