Guild Wars 2

As far as I’m aware, there is a workaround for that ( ? ).

Put both items (new and old ones) into the inventory, relog or change zone. Now they’ll stack again.

Workaround aside, I sure as hell wouldn’t mind them being depositable simply to safe banking space.

… carry my spare equipment so that my inventory doesn’t get full all the time.

serenke.4806:

Oh i can easily see where Torvarren is coming from. The title is not the reason for playing nor is this bug a reason to not play. It’s the fact that some guildies mentioned they see a whole lot more GWAMMs running around since the bug. Every GWAMM (not just the legit ones) reminds you of this, it’s not easy to just let it go when A-net built this up years ago in GW1. You know, titles were a big part of PvE there. Then they made a game (GW2) where most titles don’t come close to GWAMM or most HoM titles.

So yes, here we are waiting for that promised fix “real soon”.

Precisely this. These days, I run past a GWAMM and I cringe. That is wrong on such a fundamental level that it does indeed take away some of the joy that comes from playing the game. None likes when their cherished memories are being stepped on.

Evapor.6849:

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

On the second point like I said I’m not aware of any game that’s gotten popular or maintained its popularity in the last few years without relying on social media.

Hypothetically if the small ‘hardcore’ audience this game has suddenly dissapeared overnight, I would wake up in the morning log on to do my daily dungeons/fractals I would likely have to post my own LFG because no one else is doing dungeons, the paths I did do would take several hours due to lack of player ability, I would then go to silverwastes and farm for half an hour and then log off due to frustration of events failing or due to boredom. If I was to speculate this playerbase would be unprepared for the ‘Challenging content’ that awaits them in HoT because anet has simply hasn’t given them the proper ingame tools to better themselvers, like I said everyone has to do the very minimum to contribute for the maximum reward. What happens when the playerbase simply can’t do the content that is available in the game? do they go back to the content that was previously the most rewarding? no, hardcore players are the ones that stayed and went back to dungeons for another year. Casual players will likely quit the game if they feel the expansion did not meet their expectations.

Personally, I don’t see how this applies to GW2. When you look at where Anet has put their focus on these past few months (years?), then the answer is NPE, living story and generally their “living open world”, not dungeons and fractals. Heck, there haven’t been any serious dungeon advancements since launch.

This is a rather obvious hint at what the majority of their playerbase – or at least those they consider “important” – cares about and participates in. With minor exceptions like the triple-wurm-thing, none of that “living world” stuff needs hardcore players pushing the community. As we’ve already establishes before, it’s very easy to contribute and get “credit”, there is no trinity or advanced coordination required and so on and so forth.

As such, the hardcore players may provide added value for the limited instanced content, but this is not mandatory to keep the game going. So dungeons and fractals take a bit longer to complete, groups wipe more, etc.? This is no game-stopper. As far as I’m aware, the current instanced content is perfectly doable with average players playing random classes with random builds. The game aims to be like that and personally I think it’s a major strength.

Evapor.6849:

We can debate what is more valuable all day, casual or hardcore players but when there is clear evidence out there, the top 5 games on twitch tv have a playerbase that is good at the game and host competitive events that cater to millions worldwide and challenge the players to better themselves. Anet is trying to make there way into the esport scene and plans on adding ‘challenging content’ when it is clear that the vast majority of the playerbase is not ready for this as they are not very good at the game.

Could you elaborate this further? I don’t understand how you measure the skill of a games community over twitch tv. This is not sarcasm, I’m just not familiar with that kind of environment. To me, twitch tv is where some popular internet kids play games and other people watch. This is a very small part of the community and I don’t see how you can generalize based on that.

Jerus.4350:

Everything you say is fine except the bolded I have a problem with.

No one logs in every day wanting to repeatedly fail at things and be pushed to their limits. However, that is a major element of gaming. Repeated easy success, fun for a time, but sometimes you want to sink your teeth into something a bit more meaty. That’s what this game lacks at this point. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten a new challenging repeatable bit of content.

