Guild Wars 2

Yeah, it’s the “big dragon fight” bit though, as technically the entire jungle is mordremoth, but as far as fighting a big dragon, the DS event is that part of the mordy fight.

Unlike zhaitan, Mordy, according to the story, doesn’t really have a “body” in the way you’d think of something you could just shoot lasers at and kill. This is also why the mouth event you see is that big tendril/face thing emerging from the mist, as it’s physically connected to the jungle (and hence the total body of mordremoth) at all times.

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

PopeUrban.2578:

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

They also spent more than a year developing the core game. a lot more. From what we were told HoT had a production cycle of about a year.

Also keep in mind that from a technical standpoint developing GW2 armor is a bit more work intensive than GW1 armor. The animation rigging is a bit more complex, the shaders and dye channel systems are likewise a bit more complex in terms of texture iteration, and in many cases you’re looking at developing a much higher res mesh to build a low poly cage and bake normal maps on to.

I do this sort of work for a living, and doing a model to the visual specifications of GW2, even if it were the “same” model (say, for instance, the difference between the cash shop primeval armor and the ame armor from GW1) in both workflows, you’re probably looking at four or five times the amount of man hours spent compared to the old versions.

Then you multiply that by essentially a completely new model for gender variation, retargeting the rigging for everything that’s not a human, sylvari, or female norn to account for skeletal rig differences, as well as the structural tewaks for male norn and charr/asura biology and that work ramps up exponentially.

The reason we saw so much armor in GW1 was specifically because there were only two variations of any given armor, and that the textures there were all just diffuse maps with the occasional quick and flat specular. The problem with adding unique character started to become apperant as you moved through the campaigns. You had core classes with lots of choices, but by the time you got to nightfall, you were looking at paragons with a fairly anemic number of variations in comparison.

These factors are likely why with GW2, realizing the extra time in the pipeline for racial variants. anet made the shift to the armor weight system and simply created some accent pieces per class.

However, the fact remains that if we had stuck to “humans only” we’d have par more armor choices as a function of basic workload economics.

I’m not saying I hate the option of other races, but you can’t have it all. part of why we see so many stand alone backpacks, hats, gloves, and boots is for the same reason. They’re relatively interchangable as they’re largely non-deforming models that are either completely rigid and bone locked, or have very few points of multi-bone vertex influences in the rig.

and yet with every outfit and armor that comes out, there’s clipping and stretched textures everywhere, body parts are simply removed (yes I’m talking for asura and charr) which shows the armor rigging is only being done for humans, and then slapped onto the other races with a thumbs up and kicked out the door.

That’s not rigging, that’s tweaking the base model’s geometry to fit the sizes and visual anatomy of those races. The issues you’re talking about come from a standpoint of modelling, and it’s pretty obvious where they cut corners there to get more armor out for less work, but is a great indicator of the challenges and time required to push out an armor set that has versions that fit all of the game’s races and genders.

Rigging is the process by which the individual vertices of each model are given weights for how much they follow individual bones in the links in a skeletal animation system. It’s how you set up a 3d model to work with the technical anatomy of a character. I don’t have the skeletons in front of me, as I don’t work at anet and don’t really do the whole datamining thing, but from a purely visual inspection it looks like charr have a few extra spine links, asura a few less, and generally the torso rotations in terms of actual euler angles are pretty drastically different. Humans also appear to have a more complex skeletal setup for the light and medium weights to control skirt/coat bits, while asura seem to link those bits directly to the hip/legs skeletons since they’re so short it wouldn’t be a sensible use of porcessing power to caculate skeletal animations for something that barely moves at all. Asura also seems to have a squash and stretch controller implemented to give them their more bouncy aesthetic, though it’s entirely possible that specific controller is separate from the animation skeleton and applied to the entire model so it may not be an issue at all from a manhours standpoint when animating armor.

That’s his mental image when you fight him in his mind. The “physical” fight is in dragon’s stand.

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

They also spent more than a year developing the core game. a lot more. From what we were told HoT had a production cycle of about a year.

Also keep in mind that from a technical standpoint developing GW2 armor is a bit more work intensive than GW1 armor. The animation rigging is a bit more complex, the shaders and dye channel systems are likewise a bit more complex in terms of texture iteration, and in many cases you’re looking at developing a much higher res mesh to build a low poly cage and bake normal maps on to.

I do this sort of work for a living, and doing a model to the visual specifications of GW2, even if it were the “same” model (say, for instance, the difference between the cash shop primeval armor and the ame armor from GW1) in both workflows, you’re probably looking at four or five times the amount of man hours spent compared to the old versions.

Then you multiply that by essentially a completely new model for gender variation, retargeting the rigging for everything that’s not a human, sylvari, or female norn to account for skeletal rig differences, as well as the structural tewaks for male norn and charr/asura biology and that work ramps up exponentially.

The reason we saw so much armor in GW1 was specifically because there were only two variations of any given armor, and that the textures there were all just diffuse maps with the occasional quick and flat specular. The problem with adding unique character started to become apperant as you moved through the campaigns. You had core classes with lots of choices, but by the time you got to nightfall, you were looking at paragons with a fairly anemic number of variations in comparison.

These factors are likely why with GW2, realizing the extra time in the pipeline for racial variants. anet made the shift to the armor weight system and simply created some accent pieces per class.

