Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

Reading through a lot of the comments on various class diversification (or just stronger trait/skill diversification) concepts, one of the things that seems to be missing is a discussion on how you’d actually earn/unlock these additional abilities to make it a progression system.

One of the goals of progression, in this case horizontal, is to create an extended sense of game play and thus = reward for playing it.

For example, we’ve added more skills to the game recently, but those simply unlock with skill points, which basically means -> play any part of the game that gives exp, or kill champs to get skill point books. That’s ok as systems of unlocking horizontal progression go for the extended class diversification, but game play wise it generally means find the easiest place to get XP/champ-loot and do it over and over again for a large % of players, since folks most often gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I laid out a pretty detailed version of a system that ties together crafting, cash sinks, opportunity cost, and old style skill capture in what was the original vertical thread, though to be fair it’s a more horizontal system.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/5#post3369632

In addition, you could open up horizontal “adventuring trades” by class, order, and race to aid in tracking these “enlightened” monsters. For instance, all necromancers, by virtue of being necromancers get free access to the “Shadow Sense” ability, which allows them to consume thing X to track local enlightened undead. Each use gets a free map ping in the direction of what they are tracking. Similarly, if that necro is norn he’s also going to have tracking skills for “beast”

Orders can further influence this by allowing sidegrades to substitute other tracking materials. For instance lets say that bone was the consumed component for tracking undead, but orders members can opt to sidegrade to some more esoteric materials like discarded garments or other grey items.

These “free” lines would be available automatically, but you could opt to learn other lines through some “eyeball hunting” of various unknown types, by undertaking some tough tests from orders or racial leaders, or otherwise “earning” your way in to other paths through playing additional content to progress outside of your initially small “box”

She’ll be removed, but some of the recipes will most likely be moved on to Sonder the Seller, as he’s been collecting all of the unused old currency tokens lately.

Nike.2631:

PopeUrban.2578:

The barometer of “can you kill a plains wurm faster” is flawed.

If I was able to derive some specialized “Arthropod toxin” that made me better at killing a plains wurm while simultaneously making me worse at running, or magic find, or killing wolves or whatever… that’s still horizontal progression.

If its more effective than a Potent Potion of Wurm Slaying (+ 10% damage to wurms; – 10% damage taken from wurms) I am gonna be pretty skeptical that a penalty to magic find or stabbing wolves is more than just a distraction from the vertical progression compared to consumables in game now.

If you are fully fed, potioned, runed and rocking a Sigil of Night at night… wurms go down mighty fast. Players can hit really, really hard. Most of the time none of us bother to push to that ultimate limit. There’s a bit more wiggle room in my barometer than you might think .

In this case our “gun” is our overall character in terms of skill selection, weapon, class, and gear. If you could make fair trades for offense versus defense, better damage in certain regions while getting worse damage in others, etc. that is, I believe, horizontal progression. It’s the act of specializing rather than simply getting more powerful, and I believe that is something that should be considered when thinking about progression moving forward.

Agree fully. So if you do breach the ‘wurm limit’ I would plan on having a really compelling explanation of what you gave up to do it. And careful consider if the down side of your trade-off is something that can be completely mitigated. “Vulnerability to wolves” is meaningless if I can switch the exchange off before fighting a wolf…

For sure. The Wurms/Wolves limit was an off the cuff thing, but I’d see stuff working as more semi-permanent persistant ascpects of a character, like a sort of hybrid of traits and WvW ranks.

My basic rough idea is that one could “rank” in to all known available consumable buffs, and that these buffs don’t stack with consumables, though certain buffs (say, the mob damage ones, or mob defense) would stack with each other. So, with enough time and skill points, you could essentially “perma-buff” yourself in interesting ways.

Similarly, I wouldn’t see a problem with being able to pick an attribute to +100 out, provided that the +100 doesn’t stack with consumables or sigils.

Then there are more interesting avenues, styled like old hardcore RPG systems where one can choose some massive buffs that carry massive drawbacks. Lets say you’re a seasoned adventurer, and in that time you decided your character has been pretty beat up so you choose to “lose an eye”

This is a cosmetic and semipermanent change (All of these systems I’d envision would be able to respec, but the respec would be extremely expensive) that increases your base (the 1000 points from leveling) toughness, but removes from your base crit chance. Similarly, if you could “Become an honorary citizen of Skrittsburg” you might find that all skritt now con yellow to you, but certain more “refined” entities that used to be friendly are now less so.

The important thing about this sort of specialization is that it is both optional and meaningful. There need to be large gameplay-shifting choices and small ones that are merely convenient or just a little pretty. They should offer benefits both tangible and esoteric, and should encompass a variety of goals winde enough to have broad appeal.

What if you learned the ability to “capture” minis, but doing so made all of your current and future minis soulbound?

What if you could equip 8 runes, but lost the ability to equip one armor slot?

What if you could earn a third (or second!) weapon swap, but your swap cooldowns were doubled?

These are all interesting, powerful effects with cool gets and equally interesting gives, and that’s what horizontal progression should be about, cosmetic or functional, there should be a lot of cool gives for interesting ets so that players really have the opportunity to be individuals.

Thobek.1730:

I would like to see horizontal progression dungeons.

Currently you have dungeons with different paths and a main hub where you start any dungeon path. What I would like to see is a dungeon made up of 4-5 paths but each path access is unlocked from completing the previous path. 1 -> 2 -> 3 and so on. The final boss will be at the end of path 5.

Once you have unlocked a path you can log out and your progress will be saved. So you can return to complete the next path at a later date. The loot you are rewarded is based on how many paths you have completed. i.e. if you join a group on path 5 you will receive path 1 loot.

This idea came from when I first completed Ascalonian Catacombs and when you kill the ghost king. he says: “You’ve defeated me, but what’ve you gained? Much deadlier things stir beneath us. They’ll consume you all!”

Unfortunately the things he was talking about were boring ol gravelings. But at the time I thought the explorable paths would take you lower and deeper and new powerful enemies would be discovered with a complex storyline to support it. I was wrong – just a bunch of overgrown lizards.

