Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I’d like to see a daily dungeon, every day.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the repeatable dungeon-run achievement get switched to a more robust set of dailies similar to what Fractals have. Something that highlights different paths every day, rather than giving fluid gold for spamming the same 8 paths every day.

Ardid.7203:

The game balance DOES NOT COVER ONLY COMBAT. It includes detailed exploration, intelligent skipping (Even zerg kiting!) and basic travel too. Mounts offering any movement boost equal or superior to the 25% present on traits and runes destroy the cost oportunity balance on builds, even if it only works out of combat. Mounts become automatically mandatory, and any permaswiftness build lose its place ipso facto.

As much as I don’t like how uneven classes are in terms of PvE speed (they should have some equivalence, but not necessarily in PvP/WvW), I’m not sure I could fully support a +25% or +33% mount idea.

If mounts/speed boosts, attainable in-game by all players, became a thing, I would think it should be limited to +15%. It’s faster than the baseline, and it fills in a rather irritating gap between 0, 25, and 33. Also, mount bonus goes poof in combat in the same manner as toys and costumes. As a mastery bonus, that seems well enough.

So far as the screen clutter issue that’s been mentioned (in every mount thread merged into the giant cluster that this one oddly hasn’t yet…), I could see a few approaches via Toy items or transformation tonics. Transformations replace the character model and dispel in combat, so it’s generally zero-sum. Toys, if limited to small alterations like the carpet or riding broom, could also be an acceptable. No need to add moas/dolyaks/etc to the mix. And of course, they don’t work or have no extra competitive modes.

If it’s just a style issue, I don’t support mounts for the game in general. It’s screen clutter. Maybe the occasional fun toy item to ride around on, but not worth sinking development time into.

If it’s a speed issue, there are other ways to handle it without ‘mounts.’ Using the mastery system, it could be possible to add a zone/regional mastery that unlocks upon completion of a zone/region that can be used to gain a non-combat speed bonus. It applies to help players get around in PvE, doesn’t apply to fractal/raid/pvp/wvw contexts, and still permits travel speed boons in combat. It’s also a reward for fully exploring and uses the game’s existing systems.

Or, and this would require some extra work on Revenant, having a generic, elite signet-type ability (but not actually a Signet, for trait reasons) that parallels Facet of Nature. It gives a speed boost, and, when used, has a useful effect for jumping into combat. It becomes a build decision, but one that is available to everyone.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

It’s gotten to the point, at least for me, where I accept it as a fact of nature or an act of god. It’s something that happens when you fly. Sometimes you fall, sometimes you die. Waypoint and try again. I don’t bother evading or stealthing anymore. They’re pointless activities. I don’t even notice the rocks anymore. Rather than being some kind of mechanic that would bring some challenge and more fun to gliding, it’s become a background cost to flying in BF. I don’t think that’s how anet envisioned this working.

Depressed resignation isn’t something a video game should make a person feel.

Ashen.2907:

I like the idea.

But….

Isnt this something that the community can already do, sort of, for itself by recording raid runs and posting to youtube?

Raid videos only show one perspective. And half the time they’re set to really trashy music and/or the overly hyper git on his headset won’t shut up. Won’t doubt there are some decent training videos out there as well, but it’d be nice to have a broader view of raids as a training tool.

Ardid.7203:

The mechanic is fine. The instructions are there. But they are not well put, and they aren’t correctly exemplified.

As always, show > explain. Right now, the “tutorial” is showing you need only to press the button and then attack.

Easiest way to know is not working properly? People still keep misunderstanding it.

Indeed.

On the one hand, the instance didn’t convey everything as clearly as I would say is “good design”, but I’m not sure how much clearer ANet could have made it without it being legitimate hand-holding.

And it’s way better than some spots in Season 2. Geez, some of those instances were terrible on conveyance.

FrizzFreston.5290:

The night’s watch also didn’t defend the night.
Instead they defend during the night.
SO why can’t Dragon’s Watch be the guild that defends during the dragons rise (and fall).

A better explanation than any I’d considered before.

I think my big issue with DW was that it felt so passive and didn’t have any punch to it.

I got vaguely excited by the title.

It would actually be really cool / informative to have a mode where players can watch raiders in real time.

Ayrilana.1396:

What one liner? The post that you put in spoilers and then declared arguing for the sake of arguing was certainly more than a single line.

Just because you disagree with what I’m saying doesn’t mean that I’m arguing just to argue.

