Guild Wars 2

Why not just flat buff upgrade health by 40/30/20% depending on upgrade level? Paper is too papery. Needs to be something tougher, like cardboard or paper mache.

Apparently the WvW rankup chests are getting buffed next patch to have another piece of loot in them, so the bonus chests and ranking up in general will be worth twice as much as they are now.

RyuDragnier.9476:

To add to that, Rangers got no real changes other than a few F2 pet ability changes and more pet health. Other than that, we got nothing…again. It’s official, Rangers are the red-headed step child of GW2.

Nobody really got much of anything. Necros got a few traits changed a little bit and their Minion HP boosted, which while nice, aren’t things that people are really bothered by. This patch was, overall, a bit overrated, IMO.

Game really could use some new weapons/utility skills/traits.

I think it’d be a decent idea.

Why do people use “simplistic” and not “simple”.

The game already has enough complexity to make it interesting. Warriors could maybe use another mechanic, like 2 adrenaline skills (mainhand/offhand, or 2 for 2hers) but other than that, the game’s fine. What the game really needs is more breadth (more utility skills/weapons) and more depth (more interplay between abilities/boons/conditions, more build versatility).

Lafiel.9372:

To be fair, I think damage should reveal stealth though or at least show faint trails of it.

IMO stealth just needs counters.

I kinda wonder why a few things aren’t part of the Boon/Condition system; Stealth, Revealed and Quickness are some of them. Being able to directly remove or flip Stealth with things like Well of Corruption, Acidic Elixirs, Null Field might work.

This is a really weird build with a lot of discordant elements. Nothing really looks like it gels together that well.

You’ve got three things vying for your attention when it comes to placing your traits; conditions, minions, and your spectral/deathshroud traits. Something needs to be dropped, because the synergies just aren’t there. If you ask me, drop the minion traits; Flesh Golem is solid regardless of whether you have those traits. Those three traits are mainly being spent on propping up your Shadow Fiend, and that’s not really very good value for money. The Shadow Fiend and its Haunt already have very short cooldowns, so it makes for a perfectly fine fire-and-forget minion. Doing this frees up 30 trait points for you, which is a pretty big deal.

You’ve also got Spectral CD duration, but it only affects Spectral Wall, and chances are you’re not going to be able to use that more than once in an encounter with or without the trait because of its base CD. I would personally suggest dumping Plague Signet and replacing it with either of the stunbreaking Spectral abilities. If you’re planning on sticking with conditions, I’d suggest Armor as that protection will keep you alive while you stack the conditions; if you switch over to Power, Walk might be a good idea, as being able to poke with no real commitment is a really nice boon to have. This also frees up those 10 points in Spite that you have.

You don’t have a staff, either. This is a really mainstay weapon that I find very difficult to justify moving away from, as it provides so much defensive benefit. Permanent regen, heavy condi clearing; it’s a very solid staple for every necro.

I don’t really like them.

The long one doesn’t make much sense to me- Why would you tie the hair all the way down there? The hairstyle looks very flat, as well, which kind of makes me think it’s painted on rather than an actual model. Also, the hippy headdress thing doesn’t do anything for me.

The three braids hairstyle would be good, but it’s got that jewellery there. You’ve got some sweet primal looking braids and leather ties, and then you have a very intricate looking headpiece. Why the discordance? Things need to match!

The explodey bun thing is a bit too vertical for my tastes, but it’s probably my favorite of the three. I guess I don’t really like it because there’s that sudden curve just past the bands holding the piece together- How is it sticking up like that?

+0 Weapons look alright. Nothing too interesting.

-0 Armor looks eh but it’s really hard to tell before it gets into the game.

- Account wide WXP stuff. Just make that entire page all account-wide. We’ve done this song and dance before.

- A deeper building upgrade system with more room for improvement. At the moment it sounds incredibly hardcoded which is not a good thing, because buildings are basically the core of a game which changes pace as it progresses. It’s like playing Starcraft except you’re not allowed to build anything beyond a Cybernetics Core/Academy/Hydralisk Den.

- Defensive siege upgrades (cannon/oil/mortar) aren’t placed by the 1/2/3 upgrades at the Quartermaster, but unlocked instead. You can attach any of these siege weapons into sockets at relevant positions- You can place a Burning Oil on any long wall edge, Cannons on any wall edge and Mortars on any wall.