That is strict vertical progression at work. Do think A to get to things b,c,and D. This was the majority of the vertical model used in GW1 and it was a lot of fun because it was about doing stuff rather than filling out numbers on a character sheet.

The horizontal version of dungeons is much more like what we have now, where you have multiple options rather than a single required path

I made a lot of words about the topic in the other thread, so I’ll just link this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/PopeUrban-2578/showposts

Working skill capture and skill diversity. Horizontal progression is not necessarily cosmetic, it also comes in the form of sidegrades, things that may be situationally better at some things while being situationally worse at others than the “core” mechanics.

THE barometer of “can you kill a plains wurm faster” is flawed.

If I was able to derive some specialized “Arthropod toxin” that made me better at killing a plains wurm while simultaneously making me worse at running, or magic find, or killing wolves or whatever… that’s still horizontal progression.

Ever since multiplayer shooters decided that they all needed to have XP and levels and junk they’ve been perfecting the idea of horizontal progression. The perfect system for which is one in which the defaul gun is an all around performer, but as you unlock other guns you get neat sidegrade options which are better at one thing but worse at another than the default gun.

In this case our “gun” is our overall character in terms of skill selection, weapon, class, and gear. If you could make fair trades for offense versus defense, better damage in certain regions while getting worse damage in others, etc. that is, I believe, horizontal progression. It’s the act of specializing rather than simply getting more powerful, and I believe that is something that should be considered when thinking about progression moving forward.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Aside from the pre-change GW1 skill capture (I posted earlier in this thread about how I think in-combat capture could be designed without the problems it had in GW1m and be a fun economic metagame) I think one of my favorite progression systems was base building and base raids in City of Heroes/Villains.

Sadly, the studio left the feature on teh cutting room floor after the initial pass decided that the rewards and PvP designs were less deserving of development time than adding raids and new PvE content (the community of that game was extremely PvP averse, and the PvP portions of the system were designed in an unrewarding manner and were plagued with building exploits that never got fixed.

Howeve,r the synthesis of customizable form and function in the bases in the game was extremely appealing. I mean I liked my old SWG housing, but it was largely cosmetic. The CoH “guild hall” system was equal parts cosmetic and functional. You had to build specific room types, find places to put things like shelves and machinery, defenses, deal with concerns like power and data processing limitations, etc.

Things took up a logical amount of space, which was really neat. For instance, in stead of having a tardis chest that held 200 items, you had shelves that held about 30 items, and they looked like shelves capable of holding about 30 items. This idea of “practical use of space” was very prevalent in this system. At times it became tedious (like when looking through 20 shelves to find the right crafting items) but it was extremely satisfying to look upon your racks of, say storage space, and know that all of these shelves actually hold items. You could fill several rooms with “practical appliances” in this fashion, and the result was a sysem that was more satisfying than purely cosmetic ones. When you visited your epic-huge vault, it actually LOOKED and FELT like an epic-huge vault, because the way the game was designed, you needed to BUILD one!

Not only that, but the base raiding PvP was extremely unique. You invaded other bases, which were custom layouts, with custom placement on traps and defenses, and custom placement of the power and computer equipment needed to run it. This meant that while the objective of the raids was always the same (steal an item of power) the execution was never stale, and the base raids were always posesses of a really tense first action of real and valuable intel gathering, followed by intense fighting and on-the-fly command decision making based on suprises and uncertainties about the enemy’s fortifications.

It worked a lot like a combination of SWG player housing and a really simplified game of simcity, and it allowed you to use your guild currency (very much like influence) to add nearly every useful noncombat element of the game, had amazing customization, and even had some unique content (kinda like guild missions) that you could only start from your base with the proper upgrades.

VOLKON.1290:

PopeUrban.2578:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

Personally, I think they missed a trick with the Personal Story, both as a way or making it relative to the open world and extending the pacing of the story, by not including a Order rep requirement.

For example, you start out as a grunt, and you don’t get the next Personal Story mission until you’ve made yourself outstanding among the new recruits (through doing DE’s and Order Missions [Order Missions aren’t something that’s actually in the game. Rather they are tasks doled out at random – say, every 1 – 3 days]). I mean, I found it kind of disjointed that you start in an order, and 5 missions later you’re quite high in the Order in terms of rank.

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone remember skill books in GW1?

Great horizontal potential there if they come back.

Were they the ones you did for rep and gold?

Or am I thinking of something else?

You’re thinking of journals/storybooks. Skill books were the things you got in hard mode that let you learn any skill already unlocked on your account. IDK how this system would be applicable to GW2 though, as all skills in GW2 are considered “unlocked” when you make the character.

I wasn’t clear, sorry ‘bout that. I just meant as a means to acquire new skills. Maybe a boss drops a ranger skill book that contains one of n new skills. No guarantee that you’ll get the one you want, or even for the profession you want, but it would be a different way to open skills up for your characters. If you get one for a profession you don’t have, either sell it or save it for later. Or maybe toss four in the Mystic Forge for a random book.

You’re actually descibing signets as they existed in GW1 beta

WAAAAAY back before anet decided the skill capturing was more fun when you had to give up some opportunity (by replacing a skill with signet of capture) the way to acquire many skills was as drops. These drops were rings.

Now, the skill capture system was super awesome, you had to time the capture skill during a fight, and capture while a mob was casting the skill.

However this design was problematic for many skills with low or no cast time, so they moves the sigent functionality to after you had defeated the boss. This took something away from the system, made it less fun, but also made it equally difficult to capture the skills you wanted.

I think GW2’s mechanics are a perfect place for at least elite skill captures to go back to the original mold. In GW2 virtually all current elite skills have either a channel, buff, or form of some sort. The ones that do not are the minority.

I think if we add new skills and design them with that old school “in combat timing capture” in mind so that the problems that system had originally don’t pop up, it could be an awesome way to not only acquire new skills, but combined with tradable “empty” and “full” capture items (one for each crafting profession!) could be a great economic motivator too.

