Guild Wars 2

Didn’t get through all the comments, but I love what I read from the OP.
A few tweaks are necessary, for balance, but I love it.

1. Stack limit. Get 25 stacks of the Area Hero buff for maximum rewards. Maybe even have the buff scale more sharply toward the top.
2. Find a way to give greater rewards to people in less populated zones. Suddenly, those mid-level zones will get a lot more love~
3. If not money, add +1% Magic/Gold Find as a buff while in the zone instead.

We need more rewarding event chains, too. End them in boss fights (Ulgoth) or unique vendors with gear skins (Arah, but less painful).

I really hope the devs see and act on this idea. I’ve been musing of ways to make open world and dynamic events more interesting again.

Aidenwolf.5964:

I’ll use small words as you’ve (oops used a conjunction there)(oops again conjunction means a combined word) misread what should have been very simply understood. My issue is with how precursors are RNG based drops. I’ve never asked for anything for free. L2R.

You meant “contraction”, but I’ll (there’s one!) forgive it. As it is, we really should be getting minor progress tokens for it, instead of hoping for one really lucky score.

Example:
We should get Precursor Fragments per Mystic Forge fusion (0-1 per Rare used or 1 per Exotic). Now these can be put directly into a formula similar to the one below:
250 Precursor Fragments (indicating significant investment
1 Exotic weapon of the precursor desired (to guide the transmute)
250 Philosopher Stones (or 25 skill points, of which there is a huge glut for long-time characters)
1 Writ of [Precursor’s name] (new item with the actual formula for the precursor, purchasable from a weapon vendor for karma)

And, bam, done. Between the various proposed costs (karma, skill points, and gold), with an eventually guaranteed result, you’d have players snapping up rares and exotics off Black Lion faster than ever.

Let’s make Evon happy for once and get this solution in place, eh?

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m a crafter but since my 2 crafts (jeweler and cook) are the only crafts that won’t be upgraded, ascended is useless unless they allow for selling it.

So maybe they’ll have Ascended cooking recipes from Bloodstone Dust? A guy can hope.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Excuse me, if my idea will sound a bit weird, but why not accomplish that by adding marriage?

Someone’s been watching Sword Art Online~

Wildstar is going to succeed because it’s got a very, very robust endgame, something that GW2 lacks, sadly. :\

I tried the beta and wasn’t impressed, though. I didn’t like Wildstar’s aesthetic (75% of the races were boring!), it rolls around in the old musk of two-faction PvP/story, and it felt more “traditional” as an MMO while having this stolen veneer of GW2’s more active combat system.

Honestly, if GW2 devs would (listen to us and) develop a more robust endgame experience, this game would be topping charts again.

Or for Six’s sake, unbind the Bloodstone Dust. Everyone has fifteen stacks of the stuff.

So, PvPers can get dungeon tokens and Ascended materials by doing PvP. That’s a thing.

Does that mean I can get PvP tokens by performing a finisher on Toxic Alliance Sylvari? Because I should, seriously.

Hyperbole, yes, but with GW2 seeming to stress “play a little bit of everything and get rewards,” why is it that PvP gets this sudden boost, while I still have to watch third-party website boss timers to get the same thing?

I’d fully accept “run dungeons for a PvP token” as a solution. It’d give me one more reason to go into them.

Nerelith.7360:

I think I may have been unclear, so let me explain. Having a few HUGE attacks that are totally avoidable, by simply dodging, because the Mob telegraphs the attack, means all you need do is dodge.

By reducing the damage of attacks,. so that they do not " One shot" players..but Increasing the frequency…. you keep the damage / time constant, while at the same time delivering More blows than can be completely avoided by the dodge mechanic.

Suddenly retaliation, and Protection has value. Suddenly having toughness In armor has value, suddenly having vitality has value.

This. It’s okay to have attacks that punish, but too often in GW2, there are attacks that are pretty much OHK. If an attack knocks me down to 20% of my life, I panic. I scramble. I do something. The point is I do something. I get a chance to make up for the mistake, to recover, and stay in the fight. Being made insta-dead is frustrating, not fun, and just plain cheap. It’s based on old-school mechanics that should be left behind.

