Guild Wars 2

As has been stated in two other threads: The ID system is too cost prohibitive and has a terrible ROI. Its frankly a step backwards and basically results in a net loss of both time and in game gold. Either remove it or just allow us to open unindentified packages on our own.

Carlin Sanders.3587:

been playing since GW1 beta days. used to carrying an ID kit.

not quite sure why people freak out over ID’ing gear. we’ll likely get ID kits at some point soon anyway, similar to how we got salvage-o-matics and such.

personally with how auto-loot works it’ll save a lot of space in my inventory and also eliminate that ungodly amount of minor runes/sigils when salvaging a bunch of equipment all at once.

people cry about mounts being in the game, people cried about gliding ruining everything, now people cry about unidentified equipment.

Not sure if genuinely concerned or just cynically lashing out.

Yup, I’ve been playing from GW1 days too. This is what we call a step backwards. As a friend of mine so aptly put it “What? Did my girls suddenly forget what a sword looked like (and what it does)?” Since GW2 dropped we’ve been able to have gear and just know what it was. Now, if they gave us unknown bundles that stacked and then just let us open them and find out what was in in them, sure fine. If they wanted to find a way to include a SMALL gold sink, then sure (about 50cp might be fine), but no. They put a steep sink, a requirement to do/go to a heart and really bad returns on the ID making people operate at a loss. I don’t do ecto gambling for a reason and I don’t want it for my normal gameplay as an almost necessity. What I DO want is for SOMEONE from Anet to actually respond to this post already.

Pifil.5193:

Just resurrecting this to say that I don’t like how hard it was to find the pages and other usable objects this time. Looking for a grey square on grey terrain is not fun. All this does is push people to external guides quicker.

I think you should respect the “Show All Usable Object Names” option, if people have that option selected then show the names above the objects. If people don’t want that option then they can deselect it.

Yeah, I didn’t even bother with this because of this recent change Anet’s made. I hate jumping out of a game to use a guide. That’s not fun. stop making me needle in a haystack things.

Belorn.2659:

Before dps meters we had party search requirement that tried to do the exact same thing. You had to have over 30k achievement points, the right titles that prove that you have finished the content on challange mote, Legendary insights/kill proofs from raids, and in some cases you also had to ping gear on joining. Failing any of those resulted in a kick.

On the more extreme end you had people that wouldn’t even let you in their group to start with until you filled in an application, soloed a 5 man boss encounter, and preferable been personal recommended by someone they trust. The distaste for “pugs” was real and very noticeable.

DPS meters mitigate the need for all that. Some people still behave like that but in my personal experience it is much less common now after DPS meters have become main practice, and I rather not go back to how it was before. Pugs are no longer hated for being pugs, but rather people are judged based on metrics. Those metrics could be flawed, but no one need to solo lupi or MAMA.

So, toxic people had to show up front they were being toxic and now they get to hide behind a dps meter and be just as toxic but won’t show themselves until someone looks to join into their group?

Here’s a thought, how about those people make guilds based solely around their perceived “elite” gaming set up and have some kind of rigorous guild membership whatever. If people want to join their guild, its on them to deal with whatever tests and metrics they want to set and if they fail they get kicked from their guild. Outside of that, if those people want to fun high level fractals and raid, they can just do them with their guild. They want to DPS meter anyone, they need to be in their guild. If they do anything with anyone outside of their guild though, they can just hush it and keep the dps meter bs to themselves.

BurningHeavy.7268:

Which is more fair, being kicked due to a perceived and possibly incorrect weakness, or being kicked based on performance? Improve yourself, don’t be carried, do the carrying. Your Dps was LOW. That’s not Anets fault, it’s your fault. use the dummy, find a build, get BETTER.

Whats being more fair is people just playing the game and not kicking a player for any perceived anything. If you suspect someone is doing poorly, that is the time to reassess and maybe help that player. Not look at some class, or numbers and go “nah son bye”.

That kind of nonsense is what Anet originally said they were trying to keep out of their game. Its exclusionary and rude and a big reason why so many WoW players even ended up here in Tyria. It breeds toxic behavior and scale large enough to have many players from all walks point it out.

notebene.3190:

It’s why I probably won’t ever get to make one of the newer style legendaries, since you have to do fractals, and I’m betting no one wants me to tag along.

