Guild Wars 2

Siege that requires more than one player to operate sounds pretty interesting.

WvW feels very empty without white swords.

It’s pretty hard to land a hit on someone with them.

PPK is good since it punishes players that throw themselves endlessly at objectives.

The only issue is that they need to make the Borderland Bloodlust buff more compelling if this would be permanent.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think it would be good to value both the journey and the rewards and not focus exclusively on the end result. The sub-80 you party with today, the sub-50 you teach the ropes, may become your new guildie or a valued fractal/dungeon partner in the future.

I take on board not everyone wants to go this route, but I think in the long run it can be quite rewarding in ways that are more valuable than gold and tokens.

Many other MMOs don’t expect players to be altruistic but instead have systems that encourage this kind of behavior by rewarding players.

For example: In Tera Online, players who have done a dungeon less than 10 times were labeled as “rookies”, and these rookies gave their whole group 10% more damage, an extra drop off of the bosses, and they protected everyone from any costs associated with 1 party wipe. (Dying in that game could be expensive)

It certainly didn’t stop all elitism, but it rewarded parties that making the sacrifice of teaching new players about the dungeon.

Even though making WvW a more hardcore experience sounds tempting to experienced players, WvW would become a very empty place without its less hardcore / more casual crowd.

The way downed state zooms in and removes our UI has always been very disorienting and annoying.

It’s because the reward structure is pretty lackluster with a grindy rank system. Also, once someone gets about 1,400 WvW ranks, they have nothing to spend their ability points on.

There are restrictions on who you can whisper while in WvW.

The concept is server is really only relevant for WvW.

Virtute.8251:

Judging the evidence while ignoring the hear say. That causing your brain to hurt is irrelevant to how evidence-based judgement should work.

• He was in World vs. World while unkillable with live players.
• He wasn’t invisible.
• He knew he wasn’t invisible because people were attacking him.
• While being aware of all of the above, he changed his teams twice.

If he didn’t want to disrupt the play of their customers, he would have made himself invisible. Most, if not all Game Masters are invisible. This guy was either incredibly stupid or being intentionally disruptive.

I’m not going by any hearsay of “swapping to Mesmer” and “portaling people in.” The things above are things he shouldn’t have been doing. If he was “testing something”, they have their own internal testing environment for that. Why? So it doesn’t disrupt live players.

I really like the people who keeps saying the guy “forgot to make himself invisible” after he was being attacked and nuked by many players. He sure didn’t forget how to swap his team though.

This thread makes my brain hurt.

I would try to explain what’s wrong with someone who is invulnerable and swapping teams in a competitive environment, but that would be a waste of time since anyone defending it is clearly beyond any reasonable or cohesive thoughts.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

I gave two examples. Neither were realistic?

Your example of “shooting fire” and “shooting water” are only cosmetically different. You can achieve balance by homogenizing everything, but that begs the question: If the classes are identical mechanically then there’s no point in them being “different” in the first place. I wouldn’t call your examples “unrealistic”, but more like not applicable. Confining your arguments within the parameters of Guild Wars 2 would achieve a stronger premise I think.

I also was confused as to why you fixated on me saying “optimal” and then went on a tirade about math. You yourself agreed to the point that "The more variables you introduce, the more likely it is that one option will be better. " Wasn’t this thread about the “Berserker’s gear meta”? Since I doubt you’re suggesting that someone wearing full Cleric’s is not sub-optimal in most PvE situations I don’t really know what it is you’re trying to argue for anymore. It just seems like people are caught up in semantics right now.

Because building maps is probably a lot of work.

You only bring as much defenses as is necessary and then you load up on as much damage as possible. This will always be true if the way you defeat an encounter is to reduce its health to 0 via dealing damage. Dealing more damage will always be the optimal solution.

There are two types of damage in this game: Direct damage, and condition damage. No matter what the “meta” is, one of those two will be optimal. Even if direct damage and condition damage were somehow equalized, some professions would be more optimal as direct damage and others as condition damage.

