Guild Wars 2

vicious.5683:

Sakri.7234:

Next, they need to come up with a solution to the junk items and minor runes/sigils that clutter your inventory. I would accept them never dropping for level 80 chars (except for junk items that are worth more than 5 silvers).

actually there is a solution, buy more bag slots with gems. You can buy shared slots too (again, with gems).

They should just add a collections tab for them. Rightclick deposit and deal with them later. There’s even precedent. Gems and several other upgrade components have a collections tab.

I was honestly very surprised when tehy implemented gliders with a dye channel, but not backpacks.

I don’t think anyone would be upset if future backpacks were dyable even though past backpacks were not, since the old packs were made before backpack dyes were implemented.

It’s a sham really. They say “armor takes a lot more time and effort to make” which is technically true.

However, they then ramp up production of outfits and all but halt development of armor sets. Basically doing the same amount of work by releasing three outfits in that period that would have otherwise been one armor set.

Outfits can be used by any character however, so the idea here is that they can easily sell 1/3 of an armor set to more players, despite offering less overall variation in player looks.

A better compromise would be to unlock armor skins for whatever weight’s animation rig the outfit uses. Thus, you could get a “light” outfit look on a heavy character, but if you have a character that actually uses light armor then you could skin it in pieces.

I think they’d actually sell more outfits this way, since it would require similar amounts of work but create additional value for people that just want part of the skin for whatever weight it is.

That Mordremoth soundtrack just MADE that fight. It was superbly crafted within the scope of the fight and environment.

You know its a good track when you get to the boss fight and the music starts and you audibly emote “it’s go time.”

Easily my favorite track since scarlet on the breachmaker.

I get why LS1 is still the way it is, but honestly, LS2 should be part of the HoT purchase, LS3 should be part of the next expansion, etc.

I get that the LS patches are meant to encourage logins, and thus exposure to the gem store to drive sales, but the whole reasoning behind making the core game free to play was to break down barriers between new players and established ones.

I can even see a logical argument for selling LS2 episodes before HoT released. It’s additional funds because you’re in a bit of a content desert while the expansion is released, and it encourages existing players to log in during peak sales to hopefully throw some money at the gem store. Similarly, I can see an argument for selling LS3 episodes before the next expansion. It encourages people to buy the current expansion so they can get the most up to date story for free, encourages them to log in during peak gem store sales to hopefully sell them some microtransactions, and recoups some of the content’s cost from new players that start playing between expansions that may have missed a few episodes.

However, imagine a player four expansions down the line.

They’ll be thinking “awesome, the game is only 50 bucks and I have all the content since release!” only to find out they need to pony up 80 bucks because they’re missing like half of that content.

Kind of makes the whole idea of giving away the non-current expansions to give new players an attractive deal pointless.

blakkrskyrr.7413:

I afk in the corner between the intervals where you can attack the generator. My vit/tough and healing signet keep me above 80% health the entire encounter.

Yeah.

I think maybe higher scales should have mobs in the chamber during the test phases, kinda like how higher scale mai trin summons the crew or something?

As it is there’s not a lot of mechanical difference as this fractal scales up.

It’s really FUN to dodge all the craziness, but its also really too easy to ignore the central mechanics of the fight and just sit in a corner.

Feydiir.2609:

Hesacon.8735:

Non-wvw laurel merchant.

Thanks .. I eventually found a comment in another forum thread that explained this.. which helped.. as a primary WvW player this was very confusing.. and there was NOTHING in the patch notes that indicated you had to use a NON wvw laurel merchant.

Yeah, its weird that they don’t put those items on the WvW laurel merchant, or at least the MF/Karma ones (since XP isn’t useful in any way in WvW)

I was afraid that the rework would remove some of the unique character of the place and make it feel less like the original dungeon.

My fears were unfounded.

Having the drill start and run while the portal spawns and blocks you off was a really clever way of cutting down time spent hugging the rear end of the drill, and the falling rock spawns will still occasionally make you go “lol I fell” without becoming frustrating chains of waiting for greg who was AFK to navigate the whole tunnel and fall down twenty times.

Only three things I can think of to improve this fractal any more:

1: Corner stacking in the test chamber is still too easy.
I get that this is a function of player defensive interactions, but its a boring way to do the encounter that is still stupidly effective.

2: Old style circles in the flame cannnon phase of the final room are still unecessarily difficult to navigate.
I’m not saying to tone down the number of floor circles, but rather that the old style empty circles, all overlaid as they are, make it extremely difficult to find the breaks in the pattern, especially since many of those circles overlap th edges of the room. I think functionally it is fine, but those circles should be changed to the bright orange versions so it’s easier to visualize the breaks to avoid the cannon fire.

3: Can we get a random chance that the boss ends up a L1 scrub like the original dungeon?
That was hilarious. Even if its just a 1% chance, I’d love to have himm go HAHAAAA and just fall over dead once in a while to recapture that “wtf? lol” feel from the original.

is it just me, or can I not break down my +6s at the mechant?

