Guild Wars 2

You know, you’re not responsible for glitches in someone else’s game. The best thing you can do for that game is reporting said glitch when you find it.

And you know what? You restarting because you encountered a glitch is not fixing anything. It’s just making everything worse for you. The thing is, glitches are expected when you have a project as large as a major videogame. You don’t get punished for encountering a glitch, that would be like punishing you every time you run into a well-behaving 5-year-old. You get punished if you encounter a glitch and deliberately use it to gain an unfair advantage. That’s more like brainwashing that 5-year-old to do your evil bidding.

And really, even if you were to be punished for encountering a glitch, restarting your character because you encountered a glitch does not make your encounter with said glitch disappear. That’s not how they punish you in a videogame. An actual punishment would be terminating your service either temporarily or permanently. And if you were to self-punish yourself by leaving the game for 3 days every time you encounter a glitch, that would actually punish ANet as well, as you are still a player and thus an asset to them.

If you think your Guardian is pale in comparison to a Warrior, I highly recommend a vacation to a sunny place. Get a tan, you’ll be as brown as a Warrior in no time!

wasted.6817:

Olba.5376:

Even a fairly conservative amount of 15v15 would be completely and utterly unfeasible for an eSport. It’s too many people, spectating would be a confusing mess..

It’s conservative only for GW2, due to where this GvG iteration originated from — WvW. In GW1 it was 8v8. It could be 5v5, or same old 8v8, for GW2’s real GvG.

So let me get this straight: 5v5 is not GvG because it’s too small, yeah? And yet somehow adding 3 players from each guild makes that into GvG? In a game where a guild can have up to 500 members?

How the kitten is that supposed to make any sense?

Because if you accept 5v5 as a form of GvG, then that already exists in sPvP, particularly with custom arenas.

in gw2 we have unoffical gvg.. cuz of wvw environment is random generated unfair things interupting.. guilds are looking for fair matches.. mostly in goal of they are better.. gvg in gw2 is making death match in os with rounds at the moment..

I think that’s quite asinine. The “unbalancing” elements in WvW are Bloodlust in Borderlands, which amounts to a maximum of +60 stats. The passive WvW bonuses also aren’t that noticeable.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Anet launched the game saying there would be no GvG in the game. I think they’re probably looking at it now, but it was well known before launch that would not be part of the game.

I can’t say why that is, but we can theorize that in Guild Wars 1, though there was a hard core population of people into it, most players weren’t. They didn’t want to spend resources designing something up front that most people wouldn’t use, even though some were passionate about it. As I said, that’s just a guess though.

All of which is odd as they also indicated that they wanted GW2 to be an e-sport, something that is poorly supported by the current implementation.

And how would GvG be a better eSport implementation? You literally cannot make an eSport out of GvG, not with the numbers it takes. Even a fairly conservative amount of 15v15 would be completely and utterly unfeasible for an eSport. It’s too many people, spectating would be a confusing mess.

We do already have 5v5s, which is as far as you can take it as an eSport. There’s a reason why they limit team sizes to 5 players for a lot of eSports.

On Windows, there is a mouse option that you can turn on that will make a visible circle appear around your cursor when you press ctrl. Works while in GW2 as well.

A sticky thread won’t change anything. Most people don’t even bother to read those.

Quite honestly, there is nothing you can do to make people acquire information that they do not think they need. You could force them to view a video when first entering the subforum, but most people would just mute their audio and alt-tab if they don’t want to view it.

And from what I have seen, replying to people with a stock response, such as “read the sticky” is far more likely to make them angry than read said post. That’s because the stock response, even if it’s the right choice, is still a stock response: it ignores the individuality of the poster, which kittenes them off.

Ironhide.2875:

Yep, in the other game we reached the endgame and only played for the wars. And it worked out, because outside of the war schedules, you’re free to do other things: like paint a picture or read a book, or help train new players (they still had other 24/7 PVP areas). The main thing about a “war” was just the concept of a time-limited invasion afterwards for the nation defeated. But indeed, with international audience, there is no perfect timezone schedule. Some servers had a different schedule, but with megaserver there is no consistency, which even ruins many guild events. Megaserver is still a big flop in my book, but I respect the concept and technical work to pull it off.

The Megaservers have nothing to do with WvW though.

Adding a schedule would probably end up killing WvW. Currently, the top servers are at the top because they got guilds that can play at off-hours. Adding a schedule takes that away, which would even the playing field, but it would also end up with all of the off-hours players being shafted. And while sometimes the off-hours play is a bit shady (US players on EU specifically to take advantage of the time difference), there are also players that are located outside of the EU and US in a far away time zone, such as Australia.

For many players, the fact that you can come and go from WvW as you please is one of its strongest aspects. And while you might be willing to “do something else” during a downtime, there are people who simply do nothing but WvW. There’s a reason why they made it possible to get Ascended gear in WvW. And those people would be left with massive amounts of downtime, which would probably end up with them quitting the game.

The elected people don’t have to be particularly special players Actually in the other game, you could rotate guild leadership, which was a nice feature. If a leader was on military leave for some number of months (or in some countries, mandatory for some years), they could hand leadership to someone else. In any case, like any political thing, if you worked the community by pure personality attributes, even “weak players” could get elected. Or like many politicians, kings could make false promises, like giving certain guilds kickbacks from the the accumulated tax bank. It made for an interesting twist in things. Most months, the community voted for the noble good player and got a good king, but sometimes there was a conspiracy and jerks got elected. Or sometimes a king had to hoard money, for a greater good later in the year (also I think in that game, if the king didn’t use the money in the bank, it all got erased at the start of the next election). In any case, just being nominated had to be earned by some criteria; it wasn’t open ended that anyone in the entire game could get elected.

I don’t think we need this kind of system. I don’t see any way how a system like this would not be a breeding ground for a toxic atmosphere. We already have shady practices like buying guilds from other servers or WvW servers teaming up against a third enemy. The last thing we need is an official popularity contest that comes with a monetary benefit.