And there will always be an optimal solution to any problem.

Why can’t I ride mounts in Guild Wars 2? That’s how I want to play. I’d also like to fly too.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this game has not been and never will allow the freedom to play every whim and fancy you have. The whole concept is flawed. If there is an optional way to play, there’s also always going to be an optimal way to play. Your choices end up being simply picking between an option in relation to the best one. (Why wouldn’t you always choose the best one?) Achieving perfect asynchronous balance between choices is impossible.

“Play how I want” is just some entitled community drivel that’s chanted to justify, “I don’t like this, change it because [reasons].” This is a game, and by the definition of “playing the game” you are playing by (and therefore confined to) the rules set forth by this game.

Play the game, or don’t; but you don’t make the rules unless you make the game.

Try dodge jumping the gap and you will land there every time.

JefTheReaper.1075:

I just want the ability to enjoy doing a dungeon run, right now its ether a boring chore.
I ended up finishing a fair share of dungeons to, but I honestly don’t see what people “like” about doing these runs, beside the rewards.

“Why don’t you like the things I like?”

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then I suggest you simply try doing something else. Most people like the way things are one reason or another and you’re pretty selfish to expect the game to be changed just to meet your expectations. If you don’t like dungeons, then maybe you’re just not the target audience and it’s time you just admit that.

P.S. – There is no dungeon team and there hasn’t been for over two years, so nothing major is ever going to change anyways. (Not that any of your suggestions would have been improvements anyways)

GuzziHero.5104:

Basically, this is Anet again saying “Play how WE want you to play” aka trying to force us into WvW and PvP.

What the heck is it with Anet intentionally limiting options or trying to force us to play how we don’t want to?

Can anyone even link a direct quote where did ArenaNet ever say you can “Play how you want.” That just seems like some community hive-mind paraphrasing to me.

coglin.1867:

You 5 guys crying about white swords being gone, do understand the devs are smarter then you have a clue about right? They identify as easy as anyone that this thread is simply the same 5 guys bouncing the same complaint off of one another.

Oddly enough, you seriously believe back handed insults and bad mouthing the dev team will get them to see things your way?

Arguments that are made without evidence can be refuted with just as much. Especially fallacious ones like yours. Appealing to authority isn’t really going to get you anywhere, especially the one you’re using. The WvW developers have made some pretty outrageous mistakes in the past and have made many questionable decisions. I have two words for you in case you forgot: Arrow Carts. (If I need to go into details about this, then you probably do not WvW much)

The lack of white swords is an interesting experiment, but it’s going pretty much the way everyone expected. Scouting is needed more than ever, but scouting is still a very boring, uninteresting and unrewarding role.

One thing most players didn’t anticipate is that it’s much more difficult to identify what the enemy is doing on the other side of the map. Previously, Red Team could see that there are white swords on Blue Team’s keep and assume that Green Team is attacking them. They could then use this information and react to it, or plan for it. Without a forward scout on the enemy armies, it’s not possible to get this information anymore.

In short, this change puts a larger burden on scouting and unless you’re willing to do it very often, it’s pretty hypocritical to defend it.

Seera.5916:

If you aren’t following the meta, you don’t need to fixate on the meta. Just know roughly what it is so you don’t join a group that’s obviously one.

But then how can I have my cake and eat it too? I want to benefit from players running meta builds while not having to play one myself.

Personally I don’t think it’s gone far enough. If the goal was to disorient the average player, they should remove the overworld map and mini-map as well.

On a serious note: The change is overall bad. Most players are disoriented without the swords, and it’s difficult to gauge who is winning because of PPK. Killing players can be more war score than PPT, but it’s a fairly invisible system to keep track of. Your team could be doing fine, but the other team could be benefiting from feeding off of the third. It’s hard to gauge who is currently more powerful on the map because of this, and this is a bad thing for anything except the most organized of players.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

No offense

Ironically, nothing non-offense has ever followed those words in the history of mankind.

The system works.