Maybe I just missed something when I did it last night, but I ended up artificing them to +7s so I could use them in my grand reshuffle.

Fun fact: I had a bunch of omni toughness infusions, so now I have 152 AR. You’d think I was done. Then I realized I can get +15 more stat points than in the old system.

I’m actually pretty okay with the chances to the neck now, all things considered. Lost a neck stat slot, gained 4 stat slots on rings. Net gain of 3 infusion slots for stats.

hardy.7469:

Ranael.6423:

Blaeys.3102:

Everything that takes place in Bloodstone Fen – and, for the most part, in the Living Story steps – is a direct result of what happened in the raid.

Could you make a summary of episode 1 and raid story to be more precise on that please?
The reason for the Commander to go there, the explosion, the investigation, the chase of Caudecus…. nothing is a result of the raid. Should the raid not have existed, only Benett would be dead now, nothing else would have changed!
This is no direct result.

Don’t know if you played the LS S3 story, but the reason for the explosion and the twist at the end is a direct result of the raid. Everything the White Mantle was doing in the raid is directly tied to the surprise at the end of the first S3 chapter and whatever future content tied with that.

Irregardless, whether one believes the lore/story in the raid is “vital” or not is just semantics. What really is the issue is that NO story content should be locked behind a raid.
While lore is behind things like dungeons and fractals, there’s a much larger barrier to get through raids to see story.
I don’t know why anyone would be against the idea of letting all players have easy access to any and all stories (and world maps for that matter). Whether delayed (such as giving broad access to the clear state of the raid already in the game to all players months after the raid has been released) or in tandem with the raids release.

There’s no reason not to do this, especially when such features are already in the game (said clear state).

And again, while is can be debated that it’s not “vital” is certainly helps with the context, as is it being a much easier way to fight content droughts than making all new content.
Also the raid will become dead, we all know it will when the next raid comes out, and then the overworld area of the raid just becomes a waste of space.

ANet can do what they want. I’m merely stating that I think this sort of content planning for story and map expansions is a bad idea and an inefficient use of developer resources, but in the end I can only vote with my wallet as a single person so they can do what they want, and clearly by looking at every other MMO, there’s apparently on ONE singly way to handle the release and content within raids. ANet has no ability to deal with raids in a more unique and better way, it HAS to be the way every other MMO company does it because laws of physics or something.

So what you’re saying is that raids should just have signposts that say “boss this way” and the bosses should just be cubes named “boss”?

The raid’s story is only tangentially related to the start of LS3. You get exactly as much reliable information in the raid about what is to come as you got doing the open world current events.

Raid story is fine the way it is. It’s a side story, not necessary to know any of to understand and interact with the main plot.

It matters as much to the ingame plot of GW2 as the GW2 novels do, and is integrated to roughly the same degree. Will you now complain that you have to buy and read novels to experience the whole story? Or that you have to find a party that still plays GW1 so you can personally witness the entire prophecies storyline and war in kryta?

Jerus.4350:

Still trying to wrap my head around why they did all this work, that will make me go and micromanage half a dozen characters again… all for the same result? kitten man, that seems so inefficient. Unless they’re planning on giving us a ton of new fractal levels… why?

As a guy who has had to walk like 12 people through te infusion system, I understand exactly why they did it.

The multiple infusion types were confusing to new players. Now they work like most people expect them to. A slot says “infusion” and you can put any infusion in there.

Agony is not the only reason to get infusions.

I have four separate necks, one of which is my “stat” neck.

I’m all for simplifying the infusion system, but I don’t understand why infusion necks were removed. Why can’t necks just have a normal infusion slot AND an enrichment slot? seems simple enough.

Jerus.4350:

UnbentMars.9126:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Avster.1935:

Specialization is THE BEST way to horizontally expand classes.

In theory, but not in practice as we’ve seen with HoT.

How so?

Horizontal means to the side, as in one isn’t greater than the other, and that’s just simply not the fact in most cases when we’re talking about HoT specializations and HoT in general.

Due to their basic design, Elite specializations simply can’t be horizontal compliments to the base specs because they can be stacked with the base specs

Their design intent was always that they are horizontal adjustments in relation ot other elite specs because they can’t be combined.

Anet’s failing was releasing HoT with only one choice of Elite spec, as all future balance is supposed to revolve around the assumption that players equip one elite spec and 2 base specs.

Alternately, they could have adjusted/considered one of the core specs as “elite” and buffed it accordingly so it fit better with the new system, however that would have had the opposite effect, creating even less build options than simply letting the core specs all be considered on par with one another and stackable.

It is impossible as a function of basic design for a core spec build to remain competitive with Elite spec builds, simply because core specs can combine with elite specs however the user chooses.