Big question is, how do we make other builds more viable?
Increase the condition cap on world bosses. I can make one character that bleeds for 11 stacks. 25 stacks is a joke. 100 stacks is at least reasonable for a group of 20. If duration is an issue, have those bosses cut durations so that more players can contribute.
There’s a troubling rumor I’ve heard: Crit damage doesn’t apply to bosses? If this is false, ignore. If it’s true, this is ridiculous. Two of the most prevalent builds are Condition and Crit.
As it is, the best builds for non-PvP content are Power/Toughness builds.

Sir Arthur.8905:

I think why you see so many duplicate threads is because the searching, navigation, and overall organization of the forums is… not optimal.

99% of the time, I have no idea where to put a post, and when that happens I try to use search…. and that just never goes well.

Truth. I go looking for posts to petition a change in the silk market, and I get told there’s “no posts”? I have to go “lolwut” at that. The silk change was incredibly insulting, and I’m sure the community had many good ideas, that I can’t see now, because the search engine is lazy-lazy.

Two words: Jade Maw. Kitten that place, for srs.

Beat that event with a gun, a dagger, and a pair of gloves entact. :P

I’d totally buy it for 800 gems per character if it came with a /yournameisdumbpleasegodieinafire emote.

Seriously though, the game does need some more emotes. There’s a few that don’t come up with errors but also don’t do anything, so there’s something there waiting to be let loose.

It’d be pretty interesting if they took the destroyed Lion’s Arch and gave us the chance to rebuild in it with an actual player housing area. Because flopping into one of the major towns for a “home instance” isn’t all that interesting, in spite of me having 3 different material nodes and the skill point crystal. :\

Sawnic.6795:

The proper fix would be either remove the buff (which I would like to avoid) or add a buff during P2 that does a reflect on raw damage, but reduced damage reflection if it’s a DoT-applying skill.

Considering that making boons/conditions a specialized thing is actually very simple (Miasma, etc), they could have made a Condition Retaliation buff during that phase. So, if condition players are willing to manage/sacrifice HP to continue with afflictions, they can, but it also doesn’t completely cut out their ability to do white damage with their skills that also inflict conditions.

As it is, right now, there are certain classes/weapons/builds that can’t even auto-attack because they’ll drop from the backlash.

And for those who say “switch builds l2p”, I recommend attending several hours of game design courses. Or at least look up the concept of “agency” in gaming, then realize [why] standing around dodging for an entire boss phase is unacceptable.

Thing is, there’s nothing, not a kitten thing, that ANet or any MMO developer can do that will stop the inevitable march of content locusts.

Thing is, once they’re done, they coast for a little while, then they come back with the next shiny.

I’d certainly love to see a 3-week rotation. That gives me time to hit content at a good pace, and then I can go back to achieving other goals, like Ascended gear or dungeon/fractal diving. As it is, right now, my 1-to-3 hours of play time per day goes to finishing dailies and trying to get one shot at LS content.

Just one extra week of breathing room would do wonders.

I realize this has been talked to death, but somewhere I started hearing rumors that maybe, just maybe, ANet was going to slow down their content patches to give the non-obsessives some time to finish things.

And yet, I’m still seeing the same old, tiring behavior as they continue to the finish of Living Story, season 1.

Here’s to hoping season 2 is actually paced well and interesting enough to warrant three- or four-week rotations.

Flissy.4093:

But if there is a phase that needs heavy conditions, it’s unfair to Berserker players as they need to respec too.

…Whut? Any character with a ‘zerk build still has skills that can do conditions. Their auto-attacks still work and won’t get them killed.

Reflecting conditions when some people can generate 12 stacks of bleeding or 8 stacks of confusion on their own is just asinine.

Condition damage/duration is 20% of the build options on the trait lines. Several classes are much more highly dependent on CC and condition damage than others. The reflect condition phase is just insulting.