However, the fact remains that if we had stuck to “humans only” we’d have par more armor choices as a function of basic workload economics.

I’m not saying I hate the option of other races, but you can’t have it all. part of why we see so many stand alone backpacks, hats, gloves, and boots is for the same reason. They’re relatively interchangable as they’re largely non-deforming models that are either completely rigid and bone locked, or have very few points of multi-bone vertex influences in the rig.

I think, for ally teleports, an opportunity mechanic would be more appropriate, similar to the way mesmer portals work.

Very early in development those portals were automatic, you walked in to them and got instantly teleported. It was changed to an activated ability to keep the functionality without forcing allies to do something that they might want to put off a few seconds (or totally ignore)

If it were, say “for x seconds your ally’s next jump/hit f/etc. shadowsteps them to your position” it might have a better feel to it?"

Another option would be to treat it kind of like ele conjures, spawn them some sort of interactable that would give them the boons and shadowstep when activated maybe?

Like, the basic idea I get (provide allies an on demand shadowstep) but the implementation is a little tricky to keep it from being highly disruptive for pve, or even accidentally disruptive when its well intentioned given the pace of GW2 combat.

What if you flipped it? Ambush would in stead shadowstep the target to you and then process whatever buffs. Thematically it’s the same idea, helping the party jump on an enemy, but it’s less disruptive. As an instant pull it’s also pretty unique and powerful support, as most pulls have some sort of dodgable projectile or effect.

Hammerguard.9834:

Who ever said anything about tradable? What I’m asking for doesn’t change anything except that we get to choose which rewards we get in the order we want them. If someone wants to they can get a full Radiance set before they ever have to touch Hellfire. It’s not that hard to understand.

Ah, I see what you’re getting at.

Doesn’t seem too off the wall, but achievement point “costs” would likely be radically adjusted to account for the ability to streamline the process. I mean, if the intent is that you don’t end up with a backpack until 40k AP, allowing you to just bank points and buy just the backpack kind of removes the current “tiered” system of acquistion.

If anything I’d suggest in stead making the “choice” tiers more comressed so you end up with an option to sequentially acquire a full set of hellfire/radiant before you default in to acquiring a full set of the one you didn’t pick. It’s a bit anticlimactic to go “oh, new achievement chest!” and get something… you could have had two chests ago.

Disagree with the guild buffs. I think the way they exist now is pitch perfect, wheras the old version was simply too many buffs for too little effort.

Now, buffs aren’t a constant time or resource sink, but they’re free of cost once acquired for all guilds, in stead of being essentially free of cost for large guilds and cost prohibitive for small guilds. It’s a far more equal system that ensures that small guilds who work hard have exactly the same buff capacity as large guilds once the upgrades are completed.

TBH I was expecting them to work on a potion based system that actually cost a few silver to buy at the bar and stacked, as that was the stated plan for scaling buff costs. I don’t know why they went with the current system in stead.

A few things I’d like to add from an immersion/social bent. These aren’t really important systeming things, just things I feel would tie the whole expeience together a little better:

• Tavern does not sell food or drink, and there is no belcher’s bluff upgrade. Honestly, there are myriad NPCs in the game that sell various types of alcohol which doesn’t do anything but grant the drunk debuff. It’s fun, and some of it is even useful for crafting various things. Similarly there are many inferior or low level foods sold by various vendors. It would be nice if the guild’s tavern actually sold these things as well. Nothing would be imbalanced by including these items at the bartender, and it would feel slightly better to have that first structure actually have a little bit of functionality before completing upgrades. As is, you make a tavern, but it doesn’t actually do anything until you complete at least one additional upgrade. Adding these fluff/low level items would at least give it a function without breaking anything. A permanent belcher’s bluff table upgrade would also be great. It’s a fun social/downtime activity that would fit right in at the tavern.

• No mugs, food, and table cover as decorations. I have a bar and I can not litter it with mugs and bottles. This makes me sad.

• No basic decorations before market 1. Decorating is a huge part of the guild hall. Shouldn’t there be at least a small selection of basic decorations available for purchase immediately just to customize the space a bit? The market 1 decorations, or even just one type of basic wall would go a long way toward getting people in to the decoration system, and excited about working toward further market upgrades and helping the guild’s scribe level.

• The mine has no miners I love the effort that went in to making the guild halls feel like real places in the world. I like how new NPCs show up at the waypoint, and that time was taken to have them have little conversations when they show up or when they’re just hanging around the tavern before their structures are built. It lends a nice sense of narrative and story to the hall and adds a little extra interest to major upgrade steps. It is only for that reason that I feel that the absence of NPC miners seems out of place. So much care was given to introduce these NPCs as people and phrase the hall as a real place that the world of tyria interacts with, but upon building the mine, it’s just a cave which seems to produce aetherium from thin air. A couple miners with some looping animations to spice it up a bit would be cool. Bonus points if they stop digging and start sleeping or screwing around when aetherium is capped out.

The entire purpose of achievement skins is that you can’t trade for them. They’re rewards specifically for gaining achievement points, just like elite spec skins are for training elite specs, dungeon skins are for doing dungeons (or the appropriate pvp track), etc.

Making AP tradable would completely subvert the basic intent of AP as a system engineered to reward your individual progress through the achievement system.