Use thief for example. Lets say acro was a viable alternative to daredevil. You can stack acro with daredevil. This means that you still have an apex predator build compared to an all base spec build simply because your base specs would be lacking that stacked endurance traits.

The same goes for the other elite specs. If an elite spec offers duplicate functionality to an existing spec (and in some ways they have to) then if core specs were reasonable alternatives, the only result would be, effectively, even less build variety. Your more efficient option would always be elite+complimentarybase+otherbase. Effectively, you’d turn elite specs in to a system that takes up 2 trait lines rather than one.

Aeolus.3615:

Rhaegar.1203:

Bow damage in GW1 took altitude into the calculation; I dunno why that was removed, so I assume there was a design decision involved. Balance, maybe?

In gw1 people needed to understand how game works , on gw2 is more follow the gimmick than anything else, it was not about balance, but to cut the gap between players effectivness, was removed to make game more easier for everyone.

This most likely. They went overboard, then swam about three english channels worth of water in the name of accessibility in the move to GW2.

They wanted the game to be simple, where concepts of mastry are applied specifically to timing a keypress and all areas of interest or tactical utility in the environment are clearly marked with giant circles.

Energy management, height advantage, important interrupts, and other mechanics that are difficult to pick up for new players in the first hour of play were removed from the game.

Break bars and the new raid fights give me hope, though. Break bars are basically re-introducing GW1 style interrupts in a more “accessible” manner, so perhaps they slowly ramp us back up to mechanically interesting combat that revolves around more that running a rotation and dodging circles.

Unlike most classes, Thief doesn’t rely on swapping the 1-5 bar for DPS. This is because the thief’s weapon skills all share a single resource, initiative.

One of the primary resons most classes rely on hotbar swapping is that Anet decided to balance the game primarily around cooldowns. Thus, when you can swap to a second set of cooldowns, it means not doing so seriously cuts your damage.

Thief’s Initiative is basically a no cooldown mana system. For all they like to talk about revnant’s energy, thief initiative works more like GW1 energy than any other class.

The only reason to swap weapons on thief is if you have decided to use swap sigils, or if you need the utility.

While most classes equip weapons (or kits, or attunements) based on their total combat synergy, in general thieves rely on a single weapon set, and consider their swap a utility or situational tool.

Shortbos is super popular for this reason. It’s often not a grat primary weapon, but it has a ranged shadowstep, better AoE than most theif weapons, and is the thief’s longest default range weapon. Since thieves generally only swap for situational utility rather than DPS, Shortbow fills that spot nicely for most thief builds.

Zet.9130:

Ardid.7203:

What happen after you max MF? Do you still get more and more of those anoying charges?

Yeah they keep dropping. I’ve continued to buy and salvage items from the TP. I now have 94 stacks of exotic essence of luck in storage. Hopefully Anet will come up with a secondary use for them in the future.

Guilds need 777 of them for the guild hall expansion upgrade as well as a couple other various upgrades.

I bet you could sell them to someone, or help your own guild out.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sismis.5390:

there is a thing called DR ingame that prevents that.

DR doesn’t apply to opening chests. It doesn’t apply to the salvage rates of ecto.

Also, they officially removed all loot DR from the game a couple patches ago according to Mike O’Brian.

Avster.1935:

Genlog.4983:

i hope Garm join Eir son and not be a 1 off mord slaves
it will broke my heart

Are you indirectly suggesting Guardians next elite specialization will consist of them having pets? Might as well delete Rangers from the game altogether then

Lore team already specifically stated that The specializations don’t actually have anything to do with NPC roles. NPCs are just special and immune to class limitations in general.

Easier way of putting it: Traherne’s job is necromancer, but he can use a greatsword that throws fireballs. This does not make him an elementalist, or a reaper. His class is “Traherne”

Similarly, just because Rytlock is now a revnant, it does not prevent him from picking up a rifle, pistol, or anything else if he feels like it.

Marjory can summon bone walls, but that does not mean there are any plans for a player spec that summons bone walls.

Taimi has a permanent golem, but that does not mean there are plans for a golemancer spec. (Though there darn well should be!)

NPCs don’t obey the same balancing laws as we do.

Its basically a reference for which colors are designed to look best on which materials.

e.g.

If you want to put together a blue suit of armor, it’s supposed to be a quick and dirty way to choose appropriate and semi-realistic shades for your skirt, the leather straps, and the metal buckles so you don’t look like a neon disaster, and in stead look like you’ve put together a somewhat realistically toned blue outfit.

Of course, if the average LA fashion show is any indication, nobody really cares about such things, and most people actually want to be neon disasters.

I don’t see the need.

The entire reason they added ascended to the game is that they found that players were finding it too easy to build a full set of exotics.

I doubt they have any desire to return to a system they designed a whole extra 100 points of crafting to get rid of.

Jtoon.6907:

PopeUrban.2578:

If it’s solo content it’s not really a guild activity though is it? I mean solo content insinuates that you do it alone, without any of your guild members.