^ That one.
Ignoring others’ text to continue arguing is one thing, but ignoring one’s own text is just being oblivious and pointlessly contrarian.

There is plenty of justification to put it in PvE which I had mentioned in an earlier post.

I hope you don’t mean:

They are PvE.

Because that is hardly a compelling or descriptive statement.

There are three game modes: sPvP, PvE, WvW. Which one does it fit in? Certainly not sPvP or WvW.

This attempted logic puzzle ignores a very simple alternative. Activity does not belong in any of them. But that statement has not gone addressed for several argumentative posts because fingers in ears and lalala:

Activities are fun mini games that players could play. just because you compete with other players does not make it any less PvE.

Actually, yes, it does. When I go to Silverwastes to help with a boss, that’s PvE. When I go to Brisban for daily events (okay, I don’t actually do this, ever), it’s theoretically PvE (even though it’s a panicked tag-fest to get loot and credit).
But Activities are, by definition, player versus player. Does the entire party have a team score where they keep the crab away from the karka as long as possible? No. Is Southsun Survivor a group game of gathering resources and weapons to stave off the island’s threats? No. Do I actually need to keep explaining this? By iron, I hope not.

Yes, a lot of the activities have some form of PvP element but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they cannot be included in PvE. There really isn’t anywhere else to put them.

The only “PvE” thing about Activities is that they are accessed through an NPC in Lion’s Arch. If there’s no other place to put them in the categorical groupings, then it is disqualified for all of them and ought to be removed as a daily item.

But the kicker is, those in the know use Daily Activity as a quick completion. Don’t AFK and you get credit, even if you lose. I’ve done Southsun Survivor runs where I actively tried to get eliminated, except I somehow won. Finish the Sanctum Sprint run and you get credit. The worst is Crab Toss, because there’s no quick way to end it. But it is still PvP.

Bug, bug, go away
And please don’t come back.

Apple in the forums seems to have a bug.

Well over 2000 hours. Playing since headstart.
1 precursor.
It was Storm.
Woo.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Rauderi.8706:

I avoid apple-tagging because I don’t need the stigmas, and most times, I don’t feel 100% capable of answering all the questions that might come my way.

My general strategy for rallying is to just ping the map obnoxiously until people show up. :P

Only people in your party or squad would see your map pings, unless you mean you’re linking waypoints in chat.

And this is why I’m not a commander. XD

Must have been purely coincidence that poking a hero challenge in TD brought some folks to help out. I really should apple for that kind of stuff. Getting help for hero challenges isn’t always easy.

I avoid apple-tagging because I don’t need the stigmas, and most times, I don’t feel 100% capable of answering all the questions that might come my way.

My general strategy for rallying is to just ping the map obnoxiously until people show up. :P

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Spoiler contains arguing for the sake of something that should not exist. The insistence of it to justify an incorrect point is just.. baffling. It’s arguing for the sake of arguing, and it’s definitely not reading what anyone else has written.

It wouldn’t make sense to have activities in sPvP…

Why not? It’s a player versus player environment. Why can’t PvP have fun little things to do?

it wouldn’t make sense to have them in WvW.

Why?

Yes, a lot of the activities have some form of PvP element but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they cannot be included in PvE.

Aside from the Wintersday activities, they’re all PvP and have no place in PvE, by the very definitions of Player Versus Player and Player Versus Environment.

1. So, if Daily Activity fits none of the categories, it should not be categorized at all. Give the Activity a once-daily award for participation and leave them off the daily rotation.
2. With that particularly obvious point aside, there is no point in running to Dragon Stand for daily events if you can’t participate in daily events because no one is doing them. I doubt I can make that point any clearer.

Just because you disagree with what I’m saying doesn’t mean that I’m arguing just to argue.

The one-liner defending arguing and not making any valid points says otherwise.

There is no justification to put Daily Activity in PvE based on the type of activity it is. It doesn’t fit into sPvP’s room/lobby/gameplay structure, even though it is PvP and structured. It’s definitely not WvW. It’s silly to force a category on it when none fit.

So, position of upholding Activities-as-PvE is either a pro-ANet kool-aid*, ear-plugging anti-change, or stubbornly arguing without merit to score points.

All that being said, to address the OP’s (somewhat embittered) point, the PvE dailies are usually pretty breezy. Most often at least two are “gather here” and “vista there,” and quite a few jumping puzzles, which often have benevolent mesmers to zip people to the end anyway.