I’d say that’s one of the major problems of the game currently is the lack of true challenges, even the devs seem to agree at least publically. Look at all their recent claims of challenging group content. Will the deliver /shrug no clue, but fact is having something to push yourself on is a very important part of a healthy game, doesn’t mean it’ll be the most used and most played content, it just needs to be there which creates a problem with development resources and what not, but again, just something needs to be there and hopefully they actually pull it off.

First of all, I did not mean to be dismissive about the part you quoted, though I understand it could be perceived as such. I did not mean to say that the casual player wants to get everything handed on the silver platter (at least I don’t hope so). However, what I think is important – and what you also pointed out – is that players don’t get repeatedly stuck on something without any kind of progress.

Jerus.4350:

As for the reward tiers, while the OP has a certain idea for it that may be undesireable the fact that it’s so easily to leech off people in this game is another major problem.

Tier based rewards are something that’s needed just to promote actually playing the game. Look at silverwastes and how easily people can just grab up rewards on the bosses and with one keystroke to tag things. It’s silly. The thresholds don’t need to be extreme but they should be there. A game should promote getting better at it, but at the very least it needs to promote actually playing.

And it’s not about chest thumping, it’s simply about the fact that this game doesn’t really motivate players to get better. Personally I’m not great, far from it, but I can do all the content… and well, why I don’t play as often as I used to is that I simply don’t have the motivation to get better, and getting better is something that’s fun to me and many gamers. You are right though a large portion of the demographic never wants to see how bad they are. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to get better, because doing so means they have to accept that they were doing poorly before. That’s the reason things like scoresheets at the end of a dungeon are often controversial. They can be an amazing tool to improve, but far too often they just lead to toxicity between the chest thumpers and the people who want to keep their blinders on.

/shrug TL : DR – casual players can still be good and want to be good, GW2 doesn’t really motivate people to even play let alone get better, and the only reason we don’t have the motivational tools that could help this is because a lot of people are idiots (on both sides of the fence).

In my opinion, what you describe are the downsides of the sort of game that Anet envisioned. One of the major things the game offers is that you can so easily contribute. There is an open-world event going on, you hit a few times, you profit. Others players aren’t there to grief you, but rather to support you. You don’t need to build teams, you don’t really need some kind of trinity, you don’t need to outrun another player to harvest a node and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, this also means that you can leech very very easily.

Would you really be willing to give that up? Let’s think about this for a moment:

My team does more damage at world boss than yours, so we get loot and you don’t.
I arrive first at a node so I harvest it and you don’t.
I have the proper class composition and you don’t so I beat the content while you don’t.

There are MMO’s which do all of the above, but I don’t think that GW2 ever wanted to be that kind of MMO and I think it’s a major strength.

Ultimately, I think they really hit the nail with the fractal levels:
You can play some kind of pro group doing the lvl 50 fractal in half an hour.
But you can also play some mediocre group and doing the level 30 fractal casually within an hour.

Both groups will get the same kind of rewards, but the better one will get more within a shorter amount of time. Personally, I consider this ideal. I would very much like to see that kind of concept being applied to other content. In my opinion, it can please both hardcore players as well as the more casual ones.

spoj.9672:

Hardcore players might not be marketing to casual players. But they are certainly a big influence on keeping a game alive. All those player resources that casual players rely on and use are not created by casual players.

I am curious to what resources you are referring to here. If you think the casual player is interested in your soloing lupi video then I’m afraid to inform you that you are greatly mistaken. The kind of casual player we have been talking about here is reading the official wiki at best. They are sort of busy playing the game themselves with the limited hours they have. As I’ve mentioned to the poster above, speed runs, famous kids streaming the game and so on and so forth is nothing that gets commonly talked about in the game. I’m also aware that there are some delusional persons on this very forum who think they have “taught” the community how to beat dungeon content and what not. Having been there since (pre-)launch, let me tell you that it has been done without those players. Slower, more painful, but yeah, still done. From my personal experience on these forums, hardcore players tend to have the attitude to tell everyone else how bad they are. I don’t really see how that helps keeping the game alive.

