Guild Wars 2

When I run away from a fight as a Thief it’s because I can’t win, not because I can. I’ll test the waters and see if I have a chance to win, but me spending time in a fight only to have to run away is not a win for me. It’s a loss. I either lost a capture point or lost an opportunity to contribute to a capture point elsewhere or both.

My running a way is in no way me winning, it’s me not winning and not losing. It’s neutral from that perspective, but a loss from the time loss/opportunity loss/cooldown loss perspective.

Butch.4957:

I don’t think you understood what we have been saying. Every other class in the game has some form of getting ooc and running away when they don’t want to die. Thieves are just a bit better at it because we take the time to really learn our class (hardest class to play btw if u didn’t catch that). It really is just a L2P issue for other classes. If they bothered to take the time to learn their classes well, they would learn how to get almost exactly what we are doing. (not saying exactly because there can always be some semantic you throw in to prove your point that doesn’t make any difference whatsoever)

That honor goes to the ele IMO

Lopez.7369:

Lyssa runes are just too strong relative to other runes. The full set is basically a fourth utility skill for classes that can use short-cooldown elite skills every time they’re up.

If this nerfs some builds, so be it. Builds shouldn’t rely on a rune set to be viable. If some builds fall too far following a nerf to Lyssa runes, then that indicates a broader problem that should be addressed through sounder game mechanics.

This argument doesn’t make sense to me. “Lyssa is a strong rune so it should be nerfed”. Pack is a strong rune too, should it be nerfed? Scholar and Eagle are strong too, should they be nerfed? Melandru is also strong, should that be nerfed? Ogre is strong, there’s a handful of standout runes. While there are numerous underpowered runes.

Should all the runes be relatively close in power? Maybe, but you can’t do that all in a month unless you want things to be like they were at launch where everyone was learning what works an what doesn’t.

If you’re speccing to get the full benefit out of lyssa the thing you’re missing out on is the strength of the longer cooldown elites, you’re also missing out on overall DPS, because power runes are better than precision for that. You’re also missing out on the benefits of the other strong runes.

I’ve debating taking lyssa for some of my builds, but for example on my thief it doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense for me to take Eagle so I can get 8% more crit damage and deal 5% more damage after I backstab someone.

It’s not a rune that’s clearly superior to all the others, it is a rune that’s good for builds that have sustain. So for the warrior it makes sense, and maybe that’s what a lot of people are seeing it on, but honestly if you’re taking Fury over Banner you’re missing out on a really Solid utility.

The fact of the matter is that there are clear tradeoffs people make by taking lyssa + a low recharge elite over a different rune and a long recharge elite.

It’s a strong rune, but you can’t nerf a rune because it’s strong or you have to nerf the other strong runes, because they are strong.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Shockwave.1230:

Bsgapollo.5364:

Shockwave.1230:

Bsgapollo.5364:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Why nerf this? For some builds, this is basically the only access to stability and condition removal they have.

because some classes don’t have elite’s every 50 seconds for a full condi cleanse which does make it seem a bit unfair, wouldn’t you agree?

So does this trigger when using Nature’s Renewal or Charge?

I don’t see the issue for Summon Flesh Golem, Signet of Fury, or Basilisk Venom. We’re in a condition heavy meta, nerfing ways to manage conditions just buffs condition builds more.

A better solution for balance would be to implement weaker low recharge Elite’s on the professions that currently don’t have them.

it doesn’t for the 2 above skills, only the ones you mentioned like signet of fury.

Okay, it says on the wiki there’s a 45 second ICD anyways so it wouldn’t matter too much for those two skills anyways.

Given how powerful condition builds have been shown to be, I really don’t have an issue with lyssa as is. If the concern is overall balance between classes give the ones that can’t already do so the option to utilize lyssa more frequently.

ok so I was wrong that it didn’t have an eternal cooldown, nonetheless it’s still basicly the same, no class has almost an ult every 45 seconds or less. If the cooldown would be between 60-90 seconds that would be reasonable.

For me as an ele I don’t really have an issue with it either, I just wait 5 seconds until the boons are gone and I go back into being offensive, however for a condi class like necro I can imagine it being a pain in the kitten .

Why would it be a pain for the necro? The necro can just keep reapplying conditions at a much quicker rate than 60 seconds, it’s not like lyssa gives condition immunity for 5 seconds it just removes them once. The thief doesn’t really have the staying power to make it’s 45 second recharge matter, and normally Basilisk Venom is a precast to combat so the thief can get the opponent to 50% health more efficiently to utilize some of its procs.