I still have my arguments with “zone event” dailies in lower level zones, because they don’t often spawn enough events to keep a zerg busy. Bosses on the clock, while much less frequent on the rotation, still require logging in at a very specific time. And the same applies to Dragon Stand, unfortunately. At least with bosses, if you’re in the area, you tag and get credit. With Dragon Stand, you can’t even do that much, so it makes for a poor daily, even if it does promote the zone for participation.

Spoiler contains arguing for the sake of something that should not exist. The insistence of it to justify an incorrect point is just.. baffling. It’s arguing for the sake of arguing, and it’s definitely not reading what anyone else has written.

It wouldn’t make sense to have activities in sPvP…

Why not? It’s a player versus player environment. Why can’t PvP have fun little things to do?

it wouldn’t make sense to have them in WvW.

Why?

[/quote]
Yes, a lot of the activities have some form of PvP element but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they cannot be included in PvE.
[/quote]
Aside from the Wintersday activities, they’re all PvP and have no place in PvE, by the very definitions of Player Versus Player and Player Versus Environment.

1. So, if Daily Activity fits none of the categories, it should not be categorized at all. Give the Activity a once-daily award for participation and leave them off the daily rotation.
2. With that particularly obvious point aside, there is no point in running to Dragon Stand for daily events if you can’t participate in daily events because no one is doing them. I doubt I can make that point any clearer.

Xillllix.3485:

It was too unfocused for me. I think they need to add a group dungeon to each of their living story episodes or something else than just a new map to farm and never-ending dialogues, it’s not like we don’t have enough of that.

That’s something I miss about the old Fire & Frost era of Living Story. And now that Arah story scales to party size, that’s a concept that can extend to new dungeon development.
It might not need a full set of explorable paths, but a story run and 5-man run would add some extra content. Granted, Fractals are the 5-man content now so.. probably not going to see LS-related dungeons that aren’t raids anymore.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes maybe 30 min to run from VB to DS; likely less. You do not need to do any events in TD in order to gain access to DS.

…Great. You run to Dragon Stand. Then what?

If it’s not 30-minutes before event restart, nothing. That’s what. If you’re not in the bloated LFG squad waiting to do the event, then nothing.

gg, Anet.

And? Their issue was that they did not have access to the map yet.

“And?” I just spelled out the “and” for this. Getting to Dragon Stand is only half the problem. Ignoring that is just being utterly callous and oblivious. Having Dragon Stand events is worse than having a daily rotation boss, because of how inaccessible they are.
There’s no excuse to yield to bad design just for the sake of being contentious.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

And please remove activities from the daily PvE rotation. The activities are not PvE.

They are PvE.

Wait, what?

A game activity that is competitive against other players is PvE?

No.

Daily Activity is PvP, it’s just not accessed through the PvP interface.

There are three game modes: sPvP, PvE, WvW. Which one does it fit in? Certainly not sPvP or WvW.

Answer: Mu. Your question is wrong.

Also, activities are:

• player versus player
• with set, structured skills.
  Activities are much more sPvP than any other category. To ignore that is simply being dense for the sake of arguing.

But, to refer to the misguided question of “where does Daily Activity belong: PvE, PvP, or WvW?” The answer is none of them. It belongs in a trash bin of bad ideas. It most closely resembles PvP, but it isn’t, so ANet ought to just drop it and make the Activities rewarding enough on their own.

Cecilia.5179:

Rauderi.8706:

I shamefully admit I would shamelessly shovel $90 in new character slots at playable Tengu. :|

Pfft. If the designs were good enough, I would spend $180 on Tengu slots.

I’ve been 1-up’d. ;_;
Doubled.
Outbid.

Proof the money is out there, ANet. Take the number of Charr characters, multiply by $10, and let that be a starting estimate for how much money Tengu would rake in.

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

And please remove activities from the daily PvE rotation. The activities are not PvE.

They are PvE.

Wait, what?

A game activity that is competitive against other players is PvE?

No.

Daily Activity is PvP, it’s just not accessed through the PvP interface.

Ayrilana.1396:

It takes maybe 30 min to run from VB to DS; likely less. You do not need to do any events in TD in order to gain access to DS.

…Great. You run to Dragon Stand. Then what?

If it’s not 30-minutes before event restart, nothing. That’s what. If you’re not in the bloated LFG squad waiting to do the event, then nothing.