Evapor.6849:

I don’t agree with a few things you said, I believe hardcore players are the ones selling the copies, they are the ones that are constantly playing running around completing events, filling the world, helping noobs where necessary, They are the ones keeping the game alive. Many of the hardcore players that stream sell alot of copies for example last night in Phantaram’s stream (Pro pvp player) I seen at least 5-20 people asking where they could buy this game asking all sorts of questions because they were interested in the game, now lets compare that to the ‘casual’ players, casual players come and go they generally don’t play for very long.

I doubt the dungeons/fractals board would still be active 2 years after the games release with only casual players populating the game, guilds have made speedrunning very popular and is one of the main attractions people see when they watch gameplay of gw2. I’m not sure how you think a casual player is more valuable, considering last month we had an event hosted by the hardcore guild [DnT] which brought in 1000+ viewers and I bet that sold lots of copies on it’s own. Casual player’s are usually one time buyers that float from many different games and are brought in by hardcore players through social media or word of mouth.

First of all, I think it’s important to realize that the players posting on this forum are a vocal minority. The same goes for the very few streamers who have an audience enough to go viral.

Let me put it like this: I’ve actively been playing since launch, I’m spending my gaming time in all kind of areas, such as hanging around in major towns, engaging in world bosses, PUG-ing dungeons/fractals, doing some pvp as well as wvw – meaning I get to enjoy all kind of socialising. Let me tell you that it does not resolve around these forums and neither does it resolve around some (in-)famous streaming kids I’ve personally never even heard about (and I do bother with various forums outside of the game).

I do not doubt that there is an audience for what you’ve mentioned and surely there are box sales being made through it, but if it’s not being actively talked about ingame, it is not that much important. “Viewers” as such are irrelevant as long as they do not actively engage. They are there for their personal entertainment and they are loyal to the “celebrity” involved, not the game as such.

I don’t see how this can be more important than a casual player drawing friends or families in.

Evapor.6849:

Secondly i’m not a developer if you couldn’t already tell, my threshold system is simply an idea or a solution to what we currently have. There are two stages in a dungeon currently: Complete and Incomplete there is no inbetween and because of such we look for ways to complete the dungeon fast as possible, if there was a system add mini challenges or goals for the group to aim for i.e. kill lupi in under 5min, block every mossman attack. These challenges would test the player individually and give them a bonus reward for it, as opposed to the current system we have were someone can die every fight, contribute nothing and get the same reward as the players that carried them through the dungeon, this was just an idea to help the playerbase improve at the game as a whole. I’m sure you’ve heard tales of the players 1000+ hours in that still don’t know what a combo field is, I don’t have a problem with casual players I just think this game’s community is hilariously bad at the game because anet refuses to help the players get better.

Individual rewards in a group environment do not work. Let me draw a parallel to the living story (grind) chapters (season 2) here: Personal achievements are commonly solved through having one person take one for the team, while the other 4 players hang back at some kind of “safe-spot” to get the achievement without much effort on their part. Later on, you switch roles. That is exactly what would happen in dungeons.

Evapor.6849:

TLDR: The playerbase is terrible at the game, add meaningful reward systems that will make players want to get better at the game and perhaps add thresholds that need to be met before you can obtain the reward.

Personally, I believe the playerbase in MMO’s in general has simply become far broader than it used to be: Next to the “traditional gamers” who I believe could already be found in MMO’s 10-15 years ago, you now have all kind of youngsters, elders as well as former “traditional gamers” who have now reached their late twenties and early thirties. What these new types of gamers have in common is that I call them “casual”.

They likely have less time available to play, don’t primarily play to be challenged to the maximum of their abilities and beyond, but rather like socializing and easy access to the content. But most important of all, it’s (the adult part of) these players who fund a game like GW2.

Sorry if I’m gonna burst a few bubbles here, but a family consisting out of 2 parents and a few kids all owning a copy of GW2 and making frequent purchases in the gemstore is – economically speaking – the far more valuable player/customer than a handful of students with too much time on their hands playing excel wars and setting SC records.