- A counter of some kind to Defense Against Guards/Guard Killer. Just have a world ability that gives you a chance to strip stacks with each attack.

- “Fortify” walls using supply. On a full health wall/gate, “repair” is replaced with “fortify”, which reduces all damage taken by the wall by 1% per stack, up to 20 stacks. Removed via structural vulnerability.

- Rewards scaling. Taking a 1700/1700 keep should give you insanely huge amounts of Dragonite Ore/loot/etc.

- Single-player WvW-exclusive stuff. Say; a utility-skill Sapper Kit which you can earn as any class that you spend a few WXP points on to unlock. Give its 1-5 WvW-exclusive stuff that consumes supply, that you unlock by going deeper in the line; say, the 2 plants a large bomb that causes siege damage, but consumes supply. The 3 lets you repair siege. The 4 and 5 might be permanent versions of some basic siege, or traps.

So we won’t be able to put away siege until Tuesday? Interesting.

let’s delete all the classes and just make one which is as good as everyone else at everything

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

That is a very good question. Obviously for me, the answer is “no”, but this could be a real concern for others.

I wonder if it’s possible to have an in-game poll initiated by an NPC? Or if that would be overly complicated? I’m interested to hear what others have to say on the subject of in-game polls.

I had a thought about this not long ago.

We have the Living Story framework and development cycle. It wouldn’t be too hard to expand the Living Story into its own window, I imagine. You could tuck the poll into there. Menus are naturally unimmersive, and you don’t really open them unless you’re not actively engaged.

So yeah. Create a Living Story window which basically outlines the current Living Story stuff in the same way that the Heralds and the thingy in the top right and the letters you receive do. Tuck a “report card” feature into it so you can give ANet your thoughts on what they’ve put out. Naturally, attach a few checks onto it to make sure that you’ve actually done the content. Maybe add a little perk to filling out report cards (achievement points would be pretty much perfect for this), and donesies. If you’re like me, you’ll probably chew on the content and form a few thoughts on it; whether you’re a fan, whether you thought that boss was too hard or tuned just right, whether you think a character is a complete train wreck, and then you’d go either to the forums or to hypothetical the poll to fill out your feedback.

Lord Kuru.3685:

What about this: If a thread in the forum gets a certain number of views, it should trigger a dev response.

I dunno if I’d like this; I don’t think that large threads are the best format for discussion. They’re really intimidating for people who are approaching them; most people will probably not read much beyond the opening page and the most recent page, which obviously makes a problem for any thread that’s longer than two pages. Unless threads have structured growth and bookmarks it’s difficult to know which posts are sticking and which aren’t, and they can get a bit cyclical in their responses.

I’m fairly sure that weapons are balanced around the assumption that you will always have that set of skills available to you at one time. Being able to slot in and out a few skills wouldn’t really work with that in mind, and I think it’s kind of the intent behind the 1h/dw/oh weapons; you sacrifice a bit of raw power in exchange for potential versatility in the offhand.

HOWEVER

New toys to play with would be really really nice to have. necro shortbow please

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sarrs.4831:

I don’t know if a single thread would be the go. There are more than a few hot-button issues, at least on the WvW side; having a consistent dialogue on each of those would be good, but having a single thread try to encompass them all would be ineffective, I feel.

How about this then? We create a forum thread on the main forum to discuss high level aspects of the game with Colin and I, and meanwhile on this thread people put forward ideas of how to move forward with a process for collaborative development from the forums? Then a method can be picked and we go from there?

Chris

And you toot the horn for people to do the same on spvp and wvw forums, I’m guessing, and those threads branch out from there? That sounds like it could work.

Throwing my chips in on the ‘collaborative design’; first things first, we really need to get access to your brains before launch day. This blow-by-blow dialogue we have in these last few pages is pretty solid. There was Josh Foreman talking about SAB W2 as well; that was great. This kind of dialogue really helps to show that there are people with real investment in the game on the other side, and it’s not just us.

I don’t know if a single thread would be the go. There are more than a few hot-button issues, at least on the WvW side; having a consistent dialogue on each of those would be good, but having a single thread try to encompass them all would be ineffective, I feel.

Luvpie.8350:

Don’t bother. 3-4 answers in last 1hr. Also most answers are we want to but we don’t know eta. Only confirmation is that Wxp chest might get better chance at rare/exotic & ascended back in WvW within next 2 months. Lastly confirmed changes to BL buff might be a bug fix to sentry or neutral. No stats change.