I wanted to be excited that DS was on the rotation the other day, but then 9pm rolled around and I wasn’t in the Precious Squad to go do the event, so I hit up a PvP room instead, did the easy Bloodstone Fen dailies, then quit.

gg, Anet.

Nah. Join the “1v1 me bro” custom rooms in PvP or use your guild hall’s arena. No need for an inflated zone for niche gameplay.

And more to point, classes aren’t balanced around 1v1, anyway. You think a lot of people are cheesed about PvP balance affecting PvE characters, wait until the 1v1 balances hit and everyone is ticked off.

Khisanth.2948:

Randulf.7614:

There are plenty of things in the game which should be nerfed (imo), but I am not convinced Vinetooth is one of them. Or at least not until we reach a new expansion and HoT in general needs nerfing “if” the population in HoT isn’t as high as it has been.

The issue with Vinetooth simply is a lack of awareness and training in what is cc and how breakbars work. We have suggested this as dozens of different threads since HoT came out and I am a little surprised we haven’t seen something added yet.

If everyone equipped cc before the fight begins and uses the adrenal mushrooms (where mastery exists) to reset cc between breakbars, then it’s a smooth fight.

Actually there is a second issue with VT.

After it finishes doing it’s jumping thing it will take a short walk. If you try to CC while it is doing the walking in many cases the CC will miss.

…
AAAGH, I know exactly what you mean.
When I’ve tried it, I was usually on my hammer-warrior, and chasing that kitten gives me an extra dose of rage.

Well, Darwin’s thing of “survival of the fittest” actually indicates more than just adaptability. The “fittest” as described is who can give the most groin-kerpow and make mucho niños.

So out of the quaggans that are alive, just assume they’re really good in the sack. Or pond. Or wherever quaggans do it.

Khisanth.2948:

Rauderi.8706:

Khisanth.2948:

Fewer people is actually better. Less chance of having people failing to CC and even if they do fail to do that it is probably less impactful if you brought a decent number of your own. People usually seem to fail to take advantage of the adrenal mushrooms as well.

They also don’t use the Exalted Assistance shrine tucked in the back corner. The more people that use it, the faster it appears and the stronger it is. Use your masteries, people!

I have never seen the Exalted do anything except stand around and be useless…

If only one or two people trigger it, yeah, it stands around like a lump or gets killed pretty quickly. The point is that it ‘charges up’ as people contribute to it. Everyone with Exalted Assistance (which isn’t even hard to get) should be poking it when the fight starts.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Dinosaurs.8674:

There should probably be better in-game information about CC (maybe a “break bar damage” stat on skills)

Now that’s an awesome idea… I urge you to add it to the QoL suggestions thread in General Discussion.

~EW

It’s come up before as a standalone thread and in other “wut is cc?” info dumps.
Still a great idea. Better communication is better for the game as a whole.

I have to agree with Etienne on this one. And I’m not even sure what the proposed changes are trying to solve.

If there’s some PvP reason, then it’s more a matter of giving condi clears, Resistance, and Stability better opportunities to counter conditions/disables. But what’s proposed would be hideous for PvE builds and ruin condition builds in PvP.

As for how condi compares to power builds, condi really doesn’t get burst in the way that power builds do. It takes time and a solid rotation to ramp up enough to tick huge dps numbers for conditions. (I’ll admit I giggled at a 9k confu tick during a boss fight, but that’s an edge case.) That level of condi damage is the reward for sustained effort and concentrated build. Critter designs in PvE are actually based around supporting both power and condi at different times, which is a good thing.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

The Tengu would be revealed to be there all along, participating in everything the other races go through, but in secret. We’d get to revisit the same scenes, such as the battle for Claw Island, but from a new perspective. Maybe it would be revealed that the Tengu actually took out a large part of the risen forces themselves, at sea, and that the force faced at Claw Island, as bad as it was, was actually much smaller than it would have been if not for the Tengu.
Maybe.. just maybe… it could be revealed that the reason Zhaitan was beaten so easily was that the Tengu had already softened him up before DE got there! Wouldn’t that be a kicker?

If they introduce Tengu, I would love to see it as a side story. Maybe even have a spot where, after the Pact and the commander get into place, but before Zhaitan’s defeat, the Tengu squad encounters the Pact Commander’s squad getting overrun, tries to save them, but the squad is demolished. Reinforcements show up too late, Trehearne and the Pact have a big cry over the dead commander, and start to look at the Tengu as a replacement. Throw in a few test missions as the competent Tengu commander makes his stabs at Zhaitan’s forces, and bam, new Commander of the Pact to integrate into the story at large.

