Guild Wars 2

Aireroth.7596:

Why not make each mob (that counts as a mob, e.g. gives stacking sigil stacks, has a chance of loot) in a dungeon drop a small amount of dungeon specific tokens? Let’s say 1. This way, there is incentive for people to kill them, without killing skipping and speedrunning. And it wouldn’t lead to the “Let’s just farm the trash, because best rewards.” approach.

Because once you complete the collection (imagining you cba to actually do that through pvp), you’ll end up with stacks of tokens. Which you you’ll exchange for gear, which you’ll toss down the toilet. Incentive to play them?! Still lower than a CF in SW. Not to mention Arah would probably give you a whole armor set or two in 1 day.

I’d call incentives the Froggy Scepter, the BDS, VS, DSR, Mini Dhuum, Chaos Axe, Mini Polar Bear and so on. Rare, dungeon specific drops. I’d call incentive to kill trash mobs in Arah a higher chance of dropping T5 and T6 bones, for example (along with T3 – T4) Putrid Essence from Elites and above.

It’s not a question of farming. Everyone’s farming something in GW2. We also did that in GW1. If we no longer have a goal that would require that farming, we’d probably stop visiting that part of Tyria. The difference between full run and just clearing to 1st champ would be big though. Like farming UW on a SoS build vs doing the whole run in a timely fashion. 3+ hours of clearing every mob for 6+ ectos vs ~30 minutes of putting Dhuum to sleep for a chance at higher quality (thus more valuable) loot.

That ^ takes us back to “Champion Boxes aren’t dungeon loot” problem. 3 tokes/boss killed aren’t incentive. Random trash dropping random loot isn’t incentive.
So how about:
> AC mobs give dust (scaled with player’s level, not dungeon’s, so T5-T6 and T3-T4 Charged Rares. A decent chance of T5 from end boss) along with a rare mini graveling/troll/Foefire’s Essence and very rare chance for acc bound “http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ascalon_armor”

> CM would give blood and onyx. End bosses would have again, very rare chance for “http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Krytan_armor” and some minis Victoria/Salma/

> TA would certainly give poison and maybe crystal, again some good old fashion very rare armor set and some minis
…
> Arah would drop bones, putrid essence a mini “tail of Zhaitan” and how about Obsidian armor?

Bottom line, instead of reworking the dungeons into prisons, rework them loot tables. Rare and unachieavable by other means loot that looks good will give good reason to run-spam them, useful drops from trash mobs will make players think twice if to skip or kill.

Cyninja.2954:

I like your ideas making stuff optional. But I have to correct you on GW1. It most certainly had trinity in pve and gvg.

In gvg and even pvp in general, yes. Otherwise, they did not. Plenty of solo jobs, lots of damage prevention with a very few situations where dedicated healing was mandatory. The multiclass system and low hp pools made that possible.

On the other hand, GW2 has its own, more disastrous trinity War/Ele/Guard. Huge variety of gear to choose from (sigils, runes, stats). High amount of traits. Focus on a just the lucky few who boost the zerk setup. The lineup changed… for the worse. Before you had roles to pick from, swap to. Now?! you swing your sword. (At least the kitten rewards are well justified with such mechanics and brain-usage). From tank&spank we “evolved” to stack&spank.

I support skipping with all my heart in this obnoxious (instance) environment. At least it ends fast.

Gerrand.3085:

Personally, I’d just make mobs you aggro chase you until either they or you are dead.

It didn’t work before, it won’t work now either. Between stealth and running buffs, there’s still room to choose from. Also, instead of enforcing a “desired” behavior, making it more enticing always worked better.
Rethink the loot-tables and overall improve the quality of those grindholes some people like to call “instances”. If I prefer going duo-mode everywhere possible, it’s mostly because I don’t like stacking and I find the speed clears in GW2 to be utterly boring and void of any challenge. Hardly any difference between that and the Cursed’s Champ Trains or, to some extent, SW’s Chest Farm. Herd of people running from A to B, stacking, using 1 item/skill/brain cell.

Oh! making things more challenging doesn’t actually mean doing the same skill rotation 10000001 (give or take 1 rotation) while dodging one extra time every now and then. Mobs don’t need more hitpoints, they need lower hitpoints and more brain power – after all, no player in pvp has 100k hitpoints, hm?! And if the skills don’t change there, why give almost mobs 1000 times more?! It’s not fun, it’s not rewarding, it’s not challenging. Quite the opposite – it’s downright boring.

The promise in the MMO Manifesto of not grinding anything landed so far from the expectations when you have to even grind down the hitpoints of one mob. And funny enough, for some of us, it’s still not enough. Swing your sword! Swing your sword again! Till it gets dull, it breaks or you walk away from the fight triumphantly, with the exquisite loot, a dirty old sock.

GW1 didn’t have the trinity either, but then again, neither did they have 1 bazillion hitpoints mobs all over the place. There were dungeon specific drops (DoA/Deep/Urgoz/FoW/UW) from mobs and even more rare loot at the end of the instance. So you had actually incentive to spend time there, just as you had reason to just rush the important targets in the instance.

GW2 has trash mobs with trash loot and the generic “champion box” that you can get everywhere. No dugeon specific loot/materials/minis. High hp pool’ed mobs. And because of these, adding one “special” mechanic in the instance doesn’t make it more interesting at all. As Krolisia said, the instance gear is better and faster obtained through pvp.

Reworking the game mechanics to lower mobs hitpoints (preventing boredom from setting in after then first 5 elites) won’t happen. The meta in MMOs is “big boss with big hp bar” and Anet followed it with GW2.

Adding checkpoints of sorts will make the majority of the players unhappy.

Making the fights harder would be bad. Anet did that with UW in GW1 to prevent speed clears, but that ended up with adding a few minutes to the run and making it nigh impossible for casual players.

