Guild Wars 2

A suggestion that I made could help with these problems:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-for-better-Targeting-Skills/first#post6222192

Check it out and support if you think it would improve your problem.

Yeah wont happen. As it is right now I am having to ALWAYS recheck the box because of their going bye bye all the time.

I can’t see them doing this, not saying it wouldn’t work or be a good idea but….

They changed it to this system because it was confusing for a lot of people and slightly harder to balance as people could mix runes. So they changed it to what we have now.

Tbh I’m surprised they haven’t gone the full way through and just changed it to how PvP works – you choose 1 rune and that’s it, it covers all your gear, no mixing at all, no spread stats/bonus here and there.

serialkicker.5274:

Before another dozen people say exactly same thing I’ll say I don’t see why they couldn’t do it. Reset personal story and problem solved. I’m sure if someone really wants to change the race, they wouldn’t mind doing personal story again. Now, don’t start with “it’s not immersive” nonsense, because many many things are not immersive in game and also why do you care how other players play their game? If I for example change my race and my story resets, how will that affect you? If I don’t care about my character being in “non immersive” way, why would you?
I’m pretty sure Anet could do it if they wanted, they just don’t want it, that’s the problem. Same thing as with separating PvE from PvP.

So you say reset the story and no problem? I say what is the difference doing this compared to just buying a new char slot and starting again from scratch? All it does is create MORE work with possibly MORE bugs for anet to bother with.

The op says he/she would be glad to pay for such a feature to expand on his/her account. Again I say it’s already there – buy a new char slot.

I am a GW1 vet I guess as in I did have the game a few years before GW2 came out and I did earn 35 points to have a specific title (for my Rev) as well as all the other goodies.

Having said that, I wouldn’t mind if they did give you another way in GW2 to access these skins. HOWEVER I would only agree to such a thing if they also offered NEW rewards be they skins, minipets, toys or whatever for those vets who already have the others unlocked. In order for players such as the OP to obtain access to these new skins/whatever they would have to go back to GW1 and do everything that we did.

Is this a compromise we could all live with lol?

niea.7504:

Black Citadel worst citadel.

Once you know this map it’s actually probably the easiest/quickest city map to do, very fast. However all city maps are pretty crap reward wise so yeah meh anyways lol. Unless you are farming Trans Charges of course.

There’s not really any hard ones imo but there are a few that are annoying or boring due to various events or bugs that happen often.

Diessa Plateau – Is one that comes to mind, that 1 heart with the cows you feed and do emotes too was always bugged for me, cold never wash the stinky ones and the bug catching became very annoying after they changed it. So for me you are always left with spamming the cows with emotes and waiting to be able to do that again.

Blazeridge Steppes – I think it’s this map that has that heart where you have to use stealth to tag things. You move SOOOO slow it is super annoying. Not only that but the npcs who spot you seem to have some super keen sense in doing so. Ultimately for me the spammy nature of having to run back to the npc to get the stealth again and the super slow movement is such a put off I resort to cheesing it. That being, park my char in stealth near the first dummy and just sit there tagging that one over and over. Of course you have to wait a min or so between chances to tag it again – more super boredom.

Wayfarer Foothills – I think this is the one with the Jotun Trading Heart. It used to be super annoying but thankfully they have made it you can kill the wolves or whatever now so not too bad.

Caledon Forest – I guess it’s not too bad but it just seems bigger than the other starter areas or maybe just more stuff to do, more hearts perhaps? Not only that but the minimap looks very messy to me.

Apart from that I have no other issues off the top of my head. Even after I had to take about 8 or 9 of my alts through the WvW maps as well lol.

tolunart.2095:

Paulytnz.7619:

Funny how it’s now you coming out with numbers which I will not comment more on. You are ignoring anything that I am saying about my experiences from playing the game with both zerk or other gear. You are also throwing out stuff totally unrelated to this entire topic. Not only that but this all started from my 1 comment which went as such:

General statements are not numbers. I’m looking at the big picture, while you are projecting your personal bias on the entire playerbase – statements like saying that anything “less” than zerk gear is too slow and boring. I’ve never used it and while the game isn’t perfect, I’ve never found combat boring outside of the world boss events where I used to semi-afk while 100 or so toons chipped away at the boss’s hp total for 45 seconds.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Zerk is not the be-all and end-all of the game, and the devs don’t tune around it, they tune around the idea that nearly every build is some flavor of dps because they built the game to work without tanks and healers. It’s the Trinity that is the artificial concept, they didn’t have that sort of thing in tabletop RPGs which these games are heavily based on.

How exactly am I biased when 90% of my play time here has been in PVT gear and only NOW I am changing to zerk or condi? Again when I say things like “anything less than zerk is slow or boring” is from MY own exp/opinion. Did I say anywhere it applies to everyone? Wow you really can’t let things go can you?

I do find it funny however how you say you are looking at the big picture yet you are commenting so much on a certain stat gear you have never tried using yourself. How can you comment on it if you have NEVER used it? The mind boggles. Here I am someone who has used PVT for 90% of my gameplay through 11 chars through all their stories and world completes. All through LS2, all through HOT story and played them all in PvP. I comment from my experiences from all of that from both zerk gear and PvT. And yet you say what I say means nothing and you shoot down a certain set when you have never used it? Wow really come on now just let it go….

