Guild Wars 2

Tremain.4623:

p/p needs a good auto attack.

It has a perfect auto for P/D

Unload is the only power focused pistol ability. Every other pistol ability is geared around condition duration. P/P being a pure damage output skill is an anomaly that encourages play of power-based pistol builds, and should remain the source of raw damage for those builds. If anything, P/P should be looked at for better damage/initiative ratios to make up for the weak ratio of its auto so that p/p remains competitive with similar weaponsets without destroying P/D in the process.

evilapprentice.6379:

@Popeurban

I disagree – I want my spec to be consistent and reproducible- I don’t want to win or lose a fight thanks to a lucky/unlucky Improv trigger. It’s not about how potentially powerful the trait is (to me, at least) its about how consistently powerful it is – I’d prefer something I can always bank on as opposed to something that ranges from fight-changing to utterly useless every time I use it.

That is why major traits are optional. I may like the random power and thinking on my feet playstyle, you may want to choose something less potentially powerful but with a more consistent and predictable rotation. Since you and I have the option of choosing different traits for our different builds, that should be a valid and meaningful choice both ways. Creating sets of traits that are really only good in one configuration is like not having selectable traits at all. Traits should be an option, should have powerful effects appropriate to their theme, and should be varied to increase build diversity.

It’s like saying crit chance and damage should be removed from the game, or that you’d never use a proc sigil. Random is a build choice, and should be a viable one. You could easily take dagger training in that slot for what you want out of your build, and I can take Improv for what I want out of mine.

I’d rather lose that predictable damage number for a shot at doubling up on a utility because it’s frantic, fun, and useful. I have more fun playing it that way, and that power is worth the tradeoff that it might not go so hot for me. I like playing thief because of the class’ ability to “live in the moment” rather than “sneakily assassinate with precision.” Two sides of the same thief, and two faces of the same class really. Both should be supported build options.

Bring it on home:

Use our (or other) home districts in the living story. Let the LS NPCs mull about in those existing zones. Let us fight on a smaller scale for smaller stakes, closer to home. Not everything has to be about saving the world. What if we had a house… and someone was just trying to blow up our neighborhood?

Lore:
The original mad king event was great. There was a ton of lore packed in to not too many text NPCs. I don’t see any reason there shouldn’t be similar “lore scavenger hunts” in each release. For people who don’t care, it’s an easy achievement by following Dulfy’s inevitable guide. For people trying to piece together the story, it would indicate and give some good foreshadowing as to the significance of events.

Less disposable characters:
I was really happy the adventure with Rox and Braham again, to see how their relationship had changed and how they’d grown a little as characters. Similarly, it’s been interesting to watch Ellen Kiel rise from simple inspector to captain (Though she’s kind of tiresome as a permanently invincible authority figure) but then you’ve got all of these one-offs like Mai Trin, the market, Marjory, etc. that show up, seem important, and are never heard from again in MONTHS. There should be a rule that if a major character is introduced, that character should stick around for an entire arc before departing, so we have time to get to know them and have a reason to be happy to see them again when they’re gone for an arc. Also, stop presenting minor characters as if they are major ones. It’s just confusing.

No new enemy groups!
We have SO many enemy factions in the game that adding new armies every few updates seems wasteful. What are the sons of Svanir up to while we screw about with the aetherblades? How about those pesky centaurs? Nightmare court? We have a lot of great enemy factions with established lore that already own a big chunk of the map. You mean to tell me they’ve spent an entire year just sitting on their hands? Less time spent designing more groups means more time adding breath and depth to the existing ones, which is, in my opinion, a much more natural path for the living story. Operate on things we are already familiar with and it seems less like things get made up on the spot. If you DO invent an army, stick with it, and give it substance rather than just tossing it away or baking it in to a greater coalition of evil like the molten alliance. Imagine if all of the updates to this point had been centered around the story of the molten alliance, and JUST the molten alliance. They’d be much more belivable as an enemy faction because we would have had the time to get to know them. In stead we got the aether blades unceremoniously dumped on us with little explanation, and then suddenly Scarlet shows up and owns both groups for no apparent reason. Also, clockwork. All of a sudden clockwork because she apperantly doesn’t have enough minions. It’s too much too fast and it results in nobody giving a crap who these factions are or what motivates them.

Foreshadowing!
Imagine that during an update you got a key. You don’t know what it’s for, but you have it. Maybe give it a special “living story” rarity so you know it’s important and not to throw it away. In the next update you find out you can use that key to unlock a door, behind which is a dungeon. Completing the dungeon, you find a mysterious ancient tome, which you submit to the priory for research. In the next update you get mail from your priory contact, who has deciphered it and found that it points to a powerful artifact of some sort in a specific location, and you are sent there. Upon arriving you’re annoyed by a specific NPC, who is also searching for the tome, and you spend the next bit of content competing for it. You fail, and your new enemy absconds with the tome. During all four of these updates you’re free to do the previous parts.

Next update, the enemy, with the tome, summons the WTFBBQ army of death. You can’t do the previous parts now as the event they caused is now live in the open world. You and the other players battle said army of death. Next update, you track down said enemy and slay/disarm/jail them. Arc over, you get some cool stuff, but after the fight you find an odd object…

This is how I would phrase the living story, with foreshadowing of future events and built in to 1 or 2 month chunks of content (like flame and frost, only with more actual content) that are doled out in pieces so that there’s regular new releases, but people don’t feel rushed to complete it all in 2 weeks. Something that cretes mystery and apprehension and delivers on it rather than taking a side road to a completely different story.

WyldKat.4712:

Oh. Those two were just bathing? Ah.