Wow, loved this person’s stuff for Gw1. Great features for Gw2.

Really people aren’t looking for what armors work best, they’re looking for what stat spread works best. Truth of the matter is that it depends on the player. Some facts about stats are that Vitality is always going to be better than Toughness when given the option between the two, healing isn’t strong enough to allow it and Defense to scale similarly to the way Attack and Critical Chance do.

Also I prefer to avoid Celestial, because usually it results in wasted stat points on Condition Damage and Healing Power. If ever there is a day where ANet release a stat combination that has Vitality and Precision both in it, min maxers will be all over it, because we know Celestial Wastes stat points.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Shockwave.1230:

Bsgapollo.5364:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Why nerf this? For some builds, this is basically the only access to stability and condition removal they have.

because some classes don’t have elite’s every 50 seconds for a full condi cleanse which does make it seem a bit unfair, wouldn’t you agree?

So does this trigger when using Nature’s Renewal or Charge?

I don’t see the issue for Summon Flesh Golem, Signet of Fury, or Basilisk Venom. We’re in a condition heavy meta, nerfing ways to manage conditions just buffs condition builds more.

A better solution for balance would be to implement weaker low recharge Elite’s on the professions that currently don’t have them.

it doesn’t for the 2 above skills, only the ones you mentioned like signet of fury.

Okay, it says on the wiki there’s a 45 second ICD anyways so it wouldn’t matter too much for those two skills anyways.

Given how powerful condition builds have been shown to be, I really don’t have an issue with lyssa as is. If the concern is overall balance between classes give the ones that can’t already do so the option to utilize lyssa more frequently.

Thief condition remove is pretty solid.

You have a guaranteed removal of damage conditions via Hide in Shadows

You have a guaranteed removal of CC conditions with Withdraw and Roll for initiative.

You can remove three conditions with Shadow Step > Shadow Return.

I have never really needed more condition removal that those slot skills.

ipan.4356:

My Apothecary build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY8Ylcm6OHcy5E+5EyOjdSn4ZYhOlnCwqrA-jECBYiDimCMQk0hONtIas12FRjVPjIqWfEzcrIa1SB8ouK-w

You have some leet healing there

Acandis.3250:

ahuba.6430:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Why nerf this? For some builds, this is basically the only access to stability and condition removal they have.

the condition removal stays. and the builds that use this for stability will benefit a lot more from its counters not getting free aegis and stability than getting it themselves

The point of this isn’t to take away condi cleanse, it’s to take away the stability gain from it and to always give 5s of awesomeness right after at a very low cost.

I don’t think any runeset should give Stability, the way Lyssa currently works it’s like a get out of jail free card.

It’s not really like a get out of jail free card, unless Nature’s Renewal or Charge can be used any time, but that would be exlusive to the ranger and necro and potentially is a bug. All elites have cast times meaning you can’t be in jail already and get out. You’re taking action to avoid jail.

Bsgapollo.5364:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Why nerf this? For some builds, this is basically the only access to stability and condition removal they have.

because some classes don’t have elite’s every 50 seconds for a full condi cleanse which does make it seem a bit unfair, wouldn’t you agree?

So does this trigger when using Nature’s Renewal or Charge?

I don’t see the issue for Summon Flesh Golem, Signet of Fury, or Basilisk Venom. We’re in a condition heavy meta, nerfing ways to manage conditions just buffs condition builds more.

A better solution for balance would be to implement weaker low recharge Elite’s on the professions that currently don’t have them.

Acandis.3250:

So, Kensuda and I had this idea in the Bear Document, but I don’t want it to get buried in there, because I actually think this will be a good idea.

Change the (4) and (6) bonuses to the following:
(4): Convert a condition into a boon (LIFO queue)
(6): Convert all conditions into boons (same conversion table as Pure of Voice – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pure_of_Voice)

What this does is the following:

• It will remove RNG from the (4) bonus and serve with a bit more condi cleanse.
• It will remove any Stability that people currently get from this rune set.
• It will add a huge risk/reward factor to utilizing these runes; if you use your elite before you have any condis on you, you won’t get any boons.

/discuss

In what situation do people view this as overpowered or underpowered?

I haven’t seen any compelling arguments, but have seen people saying to nerf the set.

The elementalist is normally challenging to play. You can make it A LOT simpler by putting 10 points into fire magic for conjurer and primarily using Lightning Hammer.