Imagine a world in which huntsmen craft “Binding ammunition” which adds a buff that will capture certain projectile based skills. You make or buy the ammo, and consume it. I gives you a one off elite “binding shot” that can be used while a enemy is using a capturable skill. If you time it properly, and capture the skill you gain an item.

Wheras in GW1 bosses were rather predictably placed and large, I see a system where any mob could conceivably spawn “enlightened” and the skills it could contain are based on its creature type. Enlightened foes are automatically made champions or elites, use the skills they contain regularly, and have a conspicuous glow.

So lets say you decide to make a name for yourself by collecting and selling necromancer skills, and you’re a ranger who is a hunstman crafter. You can do that. You craft your own binding ammo, and use that ammo in places where ‘necromancy skill’ mobs hang out. Places like swamps, risen bases, etc. You hunt around for these special mobs and when you find one nail him with your bindnig ammo, then take that necro elite and give it to an alt or sell it.

As for the timing issue, how about having the capture skill itself indicate when its a good time to use it. if you have a capturable mob targeted, when he uses a capturable skill , have the “binding shot” (or whatever other capture skill you use) Light up or change to cue the player that now is a good time to hit the button.

Also, just as the first game, body blocking would naturally be disabled in towns for obvious usability reasons.

So that there is still one form of karma/gold that is not affected by buffs, obviously. It allows anet to award large chunks of currency without having that large chunk scale to a chunk so large it’s horribly out of balancein favor of veteran players with tons of gold/karma buffs.

Body blocking was one of the most fun features in GW1’s combat system, after they worked out all the kinks like pets having collision.

I remember we had a necro in the guild before the limi on minions that would literally lock himself in corners with about 15-20 bone minions all the time, or clutter it up for everyone else.

If it’s technically feasible to do in GW2, I think it has merit, and would go a long way toward fixing WvW and PvE zergs. We have a perfect system to avoid player bodyblock griefing already. Jumping. Just turn off friendly collision when you jump. You can’t bunny hop to keep a stack going as you’ll just get all warped around as people/you land, but you could use it to easily get past some dudes trying to troll a door.

Enemies bodyblocking you is a valid tactic on the other hand and shouldn’t be skippable without proper skills.

Bodyblocking would also greatly emphasize the utility of launch and fear effects.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

Personally, I think they missed a trick with the Personal Story, both as a way or making it relative to the open world and extending the pacing of the story, by not including a Order rep requirement.

For example, you start out as a grunt, and you don’t get the next Personal Story mission until you’ve made yourself outstanding among the new recruits (through doing DE’s and Order Missions [Order Missions aren’t something that’s actually in the game. Rather they are tasks doled out at random – say, every 1 – 3 days]). I mean, I found it kind of disjointed that you start in an order, and 5 missions later you’re quite high in the Order in terms of rank.

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone remember skill books in GW1?

Great horizontal potential there if they come back.

Were they the ones you did for rep and gold?

Or am I thinking of something else?

You’re thinking of journals/storybooks. Skill books were the things you got in hard mode that let you learn any skill already unlocked on your account. IDK how this system would be applicable to GW2 though, as all skills in GW2 are considered “unlocked” when you make the character.

Vertical Progression
This is a hot button issue. People are fairly well adjusted to the idea of ascended now, but simply taking the easy road and adding another and another 5% stat hike down the line is going to result in new and returning player alienation.

Gates, not Grinds
Vertical progression needs to be handled in terms of gates, not grinds. A good example is the way fractal levels, hearts, and waypoints are handled. You don’t theoretically need to grind 31 to gt to 32, or 32 to get to 33, etc. and you don’t need to collect 4 milliong whatevers to unlock a waypoint. You need to prove your ability to pass the prerequisite, and you need to do that one time. Doing a thing, even if it’s difficult, costly, or time consuming to first time is often fun. In terms of gated content, it isn’t about the equipment and stats as much as it is about accomplishing something. Putting laundry lists of “a stack of this and 200 or that, and five of these” in place of some sort of questing, boss fight, or other content diminshes that sense of accomplishment. Getting one of each of five things, all from different places/methods, and combining them to get the “key” for the sixth thing is fun.

You already did it better once
If we’re going to progress characters, it needs to be meaningful, fun, and content driven. The EOTN systems and guild wars 1’s mission systems were very good at this. You could earn skills by progressing thematically through content related to those skills. You could unlock a “boss dungeon” by defeating several other dungeons. You could access later fights by doing easier ones. The goal of these methods of advancement didn’t just boil down to “do one thing” or “Collect currency” as much as it encouraged you to go out and complete a variety of content. In these systems my advancement wasn’t ever measured by the numbers on my character sheet as much as it was measured by all the things I had access to, and a lot of those things were placed in a strict vertical acquisition heirarchy despite not adding mechanical power to the character.

Horizontal Progression
Horizontal progression is a term that should really read “customization and options” as that’s what we are really saying when we talk about it. The main problem with horizontal progression is that so many of the trait and skill systems are extremely high impact per choice, leaving little room to have a skill or rune set or whatever “for fun” because taking that one “fun” thing can seriously cripple your overall effectiveness.

Despite having a smaller skill bar, GW1 did a slightly better job of this. A large number of builds had around five or six “key” skills, and two or three “optional” skills. With the GW2 system, there’s very little wiggle room due to the limitation on slot types. You can’t take a fun but lackluster skill because it takes up all or 1/3 of your options. When looking at Horizontal Progression we need to look at low impact but useful customization hand in hand with high impact things like traits and mainline skills.

Adventuring Ranks
Skill points are vastly underutilized. Take a look at the WvW ranking system and envision a version of that, only for general PvE. Allow players to “rank up” passive buffs to acquire effects like those found on consumables. “favored enemy” bonuses, minor stat buffs. Conditional bonuses when in certain areas, and other things that help to individualize characters.