Can’t it be for the guild if it contributes favor as I was talking about in the other game I was referring to in which a player could get solo missions to add to the guild status.

They already have that. It’s called the rest of the game. You need the stuff it gives you to upgrade the guildhall. Favor is practically nonexistant in comparison to resource costs. You can already solo cap favor in a week and pretty much never have to do more than one guild mission a week to remain at the cap.

I don’t see the point in adding “guild content” built for solo play. Guilds are not designed as solo endeavors and already include a massive number of ways for activites that are not guild specific to have a large impact on the hall. In some cases, like boss trophies and rare scribing drops, they have added guild specific interactions to existing content. That’s the proper way to handle solo utility to the guild, by offering a guild relevant reward layer for content that is intended for PUG and solo play rather than guild missions.

A “Guild Mission” doesn’t have that name because it grants favor. It has that name because the intent is that it is an activity you do with your guild. It grants favor specifically because of that.

This is also why several guild missions can be partially completed and still reward the personal chest, so that people who aren’t participating in the guild’s clear still benefit from the guild mission system, and still have access to content that’s part of the guild system.

If it’s solo content it’s not really a guild activity though is it? I mean solo content insinuates that you do it alone, without any of your guild members.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Rush is Right.9723:

also the length of time they have been there without being killed. .

That would be a very odd and expensive thing to process and maintain, how do you know this out of curiosity?

This was a feature of the game at launch. If you’ve ever killed a mob and it showed you bonus XP, the bonus comes from killing a mob that hasn’t been killed in a while. You can test it yourself by killing yellow mobs and waiting for them to respawn and killing them again. The longer you wait to kill them again, the more bonus XP they will grant.

Like the diminishing returns on loot farming code (that they eventually got rid of) it is a system intended to reward and encourage exploration rather than sitting in one place farming.

It does not, to my knowledge, increase the loot gained from these mobs though, only the XP.

Play dead won’t work in GW2. As much as I love play dead abilities, GW2 allows you to constantly see enemy HP bars. The only time anyone would believe you were actually down is if you had such low HP that it would be a waste of time to use the skill.

I do like the disarm concept though. Its an interesting status effect, sort of like a half-daze that is more defensive than offensive since it doesn’t prevent them from using utilities.

I think in stead of play dead you could in stead rely on existing GW2 trickery mechanics. stealth would be boring, but taking a page out of the mesmer’s book and making a clone would be cool.

Shadow Split Evade to the right or the left, and create a clone that dodges in the opposite direction. This clone mirrors your attacks and movements, and has a life span of ten seconds. If the clone disperses naturally, it shadowsteps to your location and you are healed for X.

While split, you and the clone deal 50% less damage and take 50% less damage from all sources.

Shadow Split becomes One With Shadow when used for 10 seconds.

One With Shadow Shadowstep to the location of your Shadow Split, blinding and dealing X damage to enemies within a Y radius. Blast Finisher. Shadow split is used automatically if you move within 100 units of your clone (basically if you use a shadowstep ability that would cause you and the clone to shadowstep to the same place)

Ideally this would use the tech they made for the rev’s hammer jump skill, moving the camera between you and the clone and you are basically controlling both for the duration so you can pilot them both. from one easy camera angle. Direct ranged attacks would use the same target for both, aoes would also use the same target for both, and melee would just use melee attacks facing forward without target locking. (So, for instance, id you used dagger 2 you’d hop straight forward rather than directly at your selected target, as would the clone)

Like mesmer clones it would be identical to onlookers, but on your screen you’d have some kind of pointer pointing out to you which one was the real you and which is the clone.

Donari.5237:

Check the original HoT trailer, the one that had people sure Thieves would get rifles as their elite weapon. There is a moment with a very traditional dragon-looking-dragon stepping forward, it’s large but not the size of a building. I’ve long thought that might be the egg’s result since we have not seen anything like it in game yet.

Check https://youtu.be/IOUk2y0K2m8?t=1m8s for that moment. Hopefully I figured out how to timestamp it but it’s 1 min 8 seconds in to the video.

No, that’s a common wyvern, the same kind you encounter all over Heart of Thorns. in various events. That’s not a dragon at all.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Bestiary_Wyvern.jpg

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Deluxe_Wyvern_Trophy.jpg

Unnecessary.

The original trait rework was done so that there were less traits, but overall every pick was in its own way valuable.

Further traits added to the system are being done by adding elite specs specifically so they NEVER need to go back and rework the core traits again. That’s the entire reason they designed elite specs, so they can add new build options in a way that doesn’t require complex reworks since they only ever have to balance against core rather than core and every new trait line added between release and the current expansion.

Will they tweak core traits some? Sure. but the entire point is to get to a place where they can STOP tweaking core traits. if there’s a balance issue with a new elite spec, their balance goal is that it can be addressed by altering just that spec rather than messing with the existing ones.