At the very least, LFG feature should be renamed to Group Looking for Players

The LFG used to work the way you described earlier. It was just a status and you would see nearby players who had put themselves up as “Looking for Group”. Not many people knew it existed or even used it.

The issue with having a schedule for WvW is that there are tons of players who only do WvW. If you add in a schedule, the result is that you’re taking away the playtime of these people.

And by adding a schedule, you will run into issues with handling different timezones. Should the wars take place in the “primetime” of the servertime? Should it take place evenly across every 24 hours? The former means that players who are from a different timezone get shafted. The latter means that the players who are on the timezone get shafted.

Smith.1826:

I don’t see why that’s a problem, because I’m not sure why one should feel privileged enough to access something they didn’t pay for. You already have to pay $50 to play the game, but your argument here could be used to support the game going entirely free-to-play.

That’s not something I’d want. Not because I don’t want “f2p scum/noobs” in my game, I just think the $50 is well worth it. I may have issues with their continued payment model, delivery of content, etc. but the experience of playing it for the initial period deserves that pricetag.

Maybe that’s one of the larger concerns with providing additional “buy to play” content: The playerbase may be too accustomed to the “free” content.

So I paid the box price and I should be willing to give up my access to the game unless I’m willing to fork over more? You do realize that this is one of the reasons the people who do not play subscription-based games are the way they are?

What if I am perfectly happy with the game even without an expansion? Should I be willing to give up a game I like unless I pay for something I never asked for in the first place?

But you are right. The playerbase is accustomed to free content. What this means is that the bar that an expansion has to clear to be called a good expansion is set pretty kitten high. They can’t just put in new races or skills or even maps into it and expect everyone to happily fork over the cash, since they could have delivered all of that through Living Story for free. And that is exactly what Colin has been saying about the Living Story: That their goal is to deliver expansion-like content with it. If they ever truly succeed in that, then any hope for an expansion pack is basically dead forever.

A F2P game is just that: A game that is free-to-play. While GW2 is a bit weird in being a buy-to-play game that essentially turns into a F2P game, it’s continued support is afterwards mostly F2P, and in a similar vein as those other F2P games you dread: Some rewards are affected by money and RNG, reward progression is ‘drawn-out’ by design, and throwing actual cash at the game can progress you towards better stats.

Of course, that’s all lacking a bit of context: The ‘gap’ in meaningful stats isn’t that big. The funny part is, even if it was, the game’s zerg-based, open-world emphasis would negate it (maybe that thought could warrant it’s own thread…)

Regardless, my point here is that while there’s far less ‘urgency’ in the loot hunt in GW2, I can’t imagine much longevity or player activity without it. And if every reward was easy and cheap to get, I don’t see why anyone would want to buy gems with cash (unless the exchange rate was nuts, maybe?)

In summation, I think of GW2 as a F2P game, it may not be as “bad” as other F2P games, and I still don’t like it as a F2P game.

Well my perspective is a bit different. I think that the long term for Guild Wars 2 is in the PvP scene. That being WvW and sPvP. I just don’t see how they could make a lengthy sustainable PvE that would keep everyone satisfied for years without risking a lot. They can’t put in a gear grind and putting in a cosmetic grind runs the risk of lowering their Gem Store profits significantly. That isn’t an issue in PvP, where your primary goal is to improve your proficiency at playing the game.

Heck, coming from one of those horrible f2p games myself, I truly and honestly hope that PvP does become a major thing in GW2. Because I absolutely love how fair it is. There is no gap between someone who spends 300$ every month on Gems and someone who spends none.

I don’t want an expansion. I believe that ANet can bring anything you would put into an expansion via the Living Story. There is no reason why they couldn’t, other than expansions bringing in teh coinz.

Expansions also go against one of the things I absolutely love about Guild Wars 2. The fact that you can play it whenever you want. If they start releasing expansions, you’ll quickly run into a situation where someone who would otherwise play the game will not because they would now need to buy an expansion pack.

There is also absolutely nothing preventing ANet from taking all the content of an expansion pack and releasing it bit by bit via Living Story over 6-12 months. Because that’s how often you could expect an expansion.

Looking at the list the OP made, I think I see what he’s trying to say. His argument seems to be that since you don’t have to pay for Living Story, ANet has no motivation to make it any good. He also believes that an expansion would automatically have more content than all of the Living Story they could release in the time it takes to develop and release an expansion pack.

However, the OP is forgetting one thing: What if the content of the expansion is not vast enough to keep you playing until the next expansion hits? What if the content will only keep the people who do every Living Story playing for a month? Having a month’s worth of content every 6-12 months is much worse than having a few days’ worth of play every 2 weeks.

My issue has everything to do with how it all gets funded. I wouldn’t like a “free to play” expansion any more than their current method of content delivery. Not to question the quality of the content itself, I just don’t like the “F2P” model, period.

GW2 is far from “F2P”. An F2P game is one that has every motivation to add a set of gear that you can only buy from the shop at a price that would take months of dedicated play to afford. That or a credit card. And that is something that literally kills games. It murders them, defiles every orifice in their corpse, takes said corpse and turns it into a steak to sell to the rich guys.

In comparison, I will admit that GW2 is putting a lot more skins into the Gem Store than they are releasing to be gotten via playing the game. They have released plenty of such skins, just that they’re kind of hard to get. However, the skins will never make the game unplayable for someone who’s not willing to buy them from the Gem Store. And that’s a big kittening deal.

bigmonto.4215:

But I can open with a big attack on the 4th sec right? A 9k backstab, or 5k bleed every 4 sec is not bad even if I am not attacking during stealth.

You’re free to do that, but that makes you a very easily countered enemy, since your attacks are all on an exact clock.