What’s the reason for this pricing for both items? Also what’s the target market for both items? Finally, why not do what you did in Guild Wars with the perfect salvage kit?

Upgrade Extractor’s are good for one situation that Black Lion Salvage Kits aren’t good for. That’s the situation where you want to keep both your skin and your upgrade Component.

Black Lion Salvage Kits per use are 12 gems.

Upgrade Extractors per use are 200-250 gems.

In Guild Wars 1, getting 5 Perfect Salvage Kits was slightly less time/money demanding on players than a black lion salvage kit is now (and the BLSK will be even more resource intensive on players in the future as inflation continues).

I don’t see why the same player investment of time/resources as Guild Wars 1 can’t be used for items like the BLSK and Upgrade Extractor.

I’m not sure about what the company’s internal feelings about value delivered to the player for the revenue was, and not that Guild Wars 2 isn’t providing value, but Guild Wars definitely provided more value for the player’s time and dollar than what has been happening in Guild Wars 2 so far.

The upgrade extractor is quite honestly incredibly demanding of player resources when comparing to its equivalen in Guild Wars 1 the Perfect Salvage Kit. Incredibly demanding is putting to too mildly, it’s actually pretty rediculous.

It’s also rediculous when compared to the BLSK, considering the only additional benefit you gain is keeping the skin in addition to the upgrade. It honestly feels like price guaging players who want to change their builds while keeping thier upgrades and skins. It’s actually way more economical to the player to simply abandon their existing upgrade and just destroy it by overlaying another.

Anything that can happen probably will, but why would your playerbase ever use this instead of just buying another upgrade. These kinds of items should provide value to the player, meaning it’s pricing should be such that it makes sense to get one and use it. The only time that it would make sense to get one and use it is when an upgrade costs more than the purchase of 250 gems, which currently in the gem exchange is about 17 gold and 9 silver for 1 use (in Guild Wars 1 we got 5 uses for a perfect salvage kit)… literally the only upgrade components in the whole trading post with a price greater than that are +8 thru +13 agony infusions.

I don’t know why it would be intended for this item to be designed around high grade agony infusions, it seems really questionable to me, since it’d make more sense to provide value to the players by balancing it around the mean price of exotic upgrades or provide the player even more value by balancing around the median price of exotic upgrades, but if the goal is to provide value to revenue I’m not sure it’s even accomplishing that because the price point absolutely kills demand to the mass of the player base, unless of course this functionality hasn’t been designed for the majority of the playerbase and instead designed for the fraction that spends high dollars on the gemshop, and if that’s the case then maybe mission accomplished, but by looking at the numbers most likely not.

I personally am frustrated, but mostly with the image that ANet has chosen to wear with this situation. It’s a far cry from the Guild Wars experience I had where I was more than happy to spend money in the Cash Shop (granted these items’ functionalities were simple to obtain in game).

Also Merry Christmas everyone, I hope it’s been most enjoyable.

The best way to deal with condi spam is to go 20 into earth and use Rock Solid. Use ether renewal when you are taking a lot of DoT dmg amd have 2/3 or less health and swap to earth after a 1/2 second of the skill activating.

No one can realistically react quickly enough to interrupt during that 1/2 second, and you’ll likely have boon duration so the stability from Rock Solid will last the rest of the cast. I’d always recommend Elemental Attunement when running a spec like this, because the damage redux while casting Ether Renewal is usually necessary. If you’re going Aura’s you could potentially spec Elemental Shielding as well.

As far as other ways to deal with condi builds, it really depends on your build. Staff + Cleansing Water is good. Cleansing Water + Soothing Disruption + Cantrips is decent.

Really though you have to deal with heavy conditions in two ways, those are Cleansing Water + Multiple Regen sources or Ether Renewal + Stability.

OP’s comments look extremely tame to me, tame for outside a competitive environment too.

So really what we’re looking for is some exploration mobility on the Mesmer, because the best way of achieving it right now is Centaur Runes with Mantra of Recovery.

…continuing from above

Story is also a pretty significant part of the endgame due to the living story. It has been somewhat lacking, but fortunately of late we’ve seen improvements in both quantity and quality, which is honestly really impressive. It’s so obvious the living story is end game, because of the enormous concentration of players doing the same thing. However, it’s extremely different (and better in my opinion), because it’s new content and added challenges/story progression.