Teamwork!
What if there were a way to customize the effects of your combos with other players? What if there were more ways for characters to meaningfully interact in combat? What if these were highly customizable, both visually and mechanically?

Weapon skill customization and collection
What if there were several cosmetic versions of each weapon skill, and you could learn them via skill capture, looting, or some other method? Mechanically they would always work the same, but let’s pretend you could get unique or rare versions of these skills with altered effects, character animations, shouts, projectiles, etc. This could be an entire new and fun subset of horizontal progression.

What if it were possible to add over time slot-limited skills to weapons? Use the weapon slots like the heal and elite slots to make it easier to balance, but how about it?

My Home Town and/or Guild Hall
You know where vertical progression is awesome? When you’re building something massive. Adding content to allow players to upgrade, improve, and customize things like these adds an entire new subset of potential shinies to acquire, none of which upset the power balance of player skills.

Hard to Catch You instantly break the first incoming stun, gain .25s of stability, and gain 50% endurance. Your next dodge travels twice as far. 30 sec ICD.
This keeps the spirit of the trait while placing control of the mobility component in the hands of the player.

Last Refuge When your health reaches below 25%, gain feathers in your F1 slot if it is empty, and you lose the revealed debuff. 30 sec ICD
This implementation makes it useful for a wider array of builds, and puts the control of the stealth in the hands of the player.

Opportunist You can store one additional stolen item (this trait adds an F2 key to the thief interface) You deal 10% more damage with bundles.
This removes the weirdly unintuitive proc funcition while keeping the fun bit of flavor that allows extra bundle damage (stolen skills are still not considered bundles) and expanded pseudorandom wackiness resulting from steal.

I believe that the above trait changes would keep the power level of the intent of these traits while fixing what makes them unattractive, and that changes like these encourage the skillful and in-the-moment decision making and resource management which typifies the Thief class.

MyCondolences.8172:

i wish blind worked on defiant, but it would be quite OP. I think a good compromise would be making it like stuns and removing stacks, so that way blind would still be viable, reliable and thiefs would have a good place in parties.
If blind ignored defiant it would be quite easy without a boss overhaul to almost permablind bosses. If it worked off defiant, it would either take alot of skill investment to keep near perm blind up or atleast work towards deminishing defiant stacks so better CC options could be used.

On the point of venomshare, i’m currently running blinding powder traited for regen. Its a real life saver and makes this build really quite useful. Gives me a chance to ress and a counter for CC.

Which is, honestly a failure to properly design blind/aegis skills. I’ve remarked on this before, but the only conceivable reason for blind to be “special case” in regards to defiant is because of its potential application frequency… until you take a look at the practical application frequency of aegis.

Blind lasts until a target attacks, whether it hits something or not. Aegis lasts until it actually mitigates something. This means not only does an AoE aegis application effective have a potential application of up to 5x the mitigation of am AoE blind, but also that aegis is mechanically superior due to rewarding rather than penalizing skillful play. Using blind and then avoiding attacks anyway penalizes the user for mitigating the damage in stead of relying on the blind.

Essentially, if the frequency of blind applications was lowered, but blind was “made equal” by not being cleared until it actually mitigated an attack, I don’t think it would need the special case in defiant, and furthermore it would be a lot more useful/skillful in all forms of play.

Not only that but blind could actually work with aegis, making it possible for a defensive minded party to double up on mitigation, allowing for much useful and dynamic support builds while keeping the distinct advantages and disadvantages of both. Namely that AoE Aegis is more useful against single targets like bosses while AoE blind is more useful against multiple targets like tough trash fields or adds. The difference would be that single target applications would be normalized. Single aegis would be universally useful just as it is now, while single blind would be useful in a situation other than 1v1 PvP.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

knyy.6427:

caveman.5840:

knyy.6427:

i am a fellow thief player and i LOVE the changes made. it was the right way to nerf permastealth + infiltrators return as they were OP like hell. now dont come with other professions and their OP stuff, that has no place here. everything which is OP has to go away.

lol i think all classes should be able to have a outnumbered fight just like the war or mesmer or what ever . but just because we r able to jump in a fight and help finish off that persons rampage dos not mean we should be forced to be a finisher/ support class lol

i dont know what you are talking about. permastealth is just bad and everyone knows it. infiltrators return is a “stunbreak” without cd, so cc immunity. b r o k e n – and therefore removed!

I would have less of a problem with the IR nerf if the mesmer’s staff 2 was also nerfed. It has pretty much the same functionality, why nerf one for allowing you to “escape” stuns when you leave the other untouched? Either leave both or nerf both. Preferably leave them :P

Because one mesmer can yell four times as loud!

Clones are great for picketing.

Everyone arguing that “Thieves shouldn’t be focusin on support builds” needs to come off it.

GW2 is supposed to be designed in such a way that there’s a valuable DPS, control, and support option for any class, meaning that “Just take a guardian” shoudn’t be the obvious end-all answer.

THat said, Venomshare is extremely narrow, requires too many traits, and as people have already said, is a less efficient and useful way of adding what a condi canro can do easier, safer, and without the input of party members.

I’m all for more viable support builds, but venom and trap builds are extremely narrow and broken when held up to similar builds from other classes. Adding a lackluster venom-heal is a band-aid on top of a sucking chest wound. You didn’t all of a sudden make venomshare an awesome idea. You just made it slightly less bad. It’s still leaps and bounds worse than just putting shadow refuge and smokescreen on your bar and running whatever build you were already running.

IMO thief support is best when using skills like shadow refuge, scorpion wire, or black powder shot. They are effective tools for either offensively mitigating damage (well, not in boss fights, because blind is useless despite aegis being 100% effective and doing the exact same thing.) and “controlling aggro and enemy positoning” is an extremely powerful form of support that no other class really has. I’d see a proper support thief as the polar opposite of a support guardian, with aoe pulls rather than bubbles, blind rather than aegis, and weakness rather than protection. In theory, with a few skill changes, and some updates to blind limitations in PvE it could be just as good an option as a guardian, with the primary difference begin one is a much more aggressive form of support.