Wow, yeah. That was really short. Where the hell did the thread go?

Oh it drifted somewhere else. Great. Welp, I guess that’s our bi-annual opportunity to interrogate Devon done.

Can’t decide whether I should bother making an account on some website that I don’t care one iota about to ask questions.

spoj.9672:

It only works when the mark is triggered. Its one of the biggest complaints I have about necro finishers.

It actually activates both times, I think- once when placed, once when triggered.

I had a thought a while back- What if you could give ANet a report card for each of the features of a living world release? An in-game beta tool makes the game feel like… Well, a beta, and this is supposed to be a finished product.

At its core, it is a good idea. Participating in WvW lets you specialise in certain activities and siege weapons- sure, that makes sense. I don’t mind a bit of power creep, so long as that power creep is kept in check by other mechanics.

However, there are big holes in the design.

- No account wide ranks. We all know this song and dance, but character-specific ranks really does hurt when it comes to playing what you want. Part of the reason I advocate having several alts is so that, if the dev team shoots your favorite class in the neck with a nerf gun, you can just go “no problem, I will play this other class”. All of the impetus behind having an alt goes down the drain without catchup mechanics or account-wide ranks.

- Mandatory lines. Hi there, Applied Fortitude! It takes days to get Applied Fortitude unlocked on a character, and just as much to get its cousin, Guard Leech. This is a really punishing barrier to entry for new players, and with no account-wide WXP, it’s a barrier to alts as well.

- Lopsided power gains. Catapults, trebuchets, rams; they’ve all gotten boosts from the power creep, but the walls and gates haven’t. There is no equivalent mechanic, either in WXP, or at all, to counteract this. This will only get worse as lines expand, until appropriate countermeasures are put in place.

So yeah. Account-wide ranks, some countermeasures for ranked-up siege, something done about GK/DAG and a gentler slope for new players, and I’ll be pretty happy with the system.

I’m genuinely curious what posted ideas were actually actioned on.

At any rate, I don’t see anything really changing because a CM posted something on the forums. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to take away from this. That you’re listening?… I don’t see it. That you’re going to start listening more in future? Well, some real discussion would actually go a long way to that.

We’re apparently giving you ideas, but we really have no way of identifying which of our contributions are beneficial and which ones are wasted time on our part. Do we have a real impact on the development of the game, or not?

Starts with C and ends with P.

Codswallop.

Seriously, though, cardinal directions.

scarlet briar is the mother

Waah! This is incredibly complicated. ;_;

I like it but it’s complicated, and I doubt they’ll do anything with it because of that.

Atherakhia.4086:

What we need are fast, agile ‘skimmers’ that do no damage to players but provide CC and high damage to golems. Golem rushing is getting out of hand and 2 cannons aren’t enough to counter them all and they’re too easily killed. Balista are great, but don’t have good arc of fire once they’re on the door. Other siege is ineffective.

Being able to pilot skimmers that attack from another entrance and take out golems could be fun. Give them a vector engine attack so they can fly through zergs knocking everyone down/out of the way, tow cables to pull golems away from a keep so balista can hurt them, etc.

IMO, reduce player/AC damage against cannons and their users, like Iron Hide. Ballistas really need a role, and sniping cannons could be a good one.

Come to think of it, you know the damage reduction you get from Burning Oil 3? Is that Iron Hide, or Protection? Should be Iron Hide. Seems like making Iron Hide a uniform siege-user buff would be a good idea.

Shpongle.6025:

Liadri was frustrating and annoying.
SAB tribulation mode was difficult.

Other way around, mate.

Trib mode was almost perfectly designed to annoy me.
Liadri was a good challenge to sink my teeth into.

muh opinions

Paulytnz.7619:

Well that’s purely an opinion of course. On the other hand I for one think that things such as the LFG tool, finally deserved rewards for killing champs, MF spread across all chars and not gear involved as well as many other things that have been added are a few good examples of where my opinion is contrary to yours. But again it’s only an opinion, my opinion.

Those are systems, not content. While they can certainly make the game that exists better, they can’t really change standing dynamics in the game.

Really depends on what you spend your time doing. However, I’d probably say these are the most valuable ones;

Supply mastery 4; gives reasonably consistent returns for a fraction of the price of Supply Capacity.
Build Mastery/Repair Mastery 1; When you have +5 supply, a single channel won’t deplete your supply when building or repairing. Getting these two to rank 1 will make everything go faster.