It won’t get you actioned, but if someone scams you you will not get your stuff back, even if they get banned for scamming.

Anet adopted this policy specifically to discourage people from trading outside the TP, and thus discourage people from filling up LFG and chat channels with market spam.

So you are fully allowed to trade this way, but you trade at your own risk.

High value item prices on the TP are generally adjusted upward to account for trade fees anyway, so if your item is listed at 600g, consider that its trade value is generally based upon the (taxed) cost of buying its resources or the opportunity cost required in terms of gold over time to farm for it.

Because it is a MOBA styled mode in which neither the creeps or player power progression are a thing.

They could easily fix stronghold by putting the guards on towers, with arrows, and requiring players to spawn archers to kill the guards.

The current setup, where you can just spam doorbreakers and kill the guards yourself promotes simply racing to rush the enemy lane and removes the “jungle” (supply running) and lane defense rolls from the equation.

I think Stronghold can get away with being a 2 lane MOBA without level progression, but it can’t survive if it doesn’t actively require the teams to split in to offense, defense, and resourcing roles. Currently it does not.

Also the map is too small.

SolarDragon.7063:

Long story short, ANet needs to give up on promoting PvP for F2P, given the release of elite specs.

I’ve discussed it before, but there is always going to be an advantage to having HoT. In a sensible situation where about half the classes used elite builds in their good builds (3 traitlines out of 6 used, random distribution), that still means that free players will be limited to half the classes/builds. Right now Elites are overtuned in comparison to their own core specs, but F2P will never be competitive unless Elite specs are nerfed PAST the point of equality (a bad result).

Or, they’re playing the long game.

Future elite specs are supposed to be balanced alongside the current ones, as that is the entire point of the elite spec system.

Using an elite spec was always going to be a mandatory option simply because mechanically, it wouldn’t make sense to be able to pair an individually good trait line with a limited elite specialization. The fact that core specs cna stack with Elite specs means that core specs simply can’t be on par with elite specs.

However, the entire design of elite specs is that thy’re build choices relative to one another. You can’t equip more than one at a time. once Anet releases a second spec for every class, HoT will also have moved to free to play, and the circle will be complete.

I’ve said this before, but Anet made a mistake releasing the elite spec system with only one option to choose, as the entire point of the system is that it has multiple, wildly different options that can only be so wildly different because they can’t stack with one another. That made elite specs a straight upgrade rather than a build choice, since all future balance is based on the assumption that everyone will be using one of multiple avaliable elite specs.

In stead, the should have released HoT with two specs to choose from, and perhaps the intent of the system would have been more clear. This will be the state of the game after the next expansion is released, and if they design the next specs to serve the purpose they set out to acheive with them, this will cease to be a problem for their F2P marketing.

Disagree.

Mo’s entire mantra since he took over from Colin as been “show, not tell” for a very good reason.

Anet has developed quite the reputation of overpromising and underdelivering. By promising nothing, Anet doesn’t engender a culture of ‘but you said we’d get so much stuff!’

What they have done is sewn the seeds for the plot directly within the wolrd, which is a far better way to build excitement, again by showing, not telling. We know that the bandits are in lauge with the white mantle, we know that the leyline energy of two dead elder dragons is starting to create strange magical anomalies, and we also know that the White Mantle is the primary initial antagonist.

Beyond that we know very little, which is as it should be, because Anets goal is to get you to log in to see that story (and when you’re logged in, hey, maybe you visit the gem store and buy some LS3 themed skins and other crap!)

I would be VERY surprised if the first new weapon types weren’t re-uses of existing underwater types. It’s simply way cheaper for anet to repurpose underwater weapons since they’d have to make way less skins for them.

If you add a new weapon type, say greataxes, you also need to ship more than 4 greataxe skins. If you just add land spears, you can get away with only adding 4 new spear skins.

On top of that, I wouldn’t expect to see such things until every class has some kind of spec options to wield every type of existing weapon, for the same reasons. Eventually there will be pistol guardians, greatsword thieves, Staff engineers, focus wielding warriors, etc.

It just makes more financial sense.

I would assume that at least one new hall comes with each xpack, if not multiple halls, as well as new guild upgrades each pack so you have something new to add to your hall even if you don’t like the new ones or want to move.

I think adding minipet housing would be cool.

Like, you have the ability to donate minis (all of them) to the hall in stead of to your account. In decorate mode mode you’d see ghosts of the spawn point of minis with a circle showing the wandering range.

Then, using the same system for trophies, you could use scribing to combine multiple minis in to bigger and bigger versions of the creatures, eventually being able to have full sized versions.

Or maybe in stead of scribing its a whole new profession called mistweaving or breeding or something.

In this way your guild could have wandering NPCs of all types, except maybe certain special minis like those of main GW2 characters.