Of course, integrating the Destiny’s Edge dungeon stuff might get weird. >.>

Sirius.4510:

The upside is that a lot of people would pay for it. But, again, we don’t know exactly how many, and thus whether it would pay for itself.

I shamefully admit I would shamelessly shovel $90 in new character slots at playable Tengu. :|

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

These events are training me out of my completionist habits. I’m finding I don’t have the desire to complete every cheevo.

^
This.
Right here.

I want to participate in these events, but I’m not going to waste play time that I could be helping my guild in fractals, completing collections, chasing achievements, or doing HoT metas.

HoT metas already got a lot of heat for being on stupidly long timers (hi, Dragon Stand, I missed you again, because I wasn’t in LFG a half hour before you started last night), and then ANet continues to run these events in different zones on a 2-3 hour rotation.

The bandit bosses are on the border for acceptable wait time for content, so factor that into your future calculations, dev team.

Khisanth.2948:

Fewer people is actually better. Less chance of having people failing to CC and even if they do fail to do that it is probably less impactful if you brought a decent number of your own. People usually seem to fail to take advantage of the adrenal mushrooms as well.

They also don’t use the Exalted Assistance shrine tucked in the back corner. The more people that use it, the faster it appears and the stronger it is. Use your masteries, people!

RoxBuryNine.4210:

I hope this isn’t dumbed down.

I don’t see a reason for it to be. While the conveyance isn’t ‘great’, it’s more than sufficient to complete the instance without it. And, apparently, the NPCs tell you what to do (even if I didn’t notice. :P)

There are some great tips in this thread. I will definitely be using them. I have already re-bound the special action key. I wish I had done that sooner.

I’ll stop being lazy and do that sometime, myself. After the jade construct encounters, I really regret not having a faster keybind for it. But I’ll probably still be lazy, because I don’t want to update my .bat files. :P

He really is just a big HP sponge. That could stand to be dropped.

I’m pretty sure his Defiance bar needs a tweak as well. His vulnerable phase isn’t long enough, and I’ve never seen his bar broken because of it.

“Major nerf”, though? Maybe not. Couple of tweaks to make that fight not such a horrible slough to finish and better opportunity to CC the blue bar. That’s it. Otherwise, it’s a fine enough fight.

Amaimon.7823:

Taylor Swiftfang
self explenatory

Bonus points for it being a Charr name. }]:3

I’ll add one I saw:
Bobby Flamethrow

You think he has chef leveled?

This isn’t even the first event to leave players waiting huge chunks of time to actually participate in something.

• The wait for the bandits wasn’t too bad. 10 minutes, usually.
• The leyline anomalies were excessively long waits, and they scaled badly to group size. If I recall properly, the locations were on a 2-3 rotation.
• The ley research teams (Consortium, Inquest, Priory) were stupidly long waits.
• Now, this bloodstone animal thing. It’s not even worth hunting after, because their spawning is even more random, and they’re still on a 2-3 hour rotation.

There’s absolutely not excuse for this. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to trigger these events so people could actually participate naturally, rather than having to wiki/Dulfy it just to find out the event even exists?

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Can Largos wear backpacks? What happens if they have the white winged backpack? Will they have the white wings and the blue wings at the same time or will the blue wings go POOF each time a Largos wears any backpack? How about gliding? Wings and a glider both or only the glider?

The defining feature of that race, the giant blue wings, are incompatible with wearing a backpack or a glider. A race that can’t use major cosmetic features without turning off a defining part of it is a race that is problematic as a choice for a new race.

This is a good point. I think the easiest answer would be to lock the Largos characters out of having visible backpacks and gliders, except what their wings would naturally show. How many players would be upset with that? How difficult would it be to program that exclusion for one race when all the others would have those skins available? Even what I see as the conceptually ‘easiest’ solution (which it might not be) still brings issues for consideration….

~EW

The easiest solution is to not include Largos.

Fluffball.8307:

The argument has always been that it’s semi-wasted content. The personal story is not popular and is only played through once anyway, starter zones are something you use once and then outlevel in an hour of playing, etc. There is not much replayable content for a new race.

Perhaps several level 80 ‘starter zones’ for a new race could be interesting, and this new race starts in the end-game (for example how the Kodan live in what would be level 80 territory). The “personal story” could consist of like 8 new missions that are unique to the new race, almost like a living world update, just something to give the new race some lore. I could get behind that.