To me, this thread reeks of self-grandeur and the usual “let’s pat each others on the back” so commonly found amongst several visitors of this forum section. Before you raise such matters as “bad players”, you might want to consider to what kind of audience a game like this caters to. In my opinion, your problem is not “the bad playerbase”, but that you simply picked the wrong game. Learn to deal with it or move on.

As a final note on your actual reward suggestion:
You mentioned how the “all or nothing” mechanism of open-world content isn’t ideal, yet I don’t see how your threshold idea is any different from that: Either you reach the thresholds or you don’t. This is precisely the same “all or nothing” approach.

In order to change that, you’d need multiple tier of rewards, similar to how GW1 missions awarded standard, expert and master rewards. You would then award reward X at standard level, X*2 at expert and X*3 at master (just examples). But you cannot award X, Y and Z at individual levels, because then you are again doing “all or nothing” (when a player only wants the Z reward, getting X or Y is meaningless).

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Satenia.9025:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

How to make your norn look better:

1. Delete norn.
2. Create a charr instead.
3. Profit.

I don’t recall him asking how to make an abomination?

Charr + asura master race.

Surrender or die.

Us humans tend to purge stray cats and rats with fire…

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

How to make your norn look better:

1. Delete norn.
2. Create a charr instead.
3. Profit.

I don’t recall him asking how to make an abomination?

Sarisa.4731:

Unlocked: Flameseeker (Closer to the Stars specifically on my Canthan-themed character). Before playing GW1, I didn’t bother to use titles at all. After I got GW1 last August, and started earning these titles, I changed my mind about them.

Any: GWAMM. I’m close, 27/30 titles (also 47/50 HoM points), and completed the one thing that worried me about completing it last night (Ooze Pit HM, 2 easy dungeons and a little cartography left to get Master of the North; then finish the Dwarven title and Sweet Tooth).

Very impressive. Going back there (or in your case: starting out) at this point and earning all those title in an aged game takes a lot of dedication.

Keep up the good work and surely you’ll be displaying the GWAMM title yourself soon

Please don’t let our GW1 efforts remain cheapened

Kronos.2560:

Silk drops ridiculously fast if you simply salvage everything and not vendor. If you are complaining about not having enough you either need to:
1. Salvage stuff or
2. Not sell silk on the tp then complain you have none.

Problem solved.

Compared to the other mats required for the time-gated refinement component, that is simply not true.

Personally, I salvage everything. Literally everything. Based on my daily gaming schedule, I can quite easily craft the metal, wood and leather refinement components on a daily base. However, being able to craft the silk-based refinement component takes me about 3-4 days.

Clearly, this is not balanced.

• Favorite unlocked title: GWAMM (“God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals”)
• If I could have any title I would still wear the GWAMM one.
• I used to genuinely respect other players with the GWAMM title, because we share a common gaming history and it likely means they have been around for a while. I’ve said “used to” because currently I can no longer tell who got the title legit and who did not due to a still unresolved bug.
• I dislike seeing the Dungeon Master title because there is nothing masterful attached to obtaining it. Could have bought paths or getting carried through them by others.
• If I could make up a title it would be something involving deaths or downed-state: Possibly something like Floor Mopper or Wannabe Zerker.

Generally speaking, I like when other players display some kind of title. The title together with the characters class and appearance can potentially tell a lot about the person.

serenke.4806:

Indeed, i gave it a lot of thought and couldn’t come up with much of use. I know that at this point if they would turn skins obtainable by pristine or normal relics, they would come up with numbers that would not bother me since they have to keep it realistically achievable for fractals-newcomers as well.

Well, how about handling it like the dungeon-tokens? You can keep purchasing dungeon armor and weapons past personal usage by just salvaging them or throwing them into the mystic toilet.

Now, if similar options existed for relics…

There is just no variety in this, even less so than with other outfits.

Don’t mean to spoil it for those who like it anyway, but your characters pretty much look all the same, colouring 2 slots differently (the other 2 don’t matter) doesn’t make your character stand out (enough) at all.