Optimal and viable do not mean the same thing. Many of the stats you mentioned have their place in WvW and sPvP. Conditions are the meta-damage of PvP as are defensive stats. Going pure glass-cannon is very risky there. ArenaNet seems very reluctant to split skills so any change made for PvE would also have an affect on PvP.

Basically when your party is the size of two, the “kick player” option is just “leave party.”

spoj.9672:

Tao.5096:

Enaretos.8079:

- I got into an AC run with two guardians a thief and a warrior as I was on elementalist.

TA Marona – 3 Guardians and 0 Reflect Shield.
Happened few more times with different groups.

You cant reflect or block malrona anymore.

Maybe he wanted Light Field for the Area Retaliation.

I remember this guy; did a Fractal with him. He’s one of those guys who blames everyone else when he dies, is extremely rude, and simply annoying, barking orders like he knows what he’s doing. (You might have seen him with a Commander tag on, lol) This guy is just sad because he used to be able to say, “You can’t kick me, I started the instance.” Yep; he straight up said that.

OP, I’ll say to you now what I said to you then: I’m glad attitudes like yours are going to get what they deserve.

Anyone who reads between the lines will see that most of your “wall of shame” could only have been the result of the temper tantrums of a passive-aggressive, painfully below-average know-it-all.

“Forum Specialists” are GW2’s version of Blizzard’s MVPs.

I think the title of this thread is going to attract a lot of hostility and trolls that don’t actually read your post. That said, I think some of the ideas are nice and would make WvW more interesting.

One thing I’m not a huge fan of is more PvE creatures engaging in attacks in WvW. This is mostly because of how one Guard can rally an entire army when it dies.

I think some people have a bad impression of “adding more PvE to my WvW.” I think when done correctly, adding more PvE elements is not a bad thing. League of Legends which is a PvP game has some PvE elements like creeps and jungle creatures. It’s really about how they fit with the game.

Maybe the better solution would be to just make all melee skills hit at 1,200 range.

Vayne.8563:

In any event why should two vendors sell the exact same item for such a huge difference in price?

The 16 copper price is probably a bug.

spoj.9672:

We all know even anet arent stupid enough to make such a drastic change.

You can rest assured that even if this the original post was a good suggestion (it isn’t), ANet won’t change anything because of PvP! It’s extremely rare that they implement a significant class change solely for PvE, and it’s even rarer that they would change anything for dungeons specifically.

It’s funny when people say, “Let me know what you guys think!” when they don’t really.

There is trolling, and then there is disagreement. You would do better to not conflate the two.

I don’t know why people think evening out the WvW population would suddenly “fix” WvW. This would spread the collective community so thin than there would be next to nothing to do. The overall size of the WvW community has been shrinking since day one. People do not go to Tier 1 servers because they’re “stacked.” They go there because they want to actually play WvW. Many of the other NA servers have significant periods of dead hours. Tier 1 is not teeming with life at every moment, but it’s in a much better place than many of the other servers.

The WvW population has been in decline, and so some players who enjoy the game time and active communities go to where they still exist.

There is no dungeon team, so not sure who would build them.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The proper solution here is to make GL’s projectiles non-reflectable. That’ll stop this and make the fight more interesting in general.

Shouldn’t the proper solution be to make his projectiles actually originate from its hands?

Vayne.8563:

I’ve spoken out about the changes to the later chapters.

You sure did.

Vayne.8563:

It was a good change because of the situation in Orr.

It’s pretty stupid how all projectiles originate from the bottom and center of everything. Happens with everything. WvW Trebuchet, the Triple Trouble Wurm, etc. The animations are all lies.

Vayne.8563:

(snip) irrelevant stuff (snip)

You backtrack at least three times with the first chapter of the Personal Story 2.0. There’s nothing more unnatural than that with regards to map flow. Queensdale is very poorly designed from a leveling perspective without the Personal story guiding the player around it the way it used to. It’s backtrack city now.

I don’t expect to convince someone (you) who is defending the butchering of the later chapters of the Personal Story, and then says the old way was more “unnatural.” Laughable.