Okay

“bathing”

Rated T for teen!

While I do think that thieves are a logical fit for a 1200 range rifle, I don’t think it should be a damage focused set.

It should be a control focused set, designed for either helping allies keep a single target locked down, or helping the thief keep an opponent at range.

Thieves are jerks. Thieves have two basic modes of combat, either high burst low survivability, or extreme survivability through control/evade with low burst.

Thief rifle shouldn’t be a lolheadshot sniper, it should be a weapon that just makes it a proper pain in the neck to close to the target while it slowly whittles away your HP. Take a look at shortbow, it’s focused on the opposite end of the spectrum, getting away from your target with some solid AoE damage.

Rifle would be the flip side of that, a weapon loaded with knockbacks, dazes, cripples, and chills with one solid single target damage spam. Used in solo combat it would be a good kiting weapon that would take a while to down the target, in groups it would be excellent support akin to a GW1 pin down ranger, efficient at keeping a target slowed down and mobility-weak to prevent targets from escaping your friends.

This is easy to design for thief as we’re built around initiative, so we can have a weapon that allows for good long ranged cripple via spam, because that spam would remove our ability to also spam for damage. This means the thief would have the option of either a balanced kite/damage rotation, a full on CC kite, or a full on spam to dump damage.

I disagree with removing the RNG from improvisation.

I’ve been using this trait for some time, and on a trickery build with a 20s steal cooldown this one already pulls its weight. It’s meant to be random, but powerful, and it is, but only if you build for it. I think the proposed fix is a good one. Currently you have to limit yourself quite a bit to get good proc chances for the trait, but it lets you double up on a huge number of things that would be extremely overpowered if you could reliably do so.

It’s a trait that requires a shift in playstyle to use effectively, as it rewards picking multiple skill types, blowing your cooldown, and using steal in a rotation in order to proc recharges. When you use it properly, it is an amazing trait, it gives you power, but it requires you to think on your feet to utilize that power. In short, it rewards the ability to improvise, and is a great companion to steal itself, which also gives you very powerful (okay, some could be made more powerful) but very random effects.

Changing it to “one of your utility skills” keep the power of the trait, and keeps the random factor. The damage boost to bundles is a good one, and I do like the trait’s usefulness with ele conjures and environmental weapons, but I wouldn’t be sad to have that moved over to “steals are more effective” in stead.

Still, the proc recharge is THE reason to use the trait, not the damage boost. Don’t gut what makes the trait good to fix what makes it mediocre. I’d even take an 80% chance to recharge one utility, as that’s effectively what it does if you pick 3 schools, and I’d lose the ability to proc recharge basilisk venom while doing so. I’d be happy to give up basilisk venom procs if it meant I could have anything I wanted in the utility slots for exactly the same effect as now. The number of times I’ve double-caltroped, double-refuged, or double- smokescreened my way out of a jam is too large to even count.

Removing the recharge would simply destroy the primary function of this trait, though I do agree that it needs to retain some sort of secondary buff to compensate for the fact it might not proc favorably.

It’s just like any other proc trait… only with way wilder RNG for a way more powerful effect, and as it’s easily replaced with a number of other traits I’d rather it keep that functionality.

Mesket.5728:

It kills the immersion a bit when fort guards die against a moose but lazy players would use more “Troll vs Kholer” strategies across the whole game

I kinda miss Troll versus Kholer. Actually I just miss the opportunity to be creative an opportunistic. I feel like it’s a better representation of realistic combat mechanics than making force the only option for every situation.

But then… I’m okay with no feeling heroic, but rather feeling clever, and that’s not what this game is about.

It’s about 200 heroes invading a cave to beat up a troll that was just minding his own business. Because he drops good loot.

Wait… I think muggers are the true heroes.

Anthony.7219:

Finally, I never played Cantha, so can someone point out to me why the Tengu are so interesting? I find their appearance, structure, and overall design aesthetic to be inferior to every race outside the Kodan. (I see them and think, oh great, a bird race, a bear race, whats next, an elephant race? I’ll name my character Babar)

The tengu were, essentially, the Charr of Cantha.

Where they differ is that they were actually not the agressors of that war, the humans were, and they sucessfully defended themselves and may have actually wiped out canthan humanity if not for a man named Togo working diligently to secure a lasting peace. Unlike the Charr, they also had presence on multiple continents, and in the case of Cantha even some villages and quest NPCs.

Also, all of that Tengu stuff was Cantha’s backstory, it hapenned before that campaign, but Tengu were the “other” major sentient race in the region, and Tengu existed as far north as the shiverpeaks 250 years ago in the original Prophecies campaign, though at that time they were simply wordless NPCs much like the majority of Charr.

My point is they have a large grounding in the lore of the world, as much as the Charr and, IMO, would have been a better pick than inventing an out-of-place “elflike” race to pull in… well… people who like elves.

That’s the difference when working with an established world versus making a new one.

DaMunky.6302:

Jordo.5913:

Well the Mad King is a king no more…so what is he the king of? King of the mad realm…..so yes, he is the KING OF MADNESS!

Mad King is going to have it in for you this year!

At risk of being pedantic, I’m going to point out that the Mad Realm is just named after the Mad King. It’s not actually a realm of madness, per-se. It’s a realm containing the Mad King’s minions where weird stuff happens sometimes, more like Buton’s Halloweentown than D&D’s Pandemonium.

(For those not familiar, Pandemonium is a Chaotic-Evil / Neutral afterlife in Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a large cavern complex constantly filled with a cacophony of crashing winds which drive anybody who stays there a while completely mad.)