You could add interactions to the full sized versions, dialogue, daily item rewards, or just plain have mobs that would drop a few copperand a small chance at guild currencies or something.

IndigoSundown.5419:

PopeUrban.2578:

RoRo.8270:

They need an option to buy pvp unlocks for the expansion. 50+ bucks for someone that only pvps is not worth it imo. Also it wasn’t some fluke that all elite specs ended up outclassing their core counterparts.

See, now this is a reasonable expectation that I could see Anet actually doing.

Don’t want the whole expansion? Fine, pay 20 bucks just to unlock the specs and reward tracks in PvP.

Or $10 to unlock one Elite Spec, if that’s all you want.

As to monetizing sPvP, what do LoL/DotA sell that keeps those companies afloat?

Skins, however this is an apples and oranges comparison since all of LoL’s Dev team, and all of DOTA’s dev team are only working on a purely PvP game, and all of the art, sound design, and engineering resourced go to pvp and only pvp.

In GW2, PvP is a thin slice of a greater whole, and acquisition of skins is its primary advancement model already. Despite the fact that they overly monetize this already, it is far less simple to design for GW2 PvP because of its relationship with PvE, WvW, and the shared development resources for those game modes.

GW2’s model is also not the same. It creates a lot of very expensive content for PvE, in addition to trying to keep pvP and WvW updated, which requires greater cash input, hence the sale of expansions.

Further, I can’t imagine the community would take it well if WvW and PvE people had to buy expansions for new character build options and PvP did not, and they’re most certainly not going to just start giving away full expansions worth of content for free again since they’re already pretty much spent money that requires a return on investment over the last two years in their move to the expansion model.

Really though, what it boils down to is that LoL and DOTA are much tighter, simpler PvP designs with a lot less moving parts as they were designed specifically for PvP, and designed specifically for people to be able to easily pick up and play.

GW2 doesn’t have the ability to attract as wide a player base simply because the design of the PvP game is an offshoot of combat systems primarily designed for PvE, where complexity, choices in character builds and gear, and more knobs for players to tweak are more important.

PvE would have the same issue if they designed combat for PvP first and foremost, as people would be unsatisfied with the much simplyer, less customizable characters for PvE.

In order to support PvP, Anet can’t treat it the same way riot or Valve treat their games because in terms of resources they simply can’t invest as much in them. PvE with full voiced dialogue, highly polished visuals, cutscenes, etc. is massively more expensive than regular rollouts of a new hero.

Galtrix.7369:

PopeUrban.2578:

Anet has no interest in spending money of features that encourage you NOT to spend money.

If you haven’t bought HoT at this point, you are no longer their customer. You are either a former customer, or a trial user with the potential to become a customer.

They can’t simply make elite specs free in PvP only, as then there would be literally no incentive for that eSports community they keep foolishly trying to chase to pay them at all. Their entire eSports setup is a marketing tool, specifically designed to sell more copies of the game. Making it more competitive by spending less money simply undoes that entire business model.

The problem with that is I still buy gems even though I didn’t buy HoT. That makes me a paying customer. And there are many people like me that didn’t buy HoT but buy gems. We’re still customers.

One wonders why you decided to support a company with your money that is using a business model you don’t agree with.

Gem store purchases are considered supplemental. GW2 is not a free to play game. it is a buy to play game with a free trial and optional microtransactions.

That probably isn’t going to change. They were very clear in the HoT announcement AND the F2P announcement that they consider their business model buy to play.

While they’ll certainly take your money, they don’t intend that you spend the money you could have spent on the expansion on gems for obvious reasons.

You decided that whatever skins you got from the gem store were more important uses of your currency than buying their game. Then you complained their game was poorly balanced for “paying customers”

You are the architect of your own balance issues in this case. You know that they designed their system around encouraging, nay requiring people to occasionally buy an expansion. You chose not to buy the expansion because you don’t want to support this business practice. Then you gave them money anyway… effectively supporting this business practice?

Doesn’t make a ton of sense.

RoRo.8270:

They need an option to buy pvp unlocks for the expansion. 50+ bucks for someone that only pvps is not worth it imo. Also it wasn’t some fluke that all elite specs ended up outclassing their core counterparts.

See, now this is a reasonable expectation that I could see Anet actually doing.

Don’t want the whole expansion? Fine, pay 20 bucks just to unlock the specs and reward tracks in PvP.

I think Garm will stick around, though not as a proper “pet” in mechanical terms, but rather as a proper self-running NPC with more autonomy than a typical ranger pet.

I wouldn’t be suprised if we go to rescue Taimi from the thing coming through the gate, and we get there only to discover Garm save Taimi.

A better buff for d/d would be either increased end regen or a built in blind proc (similar to guardian’s passive block)

DD lacks mobility / survivability compared to other dagger sets. Daredevil creates a decent option for conditions, but power D/D doesn’t really need more stealth or damage. Adding some extra END or blind to either set would increase potency without being broken. Honestly though, I prefer the blind.