Elthuzar.9478:

infiltrators arrow has always been a struggle filled rubber banding exercise for me. I don’t’ know how other oceanic players go with it but I find all of the thief port skills to be almost useless with our latency. Rolls and leaps are fine, but for some reason the ports cause rubber band issues.

All the more reason for them to allow/provide Oceanic players a more appropriately located server IMO. Ports are fine when you’re connected with a reasonable ping. (Read: NA connected to NA servers, Europe to Europe, etc.) In this case some core functionality of infiltrator’s arrow has been reworked in a way that makes it awkward even when playing with a generally acceptable ping.

You don’t have an issue with the skill, you have an issue with bad server selection, which is unfortunate but not related to this problem.

I experienced this as well. I usually travel by doing in arrow>roll (to get swiftness) and shooting another inf arrow when the swiftness wears off.

Now I inf arrow>roll and I get stuck in place rolling. Makes shadowstepping feel clunky and not at all fluid.

There is fun random, and frustrating random. This is frustrating random. Fun random is “does a totally reliable lowish power thing and you also get a random boon”

or

“does x with x% chance on crit”

Neither of these things has a potentially BAD effect for the player.

Traits like hard to catch and last refuge can be actively detrimental to your defenses, with the activation of the effects tied to outside influences and should be redesigned.

The extra initiative (my SoM zergbunker d/d build didn’t use INI traits before, and still doesn’t.) Isn’t as game changing as advertised. I notice it, but only when I’m staring at the initiative bar. In practice it doesn’t increase the number of attacks I can reasonably chain or adapt to, unless I’m shotgun spamming cluster bomb.

The Healing increase on the newly master-tier assassin’s reward is laughable. Respeccing to keep the trait, I quickly discovered I’m gaining single digit point gains, or, if I were to actually measure it (can’t, don’t have the screenshotted heal numbers from before) less per entire bar spent of initiative than a single strike of signet of malice. SoM returns me ~140 per strike with my life sigil charged and my gear. An entire bar of initiative is returning what seems like 50 more HP.

50 more HP is not justification for a grandmaster trait, just because I could theoretically heal more over an extended period. Fights in this game don’t last long enough for that difference to be perceptible in any way.

The new venom is interesting, but lacks utility. It’s nice to have a pure big numbers heal option, but the long cooldown hurts its usability. IMO the requirement to hit targets is enough of a limitation. Maybe move some more of the heal to on-hit and shorten the cooldown and it will be a bit more useful outside of venom share specs. As it is it can’t hold a candle to SoM sustain, and isn’t a good option for the lower HP thieves most likely to need a large enough chunk of HP to use it. The lack of utility it grants seems like a double negative when also requiring the user to engage targets in order to fully benefit from the larger heal. Something has to give. Either it need more sustain, more base heal, or a shorter CD, otherwise the people using utiltiy heals won’t find it attractive, and the people using SoM won’t find the potentially shorter term sustain worth the cooldown of risk.

I can already get a nice chunk of HP and experience a period of risky cooldown with SoM, but SoM’s version works much more intutively. Get sustain, lose sustain when using panic heal. The inverse of using panic heal (in a much riskier/lower HP situation) and then get some sustain isn’t as useful. If I just healed for that about I don’t need the four strikes of sustain. I might need the sustain afterward because I’m still getting wailed on by whatever made me use the heal, but I can’t use it that way.

Basically, it does the same job as SoM, but in a less intuitive and useful way. Its only practical use is venom share, which has much larger problems as “the support build” than a lack of support heals. Arguably too niche to justify existing.

Honestly I’d be happy with the alterations to initiative regen versus traits if our other survival traits (like assassin’s reward, hard to catch, pain response, etc.) were buffed more to compensate.

I also think thieves should get a “free pass” on the gamewide vigor nerf as evasion is what our class has in stead of wide access to regen, protection, a larger HP pool, or aegis. In fact, traiting for perma-vigor should be brainless with 30 points in acrobatics and the proper trait selection. It’s called acrobatics. It’s a like about avoiding damage via dodging it. Why there aren’t more selectable vigor traits to round out a permavigor in the one trait line in the entire game that seems tailor made to hand out vigor like candy I just don’t understand.

I would happily give up card to catch/pain response for vigor on disable, or crit, or any other option that doesn’t require me to use a heal skill, as that’s basically saying “when you’re already beat up you can then get more endurance.”

That’s not when I need vigor. I need vgiro to keep that situation from happening in the first place. Bountiful theft is an odd place for it (honestly, bountiful theft should just properly steal boon stacks and lose the vigor) and it would be much better off as an offensive action>vigor somewhere in acrobatics.

DarksunG.9537:

VOLKON.1290:

I tell you right now you ungrateful little brats, back in the day we couldn’t just grab us a roll of cloth and smear some blood on it and call it ascended or infused or whatever you dang kids are calling it these days. We had to do it like MEN! We stormed up a mountain in the middle of winter carrying the gear we wanted to infuse with us just to talk to some old hag so ugly she’d make your eyes puke, only to have her direct us to some vile, nasty beast we had to kill, slice open and carefully remove some despicable organ full of some reeking goo and carry it back to the hag so she could smear it on our gear while we stood around in the bone chilling cold waiting, then wear that stinking gear back to town while it dried! Half the time half the party would wind up half dead, and the other half wholly half dead! We did it like MEN and were proud of it! You brats have it easy these days! Now git off my lawn! I’m going to take a nap and expect QUIET!

Wait a sec… Are you trying to make it sound like it was harder in GW1, or easier? I’m getting conflicting messages here!

He’s making a joke, about how it was thematically harder for characters “back in my day” not attempting to compare the two, because trying to compare ascended GW2 gear with the function of infused armor in GW1 is apples and oranges, and would be a pointless discussion.

How does it make your stuff pointless exactly? You still have more than people without the nodes, you’ll still have the nodes after wintersday, and you can still use the node for wintersday.

Or were you just under the impression that certain stat sets would remain somehow “exclusive”?