Unless they have REALLY good will saves

Electro.4173:

daros.3407:

OMNIBUS.2913:

I was hoping for a really awesome halloween backpak. But ofc enough people complain on here about backpaks anet will stop putting them in :/ . Instead we get the ever so plain and boring mask (we alrdy had 3 masks for queens jubilee why more?)

And we already have tons of backpacks why more?

Do we really, though?

When the game launched there were no back items at all (well, visible back items anyway). We’ve gotten a fair few since then, but compared to armor sets the number of back items available is still quite a bit less, and it doesn’t even hold a candle to weapon variety.

Seems like its just the frequency of new back items being added that’s making it “seem” like there are an overabundance of them, when in reality there’s only around 2 dozen different ones (a bit more if you consider recolors separately).

I apologise in advance for being a stickler for details, but I must remind you.

There were guild backpacks at release, and they were the only visible back items (and at the time they were pretty expensive!)

I won’t break it down encounter by encounter, as that’s been done to death. I like the increased reliance on mechanics and paying attention to them in this dungeon. This post, however, is about the little touches that make it fun as an experience.

• The Journey The way this dungeon begins in one environment and gradually transitions to a completely alien environment is really satisfying. I truly feel like I went somewhere rather than dredged around identical tunnels. The set pieces are really nice and no part of it feels like “oh look, another corridor.”
• Cutscenes/Plot Aside from anyone’s personal feelings about scarlet, the way in which this dungeon tells a story that’s ancillary to the player’s own is well done. I don’t feel like I’m Caithe’s hired lackey, but rather that we happenned to show up at the same place, and have to different things going on. Heck, we actually saved her! This is far better than me doing all the work and the NPC taking all the credit. The cinematics to introduce the bosses were quite nice as well. Really amped up those fights and made them feel more important.
• Victory I really like that there’s and honest to goodness victory cinematic. After several hours, replacing ragequitters, and figuring out mechanics seeing all those lionguard drop in from the roof was just awesome. Running rampant through the panicked facility afterward was just icing on the cake. I like the attention paid to the “feel” of victory, the use of non-cilver mobs that we can just punt, and the overall smackdown and spoils of war feel of it. Winning hasn’t been this much fun since blowing up those pesky molten facilities. Keep thinking of really awesome victory sequences!
• Easter eggs Things like the bathing aetherblades, the fleeing fern dogs, or the hidden areas which contain the chests did a lot to make it feel like an actual place rather than a tunnel full of mobs.

Anthony.7219:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kodan wouldn’t really work. Your customization options are white and… uh… white. Tengu were originally slated to be playable, but got cut, which is a shame, as they would have made far more sense than suddenly inventing sylvari, and would have easily filled the same cultural role.

Honestly the sylvari seem to have just been injected in to the lore with very little rhyme or reason as some sort of plot fulcrum for a plot as yet unrevealed to us. Tengu have a vibrant backstory, a global presence, and a diverse and interesting culture. Why Tengu were cut in favor of sylvari I’ll never understand. Maybe to court the elf market?

The Sylvari are a very well designed, innovative race. Thank goodness they didn’t just say… and… um… Elves? Yeah… they came from…. somewhere.

Sylvari are semi gender neutral slim forest creatures. Elves. Which LITERALLY sprang from nowhere (alright, from a magic tree planted by two extremely minor NPCs) and weren’t even given a decent retcon to apply them to the existing world (at least the asura and norn were “discovered”)

Coming from literally nowhere, they’ve been given the one special gift that they’re somehow immune to dragon corruption. Something that’s extremely potent as a plot point.

Additionally, the two foremost NPCs in the game thusfar NOT designed just so that your race has a hero too are both sylvari (Scarlet and Traherne)

So, again, I marvel at a brand new race that sprang from nowhere being suddenly added to the lore and made literally the most important one.

The alternative would have been a race that has a richer history than the Charr in the collective lore of Tyria.

The only explanation I can think of is that they knew they needed an elf-like race and Tyria didn’t have any. At which point they had to justify adding them to the world, so they made them super important to gloss over how much of a historical black hole they are.

What if… crazy idea…

What if the innate stat values for leveling to 80 were moved over to traits?

So you’d get innate up to 20, but past that all of your non-gear points come from traits.

This would mean that running full dps traits (the things that make zerker builds over-the-top in terms of damage) would end up squishy to the point of insanity… but also that running support lines or tank lines would be effective in a way that could mitigate it.

In additon, give people a secondary trait set to flip to so they could effectively fill multiple roles for group composition, and shore up some of the control/support weaknesses on all classes so that each has really viable support/damage/control focused builds.

This means you have a semblance of trinity, but in a way that allows any class to fill those roles easily. In addition, you could still run balanced builds and still clear content without going for a “hard trinity” spec, as you wouldn’t need “hard support” if you weren’t running “hard DPS”

There’s got to be a middle of the road option that allows more effective non-damage roles without simultaneously requiring those roles.

Kodan wouldn’t really work. Your customization options are white and… uh… white. Tengu were originally slated to be playable, but got cut, which is a shame, as they would have made far more sense than suddenly inventing sylvari, and would have easily filled the same cultural role.

Honestly the sylvari seem to have just been injected in to the lore with very little rhyme or reason as some sort of plot fulcrum for a plot as yet unrevealed to us. Tengu have a vibrant backstory, a global presence, and a diverse and interesting culture. Why Tengu were cut in favor of sylvari I’ll never understand. Maybe to court the elf market?

It’s really nice in text, but from the community’s standpoint you have to realize that while you may be taking feedback in to account (and of course you are, you’re game developers) The sentiment of this post is that you’re integrating the community in important ways, and the appearance and practice is that you simply don’t appear to be.