My suggestions would be: add dungeon specific rare loot obtainable from mobs (acc bound, ranging from skins to minis and tonics or really rare ones that could be tp’ed) AND rare/fine mats (8 dungeons – 8 types of mats, hm?! HMMM?!) and maaaaybe instead of enforcing full group needs, have the mob types and content scale with the party numbers (which would kinda require that players can return to the instance on d/c without losing progress and no person would be able to join in after the instace started – pretty much like it was in gw1).

Caught off-guard, you can get downed not only by thieves (especially if 2), but also by a necro, a ranger, a guardian or an ele (mesmer would need some seconds to prep everything and I’m guessing warrior would need some adrenaline).

Rangers can pack ~5-6k damage on auto-attacks if they sigil’ed air/fire. Necros can down you under lich form, eles have so many skills to spam so fast that it’s just irrelevant what they do (for me – watched an ele fighting in pvp and, while I believe he wasn’t really mindlessly mashing the keyboard, with 20 damage skills to roll through – who cares?! ^x^) as for the guard, we all know the punch they have when launching their attack chain under aegis. And in pvp you have enough time during rotations to recharge all your skills (most of the time, at least).
However, those classes have a lot of damage/pressure mitigation and relatively high to really high hp pools. I’m not complaining about the damage on thief, nor about their hp pool (which is probably the lowest in the whole class spectrum). Stealth and the extra evade do help, yes, but so do 3 clones and stealth on a mesmer with higher hp pool, blocks and both mobility and condi removal for example.

I agree that thieves require more focus that most other classes, which is why I love to play it (and hopefully get to master it one day), but it doesn’t really feel like “high risk, high reward”, more like “high risk, extra focus, normal results”. Can’t spam skills, can’t clear conditions, no high hp pool, no summons, no extra hp bar, no invulnerability or stability and just slighly higher than average damage output. While I prefer this everyday over the Rapid Fire happy class, I still think there’s just too much trade away (needless to add the “No Valid Path” hidden enemy in the thief’s mobility section).

I did read about the trickery trait for thief and about the changes of those two skills (after making the thread), but between that and the let’s call it “suggestion” of adding condi removal among the Crit’s minor traits I think the latter would be better and not really ruining the experience for any of our foes (not that I care all that much about the cheating npcs kittenet their hps or turn invulnerable when they get a “No valid path”).

As for instances and such, the normal zerk trend (kill before you die) doesn’t raise a problem, unless not going in a full group (and I’m not) which would lead to a “attrition war”. A good example would be the Colossus instance in FotM, where you get literally spammed with conditions from so many sources and so often that it’s nigh impossible to dodge them all out or stealth-clear them. I know, FotM aren’t designed to be duo’ed (wishing they were though), but still – if I can survive on ele and guardian alone there and I push up daisies in no time on thief, then maybe not all classes have the same fighting chance.

Anyway, hope dies last (still hoping for bug-free Ogre Wars, targets never too close and more valid paths) ^x^

The high burst isn’t something only thieves can do – roughly all classes having this. The mobility isn’t, again, a thieves-only perk, but the low survivability and vulnerability to conditions are.

A D/P thief would spend 8 ini to gain stealth from combo, a S/- needs 5 for the infiltrator’s chain and so on. With a pretty low ini regain (even with the Crit Strikes trait), First Strikes really favors the auto-attack/Backstab spamming.

Now, in PvE you kinda know what conditions you might get: all. Among the most annoying being torment and confusion, which no trait or heal can remove (leaving you with stealth option or the weak skills). And while /D might be an option to gain stealth and clear some condi pressure, I find myself “forced” out of any weapon combo like that (simply because P/P or bow and the S/P both offer a much better dps output).

Now if we look at all classes, they’re quite proficient in removing conditions. And they don’t lack mobility (shadowsteps, weapon skills, speed buffs, etc). Nor damage – be it from condi builds (which thieves also lack) or sheer damage (with lots of weapon skills for happy-spamming).

With all these in mind I’m not so sure that there’s a fair trade-off for thieves (glass-cannon type profession is fair, but not when all other classes can achieve a more sturdy cannon setup). Hence, upgrading a minor trait that we’re quite sure to use at all times could add some more versatility in the builds setup while slightly improving the odds of survival for the class. So a First Strikes trait with “60% chance to clear 1 condition on critical hit” with some 3 seconds cd isn’t going to be a game-breaker, but will certainly help a lot.

On a side note, shouts heal, meditations heal, survival skills clear condi – they’re all traits that improve QoL for those classes (I’m pretty sure necros don’t lack condi removal and neither do engis – both having plenty survival options and high damage output).

I’m pretty new to thief and the game itself, but I did play enough to notice this class is pretty shabby when it comes under condi pressure. The silly condi removal Signet of Agility, Infiltrator’s Return from sword (5 initiative to remove 1 condition) and Shadowstep aren’t too much of a life-saver for this class (especially with the low hp pool and the lack of stability/invicibility utilities that all other classes have).

Second thing is, thieves can’t spam their skills (again, like all the other classes can), so that means the “First Strikes” trait is even more encouraging an auto-attack approach (true, true, it means added kick on backstab).

Lastly, the traits which help remove conditions have either long cd’s and requirements to be met or they kinda “enforce” stealth usage.

With all these in mind I was thinking that, with the class revamp inc maybe that particular train in Crits could be redesigned to actually help remove conditions on crit. Say, 60% chance to cure one condition on crit. That won’t mean way too much in the current, condi heavy, world. And since thieves are a precision focused class, it would be nice to have something attached to it like this (I mean, ye, thieves “specialization” is stealth, but mesmers can also make really good use of it too, with quite a lot of delicious things attached to their stealths, so that still leaves the high chance to crit as the class’ defining mechanic).