Initially, I was hyped, but after the “floating head” disaster when not displaying the helmet I’m downright upset. Not being able to properly dye is just one more insult added.

Shame…

Well the OP has a point. Personally, I only ever end up using outfits while level characters to cover their randomly slapped together gear. But I’ve kinda run out of alts to level…

At level 80, I want to mix-match something (more or less) unique for my characters. Outfits feel far too limited in these regards. It’s especially bad with the latest balt outfit, since you can neither properly dye it, nor remove the helmet without looking incredibly stupid (floating head ftw).

Currently, the only reliable way to get (useful) ascended gear is outside of fractals. That essentially sums up the problem with the fractal content: The rewards are just too random.

Personally, I pretty much stopped doing them because of the following:
- Get an ascended ring with stats I don’t need and cannot trade for something else
- Get a fractal skin I already have, instead of one I actually would have liked
- Get nothing at all
(frequently, I get neither an extra reward from the bonus chest, nor any exotic drop whatsoever, effectively turning the run into a huge waste of time)

The real shame is the fact that there is a token-system in place, but it’s not being used to full effect. There should not only be the option to trade relics for rings, but also for all the other trinkets as well as the fractal skins. That way, you’d make steady reward progress. Extra drops such as ascended chests can still be left to RNG.

Unfortunately, no further word on this for the time being

To me personally, the “floating neck” is kinda a deal-breaker. Unfortunately, I couldn’t preview this in the store before buying.

Unless you don’t mind displaying the complete outfit including the helmet (and look like clone number 1000000), I don’t consider this a usable outfit… unless you don’t mind looking like some kind of fiery clown.

Not too happy about this.

… just don’t try wearing it without the helmet. Meh.

CureForLiving.5360:

Satenia.9025:

Wasn’t there something about clipping issues on charr?

Poor Charr always getting blamed for everything :P

Every game needs a scapegoat

In my opinion, the biggest problem is the neck-area: Not displaying the helmet makes your char look like it’s wearing some kind of ruff. On small characters, it can even look downright ridiculous.

Ah well, still OK for niche situations once the hype has died down (kinda like it is with all outfits).

… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it just got released \o/

Have my gems, Anet, have my gems…

RNG is the path to the dark side. RNG leads to anger. Anger leads to rage-quitting…

From my personal experience, the kit is a rare drop from the BL chests. But in the end it’s all RNG… I surely wouldn’t trust on it to work in your favour.

(Why not use the 3rd option and simply buy the gems? :o )

Same problem

If you won’t give us SAB, please fix the boom boxes at least…

Wasn’t there something about clipping issues on charr?

There is a simple solution for that though: Disable the charr race selection for players (existing ones are turned into asura). Several classes such as mesmer or guardian would be far better off (as well as my eyes)

Kaleban.9834:

And you may have missed it, but I contend that the game is NOT focused on character appearance, that’s you in your Barbie Dress Up post. Yes, the game’s gear treadmill is lateral instead of linear (more skins instead of more stats), but that doesn’t mean that the game itself revolves around skins acquisition.

Heck, with more than five players on screen you can’t see your weapons anyways with all the F/X going off, much less PvP or WvW. People don’t play those modes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Frostfang or Eternity zooming by on a player rocking full Ascended skins. They play for the fun, competition and thrill of victory.

So no, GW2 is not about skins, unless you the player decide to ignore the vast array of content available.

Titles – which this thread is originally about – are something you display for others to see. This is rather obvious due to the fact that everyone but yourself can see the title you select (unless being targeted).

Thanks to this bug, it’s no longer possible to differentiate between who got the title legit through a rather huge effort and who got the title for free thanks to a bug. This effectively renders displaying the title obsolete – if not to say hurtful (I don’t wish to be mistaken as a bug abuser).

With skins, it works quite similarly. If a prestige suddenly becomes easily available, players feel cheated in their accomplishments.

Whatever your personal motivation to play the game may be is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. There are people who do care for titles and skins and as long as they do, there is prestige attached to them (and also a hefty price, if trade-able).

Lastly, thank you for honouring the thread by staying on topic.