Vayne.8563:

In some ways, the old way was more artificial than the new way because it was always split up, but before it was by levels.

You weren’t paying attention at all to how Queensdale and the human personal story flowed together if you think that. I don’t know how you can call the new way less artificial when they lumped them together into arbitrary chapters, when they were originally designed to be done as the player was progressing through Queensdale.

There’s an awful lot of backtracking with the new way now. For example: A level 10 player will have already finished with the Bandithaunt Cavers, (level 5 area) but the Personal Story will take the player back there at around level 11. Before, you’d just go there at (surprise, surprise) level 5 when it was level appropriate. But hey, that was more artificial!

Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is the best crafting system of any MMO. I’m sorry you didn’t understand it enough to actually make any informed decision about it. That game took its crafting seriously. Leveling a Chef in FFXIV is as serious as leveling an Elementalist in GW2. It is its own class. Synthizing was a mini-game meant to keep it interesting and at times tense. The reason you could fail it is how hard someone was willing to push their craft to get the most out of it.

FFXIV actually did something different and interesting with their crafting. Guild Wars 2? You press a button and watch a bar move automatically. You can tip your hat to their quality-of-live improvements, but there is nothing new or interesting with how crafting works in GW2.

Wynne.3908:

In regard to your post I think adding some mechanics to existing bosses to punish stacking is a great idea. The bosses are just too easy in this game.

There is no dungeon team and hasn’t been for almost two years now by our estimate.

Stacking isn’t a problem; it’s a symptom.

Engaging: I want encounters that entertain me and engage me. Even though the Prime Hologram open-world boss was not that difficult, I felt engaged by it by its various mechanics.

Knowledge: If you do not do the mechanics properly, you can and should fail.

Skill: This will determine the “balance” of the fight, assuming that the group has the knowledge needed to win. I hope that there is a place for people desiring challenge and perhaps a more casual experience as well.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

So an enrage timer will make ppl more skilled ?
This is beyong me …. i dont really have words to describe it ….
Or will it make the encounter a DPS RACE like other games ?

As much as I hate going off-topic, I am going to reply to this: An enrage timer does not necessarily mean it’s a “DPS Race.” It’s sometimes there just to make sure people are doing the mechanics properly.

For example: Tequatl has an “enrage timer”, but it’s actually pretty generous. This was criticized heavily when it was first released, but on average groups kill him with lots of time to spare now. The players that win are also not perfectly optimized. Most of the time “enrage timers” only exist to make sure the fight does not persist longer than it should (on average) if the group is doing everything right.

For example:

• If a fight required the group to frequently interrupt a spell the boss casts or otherwise it will gain a buff making it immune to all damage, the groups that hit the enrage timer will always be those that simply fail at interrupting.

Crystal Reid.2481:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a
situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

The simplest solution is to just make certain skills that a creature casts interruptable even when it has Defiant. This would makes interrupts valuable in certain circumstances without letting a creature being “stun locked” to death.

I don’t think Defiant is really that bad in concept, it’s just poorly tuned. Defiant increases much too quickly with scaling; half of what it currently is should be better. Furthermore, a creature should be vulnerable to Crowd Control for a period of time instead of a single spell. For instance: When you strip the Defiant of a creature, Crowd Control and interrupts will land for 2 seconds.

STRanger.5120:

You know, there are mercenaries, but there are also frauds in the world

Are you just trolling, or are you really that obtuse?

I suggest you review this literature and actually educate yourself on ArenaNet’s policies on scamming and abusing their power to kick. Check it out

Michael Henninger.7451:

Now, in regards to getting booted -

It is not allowed and we will take action against accounts we find doing this. This is monitored in-game but if you are able to report please do so as thousands of eyes are better than a team of GMs.

The fact that there are people doing this simply sucks and needs to be corrected and I want to assure you that my team actively takes issues like these to production to raise awareness (as do other devs that frequent the forums). I have been approached by multiple leads on ways to correct and curb this behavior and the conversation is happening.