PierPiero.9142:

PopeUrban.2578:

Anet has not interest in spending money of features that encourage you NOT to spend money.

If you haven’t bought HoT at this point, you are no longer their customer. You are either a former customer, or a trial user with the potential to become a customer.

They can’t simply make elite specs free in PvP only, as then there would be literally no incentive for that eSports community they keep foolishly trying to chase to pay them at all. Their entire eSports setup is a marketing tool, specifically designed to sell more copies of the game. Making it more competitive by spending less money simply undoes that entire business model.

I have hot, but why have i to play with something i have not fun ? Why have i to play with scrapper or chrono when i have more fun with old pistol pistol engi or old condi mesmer ? I have it but i ask anet to let me chose the way i want to play on the same level of the new specs . Otherwise delete the pvp builds and set a common build for every class and does not let people chose alternatives …. but having alternatives all suboptimal is in my opinion not fun and correct . I bought Hot but i ’d like to play also without hot traits

Solo que was removed from the game because no matter what Anet does there simply isn’t a large enough player base to support such a split.

They tried to create a second community by adding a new gametype, which didn’t go so well, but adding even more splits to the community will not achieve their goals, and would actively harm the accessibility of PvP by creating longer que times and less options for MMR to pick from for balanced matches.

What are you then going to do when the next expansion comes out? have another split? What does that look like after five expansions? Five separate lobbies?

What you’re suggesting is basically allowing people to pick a patch and ‘freeze time’ because they personally had more fun at that point.

I don’t think I need to explain further why that simply can’t work.

What you’re forgetting is that the entire purpose of elite specs is to allow all classes access to a larger variety of specialized roles

Currently, there is literally one usable role for various things. However, if Anet does its job with the elite specs, you could very easily end up with a comparable tank/dps/support/whatever build for every given class.

That is literally the direction Anet has been trying to move since the release of the game. That class does not matter, and that any class can equally and adequately fulfill any given role.

I don’t think dragons necessarily have genders.

As far as we know, Glint created eggs through sheer force of will. The fact that the rest of us call Glint ‘She’ is likely due to our own bias. We saw a vaguely reptilian being, and it made eggs, so we decided it was female.

In Reality, there is no evidence of dragons having any gender at all. They are more than likely asexual beings capable of procreation by just choosing to do so, assuming they have the required magic/energy/other inputs required to create the egg.

We only assume that a dragon egg is like a reptile egg, in that it is an unfertilized ovum that requires genetic material from the opposite sex. In truth, evidence suggests that dragon eggs are “created” rather than “laid” and that they are strictly creations from a single parent.

Further, the only dragon we know to have had eggs was Glint. We don’t even know if the other EDs have the capacity or need to lay eggs, or if they create their lieutenants through other means.

Not going to happen.

Elite specs are the replacement for that mechanic, because they are far easier to balance. The entire reason they reworked traits in to spec lines was to support this, so that they could more easily extend build options and ensure that there was virtually no power creep as more elite specs were added, since they are never adding more core specs, and you can never equip more than one elite spec at a time.

Moyayuki.3619:

PopeUrban.2578:

You haven’t seen a “true desert” yet because there are not desert zones currently in the game.

The Magumma Wastes areas (Silverwastes and Dry Top) aren’t a desert as much as they are a large mesa formation in the middle of the jungle. They have a very similar took to how this area of the world was presented in the first game.

Do a google search for “GW1 Ventari’s Refuge” and “GW1 Crystal Desert” for reference.

That said, I think the post-release maps have done a great job to attempting to differentiate themselves, though the release era maps can feel a little samey at times. Especially the shiverpeaks maps. Kryta used to have this issue, which was, as I recall, one of the main reasons they did the whole nightmare tower in kessex in the first place, so they could revamp Kessex so it felt less like Queensdale.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see these sort of changes hit some of the other release era maps that are overly similar.

Although, the last thing I want to see happen is another Kessex fiasco where there’s destruction everywhere ugly-ing up the place. I’m really getting tired of the fact that ANet hasn’t made a lore decision to finally clean it up.

Sure, the new maps do differentiate themselves from core Tyria…but it’s not my cup of tea. Annoying, powerful mobs clogging up the roads, a perpetual jumping puzzle everywhere you go, things being locked behind meta events, etc. Even then, I don’t think there’s enough GOOD variety in GW2’s environments. The only variety I’ve seen is the annoying kind, IMO.

Sounds like you won’t be happy no matter what they do TBH.

Anet has not interest in spending money of features that encourage you NOT to spend money.

If you haven’t bought HoT at this point, you are no longer their customer. You are either a former customer, or a trial user with the potential to become a customer.

They can’t simply make elite specs free in PvP only, as then there would be literally no incentive for that eSports community they keep foolishly trying to chase to pay them at all. Their entire eSports setup is a marketing tool, specifically designed to sell more copies of the game. Making it more competitive by spending less money simply undoes that entire business model.