I did manage an old school Bifrost before HoT, and did Aurora, so that was fun.

Nah, you can still do fractals as the things you need from them you don’t have to be in any high fractals and theres plenty of people like me and my friends that don’t mind doing a fractal or two to help someone get the things from there.

Sorry…i have to laugh at the “doing raids correctly” line. There is only one metric you need for knowing if you’ve done a raid correctly: Did you beat it? Yes or No. Yes? Then you did it correctly, yay! No? Try again.

Now what you probably meant was “is my team beating this raid as optimally/quickly as possible?” That is why using DPS meter may come in handy. Unfortunately that’s some utopian nonsense and in reality many people use them to be elitist and exclusionary. Its the reason why so many of us were glad that Anet disallowed them and why we groaned when they green lit them.

And if I ever get someone in game “inspecting” my stuff without my permission I will report them and their account.

This is also why I have just avoided fractals unless I’m with friends and why I will never step foot in a raid.

Its a mini game that literally goes back to the first game, and frankly no. Just no. This game requires people to commit WAY more information to memory just to play it. Seriously stop and think about the number of things about your character and your move set and enemies and buff, etc that you have to remember in a moment just to survive a simple level 80 encounter.

If we are doing that already, playing a version of a memory game from the 70s/80s (and one which has been replicated mechanically in MANY other games and MMOs) should not vex people THAT much.

As I said in my original post/feedback regarding this: while I get where anet was going with this, if they insist on keeping this system in the game, they need to lower the cost of ID to no more than 50cp. This way they have a small coin investment that won’t break the bank, especially for new players who are going to 80 bump themselves into the game AND they get to keep their space saving/gamble thing in the game.

People had problems with the teleporter one???

Really?

oooookay.

Yeah, Frankly I’d rather they make sure that mounts are just flatly disabled in core tyria map cities. The constant visual noise from the mount and dismount on those maps would drive me insane. I also don’t need a bunch of raptor tail in my face at every npc when I’m trying to interact with the npc.

That being said, vistas would look just fine if we stay mounted, unfortunately I think there is an all or nothing aspect to this auto dismount thing, and if so the option then is, make ALL city zones non-mount or keep it the way it is currently.

Raine.1394:

Let me give you another perspective on play it your way, perhaps different than the OP or Dashingsteel who has made excellent points. I had no problems in terms of play it your way in GW2 so let’s go back to the beginning of HoT. …lots to address, but don’t want a tl;dr…

OK, I understand the frustration with HoT and the level design (as I too had/have issues with those), but that is more a gripe about not wanting to run around on poorly designed maps, with a broken minimap while also trying not to die to anything that is just outside the one or two safe way points on the map.

All that being said, you can very easily play HoT story almost straight through, with a few side runs for a handful of mastery points to help round out the ones you get during story mode stuff to complete the main story. After that, yes, getting full map complete will require taking the time to do some extra MP giving meta events (especially in Dragonstand where they are handed out like candy) so you can get the masteries fully unlocked. And here’s the kicker: you don’t have to even get them all unlocked. You can if you’re a completionist, but in reality you don’t need them all. As of right now I’m just casually getting MPs to chip away at a few last ones that are nice to have but are completely not necessary.

Now, did i like them sticking aspects of the story behind needing to unlock a mastery to even do the next step? No. I thought that was poor game design. And I too griped that I wasn’t being allowed to just play the game. So I skulked off to grind experience and find random MPs I hadn’t gotten and in doing so I visited parts of the map the story and metas hadn’t taken me before. I started just exploring the map. As a vet I had lost the explorer mindset by HoT and just wanted to push through it and this forced me to sit back and essentially enjoy the view.

In hindsight I’m glad I did.

Tangled Depths still eats a bag of Richards, but I don’t think anything can fix that map.

One more small gripe, and admittedly it could have just been horribly bad timing, but I think maybe it wasn’t has something to do with the respawn rate of some of the mobs and some of their pathing.

I was out by the hp challenge in the mid-north section of desert sand and found myself fighting a roaming band of forged, two hydra and frankly ungodly amount of sand sharks and a pack of those dog things that are invulnerable half the time. Thankfully I have a good amount of kiting and stealth on the thief I was using, but I came close to getting downed a few times at this point on the map. Prior to that I was caught out there by the champ hell hyena creature that laughs at your attempts to kite him while also trying to fend off a similar cache of mobs.