PS The following looks like numbers to me and not a general statement:

“On the forums there are a couple dozen regulars, perhaps a hundred or so who post once in a while, a few thousand who lurk”

I will let it go if you do. :P

PistolWhip.2697:

It says crystal desert in the OP’s first link…

The OP could have named that pic anything they wanted to throw people off the track. :P

tolunart.2095:

Paulytnz.7619:

Players ask in game for info all the time as well as the ideal builds to go and gear. I see it all the time and you can geuess what is pretty much answered all the time. Not only that they also see other players killing faster than them if they are in anything besides the fast killing gear and will straight out ask them how they are killing faster. People are not totally blind or stupid as you may be trying to make out they are.
.

You’re continuing to make assumptions. Casual isn’t stupid, it just means that they have different goals than you do. Hardcore players like to challenge themselves and test the limits of themselves and the game. Not every player does this, some people just log in to chat with their friends or to have fun and play the game while they have a little spare time. Researching the BiS equipment, let alone grinding until their fingers fall off to get it, doesn’t appeal to everyone. There’s nothing wrong with this, there are thousands of small details built into the game for players to discover, most of them have nothing to do with killing monsters or collecting loot.

On the forums there are a couple dozen regulars, perhaps a hundred or so who post once in a while, a few thousand who lurk and read the posts but don’t comment. We tend to forget that while this seems like a large number, it’s only a few % of the total number of people playing the game. The average player has never even visited the forums, many of them don’t even know it exists.

Back when he posted in the BLTC forum, John Smith occasionally offered a glimpse at the size of the active player base by posting how many items passed through the trading post during a short period of time. While you think in terms of dozens or hundreds of items, the reality is that 100x to 1000x the number of transactions happens compared to what we imagine. A while back someone spoke about manipulating the precursor market and he mentioned that approximately one Dusk was sold every hour on average. Think about how many hours this game has been around, even if the rate fluctuates over time, thousands upon thousands of Dusks have been spawned, transformed, bought and sold, packed away in the bank against future use, etc.

And still, Legendaries are a concern to only a small part of the player base, and buying/selling them through the TP is a thing for an even smaller part of those players. The vast majority of players don’t care about Dusk at all.

Funny how it’s now you coming out with numbers which I will not comment more on. You are ignoring anything that I am saying about my experiences from playing the game with both zerk or other gear. You are also throwing out stuff totally unrelated to this entire topic. Not only that but this all started from my 1 comment which went as such:

I think part of the problem is Anet balances the game around zerk gear. Or at least I think they do maybe?

I don’t know what to say but if I was someone else reading that comment I would see it as someone posting an opinion on what THEY thought or see/experience rather than straight out claiming as fact. Okay maybe I did not add a similar disclaimer before I dropped those numbers (90-95% or whatever) which I guess I should have since some ppl tend to take everything said around here as absolutes or something that needs to be backed up with proof/statistics or whatever else. People’s own experiences or guesses count for nothing unless you have those barebone facts and numbers. Really, does it do anyone any good to be the one who is “correct” or has all the “figures and numbers”? Does it really add anything at all to this thread or topic being discussed by pointing to someone and saying “your numbers are wrong, lets create a whole other topic/discussion on why you are wrong”.

Can we just please stay on topic? Anything ele is just pointless.

My opinion is that it seems anet balances the regular Joe Shmo trash mob around zerk or now high power condi damage based on how fast the mobs are downed with those gears vs say a PVT. My opinion is that Anet may look at any other gear such as PVT to be used only if:

A – You are new to the game and need to learn the basics of combat.
B – Have poor reaction times or ping and may need those extra seconds/hits taken to survive and react.

C – Used in very specific situations such as raids or dungeons etc where people may not care how slow the fight goes bla bla bla but it would still certainly go faster if the other gear was used.

D – Use it for peace of mind, roleplay or just mucking about playing with things and not caring how fast you kill things and maybe even feel strong that you can be the last one standing after taking on a lot of mobs all at once.

Again all of this is my opinion and even if so, there is nothing wrong with that. However as related to this thread and being on topic my opinion still stands that if Anet or even the player base wants the “perceived” “Meta” to change they need to offer more viable/attractive reasons to have players use this gear for the more typical part of the gameplay which is not covered in my examples above from A-D.

Lastly, why would Anet care if the trash mobs were balanced around zerk or not? If you go zerk or condi you have that “risk vs reward”. Risk being you may get downed/killed. Reward being you move on to your next kill faster, thus less boring/tedium and more loot (but even the more loot is debatable based on the rng and loot tables here but that is another topic altogether!). If you go in any other gear, sure you have a greater chance of surviving but more than likely it’s going to take you longer to kill and make it a little more tedious bordering on boredom. Again in my opinion I would think Anet would see this as a good system and working as intended with no reason to change it.

Redenaz.8631:

Paulytnz.7619:

Also since Anet has the data and can see and has seen for some time now that almost everyone ( I would assume less than 5-10% who don’t, including myself for the most part of my time here on 7 out of 11-ish chars) does run zerk and even now zerk type cond builds I would say they adapt to add challenges for that even with the trash mobs and thus we get even more larger HP pools or other tricks that take us longer to kill them even with said zerk/high cond gear.

Is it possible that your assumption is way off, and that they’re not balancing everything strictly around pure DPS gear? I think you’re mixing your “they have metrics” knowledge with your assumption (“90-95% of people run zerker”) and coming up with a pretty major conclusion based on those two together.

I mean, I guess it’s possible, but the vicious cycle you’re describing in detail hinges on some large assumptions.

Well of course my assumptions could be TOTALLY off. But you can’t tell me that fighting creatures in anything other than zerk/high cond builds for a great deal of the classes doesn’t take longer and get’s to the point of total boredom. Unless you build your char to a very good balance in the other gear (which I think I have managed to get very close for my PVT Engi) you are stuck like this and could very well get tempted to “the dark side” which I am sure many people have.