Offair.2563:

In order to kill Zommoros every single player have to click 10k times to achieve it.

There aren’t many situations when you don’t have to click in order to achieve something. You can’t really complain about it. Actually, you can! Just did… Still, I think that’s less a problem of RNGesus trolling and more one of the mankind’s permanent debuff called “laziness”

He could just act like the skritt burglar too. Converting your top of the line gear into rags and rubber weapons.
On the other hand, he should also have retaliation as permanent buff instead of defiance – constanly returning 25% of the damage back to source, just as he returns 25% of the junk items back to the source

And yes! averaging the amount of drops ppl world wide tossed into the toilet, he should have an ever-changing set of weapon skills and such. Pretty sure he’d be a cloth class and his main weapon would be the greatsword. His specific loot could be a bag of mystic coins instead of any other dungeon currency.
Failing the instance should leave the party with 3 less gear parts…

Orangensaft.7139:

…but ascended materials like bloodstone dust etc should be an option… but they would need to be worth 1 copper each at least for that…

I do support the idea of giving the dragonite ore and bloodstone a merchant value of 1c. Arguably some of the most annoying “rare loot!” we could get that is easily labeled as junk by pretty much everyone, since there’s absolutely no reason to pile up stacks of ingots from both. getting 2 silver for a stack of ascended junk is still more pleasant than just tossing it over the inventory window.

That didn’t work for me though. 2 days in a row now I get no bonus chest from this TT. Heartly thanks to the communities organizing it and a big Arrrrrgghhhhh! to yet more bugs in GW2. Is this game still in beta phase?!

I would like a mechanic hand which I could control in order to manipulate the spoon when I’m eating my cereals…

GW always had the system of selling individual items. The only improvement (not really necessary) could maybe allow people to select multiple items and d&d them into the merchant’s window. However, that might end up with a loooooooooong list of tickets to support to undo some selling that happened by mistake.

And speaking of misclicking your Spark and “list as junk” and then trashing it to merchant, 99% of the people will not live with that mistake and spam the support staff. I don’t like to see so much effort spent on throwing more silly minis on the market instead of cleaning up the game, but I’d certainly hate the player base if such an option would become real and then anet would have the luxury of blaming them for not having time to fix Ogre Wars

Thing is, if it’s a 100 ppl instance, then the survivors would be long since dead if not for the “losers” and auto-attackers who contributed to their continued survival by doing whatever it would’ve been they did. The way you presented it feels like recruiting your group for current dungeons then kicking them all out once you’re at (or, okay, near) the end chest.

2nd thing, you already have something along these lines, it’s called “Southsun Survival”.

Another lil hiccup is that the rewards for anything in this game are ranging from dumb to mildly frustrating (see the boxes for finishing some instance, SW/DT event chains, Teq and TT). As such, I don’t imagine there will be too many players willing to waste their time there so that a “lucky few” can get a Carved Bone Fork or something.

When I’ve read the thread I thought of “dynamic scaled” dungeons. Was thinking, what if the dungeons we have would scale their content to the number of people in the party?! Adding environmental challenges to full teams, to defeat the holy zerker (which is almost as bad as the “trinity”, since ppl swapped from tank/heal/dps to ele/guard/war, which not just pushes some classes away, it also just changes the trinity from 3 different professions to best 3 dps ones the game has to offer), add conditions pressure, tougher bosses, etc. And with party numbers decreasing, remove some trash mobs and lower the hp/dps output for the rest.

As for the rewards, I don’t know if – given the way things are – there’s any chance to actually make them an incentive for running any dungeon. As such, there are 2 problems with the way current dungeons are: 1) zerk/stacking them is fast and boring with a full team and 2) in few people, whatever dungeons are runable are pleasantly challenging but the rewards are appalling.

Conaywea.5062:

if they nerf the fem human bodies , the game would lost half of their players

I’d say that most races started nerfed. Humans have decent armor skins to cover monotone (let’s not say bad) bodies. Charr as a race has been sent slumming (if you compare their gear with the artwork – hell! even with GW1’s style). Asura’s armor skins are roughly the same thing and arguably ignoring the size of that race, but hey! female armors end in a vowel… or don’t. Not to mention the looks are also quiiiite confusing (luckily, names to the rescue again, hm?!) Norn don’t really have their own style at all, the clothes in their store are just XXXL outfits that no human can buy or wear. The only race that seems to have received enough attention, both in terms of anatomy and clothing is sylvari (and pretty sure, not because they loved the class all that much – since they want to butcher all the cabages with HoT – but because they probably messed up beyond belief at first attempt).

So what nerf would you be talking about?! Improving (dreams, ye, I know) the character creation and maybe revisiting the largely similar and boring outfits?! Hope not, ’cause then every successfull bug fix is probably a sad day for you too

Something similar happened in another game – armor parts skins getting replaced with outfits. After that, they also removed the option to actually use any skin you had unlocked in the wardrobe. Basically, you were left with the option of using some shop outfit or hope your level’s crafted or dropped armor will look pleasant enough.
As of late, Anet seems to follow in the same direction to some extent, by popping more and more outfits.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

… but the OP deliberately named it in such a way that it will inevitably become a flame war about sexism and the objectification about women…

I thiiink, if I’d consider starting a topic about the way I think about charr outfits I’d name it “Charr looking like rag dolls in their armors”, and not really “Could we have more variety in the charr wardrobe?”. To start with, given the other major issues of the game, I’d need this matter to get to the boiling point for me before even starting a thread – and at that point I probably would be pretty blunt about the problem.

Going astray on topics of sexism from this is at the very best hillarious and it would signal, I think, a very narrow field of view.