They’re not going to write entirely new dialogue dude.

The best you can expect from a revamp is conversion of some of the important world events in to instances, along with the return of all the old instances, and probably turning certain things that weren’t really story critical (like fixing all those signs and many of the scavenger hunts) in to ingame mails. For example, no leyline gizmo scavenger hunt, and in stead you get a mail from taimi stating “we researched the placement of these devices and they led us to this point”

The real “work” in a season 1 revamp is making the important bits, like the tower of nightmares, battle for LA, breachmaker phase 1, etc. compatible for solo instances, in most cases probably by nerfing the difficulty and giving you NPC allies.

Yeah, this bug happenned to me on new character creation. I just swapped characters and back and it was fine.

Enemy scaling. There have been enemies as high as level 83 in GW2 since release. The same was true in GW1.

Those enemies are still designed to be killed by level 80 players. They’re just given a higher level so it’s not as easy for the large groups of players that spawn them to faceroll.

It’s just a number, there to intimidate you.

TheGrimm.5624:

Anyone find where we can acquire the new runes, example Superior Rune of Thorns or its recipe?

if I remember correctly, the thorns rune comes from one of the map currency vendors.

Dante.1763:

PopeUrban.2578:

Crafting backpacks are fashion bonuses for crafters, “prestige badges”

The point of crafting has never been to make backpacks. Backpacks are simply a bonus for skilling it to show off “yeah I ranked up X craft.” It’s also why they’re all account bound.

That said, if you really want the l400 scribe pack there’s nothing stopping you from attempting to skill it for just that, or hey, maybe it’s one more reason to be your guild’s scribe! Crafting pack skins are just like elite spec skins. They’re just “badges” that aren’t really the main focus of progressing it.

Oh i wish our guild was doing just one scribe, but noooooo they dont think thats a good idea, so they are just letting random people level it up. its not great system to be honest. >.<

That seems more like a guild thing than a systemic problem really. As a system it seems pretty well thought out, and I’d like to see more things added to the game that create “jobs” for different people in guilds that aren’t just permissions. Promotes more codependance and teamwork IMO.

I think it’s pretty sensible to have more specialized crafting disciplines. Might even be neat to see something like a wvw-specific discipline, fractal specific discipline, guild shipwright for multiperson boats in a naval battle expansion, etc. in the future. I think they pretty much have the basics of personal gear crafting (the stuff people actually need in a personal sense) covered.

I mean the trainer does warn you that scribe is primarily for guild stuff, and not for you alone before he teaches it to you.

“Core” stat sets are laurel based, but just like the recipies and crafting material, extended stat sets always require resources gained by playing in new content. It’s that whole horizontal progression thing. They want you to have good reasons to play new maps, so usually they add new stat sets that people might want.

Considering stats are all derived from gear now, they could go on this route for quite some time, especially now that boon and condition duration are proper numerical stats now.

Samnang.1879:

Bags, essence of luck…

I swear my forefinger will develop arthritis one day.

You know you can save up a stack of luck and “consume all” now right?

Spambot.3625:

whats hilarious is that I never had crashes on the normal client, 5 minutes in with 64bit and I get my first crash… ouch

I hate to be that guy but…

It’s beta

Can you at least submit crash logs to help get it out of beta, or is it a straight up CTD with no log window?

Dante.1763:

PopeUrban.2578:

Nikku.3562:

We’re already talking of just having a single designated guild Scribe who we funnel materials to.

That’s the point of the system. It’s a guild-centric crafting profession meant to be supplied by a guild, as what we make is primarily for the benefit of the entire guild.

It’s expensive for this exact reason. If it were cheaper, there’d be little reason to have a guild-centric profession as everyone in the guild could easily just make their own stuff.

they should make the backpacks tradeable then as well, that way the scribe can make the backpacks for others that are sending mats to the scribe.

Crafting backpacks are fashion bonuses for crafters, “prestige badges”

The point of crafting has never been to make backpacks. Backpacks are simply a bonus for skilling it to show off “yeah I ranked up X craft.” It’s also why they’re all account bound.

That said, if you really want the l400 scribe pack there’s nothing stopping you from attempting to skill it for just that, or hey, maybe it’s one more reason to be your guild’s scribe! Crafting pack skins are just like elite spec skins. They’re just “badges” that aren’t really the main focus of progressing it.

Nikku.3562:

PopeUrban.2578:

Nikku.3562:

We’re already talking of just having a single designated guild Scribe who we funnel materials to.

That’s the point of the system. It’s a guild-centric crafting profession meant to be supplied by a guild, as what we make is primarily for the benefit of the entire guild.

So why’s it not part of the guild hall system?

It is. You can’t train it or practice it without guild hall upgrades, and many of its recipies are guild hall upgrades.

Runiir.6425:

Well, considering how dead HoT will be when a new expac opens up…they’ll have to change how/where you can earn mastery in gliding then if they intend on keeping it for new players/those that haven’t maxed it out.

Nah, if it’s just gliding that remains useful and the new map stuff only requires t1 gliding it would be fine, just the same as using core zones for leveling.

Not only that, he region limited mastry tracks and skins sort of ensure that “old” content like HoT remains relevant.

I usually just stab them a lot and it works pretty well.

Way cheaper than bulk transporting zombies too.

Doggie.3184:

WTB Open All function.