So to bring it all back together, no matter what you do endgame is a guarantee (unless there’s literally nothing to do at somepoint, which some people may feel is the case). If a game is largely about power progression, it will lead to endgame. If a game is largely about story/lore it will lead to endgame. There will always be content implemented into online RPGs designed to be a funnel for the playerbase to start walking through muddy terrain. It all goes back to the dissapointing truth that developers can’t create quality content faster than it can be consumed.

Honestly one of the simpler ways to solve this is to hide it well. If you can spread out the playerbase through your world as part of endgame it won’t feel as much like a funnel. If you can give them different lore/story elements to progress in those areas you disperse them too you’re building your world and your IP with them. If you can allow them to progress their character at the same time, you’ve got an incredible system. If you can make them want to replay content, they’re happy. If you can do all that at frequent enough intervals, you’ve solved the content consumption rate problem.

Is Guild Wars 2 entirely endgame? No, because when you start there’s a pretty clear starting point and there’s incentive to go everywhere. As you start to go everywhere and progress in the game you realize there’s really incentive to only be in a few places. For many people that’s, champ trians, dungeons, fractals, or living story. Each of which there are multiple, so while Guild Wars 2 isn’t entirely endgame, it has more endgame than a lot of other MMOs, maybe the most endgame (and without a subscription!!!). In my opinion though, Guild Wars had even more endgame than Guild Wars 2 (but we can thank Hard Mode for most of that).

I have a theory that I’d like to share on one of the more significant factors of creating the feel of end game. That theory is quite simple.

Every form of progression will lead to a feeling of endgame.

It really seems so obvious now. Players in many MMOs wonder what they are going to do after they are done leveling, or done gearing up, or done with the story. It’s like power progression is the game, or the story is the game, and while you’re on the cusp of reaching the pinnacle or are at that pinnacle the game becomes end game. And let’s be clear, end game is what players do in game after they’ve completed most if not all of the challenges and story of the game, and basically are all funnelled into the same end point of content/grind.

This isn’t supposed to be a comparison of GW1 to GW2, but more about the driving concepts of the different genres they’re a part of. I’m not sure how many of the forum goers played Guild Wars 1, but the “end game” seemed different to me. It wasn’t that end game started after power progression. It started after gaps in story progression, playing while waiting for the next game/expansion.

Basically in both genre’s we see a clear progression of something leading to end game. In Guild Wars, it was clearly story and lore. In normal MMOs it’s power progression. Sometimes it seems like these progressions are all there is in the game too, and maybe that’s somewhat true.

The question is what is Guild Wars 2’s progression? It’s a lot of power progression, it’s a lot of story (granted the storytelling/lore tie-ins can be improved definitely). The Ascended gear and Legendary gear are both pretty unrealistic for a casual player, especially if they have alts. So the power progression is heavily endgame (as the concentration of players doing the same thing increases), but fortunately the power progression is fairly shallow, unfortunately it has a heavy impact on fractals due to agony resist.

continued below…

You’ll have to wait until a bit of a higher level until you can get elemental attunement at master.

I’m not sure what your goal is, but if it were me playing I would be 100% focused on getting to max level as soon as possible so I could have w/e build I want and not deal with power progression ever again.

If that’s your goal or you just want to play the ele in PvE on easy mode, your best bet would be to put 10 into Fire, grab Conjurer, and use Lightning Hammer as your main weapon, because it pretty much blows everything else out of the water in terms of ease of play combined with effectiveness.

Throw down some longer duration combo fields before using it because the third auto attack is a blast finisher, and does AoE blind.

Anybody for or against Signet of Inspiration always applying Swiftness while out of combat in PvE?

Do the bonus items via gems come from spending gems or buying gems?

Lord Kuru.3685:

For those who want new skills/weapons — that works in the short term to keep the game fresh, but it’s not sustainable. If you keep adding skills, balance becomes a nightmare (Anet’s already having a terrible time of it right now).

How do you propose they Anet deals with this?

They did it with Gw1, and are probably better at now

I’m not sure what professions people feel range is weaker than melee, but I don’t feel that way on the Thief, Ele, or Mesmer. If it is an issue for some classes the simplest solution in my mind would be to increase range attacks’ damage at close range to be closer with melee dps.

Simplicity.7208:

Shockwave.1230:

Backstab Thief still has solid burst, you’ll just need to figure out what available defensive tactics work for you.

If you want a bit of staying power for a point go with pistol offhand.

If you don’t care about staying power use stealth/shadow steps.