Also, interestingly enough, we see a lot of players actually picking the weirdest looking options on character creation. From funny/crazy haircuts to eye-twisting colour schemes. However, regarding body’s shapes and sizes (and also the armors on their vast majority), the options are quite limited – kinda feels like having only bread on a restaurant’s menu. White bread, dark bread, seeds bread, etc bread, but nothing else.
And if other races have a bit more variety in terms of both skins and body shape, you’d think the human race just received a sloppy artwork.

Lastly, let’s not focus too much on realism and calories. Because we’d fall in a bigger trap, seeing how conditions work in this game with absolutely no respect to logic and reality

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

While the model designers could spend their time making female models that…

let me try to fill in the gaps there with “look almost all the same, both in terms of facial figure and body proportions”, hence not really spending much time with that. I’ve created a few female characters with different (I thought) faces and bodies, and so did my gf and the funny part was that during cutscenes (can’t really see much detail while zoomed out to the Moon in a Teq fight) the characters had only one thing different: hairstyle (and eyes colour, but hey! both are irrelevant to the topic).

We don’t have that many options there – I think – just the illusion of customisation. However there are plenty of options when it comes to selecting our minipets from the gemstore. Time and money well spent, hm?! (Btw. In a dragons themed game how come we have the whole fauna available in small size, but only one dragon?!)

On the same note, I’d say that charr garments don’t feel charr-ish at all. Don’t see how a steampunk race would choose raggy looking outfits all across the board. Cloth and leather at least barely have any differences between them – both looking like rags slapped together by a drunk tailor. Not to mention the generally oversized shoulder piece (which is, from my point of view a common problem to all races).

I’m guessing they were aspects overlooked during the designing process, with everyone more focused on how to make events more buggy and the terrain more incompatible with the game’s mechanics.

In conclusion, I’d say that saving money on this part of the design (both body shape and clothing style) isn’t really a long term achievement. I may play the game because of some good parts of it, but I’ll certainly not buy outfits for a body I’m not that happy with or, for the charr part, that have nothing in common with the race or (since there was someone here mentioning how the war business affects the body mass) basically troll the idea of armor. I’ll just have that <insert funny colour name here> coloured bag of pixels on whom I won’t bother to zoom in too often.

First question would be: why don’t we get HoT PvE part thrown down our throats in the same way, instead of putting those portals?
I’m not saying the regular pvp maps are very pvp-ish or well designed, but getting “forced” to play a beta is kinda bad. Having Stronghold on map selection at all times would mean for me “having to choose between it and other 2 options”, not what happens now.
Also, about the design of that map… we have Silverwastes and WvW that resemble the map.
We also have Battle of Khylo and Legacy of Foefire with them extra toys to play with, if you don’t want to pvp, which are pretty annoying. So what could be worse?! having both in one map. Along with some skritts for the added “swing a sword again” style Anet trolling.

No reason to comment on map bugs, like uninterrutable communing, when the map itself is a bug in the pvp area.

T Deines.4827:

That’s an extremely stupid assumption…

It was sarcasm, or trying to crack a joke at the modern society’s beauty or desireable body, if you want. All we’re being fed all over the place, from tv stars to other types of divas tend to fall in the same pattern. And if that pattern is what’s widely accepted as “desireable”, then everything else has to be bad, be it just socially or even medically.
As such, creating women bodies in an mmo (that tends to have a higher male player base) has to follow the same stereotypes.
Why I can’t really stomach well, tbh – hence the sarcasm.

Luckily, GW2 is still a decent game, in terms of sexual load (compared to some others I’mma avoid mentioning, still of Asian origin). However, the whole character creation area is quite… dull. All faces have largely same “topography” (best noticed during the wonderful cutscenes – no, I don’t like them ^x^ ). As for the bodies, I’m guessing using sliders would’ve been a wiser choice instead of predefined structures.

Uhm… errr… well, thin frame with small chest size is undesireable, meaning anorexia, hm? Whereas, small frame with large chest size could mean fotomodel or something?! Or just a wealthy thin lady who loves plastic.
The general trend seems to be that that particular part of the body should be big enough to obstruct seeing the ground you walk on ^x^

The problem is that Skyhammer and similar maps are centered around toys and objects. Less on captures and even less on pvp. As such, it can be quite refreshing to have to rely solely on your skills and your team for winning a match instead of sneaking to points or killing the lord, getting BLUE balls or using the kitten hammer.
As for Courtyard, the only problem it has is mentioned here – camping the spawnpoint which could be adjusted by Anet, if there wasn’t the season for Gemstore updates the whole year

One other slightly funny thing is that they added cosmetics improvements and gamestore updates with the last patch and suddenly one very important game mechanic gets its functionality changed (probably we could blame the new weapon skins for that?! ^x^) and the mesmers can no longer pvp (that’s maybe a pile of woodplanks blocking access :P)

@Farming: I think the feature is intended. It just doesn’t work the way they wanted yet, seeing how “Revealed” status abruptly eats 7-8 seconds of the stealth gained from SR.
And after they fix that, they’ll add it in the patch notes. It’s way too obvious to be a “bug”. It was just slipped in “by mistake”.

And as we could’ve seen, they don’t like fixing their bugs. Shadowstepping is still crippled. Events still freeze. Whole chapter of the story still missing. Etc. But new kittens in gemstore!

I’m ranting about more than the topic I’ve opened because it’s just frustrating. I love my thief and I can no longer enjoy playing it. At all. Not with Steal/Shadowstepping skills randomly working and any C&D tactics for both pvp and pve being made impossible.