He also said this with regards to scamming:

Michael Henninger.7451:

2. We terminate accounts permanently for defrauding (scamming). If you are found to make a deal to trade (say, sword for gold) and not hold up your end we will investigate and terminate. If you are the victim of a scam you should submit a support ticket and provide what you lost and the time and date as accurately as you recall. This is usually all we need to research the event but we will ask you if we need more info. You do have a right to know the outcome of these investigations but be aware these take us a few days to resolve.

tldr: If you scam someone, the scammer will be banned but the victim will not be refunded. That’s the price they pay for the risk of not using the Trading Post. Joining a group and abusing the power to kick people out of their dungeon is also bannable.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Core Combat:

Damage:

• Target prioritization/swapping: Identifying the biggest threat and killing it first is as basic as it gets. This is rarely seen in Guild Wars 2, with one of the few examples being the Molten Alliance Protector; or rescuing an ally out of a Mordrem Prison during the Shadow of the Dragon.
• Target splitting: It might be important to divide the group up in order to keep pressure on different targets that are spread out. Perhaps bringing those two targets together would be detrimental to the group, thus they have to be slain far from each other. (As an example)
• Burst Phases: These are periods of the fight when a small window of opportunity opens up and the damage dealer can take advantage of it. This is actually seen quite often in Guild Wars 2, with fights like Shadow Behemoth or the Triple Trouble Wurm.
• Condition & Power Creatures: Similar to the Partially Digested Husks, there could be creatures that are more beneficial to attack with Conditions and some creatures more beneficial to kill with Power damage. A good damage dealer would be able to recognize where they are most effective, and overall a team would be faster and more efficient if they understood their strengths on each encounter.

Control:

• Creature Positioning: One drawback of Guild Wars 2 is that it’s difficult to tell who a creature is targeting. If this was made clearer, then positioning a creature could become a more important mechanic. We’ve seen this briefly in fights like the Dredge Fractal with the Dredge Powersuit. Imagine if there was something very simple showing which player had aggro such as, if you targeted a creature, a small red ring would appear under its target to show who it is focused on. This could even promote using this in new ways as well, like “aiming” a boss attack at a location.
• Interrupting: While every player can provide some sort of interrupt, it’s hardly ever needed in the game. The only times I’ve ever bothered with it are against the Molten Alliance Defenders and Tootsie from Dry Top. There are issues of clarity when it comes to creature tells in large groups due to particle effects obscuring it. A PvE cast bar would solve this, but that sort of suggestion is off-topic.

Movement:

• Constant Pressure: In WvW, even in the most “zergy” of fights, these fights are very mobile. This is because in these PvP engagements, they are under constant pressure from lots of AoE. This sort of mechanic is not difficult to replicate in PvE. We saw a bit of it during the Queen’s Gauntlet encounter of Salazaan; just imagine it on a larger scale.
• Environmental Hazards: Making the environment the enemy is one of the best ways to engage and challenge players in a fight. The rotating laser walls of , Liadri’s Shadowfall, the trampling centaurs of Kuraii, and the floor of the Thaumanova Anomaly are all great examples of this. They are predictable and thus making them a hazard that is easy to process but remain a constant, looming threat.
• Moving Platforms: We saw these briefly in Super Adventure Box: World 2. I have to ask: Why isn’t this used more? A battlefield being ripped apart and coming together is something I would like to see and can honestly say has not been done in other games.
• Boss “Sweet Spots”: This would require something brand new, but simply put I am unsatisfied with the large stationary bosses that exist. There would be more room to explore positioning if a creature had visible, vulnerable spots; or a boss with different “parts”.
• Spread Out and do “Something”: The Legendary Flame Effigy from Citadel of Flame, Path 1 used to be more challenging on launch. Some groups had to disperse and quickly destroy the crystals and were forced to do that because of how much area these crystals covered and because of the amount they healed for. What this taught me was that forcing a group to cover a lot of ground is one way to encourage movement and spreading out.