There was a thread for testing backstabs on the thief forum. I think the highest realistic backstab one could hope to acquire is 7k on a glass target (with a 0/30/30/10/0 standard D/P build). That’s not enough to kill anything that’s not already hurting. And there’s a 3 second revealed period before you can do it again. To be honest, he’d be better off going with pistol whip haste. But still, conditions can do everything direct damage can do, but with more sustain. If he really hates conditions, I’d suggest a bulky DPS class like a stun warrior. But still, best burst is condition burst. Necromancers, engies, & warriors.

Yeah, I normally see a range of 6-9k on my backstabs before the 50% threshold is reached for executioner. Fun fact, executioner seems to trigger on necros below 50% HP regardless of active death shroud health.

I’m not saying Backstab Thief is easy to execute, but it’s still got a solid burst. Backstab followed by 2 heart seakers will usually pull around 20k damage assuming you get the crits. All in all 3 connecting hits for that much damage probably meets the OPs requirement for burst damage.

@ OP
PvP/PvE gear eventually will be the same gear. So good news is that all those skins your getting will be good for PvE. Matches per hour tends to be about 5, so in solo arena @50:50 win/loss that’s about 1 gold an hour plus 1100 glory and with glory boosters about 1500 glory. Plus currently you get 5 wintersday gifts per win so that’s about 25 more silver per hour.

That all said, you’re playing with a reward centric mindset. PvP is just fun, that’s the reason to play.

Backstab Thief still has solid burst, you’ll just need to figure out what available defensive tactics work for you.

If you want a bit of staying power for a point go with pistol offhand.

If you don’t care about staying power use stealth/shadow steps.

This seems strange. It would be an extreme corner case for someone to load for 7-15 minutes. As far as leaving a match with friends, that seems somewhat reasonable, but why leave 3 times?

Keiel.7489:

What kind of idiots do you take new players for? It’s like a general assumption that all new players are brand new to the internet and gaming all together? I don’t argue that there are some who is completely brand new, but farming of one thing or another is available everywhere, jerks of the trade is in every MMO. If they aren’t bashing these newbs in the starting area they’ll bash them somewhere else. If you want to be helpful, great, be helpful guide them when they ask a question and don’t let those jerks be the only voice they hear. But let’s not pre-emptively decide for the larger population what they should and shouldn’t do with their time.

I’m not sure that anybody would take new players as idiots. They just don’t know what’s up.

First impressions are important. If your first impression of interacting with players in a game is numerous negative exchanges are you more or less likely to want to interact with people out in the world?

I personally don’t see the value in adding a sub-class system. People are pushing for it in order to have further specialization in combat. This can be achieved through various means, such as simply introducing new skills.

Subclasses just don’t feel like they have a place in the Guild Wars lore. If anything a move back to secondary professions is more fitting.

This thread is relevant because of the influx of new players due to the current discount on the game purchase.

I agree that starting areas should have incentives for experienced players to come back, but not in order to do robotic farming.

@the thread resurrecter, there are far more than 18 basic things to do in GW1, but that is a pointless debate because you can continually break down things to do into smaller and smaller components.

Ultimately it comes down to personal preference. Many of us prefer more of a story/lore driven game, which the original was more so than gw2. There were a lot of big picture storyline, and people liked that. Currently in gw2 the big picture storyline are scarlet and dragons, scarlet didn’t feel like a big storyline until recently when people realized the connection between magical veins on the planet, dragons, and Scarlets pursuit of information on those magical veins.

In Gw1 there were 3 different stand alone campaigns, plus lots of lore and stories that were released with eotn, plus 2 Guild Wars beyond story arches. There was a lot of good writing creating connections between these different elements.

I personally am now excited about the scarlet arc in gw2 because of the recent connections they have been making to the lore. We’ll see where it goes.

Fernling.1729:

Shockwave.1230:

Fernling.1729:

It was done with the SPvP population after they reset the leaderboards. I don’t see how you would be able to tell PvE population by their achievement points though.

I think you’d just have a very wide range ballpark figure with PvE achievement points. It looks like they only tell you your in the 90th percentile before you become part of the top 1000 ranks. However you might be able to do some analysis on the trend in the difference of rank points from the top ranks to the bottom ranks in order to gather a more accurate number.

We won’t be able to determine the active population though. We know that there was over 3 million copies of the game sold, but will likely never know how many of those are active players.

