Guild Wars 2

I think this’d be a great idea. They could have a big tally at the week’s end and you can see how many people you killed, how many objectives you captured, so on and you get a big box based on how much stuff you did and how well your server placed.

Ohoni.6057:

I think you believe that you have a logical position here. Let me try to explain why this is not true.

Say there are two children, and an adult. One of the children is given five cookies. The other child is given six cookies. The one who only receives five cookies asks if he could have a 6th cookie as well. The adult replies that this is no trouble, he has plenty of cookies, and begins to offer one to the child. The child who already has six cookies starts to yell.

“You can’t give him another cookie! I’m the one with six cookies, I’m special! If you let him have six cookies too, then I won’t feel special anymore! You’re taking away my special feelings!”

But that child does not deserve to feel more special than the other, they both deserve to feel special, and they both deserve an equal number of cookies. If the child with six cookies can only feel special if he has things that the other child does not, then he is a naughty child, and does not deserve to be validated for his negative feelings.

u already have 6 cookies bro
one is just a flavor you dont like
other kid’s doin fine with that flavor cos he’s a champ

Ohoni.6057:

We all know how long the lead time is between ANet deciding to do something and when it actually launches

Considering the release of HoT (23rd Oct) and the release of the April patch which corrected the HoT reward rate (19th April) we can safely assume the lead time on these corrections is roughly 6 months.

How, precisely, is this logic ‘extremely faulty’ considering the raid reward model is much less complex than the reward models for the 4 HoT zones and thus a ‘fix’ would take far less time?

Ohoni.6057:

. . .and yet you worry, so very much.

not an argument

I’m sorry but I’m not going to go through that post word by word. One paragraph is hard enough to dissect, let alone five.

Long story short, ANet uses a breadth of analytical tools so they can tell who is leaving and why. They have large presences in both the official forums and third-party websites to gather feedback. They gather data constantly about what players are doing. They have employees whose job is to parse and analyze player feedback and statistics.

Your assertion that a middle-of-the-road, pleases everyone solution is the best answer is the result of GIGO. You have no data from which to draw conclusions and you openly refuse to accept conclusions provided from people with way more data than you.

Ohoni.6057:

People quitting is in no way an objective metric of any one game system.

So you’ve just kinda stumbled right out the gate here by saying this. If this were true, ANet would not be able to conclusively say that raids have helped player retention.

But they did say that, so what’s going on?

Ohoni.6057:

People don’t quit over any single system, they quit because of multiple elements interacting. Determining exactly why people quit in a very complex calculation,

So assuming this is right, it’s not really very complex. You just count up the reasons people quit and then you look at which reason occurs the most often and tada, you have your culprit.

One of those reasons was the lack of difficult content. That’s why raids were implemented.

Ohoni.6057:

but just counting people who ragequit stating a single issue as the reason is meaningless.

This is a reductionist strawman.

Making them elites and champs wouldn’t actually make them harder, it’d just make them take longer

Ohoni.6057:

It’s not a matter of people quitting over it, it’s a matter of whether they are fully satisfying their customers. If they can launch a relatively simple change that would satisfy a lot of players, then they should do so.

So basically instead of using this objective metric (because you know as well as anyone else does that raids are helping with player retention) you want to move to this subjective metric that ultimately doesn’t really have much bearing on anything.

I am somewhat confused as I’m mostly a solo/small group roamer in T1 and I don’t think I have any trouble contributing. The demand for this play exists and that demand is being filled in the current game.

You’ve given me a lot to work with, Swagger, I really like that.

Swagger.1459:

Problem

Some Conditions are damage over time (dot) damage that have status effects tied to them correct? Yes, so what’s the problem here? Well, players are hit with direct damage, critical damage, Condition dot damage PLUS all the status effects from CC skills… Those are way too much when combined from one player, let alone multiple players.

Solution

The Toughness stat should reduce “soft” Condition dot damage and status effect duration as well.

This is just a straight boost to Toughness which I’m not necessarily convinced it needs. Bunkers can already be very hard to bust; I don’t see why they need to become even more unbustable.

Swagger.1459:

Problem

Individual builds are capable of applying multiple different “soft” Conditions and status effects over and over and over… and that is too much.

Solution

Add more and improve current Condition removal skills, and tie in immunity timers to Condition removal skills.

This first one I like; the idea of buffing condi removal skills. There are tons of unused skills that could be beefed up with condi removal and CD lowering, which seems to broadly be a good idea considering they were implemented when there were less condis in the game.

