Guild Wars 2

starlinvf.1358:

I wouldn’t call a month “nothing”.

After 35 months I DO call a month nothing. And after 8 years of LotRO I still consider the farming quest that takes three months to complete (plant in summer , come back in the fall – real time) to be one of the most clever things in that game. There is nothing wrong with activities you can’t bull your way through faster than the next guy with massive quantities of free time.

I’ve played games that scaled exp so high, it would take a month to get 1 level.

Are you coming to a point with this example? If so I’ll wait. Probably not a month though…

Ascended armor on the other hand is in the realm of a practical project by its Stat rating. Its the highest form crafting that actually yields functional results. However, its requirements are incredibly steep, and ORIGINALLY had no bonus, nor any other purpose then to house infusions for high level fractals.

You and I remember the introduction of the ascended tier very differently. They ALWAYS had a modest gain in stat points (5%) under my little blue sky.

But then you have a whole exotic line on this time gate. Thats 5 days to create 1 piece of gear, which wouldn’t sensible to use until you’ve assembled a full set.

Again with the total nonsense. If you are aiming for Celestial stats,every single piece is a step forward, and you put them on as you get them. Unless you are arbitrarily stomping on your own foot so you can come to the boards and complain about it…. oh.

Quartz was introduced July 9, 2013. 24 MONTHS AGO. It can be bought from the Trade Post at any time day or night. You have had OVER 700 opportunities to make charged quartz crystals. 700. It takes 30 to make a full set of armor. No one who wants it that badly hasn’t been able to get it by the double fistfuls.

Huh.

Since they don’t have to come with a “special effect” your entire premise is faulty.

And I really doubt they’re are going to code something that needs to adapt to 17 other possible effects AND has to be expanded on every time they add another Legendary.

Notsoperky.4291:

30 days per set. 4-5 sets for different rune layouts. Add in a couple alts and it’s stretching past a year for the time gating.

I gotta know: What three or more rune sets are you running with Celestial on a single profession?

The alts thing? You’re trying to convince us that you are so meticulously detail oriented as to run multiple rune set but you don’t invest the effort to promote the gear to Ascended – which makes it account bound?

A year or more. Yeah, right.

30 days. It take 30 days to charge up enough quartz for a full set of exotic armor, that then gets promoted to ascended status (with more time-gated mats you can be working on simultaneously) making it account bound and you never have to make another piece in that weight class ever again in the multi-year life of the game.

I think people have had maybe a little too much instant gratification. A whole month to achieve a terminal goal in an MMO is NOTHING.

Silverkey.2078:

2) you can have full condi damage with only 1 stat instead of 3 for direct damage. So you can be more defensive while dealing only slightly less damage than a zerker.

This is just flat out wrong. Condition Damage is analogous to Power. That direct damage has the OPTION to massively multiply it’s offensive effectiveness by pouring points into two more stats doesn’t make condition damage better. its one of the principle reasons condition damage can never catch up to what direct damage builds are dishing out.

If you stack power and use your other points for survivability the way condition damage builds are FORCED TO, you’d see similar results: much lower damage output and higher survivability.

Whose condition cleanse are you talking about that they don’t have to make sacrifices to have it?

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Are we keeping anything this time?

No. You’re not. Beta progress almost never translates into permanent progress in any game in the history of the human race.

Is it all again a waste?

If you’re looking to line your pockets, yes. If you’re there to help them polish the game before release, no, it’s definitely not a waste.

Meaning we should focus on testing and not getting a thing in return.

I know enlightened self-interest is hard, but finding/reporting bugs and contributing to metrics gathering gets you a BETTER GAME come launch day, so testers always get something in return.

I’m also one of those worried of getting a precursor and being told to blow it up or give it to a Skritt because they love shynies.

Living in fear is unhealthy.

Fashion Mage.3712:

I’m fine with the bow; I’m not fine with it being a ranger wannabe bow.

Rangers would think they’d died and gone to Arrow-Heaven to have the guardian’s bow skills.

Mike.3460:

1. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Liked-the-ready-up-name-still-doesn-t-fit/first#post5048195 The comparsion of the Dragonhunter to the medival Witch Hunters and other parts of it make him actually sound like a religious fanatic… which isn’t exactly something one would appreciate.

Not liking that people get zealous doesn’t mean zealous people shouldn’t exist in a setting. Or understand the context – standing in fanatical opposition an actual tangible genocidal force actively slaughtering your people. Every fighting member of the Vigil is called a ‘crusader’ and if you don’t think that name has a stink on it for some people…

2. As mentioned countless times, all Chars in GW2 are hunting Dragons.

I genuinely don’t understand the rampaging pedantry required to make this argument. Its like saying no one could be called “the Driver” as a sign of respect for their specific skills because all of us can drive.