That’s likely true the leaderboards for PvE probably represent the entire population of game accounts, and not active accounts.

It’s interesting to see the achievement point spreads vs the percentiles

Fernling.1729:

It was done with the SPvP population after they reset the leaderboards. I don’t see how you would be able to tell PvE population by their achievement points though.

I think you’d just have a very wide range ballpark figure with PvE achievement points. It looks like they only tell you your in the 90th percentile before you become part of the top 1000 ranks. However you might be able to do some analysis on the trend in the difference of rank points from the top ranks to the bottom ranks in order to gather a more accurate number.

Hey guys,

This may have been brought up before, but I just realized we can get a number on game population based upon tracking our progress in the leaderboards.

Granted we don’t know what that number will mean exactly, but it’ll be related to the population of Guild Wars 2 accounts per server region and game type.

Has anyone tried thinking through this so we can get an idea of how many people there are in each server region doing each game type?

Not that this would matter to the average player, but I’m really curious.

One, it’ll be whichever character I want to main fractals on. I won’t need any ascended gear for infusions until I’m past level 14 or so in fractals (currently 7). I’m not planning on gearing out ascended anytime soon though, because I do fractals maybe once or twice a month.

Added:
It does feel kind of annoying that I’ll only be able to do high level fractals on one character.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Quick note to say that I am up to date and that there are some awesome ideas here.

If someone wants to do a macro summary of the main ideas that would be awesome (if they haven’t already. I haven’t seen one). If not I will do one tomorrow morning.

I will then call out some of the suggestions I personally really like. Also as per Colin’s question in the previous thread (one which has been asked again by some posters in this thread) feel free to discuss Horizontal Progression systems you have enjoyed in other games.

Chris

I enjoyed Guild Wars’ horizontal progression systems.

I liked how you had to work towards the title progression of different groups/races in order to unlock weapon skins. I also thought it was neat to have what became a fairly shallow vertical progression blended title related skills (Ursan Blessing problem, but after all the fixes and changes it wasn’t grindy to max power).

I liked how there were some serious rewards for characters via story books in Guild Wars. This heavily promoted lore and playing of the story multiple times, which is sadly something that appears improbably at best for Guild Wars 2. I’m not sure why it feels like there is such a lack of storytelling in Guild Wars 2, but for me it does (maybe there’s just not enough voice over story telling and cutscenes for my liking).

I liked the hard content and the titles that came with it, Hard Mode with Vanquisher and Guardian titles (though vanquishing felt pretty grindy sometimes, less of that please). Something Guild Wars 2 could use is more challenging content outside of PvP and WvW. Having that challenging content be rewarding would be also be nice, but please be careful with gating challenging content. I like how it was done in Guild Wars, it was gated behind ascension, story progression in factions, and completing the story in nightfall, while EotN had it littered everywhere.

Another thing I liked about Guild Wars is that I could reasonably do character progression on all my characters. Check out my account I have elite armor skins on 8 of my characters (includy Vabbian and Obsidian) and multiple on some of them (4500 hours over the life of the game). In order to make that happen in Guild Wars 2 it feels like I’d have play twice as much, another thing is I felt way better about spending money in Guild Wars’ cash shop, that’s FAR less true in Guild Wars 2 (I feel like numerous things in the gem shop are a scam that you either already had accessible for way less time in game or would have had accessible for way less time if it was in the first Guild Wars).

Besides Guild Wars, the only other games I really play for progression are FPS games that have ranks. But y’all already have that, so kudos.

Shpongle.6025:

Tixx works for TSA

In Tixx’s Infinirarium, the TSA works for Tixx

Deified.7520:

2. Hard Mode- Do instanced 10+ player versions of meta events. Perhaps you need to have world completion done for that zone to do it. Unique skins and rewards, the likes. I know you’re going to be doing harder bosses like tequatl, heres the problem. Tequatl is insanely hard to organize for. Players get discourage because of how hard it is to get a bunch of people organized on at the same time and in the same overflow. There is a guild of tequatl runners that is huge, they will actually leave an overflow if there are too many pugs. Doing hard large scale organized groups in the open world will never work. It must be instanced or we should be able to easily choose our overflow.

This is an interesting concept

The 10 best traits in the game are the one’s that make meta builds so effective.

They’re going to be in frequent flux.

Also more context is needed. You can’t judge traits by themselves.

lordkrall.7241:

Shockwave.1230:

Our bad there were 1319 skills in the whole game, I have to wonder why the duplicates don’t count since they were similar to taking a trait that that allows you to cast a skill twice within its recharge time.