The second one- adding Resistance to more utility skills?- I am not so sure about. It’s interesting, I’ll give it that, but it’d need to be given to specific places and specific classes.

Swagger.1459:

Problem

The rate at which you can be hit by “hard” Control skills vastly outweighs resistances and Stun Breaks.

Solution

Add more and improve “hard” Control resistance skills. Add immunity timers after you manually Stun Break and also when the effect ends naturally if you were not able to use a Stun Break.

I disagree on this one. We don’t want to push the game into a position where you always have as many or more defensive options than your opponent has offensive options. Fights have to end.

Swagger.1459:

Immunity Timer Stuff

The below quote is about the immunity timers that City of Heroes implemented in pvp…

“Every time a character recovers from a Hold, Immobilize, Disorient, Sleep, or Fear status, that character becomes immune to all five of those effects from other players for 15 seconds. Every time a character suffers a Knockdown, Knockback, or Knockup effect, that character becomes immune to all three of those effects from other players for 10 seconds. These two timers are independent. It should be noted that Confuse effects, while technically mezzes, are on a separate 15-second timer than the other mezzes listed above.”

So let’s tailor the above quote for GW2… The basic gist is that a character goes on an immunity timer to all “soft” Conditions after using removal skills and “hard” Control effects after the effect ends or the player uses a Stun Breaker. Moa must finally go into this “hard” Control category as well.

For “soft” Conditions there are two ways to do it…

First is an immunity timer on a 1 cleanse-1 condition basis.

Or

Immunity timers to groups of “soft” Conditions. Some grouping examples below…

Group 1… Blind, Confusion, Vulnerability and Weakness.

Group 2… Chilled, Crippled, Immobilize and Slow.

Group 3… Bleeding, Burning, Poison and Torment.

The direct damage from weapons and skills that produce these Control and Condition effects remain unchanged.

So this is diminishing returns.

I wouldn’t like this as a base system but I think it could be interesting to add traits which function like this to some of the unpopular traitlines. Gain resistance/stability when x/y

Swagger.1459:

Visual Indication of Immunity Timers

Visual indicators can be assigned to a character in the form of auras and an icon on the UI so both player(s) and attacker(s) know that CC immunity timers are in effect.

So basically, bigger tells for Resistance and Stability. Resistance already has a huge tell but Stability could use one.

Swagger.1459:

Balancing Damage

Condition damage and status effects will be reduced following these suggestions, so I would like to suggest increasing direct damage from weapons designed more for condition application.

This is more complicated than you give it credit.

I think it could be interesting seeing EotM as a ‘serious’ map since at the moment it’s mostly karma train food.

game’s trying to tell you that your char needs a makeover

Maybe “Advance!” instead of “Retreat!”

I’m not bothered by it though and it takes VA work to fix

Nah it’s not dying. It’s chilling for a bit because no new content, but it’s not dying. I’m expecting the game’ll light up like a christmas tree with the next patch, provided there’s plenty of content.

Allison The Strange.4519:

Anyone who says tiers is a bad thing needs to find the door and get out.

This is usually not a strong strategy when it comes to convincing people to read the rest of your post.

Turamarth.3248:

And how would you define a wvwer?

I love threads in which the first post is a slam dunk

Seriously though it seems like anyone who dislikes the results of a poll just defines “wvwer” as anyone who agrees with them and everyone who disagrees with them, including and especially when their opinions are losing by a supermajority, is conveniently “not a wvwer”.

If you don’t want your duels getting interrupted, take them to OS ;x

Actually, just had a thought

10 supply kit which creates a bomb which does heavy siege damage and applies vulnerability

I know it’ll take a lot of work, so it doesn’t quite fit the subject, but…

Old ABL with the Quaggans!

Celestial Blind reaper with Flock runes and Sigil of Mischief, take every trait that buffs Blind and Chill, toast people by instantly applying 4 conditions every time you switch weapons or 4 conditions when they hit you on a 10 second cd

Artemis Thuras.8795:

With a balance patch quite possibly coming on tuesday that may happen.

I would be utterly amazed if we didn’t see new runes/sigils/statsets in the next patch considering we haven’t seen a single one since HoT

Why? For the most part WvW is fine and the extremities in balance are caused by extreme runesets and sigils. Why not just prune those runesets or sigils down or create build variety by providing more runesets or sigils?

That’s a shame, I was really hoping we’d be seeing it in this coming update. Still, thankyou for the heads up. Hopefully we can see it again ASAP.