Regarding the reduction on condition duration, most condition build get at least +36% duration food (~ 1.5s a piece on tp). Plus Cover condition also works for CI.

Yeah, I was talking more about without any foods. In case you missed with, there’s tons of warrior running around with Rune of Melandru (-25% condition duration) and Dogged March (-33% chill/immobilize/cripple). If you want to add foods to that, it’s an extra -40% for -98% on chill/immobilize/cripple, which is enough to make them virtually immune to those.

And there’s always blind, which your Thief isn’t going to remove either, since you’re talking about sitting in Stealth for condi cleansing. That leaves a Warrior with 4 conditions less to potentially cleanse than a Thief. And that means a lot.

That and there’s the simple fact that people are already too busy kittening about stealth, Backstab, Sneak Attack and Shadow’s Rejuvenation to care about Shadow’s Embrace.

The bottom line is after seeing what the thief can do, I don’t even think CI with compulsive shot is OPed. After all you are making certain trade-offs by going to LB especially for power builds.

Longbow can still do some pretty mean damage on a Warrior. There’s a reason why Rune of Strength became instantly popular in sPvP after it was changed. A Hammer/Longbow Warrior pumps out Might from every orifice in their body by doing pretty much anything at all. Since you know, Combustive Shot is a Fire Field and Earth Shaker and Arcing Arrow are Blast Finishers. Add in a Sigil of Battle and that’s 9 stacks of Might for 29s on a 10s cooldown.

And even without that, Arcing Arrow still has a 2.0 coefficient, which is what a 1-bar Eviscerate does.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Whenever I try playing my Thief the damage comes from maybe 3 attacks while the other skills are situational or maybe hardly touched at all.

On a D/D Thief, that might be true. On a D/P, all of the skills have a purpose. Shadow Shot is an excellent gap closer. Head Shot is an interrupt.

If you want to talk about a boring Thief, go have a look at P/P and P/D. P/P is basically all about Unload and P/D is all about Vital Shot, Sneak Attack and Cloak and Dagger.

The second weapon (usually Shortbow) feels more like utility you use to buy time or run. You don’t see a ton of combos that require the use of both weapon sets to deal damage (like using Bull’s Charge or Shield Bash to set up Skull Crack then switching to GS to use 100b and Whirlwind Attack).

Comboing with two weapon sets doesn’t make much sense on a Thief. Unlike everyone else, a Thief has no weapon skill cooldowns, so swapping weapons doesn’t have as much purpose. And the thing is, each weaponset is a bit too different on a Thief. In most cases, the most playable weapon swap is an identical one, in which case all it does for you is trigger a weapon swap sigil. And for a lot of people, a weapon swap sigil simply isn’t worth the lost utility from not having Shortbow.

In GW2 it feels like try the short combo, either kill your target and if you miss then just retreat and try again in a few seconds. I think the whole initiative system was poorly implemented and I would of rather seen the chain system from GW1 where you use both weapon sets for combos.

Have you ever met a S/D Thief?

bigmonto.4215:

Its funny people still think CI is OPed. I used to think CI is pretty decent. Until I play a thief. The “Adept” trait: “Shadow’s Embrace”. Coupled with how often I go in stealth, this is the best condition removal trait in the game. No wonder thief doesn’t bother with any other condition removal skills.

Shadow’s Embrace, remove 1 condition when the thief go into stealth, another one 3 sec later. So 2 every 3 sec, this rate is much better than the CI. The best part is, when thief is in stealth its unlikely to get new conditions and can open with a devastating attack.

That’s 2 conditions every 3 seconds if you are not attacking your enemy.

And unless you’re lucky, that might just result in your spending 3 seconds taking damage from 20+ stacks of bleed.

I wonder why people don’t complain about that?

Because Thieves don’t get to reduce the duration of Chill, Crippled and Immobilize by an amount that almost makes them irrelevant? You can easily get around Shadow’s Embrace by forcing it to cleanse a non-damaging condition.

When you’re asking for a new profession, you have a duty to present proper reasoning why you think that profession would be a good fit for the current game.

Bringing classes from a previous installment is not a good enough reason. After all, most sequels to RPGs do not bring all of their professions over. And adding a new profession because of a weapon they used doesn’t make sense in Guild Wars 2, where every profession can use multiple weapons.

If you want to add a new profession to Guild Wars 2, you need to make it a profession that has a meaning. The mechanics of the profession have to be something that is not already covered by one or more professions in the game. Adding a profession that is basically a frankensteinian monster of the current professions wouldn’t make much sense. Remember that most of the balance in the game is centered around a full party rather than a solo player.

So tell me:

1. What could a Dervish bring to the game that the current professions do not already cover?
2. What could a Dervish bring to the game that the current professions could not bring via adding scythes to the game?
3. What makes a Dervish a better fit than any other profession from Guild Wars 1?
4. How would you explain the Dervish profession in the lore of each of the races?

Due to the way damage and crits are calculated, Power is pretty much always the superior stat.

A more interesting question would be Ferocity vs Precision.

kntz.1420:

Ok, let me explain.

Currently there are no sense in playing WxWxW.

But what about those who like playing WvW as it is right now? What about the solo roamers? What about the havoc squads? What about the scouts? Where will they go? What will there be for them to do?

Alone or group players could choose factions (temporary or not) as well.

This means that WxWxW maps would allow PK: Player (s) vs. player (s), the real PvP, and no longer a zerg festival.

You already have PvP in sPvP. If that’s what you want, you can go there.

Not everyone who plays in WvW plays in Zerg, duels or a 5 person group. You’re basically ignoring all of those people.

It has extremely low supply and you cannot get it anywhere else in the game currently.

That and it’s a cosmetic item in a game where cosmetics are a big kittening deal.

Of course it’s going to have a steep price tag.

Warriors can have good escaping mobility if they choose to prioritize that.