I’m also really really sick of dealing with useless sigils/runes all the time when salvaging stuff more than anything.

Collection tab for runes/sigils IMO. We need this.

I like how the bags stack so I don’t have to visit a merchant every 5 seconds.

However

Couldn’t we just adjust the economy by dropping less blues and greens, and increase the salvaging yields and vendor prices on said blues and greens?

In the end you have the same economic throughput, but with less clicking stuff. The problem is implementation. If such a plan is on the horizon, how do you keep people from farming/buying a bazillion cheap blues and greens and then overturning supply the moent the salvaging yields increase? Would it even be a problem? It would temporarily deflate the value of almost all resources, permanently inflate the value of blues and greens, and the worst economic fallout would be what, maybe people have a week or so of extremely accelerated resource gain and jump up grafting or guild halls a few notches, which doesn’t seem so bad.

Tim.6450:

Considering the gliders are a mastery feature, I don’t see this as a problem. It does not have a long lifetime since the moment we move out the maps ruled by the heart of thorns mastery tracks we lose acces to gliders. It means that glider skins add less value in the long term. Skins and outfits have a much bigger value since they can be used in any map. So what if we don’t have much unlockable glider skins through play? The next map released, might completely invalidate them.
I have more problems with the fact that gliders are depicted as an important feature in the customisation panel even though its Hot maps only nature.

HoT maps, and presumably all other maps moving forward.

I seriously doubt when they move on to the next region after another xpac or some LW updates they’d just go “and yep, gliding is over, hope you had fun with it.”

Remember that unlike GW1 ampaign, expansions in GW2 are linear, and more importantly, it’s actually impossible to own whatever the next expansion is without owning HoT.

This means you’ll see HoT masteries, at least some of them, having the same relationship to the next xpac as core has to HoT. You need to level up in core to really get started in HoT, but you need not do all the content. I’d be suprised if gliders weren’t the “minimum investment” in HoT content before moving on to the next mastry region. It’s a more “general purpose” mastry, unlike the other lines which are much more closely tied to species and lore.

The only reason gliders aren’t backward compatible is the amount of effort it would take to retrofit old maps and the content it would break. Moving forward in to new content, it would be silly to just turn off gliding when you can just as easily design the maps with gliding in mind, although they might not require as much gliding to get around.

I like this. At least having them copy armor colors would be neat.

Nikku.3562:

We’re already talking of just having a single designated guild Scribe who we funnel materials to.

That’s the point of the system. It’s a guild-centric crafting profession meant to be supplied by a guild, as what we make is primarily for the benefit of the entire guild.

It’s expensive for this exact reason. If it were cheaper, there’d be little reason to have a guild-centric profession as everyone in the guild could easily just make their own stuff.

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Lack of gliders I blame solely on arenanet. Day 1 DLC on that scale ain’t cool guys. One gem store skin was understandable, but you took it too dang far for something that requires the same amount of rigging as a backpack skin, your cheap to produce item of choice for live content rewards.

For a game with a primarily cosmetic reward model, stop being so stingy with cosmetic rewards for playing the game. Bare minimum we should be seeing one ingame skin for every gem store skin.

They’re part of the expansion, and as such can only be found in expansion maps, which are all level 80 zones.

It overflows, but it doesn’t really overflow to the place you might want it to, so it’s still best to choose your next line as soon as you have a spare moment to do so.

I’m hoping that with the new LS episodes they change from the standard backpack rewards we had in core GW2 to glider skins for HoT, since gliding is a whole new HoT thing, and new LS episodes require it.

Seems a waste of perfectly good story content. Do it for elite specs so you don’t make irreversible character decisions with it and it’s a cool idea.

GW1: “I can’t play this game because I can’t jump.”

GW2: “I can’t play this game because you actually use jumping for gameplay”

Someone will always be unhappy.

Woah woah woah… 64 bit client? Why is this not front page news? This could be huge for performance on older 64 bit rigs even if you weren’t crashing before!

Aye.8392:

These days we earn nothing by playing with guild mates. In the old system only a small amount of influence was earned by just signing on, most of it was earned by teaming up and playing in the same team with guild mates. I’d love to see influence make a return and be a currency that the guild treasurer would accept in trade for the materials that are required ie: 600 silk or 6,000 influence fills an upgrade requirement.

Playing with guildies actually brings players to the game more often and keeps them in the game longer. This is good for A-Net and good for the game. The frustration of dumping wealth into the guild hall treasury does nothing to keep players coming back for more.

This is a thing I see a lot. That treasury is a group project. One that you have to want and work toward together. In order to get upgrades done, you’ll also have to do guild missions together (well, you can technically solo some of them, but they’re designed as group outings)

Influence was an extreme problem because it rewarded doing stuff you were going to do anyway better just because you were in a guild. It was passive, it was boring, and it did nothing to incentivize working toward things as a guild.

Under the new system you get out of the guild what you put it. It’s all a team effort now, and that team effort means investing in something as a group the same way you invest in your gear, skin collection, mini collection, or whatever as an individual.

It means there is real economic cost involved in operating a guild and benefitting from it, which necessitates people acting like team players, and playing as a team.

This is far better than the old system for the same reason the way the metas and their rewards adminitrate loot in the new zones is better than the “click 1 and hit f” model of the old ones.