Just before HOT came along I took all of my classes through LS2 to get them ready for HOT. I can tell you for the vast majority of them – snooze fest because of the HP sponges that most of the mobs/bosses were. Seemed to me so much more than the PS and doing Pve content while doing world complete. Then along came HOT. General mobs take longer than core Tyria usually unless they are glass cannons such as raptors. It’s the same for the story, sure it’s a short story but what a pain again in toughness gear, especially the last fight.

Of course I can only ASSUME they are making it more challenging for the zerk meta. But I certainly can see and feel how it is also effecting myself in other gear. Also if I am not mistaken (might have to look for it somewhere sometime) I am pretty sure before HOT released that they did straight out say to us that players in zerk gear may have to change their playstyle or look at other gear/builds to approach HOT. I don’t recall if that was raid specific or not but I’m sure it was said and there was a buzz about it on these forums at the time.

It’s only logical that a company will try to give their customers more challenging content (especially when some of them are yelling for it) to keep the game interesting and worth playing so I would think they would look at the metrics, see what the players are doing, how they are doing it and then plan from that where to take content and how to challenge them.

I have no metrics, no data, but from what I see in game from people’s chats, the speed at how they kill creatures and all the topics on these forums you can get an idea in your mind that a vast majority of the people are using these stats.

tolunart.2095:

Paulytnz.7619:

Also since Anet has the data and can see and has seen for some time now that almost everyone ( I would assume less than 5-10% who don’t, including myself for the most part of my time here on 7 out of 11-ish chars) does run zerk and even now zerk type cond builds ……

Go ahead and assume but again, it’s more like the other way around. Most players don’t read the forums and don’t even know what the different gear prefixes mean. Mostly they probably gear in level/story rewards unless they get something as a drop that looks cooler.

There are millions of GW2 accounts, and a few hundred thousand of them are active accounts. Most log in for a few hours a month. Hardcore players are a lot less common than most forum warriors believe. The average player does not know, or care, about these kinds of things.

Players ask in game for info all the time as well as the ideal builds to go and gear. I see it all the time and you can geuess what is pretty much answered all the time. Not only that they also see other players killing faster than them if they are in anything besides the fast killing gear and will straight out ask them how they are killing faster. People are not totally blind or stupid as you may be trying to make out they are.

Look I’m not here saying which armour should be taken by anyone. All I am saying is that from my experience after running 11 chars through world complete and taking the time on every one of those to do every event that I came across while doing so. That the zerker (and prob too now condi power builds) are just straight up faster for killing the trash mobs/vets and for some classes in anything else it can get very boring very fast. Not to mention if it is indeed a stronger monster the longer the fight drags on the more likely you will be downed even in more defensive gear.

Believe me it has taken myself a LONG time to even convert from PVT to the other. Even now my main still uses PVT and he will probably be the last to convert.

I am all for people using other gear, I wish they would but I think they need to find ways to make those stats/types more attractive to the player base. I don’t have any ideas how they could do this atm or other wise I would offer them up.

This indeed is good news ty Anet! Another set to work on collecting lol.

tolunart.2095:

Paulytnz.7619:

I think part of the problem is Anet balances the game around zerk gear. Or at least I think they do maybe? Look at the hp pools of even just trash mobs. It can take a while to kill them in PVT gear for example depending on the class I would have to add. Or perhaps those HP pools are so large because they expect more than 1 person to attack and kill a creature.

You’ve got it reversed. The bosses that spawned at the end of an event chain (or were the event chain, back when Boar/Troll/Bandit/etc. was a thing) were zerg-rushed by dozens of toons with power/crit buffed to the sky. There is (was?) a limit to how much damage conditions could do, so if too many toons relied on burning, poison, bleeding and so on to do their damage they barely scratched the boss before he went down faster than… er, well very very fast.

So in order to get a few shots in and get credit for the kill, and the loot, you had to get there fast and do a lot of damage fast. So zerk gear was pretty much the only way to go. And because the bosses died in like ten seconds or so, Anet buffed them by adding more and more hp so someone besides the first dozen toons to arrive could get some loot.

Players set the meta, not devs. They can try, like making ranged skill do much less damage than melee or making bosses immune to damage until they are burned, poisoned or whatever. But players will always seek out the path or least resistance. Min/maxers blaze the trail by finding and committing to the most effective builds, and many players follow their leads.

Not all though. I tend towards carrion and soldier gear, but I mostly play solo or with my wife so I don’t feel any pressure to conform to others’ standards.

To be fair you are talking about Champons here (or what was once a Champion) and a group event at that. These are meant to be killed by many people. Added to that we are talking about pre-condition buffing as well as the group event scaling to appropriate levels for the amount of players doing it. I was mainly speaking of just the run of the mill trash mobs, you could even add vets into there as well. So tbh I don’t think I have it backwards at all.

Also since Anet has the data and can see and has seen for some time now that almost everyone ( I would assume less than 5-10% who don’t, including myself for the most part of my time here on 7 out of 11-ish chars) does run zerk and even now zerk type cond builds I would say they adapt to add challenges for that even with the trash mobs and thus we get even more larger HP pools or other tricks that take us longer to kill them even with said zerk/high cond gear. Take a look at the regular HOT trash mobs for example. They can be tough for a lot of people. And what does this do for those in any other gear? Takes them longer to kill again, even more so, so again we get back to the same problem and more people considering to go the Zerk/High cond meta because it now takes them even longer to kill the mobs that are being created specifically for the zerk/cond meta. It will never end……

penelopehannibal.8947:

Gilded Hollow.