However, most Warrior weapons are very lacking in mobility. Axe MH without a Warhorn, Mace MH without a Warhorn, Hammer, Rifle, Longbow. That leaves you with 8 combinations that have some kind of mobility. Out of those 8, 2 only have “mobility” in the sense of having access to permanent Swiftness. Out of the last 6, 4 have just 4 mobility skill in the form of Savage Leap.

Are you seriously complaining about two weapon sets on a Warrior having good mobility when there’s 11 that have none whatsoever?

It really puzzles me why these people seem to think that a character being able to run away from them instead of dying is somehow a bad thing. Them running away is basically them admitting that they lost to you. Heck, running away in WvW makes plenty of sense because if you get stomped it can mean a very long trip to get back to where you were.

Well, since they are developers, I would hope that they are working on the game. Pretty sure the CCs are monitoring the forum and gathering stuff for the devs to look at.

As for why the devs aren’t posting as much, I would think it has to do with the reaction of the community. If a developer posts in basically any thread in Profession Balance, you’re just about guaranteed to see someone trying divert their attention to another profession or another issue. And if you look at John Smith’s posts in the BLTC subforum, you’ll see that a lot of people want to argue with him about the economy.

We’ve gotten to a point where the devs have a very hard time posting at all without it resulting in a derailment or being confronted by the players. And neither of those are very good motivators for you to make a lot of posts.

And when the developers do post, they cannot really say much because the playerbase seems completely unable to not take their word as holy gospel of unchanging truth. Just look at how much people are still complaining about the “Upcoming in 2013” post by Colin or the freaking pre-release MMO Manifesto.

The reason why you see the most dev activity with Gems and Customer Support is because those are extremely urgent areas. Gems deal with real money, so they have to keep it flowing as smoothly as possible. Customer Support tends to deal with the game being unplayable for reasons that are not directly related to the game, so it’s not something a player can be expected to fix on their own.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Kanebrake.6192:

Demwar.3160:

BUT.. They should implement a mode that allows you to go 1st person view only if not doing any action or in combat.

Isn’t combat exactly where you’d want to have first person view?

Are you suggesting it as a “challenge” mode of sorts? I can think of no other reason you would want to reduce your field of view and eliminate the visual awareness of the surroundings during a fight.

I’m quite baffled as to why anyone would want this in a game designed for 3rd person combat? There are plenty of FPS games on the market that were DESIGNED to provide challenging combat from First Person view.

And what would you do with animations where your point of view is all over the place? Dodge rolling, Roll for Initiative and Withdraw, not to mention horrors like Death Blossom. Surely you cannot be talking about immersion in one breathe and in the next complain about how some skills should not alter your point-of-view according to the animation of the skill.

And what would different character heights? Surely you cannot implement a proper 1st person view without taking into account the height of the character. And that would probably result in some issues with playing an Asura, since they’re kinda short.

And what would you do with the Personal Story? The dialogue scenes are narrated from an obvious third person view, so you would have to do them all again for 1st person. That’s a lot of work.

And yes, the developers totally have the right to dictate how they want you to experience their game. There are tons of such choices. The way the maps are organized is one. Different races not having different base movement speeds is another. We have 1st person shooter and 3rd person shooters for a reason and it sure as hell is not “well we were too lazy to implement other options”. The different perspectives give a different experience.

Heck, the most obvious reason for forcing 3rd person view? The character customization. If you had 1st person view, you would barely ever see your character. That right there is a lot of beautiful design work gone down the drain.

The issue with Last Refuge is that it’s the Thief version of the “Use Skill X when low on health” type of trait. It would be inconsistent if the trait did not use some skill, such as Blinding Powder.

There are about three scenarios where Last Refuge can screw you over:

1. Last Refuge triggering in the middle of an autoattack chain. While this will give you a backstab, it’s not one that you were prepared for.
2. For D/P, Last Refuge triggering after Black Powder but before you get stealth from Heartseeker. The end result is that if there was a foe in range, you get stealth in the middle of Heartseeker, which hits your enemy and puts Revealed on you.
3. For D/D, Last Refuge triggering just before Cloak and Dagger grants you stealth. The end result is that Cloak and Dagger instead counts as an attack from Stealth and puts Revealed on you.

The latter two could be fixed by forcing Blinding Powder to interrupt the skill animations and put you into Stealth. This would only work if they made it so that interrupting the animation wouldn’t cost you initiative.

Another option entirely would be to have Last Refuge use a utility skill other than Blinding Powder. Sadly, Thieves don’t really have that many defensive utilities that could be used here. Shadowstep and Roll for Initiative would end up killing you even more than Blinding Powder. Shadow Refuge wouldn’t fix it and it would be kind of OP. The only one that I could see working would be Smoke Screen. It doesn’t grant stealth so it wouldn’t give you Revealed and it is a defensive skill.

What resolution are you running the game at? I don’t see how the UI could be taking lots of space unless you’re running the game at a tiny resolution.

I don’t think it’s necessary. We already get the widest arrangement of weapons and an option for 5s cooldown.

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have it, but it would be a bit much. Yes, a lot of people are going full 6 points into Discipline anyway, but there’s also tons of people who go just 3 points for Fast Hands. Without Fast Hands, the only things in the trait line are at 4 or 6 points.

Warriors have been using weapon stowing to stop Flurry (and some other skills) for ages.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Say you make skills like Rush and Savage Leap require a target. That to me seems like a major step back in terms of MMO design. Requiring a target to do an attack seems so archaic. Having more freedom of movement is one of the strongest parts of this game. I can’t touch other MMOs that require targets because of this system. Also, since this mobility issue is only really an “issue” in WvW do you think requiring a target would actually change anything? With skills that teleport it makes sense for it to require a target but less so with leaps/running. Here’s what would happen, the Warrior would target an ambient mob or any other mob and use the skill. If they get close enough to hit they’ll cancel the attack via weapon swap or sheathing the weapon. Basically, nothing will change.