After that, I would probably start working on one of the following;
Ram Mastery 3; makes you that much more effective at knocking down doors, people will usually either go in the front door or…
Catapult Mastery 1; by knocking down a wall.
AC Mastery 4; makes you a bunch much more effective at holding back zergs; ACs are the cornerstone generic defense siege
Defense against Guards 10→Guard Killer 10; Makes soloing camps really, really easy as opposed to just easy. If you move into defending/attacking, the stacking buffs will pay back dividends; that vitality is nothing to sneeze at.

After you’ve hit your stride, then start picking up Siege Bunker and Siege Might. They are, mathematically, very strong- Spending 30 points to cut siege damage by 5% is quite effective, but you won’t really feel yourself getting more effective so it can feel like your points are being sacrificed to the WXP God.

Well this thread was worth the physical exertion of entering it.

The new path is actually a really great place for Death Shroud. Most of the mechanics aren’t instagib ones like Liadri’s everything, so Death Shroud can actually realistically take the place of dodging.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Not every class should get perma swiftness. What would be point of swiftness then? If you ask me there is already too much swiftness going around.

Losing your runes is a pretty big price to pay for permanent 25% movespeed. This is pretty much the sweet spot for runes, IMO.

The good stuff;
1. SAB. It’s genuinely fun and has soul. Back to School isn’t quite as good as the original release, but it’s still good.
2. FotM. It’s an interesting take on random dungeons and offers tons of room for expansion.
3. The two Labyrinthine Cliffs patches. Three minigames, a beautiful zone, pretty music.
4. Mad King. Fun stuff all around.
5. Twilight Assault. A solid dungeon which shows off what the game is capable of. Molten Facility and Aetherblade Hideout were good starts.

The worst
1. Pavilion. Nobody likes Scarlet and the hole in the ground megadungeon thing was pretty lame.
2. Dragon Bash. Hit 500 pinatas. Yawn.
3. Southsun is kinda… Eh. Karkas break the established combat routine and the map doesn’t really quite pop.
4. Canach’s dungeon was really not very good.
5. Permanency. You add things then you take them out! We get a new dungeon path but you take an old one away! Are you going to delete some fractals to make way for the new ones?

Liete.5263:

Accountbound world ranks are bad. You are effectively leveling your account and not your representation in game (i.e. your character). I hope they never ever introduce account bound ranks.

And whyyyy is that a problem?

It’s incredibly easy to demonstrate why not having account-wide world rank is a problem. People feel unable to play alts which increases burnout which either reduces the amount of fun they have (A Bad Thing) or reduces the time they spend in the game (A Very Bad Thing).

Where would account-wide WvW levels create Bad Things? What demographics would be discouraged by such a change? How would it affect player behaviour? Because I don’t see it; I don’t see these damaging effects, and if they are there, they’re nowhere near on the scale of the other option.

ykyk.2740:

Bad matches create incentive for players to transfer, translating to gem sales.

Basics people, basics. There’s all the incentive in the world for them to make WvW terrible, because PvE has guesting and the only people transferring will be doing so for WvW.

Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I don’t really think ANet’s so money-hungry that they’re willing to compromise their game’s quality just for the sake of money. It’s possible, but blame stupidity before malevolence.

nekretaal.6485:

Even the most balanced matchmaking ever isn’t going to change the fact that players en masse are transferring from losing servers to winning ones.

These transfers are the source of the imbalance, not anything anet does.

You’re not going back far enough when you’re finding the root cause of these things. Compare;

Servers are imbalanced because people transfer to stacked servers
Servers are imbalanced because people transfer to stacked servers because ANet makes it more beneficial to change to a winning server

Changing server isn’t a short term investment, and a raise in gem prices can’t be substantial enough to deter moving up. If anything, lower gem prices for moving to a lower tier server.

Rewards still need work in general.

Ethics.4519:

I think it’s too easy. It was fun to figure out the first time, but will only become boring.

We need something that has changing mechanics.

I also though Liadri was a fantastic fight. It was very difficult, but made you learn from your mistakes. I think stupid difficulty is tribulation mode. You still have to learn from your mistakes, but you’re FORCED into making those mistakes.