There are 8 rows, and 8 buttons. The colors reinforce the clost but aren’t at all necessary or important. Return to complaining about AoE circles!

Great cutscene. I was really hoping for a molten facility style “escape the impending doom!” sequence but I realize that takes time… and the tower is really big.

Still, satisfying arc ending.

Meanwhile there has been at least one ingame acquirable cosmetic reward for every 2 week content patch, for half a year and it’s still going on, and will be all next year coupled with several gem store sets.

Honestly, I prefer getting new shiny things for the majority of patches rather than the minority.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Ceallach.8740:

Back in my day you bought your gosh darn robe for 22960gp from a shady dude in High Hedge with Flesh Golems and you liked it and admired what few pixels you had and were grateful for each and every one of them.

Back in the day,
1000 gold coins were worth 1 platinum ingot.

Nowadays,
48 platinum ingots are worth 1 gold coin.

What happened?

You didn’t hear this from me…

but reliable sources claim that Evon Gnashblade might be taking just a wee bit more off the top than advertised.

This is what happens when you let Charr run global finances. Those people run everything in the the ground until it either burns up, explodes, or explodes and then burns to the ground.

babazhook.6805:

A question that is unanswered but can have a great impact on the making of this skill .

Will the venomshare allow allies to proc skills accrued through runes that trigger “on heal”?

If a person wears runes of Grenth and has this venom as their heal, do 5 others suddenly burst a chill?

Imagine five others burning all nearby enemies when one wears runes of Balthazar?

In GW2 mechanics, “on heal” means “When you activate your personal healing skill”

You know, I’ve never thought about it before, but what i thieves for a 1200 range torch set in stead of rifle?

That’d be unique. Mainhand torch/dual torches. I mean the bandits in pre-searing used those cool double torch staves right?

Fortus.6175:

Yes, on the pipes most likely the most requested ones;

Greatsword for Elementalists
Longbow for Guardian.

and some sort of rifle for thieves, so thieves have a real 1200 range option.

There will be as many socks as your heart desires, for Wintersday is the season of socks.

sing it with me now from 0:13!
Oh, The dragons outside are frightening,
and the grip of winter’s tightening
This wintersday unfolds
socks or gold?
socks or gold?
socks or gold?

There’s a tower in Kessex standing
but the climb is so demanding
Stay in LA and roll
socks or gold?
socks or gold?
socks or gold?

Oh you’ll never unhear the criiies
as those princess dolls stack confuse
You do thousands of damage crits…
to yourself and then you lose!

Presents of different sizes
Filled with many different prizes
Only one way to know
socks or gold?
socks or gold?
socks or gold?

Mac Just nods his head and bops off stage at this point and lets the band finish up while he opens presents

Dear Krait,

The Consortium would like to invite you for an all inclusive three day stay at Tyria’s latest premiere resort destination, Southsun Cove! At our resort you will find all of the love, meat, and arts your heart could desire. The Consortium knows that you are new to civilization, and so we will waive the customary fee, which we assure you is very expensive and exclusive, if you would simply sign a legally binding document guaranteeing The Consortium exclusive and non-transferable rights to your story, likeness, ethero-phasic signature, and any existing or future recorded works of “art” or “music” so that we may better spread your message of friendship and discovery across Tyria!

If you are interested in transferring your completely immaterial and meaningless intellectual property rights in exchange for an AMAZING opportunity to experience the finest resort destination in all of Tyria, please sign, scrawl, stamp, bleed, or whatever it is you people do on the dotted line and follow this sensibly armed, polite, and completely sanitary mercenary to our portal in Lion’s Arch to start the vacation of a LIFETIME!

What:
Caltrops (again)

Why:
It still does TWO conditions! a LOT! When the thief is GONE!

So… I play a malice/evasion bunker.

I can see one and only one very narrow use for this heal, which is venomshare. This is a build that, quite frankly, didn’t need help and was already excellent support. Why the focus of the new thief heal was a venom I have no idea… unless there’s something awesome about venoms that will make them attractive in non-vs builds that we haven’t been told. If you wanted to help VS and thief support in general, you should be looking at ways to reduce the number of traits required to VS, reinforce support options for thief core mechanics like steal, stealth, and evade, and otherwise give thieves something unique to bring to the table as a whole of in little pieces. Stuff like “when you evade, allies within x evade for y” or “when you stealth, you also stealth nearby allies for 1 second”

This would be a fantastic option as a utility, but as a heal? Pure meh. There’s nothing that would convince me to trade out my bread and butter signet of malice for a less reliable version of the exact same skill that also loses the ability to save myself from falling over from conditon damage during an escape. Maybe if it had a built in shadowstep, stunbreak, or something to offset the fact that it’s just a worse signet of malice that can be easily counterplayed it would be attracive, but a straight up venom-heal? Nobody’s going to give up the utility of His/Withdraw or the sustain of geared-SoM for the ability to maybe charge in to a fight when low on HP unless the healing is absolutely stellar, like near-full heal if you connect all five attacks stellar.

This is another perfect example of the problem that all venoms already have. They’re lackluster without trait support, and confined to a very narrow build that can’t solo well or escape with it.

You wanna fix Venoms? Here:

All venoms now have 2x the charges.

Untraited venoms now grant their charges, shared equally, among the thief and all allies within 300 units. For example, using devourer venom, which now has 4 charges, would grant a lone thief 4, a thief in range on one ally 2, while granting the ally the remaining 2, or a thief with 3 or more allies in range one strike, while giving three allies one strike each.

Residual venoms changed to:
Your venoms grant one additional charge for each ally affected. (Capped at 5) This includes the thief.
So in the devourer venoms example, the lone thief would have 5 charges to play with, but the group-buffing thief would grant 2 to himself and each of his 3 affected allies.

Venomous Aura Changed to:
Your venom sharing range is increased to 900, and all venoms you apply now take effect when struck, as well as when striking the enemy.

