Guild Wars 2

I agree on the low level part.
We desperately need cultural starter gear (even something not fancy at all and that isn’t even a complete set with gloves and shoulders). It’s really frustrating to have your sylvari intro cinematic(other races too, but sylvari are the best example) completely ruined by the fact that your character wears non-vegetal armor. It also kills me that my female norn necro has to start with that insulting mini-skirt that doesn’t blend at all with the local norn culture. The first thing I did on that character was going to the hall of monuments to get a new armor skin, it wasn’t ‘norner’ but at least it was classier.

When the game was first shown at gamescon, the starter gear for humans changed depending on their choice at the question about social origin (nobles got fancy clothes, street rats less fancy clothes). Well, having three (or more for Norn and sylvari where the equivalent of social class are cycles and spirits) different starter cultural armor for each race would clearly be too much work but it was awesome to start the game with proper immersion

I did notice some unusual delays on skill activation in WvW, but I wasn’t even in the middle of a zerg, there were only like about 10 people around. The interesting thing was that being inside a friendly zerg was ok, even when they’re all firing at a door at the same time, but when it’s an ennemy zerg the lag and framerate drop is just so that you can’t do anything at all. Similarily, the delay on skills I experienced while only 10 people were around only happened when we were fighting one or two ennemy (particularily a roaming thief). It may be that everytime we did this there was an ennemy zerg moving in the vivinity that we didn’t notice, but still…

You’d basically be removing all the diversity that you can have in the way you use runes. Currently you can mix them, have 2 of one and 4 of another, or 2/2/2 or whatever suits you. Going up to 6 generally is interesting in the way that it adds some cool mechanic to your gameplay but isn’t necesarily more powerful.

You’d also be removing diversity from elite skills if those would be more powerful than normal elites.

You’d also be crushing down Anet’s design goals regarding the relative importance of each part of building. ie : Skills > Traits > Gear. Your choice of gear is supposed to be a consequence of your choice of skills (sometimes your tinkering with traits and gear will lead to switching a skill or two but that’s about it).

Bust the most important is you’d be bringing on a whole gigantic nightmare of unbalance. Just too much new elite skills that’d be shared by every profession. A profession’s elite skills’s power depend on how it interacts with the rest of the profession. Some elite skills would just be incredibly imbalanced if handed over to another profession, and that’s why racial skills are less powerful than profession skills.

So please, try to think things through before coming up with what you think is the idea of the century. You know, Anet have full teams of devs whose job is to produce hundreds of these kinds of crazy ideas, but then they brainstorm on it, and they test it and rule out what is obviously not gonna work without any hestitation. I think it would be quite surprising if they didn’t already considered something like gear influencing/modifying or adding skills multiple times during development

If you have the “making of GW2” book I think there’s a mention somewhere that a common ancestry between Asura and Skritt is indeed part of what the devs intended for these two races.

The devs are trying to learn from the mistakes they did in GW1. All professions that were added on top of the first ones although they had very cool concepts had more and more trouble finding their place in the metagame, with the Paragon probably being the ultimate example of this. Part of the reason why they moved from Utopia to a new game is because the two new profession were going to continue this trend even more, and make the metagame even more instable because of the issues with secondary professions (which, although very cool too, made balancing a nightmare).
With GW2 they adopted a much more careful approach, and spent so much time defininf their professions, ruling out those that were not distinct enough and fusioning overlaping ones that any lore-fitting archetype is pretty much covered.
So, adding new professions would really be extremely surprising. Adding skills and weapons to expand archetypes and cover some gameplay niches however is very logical and pretty much (un)officially announced if I remember well.

Adding new races is much more plausible, but even for that I hope they use the same careful approach : not adding things just for the sake of having some punch-line for a wow-like trailer (like “we’ve increased the level cap and created artificial new content (again…) !” ), but because it actually fit the lore and add an interesting archetype that wasn’t already covered in some way.

Dradiin.8935:

I think there are literally hundreds of other games that have defined roles, and i think if you want that in your game you have hundreds of alternatives.

I do not like having defined roles, so i have this one game.

So umm yeah ….

About roles, because this notion tends to be used a lot in such arguments. GW2 does have roles, but these roles depend on the content you’re playing. i.e. you have to adapt your strategy to the situation, as opposed to always using the same trinity all the time which is probably what you call “defined roles”, and it honestly makes a lot more sense.

A good exemple of this : I was doing CoF path 1, and the last boss spawns crystals to heal itself. So our team took a few seconds to think about it and came out with a simple strategy. Characters that were built for direct damage (as opposed to condition damage) would break the crystals (since they are objects and are not affected by conditions), glass-cannons especially were appointed to this task since it allowed them to stay away from the boss’ pbAoE while still doing something. Characters built around condition damage and especially would focus on the boss and maintain poison on it to reduce the healing from the crystals.
Another example is that one of my guildies like to spec in skills that reflect projectiles, so in an encouter against several ennemies he will be appointed to neutralizing the most annoying ranged ennemy, splitting the team for more effectiveness.
Well, it’s not really complicated (well, it’s not like the trinity is complicated anyway), but still, that’s a strategy with everyone knowing its role and knowing how to adapt it would the situation change.