There are several methods to go about this that other games have done in the past in terms of test servers, community liasons, developers responsible for specific balance communication and areas of the game, etc.

The only two areas of the game that I, as a user, have really felt communicate with the user base well are John Smith’s impromptu Q&A in regards to economic topics, or Josh Foreman on the SAB boards. In both cases these staffers have responded to and engaged in conversation with the user base rather than making monolithic statements.

That’s really all it takes. If you see a 9000 page post, chances are it’s important to the community at large, and not just the small fraction that regularly browses the forum. If a topic is critical of design, don’t be afraid to enter in to that discussion. Don’t just drop in to threads with posts like “thanks for the feedback” or “well this because this” as some monolithic statement with no followup. It makes your users feel like they’re not being engaged.

Ask questions, see if there’s a common thread in the answers to that question, and respond to that overall answer or two conflicting answers if there seem to be some lines of consensus.

Post information on your own website. Social media is great, but you should be using it to link to the portal for your community, which is this site, not the other way around.

Think about ideas like promoted user groups which can help you filter community feedback in to more easily digestable channels (class liasons, server liasons, etc.) or let users opt in to the polling system that was used in beta to collect information in a more managable dataset so you don’t HAVE to scrape through forums to get a line on how the community feels.

Currently, a wide berth of your community seems to feel like it’s not being heard about one thing or another. Whether that is true or not isn’t something I can personally say, but I will say that people will rarely go out of their way to give positive feedback.

I understand and believe in the idea of the living world, and applaud the concept and the idea of drawing a line in the sand to say “this is what the game is about, if that’s not what you want maybe this is not a game you will enjoy” because at some point you really can’t make everyone happy.

Personally, I like the living world concept and I think its implementation has been getting better in the past year. I’d like to see more radical changes and more opportunities for player action to shape it. Like much of the community I’d like to see the living world start to resolve some of the many hanging plot threads from GW1 as well as the many hanging plot threads still present in GW2.

Hello.

I built an Occam’s Razor, and used a transmutation stone to fuse its stats with an exotic carrion fused dagger. I’ve done this once before (and indeed still have the one that worked) however, the fused skin did not come though the transmutation. The resultant weapon was an Occam’s razor with the sigil (superior life) from my old dagger.

I decided to take it on the chin and undo the transmute, bought a transmutation splitter, and used it. The old fused dagger is not present. The transmute shows Occam’s razor on the left and the sigil alone on the right.

I can’t get my fused dagger skin back now, which leaves me with mismatched daggers and gems wasted on the transmute splitter.

Can someone review the server logs and help me out here?

Quam.7218:

Oh I love this dungeon, tried it 14 times with different pugs I just love it! Maybe on 24 or 76 try I’ll get it done ? I so much love to waste time to gain nothing.

I’m just sad It requires so much teamwork and “scpecific classes” with “anti-kitten-projectiles” to make the Ooze part faster.

TY ANet for another Guardian/Mesmer or GTFO dungeon.

“Play the way you want” – oh I had a laugh.

It really, truly doesn’t require specific classes.

Every class packs enough CC in a combination of weapon skills and utilities to get through.

Reflects aren’t the only way to fly. Knockback, stun, Daze (which is essentially stun for NPCs) and blind all effectively mitigate damage from the extremely long telegraphed attacks of the lava elementals.

At most you’ll need to swap out a eapon and a skill bar for this section, which is something Anet has specifically stated they want to encourage (Swapping utilities between encounters to suit the next encounter)

“I still can’t believe that there’s no mode like this very specific one… that isn’t exactly a genre staple… that I apperantly expect to have been added because I willed it, and also because all of the crappy console shooters I play have it.”

Why isn’t this in the suggestions forum?

I wouldn’t be against such a mode, but the way you framed your post is kind of puzzling.

All of the above.

I can see no apperant reason tha the target for living story releases wasn’t answering or addressing some of the many hanging plot threads from the first game.

of course this is the same lore team that decided to retcon everything in to “Oh the Charr were there too, see how important they are?” and “Oh also this guy was a servant of Abaddon all along!”

Also don’t forget

“The new game should have dragons guys. It should totally be all about about dragons.”

“But Jeff… there’s not really much important about dra-”

“DRAGONS. MAKE IT ABOUT THEM. I HEARD FANTASY HAS DRAGONS ALL OVER IT!”

So we’d probably get something ridiculous like “Scarlet went back in time and gave the flame legion the searing crystals, convinced Kormir to open the first city, and also was the fortuneteller that corrupted Shiro”

I try not to think about the lore any more. It’s depressing at this point. Back when it was actually kind of off center and inventive I enjoyed it. I’ll write a better living story arc for free if that can start salvaging the ongoing decline in narrative quality.

It was expanded upon.

All of the Utopia content was repurposed as the Asura race in EOTN. This includes the zones, enemies, and armor (Silver Eagle) that was complete at the time.

Utopia was, at that time, stricken from the lore. Utopia, it’s people, and it’s technology do not and have never existed because everything that would have been their domain was added to the design of the Asura race when Arenanet decided to invent extra playable races because all the other MMOs were doing it.

Favorite part of the new path?

How much Caithe hates Scarlet for no reason at all.

I think this is going to become a running gag “Scarlet? Man she’s annoying. I hate that chick.”

I like scarlet as a character, I just don’t like where she sits in the heirarchy of evil. She’s a character I want to have, say, Spur’s job. I like her VO and madcap antics… but I just have problems believing her as a criminal mastermind.