It really is disturbing that the devs refuse to acknowledge and adjust things for how people and zergs actually perform. When conditions are well more than half the game, why would they decide that reflecting them is a sane, fair option, especially when there are autoattacks that do it?

It’s bad enough that a heavy-CC build is generally crippled by champions, but hearing this just makes me question whether some devs need to be let go for some vacation time. Apparently, the two-week schedule is causing panic attacks that make things like the above seem like good ideas.

Not so much a bug issue as something I’d like to see done.

When authenticating by email, the window to receive and respond isn’t quite long enough to account for a potentially sluggish email. I find myself clicking refresh repeatedly, just so I can beat the time limit.

As it is, I usually have to retry two or more times just to access from a location that’s “new”.

Thanks, Zaxares and Zanshin. I’d still love to get some dev presence here, or a link to somewhere it’s been addressed.

I have to wonder the circumstances you guys have seen it succeed? Very small groups? Earlier in the event cycle?

If it’s any kind of example, I’ve been a part of 5- to 10-man teams that tackled a world boss faster than a map-full zerg. If it’s group size that’s a problem, then the events need to be tuned to right-size to the active player count. And future events should be sure that there’s never just one or two active events in place.

Since the miasma is supposed to eventually overwhelm the players and lock of the zone, I figure that the later miasma events might be rigged to be unbeatable in the time frame. Thematically apropos, but bad form to include something that can’t be beaten in a situation where players are supposed to invest time in interacting with it.

To be more specific, I’m talking about the Miasma events in the current Living World. (Way too late to be talking about it but… anyway.)
I have yet to see one completed, not even close.

I’m not expecting a group to just roll over the enemies, and I think introducing Elite level mobs in place of Champions is a good idea. It becomes a problem when the only things in the area are Veteran+, with nearly half of them being Elite.
This wouldn’t even be a problem, except the group size I was looking at was maybe ten (10) people.

Elites seem to be tuned for about 3-5 people, and that’s cool. But when there’s barely enough people to deal with a full set of veteran mobs and maybe one or two elites, why are 3+ of these superpowered HP-sinks showing up?

While I realize that zergs need to be curbed and/or catered, can ANet please do something about how it treats group sizes? We shouldn’t have to be on Vent/TeamSpeak/etc and managing group sizes to very specific magic numbers in order to get the enemy clusters to be manageable.

[Cross-posted, as I really would like the community to ponder this.]

One of my biggest drags about GW2 right now? Conditions.

Okay, so that was a bit melodramatic. =P

Whether it’s WvW, PvP, or PvE, using a cooldown skill to ditch a condition (or a half-dozen conditions) feels like a waste half the time, because some mob or its friend is going to slap you with the exact same status or a host of different ones.

One the one hand, this means that being able to dodge at the right time, position, etc. is highly important. On the other, it’s terribly annoying when you get buried under the same debilitating statuses.

What I would suggest is a brief (maybe even just 1 second, one precious second) immunity to conditions after you clear them.

Because, and I’ll be honest, I want to actually be able to control my character while I’m playing. ANet’s enemy design seems ridiculously focused on enemies piling on CC (Aetherblades being the most atrocious offenders), and the AI does so with no reservation, which leads to mass stuns (from WvW hammer warriors, which I play :P) or Zojja’s Blind Bomb Barrage in Twilight Arbor (I think).

So, I pose the discussion to the community for pros, cons, and tips for implementation.

One of my biggest drags right now? Conditions.

Okay, so that was a bit melodramatic. =P

Point is, whether it’s WvW, PvP, or PvE, using a cooldown skill to ditch a condition (or a half-dozen conditions) feels like a waste half the time, because some mob or its friend is going to slap you with the exact same status or a host of different ones.

One the one hand, this means that being able to dodge at the right time, position, etc. is highly important.

On the other, it’s terribly annoying when you get buried under the same debilitating statuses.

Did it follow you into the water? o_O

That’s usually the easiest way to ditch a ground-based thing you’re not interested in dealing with.