And if you made Savage Leap and Rush require a target, what would happen to Whirlwind Attack?

• Increase the CD of Rush but make it be halved if it connects with something.
• Reduce the distance but make the attack faster and remove cripple and chill and make them immune to it while Rushing.
• Change the attack once you reach the target to one that activates as soon as you reach them and possible make it have a slightly wider range so that it can’t be so easily avoided with non dodge.

• If you do that, you’ll just end up with people asking to match it to RTL.
• The animation is already slow, so speeding it up shouldn’t be tied to “balancing” it.
• Again, this is how it should function by default.

Tee point of this post is that there needs to be a way to let Warriors use their gap closes as gap closers and not punishing Warriors that use them as such just because some run away in WvW. Complaining about S/Horn + GS builds is ridiculous seeing that their combat effectiveness isn’t that great.

Why is it that running away in WvW is such a big deal? Unless you have a 100 man zerg consisting entirely of GS Warriors Rushing all over the map, I don’t see why Rush should be changed based on its usage in WvW.

Ah, people mistaking “random distribution” with “equal distribution”. That and trying to put a pattern to a PRNG.

Here’s something to think about. Everything related to RNG has millions of possible outcomes. Take the usual “roll Mystic Forge 1000 times” thing. Well, you could get 0-1000 precursors out of that. And yet you never hear of anyone who has gotten 1000/1000 Precursors. If the PRNG in GW2 was broken, things like that should be happening.

The fact that “rare” events such as someone getting multiple Precursors are actually happening is proof that the PRNG is working. And there is really nothing they can do about it, unless you want to put in counters that literally prevent you from getting a good drop in X rolls of the “dice” after getting one.

Zephyron.7081:

*If people want more from this game at a quicker pace, and I’m one of those people, then we must acknowledge that this is a business. The primary purpose of business is profit. Period. Hence, there should be a subscription payment model similar to SWTOR. If you want quality, then you need to pay for it. Subscription + Gem Store + Expansion Packs = More content with a higher level of quality, which in turn leads to game longevity. Most people will embrace this concept if presented correctly.

Holy flipping cake mix!

So you want to go straight from B2P to P2P and expansion packs and Gem Store? GET ALL OF THEIR MONEY! ALL OF IT! LEAVE NO PENNIES BEHIND!

*Anet, if you bring in more money, then you can develop more content quicker. It is a cycle. More content means more players and subscribers.

While throwing money at everyone does get you more slaves, that doesn’t magically mean everything will be better. While you can turn it into content by hiring new artists and designers and whatnot, you’ll also end up with a clusterkitten of bugs, which you cannot fix by throwing the sweet dollahs at it, yo!

*Subscription should be for the hardcore players, so make it worth their money. B2P with no subscription should be geared for the casual players. Nothing should change in the game as it is for casual players. Instead, the subscription should add aspects to the game not intended for casuals. This would differ greatly and be much more appealing than what SWTOR did.

This sounds an awful lot like paying a subscription for better drop rates. Which, you know, is pay-to-win. And that’s definitely not a way to go.

*A boxed expansion, or DLC would bring in immediate large sums of cash. Your box sales of GW2 were off the charts, what do you think a boxed expansion would bring? This would also help justify the subscription/membership.

The box sales were off the charts because of hype for a new game in a series.

*The living story changes are great and are very similar to a post I made long ago about Orr. The current state of Orr should be instanced and accessible from the living story / personal story menu as a flashback. This would keep the personal story, allow for friends to join and help others leveling and allow for the living world to expand and feel coherent.

*Changing the landscape of Orr to reflect the ending of the personal story, which would provide essentially 3 new zones of content could be either a DLC or boxed expansion. Now, really do something awesome here ….like what blizzard did with Cataclysm or Burning Crusade. Make Orr look very unique with lots of fun mechanics.

*All the vistas, POIs, and hearts should stay where they are, but the heart missions should change to reflect the ongoing dynamics of Orr.

Colin mentioned in an interview that they do not want to do that, exactly because it messes with the way the Personal Story integrates to the current world. The Personal Story is about current events, not the past.

Heck, what if I have not completed the Personal Story? How the heck am I supposed to accept that Orr is a flowery paradise while I’m being told by Saladbolg that I need to defeat Zhaitan? Is my character schizophrenic or something? Is he just dreaming? Is he actually a butterfly?

Here is a summary of season 1 of Living Story.

In terms of new features, the biggest is probably the wardrobe. That and the revamped trait system.

As for Mordremoth, make what you want out of this.

Answer this:

Would you be cool with ANet adding two versions of each skin to the game, one tied to content and a more detailed, prettier one in the Gem Store?

Because that’s the best you’re gonna get. The cosmetics in the Gem Store are the biggest sellers and the Gem Store is where the money is at. You’re never going to get to a point where all the cosmetics are in the content.

Also, where would these skins come from? A new dungeon? WvW? World bosses? Random drops from mobs in a select area?

Elegie.3620:

• 10 points in Arms, because… His whirlwind attack has 10s CD, so he does not use Forceful Greatsword. During the fight though, the thief gets one stack of bleed and one of vulnerability, so this could suggest “Precise Strikes” and “Rending Strikes”.

Nope. The cooldown on his Volley isn’t 10s, so he’s using Crack Shot.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Demonts, look at the income numbers from quarter to quarter and year to year as published by NCSoft in 2014.

You will see that income dropped dramatically from 2013 to 2014 by almost 80 per cent ( includes copies sold + gems, which make for approx. 75 percent of income for GW2 ).

The quarterly numbers the OP used give a total of 155.7m for 2013 and 113.5m for 2014. That’s not even close to an 80% drop. So where are you getting these numbers?

Also, where are you getting the 75% figure? And what is the other 25%? And why would income somehow not count towards the profits?

Yes, it means the game is dying, which is pretty much what most of the people feel like about the game from late 2013 until now.