I think a few eels jumped in a t one point and ultimately I just kept dodging and randomly hitting things hoping not to die, but yeah. Seemed a bit over abundant in that one spot enemy wise.

Not really something someone can suggest for you. Just try them all and even try them on different races to see which one feels right for you, then play the daylights out of it.

the turn controls I can live with but it getting stuck at the top of a ramp because there is a one inch lip at the top is broken a pathing issue. not a learn to jump one. We’re talking walking up a slope.

And no, the unidentified stuff isn’t just for salvaging as there are collection specific items that you can only get from identifying it from one of those caches. Furthermore, it still doesn’t address the very real fact that we are being charged in game silver for something that we could just do the moment we had something in hand before. If they insist on the mechanic being in the game then the least they can do is tweak it so I’m not bleeding coins just to complete a spec collection.

As for the first story step, yes yes, many of us vets can deal with it just fine. But we’ve also been playing for a while and have developed certain kinds of muscle memory and reactions to certain tells. New players literally jumping right into PoF have not, and I promise you that fight will be very frustrating for them. Core game mechanics can still vex them at times.

None of the new classes have been made with an eye to PvE. None. They’re all basically condi spec leaning with mechanics that are meant to counter other players, not an AI.

Thats my biggest gripe about this to be honest.

Also, regarding the ID mechanic:

Why? I mean, ultimately why not just let us have stacked unknowns until we got back to someplace and could open them and see them for ourselves if they are just going to be normal loot anyway. I mean ultimately aren’t you just making us pay way too much to discover that we have junk anyway with an occasional “yes you might need or want this”? Seems a little mean to stick such a costly barrier on something we’ve had for free all these years the more i think about it.

OK, so first the tl;dr version:

Enjoying it so far. A few things are a little janky or annoying, but overall I’m much more pleased than not.

Now for the deets, good and bad:

Bad:
Cost of Identification:
Simply put, the cost is too high. If I’m going to get charged about 14 silver to ID just 8 items, and then have most of them still just be crappy greens, I’m now operating at a loss. Simply selling them is not optimal as there might be necessary things in there and same goes for salvaging without ID. I don’t mind there being a cost, but as of right now 50 copper per would be way easier of a pill to swallow than the 1.7 silver. That adds up way too fast and i don’t think its fair to expect people to need to grind gold to find out they are holding into mostly junk items.

Mount control:
Maybe it was intentional, but getting the mount to move/turn easily is a bit of a pain and frankly it gets to be a bigger pain when trying to run it up some ramp which it then gets itself stuck on the top lip of because it can’t seem to lift its feet?

Opening Sequence:
Neat, but at points can be a little brutal. While i am all for this being level 80 content that is meant to challenge, we also know that there will be brand new players that don’t have a clue that will jump right into PoF. Tone down that first instance a little bit or your brand new players might hang it up before ever getting into the story.

The Good:

The Hydra
Totally a personal thing, but I was so giddy to fight a Hydra and then was both giddy and kinda salty (in a good way) when just as I remember from gw1 a few of his hydra friends ninja’d up behind me and started to roll me. I got away, but the fight was crazy fun.

Organic/Reflexive Happening:
Another fun thing I experienced was by the refugee camp. An event started and me and 3 other people that where there (without saying a word) popped up on our mounts to literally leap into combat. It was nice seeing that unfold in that way and the event itself felt well balanced, but maybe have the enemies come from 3 directions instead of two very visible and predictable ones.

Other:
Now while I was hoping for a bit more of a “wow this feels familiar” kind of like when I first saw certain places in core tyria, I do find that I like some of the call backs to some things from Nightfall. I’m hoping for more familiar areas later on, and I’m also hoping for more “vabbi-esque” armor. I’m sure I’ll have more feedback the more I play.

Wow. Ok.

I can level my character from 1-80 however I want. That has not changed. In fact as a vet player I can scroll/tome to level 80 and then run like a mad man through the core maps hitting every hp and then do the same on the HoT maps just so I can have a surplus come PoF should i choose to get it.