3. His Ultimate actually is in shape of a Dragon… which is kind of a no brainer when we’d imagine him to be against Dragons or anything related to them.

And so is their armor. I’d guess because the Dragonhunter is drawing on the classic archetype of turning a portion of a vastly powerful ememy’s power/energy against that enemy. But maybe you’re on the right track with the Dev’s intent and the Dragonhunters see themselves as inheritors of knowledge that’s been handed down from Glint. She’s certainly has been influencing the world again through the Revenants.

4. In GW1, Glint (Prophecies / EotN) and Kuunavang (Factions) were essential allies, so it’s not like there’s a eternal history of Dragons being the ultimate evil, which has to be whiped out.

Glint is a traitor to the dragons, an exception to the rule that is currently grinding the world beneath it’s heel. If you’re unclear that modern Tyrians are pretty dang certain dragon = bad, you may want to replay the personal story .

I hope we see some in-game, in-setting justification for all the Especs.

I’m not sure how I’d name this specialisation myself, but I’d like to think of him as something like a Castle Defender, where Longbows were used to actually Guard the castle, as this would go well with the Guardian’s Background IMO.

Alternatively, it would be a possibility to make him go along as something like the embodyment of the good Dragons (mentioned above), as Dragon Archer (or so).
Besides clearing eventual questions about his Ultimate, it would also have a nice ring to it.

Sure, Dragon Archer is an alternative, although I think ‘hunter’ provably does a better job than ‘archer’ in conveying both the archers & traps aspect of the skill set the Espec offers.

Rauderi.8706:

Y’know, if Brahm is going to be the first Dragonhunter, Guaranger, Rangdian, etc, couldn’t they at least spice it up with some sort of fake-Norse name?
Just.. nothing with a ‘J’ in it, please. I still want to throw haymakers at he improper pronunciation.

From what we’ve been told he’s probably NOT the first Dragonhunter. The Devs seemed to feel there is/was a whole sect of them running around. But we’ll have to see. Story stuff is kind of in flux until it hits the live servers.

Its not black or white but it is Cost vs. Return and the people that care very much about continuing to have jobs/get paid and who have actual data have made their appraisal of that consideration VERY CLEAR.

When its worth it, they’ll do it. As long as it’s not, they won’t. And no amount of blind presumption about the hardware of their entire playerbase made by an individual player is going to mean diddly squat in that calculation.

MAGpie.7962:

44 pages, and the ONLY response from Anet is, “we merged the thread”.

Because we wouldn’t want to consider the possibility that’s all the response it deserves… Some of us actually find it a bit of a relief from the lexicon of stock fantasy names that comes bubbling up when people run across something new that doesn’t match their vision.

Anet… you may not have noticed, but there is a lot of people who don’t like this silly place-holder you assigned to the Guard elite. Could you please reveal the real one for us?

Or maybe they’ve noticed its a couple of people who are really vocal and the Dev’s aren’t holding a poll or asking for your opinion about how they should name a new class in their setting and NEVER WERE.

Who knows? Maybe between now and launch they’ll be in the mood to be second guessed into submission by armchair fantasy writers with zero real stake in the outcome and who don’t have to measure the costs.

But I doubt it.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Am i misreading this or is the only way to get a legendary backpack is through fractals?

You are reading it wrong. The only way to get the backpack being shown includes some activity in the fractals. Probably since just about everything about it screams “fractal weapons styling”.

DaikonSamurai.6714:

It’s not the size that matters it’s how you use it.

And Zuko knows exactly how to use it!

Well played, sir!

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

I think the recent tinfoil theories about the release date being pushed back because of players expressing concerns over the amount of maps etc has some merit.

Which raises the question “pushed back from what?” People just assume they are/were aiming for the anniversary, and yet it’s been obvious for a while now that’s not gonna happen simply because there’s a certain amount of lead time between announcement and delivery.

And if the date is slipping compared to their internal expectations, you can bet they are dang glad to have not given a public date yet.

Phy.2913:

There’s going to be bugs and other problems regardless of how long it takes or how many beta tests they have.

Its charming the way you use “bugs” to include the whole range from 2 typoes (bugs being plural after all) to nerdrage inferno levels of cascading crashes.

Yes, there will OF COURSE be “bugs”. There may or may not be a parade of bugs that make you want to put a fist through your monitor, and beta tests can an do have an impact on which end of the spectrum a release will fall… It doesn’t have to be perfect to be better.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Yes, the item has been reintroduced to the Gem Store. I will pass along your input regarding the corrected outfit.