Said before by others above, but it bears repeating:

There’s no point in making new skills or weapon sets if they’re not supported well enough to be “good” options, or if they invalidate others.

Sadly, most of my utility skills go toward status removal, as that is a huge part of the GW2 end-game meta. It leaves me with little else to put on my bars. And the PvP meta is pretty much “tack on as much stun/daze as you can,” so there’s little build variety there, either.

While I appreciate the idea of having to make some tough build decisions, there really should be some skills that are actually competitive in relation to others, (the concept of ‘incomperables’ notwithstanding.)

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

And we need to have more weapons available for the proffessions, like giving greathammers to engineers, rifles to elementalists and nerfbats to warriors.

While I don’t agree with the nerfbats, I lol’d anyway. golf clap

tagari.3915:

I like my characters equally,I’ve tried all professions in the game.. I might resume leveling my warrior since it’s gonna be easier as blanger mentioned and I see around forum .By the way, is the staff mesmer still viable?

I find staff to be better for larger situations, like world bosses, since it’s more about AoE and support.

Blanger.3162:

IMHO…. Finish out your warrior, it’s your highest level toon and should get you back up to speed in playing the game, it’s a very forgiving class.

While I love most of the classes, Warrior was my first for getting through content. With good survivability, damage, and support, it’s a great class for adjusting to the game before going on to more versatile classes like Elementalist

Young Somalia.1706:

I really like soloing Mark II Golem; it might take 2 minutes?

I hate zerging Mark II with an audience of 1200-range autoattackers. I could be there from Dusk til Dawn.

I’ve noticed this effect. I did Mark II with about 6 people, murdered it in around 2 minutes with some banners and a rifle. A full complement of people shows up, and I’m shooting for 5 minutes straight.

To raise the level cap at all, they’d have to consider a ton of stuff, and “gear” has been chanted considerably. There’s also power creep in the trait builds. It’s nice to have those build options, but at the same time, an extra 10 levels could cause some huge balance issues.
Assuming they keep the trait point system the same at all. We could see entire trait lines added/removed/redefined with more or less points than the current system. Long-time WoW players are definitely used to this.

echo.2053:

Lol the funny part of it is that you go to these events and just see 20-30 zerkers get laid out by an attack. Fact your of less use dead or in down state then that person in blues. Then let’s be truly honest with ourselves with how easy and cheap it is to obtain exotics, even rares at the very least you are waaaay over exaggerating some one being in blues lol.

It just reminds me of my favorite saying: “Dead DPS don’t.”
I’ve pulled plenty of victories out of near-wipe situations just because my warrior can ignore and survive over half of the game’s damage mechanics. (Of course, he’s fully kitted in only “measly” Exotic gear. Woe. ;_;)

A few months ago, I contributed to get my buddies into GW2, just so they could try it out. It ultimately wasn’t the game for them (because no-holy-trinity-qq). But there was a rather stark observation that was made to me, and it hit me like a truck when I heard it.

There aren’t enough monsters in the game.

Worse still, they all look alike. (Except maybe moas, the rainbow-colored dorks :P)

So, even if you went to a different zone, you were fighting, more or less, the same monsters all over. As a helpful tip to keep things interesting, ANet should consider making their encounters feel more different from zone to zone.

Thoughts?

So, point is, if you’re “overflowing” with Dragonite ore, you’re doing content that gives Dragonite. Which means either doing some of the lucrative content (Marionette fight’s been good to me), or watching boss timers to show up at their semi-random event times (I loathe it, personally, but whatever works…).

I’d rather not be relying on 3rd party content just to get something the game strongly hints that I should have.

yksdoris.2194:

ooh ooh! a l80 aquabreather!

no, seriously, I like titles so that would be fun For the rest I really don’t care.

Don’t tease me! I want that exotic/ascended breather! ;_;

Xia.3485:

Since the content is balanced around rares / exotic armors (besides worm?) I don’t really feel like there’s a grind. Sure I got my legendary and it was a long process.. but I didn’t need it.. I wanted it. Same goes for ascended armor. Don’t feel I need it, but eventually I’ll want it.