Blah blah swampfractal blah blah oozepuzzle

Because any mechanic that doesn’t involve hitting everything you can as hard as you can is “frustrating” and “unfun” amirite?

Despite the fact that such mechanics require far more coordination and team effort than the fights people complain about being “boring”

I’ll go ahead and say it

Dungeons should never be designed around easy PUGs. PUGs should step up to the dungeon, the dungeon shouldn’t lower itself to a PUG-waltz.

In GW1 pretty much the whole game was a series of dungeons (instanced encounters with mechanics that you needed to know, built for small groups of players) and people figured out how to PUG stuff, even hard mode stuff, without that stuff being made easier.

This is not GW1 be a long shot, but the sentiment that hard content should exist, that content should only ever gate people out of it by virtue of player skill is still very much alive. You don’t need to grind gear to experience anything the game has to offer (though if you like grinding gear, fractals have several additional difficulty levels) and you’re never going to need to farm raid 1 to try raid 2 and so on.

All that stands between your group and completing anything in the entire game is your group… so why shouldn’t those actions be a decent challenge?

MastaNeenja.1537:

Awe.1096:

This thread is full of people with the usual mindset of “I completed it, therefore it is easy”. Get of your high horses please and use common sense. I can complete some content and still say it was harder than it should be for what it is and where it is. The definitions of “easy” and “hard” are blurry but to judge them, you need to ask yourself a bit more questions than only a simple “Can I do it?”.

The fact is (and yes, I dare to say that this is a fact) close to nobody will run this place in a while. It gives you what, double the rewards of CoF1? And it takes x10 times more to complete (or more if you keep wiping). Honestly, for it to be worthy, the end chest should give like 10 gold at this point.

I dare to say that vast majority of regular forum posters are “nerds” (like myself) who also tend to have a bit higher in-game experience (and thus, the so called “skill”). They project their standards onto the entire game community. Which is wrong. I dare you, I double dare you. Wait a few weeks and then try to PUG this new path through LFG tool every day. Have fun (and dont forget to buy some anger management pills before you start)!

Yes because there’s no one out there that plays harder content and doesn’t want everything in the game to be care bears and heart quests. Difficulty is relative, but there’s plenty of low difficulty options out there. Dungeons by nature are supposed to be difficult so saying a dungeon is too hard is like saying other parts of the game are too easy. People are just in the wrong neighborhood.

Dungeons are not exclusive, they do not gate players in any way other than their level and even then if you’re lower than the level requirement you can still get in. It’s just the recommended level. Dungeons do not judge they just are there waiting for players to enter them. Dungeons do not reward either, not really you get some gold and the occasional exotic or gold drop. If you become good enough to hit dungeon paths and complete them quickly you can see some profit but there are faster ways to make gold. Dungeons simply challenge that’s all they do. If you find dungeons are too hard time and time again the group you are in fails, you die often, or even get kicked especially if you get kicked then you need to look inward and ask yourself what am I doing wrong? How can I beat this path, am I running build that carries my weight or are other people carrying me? Dungeons test you.

When dungeons can be easily completed by everyone that’s when I quit GW2.

I think this sums it up nicely.

“accessible” content is everywhere in this game. They’ve easied up story mode dungeons (which are supposed to be the “accessible” parts of dungeons) I like going on braindead autopilot and joining a champ train or farm now and then just like everyone else. I like helping lowbies and experiencing world events.

I don’t, however, think that the explorable modes of dungeons should fit that mold. The game released without raid content, and I say bravo to that. The concept of mechanically difficult instances that can be done with a small group where each player actually matters was a major reason why I was excited about this game. I wanted hard dungeons with cool cosmetic rewards.

The teeth have been removed from GW2 so much it’s bordering on not being much of a game at all. Remember when Orr was nerfed… twice… because people couldn’t walk past monsters? I conceded to that, people with more laid back playstyles need content. Scarlet invasions and general open world sutff are GREAT for that… but every few updates don’t begrudge those of us who want a small challenge a nice piece of content.

You don’t need an “easy mode” any more than the open world needs a “hard mode” people, they are just two separate kinds of content.

Played thief in this dungeon.
Kited.
Pulled.
Reflected.
Blinded lava guys.
Solo’d Spur and half of mossy.

My teammates? Three wars and a guardian.

“pro classes” are actually “Forgiving classes” in GW2. The War/Guard/Mes trinity is preferred for dungeons because of their largely passive and faceroll PvE playstyle. They’re very easy classes to play in PvE and do extremely well because of that easy of use, which makes people prefer them for PUGs.

That said I do most of my dungeon runs with a guild group consisting of 2x rangers, a thief, a necro, and one warrior and we’ve never had any problems clearing stuff. In some instances we’ve found that certain class synergies (like the constant spam of deathblossom in the necro’s dark fields) make up for or even exceed the passive benefits from classes we lack.

I’d say use the LFG for pugs, and just ignore groups with silly requests like “need 1 heavy” or “all heavies”

I can personally attest to having run multiple groups of all sorts of GW2 dungeons without any of the “big 3” classes. In GW2 what’s important is understanding your character and the abilities of your teammates. If that’s in the bag then you’re good to go, you can finish any dungeon (except possibly Arah 4, if it’s still completely unfinishable by anyone)

We also did sparki first, because doing slick first almost always resulted in someone randomly burning to death, which put a huge wrench in the gears of the overall “everyone make sure you kite when the ooze aggros you” as then someone has to peel off and rez that guy, which then results in more spread oil slicks.

We found doing slick first resulted (for us) in harder/longer kiting, which resulted in more environmental damage>more people off rezzing>more spread slicks>failcascade.