Please as pass along “Load these assets into a set of light armor skins since they were OBVIOUSLY built using the light armor template and thousands of us will BUY THAT ARMOR SET.”

Keep making outfits. Knock yourselves out on them…

But ALSO release them as armor.

I’m pretty sure the work goes neither faster — nor slower — when the natives get restless.

The options are do it well a bit later or rush it. Rushing it has buried far more launches that doing it well a bit later has.

There are definitely some cool models already in game begging to be re-purposed for more Ranger pets.

Astralporing.1957:

Looking at the “cohesive theme” of Tempest and its warhorn, i don’t hold too much hope for thieves.

That you don’t understand the connection between storms and warhorns in the lore of Tyria doesn’t mean the link is not there…

I’m way more interested in a pole-vaulting in-close acrobatic fighting style twirling a staff than a park-and-wait-off-in-the-distance sniper, given how badly this game takes a dump on ranged damage builds for any profession.

I mean, they could a rifle-based Espec for Thieves, but the laws of physics (and damage coefficients) in Tyria would actually outright forbid it from being good.

I hope they sink some time into new pet AI before new pets that can’t hit moving targets…

Clustering Illusion

Zero Day.2594:

They never said that weapon repetition is on or off the table.

And why would they? Feeding somebody’s OCD craving for symmetry that doesn’t actually generate benefit for the game is just shooting yourself in the foot as a game designer.

Linken.6345:

oh that staff wielding picture you found could be a revenant, do revenant wield a staff oh yes they do.

Do revenants wear medium armor…? Not so much.

They don’t usually have their images tagged ‘thief’ either.

Forgemaster.

Add seriously, why all the pining for this or that weapon now, now now? Getting the weapon you think is the most obvious match on the first round isn’t actually a good thing. Better to get your favorite combination after they’ve gotten a little more experience under their belts.

A melee-staff acrobat thief would be amazing. And so would a rifle sniper thief. Or a burn-your-village, take-your-stuff torch-wielding brigand thief. There’s fun and evocative themes for almost any profession/weapon combo with just the teeniest bit of imagination.

Come on people – get real. Elite spec characters can still take any two of the other 5 lines. Which means Druids (and ALL future Ranger E-specs) will ALWAYS have access to traits that work with pets, which means they will ALWAYS have pets around to be affected by those traits. They could do all kinds of crazy stuff with the pet itself… but there will still always be a pet (and some form of pet swapping) for those traits to hook on to.

An elite spec that’s better in the hands of a focused competent player able to read animations and strongest when playing as part of a team instead of a roving lone wolf?

My goodness. ANet may actually get me to enjoy running my poor dusty Elementalist again. Now, what other trait lines should I be running with it…?

(Time to stock up on Superior Runes of the Trooper…)

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Uden Reavstone.3426:

Now that the Revenant has weapon swapping, will weapon swap sigils still trigger on Legend swapping? Sorry if this has already been asked.

On swap sigils will trigger both from weapon swap and invoking a legend for the next iteration you all get to play. It’ll be a thing we have to see how it plays out and address whether it stays or goes away after the feedback we get.

Like that’s not gonna break in about 3 seconds in the hands of min/maxers…

There is zero reason for the new golden child to be able to double-tap those effects.

Oh dear, the Devs could make an obvious and grotesque balancing mistake of the exact sort they check for every second of every day with their game metrics tracking, thereby throwing their player base into a tizzy and sink the game.

Or they might not be idiots, but instead the caretakers of a tens-of-millions-of-dollars-per-quarter undertaking with years of experience not ramming the ship right onto the rocks at full speed (I’m talking the design team – marketing at ANet throws out some epic fail that should be career terminating in my book).

I’m pretty sure which way I’d bet.

They’ve also said they’re looking for overall balance not slavish adherence to patterns that will lock them down and make Especs even harder to produce in the future. “Something else” is just as likely to be a 2% up-tic in damage coefficient to make one of those handful of weapon skills really sweet.

Foverine.5342:

I’m actually really intrigued by this Warhorn, since it seems those that get 2-handed weapons (guardian, Necro) get existing Profession mechanics edited, and those that get an off-hand (Mesmer) get an extra skill (f5 shatter). I wonder how that would apply to Elementalist? a Fifth attunement sounds a bit crazy lol.

I think you are WAY over-extrapolating from a sample size of “those aren’t patterns yet”

Silhouette.5631:

Guardian here. Glad to see another class with mobility as bad as us. Welcome brothers. Also please don’t ever say we have more swiftness options than you. Seriously. Thank you.