Moyayuki.3619:

Now, with LWS3, it sounds like the raid will be heavily referenced, unlike the dungeons of core Tyria.

If the villain is Caudecus, which is pretty likely, then you can expect some references to CM.

Would rather they focus on building fractals out of other content (Toxic Hybrid boss when?) than raids.

Belenwyn.8674:

Next week we see the same comments about portable mortars.

Portable mortars might actually be interesting just because Concussive Barrage could be super funny if you use it on a wall.

Jeknar.6184:

You don’t build Trebs for somenthing you can hit with catas. Why would you build a cannon for somenthing that you can hit with a ballista?

Cannons and ballistas have the same, or similar, range. I don’t see them having distinct enough roles for the cannon to be worth adding, and the distinctions which do exist (cannon has a blast radius) make the cannon blatantly better at ballista’s job than ballista.

If you can explain how they’re actually different that’d be great. Truisms don’t help.

If you have a cannon I am not sure why you would ever use a ballista. I don’t think that they would be a healthy addition to the game with this in mind.

minions are stupid. shoot them with your longbow or w/e and pull them around a corner for easy cleaving, and the necro will either be forced out of position to maintain pressure or they will lose their minions

Vicroth.3514:

So then, why exactly is it, that if I play engineer, and cast a super elixir on the elixir gun, then use a Rocket charge on hammer, I get 8 seconds of light aura? But Mesmer is locked into 4 seconds of chaos armor?

That may be a specific element of Light Aura, because Light Aura is the weakest Aura.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

What new plays does revenant get?

boon slave

Regon Phoenix.8215:

What new plays does thieves get?

mario

Regon Phoenix.8215:

What new plays does mesmet get?

all the quickness

now theoretically what new playstyle does your elite spec give?

melee minion master? but we have that already, it’s MM reaper or core necro
melee condition hybrid? but we have that already, it’s hybrid reaper
melee power damage? reaper and core necro

outside of style changes what can you do to make people play this elite spec? here is the answer:

Regon Phoenix.8215:

3) Every X sec remove all blind, immobilize, cripple, slow, chill and weakness effects from yourself. Gain might if this effects removes any condition.

this is far far better than the reaper trait that does the same job and is in the exact same position in the tree and it’s even arguably better than Diamond Skin and it’s an adept trait. the answer was blatant power creep

do people share their API or do they share their gw2efficiency page

the issue with ‘unsafe’ API use is that you can just create a site which protects the unsafe parts of the API while presenting the information you want presented

Yeah it’s really difficult to tell what that means from those quotes. I assumed that their planned changes would be so that you wouldn’t need to make a choice between Versatile +7 AR Infusions and +5/+5 infusions and that they’d do something to resolve that. idk

Ohoni.6057:

But again, even players that are more casual would like to have the best possible chances of clearing the content, and any significant class imbalance makes that more difficult for them if the class they have is a poor performer.

Well it’s convenient that the classes are not as imbalanced as you make out, and even if they were, that GW2 is one of the most alt-friendly raiding games available.

Ohoni.6057:

A lot of that boils down to “you aren’t meant to enjoy any of this, AT ALL, if you don’t enjoy playing the game how I enjoy playing the game.” I think that’s a statement that a lot of people agree with

Yes, a lot of people agree with me. I’m taking this strawman and running with it and nobody can stop me!

Seriously, though, if this is what you take from what I’ve posted you are professionally missing the point. Arguments of minute elements of balance make no sense for the average player because they don’t min/max to that level anyway, and they make no sense for the cutting edge because they play multiple classes anyway.

alberte.2685:

They just need to spend very few money can buy neat all the legendary weapon in the guild wars 2, and found that guild wars 2 is not update any new items, then AFK.

So basically people are putting down the game because there’s no new content. I remember reading a similar thread not long ago which said practically the same thing.

Sylent.3165:

I have to strongly disagree…..

The reason is because elite specizalations are supposed to be a new way to play. This is basically just a necro that got a massive buff

mhm

elite specs should not be a mandatory pick for a specific build; while this isn’t the case in the current state of the game, it isn’t the design intent

just the basics of it read as though this would be a mandatory pick for an MM necro and therefore a bad thing, especially when MM necro already has one mandatory line

Ohoni.6057:

But if a group is right on the margin, if they are prone to failing often, then you don’t want to pile on unnecessary risk, I mean if each class is rated on a 1-10 scale, then even if you only need a minimum combined score of 70 to pass the boss, if people are struggling with a combined score of 90 then they have plenty of reason to maybe try to tweak that score back up towards 100, by pruning weak links.