And that’s the right attitude to have. Grats on the Legendary.

TChalla.7146:

Tanking doesn’t make tactical sense. If I’m being attacked by a heavy armored person and a light armored person, logically I’m going to take out the light armored person first, since they’re easier to hit and kill, halving the amount of attacks I’m having to try and dodge.

When you go after a veteran monster in game, and there are normal monsters there as well who join in on trying to kill you, do you continue to attack the veteran or do you take out the trash first?

Same principle.

True enough. There is plenty more to consider to mimic “intelligent” behavior, then boil it down to a number.

So, to add to the above, other games add additional high-threat mechanics as incentive to keep attacking a ‘tank’. And I’m not talking about WoW’s antiquated “taunt,” either. Other games include bonus damage for attacking from behind (like some of the Ranger skills), crowd control, etc. At that point, the target has to decide between the target he CAN hit and the one he can’t get to.

Which means that CC-heavy characters could basically be “threat-builders.” Because heaven knows I gun right for certain annoying-kitten Aetherblades the moment they start their CC-spam.

Jski.6180:

But that not NEED RNG that more of WANT RNG in other mmorpg you have to first get a drop make sure that the drop is the one you can use becuse it could be for other classes and other builds and then you have to RNG roll for it vs other ppl. That is a treadmill RNG that is far worst then a WANT RNG that in GW2. That the thing there is no treadmill in GW2 the gear has no real effect on your ability to kill harder mobs you can run the top level events in greens all but one extremely high event and that event was made for ppl who want that type of play.

When ppl talk about RNG and grind you need to compare it to other like games and that is other mmorpg. When you look at games like ESO (is a slow grind game) and Wild star (is going to be a raid treadmill endgame) you will find that GW2 is the most easy to the top then the others and is the easy getting the gear you need. You can call getting level 2 in GW2 a grind if you want but to have nothing to compare it to the statement means nothing. So just stating its grindly or it RNG with nothing but the statement your saying effectively nothing.

Nooot even sure what you’re going with there.

I do just fine in the exotics I’ve made for myself, and I’m casually building up to various ascended mastery with my alts.

To be honest, I doubt have an issue with the Legendary crawl (99.5% world map, arglblargh) if they just made precursors craftable, as they said they would. It wouldn’t even have to be an easy precursor, just possible without having to spend 400-2000 gold or getting imperiously lucky on world drops/Mystic Forge. Heck, make it a Mystic Forge recipe: 4 specialty items that cost laurels, skill points, dragonite, and gold, blend that into one “precursor” item, then forge that with 3 exotics of the same type, and cheer your new precursor weapon.

Not necessary, obviously. I do just fine with my hammer, anyway, but it evens things out, at least.

Death Prosecutor.8713:

ANET’s prerelease hype, “we’re going to get away from grind” (GW/grind). Now we have ascended armor / FOTM GRIND. What a prerelease con. A bit hypocritical It would seem.

Yeah, they really did go for the “no gear treadmill / no grind” hype. I can understand why they skewed away from it, and they’ve only added one gear step, but that gear step is a hideous, obvious grind intended more for controlling the economy instead of making a player feel accomplished or giving a variety of things to do.

What I’d like to see is better actual “tanking” for GW2, which means having better aggro rules.

Set priorities toward:
High armor
Melee attackers
High HP

Set priorities away from:
Range
Low HP/Armor
and the coup de grace, DOWNED STATUS.

Because it’s kittening annoying to be downed with four other people beating on the boss, but still being the sole focus of its overpowered attacks. [/rant]

Of course, when I say priority, that’s not to say a boss shouldn’t go for thieves and elementalists, but it should be a surprise. Also, if a smart melee character backs off to heal, someone else should be picking up the aggro.

I love that GW2 washed the holy trinity, because it means that everyone can just LFG a party and go, not wait on a 30-40 minute queue for one dungeon. But the aggro equations REALLY need tweaking.