Do I win your stuff?

Yeah I concur, def Gilded Hollow. I have seen the desert above my own guild hall too lol….

Not sure how much Karma they give but heart quests also give karma now. So you could just earn some passively while working on map completes if you still have any left to do.

I have been sitting on 3mil+ karma for years, mainly just from events and heart completes across all my alts. So it’s not that hard really to build it up.

Donari.5237:

Paulytnz.7619:

I played this game (villager’s and Heroes) that had a sort of instance housing system but not really. For those of you that played GW1 you would remember they had servers or worlds or whatever (zones?) that you could choose to play on. Those instances worked sort of like that. You pick your “home” instance which had about 60-80 houses in it. You would buy only 1 of them of course but you could see every other player’s house that also belonged to that instance.

LotRO also does this, with infinitely spawned duplicate neighborhoods accessed by specific portals in the world, location determined by your preferred racial architectural style. The problem there for me was two fold: One, there were maybe twenty or so homes per neighborhood, of varying size and customizability (they had attachment points and item limits), and a guild couldn’t claim all the homes. So even if a guild went into one neighborhood, creating the instance from scratch, random other people could use up the slots so you couldn’t actually live near your friends by the time you had the gold to buy.

Two, even with all these spawned maps, you had to pay biweekly mortgage. You could pay a bit in advance, but if you happened not to log in for a while, you lost the house. All your furniture went into an escrow box at an NPC in the map’s center and you could get it out to furnish a new place if you had bag space to hold it and could afford the purchase fee of a new house, which probably would be by strangers as all the homes by your guild would be bought up (including yours, when you lost it someone else could snap it up).

So I think GW2 might do better with individual personal house instances, accessed from various locations in the world, to which you can invite others and set permissions as to who may randomly enter and use/rearrange the furniture. There should be zero maintenance to keep what you have even if you vanish for a year. And ideally from my perspective, each of your alts could have a separate version to suit their varying RP personae but you could enter any of your houses on any of your alts. There could be a drop down like there is of guilds when walking into a guild hall so you can choose which alt’s domicile to visit.

Hmmm interesting, I never did get to play LOTRO, every time I downloaded and installed it, it would never connect to their servers.

It was the same however in this game where if you were inactive for a while you would be kicked out of the town but everything was saved for when you came back to buy into another town. I could easily see anet avoiding this issue by not having any rentals or kick outs.

Also in that game guilds could rule entire towns. Simply by “creating” the village themselves and then forbidding or allowing non guild members to be able to join. I could see that working here.

I think it’s all to do with “fine mats” and other drops mainly. See from what I understand these boxes would give you an item/s that those creatures who the box is named after could drop if you killed them in the open world. Example harpies – bloods etc. Other loot like leathers/hides/soiled rags/other misc cloth salvage items etc as well as normal loot bags are also included, so say a bandit named box could give a sack to open. Of course it is also based on the lvl of the char opening them as well. The fine mat would match to your combat lvl.

Or I could be totally wrong of course but that’s what I always thought, too lazy to check the wiki too. :P

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr it’s been some sort of issue forever; it hasn’t prevented most of us from enjoying combat and lots of us have gotten used to it —> probably not something ANet needs to worry about any time soon.

Well not unless their Esports DOES take off and people join the game en mass for that and start complaining how “awkward” the targeting system is. I have always been the kind of guy that prefers the “prevention” more than the “cure” but hey that’s just me lol.

As for a couple of other things you touched on. I am on the fence about the priority of champ target vs regular mobs. Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn’t. Targeting creatures behind me now is a pain. Way back in the day when it would NOT target creatures behind you I thought that sucks I wish it did. Now that it does I can’t stand it lol.

Edit – My post/suggestion is more aimed at how the Targeting skills (usually aoe fields etc) work than tab targeting or any other type of targeting.

Donari.5237:

I have heard that you can also map the mouse wheel to act as a click, then spin it. I don’t know if that will set off the “too many actions too fast” ban button, though. Maybe spin it slowly? That would still be easier thakittenllion left clicks.

Or use the Windows Access functions. Activating those makes mouse pad + into a double click, so you can tap the keyboard instead of the mouse.

I thought about trying this but saw no options via settings. I do use Sharpkeys2 to disable my caps lock and there is no option in that programme either for mouse wheel. Wasn’t going to bother looking for and downloading yet another programme just for that…..

I think part of the problem is Anet balances the game around zerk gear. Or at least I think they do maybe? Look at the hp pools of even just trash mobs. It can take a while to kill them in PVT gear for example depending on the class I would have to add. Or perhaps those HP pools are so large because they expect more than 1 person to attack and kill a creature.

Aprt from that, go to any wep/armour vendor in the game, any noob one you wouldn’t dare to normally and tell me what stats you see. That’s right, on our VERY first day to the game all we got to see and use and be able to buy from the vendors (white gear) was exactly that – power builds. It does not change at all either on your journey to lvl 80 so it’s like the game is telling you – this is what we intend you to use.

Having said all that I ran 7 of the 8 classes through world complete in PVT gear and am still only now going through the process of changing them all to zerk gear. I still use PVT ascended on my Engi main, simply because that’s my go to tank class and with my current build he pretty much kills at the same speed that any of my zerk gear guys do anyway (thanks to a nice mix of power/might and burn condi).