There. Now venoms are viable support or solo skills for any thief build, the traits are useful without also taking all of the other venom traits, and dedicated support builds can still trait around venom, while giving slightly less condition burst but more all-around support for more types of engagements, as venomous aura can now be used defensively as well as offensively.

Dahkeus.8243:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Tripwire is actually pretty useful when point bunkering in sPvP. Outside of that, pretty useless.

Point bunkering…on a thief?

I would argue that point bunkering on a thief isn’t useful. =P

Evasion. Not Stealth. It works.

Lyrics! Why didn’t I think of that? Great job.

You and SAB commercial rytlock. Fight to the death. now.

Well done!

I especially like the edited 2 logo at the end. great job!

Also, I think this fiasco needs a nickname. I vote “Particlegate”

Storm of the Ages.9076:

PopeUrban.2578:

everybody is still talking about the t3 cultural. nobody is mentioning the WVW medium. That skin is no short investement to get, even though you can get it for basically achievement points now it is a LOT of wvw tokens.

In fact, only the heavy reskin is a “cheap” skin to acquire in game.

I was upset about that a bit, until I saw it and realized that it looked like crap. The original is a lot better

Originally, when the tokens were added to achievement chests, I was like ‘well that woulda been easier, but hey, achievement rewards are a great idea!’

It’s not about being upset that your work was undone and you have something to show for it (in my case I was able to spend those new tokens on another set for an alt, and some siege)

It’s about being told that the value of your items is being undermined by the gem store. Not that some rewards were retroactively credited and you got the same thing as everyone else, but that your time spent in game to earn prestige rewards is less important than your willingness to spend 800 gems.

The other gems store skins were perfectly fine because that was the only place to acquire them I use a pieces from the krytan and magitech sets right now because I like the way they look. That armor is, obviously, something i decided to spend gems on. I was willing to spend gems for that unique look, and I didn’t have a problem with it. People know I spent gems, and it doesn’t conflict with armor avaliable ingame. The sets are unique.

I am loathe to spend gems on these new flame armor sets simply because of the message they send to others.

I feel like It’s just walking around saying “yeah, well I have ten bucks so mine is shinier and I don’t have to work for it.”

That’s really the message this sends, and it is not a good one.

I would encourage arenanet to rethink this train of thought, as it sends the wrong message to your players.

everybody is still talking about the t3 cultural. nobody is mentioning the WVW medium. That skin is no short investement to get, even though you can get it for basically achievement points now it is a LOT of wvw tokens.

In fact, only the heavy reskin is a “cheap” skin to acquire in game.

No, no, we have the effects of the trade contract, they just aren’t very impressive.

We can buy kites from Evon and we can pay a dude in the LA bank to turn them in to guild kites.

Zephyrites are obviously shrewd negotiators.

Now, I wanna be clear, I don’t have a problem with reskins. I do have a problem with gem store reskins.

it seems, to me, that it would be perfectly reasonable to add these skins as part of some MF or crafting recipie, requiring the base skins.

or even sell an item for gems that can upgrade existing armor to a sprakly version, and slowly increase the number of armor sets it supports.

Reskinning prestige armors and selling them for cash is just… lazy. Why bother? Is there some rule from monetization that you have to put of armor every two patches now?

TBH, I think the point is that you get well-rounded defense and the ability to on-demand block. Seeing as most signet are instant, and thus can be used when disabled, I feel like they wanted to give the ability to use a 30s cooldown controllable insta-block to people and decided signets were the most balanced way to do it.

IMO a better way to do it would have been introducing a a set of signet skills, one for each profession, that had similar benefits flavored to each profession.

Like more -condition for warriors but no toughness, more tough but less -condi for eles, speed for engis, vit for thieves, etc.

Honestly the medium set was given a similar treatment when achievement rewards came out.

I got mine originally by doing a lot of work, then they just started handing out wvw tokens for jumping off of things and doing hearts and logging in and whatnot.

Despite the fact that they might look pretty cool, this is a bad move by Anet. This should be the kind of thing that ascended armor becomes, improving existing armor sets with some sparkly customizable bits. Re-skins with shiny effects shouldn’t be in the gem store.

Scoundrel.2139:

All skills instantly fire off as soon as their cooldown expires.

That’s an design instability that already covers the entire game.

bri.2359:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

bri.2359:

And, why isn’t dagger and pistol crafting in here as well?? Having artificer craft 6 weapons would make more sense.

Artificers are “magic” crafters. Pistols and daggers aren’t magical.

Humm …
So, a dagger in the hands of an Elementalist can be a fire or lightening weapon. A pistol in the hands of a Mesmer creates illusions. How are these not ‘magical’??

In this game, the actual weapon has nothing to do with it’s magical status. It is the class weapons skills that govern the magic of the weapon. A warrior’s longbow is a fire weapon, my mesmer’s greatsword shoots beams and creates illusions. Need I go on??

Again, shifting dagger and pistol crafting to artificer would make this craft more useful.

Because pistols and daggers are perfectly good weapons for non-magical uses. Like stabbing and shooting stuff.

Tridents, Staves, focii and sceptres are not. You either use them magically or don’t use them at all. You simply can not hit things or otherwise use these weapons without a magical ability. Also, yes, guardians are magic users. In that they use magic. Heavily. Like half of their skills. Are Magic. They shoot magical bubbles from a stick, and set things on fire by yelling at them. That’s a magic user.

This isn’t a thematics discussion, or a discussion about the crafting professions at release (when it made sense for artificer to have a disporportionate amount of consumables… for the weapon issue) it’s a discussion about the design of crafting professions, where artificer seems to be ahead of the game every single content patch. It just seems a little odd.

Morrigan.2809:

Please no player reps or middle management or whatever you want to call it.
If I player wants to contribute to CDI- great, if not great, it just means that you are not contributing.
The last thing I want is some faceless class prefect speaking for me.
I am quite capable of that myself thanks

That’s just it though. The problem is that you, me, and hundreds of other people spouting individual opinions all at once quickly devolves in to everyone shouting in a crowded room.