People are upset they have to invest in their guilds to benefit from them, but that’s the whole point for the revamp. It was done to make guilds that are willing to work together toward shared communal goals, of all sizes, derive more benefit than guilds who just want some benefits but can’t be bothered to pause their personal goals and set aside time and resources to make that happen.

Serious Thought.5394:

I had one complain about it. Cracked me up “but then I’m out of energy” “and I’m out of initiative. however you can swap legends and start at 50% energy again” “thief still op, has shortbow 5”. Screw it, delete shortbow 5. Give us real wep sets. No, better. Just nerf shortbow 5 to 15 initiative.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to hit a button and get back half your initiative without having to use any utility slots, traits, or gear to do it?

fixit.7189:

You have nothing to worry about, guild buffs are what 3% and you can only have ONE activated far as I can tell. Plus there is nothing in these guild halls worth even visiting, they are just an endless money pit for no return. There is no reason to visit guild hall unless you are an officer or guild leader so non-hot people are not missing much other than an empty map.

Actually those buffs scale up for each buff added to the tavern. My guild’s buffs are5% at this point. I don’t know where it caps out. You can only have one activated at a time however.

atlrising.5134:

PopeUrban.2578:

angellips.9753:

The tavern buffs aren’t usable by ppl without HoT. The old guildwide buffs were. Therefore the non-HoT ppl have lost.

No, they haven’t. Everyone lost the old buff system. HoT or no. The tavern buff system isn’t comparable at all as its scaling and acquisition method is completely different. non-HoT people can’t use it, this is true, but that’s like saying they “lost” scribing.

They have less buffs than people with HoT. Yes. But only if the guild in question chose to spend their resources on those buffs, knowing that many members can not use them.

If you spend materials donated by members without hoT knowing full well they couldn’t use them, in stead of fast tracking scribe or waypoint discounts, that’s the guild leader’s fault.

You are not required to take those buff upgrades in order to advance the hall’s services that do benefit non-HoT players.

Or we could just tell your non HoT members that you do not support them having access to the services. That solves a lot of problems.

When it comes to making decisions ingame, I don’t really traffic in politics, but reality. In that lens I actually did straight up tell my non-HoT members not to donate resources for services they can’t use.

For the record, I think it would be awesome if we all got everything for free for having purchased the game three years ago, that every new skin was added ingame, and that the gem store was converted to a low cost gold store.

However, I don’t operate on assumptions of perceived morality or how I think the game should work unless its likely change can be made. The liklihood any changes will be made to the guild hall system to make it more accessible to people who refuse to pay for HoT is slim to none. That’s the reality. I empathize with it from a business perspective even though, yes, everyone would rather have more things for free and pay for less.

I support the revamp of the guild systems. The old buff system was passive, overpowered, and granted large guilds extreme advantages for literally zero effort. Once you surpassed a certain size, you could load a quite frankly obscene amount of buffs, permanently, and do nothing to get them but have guild members log on.

Would it be nice if all of HoT was a free update, and they didn’t need to incentivize people to buy HoT? Of course it would!

However it would also lead to even more predatory cash shop practices to pay the bills, less revenue for ongoing content updates, and generally move the game more toward the “okay, give us ten bucks, then ten more, you know what, give us even more than fifteen bucks a month just to stay competitive with veryone eelse’s buffs or cash sop income” in stead of “Hey guys, but something every couple of years so we can keep this going, also here are some skins you can buy if you want and some convenience things that you don’t even need.”

I fully support people buying HoT, and incentivizing people to buy HoT because I’d rather see expansion sales drive revenue for live updates than even more cash shop nickel and diming.

That’s the reality. To run the game, the game has to make money. people that refuse to fund the game they play on a regular basis complaining that they can’t use new stuff they decided not to pay for don’t get a lot of sympathy from me.

angellips.9753:

The tavern buffs aren’t usable by ppl without HoT. The old guildwide buffs were. Therefore the non-HoT ppl have lost.

No, they haven’t. Everyone lost the old buff system. HoT or no. The tavern buff system isn’t comparable at all as its scaling and acquisition method is completely different. non-HoT people can’t use it, this is true, but that’s like saying they “lost” scribing.

They have less buffs than people with HoT. Yes. But only if the guild in question chose to spend their resources on those buffs, knowing that many members can not use them.

If you spend materials donated by members without hoT knowing full well they couldn’t use them, in stead of fast tracking scribe or waypoint discounts, that’s the guild leader’s fault.

You are not required to take those buff upgrades in order to advance the hall’s services that do benefit non-HoT players.

fixit.7189:

Before HoT, I could just play doing whatever I want and still advance the guild b/c I could help earn influence just by playing. Now, guilds are a major money pit where leaders/officers are constantly shamming/begging us to pay up. I prefer the old way, since I can contribute by just playing and not how much money I spend. Seemingly many guilds have their own little internal gang where new members are not welcome, I begin to question why I even bother with one now….

The passive nature of the system was exactly what Anet didn’t like about it. it didn’t encourage guilds to approach content or tasks as guilds, and encouraged mass recruiting or dumping endless amounts of money in to inf more than simply tackling guild-specific missions or economic goals.

The new system is one of permanent unlocks for resources, and requires guilds to play together to get guild things. It requires effort from guilds to get guild rewards rather than just handing them out for doing non-guild things.