And while some of the masteries (specifically for core tyria) can be annoying to get (I’m looking at you LW season 2), there are a bunch more that are easier to get and encourage doing different things in the game to get them. As for HoT mastery points, sure they can be difficult to get, but that’s part of the fun. I know i have a handful I still need to earn in Dragonstand at some point and a few others probably hidden about, but I’m not overly pressed since I got the important ones out of the way. I still play as i like and where I like.

sigh OK, well for starters if you’ve already paid for there is not real difference in what you once experienced. All the info on what F2P players don’t get is up on the site. In short, they get access to the core game, 2 character slots, and have some decent restrictions on both chat and tp access and they don’t get daily log in rewards. Theres some other stuff but i can’t think of it off the top of my head, but if you really want to get a feel for what free players get I’d suggest making a free account and experiencing it if thats what you really want to do.

As for you and what you have access to:
If you just bought the core game then you only have access to the core game and new core game masteries.
If you bought HoT then you have access to the core game and all the HoT content including the new class (Revenent) and you can learn the new masteries from HoT like gliding, etc. Obviously any rewards that are hot based as well as collections are also available to you.
If you logged in when the LWS was happening then you will have access to those. If not, you will have to purchase them from the gemstore to unlock and play them for their content. Fair warning, there are things in the most recent LWS that rely upon HoT masteries.
Obviously if you want PoF related things you’ll have to buy PoF.
You can buy PoF and HoT as a discounted bundle.
LWS does not come included with that bundle.

Did that answer your question?

As a guardian main, the staff changes weren’t that bad. Sorry, its a support weapon. Always has been. Also, while it can tag a bunch of things at once, it can still do that. Don’t know how you all use it, but when I was just trying to get loots I just GS pulled friends to me then staff smacked them after giving them the whirly-whirl.

That doesn’t change with the staff changes.

Other classes got real nerfs. Game breaking level stuff for them even. We kind of made it out of this round of BS fairly safe all things considered.

Aquamarine.3698:

Now you have destroyed the ranger/druid, one of the only two superior classes in HoT (another one is DH) before the PoF preview without any response. I’m not even sure that devs will actually read posts in official forum or not, people have to cry loudly at reddit and only Gaile responds with official jargon and sends us back to here. Guess what is happening here? Still nothing.

It will be interesting for new players to have a buggy ranger experience in preview.

They just want people running weaver, spellbreaker and deadeye with holosmiths churning out the DPS with this release.

They also want people in PvP since it seems nothing about the new classes seem balanced around PvE content.

anduriell.6280:

Kolisch.4691:

this may just be the last straw for me. May not be that needed for the most of you, but considering how many times I can usually get back up to 90-100 every minute, it meant the most for my roamer. Been a dumb, downhill, degrading few years for main rangers. All my accounts, some hot, will now be resting in peace… Cess…

The new trait is good, but you have to invest in healing power. You can’t go now full marauder.

Right, so you have to sacrifice damage while other classes can still go full glass and have more sustain.

OK, so I’m not a ranger main, but I do enjoy playing one on occasion and the kind I’ve always liked was a beast master centered build. Its one of the draws to the class and its the one thing I feel Anet just hates for some reason.

So instead of making another post highlighting all of the things that they got wrong (again) on an elite spec for ranger I have a different idea. And elite spec that is a very literal Beastmaster.

So, my base idea is this:

Scepter would be new main hand weapon and there would be a new ability that would allow you to summon BOTH of your slotted pets at once. Your main skills would then change so that the first 3 allow you to give specific commands to your first pet, and your offhand can allow you to give certain commands to your second. The utilities offer group attacks/buffs for you and your pets and your elite summons 3 random additional pets from your menagerie for 30 seconds on a 120 sec CD to all fight for you. All pets still have a certain amount of autonomy unless you are specifically directing them to perform a special attack and the number 3 and 5 skills are unique for the pet you have slotted.

I know thats all super rough, BUT I really think that a true beastmaster would be great for both ranger and the game on the whole.

As for scepter skills themselves before the dual pet summon I’d say it can be a mid range condi/de-buff type weapon meant to help buff your pet as it attacks.

I’m guessing the reason for not having a PvE test is…uhm…server load? Bugs? Sure, one of those things. I think.

Honestly I have no idea why they are doing it this way.

Goooooood luck with that. I learned a long time ago that a good many things tend to fall on deaf ears. This will be one of them sadly.

Its all about streamlining things that are rarely used. Sometimes it works, most other times its kind of hit and miss, and other times its a train wreck.