When we just beat down sparki we could screw up the ooze kiting a little and undo that mistake after we killed him, because slick doesn’t really have enough damage to be threatening by himself as long as you deal with the puddles, so everyone can just stack on him while one guy kites the slime around in a circle. The only danger there is accidentally killing the blob and getting hit with the green fog of doom.

Heinel.6548:

Zenyatoo.4059:

2. Ooze:
If the ooze were allies this would be better. I understand that it’s part of the difficulty, but the oozes should be made allies, and then if needed nerf their hp. A lot of the traditional skills that many classes would bring here are absolutely useless. An ele cant do much to help the ooze if it’s near an elemental. If it was an ally we could slow the attackers with impunity, we could give it reflection, we could heal it, ETC. The same is true for other classes. Essentially, keeping it as an enemy limits class choice to… well, guardians and thieves, as they’re the ones who can place non-damaging reflect walls to safeguard the ooze.

I’m sort of on board with this… until you mentioned projectile walls as a counter argument. Ele has the best projectile wall (swirling winds). Maybe it’s time to use something other than staff and D/D?

necros can blind + fear effectively neough to do this just fine. Warriors can stun/knockback.

Honestly there isn’t a class in GW2 that doesn’t have enough CC to do this.

There are aetherblades in scarlet invasions and the aetherblade jumping puzzle in Gendarran, both of which can be done without visiting the new path.

It’s really not. I spent several hours in a PUG with some people who are admittedly not very good at the game (as in they flat out said "sorry I’m not very good at this) and we managed all the way up to clockheart (then people had to sleep after a few wipes) They managed to do it with some tactical discussions and a little encouragement, and I was pretty much waltzing through most encounters.

What it is is mechanically challenging. It requires communication, knowledge, and teamwork.

People leaving the game because of this path or things like the new Teq encounter should just go already. If you can’t fire a handful of neurons and actually figure out how to do something as simple as switch to cc skills for a room or kite a mob during a boss fight… I really don’t want a game designed around that level of intelligence.

I hope over time all content is brought to roughly this level. It feels challenging but fair, like the dungeons in EOTN.

Honestly, I approve of these sorts of changes. While I enjoyed F/U I like what the substance of the update says more than anything. it says anet is not afriad to work in broad strokes, and that we won’t be stuck with literally the same game in two or three years.

I’d be kitten ed if stuff were just being removed, but that’s not what’s happenning, something is being replaced. I didn’t hear anyone complain when the old spawns and stretches of nothingness were replaced in southsun. Why is this different? Because it was a dungeon that some of you had “on farm”?

The more time spent actively playing and figuring out new content and the less spent doing the same thing over and over the better.

I say blow up lion’s arch and replace it with an explorable zone, let kralk finish corrupting the rest of known ascalon, or let anything be radically destroyed or changed as long as its replaced with something new and interesting to do.

+1 for subdirector Blingg

CITIZENS!!!

Shiren.9532:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Shiren.9532:

I think Kristen said she wanted to give males and females the chance to choose similair kinds of hair styles. If someone played a male character, it sucked that they didn’t have beautiful long hair, at the same time, it might suck if the dreads type hair was only given to males if a female sylvari wanted them. I guess the same thing goes for rugged hair styles. Females should have access to that option as well. Sylvari seem to bend the rules a bit more with the difference between males and females. It seems like the focus with the sylvari was to open up new options with greater variety that didn’t exist (males with long hair, new plant types etc).

So why not make 6 new hairstyles and have them available to both males and female sylvari?

I think there are differences between the two. I don’t think they are exactly the same. The simple answer would be that would be twice as much work (if not more). It’s possible there will be hairstyles that weren’t previewed.

Honestly I think it’s a shame they didn’t just go nuts on the lesser races (anything but human) because they start with less options. I can see why humans would have just as many new options despite having more core options to begin with, they are by far the most popular race and thus more profitable to cater to.

Also, humans have less identifying characteristics than other races. Every nonhuman race has at least one additional customization option, be it ears, horns, glow, tattooos, etc. thus it follows that humans would naturally possess more overall hairstyles to make up for that lack of customization.

It would be interesting if more avante-gard facial piercings became common in human culture to fill that gap, perhaps when we revisit cantha/elona or access previously unseen continents.

Player Character.9467:

Delryn.7235:

Why does everyone just skip vistas after they’ve seen a few? Because though pretty, vistas are worthless to give you a feeling of the setting and world around you. Imagine how much more powerful it would be if you actually had a reason to explore, see, and experience all those vistas for yourself, instead of seeing them through a telescope.

Also that centaur kicking me in the face while I’m viewing the vista is a big distraction.

You are invulnerable while viewing vistas. Just so you know

HellsPriest.6745:

? 100 accounts?
A guild can have up to 500 accounts in it. So, NOT false.

They certainly do not encourage smaller guilds either, where are you getting your facts?

HellsPriest.6745:

Also my guild is one of them “side alt guilds”. We have 4 guilds for it that all run together. We have over 1700 members.

You are outdated with your knowledge of how guilds work, so brush up on that before replying with such bold statements.

Well it’s nice that they finally increased the cap for large guilds I suppose. Initially it was 100.

I’m happy that your giant alliance of guilds houses 1700 people, but the fact remains that if you stop the players you see that are NOT in your guild and simply ask them about their guild sizes you’ll find my information to be quite accurate. Like all games there exist, at least one per server, a selection of large open recruitment guilds, but these guilds are the exception rather than the rule.