Anet does not want you just playing whatever content and still benefitting the guild. They want guilds to have objectives and play content together as guilds to get rewarded as guilds.

Small guilds are not stuck endlessly dumping gold just to keep up buffs, large guilds don’t get an endless supply of free stuff just for having people log in. Guilds of all sizes are now requires to put forth an equivalent amount of effort for an equivalent amount of reward.

You now get out of your guild what you are willing to put in to it.

The inf system was an endless money pit for small guilds and cost nothing for large guilds. The new system is a fixed cost for all guilds, that will take longer or shorter amounts of time based upon contribution, and requires all guilds to invest an equal amount of effort in playing guild content to move it along.

That’s a far far better system that is more in line with the rest of the game.

angellips.9753:

The guild hall should give bonuses to the guild members – the bonuses we ALREADY earned as a guild should be returned to ALL members. Period. They were earned in good faith prior to the xpack, and the people who didn’t get the xpack aren’t just not getting new stuff – fair enough – but have LOST what they once had. That is very very foul indeed.

If you’re talking about the guildwide 1-3 day buffs, those were removed completely from the system. Nobody has access to those any more as they were replaced by the tavern buff system, and nobody starts with the tavern buffs as every guild has to do upgrades to access them. The consumables (banners, yak, etc. you still have access to (as a leader or officer) obtain from the favor trader npc in the guild initiative until you get a scribe to craft them. You can also still guy guild armor, spend commendations, nad generally do anything you ha d upgrades to do before from the initiative HQ.

Consumables across the board are more costly to obtain with either favor or crafting mats. All members can still click the banners are receive buffs as before.

They significantly altered the system to stop it from being a passive buff factory for everyone. This is why the tavern system has lower buffs than the old system and makes you select only one type, and why banners now require a mission or more’s worth of favor or a scribe crafting recipie. The old system was a passive one. The new system is one that requires active effort.

8

nine when I’m doing a weekly key farm. Five of them are level 80, all different classes. When I’m done leveling the others I’ll probably buy a slot to make a rev with. I don’t really bother making duplicate classes.

Khazik.8052:

Anyone have any suggestions for Sigil/Rune combos, especially considering potent poison trait?

I use a blight/purity combo on my deathblossom daredevil. Purity combined with cleanse on dodge means I passively remove most conditions before they become a problem, and generally don’t have to bring a cleanse unless I’m fighting something that bombs me with 5+ unique conditions constantly. I happily fight inside most condi-only aoe fields like they don’t even exist due to the evade cleanse and heal traits triggering every second from evading the field effect, and deathblossom+dodge giving a reliable evade at least once a second.

Blight on a condition build is a significant amount of sigil-based AoE damage plus weakness procs which help survivability. It helps poison uptime from dagger procs, which in turn helps weakness uptime. For single target fights, maybe have a swap to venom or malice if you feel you really need more dps, but I generally don’t notice the drop enough to bother swapping out.

On this build I run signet of malice due to its excellent synergy with lotus and using deathblossom in multitarget scenarios.

Dahkeus.8243:

I honestly think it would be pretty awesome if condi thief could help keep thief as competitive in PvE, but I haven’t seen anyone do a serious theorycrafted comparison of a direct damage build vs a condi build for thief.

Also, there are a lot of potential variations for a condi build that make it a bit harder to identify in terms of a min/maxed DPS build as opposed to direct damage, which is pretty straight forward.

Here are a couple of the questions I see in identifying what condi build does the most DPS:
1) If the DA line is taken, do you get more dps from Trapper’s Respite + Deadly Trapper or is it better to go Dagger Training + Panic Strike?

2) Does Lotus Training make the DD line worthwhile? If so, the additional dodge could be great for sustaining survival while also dealing damage. However, the extra dodge doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t have traits like in the Acro line to grant vigor. Would this make Sig of Agi worth taking?

3) Which Weaponset is the highest DPS? Would you be better off with D/D for the poison on AA and bleeds on Death Blossom or would P/D be better? If P/D, should ini be spent on Shadow Strike for Torment or on CnD + Sneak Attack?

If anyone knows the answer to these questions, I’d be interested to hear, but I have yet to see any serious theorycrafting on the level of what DnT does with thief condi builds…

• 1 – trapper’s, but only if you also take DA trap traits, otherwise take something else.

• 2 – Don’t underestimate condi cleanse and heal on evade with a 1s ICD. Any condi based field effect is essentially something you completely ignore, and 400+ HP a second is a lot better for sustain than you’d think if you’re already playing thief properly and not getting hit that much. The combination of these two turn field effects that would normally be lethal in to effects you can just happily skip through. In addition, lotus procs signet of malice nine times and cripples in addition to its damaging conditions, significantly increasing sustain versus melee opponents. DD is a lot of little things that stack up extremely well in stead of lots of little things that are mostly ignorable and one big GM trait like many trait lines.

• 3 – With lotus, D/D deathblossom. You’ll be in melee range and generally confining mobs to a small area so they take more damage from trickery caltrops. Built and played properly with DA/Trickery/Daredevil you are looking at 15+bleeds at all times, as well as a constant 1-4 stacks of poison from from traits and dagger auto, with the ability to spoke up to 30+ bleeds with caltrops on utility and blowing a full bar of init. Without Daredevil, I’m not sure, you might want to test the DPS on a golem.