Those 1319 is including the duplicates, and no, we shouldn’t count those, seeing as they are not unique skills. They are after all identical other than name and campaign, other then that there is literally no difference at all.

Or are you going to claim that all those armors in GW2 that uses the same skin should be counted as unique armors as well? Because for some reason people never seem to do that, but when talking about GW1 it is apparently fully allowed to do the exact same thing.

Duplicate armors and duplicate skills are different comparisons. It’s like fruits and vegetables.

Duplicate skills were important, because like I said it was like having a trait to cast a skill twice within it’s recharge.

Earthquake an enemy then Dragon’s Stomp an enemy, same skill effect but you can use it twice in order to knocklock a group of enemies.

That’s different than having duplicate skin A and duplicate skin B, because they are mutually exclusive from each other in combat.

Skills are not mutually exclusive from each other.

Maethril.9586:

Shakkara.2641:

expects to be max level and max gear in a day Nope.

Possible, as long as you have either a lot resources or money, preferably both.
Crafting -> less than day and you have max lvl character.
While you’re at it, you can use that Crafting to get old “best” gear, exotics in a day, possibly couple ascended ones to add up.

Personally I hate that leveling method, coz it’s for the rich and lazy, but it’s still there.

It was possible strictly through time investmest. My record for reaching max level was like 11 hours or something.

lordkrall.7241:

Darkobra.6439:

You don’t remember good armour, being able to max a character in a day, hundreds upon hundreds of skills and heroes?

You sure you’re not confusing GW1 with your WoW character again?

There were some nice looking armor, but there are in GW2 as well, and that is after all up to personal opinion, so not really a valid complain anyway.

You could max a character in a day if you knew how, and it was more or less impossible to do it in Prophecies unless you spend a most of that one day playing in order to level up.
But then again, that can also be done in GW2.

He said 1000s (as in more than 2000 skills), that is a blatant lie, especially since a rather big number of them were duplicate skills so shouldn’t be counted as more than one skill.
Many people in GW1 didn’t really like the heroes back then, simply because it removed the need to play with real players, and thus making it much harder to find groups for certain content.

Oh, and I have never played WoW btw, but nice try.

Our bad there were 1319 skills in the whole game, I have to wonder why the duplicates don’t count since they were similar to taking a trait that that allows you to cast a skill twice within its recharge time.

What are weaknesses everyone has noticed when it comes to ele effectiveness?

I’ve noticed that the low health pool is a problem vs berserker builds and condition builds.

Also attunement cool down is problematic vs berserker builds too, because you get locked out of defensive abilities while you’re trying to down them or vise-versa.

A lack of pressuring attacks is someting I’ve noticed as well, most other professions can pressure with their auto attack.

Easily avoidable telegraphed attacks is another problem I’m seeing, this in combation with a lack of timable immobilize/stuns. We do have signet of earth, but it’s cast/aftercast make it somewhat weak vs skilled play.

I’m building upon my previous thread post of higher level concepts found here

Skill hunting
As previously mentioned skill hunting is one form of horizontal progression that could be implemented with existing content to help with repopulating zones. It should be more of a short term goal largely, and be achievable for alts. This will help facilitate players experiencing more build diversity throughout different professions.

Potential Implementations
Using NPC dynamic event triggers to start a 10 minute dynamic event chain could lead to an instance version of the zone which could play similarly to a living story quest.

Or talking to an NPC could take the player/players to an instance where they do a puzzle and after completing the puzzle they leave the instance arriving at a part of the zone that normally isn’t accessible otherwise (like underground or the top of a tower or something).

Or some easier skill hunts could be similar to skill point acquistions where the player communes in a place of knowledge or fights a skilled opponent to determine their worthiness to learn a new skill.

There’s numerous options, and with the examples above you can mix and match anything.

When implementing the new content though one of the MOST IMPORTANT things to remember is immersion, and to be sure to tie the content in to previous game history/lore, current events, living story, and add in foreshadowing too.

After the player learns the skill, they can unlock the skill via a 1, 3, 6 skill point investment. This will be a small skill point sink, but the way healing skills are done (25 skill point investment) should be avoided because those skills that players should be using frequently and 25 skill points is a lot to people who play more casually. Build diversity should be just as accessible as it was in Guild Wars 1.

Progression seems like the best opportunity for getting players to repopulate dead areas.