Oh come on. If you look at the numbers the OP presented, the largest one is due to the release of the game. After that, it’s been pretty consistent. If the game was dying, you’d see a constant decrease in the numbers. Instead, you can clearly see that they fit nicely between 22m and 33m. In fact, the median is 25.8m.

Even if they can, the instruments have a fairly limited range and a lot of people run with the instrument volume turned off.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Here are some additional reasons for weapon …well weapon and armor and triket (since they all can be ascended) vault:

1. I hear each account is entitled to one rollback. Ok, and what if they slip up/get hacked again?

2. Not everyone wants a rollback. I personally dislike the idea of my account hanging in void from the time i submit a rollback ticket to the time of accuall rollback (given i am granted one, and they do it at their chosen time, not mine).
Guy like me would much prefer to accept the losses (given i’m not that rich) and move on, as long as i know gear i worked for is safe and sound in my vault, ready to get me back on track. Well that and perm gem store stuff i got.

3. What if you weren’t exactly hacked, but just messed up? Got drunk and sold your legendary to npc vendor and logged off? Or something similar? Or quickly deleted a character without taking that ascended/legendary off it? Dude at your house got on your pc and “played a prank”? kitten happens!

4. Do i REALLY have to use account bank everytime i want to pass a staff from my necro to my guardian and back? can’t i just have build in button in inventory to open up my vault and pop it out then back in when i’m done?

1. Getting actually hacked twice is statistically unlikely. And by “hacked”, I do not mean “the people who I shared my account with stole all of my kitten”. Plus, since ANet already records the IPs that access your account, I am pretty sure they could spot it, even if it happened twice.
2. Well it still wouldn’t help you much. With this suggestion, you would only maintain your ascended gear. That is all fine and dandy if all you have is Ascended gear. And if you don’t give a crap about every other item that is no Ascended quality on your account. That includes your Gems, Gold, crafting materials, food items, your bags, your minis and quite a few other things. Good luck trying to re-get a mini that you can only get from a Living Story meta achievement.
3. All of your examples are preventable.
4. Yes you do. There is an item that allows you to access bank from anywhere once and a much rarer one that gives permanent access. Both of those can be gotten from the Gem Store.

serapheles.5409:

I’m under the impression that some attacks in PvE don’t show up in it either. There have been a few times when I have gone from almost full, taken a hit, and go down. It’s hard to imagine I nearly instantly received 10k damage worth of bleed.

Retaliation and reflected damage don’t show up.

Evalia.7103:

Oxstar.7643:

Adry.7512:

wait so let me get this straight….your bored AFTER you hit lvl80? its suppose to be the other way around; bored before lvl80. go do one of the 64165186810 things you can do once your level 80, plus season two is coming…..if your bored right after you reach lvl80 lol man whats wrong with you XD.

Hopefully that was sarcasm. Otherwide I’d have to ask you what exactly you CAN do at endgame that you can’t do before, other than farming for legendaries and running fractals now and then.

1. Farm for shinies.
2. Run all kinds of dungeons(>50 different dungeon paths and then 50 fractal difficulties too). Then, solo some of them.
3. Do WvW. Zerging is not fun? Do some roaming.
4. Open up entire PvE world. Do all the Jumping Puzzles.
5. Complete Living Story Meta Achievements as they come out.
6. Play PvP and be da boss(you don’t need lv 80 to do that, though.)
7. Open all your skills and traits, try out all of them.
8. Complete your Personal Story.
AND MORE

1. And why would that take level 80? What is there on level 80 that a level 79 character couldn’t farm?
2. You can run dungeons way before level 80.
3. You can do WvW before 80. In fact it’s pretty common.
4. There’s nothing in the PvE world that is requiring you to be level 80.
5. Um? Living Story is definitely not restricted to level 80.
6. Most highlevel PvP players probably don’t even have PvE characters.
7. Ok, that’s true, but it’s a fairly recent change.
8. Except that you can totally do Personal Story even if you’re not 80. It just warns you about the level requirement. Not to mention that only Victory or Death recommends level 80.

What you see in the damage is log is the damage caused by the damage portion of the skill. What you do not see is the damage caused by the conditions it applies.

For example, with Sneak Attack you will see kittens of fairly low damage, but you won’t see the damage caused by the Bleeding condition.

One reason not to log condition damage is the way it’s sent to you. While you might be taking damage from 18 stacks of bleed, poison and burning, what the server send you is data on each stack of bleed and burning. So what you would end up seeing in the log in this case would be 18 instances of Bleeding damage every single second. That would clog your damage log to a point where it’d be filled in a few seconds.

That and it’s not like you cannot see the bleed damage on your screen easily. Which is exactly where you should be looking.

a t s e.9614:

He is actually saying conditions are too strong even when used with a POWER build. I agree , Axe/sword LB warr is actually pretty face roll because even if you dodge 100% of eviscerates you will still die to conditions.

He’s taking an average of 150 damage per tick from Bleed. That’s not a number you can reach with a power build.

But yeah, sitting around taking condition damage for 2 minutes should get you killed. Try taking 2 minutes of direct damage and tell me how many times you died.

The last thing we need is a ton of “balance suggestions” based on 1v1s.

And if you say that WvW is “not even”, how is open world any more so? After all, the gear is the same, the only difference is Borderlands Bloodlust, which really isn’t major enough to be considered a factor.

If you want dueling on an even ground, go to sPvP, they already have private arenas.

Perfect Square.2534:

1. Essence of Luck: Any reason not to just consume these immediately upon acquire? They are Artificer components, but can only be converted to rarer Essences (for the same amount of Luck).
2. Flask/Jug/etc of Karma: Same thing: any reason not to just chug these all down now?
3. Old event items: Tricolor Keys, Aetherkeys, Continue Coins, Blade Shards. Should I just destroy these?
4. Piles of Bloodstone Dust: Apparently, I filled up my collectibles and now have another 2 full stacks in my bank. It’s pink and Account Bound, but will I ever need that much?
5. Empyreal Fragments: Same as dust above.
6. Agony Infusions. Will I need these for later content? Where is Agony encountered?
7. Dwarven Keys: I think these are only needed for one specific event. Probably not worth the bank slot, right?