EazyPanda.6419:

While it seems that you have made up your mind, I find a lack of feedback from thieves, so I though that I’d share some insight, from a thief’s perspective.

As a thief main, I’d have to agree, mesmer are in a better spot for Pvp at the moment. And thieves arguably have a higher skill floor compared to mesmers, especially in Pvp and and the Jungle.
Mesmers have similar, if not higher bursting capabilities, has access to stealth, yet does not rely on it, and generally brings more to the table compared to thieves.

Thief is a class that grows on you, not so much as a pick up and play class. As a thief, you are required to not only know your own skills, but to know your opponent’s as well, since you cannot just press a series of buttons and win a fight. Make one mistake and you are dead, while needing to play almost perfectly to win against other classes.

It is a high risk, mediocre reward class, but as stated before, it is a class where you have to play reactively. New thieves are certain to die, and are expected to put in hundreds of hours to be regarded as decent thieves.
When two players of the same skill level are dueling, the thief is expected to lose. Yet, a skilled thief is a monster to fight against, and can turn the tide of a match very quickly.

In PvE, unskilled thieves spend more time on the ground, or on their shortbow which deals low damage, or retreating out of range of the boss after taking a hit, and can be considered a liability to the party. On the new maps, the thing that made thieves meta, group stealth, is not as important as they are in dungeons.

After saying all this, why do I keep playing my thief? Simply because it is fun. The freedom of not being restricted by cooldown, and the feeling when you beat the odds.
No zerker in the new jungles? My daredevil is proudly wearing zerker gear and surviving decently.
Thieves die easily in group content? My thief is still soloing Mai Trin after my party wiped and is trying to respawn.

Thieves are really bad in Pvp? Yet I’m still at the top of the scoreboard at the results screen. (a rare thing these days I’d have to admit)

Thieves are bad in group fights in WvW? Tell that to the enemy zerg’s elementalists and necros that are on the floor, leaving the enemy with no way to deal damage. (again. A rare thing to be honest).

What I’m trying to say is, find your own class. Some people found the game boring after a while simply because they are playing the wrong class. Try out all the classes. Once you fall in love with a class, the game just feels a lot more thrilling.

Agreed. Thieves aren’t “bad” per se, but they do require a much higher level of play for the same reward. They’re a high skill floor class. A bad mesmer will still probably live and might kill some people or mobs. A bad thief will simply die.

I brought a new player in to the game afew weeks ago, and he decided, against my warning, to roll a thief for pvp, having never played GW2 before. he died instantly and decided the game was dumb. after a week I suggested he try an easier class to start off with, and gave him a warrior build to try. After which he decided he liked the game and hated the thief.

Meanwhile I play thief almost exclusively and do decently with it (within its sadly still to strict limits) in pvp and generally outlast or outdamage other party members with it in pve.

Darth Sylvanos.2496:

PopeUrban.2578:

This is likely intentional, just like how in the priory storyline they refer to a certain historical figure as “Dagnar Stonepate” (and this isn’t a typo, that line is voiced) rather than his accurate name “Dagnar Stoneplate”

It’s meant to illustrate imperfect knowledge of history.

I’m sorry to tell you that you are wrong. Dagnar Stonepate is the actual name. In fact, his original name was Dagnar Stoneplitter in the game manual.

Mind. Blown.

Sorry for the misinformation!

atlrising.5134:

I never called it a bait and switch, I called foul on the entire thing, please tell me you do not think a guild hall is a guild hall if everyone in your guild is not able to use it’s benefits.

It’s absolutely still a guild hall, and still confers several benefits to non-HoT members. My non-HoT people rather enjoy being able to instantly teleport to a merchant, guild bank, and repair anvil from anywhere in the world and back again, and getting a bit of a waypoint discount.

To be honest, I’m surprised they let non-HoT accounts teleport there at all, since guild halls are technically expansion zones.

What you’re asking for is to get access to HoT-specific features without actually buying HoT. You can call foul on it, and your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s, but your argument is based on opinion, not fact. In purely factual terms, it’s a guild hall. A hall accessible by the enitre guild. Beyond that there are some services specific to HoT owners, and some everyone can use.

atlrising.5134:

I’m pretty sure we can all agree that when Anet said those without HoT could enter the guild halls, we all thought that meant all members could benefit from the guild coming together to make things happen. This puts guild halls effectively behind a paywall and forces a player to buy something to do stuff with the guild even if they do not want the expansion to begin with.

They said, quite plainly, on the QA stream and in several forum posts when asked that this was not the case, and that people without access to HoT could enter the guild hall but could not use any but the basic services there. This information was avaliable for months before release. Anyone assuming otherwise didn’t take the time to inform themselves.

Whether you think it’s the right or wrong way to go about it is a matter of personal opinion, but this wasn’t a bait and switch. they were pretty clear about how the halls interacted with non-HoT accounts.

Further, non-HoT accounts don’t need HoT to access guild content (with the single exception of participating the claiming a hall, a one time event), only guild services. You don’t need HoT to participate in, be rewarded for, or spend the rewards from guild missions. You also don’t need it to benefit from passive buffs like the waypoint discount. You will need HoT to to skill scribe, decorate, or take advantage of the new taven buff system.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Vayne.8563:

Embarrassing? You’re assuming the QA all played Guild Wars 1 and were all into lore. I’ve seen worse typos in top best sellers. Entire wrong names used. It happens. This is a pretty small molehill even for this community to turn into a mountain. lol

LMAO .. WHAT!