Definitely something we’d have to see with an expansion. A new starter zone/region, and the new race might have to integrate outside of the Zhaitan story track. Partially to avoid having to re-voice all those lines. Possibly even avoiding having to revoice all the Season 2 and HoT lines. A new race would have to resolve all of that first. We glossed over Revenant’s place in storyline because the class still functions with the existing voice acting (even if it’s really disjointed in lore).

And then there’s armor and modeling. As the most likely candidate is Tengu, there would still have to be work done for each piece of armor rigging, and probably other work done in cultural armors. Another gargantuan effort.

As much as I want, and would pay mucho monies on characters for, a new race, I doubt we’ll see it. Unless there’s some sneaky bit of moving the Legendary Weapons team to securing a new race for the expansion? I can hope.

Matijo.4382:

You don’t fix economy with putting more currencies, you rebalance the economy.

Of everything written above, this stands out, because it begs a single question.

How?

I’m curious for an answer that doesn’t involve creating a new faction, currency, or material farm. Because if it’s rooted purely in gold, that point was countered earlier in the thread.

So, how does one rebalance an economy?

Ayrilana.1396:

It sounds as if you were attacking the bloodstone shard thinking that destroying it would remove the shield.

Not an unreasonable assumption, given meta-gaming thought and a history of RPGs. :P
It took a short while for me to notice the faded pink-purple Counter Magic button that clued me in that I was supposed to do something else. It does sort of blend into the background, and I don’t yet have a keybind for it. (I should fix that tonight.)

To be honest, I missed any context of Marjory spewing out the fight strat, and a mishap with the bloodstone elementals before then led to me waiting for them to chip off unstable bloodstone shards, as they do elsewhere in Bloodstone Fen.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Everyone who has 30k AP has played thousands of hours (5k and up). What do you expect? Just play a another game and come back if there’s something new to do.

Best advice. If you have the newsletter going to your email, you can be pretty aware of what’s going on for content. Or just check the patch notes every week or two and hop back in whenever something catches your interest.

If anything, with the number of checklists this game has, you’re probably just running out of things you want to do. It’s understandable.

[Penguin tax]

I suppose I just don’t notice when something is “too easy,” but the latest block of Living Story has been fairly breezy. I had one frustrating KO, and that was only because the mooks of Dargonclock can’t be bothered to pull aggro while I work. As a sustain warrior, some parts of the encounters did way more damage than they should have. A minor balance issue, honestly, so overall, I can agree that the content wasn’t so difficult (for me).

As I put to another thread, I can understand how the Justicar fights might get a little baffling, but I chanced on the answer by experimentation, as gamers are want to do. :P

Redfeather.6401:

It is something that started happening in the original guild wars sometime around Eye of the North. 250 Superb Charr carvings for a mask is just one example. The franchise has been relying on it way too much.

It just feels like the only game design idea for retaining players is farming currency. Are the possibilities of game design really that limited?

If it’s not currency, then it’s faction/reputation.

Otherwise, you get currency that looks like GW2’s Karma. Overall, karma is worthless, but if they let karma be worth something, we’d have to spend it 200,000 at a time just to make a dent in our huge stores of it.

It’d be even worse if it were a gold currency. Market barons and dungeon runners would get all the good loot without dipping into actual content, and those who run the content while getting meager gold rewards would be stuck paying the costs of content set out just to fight inflation. Those with little money at all might have to resort to buying gold or leaving content areas to farm money more efficiently.

Point is, without some kind of clean slate, there is a huge imbalance between who gets rewards and who does not.

Honestly, I see some potential in the use of currencies as a way to enhance our “play as you want” ideal. It would require the addition of a currency market as a way to trade between those otherwise closed markets. Short version of the idea, think of the gem/gold trading market, but for in-game currencies, possibly trade-limited to avoid huge fluctuations (similar to the Ley Energy Converter and its once per day purchase).
Hmm, definitely a line of thought worth investigating..

Obtena.7952:

Anet has provided players multiple ways to get the reward in question.

Aside from random spirit shard drops, players can still get them by leveling in core Tyria zones, if they’ve finished all of that region’s masteries. So it’s not a complete lockout.

The raid-lock on spirit shards seems to be an unintentional consequence of an incomplete thought, rather than “trying to force players into content.” It was probably 4 lines of code total with no check on whether raid masteries were opened or not. I wouldn’t mind a fix, but I’m not hurting for shards either.