People love progression, because they feel like they’re building upon what you’ve already done, meaning your previous activities are important.

Horizontal character progression is one way to draw players back to low player density maps. Other forms of progression could be used as well, such as vertical (personally I’d avoid this one), lore or story progression.

High Level Ideas
Sticking to the topic of Horizontal progression as a high level plan, the approach that seems most logical is to provide numerous goals that can be exclusively obtained in each map. It’ll be important to keep these goals achievable for casual players with multiple alts as well as providing slightly longer term goals too for people who stick to a main.

In order to save on implementation time utilizing existing content would be a good place to start. Designing around dynamic events, the open world, instancing of existing maps, NPC DE triggers, etc.

Providing varying degrees of difficulty for obtaining horizontal progression should be a goal as well. Additionally varying the design of party size should be considered. Some progression should be designed around solo play, while other content can be designed for 2, 3, or 5 character parties (potentially larger parties if it ever makes sense to do that).

It’ll be important to start off implementing medium and short term horizontal progression goals, as there are already long and super long goals via gear.

Lower Level Details
Skill hunting seems like one of the best places to start. Implementing skill hunting, perhaps with the 1, 3, 6 skill point unlock requirement is a far superior solution than leaving skills already unlocked with a 25 skill point fee. If there needs to be more skill point sinks than it should be done another way. Skill hunting should by and large be a short term goal.

Basic implementation ideas on skill hunting
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406669

Something to be open to is the idea of blending horizontal and veritical progression. This was done in Guild Wars and as GW2 got closer to release you (ANet) did a good job at finding a balance for it. Numerous PvE only skills were unlocked horizontally, but could be powered up via title progression. The title progression was on an exponential curve, but eventually max power came early on in the title progression. There were a some mistakes, especially with Ursan Blessing, but the system was continuously refined, and since you refined it, it might be something to consider.

Guild Halls and Hall progression are another important classic Guild Wars horizontal progression system. Building upon it would be fun for Guilds. It’d be important to allow small Guilds to progress at a similar pace as larger Guilds. This is the major challenge. So perhaps you link Guild Hall progression to different parts of game content. Guild Missions could be a small portion of it, but shouldn’t be too big a part, because over time this could alienate newer Guilds. Something new could be added similar to Guild Missions, challenges of varying difficulties that don’t have time gates. Linking it to Guild Missions until the other Guild Hall Progression systems seems like a logical starting point.

Home instance progression is another potential area, but honestly I don’t know what the interest would be en masse. There’s no quick travel to the home instance, and it’s more of a selfish thing like the HoM from Guild Wars. If however, home instance progression required group play somewhat like the HoM progression did, it might be interesting.

Build diversity unlocks/skin unlock progression are potentially the most economy impacting, but would be highly desired by the players who don’t prefer doing the trading post. Allowing for Runes/sigils/stat combinations/skins to unlocked in a similar fashion to how the achievement chest skins behave is something pretty much everyone would want to play for. Obviously, because there are so many runes/sigils/stat combinations that aren’t very useful people would only go after the useful ones at first, but as you (ANet) make the other gear more useful through changes and the improvement of the support and control combat roles the other gear unlocks would become more desirable.

Please make this more obtainable similar to the atainability of the perfect salvage kit from Guild Wars 1 that did the same thing. That is all.

It would be interesting to see over a hundred dead eles for each server just lying dead in piles at LA.

Hyperion.4638:

Ok so i guess:
1.Skyhammer glory farming abuse is not enough
2.People leaving the game or afking when skyhammer map pops out is not enough
3.The god knows how many topics about skyhammer are not enough

Seriously what is it gonna take? 9/10 people hate the map, pretty sure if you do some kind of survey majority will say they dislike it, the only ones they will say they like it will be : people who say they love it just because other people say they don’t aka trolls, people who play classes with a lot of push-backs, people who won in the map for the 1st time in their live and love it now because they won.
Come on, you know its time to say goodbye to this map.

Skyhammer glory farm is no longer possible right? And that was possible with any map not just skyhammer, correct? This was an issue outside of the Skyhammer map.

People leaving or AFKing at Skyhammer has not been my experience. ANet has data that can tell them what % of matches have dishonorables. They can see if there’s a large difference between each map.

Why should multiple topics being made about the same opinion cause a change? ANet has real numbers to illumate the reality around this or any map. They can see on the forums the number of unique players posting about a topic.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Addressing specifics and providing potential solutions.