Yes its QA fail 101.. whether they played GW1 or not.. the game lore is supposed to be consistant at the very least.. therefore when implementing something that is hinged around lore it should of been QA’ed accordingly – stop making up this stuff please.

- Excuse me Ferrari QA 101 .. this side panel is meant to be on a Fiat Panda!
- Oh sorry customer.. I never worked on Fiat Panda’s before
- Oh that’s ok pretty minor molehill, I’ll buy it anyway…

It isn’t a QA fail. It’s an in-universe obfuscation of history. It is completely intentional and used to illustrate (like in many places in the game) that NPCs often have an imperfect or just plain wrong view of historical, or event current events.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

PopeUrban.2578:

Varonth.5830:

Warframe did the Dojo building in their game right:

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Clan#Clan_Tier

As the table shows, you can have different sized clans based on the biggest barracks build in your Dojo. Depending on that, you can invite more people, but at the same time all rooms you can build will increase in cost by the same multiplicative factor that got applied to the maximum amount of players your clan can hold.

If you are a small 10 player clan you will pay the minimum for each room. If you build barracks for the next clansize you can have 30 players but you will also pay 3 times the amount for rooms.

Rooms have building time, so reducing the clansize just to build a single room from 1000 to 10 will require like a week or so to rebuild back to 1000 max players and in the meantime 990 of your players will be without access to the clan or its dojo (which is required for research of new items).

As a member of a sub 10 player clan in that game, I have access to a massive dojo with every relevant research facility, tradings posts etc.
And we already have enough materials to build decorations and decorative room.

A similar system should be used in GW2.

My clan totally exploited that system.

We built the entirety of the functional dojo at minimum size and cost, and only then upgraded barracks and added everyone else. Not only that, warframe, as a f2p game supported completely by microtransactions, actually allowed us to speed track it through buying the puzzle piece thingies directly from the cash shop.

It’s an extremely easy system for large clans to exploit, and did nothing but make it even easier for large clans to subvert the cost.

I think DDOs system, after quite a few growing pains, is pretty good. Every guild can get a guild ship and slot in upgrades and buffs. They can even upgrade the ship to have more slots for those things. But it’s really hard for small guilds to get the best ships and keep every buff and upgrade running with out playing 24/7. It is a good balance and it is not really exploitable. There are lots of games they could have gotten ideas from.

They should have made it so that if a guild had everything unlocked before and then did the expedition and got a guild hall, that it then would have everything unlocked that it did before. And for new guilds or guilds that did not have anything the cost would be equal to what it was previously and used the same currency. There was really no reason to recreate the entire system. That was done so they could add some huge grind to it and only to add huge grind.

You do have everything unlocked that you had before, unless what you had no longer exists.

Every consumable you had unlocked can be bought instantly with favor in the guild initiative building. Every guild bank upgrade still works, all of the old guild armor unlocks still work, and every guild mission unlock is a moot point since guild missions no longer require unlocking in the new system.

In fact, you actually have more options if you had those things unlocked previously, as any guild that didn’t have an unlock from the old system doesn’t have the option of trading favor for those consumables, and can only access them through direct purchase with commendations or having a scribe craft them.

On top of that, once you do advance the guild hall, those unlocks remain unlocked. You don’t need to gain an xp banner unlock in the tavern if you previously had it unlocked, you immediate have it avaliable for scribe crafting.

Overall they are more costly to obtain than before, but this is across the entire system. However, if you had those unlocks in the previous system you have the option of trading excess favor rather than scribing materials.

Yes please. I like what the key approach does for distributing open world loot, but I don’t like having to permanently lose a bunch of inventory slots.

Since they’re only ever useful on one map, maybe put them in the wallet with an (optional) onscreen UI element that tells you how many you have, or use the bottom of the inventory like you do for map currencies.

Varonth.5830:

Warframe did the Dojo building in their game right:

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Clan#Clan_Tier

As the table shows, you can have different sized clans based on the biggest barracks build in your Dojo. Depending on that, you can invite more people, but at the same time all rooms you can build will increase in cost by the same multiplicative factor that got applied to the maximum amount of players your clan can hold.

If you are a small 10 player clan you will pay the minimum for each room. If you build barracks for the next clansize you can have 30 players but you will also pay 3 times the amount for rooms.

Rooms have building time, so reducing the clansize just to build a single room from 1000 to 10 will require like a week or so to rebuild back to 1000 max players and in the meantime 990 of your players will be without access to the clan or its dojo (which is required for research of new items).

As a member of a sub 10 player clan in that game, I have access to a massive dojo with every relevant research facility, tradings posts etc.
And we already have enough materials to build decorations and decorative room.

A similar system should be used in GW2.

My clan totally exploited that system.

We built the entirety of the functional dojo at minimum size and cost, and only then upgraded barracks and added everyone else. Not only that, warframe, as a f2p game supported completely by microtransactions, actually allowed us to speed track it through buying the puzzle piece thingies directly from the cash shop.

It’s an extremely easy system for large clans to exploit, and did nothing but make it even easier for large clans to subvert the cost.