It was only my 8th (necro) and then also Rev that I dared to use zerk on for my playthroughs of world complete. Simply because I knew the world and challenges so much by then and came to realise, yup this certainly does work better (well for 8 of the 9 classes at least anyway) so why not?

lolobum.3082:

Honestly I don’t see any problem playing engi with the current targeting system. That’s not the problem anet should work on. There are enough other more serious ones in my opinion.

Well of course there are other things that should be worked on and more important. But that does not mean they can’t or shoudln’t look at things like this. After all I should imagine it would only take 1 or 2 people at most to do the job. Look at the guy that did the Action Cam, sure yes it took well over a year and in his spare time but it was something that he thought would improve the game to no end and so he gave it a crack.

I can see this sort of being the same sort of thing. Not really a major improvement or even for many of the player base. But still, having it there for those who will use it and make the game more easier/enjoyable for them would make it = worth it in the long run.

Also again I would bring up the Esports, it could/would be a great improvement there. Not only that, but with an improvement like this just imagine the possibilities for new future skills/mechanics they could bring in to the game to take advantage of this.

Thanks for your imput.

This would have been nice a couple of weeks ago when I had to click some 33k times to go from about 10 points in this achieve to max. Yes it was about 33k clicks if I remember and I did it in 1 day in a few hours.

That might sound like a lot but I was used to that sort of thing as that’s how you play the vast majority of that other crap game known as Runecape. Click, click, click for hours on end just to get a very small % of what you need for just 1 lvl.

For this tho I used a trick that I used to do for that other game when training the stealing skill. It’s perfectly fine as far as I am aware and not classed as any type of cheat:

1 – Plug in a second mouse.

2 – Tape over the mouse laser with anything dark so the laser wont operate or remove the track ball if you are using a very old mouse. :P

3 – Hold the second mouse in your hand that you usually don’t use for mouse operation. Hold it in a way that is comfortable for you and so you can click the mouse button with your thumb.

4 – Use your normal mouse/hand to control the cursor and simply click with your spare hand. Of course you can mix it up swapping over hands or fingers to click instead of your thumb to help lesson the strain.

Good Luck!

So no one else have any issues with the current way Targeting Skills work, or is this mainly an Engi thing? I understand a lot of people probably don’t even change the settings and try the “use on target”, “cast at cursor location” or even the “instant cast” options. But surely those who have, have come across similar situations where you forgot you had one or the other on or you used a skill expecting something entirely different but because of the current system, it just wont work.

I also understand that for PvE this would not be too much of a problem. However in WvW and PvP an idea like this could help greatly to many people. Also since Anet are trying to push their Esports and attract that crowd to the game you would expect they would want the combat to be as fluid and intuitive as possible.

So again, please post here if you have had any similar experiences.

Nm, I had made a reply describing my suggestion which I have made in the past but then decided to remove it from here and make a new thread instead. You can check it out if you like here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-for-better-Targeting-Skills/first#post6219391

It might help your problem if this is implemented.

3 Simple suggestions really:

1 – Show in or out of range indicator on target skills like there are for regular skills. If you must keep the AOE circle indicator as well place it in the top right corner of the skill symbol instead.

2 – Give us a drop down menu on each and EVERY target skill with the below check boxes to choose how the skill will be used when used (basically removing the need for the options via settings):

A – Cast on target.
B – Cast on myself.
C – Bring up a target field and cast where I place it.

These options would add a whole new dimension to the game I think and add a whole lot of quality of life to the combat system. Some good examples:

I am an Engi I could:

A – For my Elixir Gun Kit I could choose my skill 5 (which is an aoe heal/remove cond and light field) to always fire on myself.

B – Choose my Flamethrower Skill 4 (Fire field) to always fire on my target.

C – For all of my Mortar Kit skills to fire where I aim the circle (the better option since it fires slow and you need to lead the target somewhat).

With the current options we have in settings all of this is not possible. It’s either 1 and the rest suffer. With my suggestion we can cover ALL of that and make the combat system (when it comes to target skills anyway) far more intuitive and more simple.

3 – Alongside the right click option for every Target (as well as every other skill) an added option to select weather or not that skill will auto target an enemy if no target is selected. Atm we have a separate option for this in the settings which covers ALL skills. I can see this being helpful for some certain skills – think Engi Rocket Boots, any speed skills where you simply want to get away fast and not draw any aggro etc.

Thanks for reading and please support if you have similar issues with the current system.

Removed as I replaced as a new suggestion, sorry but have meant to do this for some time now.

I played this game (villager’s and Heroes) that had a sort of instance housing system but not really. For those of you that played GW1 you would remember they had servers or worlds or whatever (zones?) that you could choose to play on. Those instances worked sort of like that. You pick your “home” instance which had about 60-80 houses in it. You would buy only 1 of them of course but you could see every other player’s house that also belonged to that instance.

They could do something like that here for a roleplay type thing as well as a community/social area. In that game guilds could create their own instance/town. Granted the houses there were nothing more than glorified banks and you could not even enter your house or customise it too much. However I am sure Anet could do wonders here with a bit of time/thought and skill.

RoseofGilead.8907:

The thread is over a year old. OP probably doesn’t care anymore.

Oh dang it, who Necro’ed!?

Speusippus.5389:

Thanks for the replies.

To satisfy the curious: It’s because I’m a bad person. I told someone I wouldn’t start playing til they got the game. Then I played anyway.

Lmao this cracked me up. Just be honest with your friend, tell them the truth. That being – the game was too good to hold off playing any longer and it’s THEIR fault for not starting sooner! Problem solved.