“Will be fixed” sounds like a trolling when looking back at ^ those aspects. We’re not elves, 1000 years of waiting may prove to be a bit too much

Thieves’ve been crippled by the half-fix of shadowstepping skills, with them randomly failing on open ground. They have poorest survivability, no immunity skills, no stability skills, not very reliable summons (can’t really call ambush a summon) and virtually no decent condi removal outside stealth in a condi heavy game environment. Stealth was the last patch of safety for them, not just a launching platform for huge damage (which, btw, isn’t bigger than the damage any other class can unleash). So hurray!

While there are other classes affected too, there isn’t one who relies so heavily on stealth for both survival and damage as thieves do.

You wanna remove this?! no problem, I think. Just give thieves invulnerability, good condi removal, 1200 range and stability (more than that troll on Dagger Storm), and the players will adapt. But you can’t really do all that much on a class whose main tools are broken or purely obliterated (like stealth is now) and has no alternatives.

“The wise use of initiative” needed for using weapon skills is basically unique to thieves, all other classes being able to spam 10 to 24 skills. Except the warrior and guardian who have high survivability, all other classes have some means of “balancing” a fight, by spawning ads, more health pools, pets, turrets. All have at the very least half-decent condi damage and removal and again, at least half-decent team support. And all can deal good damage in many ways.

So I think this is an intended feature aimed at silencing the cries of the players frustrated they can’t always 1 hit thieves because of stealth. It also addresses the ability of safely running past kitten mobs in some instances. As such, they just need to fine-tune this before coming clean. However, I do believe that Revealed eating away seconds of stealth is an unintended side effect in the effort to pretty much paralyze a class.

Thieves aren’t tanky. They’re not supposed to be. But now they’ll have to, because they can’t hide. Or they can just retire. Honorably. The game masters no longer want them walking the lands of Tyria ^x^

Anyone else noticed the “Revealed” state triggering each time a stack of stealth is removed?! And if so… hey, Anet! didn’t you forget to mention this rather important game mechanic change in the update info?!
On a side note, along with the Shadowstep erratic functionality, this kinda blows away any chances thieves can have at playing their class as intended (or provide group support in any unnecessarily long instances).

Can you manifest any more hatred towards these mechanics that you brought to the game yourselves?

I mean it’s now finally impossible to actually chain stealth. Great! Along with being unable to shadowstep and having very short ranged non-spammable skills whose damage isn’t higher than other classes’, I kind find a devastating desire to play thief against the garbage bin.

PS: On this trend, with the next game balance patch, please add 1000 more minis and completely remove any weapon skills from the thief’ class. Just give us a generic spoon with which we could try to painstakingly slow butcher Zhaitan in 0.5 range. Thank you very much.

I believe they’re quite aware of the mess they caused with this, but HoT and Gemstore maintenance takes too much of their time and energy to actually have any to spare on small things like game-breaking faulty mechanics.
Along with the conditions mechanics mess, missing story chapter, broken events (both having even achievements linked to them), there’s a plethora of issues that people kept reporting with virtually no feedback and certainly no remedies offered by those in charge.
As of late even the number of gold spammers seems to be on the rise which makes me think not very nice things about the direction this game is going.

Hey, Anet! Why can’t you guys be the awesome people that we used to know during GW1 times? Actually fixing broken stuff and maintaining the balance in both pvp and pve environments, not just spamming the store with half-kitten items.

Vizardlorde.8243:

While I agree with you on most, the support that necros are lacking is offensive support. The ability to blast or provide fire fields, the ability to grant might and/or fury to allies, unique buffs like spotter, empower allies etc. Their damage is on par with everyone else they just dont bring anything to the party that someone else already has without hindering the party ( wells overwritting firefields, 2 target cleave, fear moving stuff etc)

It still feels pretty awkward to ask for more on a class that excels in both power and conditions builds and provides decent party support, while still having really good survivability utilities and mechanics.
Rangers have little (if any) party support (beside their spirits which tend to eat up a lot of trait specs). Pretty low survivability, poor condi removal, weak condition damage. Even their dps isn’t making them a desired class in any dungeon run.
Thieves have even worst surivability, bad condition damage, short range, almost no stability skill or swiftness ones, the initiative based attacks makes them the only class in the game that can’t spam skills and let’s not forget about that one extra enemy in their skillset (shadowsteps), virtually no condition removal (certainly not suited for the condition-frenzy world of Tyria). And I’m pretty sure most of the players consider them usefull in a group only because of the lengthy group stealth they can provide.
So talking about class improvements in general, I’m pretty sure necros aren’t really deserving a top spot in a priority queue.

All in all, giving one class way too many powers kinda locks out the “weaker” ones. Just looking at lfg for instances gives a strong idea about it (“War/Ele/Guard only” ads tend to fill up all the recruitment lists)

along Fire and Air sigils, they should also remove conditions from pvp, teleports and anything else that can hit a class that can’t survive it. Ofc, a condition class doesn’t give a frak about how badly those are “balanced” in pvp, but taking stupid amounts of damage hurts your feelings?!

On a different note, I’d say the one thing needing removed would be the type of toys like Skyhammer. Not because it’s too dangerous, just annoying. Like the Fire and Air sigils. Or the conditions. Or the bugged-to-hell terrain that prevents shadowsteps…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Issues with current Necros:

1. No group support
2. slow casting
3. no mobility
4. no power based AOE
5. low DPS

Issues Solve by specialization:
1. AOE GS
2. DPS???

Well it is a start I guess… I’d rather have the support and mobility instead though…

Say what now?!
Low dps?! with or without weapons?
Slow casting?! Did you consider other weapons beside staff? or you want a spam-style game, possibly with skills like Ranger’s LB skill 2 without any cd?
No group support?! ofc, if you don’t wanna offer any. Otherwise, wells that clear condi, aoe heals, and the cc’s of the necro are, if I dare say so, desireable group support. You can’t give portals and Icy Bows to all classes, hm?!
No mobility… Sure! Must give them some portals?! some shadowsteps maybe? (not that it’s a properly functioning mechanic anyway) Or precisely what?!
You have speed signet, you have a tp, you have swiftness skills, you have multiple hp pools, summons, fast attacks, strong dps, strong conditions, decent group support. I don’t know what you’re smoking, but I really want some of that stuff!