Reeeally wish they’d make one that’s equivalent to at least a Fine salvage kit. Basic kit is a bit insulting (to me, anyway), but to have some of the higher drop chances would be worth the gem investment.

wink, nudge, ANet

Jski.6180:

Look at the other mmorpgs to put what you have to do for Ascended armor in contexts. In most of them you have to work off of an RNG to get the right armor to drop on more of a treadmill type system or an RNG of the ability to get the recipes to craft it. That and the “NEED” for ascended armor vs the need for other games top level armor. Even the new games will have a worst need for top level gear and the ability to get the gear will be much more grindly in that there will be more of a treadmill effect. GW2 still is the most casual game when it comes to getting loot and getting the “best” gear.

It has been pretty easy to get best-in-slot gear. Until Ascended gear showed up, but it’s not that huge a performance jump.
As for confronting the (o so loathsome) RNG, just try making a Legendary weapon. RNG for the precursor (when we were promised crafting months ago), RNG x777 for the Mystic Clovers, etc, etc.
I don’t mind the treadmill, because I have no sense of urgency to get the tippy-top gear, and already have an ascended hammer. What I do mind is the utterly inane things I have to do to grind out some of the materials: the biggest sin of which is having to use 3rd-party sites for boss timers so I can farm dragonite ore. (Though, if they keep using it as incentive like they did for Marionette, I’m still game~)

Xia.3485:

Rauderi.8706:

dustinharlin.8693:

If you’re told to stack on a tag you kittening stack.

Among everything else I’ve seen from this post… Am I being trolled?

They have a command to check resource and count the players within a small radius of them. Stacking on a commander at marionette allows him to count the whole lane quickly and efficiently.

Its sad that people who don’t understand believe those who do are “trolling” or being stupid.

Ah, so that’s what that was about. Shame that no commander could ever actually say that and just assumes everyone who didn’t shell out the 100G for a tag would know. Sad, really, since being an effective communicator is important for being an actual commander.

dustinharlin.8693:

If you’re told to stack on a tag you kittening stack.

Among everything else I’ve seen from this post… Am I being trolled?

A commander should be able to have a solid rationale for everything he does, not just “I read it on Dulfy. Go read Dulfy.” Don’t blame people for not wanting it bad enough if you don’t want it bad enough to guide new talent into doing the job right. It’s as simple as keeping a text file and doing a copy/paste to convey some information.

To highlight a few gripes not seen here yet:

1. Armor designs. Usually a relatively minor gripe, but seriously folks, give the Charr places for their tails. And pants. Four-pawed things will trip on robes and the like.

2. Speaking of trips, knockdowns, and assorted stuns… ANet, please, PLEASE, tone down your inane love of NPCs with hideous crowd control skills. In PvP, it’s generally okay, usually no more than 2 seconds (which is scary enough!).
But there are things out there with 3-5 second stuns/KDs on rather short cooldowns that exceed what we can normally manage with stun breakers. And now, as proof of not listening to good design decisions, the Aetherblade Elementalists in Edge of the Mists have a high damage daze-spam attack? I don’t even have words for this, only rage.

shaquinna.2869:

You know what really grinds my gears?

The attitude of the champ train in Queensdale.

I hang around in Queensdale sometimes to assist new players. And I cannot believe how many people get flamed at for starting a pre-event (like the boar or the troll) or attacking a champion.

I lot of these people just started a new game and are minding their own business, trying to experience something new. And that new thing is getting flamed at or seeing others get flamed at in the map chat. In a map that is destined to learn new players their ways, these new players have to follow orders from others not do an event or attack something they want because of a zerg that’s running it. With the penalty of a long shaming and ‘noobing’ situation.

Do not misunderstand me, people can have their champ train I really don’t mind. But take new players (and other players in general) into consideration when you perform a champ train in a ‘starting area’.