You want to have your voice heard, as does everyone else, but that ends up meaning far less voices are heard in the short span of time the people at Arenanet have to actually listen.

Is it more important that your individual opinion is heard, or that the collective opinion of specific sections of the community is heard?

1: Underutilized Combat Systems
You have in place systems where you can have valuable support, control, and damage roles for every class in the game… only the numbers are off. Damage numbers scale too high, defensive, buff, and healing numbers scale too low, some effects have godlike power while others and laughable.

Take a look at aegis versus blind in a boss fight. One is easy mode, and the other is 10% effective. Why? Because of application frequency? Maybe the skills should be designed in a more uniform manner then Take a look at might versus… well everything.

Underutilized skill combo system. This was where you could have made the game really tactical and interesting, creating an intricate combat system that wasn’t specifically class or role reliant. In stead combos are largely ancillary and unimportant short lived effects and everything boilds down to “burst fire or water or don’t bother”

Pure cooldown reliance creates a system in which in stead of a single healer playing healthbar whack-a-mole you have an entire team of players playing skill bar whack-a-mole. I honestly cringe every time I play anything that’s not a thief. I feel like I can’t do anything but watch timers.

Not enough skills / Rigid predefined builds. The idea of traits and gear is well thought out, but they fall flat when faced with the too-rigid weapon skill system. There are exactly as many builds as there are weapon types for each profession, with only a few exceptions. When all builds are defined as “Greatsword X” or “Staff Y” or “Dagger Z” because it’s the only defining trait that separates it from it’s class peers… man… IDK.

2: Microtransactions: You’re overdoing it.
Having a gold>gems conversion is not an excuse to put 70% of all new rewards in the gem store. MMOs are about earning rewards, and only a select few rewards can actually be earned. The rest, we buy. Unlike many people, I don’t have a problem with the transmutation system. I think it’s a fair system and a good way to add value to the gem store. If you simply added more equipment to the actual game, it would translate to more sales of transmute stones because people would have more things to transmute

3: Homogenous loot
Loot just ain’t fun. In GW1 every region, zone, and boss had interesting, specific loot that created a reason to go there. This piggybacked on the skill capturing system to create an expansive world that felt valuable as a whole. Even with the new skins added in the champion bags, there is very little in the way of “cool loot” in GW2 as chances are, no matter where you are when you pick it up, you’ve seen that exact item, or one that’s visually identical a lot already, even if you’ve never been anywhere nearby. Armor as a whole has ONE rare-ish drop skin, and weapons are largely a pool of any mob in the game, or any champion box in the game. This is bad, and makes exploring a lot less fun.

4: There ain’t no siege in siege warfare
In WvW, the map is minicule to the point of stupidity, and structures are so flimsy they may as well be made of the same crappy plywood that makes up more of Kaineng City. Five people can flip a tower in less than five minutes, a camp in less than one. A dedicated force can do the same to a keep in ten. This isn’t siege warefare, it’s an instant gratification roving mess. There is no incentive to defend because nothing is defensible in the first place, and there isn’t enough map to care about territorial limits. You just run from wherever you are to whatever objective you feel like in mere minutes, ignoring enemy strongholds and sentries along the way. Then you flip it and leave to do another one.

5: Loose ends and meaningless decisions
See: The entire living story, the personal story, the backstory, the story from the first game, and the scripts for a good number of events

Player Representitives.

Honestly? You need middle management to distill talking points in to something more digestible by the development team.

EVE Online uses an official player-elected council, and various other games have used appointed or player elected representatives as the community spokes piece for this purpose.

There are a few rules to follow when setting up community middle management:

1 . Player reps are not employees, and are not appointed by employees. This is a credibility issue.

2. Player reps are volunteers, and are not unduly compensated for their efforts. The meetings that EVE’s CSM get flown to are, IMO excessive. Those discussions could be had on skype or other remote means. A town hat, name icon, or title in recognition of their services is appropriate. Being rewarded with real world material goods, plane rides, etc. is not. It damages the objectivity of their feedback.

3. Player reps have access to the development process, under strict NDA. This is your filter, these are your windows to the community because they ARE the community, and these are the people that will tell you something is a bad idea before you invest time and effort in to it.

4. It is not the player’s responsibility to run an election. The job of a player rep is to grant perspective, and to collect and present feedback from whatever sector of the community he/she represents. This is a tool, and one that a small amount of effort must be invested in. That means ArenaNet investing a bit of effort in to setting up fair and unbiased nomination and election systems so that representitives can be elected easily by the public.

5. Dissent is not a dirty word. If you’re hearing overwhelmingly negative things from your reps about an idea, that’s when they are doing their job. They are preventing mistakes by giving you prescience you would not have otherwise had from inside the company bubble. This is a good thing. When you work closely on something it can be difficult to see it objectively. A cross section of your user base will always see it objectively from exactly the viewpoint you care most about.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there’s a massively disproportionate amount of non-gear recipes for artificer versus every other crafting discipline?

Now, I’m aware that everyone has the ability to roll artificer, but let’s pretend for a moment that you don’t actually play a magic user, and thus the intrinsic value of an artificer is completely lost. See, I like potions, and tonics, and other such things, but I don’t play any magic users, and I kinda have to at least pick it up on an alt if I don’t want to waste a bunch of money swapping disciplines all the time.

It’s not a huge deal, but once again with the new AR system we’re seeing more recipies on the artificer list, which already contains a massive array of potions, tonics, and the lion’s share of LS limited recipies.

We usually end up with sigils and runes for all dsiciplines, and then artificer gets a few bonus recipies, and there’s usually at least one chef recipie.

I’m fine with the chef recipies, as that’s all chef does, but artificer’s disporportionate selection of the post-gear crafting pie kinda bugs me.

How about rotating in another discipline as the special one now and then? Add some “hones” or “ammunition” or whatever for the consumable slot. Maybe some cosmetic consumable effects? Something so that those of us without an artificer have some fun new recipes to tinker with on top of the latest runes/sigils now and then.