Necrid Blast hits hard and often and it’s not the only skill that needs dodged. I’m thinking having build and specific gear requirements for the new and improved Lupicus is not very player-friendly.
However, I believe it will be easier for them to just say “oh, it was an intended feature, but we actually forgot to mention it in the last few patch notes”.
As for one-shotting him, I for one dislike the concept. I mean, sure, most mobs “cheat” in the game (because of a rather bug-heavy environment), and the fixes are constantly postponed by the need to update the shop, but that doesn’t mean I have to join the crowd of cheating, careless entities involved in this.
There are many game breaking bugs that Anet is “looking into” or “having conversations about” for many years now, and improvements are yet to be seen.
Back in GW1 times, when Anet was actually fixing an aspect of the game, like the op SF on sins, the community used to find new means around it. Only difference is that here, the options are limited due to very poor skills/traits options (with most of them being there just to add up to the required number/class, not for any utility they can provide).

Stairs are not walls, to start with. they are paths up the wall. And as such, they should be 100% valid, if I can walk up them without even bothering to jump. Unless the terrain topography and game mechanics haven’t been tossed in the team, so to speak, and they don’t recognize each other.
Secondly targets’ hitboxes have been degrading over time. I think the corruption of Zhaitan touched them and behave more and more weird. From hiding in the ground to being obstructed by thin air (shooting at a normal sized human in the center of Legacy of Foefire had that effect at times), to being too close for melee range or out of range for half your ranged skills, while not that far for the other half.
Most worrying aspect here is that mechanics, topography and other aspects that part of the player base is interested in are not priorities, probably because they do not produce any financial effects. As such, it makes more sense that the team should focus on the upcoming (most probably even more buggy – with the gliding mechanics) content and with the gemstore ever-increasing variety of bizzare stuff. (Side, off-topic note: isn’t it funny that in a dragon themed game there are so very few dragon minis, but a hoard of cats and other domestic animals?)

The shadowsteps skills have been put under the care of the RNGesus now. I’ve played 2 games in the Forest of Nifhel just today. While I could Judge’s Intervention from beyond the stairs of the Henge onto an opponent stationed there, all attempts at doing it on thief have failed – even if there is a valid path, not out of range and not requiring jumps. Thieves are as squishy as they could make them (probably revenge on the SF builds of GW1), but with this new Gift of Mechanics from the patch they’re at the Edge of Extinction. I’m not saying though that other shadowsteps or teleports work as intended. ‘Cause they don’t. Unless the intention was to just break them like that, in which case, they work perfectly. And with absolutely no word about it from anyone responsible, it would seem it’s the latter.

Types of ground overlapping, pebbles (like someone above said), flat terrain (that actually might have some props on it to make it more bootyfull), stairs and ramps. Everywhere you go, there’s a very tiny chance that your skills will work. And hey! 5 initiative isn’t all that bad to lose for no reason in the thickest of a fight. Or the only utility that removes more than 1 condition…
And when you’re hugging the mob (probably works in pvp too, but didn’t see it) and try to steal or just hit it… bam! Target too close! so, only reasonable choice, step back so you can get the better “No valid path” error message.

“Good mechanics” to improve on an already “good balance” between classes…

Later edit: funny how two skills from same weapon, with same range function differently in the screenshot bellow. Used Choking Gas and arrow hits the intended target (at the bottom of the stairs). Used Infiltrator’s Arrow and my shadowstep is cut short halfway.

Royal, what’s the reason of actually applying 1000 conditions that are supposed to mean something (bleed, poison, burning, blah-blah), when you can have one condition for everything as a game mechanic. and one weapon. and one type of mob. since it doesn’t have to be more, hm? they’re all pixels that don’t really die. Teq’s there each day.
GW1 had that generic degeneration, which pleased both the players and the element of logic. Call it erosion here, or aging. Both affect everything living or not. Let the idea of bleeding stick to creatures which have the potential to do that, and so on.
GW2 kinda started with logic (you can’t kd an earth elemental), but that’s among the very few things that DO have some logic there.
There aren’t many games that really don’t give a flying fart about logic. Not very successfull ones, at least. I couldn’t make innanimate object bleed in any game I’ve played (and I’m a rpg fan). However, I thiiiink P&P RPGs did have rules about damage types and vulnerabilities. And the computer ones did (or do) have those as inspiration. GW2’s system doesn’t and seems to base its system on a “let’s be done fast and make money faster after” idea. So much attention to eye candies, so very little attention to core elements. And this coming from the people that promised a lot and that made even a public statement about what their intentions are in their now-dreaded MMO manifesto.
They should remove the gravity too if the logic behind conditions is of no importance. Why should we be only able to jump 2 stairs at once? Or take damage from falling?! Or even be unable to shoot through obstacles?! And on this note, I think the fact that I can’t shoot my bow at Teq from LA is a bug! All I should need there is a group member in Sparkfly to tell me if I’m pointing my weapon in the right direction, and I should be able to do pull it off right from near the Mystic Toilet. ‘Cause, as you say, it doesn’t have to be logic or to respect any rules. Otherwise, we should be playing chess.

Royal, did you play Guild Wars 1? Because Asuras and Charr were speaking there too. But rocks wouldn’t bleed and neither would skeletons. The current condition system is anything but functional or logical. Mesmers were a really strong class there too, and so were necros, but back then, logic and anatomy still mattered.
Here, between the promised-not-to-do-it “Hey! I swung a sword!” (with the huge dose of sarcasm adding it to the skill’s description) to the “someone call a doctor! I think my turret ate so bad shrooms”, nothing does. But it’s kinda obvious that there aren’t many people left who care about the state of the game. Just about the promotions of the gem store.