Rauderi.8706:

DeanBB.4268:

Have a house… so you can AFK in it. Wow. Fun.

That is, pretty much, the reason ANet isn’t thinking of investing in personal housing. It either doesn’t get used in any meaningful capacity, or players AFK there instead of doing things in open world.

Oh yes and where is the source for this information? I would really like to see it.

Btw if people are just afking in their homes where is the problem in that? After all if that’s all they are gonna do when logged in what makes you think they are not already doing the same in a city? Having tons of ppl afk in a city does exactly the same as what some of you are saying is what you are concerned about. Sure you may “see” these people but does that actually mean it is a lively population? Ask something in map chat and you may still get no response = not a very lively place. So really, what exactly is the difference?

Actually I would rather have ppl afk in their homes instead of the cities so that when you do see people in the cities there is a good chance that they are actually playing the game and not just standing there afk showing off all their glorious leet skins/legendary weapons. They are taking up population spots which could be filled with real people doing stuff. You can be sure these people that afk to display their wealth/special snowflake whatever would still do so in the city anyway rather than their own home instance. So really, I can’t see at all why anyone would afk in their home instance anyway, what exactly would they get out of it?

I think the Pros would far out weigh the Cons for player housing and I think Anet would also agree, or in the least their wallet. Look at guild halls, have they taken away the afkers or populations from the cities? If so I haven’t noticed as such, they still seem lively to me or as dead as they used to be, however you want to look at it.

@TheNecrosanct

As long as you can turn your badges into Siege and then turn those in to Superior Siege and can sell them on the TP they are certainly not useless to anyone. It’s nothing but pure profit. Sure you will need spirit shards but if you have been playing this game long enough to have a ton of badges saved up you should be swimming in those already by now.

I can and do agree to a degree that more options is always a good thing. So I certainly would not be against it if Anet decided we could get the GOB again through BoH or as the easier alternative being the reward track. However I doubt they will as it seems pretty obvious they do want people to venture into WvW as part of the process.

As for GoE my opinion stands, no need to change that and as even you said – “it’s so easy to do” so why even bother changing it?

However I do have one last thing to say. And that is Anet are not “forcing” anybody into doing anything here. Legendries are not required for anything. They have never said they were. In fact they have always said they are for those players who like to prove mastery over ALL aspects of the game. Okay so maybe they used the word “mastery” a bit loosely but I think you know what I mean. That is at least venturing into each game mode enough to be able to get what is required to make the item. They may have over looked this when they added BoH to the achievement chests. Thus maybe why this change now. So having said that, who knows, who’s to say that they wont be addressing the PvP reward tracks for the dungeon part as well? Maybe that was another thing they over looked? Time will tell I guess. Also I think it was a VERY big mistake of them allowing completed legendries to be sold on the TP in the first place. Sure the precursors, go ahead have at it. So if you are saying that was a mistake as well then yes I would agree with you. Because it does just throw all “achievement” out of it for those that do and can just simply buy them as well as somewhat demeaning the whole “Legendary” title/thing. Too late to fix this now tho I guess.

@ TheNecrosanct

Your whole argument is flawed being that the skins on the TP were MADE by SOMEONE who had to go and play the WVW mode. The skins are not just magically there. People that buy them instead of making them are simply paying someone else to do the part they do not wish to. If people stop making legendries and selling them on the TP then people will be forced to do the WvW part themselves. So the buying method is not a guaranteed way that people can avoid the WvW aspect. We can never know when things that are currently on the TP will dry up or not.

It is perfectly logical for Anet to change the method of acquiring this item from badges to a reward track. After all either way still has you having to actually play the game mode for a length of time to earn the item. Also you now gain the bonus of using your badges for what anet intended them to be used more for – siege equipment and gear while you are earning your reward track. Badges are also need for other things too now such as guild upgrades etc. So really I look at this change as a well needed thing as it takes pressure off the badge farming and gives you a new way to earn it while you are also gathering the badges that you need for other things.

However changing the Gift of Exploration from actually exploring (completing every original map) to simply gaining exp in any way you see fit (events, crafting, gathering materials, using tomes, etc etc) and then just clicking the button to level up the mastery totally changes that whole aspect of the process.

Then on top of that you need more Mastery Points which lets face it can be a pain to get enough even right now for the reward tracks that are already in game. So all this will do is create another headache and problem for people who may already be finding it hard to unlock the Tyria Masteries.

I am one of these people. I have been here since the 3 day head start. In that time I have completed world complete 11 times, done all JPs, all dungeons, a fair share of Fractals, all classes/races through personal stories, LS2 and HOT as well as a great % of achievements. A lot more and I am still struggling right now to get the last few Mastery Points that I need. Mainly because they are tied behind silly things like unlocking skin collections but that is another rant for another day.

PS, there is another fact that I overlooked which is a pretty big one. That being that there are currently NO reward tracks for PVE. There are masteries yes, but they are a totally different thing as you can’t repeat them and they are account bound. How the heck would people be able to get more than one Gift of Exploration?

They would have to bring in a new system for PVE, that being Reward Tracks. This would only create more work for them. Also how would we earn exp towards these tacks? Our exp bar works for both Reward Tracks and Masteries? Talk about confusing. Granted I am all for new rewards for players once they have maxed out all their masteries but I’m just not sure this would be the way to go or how it could actually work without confusing people even further.

Pretty much what hornswroggle said but I will give you a quick summary in point form:

1 – Salvage almost everything.