Far as i can tell from the info provided so far is that it looks like these new specs are only being balanced with an eye to PvP/WvW anyway. Unless we are looking at a ton of PvE enemies that are sporting a ton of boons and don’t insta-melt to condi like the rest of the game. I just don’t see where any of the elite specs being introduced actually matter with regard to the PvE maps that are also being added. Seems like as per usual, any build will work as long as you play it well, in PvE.

MagneHyakulegger.1064:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Sorry to hear you find it lacking. It would seem, though, that tens of thousands, if not more, find it, at the very least, adequate. Even preferable to being led around. It’s a core principle of the game, this freedom to do as one desires.

I desire to be at the same level as high-end raiders. I imagine everyone wants to. However, without putting lots of effort outside the game to learn how to have the same equipment they do, it is impossible. All I am asking for is an in-game path. Do you disagree that new players should have a guide to creating ascended equipment?

You imagine incorrectly. I’ve been playing GW since the first few weeks of GW1 and obviously since beta of gw2 and I have literally ZERO desire to ever raid. I barely like to fractal. Pretty sure I’ve only mostly dungeoned. I also have a ton of level 80 toons. Fun fact: I just recently started working on my first legendary because I was bored and figured meh, why not. Point is, you want to be lead by the hand to the highest tiers yet seem to not to want to put in the work to figure this stuff out. And to be honest, if you were doing the crafting from the beginning of your tenure, you would’ve learned the ins and outs just from playing. Same with your way around the maps. Its really not that hard.

Ubi.4136:

My last pug raid consisted of a guy asking me why I had a certain sigil on a weapon (which I had overlooked cause I swapped it off another character weeks before). Several minutes went by before I realized he could see all my gear (which he “approved”) without me linking it.

It was then followed by 3 guys from “the best raid guild in GW2” as they referred to themselves, wanting to know how (and it what order) I had all my abilities macro’d. Cause apparently, not macro’ing everything into just about 1 button is frowned upon.

They seemed less concerned that I was using an older power meta build.

When did anet start allowing anyone to macro? Thought that was a ban-able offense.

I’m really hoping that the damage gets balanced back to “normal” levels. I know some time back Anet lessened the damage rangers put out on average because they “had a constant pet” and if that pet is gone when melding, I want to be sure they get that damage back. Especially after seeing the numbers that Holosmith can put out in the Bog video. (Also hoping Bog has a Soulbeast episode coming up). Still that thread linked above (once again thank you Tex) has some good info on what can be expected skill wise at least. I’m still worried it will be overshadowed by the other elite specs but that will hopefully shake out in the first month.

TexZero.7910:

hmmm……..

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r21vn/soulbeast_skills_mechanics/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r7kp0/links_to_each_of_the_elite_specialisation_tooltip/

Thanks for the links. Seriously, I mean that. Up until this there seemed to be an absolute lack of info on it.

I know a few that did that with druid as well. I also know some that left the game over druid. Unfortunately the soulbeast thing, which does sound far more fitting in general, still feels like Anet just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it sticks. Mind you I think Firebrand and Renegade also seem like “re-skins” of other skills and roles, but at least you have an idea of their place in the party/player make up.

how do you figure?

Sorry, but no.

In the lead up to HoT, rangers/druid was left until last on both the reveal and time to test front and when many of them complained/asked for tweaks they were shutdown by Anet. Now none of us are getting to test run the elite specs until about a month out before release so any possible feedback/shakedown on most of them probably won’t hit the game due to dev time (which is understandable as coding is a major pain and shouldn’t be rushed).

All that being said, even if we take into account that these people (who are in some way Anet employees as they are a forward facing entity with early access to the game to play in the demo and explore the new content for the express purpose of reporting on it when green lit by Anet) were simply focused on the parts they they like to play, there is still the fact thateven looking at the Anet created vignettes about the classes there is still more info to glean about all of the other classes and for Soulbeast we get “you get daggers and merge with your pet to do…stuff”.

Seriously. Deadeye, sniper, can mark targets, attacks at longest range/from stealth. Scourge, support class built around buffs and condi. Spellbreaker. Its function is literally in its name for crying out loud. Mirage, pure DPS pressure with more robust illusions. Holosmith uses holographic weaponry and builds up a charge to unleash harsh AOE. Renegade uses the mist to both buff/support allies and to attack ad mid range. Firebrand uses fire based condi damage spec coupled with support from tomes that replace their F skills. Weaver get a billion new skills from comboing weapons and new multiple attunement mechanic and as of right now cam exploit the daylights out of fresh air to unleash ungodly amounts of damage. Soulbeast looses their pet to “gain some of their skills” and stabs stuff.