Most of my friends I’ve made in GW1 from all over Europe jumped into GW2 the moment it hit the shelves. I’ve been talking with them before trying it out on my own and they were all rounding it down to the same conclussion: “We tried it and eventually decided to sacrifice looks for functionality”.
All of them have had thousands of hours of GW1 and stacked some hundred hours of GW2 also. None of them budged when I tried to suggest them to give it another go with the new LWS2 improvements: “Did they fix the conditions system that they promised to fix 2 years ago?”; “Ogre Wars still bugging?”; “Still weekly updates of gemstore with no gameplay improvements?”; “Still grinding for gear they promised not to introduce (talking about ascended here)?” “Still broken events reward system?!” “Then no, thanks, I’d rather do UWSC or DoASC or other things that are less broken”.

@ Hyper Cutter: The current conditions system is brainless: “Put all conditions!!!!” Torment, Confusion, Bleeding, Burning, Poison, Cripple, Blind – they all work, most of them do massive damage, yet most classes have “remove 1 condition” utilities with 20+ sec cooldown. All conditions affect basically everything, from rocks to pile of bones, to doors and lately turrets. Fire elementals aren’t more vulnerable to water here, ‘cause they’re already vulnerable to everything.
I’d make fire elementals heal from fire damage, undead gain stability from fear, earth elementals requiring vulnerability or weakness to take some types of condition damage, and certainly I wouldn’t have turrets get poisoned (since this is the latest addition to the logicless conditions system).
I’d make precursors have a higher chance to drop(not by much) from daily bonus reward chests – depending on the mob’s type (for example Chaos Gun from inquest themed dungeons and world bosses). And make the legendaries account bound.

I’d maybe add scaling to dungeons instead of numbers requirements, since even if the intentions were nice, the HUGE difference in damage output between classes make some of them (like rangers) undesired in a group. And I would certainly try to replicate and then fix bugs that I’ve forgot about or introduced (Lupicus?). Between us, I could also say that the changes were an intended feature and get away with “murder”.

I’d also remove the option to switch sides in a pvp match or go spectator. The moment one would abandon his/her team mates a temporary ban would be placed upon the person, denying access to that particular type of pvp (pretty much like in gw1, hm?). And I would certainly consider adjusting skills and traits to match the realities of pvp. (Anet was really good at balancing the skills for the competitive areas of gw1 too).

Lastly, the old game’s store wasn’t rich, but people were always purchasing something. And that not only because the quality of the items there were vastly superior (the lich costume looks better there than here), but also to show their support for a great team who was constantly trying to provide the best gaming experience for everyone.

As for the shop, rather than tossing decent to ridiculous skins and items in it every other week I’d maybe consider adding items that are used now but were only available during before, for the new people to actually get a taste at what they’ve been missing out on (e.g. give some portal stone to instances of LWS1 or other content no longer available).

With such a vast world no one expects to actually have everything working perfect. But it’s kinda BAD when you attach an achievement to some events that need fresh maps or new game builds to have a chance of functioning and then, probably a permanent guardian there to make sure this or that npc doesn’t get killed bugging the stuff again. If a game mechanic (like shadowstepping) is in direct conflict with the game environment, remove the conflicting element (in this case, I’m guessing it’s calculating the path on the raw soil, or on props, but never on a mix of the above), or accept the kitten and allow for tp skills (reducing range or something, but not breaking pretty much every weapon set).

I’m writting walls of text here because there are sadly walls of problems that people probably ended up ignoring after years of barely any improvements in the fields.

Lastly, there was another good thing about the gw1: its community. While compared to other mmo’s gw2 is still faring well, even this has been depracated compared to its prequel. It may be because of how the game is turning into a shop-driven buggy game? Or is it just us, humans losing common-sense and manners with every passing day?!

So then, Mash, from your point of view the fact that the march 16 patch made the game a lot less enjoyable is perfectly fine.
*A valid path to target, for me, would be anything I can walk or jump to. Examples of these things being 2 sides of a canyon connected by a bridge (like the bridge at the very beginning of the Arah Explorable). Jumping could be done either over rugged terrain or over boulders and other objects aligned as “stairs”. The fact that the game doesn’t consider them valid paths is not my problem in the slightest. Basically there’s a very high chance that the underlying topography has any added cosmetic features, shadowstepping skills won’t work.

• The ‘Steall skill can’t find a path to target not even when it is 1 pixel away (in case you’re not playing thief, that skill is also a source of hitpoints, boons and stealth).
• ‘Stability’ skill has been balanced so that now if you’re caught between 4 teragriffs while defending (even level 2) forts in SW you’re toast. Not to mention the way it is applied on certain skills (like every 3 seconds over an 8 second channeled one)
• Same patch added yet another lovely behavior on some mobs, resetting their hp and position after a knockback (most husks in both SW and DT behave like this) and as I’ve noticed recently, that’s not the only mechanic that does it.
• I also understand that Arah’s big bad wolf also received an unintended behavior – talking about Necrid Blast (extremely briefly ranged telegraphed skill). But it is still running back into the wall when vs melees and the terrain around Belka is still littered with invisible obstacles (arguably making it the worst enemy in the fight, not the boss’es unreflectable electric projectile).

I could continue ranting about many issues that I’ve come across over a very short period of time that I’ve been playing this game. And how these issues are neglected while favorizing a well supplied gem store and more (most certainly buggy as hell) content for people to pay for.
It’s like some would sell you a car without one of the wheels and its service shop would give it new paint and free decals, while taking another piece from it (be it just a screw, a seat, a window or – like with the shadowstepping issue – a part of the engine) each time you get it there to have it fix.