2 – At your level however I would recommend against salving rare/exotic gear as you don’t have a chance at getting ectos. Leave that until about 73 (or is it 76 I always get this confused?). Or I should say only salvage rare gear that states on them that level it can be used at. Sell them at the TP, well at least see if they are worth anything more than a few silver, if so sell, otherwise salvage.

3 – Use the Basic Salvage Kit for whites, blues and greens. Use either the Mystic Salvage Kit (made at the mystic Forge and well worth it) or BLTC Salvage Kits for Rares and Exotics.

4 – I would also suggest buying the Copper Fed Salvage Kit if you can afford it or when you can to replace the Basic Kit for salvaging whites, blues and greens. Mainly for the convenience factor. You will never have to worry about running out of kits and having to visit a vendor all the time. It can also save a lot of inv space/time while you are out in the field.

Hope that helps and good luck!

I would wait until the Legendary Armour is out and people are wearing it before suggesting something like this. Maybe they did not go overboard with them knowing full well that the armour may be a bit to behold when complete so the back piece would just not be needed. After all it could be far too overboard with the whole set and the back piece and anything else that may come out in future.

I hear that Batman and Superman started fighting over them all and they were destroyed in the process.

As for the keys I have to ask. Do you expect to be playing these maps every day for the rest of your GW2 experience? It may seem like a silly question but there is something to it. Our home instances can get the chests to use keys on. So look at it this way. These extra keys you are getting are an investment for the future for when the next expansion comes and you are playing those maps instead. As you can still use those extra keys each day in your home instance. Better than nothing.

I would suggest getting a second armour set without Toughness as the primary stat. You might want to go more of a power or precision build or mix it up a bit with more healing (usually useless stat I know) or pure Vit. Either way it’ the toughness on your current gear that is hindering you atm.

I had the same issue on my Engi main my first trip through there. I was aggroing more than the “tank” could and no wonder my toughness is usually at the 3k+ mark lol. So I now have a Vipers set for raiding and relegate myself to being cond damage for that particular boss in the first raid.

Oh you also may want to get rid of Signet of Stone, that adds more toughness.

Dawdler.8521:

IN WvW a flamethrower/rifle engineer actually had my p/p scrapper beat in a one on one fight some weeks ago. Yeah out of all the bloody things you can meet. I’m built for roaming and I can duel every class (or 2) with confidence yet that guy on a silly rifle build and flamethrower of all stupid things took me down like a baby. It was quite embarassing. I’m sure I would have handled it alot better had I actually fought similar builds more than once every 6 months or so, but still.

Hate to break it to you but FT is not weak lol. I am assuming he took you down by conds, namely fire. I run FT and rocket kick, both of those F skills combined vs 1 oppnt can be very deadly especially if built for cond dam from runes/sigils.

To the OP I main an Engi and do have a warrior as well. I would suggest warrior if it’s just the rifle you want to use. On Engi it works more like a shotgun so has short range except for the skill 1, it’s also more a control weapon. It’s not very satisfying tbh and you are usually better off with kits. Warrior I guess is slightly more fun and more built for doing damage. However mine uses a Bow for range, especially now since it’s a viable wep for some good cond burn damage with the right trait.

Either way good luck deciding. Also don’t forget you can go to the PvP lobby and try both classes out for free. All skils and traits etc are unlocked for free and instantly so you can test them. You don’t have to fight other players. Test them out on the golem dummies or npcs there.

I would be happy with just 1 more at this point. Green.

With the old system you could only do upgrades by purchasing them with influence. For my friend and I it was tough to get the vast amounts needed for some of them. We had no issues unlocking all of the bank access and some small things like banners and such. However we could never earn enough to even unlock guild missions so we never even got to try them.

With this new system you say goodbye to the influence cost as it is replaced with gold/mats. Sure it may seem harder as you need to actually have those mats and gold or go and make it. But to me it’s actually easier. Because you can do many things in the game to earn coin to straight out buy what you need. Again with the old system influence (especially for the very small guilds) was a lot harder to come by and was via a very boring method. You had to pretty much party your guildmates and spam events to get any decent amount of influence. That is very linear and repetitive and obviously worked more in favour of the bigger guilds.

So imo I think this system works better for smaller guilds.

Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.

Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?

I wouldn’t say “boring”. Maybe “repetitive” mainly because they are mostly all part of something big or a meta. Tyria maps are not like this as such. Orr comes close but not really, you can sort of think of each event as a separate thing. Or maybe I just never pieced tem altogether? To this day I still don’t understand the lore to the Orr maps/events such as Malchor and such. But then again maybe I just don’t care or too lazy to go and find the info. I guess unless it’s really in my face (such as HOT story) I don’t really care too much.

Now when we come to the music in the HOT maps, boring heck no! Now if we were talking about the Tyria maps – yes. I could listen to the Auric Basin music non stop all day long. Why oh why don’t they give us the option to do so? I mean let us pick and choose which tracks to hear and have them on loop.

TBH using the discovery tab/process is actually pretty easy and a good way to lvl up crafts. I have almost all crafts at 500 which can go to 500 all just from the discovery panel and gathering everything myself.

The secret is once you figure out a recipe it is very simple to figure out the rest as they all follow the same pattern. Either 3, 8 or 15 of a certain fine mat, the 2 components such as say a shaft and axe head or spearhead etc. Every weapon/piece of armour all have the same stat combos available so it’s pretty easy to figure them all out each tier you go up.

Hope that makes sense.

Metasynaptic.1093:

Every time black lion keys go on discount, my guild jokes and calls it ‘the yearly reminder as to why we don’t buy black lion keys’.