Sure this sense of strategy isn’t nearly as pronounced in the open world, that’s the trade-off to keep it flowing and accessible. Still, as a individual player you should know what your character can or cannot do and how you should put that to use in, say, a group event (if you have an AoE rez, do you use it as soon as someone is downed or wait for the massive aoe that will surprise many players).

In short, just because GW2’s roles are dependant on the combination of your character’s capabilities and the situation you have to deal with (which makes a lot more sense and is muche more interesting than “let’s use the same tactic for every combat !”) doesn’t mean the game doesn’t have roles

There’s a very big difference between dodging and actually getting evasion to proc, which is required for the achievement.

While this is true, many dungeons have AoEs that cover such a large area that using the “mobility aspect” of dodge to get outside of the red circle is a very ineffective way to avoid this type of attacks (especially if you melee). However, understanding that dodge has an “invulnerability aspect” to it and that this invulnerability lasts for quite a long time (longer than the animation may suggest at first) will make you accomplish miracles.
I believe many people use dodge for its mobility aspect but haven’t fully grasped the invulnerability component yet and will find themselves helpless in some situations they could easily beat with this superbly powerful tool.

So the dodger achievement seems pretty legitimate to me (although the way it works is probably determined by technical limitations rather than design decisions. But I’m sure Anet would incorporate a kiting achievement if there was a reasonnable way to track it)

Well, I’m still one or two-shotting creatures in starter areas, effectively making them uninteresting.

Here’s one funny thing I found, the reward letter for this heart quest : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Help_Bjarni_honor_the_Hare_spirit

Bjarni

Hi

Linnea says I should send you a thank you for your help. Me and the bunnies are both very happy. Thank you!

—Bjarni
P.S. I think Linnea might have a crush on you. Shhhh.

If it hasn’t been changed, you can notice by completing this heart with two different characters that the P.S. doesn’t change depending on your character’s gender (nor your race I believe), effectively implying a lesbian love interest if you play a female. And I would agree that lesbian relationships currently seem more prevalent than gay (male/male) ones. Wether that is because of pure randomness (which can make the world more believable than perfectly evened out quotas) or because lesbian relationships are supposedely more acceptable remains to be determined. In the end, this game isn’t an essay about love and sexuality, it only uses some relationships here and there as narrative elements, but I will admit that I can easily imagine a good bunch of your ‘average straight male gamer’ (if you get what I’m referring to) complaining about being ‘sexually harassed by big, hairy, gay norns’ while most female gamers would probably not really care.

Of course, this P.S. is written like a joke (thus not necesarily confirming that Linnea is lesbian, or bi to be more precise, nor that she is interested in other races either) and more importantly you can interpret it differently depending on your character, since Bjarni sending the exact same mail to anyone who helps him probably isn’t canon lore. But I like to read it as an indication that Norn have no problem with the topic, and more importantly that they may not apply a default heterosexuality to anyone who’s sexual orientation is unknown, like people tend to do IRL.
As for the interracial thingy if you happen to do this heart as a non-Norn, well… it wouldn’t be the first time in Norn culture : http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prenuptial_Disagreement_%28female%29 (it’s interesting to note that in this case the devs actually felt the need to create two separate quests :p )

Don’t expect anything. That’s the only, obvious rule one should ever follow. This way if you’re not surprised at least you won’t be disappointed.

Sword 1 is awesome, but it lacks a bit of responsiveness. There is always quite a big delay between when the attack occured and when the animation actually finishes (when your character straighten up) and the game finally accepts to let you dodge.
Being able to start the chain, dodge, then use one of the leaps to get back into battle is awesome. But because of that delay dodging at the right moment becomes a bit random and unreliable (and sometimes, kind of a hassle it must be said) except for the slowest, most telegraphed attacks like those of the ettins, and it also reduces your attack speed.
Making the leaps interruptible by dodging is a somewhat extreme but valid solution (extreme in that it would be the only leap in the game you can interrupt), but they could also just look at the leap animations and accelerate the useless frames at the end that could be the cause of that. I believe it’s not the only animation with this problem, my mesmer with his spear underwater will use skill 5 and be unable to use any other skill for about one second after the attack actually occured.
What’s a bit strange though, is that if you just chain your sword 1 attacks the end of the animations will blend into the next animation with zero delay. This system could be extended to work with the other skills on the bar and with dodge.

Obviously +1

Building a game around elements of movement, dodging, and jumping even and not giving these tools to the AI is obviously a big missed opportunity. I have to say I didn’t know wether to laugh or to sigh when I saw that NPC in Aurora’s remains use flashy teleports to move across a few mushroom platforms because obviously the AI can’t jump. GW2 brought jumping, that GW1 didn’t have, and the devs found a wonderful way to use it in the form of jumping puzzles (rather than it being a relatively useless gimmick, like in other games) and I applaude that ; but I wish a similar reasonning was applied to the AI as well. Seeing ennemies walk all the way around a small cliff I just jumped from to pursue me is kinda depressing.