So this is pretty confusing because it seems to not really address much of anything because it has fundamental misgivings about how progression raiding and raid priorities work. Are you addressing cutting edge raiders, or are you addressing raiders after that point?

On cutting edge raiders:
Pretty straightforward first thing: If you are a raider of the caliber expected to be able to participate in cutting edge content, you have to be willing and ready to sit or be sat to bring in a class which better fits the encounter. The total size of a strong raid team is typically 125% of the player requirement of the raid’s player requirement, simply to accomodate for players taking breaks. It’s a team game; if you aren’t willing to sacrifice for your team, you’re the weak link in more ways than class balance.

Secondly, class imbalances aren’t really that drastic of an issue for a cutting edge raider because they are at the play level where they can reasonably be expected to operate high level alts. My most recent raiding guild had members who simultaneously ran four different alts, keeping them at a gear level that would allow each of them to operate at the highest level of content- And this was in WoW, where gearing was actually an effort.
Freedom of alts is especially a thing in GW2 as all Ascended gear is account-bound and you can simply move it between classes; your Engi’s not viable? No problem, you can move that gear to your Thief, maybe statswap it and you’ll be good to go.

Now if you aren’t a serious raider, your specific class’s viability shouldn’t be an issue.

Every class has some build which is, broadly speaking, viable. Some classes will have issues, sure, and those should be addressed, but that’s fixed through broad class design changes rather than raid level changes.
If you’re not at a cutting edge level, chances are any issues you are having with class could probably be fixed by changing your toolkit and simply getting better at the game rather than broad calls that “my class isn’t viable”.
And you’re probably raiding with friends and they’re not going to kick you out of the raid if you’re not comfortable with leaving the raid.

And then there’s PUG raiding. This content isn’t designed for PUGs, nor should it be. And if you’re worried about getting kicked from a PUG, there’s an easy solution: get better at the game and become more valuable such that they won’t want to kick you out.

IMO just make the repair hammer unusable on siege which is currently being operated because that is a very bad idea. Moving parts in heavy machinery is a great way to lose fingers. This conveniently fixes 99% of the concerns about repair hammers for siege.

Isn’t the mote system what is already in place for the early phases of the Legendary backpiece achievement track? IIRC you have to activate the mote and go fight Mossman at <80% rather than Bloomhunger?

If they add the new map, and the two revamped old-new maps, into the map rotation I will be way more keen for it.

If the balancing in the next patch is on point, as well, I’ll also be way more keen for it.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Only 3 condi specs were viable during S3 and they weren’t even bunkers:

• Berserker
• Chronomancer
• Reaper

Scrappers & Tempests were your only bunky classes. Scrappers being physical and Tempests just not dealing much DPS at all, regardless of it’s mixture of physical/condi.

i’d probably call Ranger a bunker as well

power rev, power thief and power dragonhunter round out the roles to a perfect 3/3/3 split

Ging.6485:

1. Keep things the way they are, small portion of the player base is happy with a larger portion that are afraid of raids or angry about them.

It’s pure conjecture to assert that there is a larger portion of the playerbase who disapproves of raids than those who approve. The vast majority is indifferent.

This forum presence which ‘is afraid of raids or angry about them’ is like half a dozen regular suspects on the forum and the occasional passersby.

if power dragonhunter were meta we’d pretty much have a perfect split between power DPS, condi DPS and bunkers

i am not sure where this complaint comes from

magic find affects
1. what drops from npcs when you kill them
2. what drops from reward track/map reward boxes
3. a specific set of containers

Spartacus.3192:

But dont you think that if they allowed free stat choices it would then make balancing between pvp and wvw much much easier. Right now ANET balances class skills/utilities using the artificially restrictive stat spreads of the Amulet system we have in place (plus the limited rune and sigil choices). This creates far too many “unintended” consequences in WvW.

you’re looking at it entirely the wrong way- you’ve got a solution and you’re looking for a problem

Wail of Doom goes through blocks.

HoT added a bunch of blocks.

Anchoku.8142:

This whole discussion boils down to, “I want this weapon designed for PvE crowd control to be useful for PvP.”

Just take dagger, for Pete’s sake.

But dagger isn’t viable either?…

atm i would expect them to be switching out fractals which are currently duplicates within a tier with the new fractal

it wasn’t ‘beta wvw’ it was specific wvw features that were being tested over the short term

reward tracks were a beta feature now they are a live feature
world linking was a beta feature now it is a live feature