You Sir/Madam just got a +1 for this reply. :P

Cactus Brawler.7415:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Seera.5916:

The problem isn’t for those that get tickets and scraps. The problem is the people who don’t who want these skins. This decision hurts them.

Really, I understand that it looks frustrating from the get go, and you might think you will never get one. But in the long run this is just nonsense, and it’s not impossible to put in some effort and get these skins regardless of not wanting to spend money.

So it takes a bit more effort than usual, and those who invest money can get it much faster.
It’s like complaining about ascended weapons being account bound. Or HoT Legendaries.

And that all is on top of it being something that is supposed to generate money for ArenaNet either way, and reward those that actually do spend money to get some more reward for their money, if they wish to do so. Which isn’t a bad thing.

It’s basically complaining you don’t want this game to have any further development.

The problem is, it is theoretically possible that no matter the effort you put in, no matter the amount of gold you turn into BLC Keys, no matter the amount of real life money you use to buy said keys, it is possible to never get any scraps or tickets.

What is the drop rate for tickets again, something like five per cent?

Again they’ve removed the none RNG method for getting these, some people are just naturally very unlucky. They could spend from now, until the game shuts down farming gold, turning the gold to keys and never get anything more than level tomes, and material bags from their keys.

People could always “farm” keys instead of gold to trade for keys. Yes I know they removed the “key farm” but that does not mean you still can not farm keys. There are a number of ways:

1 – If you have alt chars at lvl 80 you can run them through their personal stories, that’s 3 keys each right there (2 if you don’t wait a week between them for the lvl 10 key).

2 – Running each alt through the HOT story if you have HOT also gives 1 key per person. The whole HOT story only takes you 1-2 days to do depending on if you know what you are doing and have the time to do it.

3 – Running your chars through LS2 also gives another key each but imo that’s is not worth the time it takes.

4 – Farm “map completes” this is probably one of the best methods.

5 – Create a new char, rush them through their PS and a few map completes here and there to get them to lvl 80. Go through their PS for another 3 keys and then HOT for the 4th. Keep in mind that doing map completes to lvl them up should also net them a few more keys. You don’t have to do world complete. Just do enough maps to get them to level 80. Of course this whole process can be a lot more fun if you just stick to doing maps that you know well and like doing. Get the keys, delete and repeat.

So we see there is not only 2 options. That being spend real cash and buying keys or trading massive amounts of gold for gems to buy keys. Sometimes people just need to think outside of the square. Also as the Dev said these hopefully are not going anywhere and will always stay at that 1 ticket cost. So really, there is no real rush to complete the set. Just work on the skins you want bit by bit. Because really, that 3 AP for the achievement is hardly something to worry about anyway. And the ticket reward? Well that’s just a slight return for what you are paying anyway so forget that.

PS, having said all of that, it does not mean I am for these being untradeable. Just something else to think about.

I had 2 tickets sitting in my bank gathering dust as I have not really liked any recent sets so I bought the rifle and pistol as they suit Engi’s well (rifle looks like a sawn off shotgun to me) and since I main an Engi. However I did see another issue here.

That being, when you purchase the box and select a skin that particular skin does not disappear from the list? You unlock the skin as soon as you purchase them so I really don’t see any reason for the skin to stay in the list. It could be that someone purchases the same skin a second time by accident and that could be a problem. No one would want a second skin, why would they? Untradeable and once unlocked you can just reskin anyway. This needs a quick fix imo. It could be the skin disappears from the selection once you use the skin from your inventory, I did not and can’t check that now. But again there would be no reason for this even as someone could still buy an extra skin by accident before using the skins.

jheryn.8390:

First off, I agree with most here that it feels like a cash grab.

I honestly do feel that this is ANet testing the waters. Result: The water is toxic. Poor move on Anet’s part I believe.

The only good reason I can see them doing this (and it is a huge stretch) is that many people also gripe about not having any exclusive items. By making them account bound there would be a lot less people with them. Again, I know that is a stretch for some type of justification.

This was my original thought too. There have been people now and then on these forums asking for more “exclusive” sets. I don’t recall if they have been asking for them to be in game rewards or straight up cash spending. But I do very much doubt being behind the BLTC gambling, no one would want that would they? O.O

People are going to say that we already have casual raids – dungeons. I guess they could turn those maps into a dungeon some how or make it easier for more casual people with just less rewards?

Maybe a year or 2 time this could happen who knows….

Besides achievements I guess not really. You have pretty much covered the skin aspect. And again the best rewards for achievements are skins anyway from those chests so that may not really appeal to you either.

I used to be like you and play games where grind was the major content. I played RS since 2001 on and off for a long time, if I was still playing there now I would no doubt have my 15 year cape if it’s even a thing yet. Played both FF 11 and 14 for a bit as well as many other mmos (perfectworld etc). However I don’t approach this game as I did those. I see this as more my game to play for “fun”. In fact I went to GW1 to escape grindy games and of course naturally came here when it was available.

Perhaps you are just looking for the grindy kind of game again? If so nothing wrong with that but it’s not really here unless you want all those skins, max achievement points or completely complete the game (beat all dungeons, mini dungeons, full explore, raids etc). Having said all that you could always find another game to play alongside this. What I mean is find a good grindy game and just come back here now and then when you need a break from the grind or when something new and fresh hits here.

As for myself I play this, a number of steam and app games so I really don’t get the old burn out from here like a lot of other people as I jump around a bit to keep everything fresh. That’s the great thing about this game. No subscription so you don’t feel like you have to be here every minute of your spare time, just play it as you feel like it.

Good luck with whatever you are looking for.