Ardid.7203:

Heart of Coal, maybe?

We’re battling Primordius, not game economists.

Serval.6458:

How could you reach her without using the exact same method to break the shields on the mobs earlier?

So, funny story. I broke the bloodstone pillars that came with the elementals.

They didn’t respawn.

I had to wait for some unstable bloodstone shards to pop out and slap the remaining elemental to break the shield in order to move on.

When I did use the counter-magic skill, I may have just been in a lucky spot, or whatever bomf effect it gave on activation broke the shield anyway, but I don’t recall any redbloodbeamofdeath breaking shields for me.
I didn’t put that together until the justicar fight, when I put it together that counter-magic gave me the redbloodbeamofdeath and that I could chain her through it.

So, yeah, I could see where people missed the mechanic. I also didn’t consider it that difficult, and it wasn’t nearly as punishing as the consequence for failing to fly off during the final Mordy fight.
/shrug

Expansion confirmed! Guild Wars 2: Heart of Fire. Cuz it’s gotta be a “Heart of” something, right?

DoctorDing.5890:

Of course, they could just remove the lock on the raid mastery altogether. What purpose does it serve?

So far, it does seem to be little more than another barrier of entry for those wanting to get into raids. Bad enough groups expect Legendary Insights and whatnot, but not even having the masteries limits grouping options even more.

Well, ANet’s stun/knockdown/CC fetish just got me killed from two short-but-just-long-enough-to-kill-me drops.

Nothing like dying randomly to bullkitten to make a map “fun”, am I right?

Pyrophobia.6592:

Thanks for the input guys. I hear what a lot of you are saying and I agree. i feel like the Greatsword is just a weapon I’m going to have to deal with, regardless if I like it or not. I just wish some of the other weapons were on its level. I remember when warhorns could convert conditions into boons and you could pretty much have permanent swiftness. I would love to have that back in the game.

I’m getting nostalgic again…

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you.

Warhorn isn’t in a terrible spot. Extra condi clear (now 2 instead of 1), but the loss of Tactics boon duration buffs is an insult to the class. :\ I got my near-permaswiftness back by clawing into Commander gear (where other classes get 10-20% for free…), so I don’t feel too bad off.

Not sure about wvw/pvp viability with warhorn, but it’s still decent in PvE group play. With the recent axe damage buff, it makes an axe/horn support warrior still do decent damage. Ish.

silvermember.8941:

Malediktus.9250:

The reward for hero challenges in HoT is not for doing them daily, but so you have an incentive to help other people doing them. No nerf needed

The rewards are not enough incentive if they aren’t anybody playing on the maps. As the game moves forward not nerfing the challenge is extremely idiotic and poor designed.

The daily rewards for helping with hero challenges are also not sufficient enough to drag players away from meta-events, and often, the hero challenges are in obnoxious spots to reach or to fight in (Tangled Depths, Balthazar). Grouping isn’t instantaneous, and waiting more than a few minutes for help isn’t good game design (blah blah manifesto “no waiting to have fun”). And if a challenge goes south, as it often does with Balthazar and his cheap kill-all attack, most people don’t even bother showing up again.

So, no, “just LFG” isn’t a sufficient response against poorly tuned hero challenges, even if there’s allegedly loot to be had for helping.

Glad I’m not the only one with this problem. I’m generally trying to enjoy the new zone, and mostly am, until I get spammed by those excessively long range skills. (Like for srs, can we have those White Mantle guys in WvW? They’re better than catapaults…) I’ve had situations where I’d land with a good third of my (warrior’s) health gone, and then a pair of White Mantle shmoes run up to me to bring a ruckus.

Speaking of the long-range warriors, can we fix the conveyance on their radial attack? The warning symbol on the ground doesn’t match the actual effect.

Agreeing with the OP on this one. Shorten the range and make stealth a viable option to get away from them.

That does bring up an interesting QoL improvement, since ANet switched away from tableaus to speech bubbles. The big problem before was that there were many tiny moving pieces that could potentially bug out if they set up break points in story instances. (I personally still think they should push to make those work, since Season 2 and the HoT opening story are pretty lengthy.)

But, it would be nice to have a keyboard command for “Skip Dialogue” just to end a current conversation line and move directly to the next. Press that several times and at least you get to your story faster (and without dealing with wuvvywuvvy Kasjory).