1. You can use Essences of Luck for the monthly master crafting achievement and to start up an Artificer, but that’s about it.
2. Consumables aren’t affected by boosters anymore, so no need to keep them, especially now that Karma is account bound.
3. Some of them still have limited use, so you should check those out before ditching them.
4. That depends entirely on your personal plans for Ascended. Do note that the conversion rate is 100 Dusts for Brick and you will need at least 5 Bricks per Vision Crystal and 1 Vision Crystal per Ascended item. So that’s 500 Dusts per Ascended item.
5. As above.
6. Agony is only used in Fractals of the Mists.
7. Depends on whether you do that event.

Invest enough to make a profit but not enough to be destroyed if all of your investments tank.

agrho.2579:

I am proposing to change the way colors are assigned in WvW.
Right now according to ranking, 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, … worlds are green; 2nd 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, … worlds are blue; 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, … worlds are red.
To 1st, 6th, 7th, 12th, 13th, … worlds are green; 2nd 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, … worlds are blue; 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, 15th, … worlds are red.
This to give a better balance when playing in EotM.
Right now green is so much stronger than red. It discourage the red worlds to play.

I see what you’re doing there. Currently, the group with the 1st ranker gets the “1st” map in triplet, the 2nd gets the “2nd” and the 3rd the “3rd”. Your change would make it so that the world that was last in the previous bracket gets the highest ranking in the next triplet.

1 6 7 12 13
2 5 8 11 14
3 4 9 10 15

However, I don’t think that it will work the way you want it to. The difference between a top ranking map and a mid-tier map is far too large. I doubt that the lower half of the ranking has much effect on the end result.

Also, colours should never be tied to your rank. The worst of it has resulted in weeks or months of some server having the same colour. Or conversely not having one colour at all. This is a notorious issue with regular WvW.

RyuDragnier.9476:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Yeah, thieves are only OP at solo roaming in 1v1 situation. One small role (generally a useless one that contributes little to nothing to the server) in one aspect of the game.

Oh baby, have I got a video for you. 2 thieves can completely wreck a group of 8-12 enemies if working together. Here’s the video btw (love you [BÆR]!).

Yeah because two organized people beating a bunch of unorganized randoms means anything.

That group was terrible. You had people not doing anything when someone was getting 1v2’ed, random running around autoattacking and running away from the group when almost downed.

Dawdler.8521:

Lets phrase it like this: The more LED lamps and buttons and kitten, the kittentier the mouse or keyboard is.

Not really. Corsair is producing an RGB backlit mechanical keyboard with Cherry. However, if the LED lighting is a prominient “feature”, then it’s a kittenty product.

I do remember Logitech once making some mouse where they changed the position of the sensor so that they could fit an LED light in it. That is an example of a kittenty product.

To replace my mouse I had high hopes for a Func MS-3 sequel with optical lens, but nope they went and kittened it up by making it a logitech copycat mouse instead. Never trust “gaming” stuff.

That is kinda like with SteelSeries. Nowadays SteelSeries produces some good stuff in various fields, but they started out as a mousepad company (anyone remember SteelPad?). Func is most known for their mousepads, which are still awesome.

As for a mouse, keep in mind that the right click button is likely to get worn out as holding it down is required to mouse turn (and you ShOULD be mouse turning).

Unless you’re hulking the kitten out of that mouse, just pressing it down isn’t going to break it unless it was fragile in the first place.

Randomness does not mean equal distribution. Clustering is a characteristic of true randomness. A PRNG that produces an exact even distribution is kitten. A PRNG that does not produce clusters is kitten.

“Gaming keyboards” are mostly complete BS. Majority of the “functionality” that they offer bears no relation to playing a game. Media keys, repetition speed or LED backlight? That’s not gonna change your performance. The macro keys are usually situated so far from the WASD cluster that using them slows you down and you’d be better off rebinding to something closer that is already on every keyboard.

As for gaming mice? Well, that’s almost an exact opposite. Majority of the functionality in a gaming mouse will have some use in some scenarios. Having extra side buttons means that you can use your thumb and ring finger for something other than holding onto your mouse for dear life, which is awesome. Other than that, being able to tune the sensitivity of your mouse and save it on the mouse (or the cloud in case of Razer) is handy so that your settings stay consistent.
And while it might not sound like you’ll need to tune your CPI in increments of 1, it’s nice to have the option to tune the mouse to exact perfection. Not to mention it’s absolutely priceless for games that have bad or no sensitivity control whatsoever, particularly older games.
As for weight adjustment, I used to think that it was a complete gimmick and no one should use the weights. However, that is also a personal preference: Some like heavier mice, others don’t. And in some cases, the extra weight can make the mouse easier to manage, especially if you’re using a hard mousepad, as those can be pretty slippery.

But in the end, it’s not a yes-or-no type of question. Some people play perfectly fine with a mouse that has 2 buttons and a scroll wheel because they have Gandalf-grade management of their keybinds with the Shift and Alt keys. Others find themselves doing more mistakes if they have to use Shift to access something. Some will find themselves performing best when their left hand is only using WASD for movement. You have to experiment and find where your weaknesses are. Once you know what trips you, you’ll know what you need to look out for. And lastly, once you know the functionality that you want out of your mouse, go to someplace where you can try them out. There is nothing quite as maddening as finding a mouse that has all the functionality you need but a shape that makes your hand cramp. Or buying a keyboard only to discover that you prefer different keyswitches or key height.