After sifting through various mmo’s I returned to GW especially for the story. I was stunned with disappointment though. A potentially great epic was, from my point of view, butchered with rigid acting (if any – both in terms of animating the actors and giving them voice, making them look more noobish than a kindergarten theater assembly) and anticlimatic points (both “The Source of Orr” and “Victory or Death” left me with a bitter taste). Oh and it might be worth mentioning the random disappearence of a whole chapter. I admit that LWS2 washed away some of the shame (The end of it looking a LOT more epic and intense than the half-afk’able counterpart of the original, and with some extremely well made cutscenes and lively conversations).

Some players said they don’t care about story, plot holes and other similar aspects of the game or how the lore fits in with the content provided. That all that really matters is makin’ gold and buying skins off TP/Gemstore.
Back in GW1 one had a motivation to revisit pretty much every dungeon in the game, the rare drops from each being GW2’s equivalent of a legendary, hm? (the DSR, Mini Dhuum, the BDS, etc). Here?!

And the worst part is the general attitude of “who cares about consistency?! give us more gemstore stuff!”, coupled with the neverdying in-game question of “how can I make gold fast here?” – seeing how everything can be bought off TP, including legendary weapons.
What we usually do in real life we end up doing here too, working jobs we hate (grinding or struggling through bugs littered dungeon), to make money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need only to impress people we don’t like (seeing how aggresive or rude an attitude some players have, I’d say that even “hate” would fit in the phrase above)…

A tl;dr version would have to look probably along the lines of:

• broken pvp system with wide open doors to system abuse
• forever broken events and instances that (and this is the major issue) the devs seem to have been content to solve the way she said (try new map)
• illogical conditions system (poisoned turrets and blind sand?!)
• a sea of useless traits and gear
• broken professions mechanics
• really unappealing rewards for running buggy instances (why do them anyway if it’s faster and less frustrating to just pvp for the dungeon skins)
• with all the above, the feeling that there’s too much focus on gemstore’s shinies replenishment
  @ Bob, no one said there are bug free games. But gw1 was not this buggy. And when you add modifications to the game to ‘balance’ it and drop a hoard of bugs with them which you cba to fix, that’s not quite okay. Perfection is an ideal, but what we’re seeing here (at least some gw1 players who’re still around) is rather depressing… Not compared with other franchises, but with Anet’s own prequel.

Edit: Out of the 6 months I’ve been playing this game, 2 of them were spent with broken mechanics, introduced along with the new shadowstepping system. When you can’t use your skill because the game doesn’t consider a bridge “valid path” even if there are no obstacles. When you can’t steal (on thief) from a foe because you have a “Target too close” and when the targets’ hitboxes get buried randomly below ground level, one would think devs will notice such kitten s and attempt to fix them before making turrets roll out in fear. Then we have a stability skill improvement that makes hardly any sense given the massive cc spam from SW’s mobs, for example.
I can’t not compare the two games bearing the same name. And in this comparison, gw2 fails on all aspects minus the graphics.

That’s not the only nobrainer. But balancing classes attempts shouldn’t lead to more illogical mechanics. The big problem I see with the turrets’ new vulnerability is in the realm of logic, not end results. It would’ve been, as other people said, to just adjust the hitpoints instead of making them vulnerable to conditions. And really, is this the only problem one can find when viewing all the classes?
Elementalists have 20 skills and can even deal massive damage from just swapping attunements. Take their attunements! Give them 1 hour cooldown.
All melee classes have strong survivability and condition removal, but not the thieves. Take all condi removal skills from all classes!
Ranger’s bows are more dumb both in efficiency and use than warrior’s and thief’s. Take the weapons away from these two classes.
Mesmers are always 4v1 in pvp. Take their clones skills away!
Don’t stop at turrets with the “balancing” the classes. There’s more to be done, as I’ve writen above.
Or… try to actually test the builds and classes (like you used to do in gw1) and actually bring balance to the game.
I was joking with all suggestions about various classes (which jokes just might happen if this way of balancing the game continues).

Hey! I’d like to see an improvement to the turrets please. Give them wheels, so they can run in fear. Or just make them topple if no wheels. That will certainly follow the logic of the conditions system of gw2.
Anet did a great job at keeping the pvp in gw1 balanced. But gw2 is bad from this point of view. From the “auto-balance” feature that is heavily abused (to just catch a spot in the winning team) to the major differences in survivability of various classes, to the no-cooldown but not-spammable skills of the thieves. Everything’s broken. So I think the troll of making the turrets bleed is just perfect for GW2, but it’s needing the “running in fear” really badly to be complete.

Shadowstepping skills after the patch implementations seems to have gone haywire. While it’s to be expected that they’re no longer teleporting skills (and as such you can’t use them to cross a small canyon that you can actually jump over), they fail to work properly even on platforms or other sorts of irregular terrains that don’t require any jumping whatsoever. Good example would be the platforms in the final room of the Underground Facility Fractal, where skills like Infiltrator’s Arrow return a “no path found” error, even if there is just an incline connecting 2 horizontal sections that requires no jumping efforts.
This would mean that the skills don’t check for a valid path, but rather for a valid path in a straight line (which is kinda extreme).
To prevent making a 3rd topic, same patch added a most wonderful extra bug: “Target too close” that I’ve noticed when using Pistol Whip and Infiltrator’s Strike – of course, in melee range.

I don’t think this was an intended feature of the fractal, but literally all ballistas inside the fractals and also the arrow carts trigger the “obstructed” fail message when hitting them with projectiles from ranged, even if they’re in plain sight with no obstacles at all (from props to topography) on the projectiles’ trajectory.