Actually, I don’t think that’s a bug.

What we’re fighting is a claw of jormag, which means there can as well be several of them. That the second isn’t coming down to help his buddy makes him a bit of a jerk though, but maybe he’s confident that we’ll all fall off the ledges or something.

That’s very touching

Loving the game as well and even more so reading such posts about it.

<3

Back in the days, I did them because they were new and the primary source of obtaining ascended stats.

These days, I only rarely do them and then mostly for the karma and with people I know. The heavily RNG-kind of rewards just don’t appeal much to me. I never quite get the drops I would consider useful (usually stats I don’t need or a skin I already have). It is rather ironic that the most reliable way to get ascended gear is outside of fractals these days.

Kinda hard to judge based on this picture alone…

Would really love a way to turn “sepia-mode” back on. Please, Anet!

Easter is actually a very good opportunity to bring back SAB… yeah OK, I just made that one up. In truth, anything is a very good opportunity to bring back SAB.

I have two of each class, including ranger (and excluding necro). I keep telling myself that it’s because of build diversity, but in truth I just like playing with the wardrobe

I would totally play like this… permanently.

I absolutely loved how the landscape looked in old-school “sepia-mode” or whatever you wanna call it.

Great fun, I wish there was a permanent camera-setting available for this!

While I would have loved to see a return of SAB, I had a lot of fun playing a couple of hours in “sepia-mode”!

Thanks for the good laugh, Anet!

Never saw a hacker either and I’m playing since launch as well.

Generally speaking, I could think of two possible reasons why you may think otherwise:
1. You don’t know the opposite class that well and encountered a specific build that easily countered yours.
2. You suffered from a bad connection / lag and died without really seeing what’s going on.

Anything I missed?

Would also have loved to see SAB again today

Doesn’t have to be any new content, just the kind of SAB we had last time.

Zetsumei.4975:

This is a first for me defending lordkrall, but seriously dude why do you feel the deaths involved over a tragedy that was widely publicized demands extra empathy and special privileges compared to the several deaths that occur everyday but dont make for great click-bait for the media’s stories? Every death hurts someone somewhere, just because one story is popular enough to make international news doesnt mean the world should be careful not to reference the tragedy in the slightest. As many have said, why should bladed weapons be allowed in the game when everyday somewhere a life is taken by a knife.

Pretty much this.

Self-proclaimed moral saints like the OP of this thread (and similar) sicken me far more than this April fools joke possibly ever could.

Tigaseye.2047:

It’s not hypocrisy, because it concerns two separate sets of people.

The people who lost relatives in the plane crash(es) are almost certainly not the same people who were involved in refugee situations.

It would only be hyprocrisy, if the people who were involved in refugee situations IRL had complained about the game and were then told by the same people, who were later affected by the plane crashes (and the planes in game), that their concerns had no merit.

I doubt that was the case, was it?

I highly doubt that the people who lost someone in the recent plane crash are the (only) ones posting about this on the forums now.

My comment was aimed at the “not directly affected” kind of people, the ones who hear about such things through the media and then decide that their weird sense of justice is somehow being offended by this April fools joke.

Tragedies happen everyday. Some are covered by the media more intense than others.

Back when LA got “destroyed” and we had those refugee-related activities in the game, none bothered to point out any parallels to the ongoing tragic events in the real world.

This recent plane crash however seems to be an entirely different matter.

Personally, I find such hypocrisy extremely insensitive.

Did you already try adding that new light armor to your wardrobe? Mine seems horribly bugged: Says no more room left, cannot use transmutation stones and applying dye’s makes a mess

In my opinion, this forum suffers from a vocal minority dealing only in absolutes and using excel instead of the official launcher to interact with the game. This does by no means represent the actual state of affairs in-game for the majority of players.

Back around launch, a warrior could deliver far more damage than today thanks to many traits being available early on without much point-investment. Some of this (and more) has been corrected since. What remains and even got enhanced are strong team-buffing capabilities. Some people cannot get over this shift and cry doomsday instead.