Gw2’s enabling of small guilds was something that was debated at length when guild missions were added, and I don’t think I need to pull up the exact quotes regarding ideal player counts for guild content for you to realize that all guild missions were designed for between 10 and 20 people. The game is designed to enable guilds of all sizes, as evidenced by the inclusion of practice bounty missions to address the issue small guilds were having with influence gain for mission unlocks.

I suggest you step outside your private an insular community and actually interact with people not wearing your tags once in a while and you may come to understand that your particular situation is exceptional, not normal.

All that said, I don’t have any problems with the tequatl event as is. It’s a perfectly simple open world event that only requires a very simple strategy and enough people working on that strategy.

All fantastic ideas, I run a smaller guild and personally the MOTD hitting the chat on login or change would be a huge step toward actually using the MOTD.

In addition, guildmail would be very welcome, perhaps with a visually distinct mail icon (use the guild shield icon seen on other things?)

This is a great idea actually. The idle mob XP bonus should be universally applicable for all types of rewards in spirit. This would ensure people who actively roam could be rewarded at least somewhat competitively with those who farm in a more static fashion without unnecessarily hampering anyone’s current playstyle.

Well done on the ingame LFG tool.

However, since dragonite is a required ingredient for ascended weapons, how about some sort of ingame method to know when bosses are about to kick off as well?

I haven’t used timers in a while but I have been using some API fed event trackers, and they do a great job of letting me know when a thing is happenning so I can get over there in a way that doesn’t feel like wanton metagaming.

Obviously, people were never intended to figure out the timers and wait in line. They were supposed to be milling about the zone and be notified of the nearby boss event.

Today, we need to do a LOT of boss events for dragonite, and I feel that unlike the other parts of ascended crafting which can be easily “stumbled in to” it is absolutely possible for a player on the path to ascended weapons to never have personally witnessed a world boss event, or even have any idea where dragonite comes from. Without the help of external sources or other players, I would have assumed it was a rare ore I needed to mine, as all other ore is a mined material.

So, you’ve got these NPCs with some VO lines that were SUPPOSED to clue people in about the living story. Then you decided the LS would just be handled via screen notifications and ingame mail… but the heralds remain with no useful information.

How about having the heralds bark their same VO, but when interacted with they can point players to any currently running world boss pre-events? This would be akin to the way event barking NPCs already work, but in a macro-world sense. As a prestige option, perhaps even add an ingame piece of mail from the player’s herald at 80 notifying them of the function of these heralds and giving them a clue as to the rare mineral they can acquire.

From there players would be able to piece together the purpose of the dragonite from ingame sources and recipies, and the whole system would feel a lot more coherant.

Also, the heralds wouldn’t be unemployed any more.

HellsPriest.6745:

Most guilds have over 100 players

False. In fact unless something has changed, 100 accounts is the maximum capacity of guilds.

The gamewide average guild size, as per the metrics used to design guild missions is 20-50.

In addition, Gw2’s design encourages and enables much smaller guild sizes than many games and this has led to an environment in which 5-10 person guilds are not an uncommon sight, due to their ability to accomplish most of the content in the game.

Also note that many guilds created specifically FOR these new encounters are often “alt guilds” which people only tag to specifically for said content.

pelto.7345:

in the immortal words of bill and ted “be cool to each other”

Excellent. Not cool. Excellent.

Sorry I just… love Bill and Ted.

Slither Shade.4782:

Idk but the title sounds like a cool elite.

Condition Catastrophe
Cooldown 60s, Thief, Trick
For 10s, inflict a 1s stack of a random condition upon targets you hit for each point of missing initiative. When this effect ends, lose all initative, and reduce the cooldown of steal by 1% for each point of initiative lost this way.

Azure Prower.8701:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

You can refine it in to bricks for ascended, if your not going to craft ascended items, then delete it.

I already have 50 bricks refined. 5 ascended weapons crafted and all weapon professions past 475. Yet I still have like 10 stacks of bloodstone dust and growing in my bank.

PopeUrban.2578:

It takes 100 piles to make 1 brick.

It has no use except to be turned in to bricks.

You can store 250 bricks in your collectibles tab

If you don’t need to use it, why are you storing it? If you DO need to use it… why isn’t it being made in to bricks?

It takes 100 piles to make 1 brick.

It has no use except to be turned in to bricks.

You can store 250 bricks in your collectibles tab

do you have over 100 STACKS of bloodstone dust?

Alternate storyline:

We march in to the desert to kill Kralk, Joko shows up and offers to help… as long as we don’t murder him.

We agree, Joko uses his massive undead army to help, and all together we kill Kralk.

200 years later Joko has taken over all known civilized lands and rules over a kingdom of the dead much larger than he would have without our assistance. All because we didn’t murder him at the very first opportunity

This sounds kinda familiar actually…

Player Character.9467:

PopeUrban.2578:

They should definately get the inventory slots, but be limited to swapping out of combat. This doesn’t change the mechanics but would be a QoL improvement, making sure that these classes don’t have to shuffle around in their bags to swap a weapon set outside of combat. I mean the rest of us very rarely open bags to equip different weapons so I don’t see why these classes should be subjected to additional UI headaches when a mechanism already exists to make it less painful.

As long as they’re OOC swaps only I don’t see the problem as they would play exactly as they already do.

Because nobody else has to shuffle weapons OOC? I guarantee you I have way more weapons to swap through on my warrior than your ele does.

Everyone else can equip at least two sets without taking up extra bag space. That’s kinda the point I’m making here. Why not give eles and engis that same consideration for “free inventory space” without actually giving them the ability to swap in combat?