MF’s value is solely dependant on WHAT you do for loot.

If you get most of your loot from mob drops by farming big event chains, then it is going to pay out far better than if you get most of your loot from screen/dungeon/fractal chests.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Taimi didnt “halt” anything on Scruffy. Remember, in the HoT story, she sacrificed scruffy in order to progress further into Novus.

Remember how she said she already had plans for Scruffy 2.0 right after she lost the first one? She did halt development on 2.0 in favour of her research at Rata Novus.

Now with that gate activating and she not having her golem to protect her, I hope that whatever comes through (if something comes through; it could perhaps just be a surge of ley line energy that activated it momentarily) holds no ill intent towards Taimi. She always puts a smile on my face. And for someone who does not like the Asura that’s saying something.

Prediction 1:
Or first mission will be to save Taimi

Prediction 2:
Scruffy 2.0 will be a massive Voltron, and we’ll use it to punch the next ED to death. The crew will man the lesser bits and the Commander will, obviously take the head!

You haven’t seen a “true desert” yet because there are not desert zones currently in the game.

The Magumma Wastes areas (Silverwastes and Dry Top) aren’t a desert as much as they are a large mesa formation in the middle of the jungle. They have a very similar took to how this area of the world was presented in the first game.

Do a google search for “GW1 Ventari’s Refuge” and “GW1 Crystal Desert” for reference.

That said, I think the post-release maps have done a great job to attempting to differentiate themselves, though the release era maps can feel a little samey at times. Especially the shiverpeaks maps. Kryta used to have this issue, which was, as I recall, one of the main reasons they did the whole nightmare tower in kessex in the first place, so they could revamp Kessex so it felt less like Queensdale.

Perhaps in the future we’ll see these sort of changes hit some of the other release era maps that are overly similar.

Its not as huge an issue as other items (the only time you need to remove crafting items is if you’re selling them or donating them to the guild) but I agree it WOULD be nice to have a search function, since the collections panel seems to keep growing with every major release.

The non-raiding community chooses to alienate themselves. Hoever part of the reason why is due to the design of the grouping mechanics and anet’s won PR rather than the actual content.

While I don’t agree that bumping the party up to 10 people was the best move, I do agree that raids are not in and of themselves exculsionary any more than pvp is exlusionary, or wvw is exclusionary.

The problem here is, honestly, that i can easily find 30 people all stating “I can’t find a group to raid!” despite that among them they could make up three separate raid groups of like minded individuals.

Raid difficulty isn’t the problem. Raid rewards aren’t the problem. Finding a Raid group is the #1 problem most people have.

Part of it is that, yes, it’s twice as many people.

But a LARGE part of it is that many MANY individuals expect to simply slot in to an existing party at a moment’s notice and aren’t at all willing to take a less experienced group from all the people just like themselves and get in to the content in stead of spending an hour standing around attempting to find only the most optimal, most experienced group.

We don’t need easy mode raids. We didn’t need easy mode challenge instances in GW1. We might, however, benefit from some sort of population scaling, heroes, or other mechanism to retain the raid’s challenge while lowering the warm body requirement.

GW1 had massive problems with NPC companions from nightfall forward. Specifically that you could bring three times as many NPCs as players, meaning that there wasn’t enough emphasis put on players in comparison to NPCs.

However, a system in which you could access NPCs or mathematically altered encounters to make the ten man limit more of a ‘scales from 5-10 players’ would feel really good.

You could encourage 10-manning it by increasing the volume of reward, but not necessarily the quality, and retain the challenge even in 5-man or 5-man-with-5-NPC scales by giving the same drops, only half as many.

Raids are EXCELLENT content, at a good challenge point, with rewards that feel earned. It is unfortunate that just the term ‘raid’ carries a stigma that instantly puts people off of even making the attempt. Had Anet in stead chosen to call these “Elite Instances” I’m convinced that the public perception, and people’s difficulty finding a “normal” player group versus a hardcore raid guild would have been vastly improved.

So, I’m unclear here. When you say that this release is akin to 9-10 of the biweekly releases, does that imply we’re looking at what, in S2, would be considered basically half of the season?

If so, this seems like a reasonable pace for quarterly-or-more updates. I’m inferring one complete world zone (honestly, this seems like a better way, releasing the zone as a whole, as I know it couldn’t have been easy to design it in pieces before) with several instances, all with their own mastry achievements and a chapter mastry chest?

I’m also going to assume this means a new world boss, either as the cap of a zone meta-event, or as a scheduled part of the new zone like the release world bosses.

Alternately, it may be just the zone, with the world boss being a specific plot hook that isn’t added to the zone until the next update (so you have a full zone to explore and get to know until a world boss comes and shakes it up to start off the next episode/lead to the next zone)