The other thing that bothers me:

Dungeon levels. It has come to a fact that you need to be level 80 to be able to join a group or you get kicked instantly (do you have level 80? – no? – Kick) You rarely find a nice group for (for example) Ascalonian Catacombs with people who accept you at the required level. Perhaps if you have some friends or a guild you can go with….

I understand the pro’s of being level 80 all too well. And I realize getting a full level 35 group trough AC exp can (and probably will) be a pain in the bottoms. That’s why this bothers me so much in the first place..

(I don’t mind hardcore linkyourgear-groups, everyone has his/her own playstyle, I’ts just not mine so I do not join those groups

So much this. I generally find the champ train a little distasteful, but kitten if I won’t use it myself. I realize there’s no controlling the zerg with a “wait up” prompt (go fast or go home, kiddos), but trying to pry the location out of a champ train or the path is like pulling your own teeth, if you’re new to it. It’s at least helpful to have a commander put his flag up.

But yes, I’ve seen a lot of toxic, hostile people on champ trains and the more elaborate world boss fights. Which is why I put Map Chat on a completely separate tab.

I’ll admit that I come back for the Living Story. I’ll also admit that the shallow-content 2-week rotation was causing some major burnout. Especially when it seemed like they were more excuses to sell special RNG-chests on the Trading Company.

I appreciate that there’s fresh content. But once per month, thanks. It gives me a strong reason to come back, poke around at something new, then go do other things. Like farm mats for Ascended gear or peek my head in WvW. Or play another MMO without feeling bitter that GW2 is baiting me. (I’m close to “done” with one of them, and I’d like to finish that soon. :P)

So, I’ve seen a lot of banter about the word “instance” in regards to some of the world bosses, and it got me thinking. What if ANet set up instance points much like most of the other personal story or dungeon entrances, but it led to a separate opt-in-only zone for that server?
It might help deal with the accusations of players being “explore-only” or “AFK” if you had to join the instance fight after it started.

(Gah, I hope I’m explaining this well at all.)

So, example, an update tweak to Tequatl. Instead of just plop-he-shows-up, run some pre-events to announce that it’s going to open (10-15 minutes tops should do, just to confirm people are round), and then when it’s confirmed that people are available, open the instance point for people to jump in. That leads to a border-enforced zone (like in Personal Story instances) with a short lead-up to the boss fight (3-5 minutes of small skirmishes).

This would hedge out the loafers and give groups that want to dive in and help a focal point to do so.

Hoping it’s not just a wistful thought, so are there any devs or players willing to chime in?

Delvoire.8930:

I’ve completed the Marionette event ONLY on overflows. There is no guarantee that you will win on your native server.

Also, what’s wrong with overflow? Instead of just playing with people from your own server, you are playing with a larger base of the GW2 community. I personally like that.

Yeah, I’ve seen better oh-so-close overflow runs than on Sanctum of Rall (which BOMBED the Marionette fight). Turns out, better commanders from the entire community can show up in overflow servers.

I was wondering about that too. I was looking around for a dead Marjory’s Helper Dee, in case maybe (s)he got mauled by a stray bear or something. No person. I went to the chest site. No chest or chest marker.

= And we got no notice of this. =

So much for “permanent content,” ANet.

And I really liked that chest, too. It gave Dragonite, so I didn’t have to chase world boss timers around.

I’m with Tumult on this one. Maybe I’m a tad spoiled by other games and their transparency (WoW being the most refined of them).

It’s actually a bit of a slap in the face to have the game constantly hold back for the devs to have the “I’m so clever. Don’t you think I’m clever?” moments. And the level of coordination required is beyond all but the most organized of guilds. Sadly, they take one or two successes by high-pop guilds or Blackgate as a standard, when that kind of performance is FAR beyond the capabilities of the normal player base.

I have less complaint about the channeled skills and stealth. What gets to me as a huge annoyance is a single target skill that follows me after I’m in stealth. It should drop the target and stop following. If the enemy turns with it (PvP) and still thumps the air I happen to be in, that’s fine, but in PvE this behavior is really just friggin’ annoying.