It wouldn’t change anything else. Also, if you’re carrying around one of everything your warrior can equip, more power to ya, but the vast VAST majority of players carry at most one set of weapons beyond what they equip because of the way traits work… and because there’s not a whole load of benefit to carrying around all that extra stuff on most classes.

I really REALLY want this to be the “Season finale with awesome clip show” dungeon of This year’s LS.

You know, just bringin’ back all the awesome parts of the instances up to this point, tweaked for freshness, and then capped off with a short stint of punching scarlet in the face and blowing up her monster.

They should definately get the inventory slots, but be limited to swapping out of combat. This doesn’t change the mechanics but would be a QoL improvement, making sure that these classes don’t have to shuffle around in their bags to swap a weapon set outside of combat. I mean the rest of us very rarely open bags to equip different weapons so I don’t see why these classes should be subjected to additional UI headaches when a mechanism already exists to make it less painful.

As long as they’re OOC swaps only I don’t see the problem as they would play exactly as they already do.

I think ratios for various skills could be tweaked, but overall healing power has a place. I build a moderate amount on my theif because it scales extremely well with danging dagger/shadow refuge 4hit ranged combos and the 9 heals per attack + assassin’s reward I get whenever I use death blossom (which is my primary source of damage)

It’s allowed me to play a tanky condition build that sacrificed burst for survivability, and without the investment in healing power and the recent buff to Signet of Malice just plain doesn’t work properly. It’s great at infinitely tanking trash in PvE, and holding capture points or baiting target focus in PvP.

I wouldn’t appreciate the loss of my ability to play a functional and fun bunker/bleed thief.

Honestly I’d like to see combos become more important to the overall tactical play of GW2. Combos were one of the things I was most excited to mess with early on, but when I got my hands on the game I realized that they were largely an afterthought.

Sure, they’re a nice bonus and can make you more effective when used properly, but my thinking was that they’d be a bit more central to the mechanics of group play, and that was how you’d get around the lack of trinity, as various combinations of classes would effectively field those trinity roles.

What about making combos a lot more important? What about some synchronized attack bonuses or using certain player skills as a moving combo field? IDK. Something.

For instance, let’s say that any of the abilities with a channeled block or spin made that character a “boost” field. This would function like a normal combo field, but in stead of being a big ground circle it would be just the general hitbox area of that character. Using a leap in to a boost field could double its range, using a projectile could split it or make it bounce, using an aoe on it could widen its area of effect, etc. That’s just one example, but the idea is to create deeper character-to-character interactions with powerful effects that require coordinated efforts by two or more parties, as the current combo fields don’t require much coordination at all, and as a result are often not all that powerful.

I like the suggestion of the soulbind breaker. Call it a “Soul Stone” or something, charge a premium, say 200 gems, and call it a day. Item unbinds an item and makes it account bound/soulbound on equip again.

Players get to move soulbound stuff every once in a while when new cool stuff comes out, anet makes more money on gem sales due to increased gem revenue, and economy doesn’t implode due to rampant proliferation as anyone who actively plays several alts isn’t going to exactly load up on these things and just but less gear as that would be overall more expensive.

Sounds to me like a win/win just like the transmute breakers.

I like that they keep adding wildly different backpack skins, and for the most park the backpack slot is turning in to the “living story gizmo” slot.

Like, I enjoy that there’s a visual gear slot mostly dedicated to LS visual rewards as it makes the LS a visual part of characters in a very real way. I also understand WHY it’s the backpack slot, as it’s very easy to position and scale static objects that rest on a relatively flat part of all characters.

However!

It would be nice if we could rotate over each arc. I’m thinking that if most major story arcs take a month, have a back, then a headpiece, then shoulders, then a weapon in chronological order, so the end result is that if you really wanna show off that you stuck with an arc start to finish you could wear the whole set.

More armor would be a nice addition if there was some way other than the gem store to acquire it. Just a matter of balance really, do like last wintersday, and develop a set of gem skins and a set of non-gem skins and deploy them side by side?

sinzer.4018:

I don’t want a healer role i want complex and unpredictable AI so that people might think of taking something other than full on damage.

This, however I wouldn’t be opposed to some truly active healing play. Age of Conan had a LOT of problems, but one thing they did pretty well was the healing. In particular the Bear Shaman class was a lot like GW2’s guardian, but where guardians have bubbles and passive aegis, the bear shaman had melee combos that AoE healed if you successfully hit, and short range cone heals. I get a lot of satisfaction out of dropping a clutch shadow refuge midfight and ressing a downed guy, or hitting a clutch blind to save someone on my thief. In contrast my guardian just sort of fights and awesome support just sort of happens without trying. In both cases my support was there to fix a problem, but it was never truly necessary.

Some forms of support should be necessary to encounter design, but at the same time you have to be careful to design that support so that it’s balanced, as GW2 is a game where you’re not meant to have to hunt for specific classes, which means each class needs to have the ability to slot in support that’s about as useful as every other class. Luckily it seems the next balance update is all about team support, which is a good step toward designing PvE that’s tough enough you need to use it.

Heck, I’d argue that while support is a viable and important role in GW2, it’s also way too passive and brainless. AoE buffs that you just toss around with the occasional timed bubble or wall or field. Aegis in particular is way too easy to use without even thinking about it against tough bosses/champs, while its sister condition blind is somehow deemed too OP to work in the same situation, and requires a good amount of timing to get anything useful out of.

I usually hate playing healers, but that AoC bear shaman class required a more active support playstyle than what you see in GW2, as it required you to kitten the situation around you and be engaged in active combat to use it properly. Mostly the cone heals and the opportunity cost of the melee ones. Shame they gutted the PvP and the itemization and balance were completely screwed up.