What role does it play? DPS? Support? Power? Condi? Does it amp the damage of your normal attacks when you merge with your pet? Does it at least stab things better than a core thief while in beastmode? Seriously there is no meaningful info on this class as compared to the other ones.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

Practically. Joko subjugated Elona 60 years after EotN / 15 years after Primordus awoke / 200 years ago.

Charr: locked in conflict w humans until 6 years ago, Ebonhawke has been a block for expansion southwards.
Norn: They don’t move south until 30 years after Joko took over and only had about 50 years before Zhaitan awoke and cut off the seas. Also, they wouldn’t move as a people. Singular norn, absolutely!
Sylvari: Awoke 30 years ago, after all Dragons except Kralk and Mordy woke up.

Thank you for the break down on this. I’ve gotten tired of explaining this though to people. The other races might see some updates after the xpac drops, but for starting out, lore wise, it just doesn’t make sense.

I could care less about immersion since a million other things have broken “immersion” in this world ages ago. I don’t play MMOs for immersion.

Lore, on the other hand.

Maybe allowing for some amount of new creature evolution would bring about the jackal and raptor mounts, but seriously? A Bunnyroo and Hover-Ray? Give me a break. There could’ve been other creatures like, I dunno, the SANDWORMS from the first game? Not to mention the fact that the mounts thing is going to lead to a whole bunch of obnoxious visual noise in places that mounts really don’t need to be.

If I get this xpac I’m going to make sure to ignore the mounts entirely except for the bare minimum of times I’m absolutely required to use them, and if anet categorically forces me to use them just out and about just to further the mastery along then I’ll go back to playing in core and HoT or not play it at all.

So far the only person to “cover” soulbeast was Peachy and her coverage of it was severely lacking in any real substance. I know FAR more about the mechanics of Weaver, Deadeye, Mirage, and Spellbreaker and what they are actually capable of just from WP. So far the only info there seems to be about Soulbeast is “merge with pet and do something different.” Or are you all telling me that there is someone out there who has covered the other new specs? If so I’d love to see their stuff on it.

For the record, my sig shows the classes I main. I was simply noting that the info for Soulbeast seemed decidedly lacking.

I’m starting to get the feeling that the various GW2 content creators and reviewers were steered away from showcasing anything about Soulbeast. I have a sinking feeling that rangers are getting a bit of the shaft (again) on the elite spec front. Any others that are ranger mains getting that feeling too or are you excited for something thats been barely shown?

I’m 100% sure that if I have to fight with visual noise of mounts jumping across my screen when I’m at an outpost or some other nonsense I will simply go play other games and fully stop playing gw2. Its been my biggest reason for not wanting them in the first place and from what I saw of those demo play through vids, Anet doesn’t care about that kind of visual noise. They really need to make outposts mount free.

hmmm, okie, thats not too bad then. thanks for the info on that.

First, let me say kudos to the stuff regarding the release and the content that is slated to be delivered. Even the mounts (which I’m still against personally for certain reasons) look to be well executed and hopefully won’t annoy me too greatly should i grab the xpac. For the most part the new elite specs look nice and the environments look stunning.

More importantly many kudos on the pricing shift that took those of us with core and HoT into consideration.

That being said, however, I’m a touch worried about the fact that it doesn’t look like core/HoT are being included at the higher prices. Specifically HoT. Now, maybe I’m missing something here, but it looks like there will be some need for gliding or at least the ability to glide in PoF, but as it stands now that seems to be a skill only learned and mastered in HoT. So is Anet telling new players that if they buy PoF that they are going to learn the hard way that a now almost necessary mechanic will be unavailable to them unless they drop more money on HoT?

Honestly wondering what all is being done about this because as much as I’d like to talk up things like the xpac to new non-gw2 players, I can’t see them dropping money on this if they are also having to buy HoT as well.

Is there is plan to do a special priced bundle for the two? I just want to know what I can tell someone looking for a way into the game without scaring them off price wise.