Personally, I am using a SteelSeries 6Gv2 and a Zowie EC1 eVo. I chose the keyboard because it’s a cheap, mechanical keyboard that has a numpad and media keys, as those are a must for me. I chose a mechanical keyboard because I do a lot of writing on a daily basis. The mouse I chose based on its shape and similarity to mice such as Razer’s DeathAdder and Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0. Recently I have been considering getting a mouse that has maybe 3 or 4 sidebuttons so that I could do something about the class mechanics tied to F2, F3 and F4. After trying them at a shop, I found that the Razer Naga and the corresponding Logitech mouse aren’t of a shape that I can use comfortably.

Aleglast.6027:

1. More powerful, does 100-200% more damage
2. Impossible to remove for 2-6 seconds.
3. Doubles stack, if one stack of bleed applied goes critical it becomes 2 stacks.
4. double duration, the critical condition goes double, or a certain percentage, longer.
5. Increased speed, the condition ticks faster.

1. Would that be per-stack or per condition? Because if it’s per condition, all it needs is one crit to take your damage from 3000/s to 6000/s, which is pretty ridiculous, especially for PvP.
2. Yeah, nope. The ability to cleanse conditions is one of the things that makes it unique.
3. That would just result in every condi build maxing out their stacks ridiculously easy, even when alone. And it would make the PvE situation even worse.
4. It would either be useless due to being too long or OP due to increasing the damage of short duration multistack skills too far. Not to mention what would happen with Fear. For example, Flurry currently puts out 12 stacks for 2s. With 100% condition duration, that’s 12 stacks for 4s. Add in your 100% and that’s 12 stacks for 8s on a skill that is on a 7-10s cooldown. And 12 stacks for 8s deals 13,632 damage with 2000 condi damage.
5. That would either literally double condi damage or present some serious issues with the tick counters.

I don’t think that Condition Damage needs to be increased, at least not in PvP. In PvP, condis are doing extremely well because they only need Condition Damage as their stat, allowing a condi spec to use armor that has Condi Damage and two defensive stats on it, most commonly Dire, resulting in high damage and a lot of survivability.

In PvE, the issue isn’t necessarily that individual condis deal bad damage, it’s that the condi cap is far too easy to reach. And for that, there are much better solutions than adding a whole new stat into the game.

alamore.1974:

Maybe reduce condis cleansed to 2 at tier 2-3 and 1 at tier 0-1

That won’t happen. Any mechanic that centers on Adrenaline has to have different functionality on each level of adrenaline. Otherwise the scaling is not only confusing, but also promotes spamming. In your case, the optimal usage of adrenaline would be at <3 bars every single time.

Conbustive shot and CI tweaked a little

The thing is, Combustive Shot gives you the choice to use your adrenaline to cleanse your conditions rather than dealing damage. Which is good.

Blind alone wouldn’t be such a big deal, but a condi thief also has ample access to stealth and teleports, which makes Berserker Stance kinda a moot point.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

1. Charge: removes Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize
2. Mending (3 conditions removed, 20 second cooldown)
3. Signet of Stamina (all conditions removed, 45 second cooldown, useful passive to let you avoid applications more often)
4. “Shake it Off!” (1 condition removed AoE, stunbreak, 20 second cooldown, will remove Fear+1 condition)
5. Restorative Strength (activating a heal skill removes cripple, chill, immobilize, and weakness, applies before healing skill’s effects, so Mending removes those 4 plus 3 others)
6. Shrug it Off (automatic “Shake it Off!” when affected by 2 or more conditions)
7. Quick Breathing (Warhorn skills convert a condition to a boon)

1. Which doesn’t help you at all with reducing damage. In fact, it’s far more likely that you’ll end up having to use Charge to take away Chill/Immobilize/Cripple to ensure that your other cleanse takes away the 20+ stacks of bleed on you.
2. Mending is a healing skill. Even if you successfully use it to cleanse all of the damaging conditions, this means that your enemy now has 20 seconds to beat you to death while you’re helpless against their conditions.
3. Signet of Stamina has a very long cooldown, thus making it impractical.
4. Shake it Off only cleanses one condition. That means that unless you want to risk wasting it on something like Immobilize or Cripple, you’re going to have to remove those first.
5. Are you serious? Restorative Strength has a nice functionality in that it allows you to set up a condi cleanse to remove the damaging conditions. It’s not functional as anything else.
6. Since Shrug it Off is a passive trait, it’s ridiculously easy for an enemy to force it into cooldown.
7. Quick Breathing is about the best we get, but that forces you to use X/Warhorn and 20 points into Tactics.

The only decent option that a Warrior has is Quick Breathing. The thing is, Quick Breathing forces you into a similar situation as CI: You have to use a specific weapon (Longbow for CI, Warhorn for QB) and it forces 20 points into a trait line (Defense, Tactics). The issue is that Tactics is a far inferior traitline in comparison to Defense. The Vitality that it offers doesn’t help, considering that Warriors have a high base health, the minor traits are notorious for being some of the kittentiest in the game and even the Boon Duration isn’t that useful since Warrior is more about long duration and few reapplications to begin with.

Aiuris.9861:

I hate to give you the bad news, but by default, no ascended gear can be salvaged. So your problem will persist once you want to remove the sigils and runes from your new gear =\

Considering that Ascended is and will always be the top tier of gear, there is really no reason to remove runes/sigils from your Ascended gear. Well, unless you want to try an entirely different build using the same runes/sigils.

As for the WvW gear not being salvageable: I don’t think it ever should be truly salvageable. At best, I would hope that you were able to use a salvage kit, but only had the chance of getting the rune/sigil back, with the armor disappearing without giving you any mats.

It’s to avoid latency issues. If you put all of the data in the US, the players in EU end up with very high latency. If you put all the data in the EU, you end up with players in the US having a very high latency. And the difference can be fairly large, going from <100ms to >300ms easily.

And if you put it in the exact middle between the two, you end up in the ocean.