Seriously. Looked at the title and thought ‘did the OP even LOOK at the other classes before trying to hyperbole their way into the Devs’ ignore file?’

Want to make real change? Start with real claims.

Most players want to be challenged – but the real working definition of challenge is “so hard that I still win”. Most players want to be “challenged”… Very, very few players want to be beaten. Or to have to try again. Or to improve when faced with adversity.

Its the invisible, but incredibly deep divide between players that after overcoming a new encounter on the first try say to themselves “I’m so awesome!” and “Got it first try… why am I even doing something so incredibly dull?”

ANet has correctly identified which group plays their bills.

Mysticjedi.6053:

You think if this keeps getting bumped they’ll consider changing the name? They listened to Revenant feedback.
Judicator sounds cool. I like Zealot, personally, or Paragon.

Bumped by the same people, over and over (myself included)? Filled with posts pulling entries from the lexicon of generic fantasy careers? Folks claiming game design is so simple you can just swap out the class name as if name, theme and abilities don’t influence each other during design steps that took place 6-10 months ago?

No. I really don’t.

Odds are you saw the heal skill animation and thought it was a weapon animation.

It might make for interesting inspiration in the future.

You can have up to 64 character slots. Nine is cute, but ultimately not that big of an improvement over 7.

That said I support a manual opt-in system to switch to a player-directed sorting order instead of sorting by most recently played. But I don’t prioritize it all that highly over about 300 other QoL suggestions floating around for the game.

Is there evidence that the changes don’t also improve PvE parity? I mean beyond “it’s a downgrade for a class I play and I don’t like it”?

“Play how you want” is a advertising catchphrase that any and every good designer will ignore. Its meaningless. It implies sitting in Lion’s Arch chatting should carry the same rewards as systematically harvesting high end nodes across Orr – something that never will and never should happen. Its a poorly phrased and easily misconstrued presentation of “All player character builds should offer similar impact and value in play” (not as catchy, but also not so easily misread). If you are just wanting to chat in Lion’s Arch then you can “play how you want” because all builds are roughly equal for that. If you want to harvest nodes all builds you “can play how you want” because they are roughly equal for doing that (sure, stealth builds can go a little faster on some of them).

So if you want to advance your character you can “play how you want” because all builds are roughly equal but YOU STILL HAVE TO ACTUALLY GET OUT AND DO REWARDING TASKS. Chatting in Lion’s Arch won’t get you Hero Points any more than spending a hour harvesting nodes does. You can’t do whatever and get any and every reward you want.

And I think you’re wrong. We’ve already seen exactly how furious existing players get when new player’s get something and they don’t. You think telling the playerbase “New players will get access to all styles for free and old players can lump it” won’t be another meltdown?

Its not bugged. That’s why they “missed it”. Its unintended/unexpected behavior because their in-house team is both too small and not sufficiently weasel-ish to properly detect and report easily exploitable behaviors in groups larger than 5. Like most companies they lack HOSTILE testers whose soul job is to break the system rather than to provide rubber-stamp validation it doesn’t crash when used in the most obvious and pedestrian fashion.

Though “players might want to drop overlapping buff fields” is pretty obvious…

Given that multiple sources of Battle Presence don’t grant multiple stack sof HoT, I’m pretty sure they can lock this down to one buff no matter how many sources pretty quickly. The switches are already in place.

They’ll have no trouble finding animations for melee staff thieves’ weapon skills.

Fortunately introverts have money, so they’re unlikely to go completely ignored. And given they just rebuilt the personal story to NOT require team play, I think ANet recognizes and wants to serve that market segment despite some serious gaffs at launch.

Honestly blowing a horn and generating storm effects seems really fitting to me. Maybe its just some old D&D horn of blasting gaming DNA floating around, but I’m largely looking forward to it.

Looks like Meteorlogicus may get a bit more popular.

Funny thing is we knew we were gonna get most of these things 4 months ago… and didn’t see nearly enough outrage back then.

You KNOW at some point there will be an elite spec that gives Elementalists access to the warhorn. Now is no better or worse than later. Now may even be slightly better than later when they have more room to maneuver to deal with a conceptually tricky tool. And right now they are very interested in promoting Support specs, and warhorn is much more Support than DPS in most existing examples.

Ya’ all know wings support the bird’s entire bodyweight when gliding, and are stiff enough to generate THRUST when flapping… This can’t be a secret known only to bird owners.

There is nothing realistic about the new wing physics… unless the goal was to mimic mediocre cosplay.

Because “we’ve revealed all major features” and “they’re hiding a dungeon from us” go together so well…