Nevertheless, the warrior is still an excellent all-around class, it’s relatively forgiving to play and desired in all game-modes. Cannot go wrong with it.

Guess we would have heard about this sooner if it happened to everyone playing in the stress test. Haven’t noticed it myself, but I didn’t really look for it specifically.

However, if I did have it unlocked, I would totally “misclick” a few times to have it applied to one of my chars, then claim innocence over the matter and hope it’ll get fixed at the speed of the HoM/GWAMM bug .

Monkey Fritz.9052:

2000 gems is already $25 dollars…. and you think that isn’t expensive enough…. You are the reason pay to win games with $60 mounts exist.

And kids like you who rather spend individual dollars on micro-transactions instead of a one-time sub are the reason we have cash-grabs like the gem store in the first place.

As was previously stated, 2k gems would mean something like 80 charges. This is ridiculously low, considering the importance of the wardrobe. For comparison, think of how much an infinite harvesting tool costs compared to just buying individual picks.

In a game where rewards are largely cosmetic, transmutation charges ensure that people play the game as well as make use of the gem-store. Giving up on that for as low as 2k gems isn’t gonna happen.

Well, let’s keep in mind that we only had a limited selection of traits and legends available during the stress test. In this situation, I agree that the class felt somewhat repetitive and boring, mainly because the whole skill-bar was completely set-in-stone with no room for diversity.

However, it might as well be that a broad range of (viable) legends is being worked on, these could be seen and handled in a way that other classes swap their utilities depending on the situation. This would largely negate the lack of a customizable skill-bar.

Personally, I would love to see some flexibility with the legends: Maybe have a range of 6 utility skills per legend available, from which a player then can make a selection (similar system for heal and elite). This would keep the uniqueness of the class but still maintain some level of build diversity.

Some impressions based on the stress test:

Map/Events
Overall, I felt that the event-chain was fine during the stress test. I do however wonder if/how this will scale with fewer players. Especially depositing the 50 bombs already felt over-long even with the NPC’s giving a hand.

Furthermore, being repeatedly rooted for 8 seconds is nothing short of annoying. My inexperience with the revenant class aside, for any class/build not specifically aimed at condition removal, this is a drag. It didn’t really make the encounter more difficult or got me anywhere close to being killed, it was just an unnecessary downtime/annoyance.

Masteries
I kinda expected this to be integrated into the hero panel, so there was some initial confusion about accessing it. Additionally, the point allocation wasn’t as intuitive as I would have thought based on how the traits currently work. Needed some extra clicking till I got it figured out. Maybe this could be done more in line with what we currently have (hero panel, trait allocation)?

Glider
Very promising as such, but feels a bit clunky at this point. When deploying the glider, I didn’t like the activation-delay (time from jump till you get the “press button” notification) , which often resulted in the gilder getting activated later than I would have liked. I’d prefer to be able to activate it manually with a key-press. Also, I’m not sure if I was supposed to be able to gain altitude again while flying, at least I couldn’t figure out anything other than slowly gliding downwards.

Revenant
The overall visual impression was very good. However, the actual game-play felt repetitive fast due to the locked-in-place skills. I’m not sure what is planned here, but I feel that if there were 6 instead of 3 utilities available per legend, then at least there would be some kind of build diversity. Same goes for healing and elite skill, though it was less obvious there. Even with more legends available, the 15 fixed skills would still bother me as such, no matter which 2 legends I picked at a given time.

Overall impression
Server stability, frame-rate and general polish of the content felt very good to me. Noticed no game-breaking bugs apart from some revenant-skills (a matter of balancing rather than bugs I imagine) and matters of convenience such as the clunky glider or the somewhat confusing mastery-window.

Miki Zu Heltzer.4018:

But the way revenant wields that hammer it was still totally worth the transmutation charge.

Just for reference: Using a transmutation charge (or any other stuff for that matter) during the beta does NOT subtract it from your live account. As far as I understand, you got a copy of your wallet (not gems) during beta-char creation.

That said, learned to fly the wrong kind of way:

Gliding through the canyon