OK, wow. This discussion. So, we already know that they have been working on mounts for the new expac and so they have literally dedicated man hours to a thing that has a very vocal minority in part no doubt because someone there at Anet realized that this could be a new revenue stream from new players as anet has also shown that they tend to care little about vet players in the grand scheme of things as those fonts of money tend to dry up quickly and new money is all they want.

That being said, if they make mounts exclusive to the gem store AND have them confer bonuses that affect movement/battle AND only available to expac owners, then they would have succeeded in making the game p2w. Furthermore they would have successfully made a bunch of people simply leave the game if they did this. For all the vocal people that want mounts there is a much larger base that still feel they are both horribly unnecessary and would frankly detract from the game/mechanics of said game and leave people that feel so many other aspects have been neglected to be even more annoyed that this dev time was spent on this new mechanic even though there has been such strong opposition to it.
So, does that mean that Anet might retool these elements, or maybe not even deliver something that is fully fleshed out? Most likely if past experience has taught me anything. This means that even among the mount proponents there will be a large number that will be less than satisfied and making a stink about them on the forums, further pulling dev attention to essentially a vanity item that will be added to a game to solve a nonexistent “problem” for a small subset of players that already have mobility buffs at their disposal.

In short, mounts are a very bad idea, especially for this series as they have never existed EXCEPT for one NPC in GW1 and a few NPCs in HoT, but since its a bad idea Anet is going to jump on it and run with it.

I’d say this is a horrible idea and that anet would never waste the time or manpower for this kind of thing, but since they are flirting with mounts I can’t say what they are thinking anymore. End of the day though, this is silly and bring ZERO value to the game. Those gardens have been empty for ages now except for maybe the few players that rp out there.

I initially hated the map when I first got there, but after running it with another toon and taking my time to explore I actually found this map to be fun and WAY better than TD. That map is just trash. That said, I have a lot of misgivings about the story and specifically Taimi being this perfect little master key they like to turn whenever they need to push the story along. Its lazy writing and compared to the richness of the GW1 lore and world it just makes me sad.

Simply put, Anet has zero interest or incentive in fixing this. They simply don’t care. They made the farm and that this literally all they will do.

If you ever played GW1 then you might remember the “fun” when they introduced mob AI that was smart enough to run from lots of AOE damage. The joy of making a your tank run after a group of enemies in the desert as they forced more mobs to get aggro.

So no. Its not a fun thought. Knocking them off cliffs though, that needed to be in game since day one.

Sylvari females looks the best when running. Especially in sneakthief armor.

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Xenon.4537:

I think the next expansion will decide the future of this game. It’s very critical to make up for the shortcomings of HoT. The content was good but there just wasn’t enough of it and a LOT of missed opportunities in the story. We only got 3 real maps and people were expecting a lot more than that. If the next expansion doesn’t go above and beyond then I expect a lot of people will be leaving.

I worries me that these forums seem way less active than they used to be. The front page used to cycle through topics in less than an hour. Now I can post a new topic and get no replies and it will still be on the front page two days later. There are threads on the front page of class forums that are more than a week old and you can’t reply to them without checking the bypass bump box.

A lot of people say the game is great, and maybe it is. But the audience is definitely shrinking…

This.

Reddit seems pretty busy. Maybe it’s a forum thing more than an audience thing.

Free to play players can’t post on the forums. I keep bringing this up, and a lot of people ignore it, but it’s a fact.

Unless people don’t think that people play this game as free to play, which I can’t imagine, the forums can’t really be an accurate gauge of the in game population.

Aside from that, I know a number of people who used to post here all the time who stopped due to various infractions they didn’t feel they deserved.

Yeah, the forums became a very hostile place to many that were critical of of certain things. I only recently started back in both the game and the forums. That being said, there has been a big amount of bleeding of veteran players in the game and maps are constantly closing a forcing players to new ones just to feel “full” and people have to use lfg if they want to get any serious content done as just being on a map with people won’t assure that the thing will be successful anymore.

I do believe though that Anet needs to find a way to tie those mastery points to other things or they are effectively saying that new players that don’y buy these things will never get to progress as much as players that have come before them or have bought the content. It basically takes a dump on the mastery system since it means those people will inevitably hit a wall that will feel insurmountable and possibly make them leave the game.

Yeah, just tried on my free account that i use for testing builds and general material gathering and crashed while running in wayfarers after 5 minutes. Had hoped to relax a bit with this tonight, but I guess not.