I think that’s the point of tribulation mode. It’s supposed to be like Cat Mario where you laugh when you die or the game tricks you.

Of course, when you’re paying Continue Coins, you’re not laughing very hard or for very long.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

The addition of the bonus WXP for laurels/badges is simply intended to give WvW players an additional option they can spend their laurels/badges on, it is not intended to fix any issues with alts and WxP.

We’re aware of, and actively discussing the amount of progression we’ve added through WxP and the difficulty for playing multiple characters as a result. When we make changes to help address alts/WxP rank, we’ll make sure to specifically call out the change is to help address that issue.

Account-wide WXP?

Where’s that Cantha reaction face when you need it?

Nilkemia.8507:

What could Scarlet possibly know about Caithe that even Faolain wouldn’t?

Don’t know.

faolain never thought to check whether caithe was an inny or an outie

wait

do sylvari have belly buttons?

LastK.6158:

how is ac p2 and harpies any difficult? LOL

Harpies aren’t difficult, they’re just a pain in the kitten . “stability/reflects or gtfo” is not fun. You don’t even die, it’s just a kitten time sink.

Jamais vu.5284:

I like that the oozes emphasize control actually, as contrasted by DPSing everything down like 99.999% of this game’s PVE. Hope ANet can filter through threads like this and realize that no matter what they do, a part of the players will always be up in arms about it.

I thought that this dungeon as a whole was pretty fantastic on the control front, actually, not just the oozes; the hologram explosions are a consistent mechanic that demand it, and how well you can control them more or less dictates your success in the last fight.

No idea; sorry mate. Fingers crossed it’ll be soon. If you miss it, you can watch their previous livestreams on their channel there.

Razor.9872:

Or make the path be worth 3 gold…

I’m inclined to agree, but pump up the token rewards as well.

As I understand, ANet wants long paths that people can sit down for an hour or two and chew through. This dungeon’s a fantastic candidate for that.

A thought;

There’s a cute NPC trio in Brisban Wildlands, which are a tank/healer/DPS trinity between the Nightmare Court/Bandits/Inquest. The tank has a Taunt ability which forces the enemy to approach them, like a reverse Fear.

How many people here think that adding Taunt as an actual controlling condition, new abilities included, would be a good idea? One of the big things that these encounters need is the ability to immediately control an NPC’s movements, like the Oozes, and I’m wondering whether anyone else thinks that it might be a good niche in which to slot new utilities/weapon skills.

I strongly, strongly disagree with the OP’s message. This dungeon is not hard. There are a few mechanics that need ironing out, like the first ooze room could use a teensy bit of love, but it’s otherwise a fantastic dungeon. It teaches you its mechanics as you proceed through it, it makes classes that are otherwise not so valued in PvE much more welcome (pulls make Thieves and Necromancers fantastic for the last fight), and it has mechanics that support doing things other than xXZerkerEsports100blades420Xx. A skilled, intelligent group should have no trouble at all getting through this dungeon.

Overall, a great showcase of what GW2’s combat engine can do. Overall, I’d say this patch was a strong one, despite being centered around Scarlet- Who I didn’t even think was all that offensive this patch.

I have two problems with this patch, though;

Removing F/U was unnecessary. I hope that they reconsider doing this.
The rewards for completing the dungeon are pretty skinny, but this is something of an overarching problem with dungeon rewards. The reward revamp didn’t really fix it, I don’t think.

Wondering how ascended armor boxes will work, both in the sense of loot table and how they’ll drop.

TheAmpca.1753:

I fail to see how them giving us more ways to get rewards is hurting WvW. Sure maybe the laurels aren’t really cost effective, but as a dedicated WvW player I will keep buying them since i have nothing better to do with my laurels.

There are three dedicated WvW slots each day, and one of them is always Kill Invaders. Making them long objectives will push people trying to do their daily out of WvW, which is a bad thing.

IMHO, they should go ahead and implement a WvW daily category and have a bunch of them active each day. Give laurel/drop of liquid WXP/Mystic Coin/5s for completion.

Rulakh.3614:

^I like this!

Though it sounds a wee bit OP

I didn’t really give many numbers because of that. There are a lot of things that could be OP about it, but overall I reckon it’s pretty okay.

Because of how a lot of systems work in the game, like dodging, overpowered abilities can be ‘okay’ because they can simply be avoided. There are a lot of things you can move about to adjust whether abilities are okay or not with that in mind.