Anet have said they want to avoid splitting skills and traits between PvP and PvE, and I agree it would be better, but it can’t happen if PvE ennemies can’t use the same mechanics and tools as PvP ennemies. This includes dodging and positionning but also conditions and boons and their removal. There are so many conditions and boons flying around in PvP, yet in PvE the few creatures that use these have so few of them that it rarely makes a difference, and managing them is a part of GW2’s gameplay that’s kinda lost in PvE.
Similarily, we have a weakness condition, but loose half of its effectiveness in PvE because ennemies don’t use dodge. And cripple, immobilize and chill can only be used to kite melee ennemies, but never to catch fleeing ennemies, since the few that do just walk at normal speed instead of fleeing. Poison’s reduced healing effectiveness isn’t so interesting either considering the number of creatures that actually use healing skills.
Just giving bosses the ability to dodge would make all of them much more interesting since their defense would rely on an active mechanic instead of their boring high HP pool.

And another +1 for the Skritt example. the gameplay should be able to communicate the richness of the universe. Tbh, I think any “social” creature should have been built with some sort of group AI to reflect their nature. The dredge suits or wolves summoning allies isn’t enough to show the social aspect of a race, and being able to “infiltrate” a dredge mine without any of them actually caring unless you really get in their face is kind of an immersion breaker (the miners picking up the weapons of their dead allies is nice though). Obviously aggroing the entire mine every time you need to get to your POI or Vista would be kind of extreme, but there should be a way to balance it for a more interesting and immersive gameplay.

Konig actually has a point when he says they become fertilizer. Killeen’s grave has a tree on top of it and, in a similar fashion, the Revered Terebinth sprouted out of a sylvari’s grave (if I my memory’s correct). The Revered Terebinth seem to be a very particular tree, maybe having some sort of spirit.
Riannoc’s grave however hasn’t much going on about it as far as I remember, but it’s in the middle of a swamp, and a swamp with risen at that.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

I would have do disagree with you on the fact that crafting is something that becomes useless when you get to 80. With crafting you can create all sorts of gear for you alts and a lot of the crafted skins on the way to 80 have a nice and unique feel to them. It is very helpful!

It may be just me but my alts really don’t need anything else than the occasional green loot here and there. And considering how few demand there is for non-max lvl gear on the trading post I think I’m not the only one who’s not in desperate need of good gear while walking the path to 80.
As for the skins, sure I may want some of the crafting skins, but that’s something I’ll only truly care about when I reach 80. I just need one cheap “copy” of the skin to store for when I’ll finally transmute it.

As for putting runes into the Mystic Forge. It’s true… but that’s more of a quick fix from the devs than a proof of good design imo.

Anyway, that’s not the point… a ‘quick fix’ like that of the runes for transmutation stones would be enough.

Hi there,
those who followed GW2’s development may remember that when the game was first showed at Gamescom and other conventions it used a red aura (or green for allies) around your target. (example : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0mT7AHKqI )
Some people then complained that it was, according to them, ruining the aesthetics of the game (I will agree it was slightly too large) and it was later changed for the current, more traditionnal, ring on the ground (which I personally find aesthetically worse but that’s not the point).
Strangely, the aura remained for targets you hover on (I’m ok with this one) and for targets that are in the direction you’re facing (this one isn’t really useful and does not disappear when i hide my UI to take screenshots

This ring has too major problems :

-It’s easily hidden by either the terrain (grass, holes…), other people or the usual rain of particle effects.

-It doesn’t work underwater, which is probably part of the reason why some people have been complaining about underwater combat being messy (not being sure where and what your target is certainly sounds like a big problem).

The only plus side I can find to the ring is that it helps getting a better sense of distances with flying creatures (since they don’t touch the ground), and that isn’t worth much compared to the two issues above.

The problem of ennemies being hidden behind clouds of particle effects (and thus not being able to see a boss’s attacks coming for instance) has been discussed many times on these forums and I think giving us the option to use auras instead of rings would be an extremely simple yet very effective solution to this since the aura would be visible through skill effects, allowing you to see animations (if they are done well enough seeing the silhouette of your ennemy should be enough to understand what it’s doing, or at least this is what I learn in my animation school :p ).

And from a purely aesthetic perspective, I think the rings tend to make things look smaller. A character with a ring at its feet looks like some sort of pawn in a RTS and, more importantly, you have to look at the ground to see the rings better. Having your camera constantly pointing downward isn’t the best way to deliver the sense of scale this game has. Well, I’ll agree this is rather subjective.

So being able to chose to have auras around my targets instead of rings would make me (and probably other people) happy. Thanks !

Basic Transmutation Stones share the same problem as many things in this game. There is no point in investing in something that will be obsolete by the time you reach lvl 80. Minor and Major Runes are an other example of this. You really don’t need to care about runes until you are 80 so you’d rather save your money for Superiors.
This is also the reason why I don’t craft. Because this aspect of the game basically failed on the promise that we wouldn’t need to craft hundreds of worthless items to finally be able to get to the useful ones.

So it’s not a problem exclusive to transmutation stones but I too would welcome anything that could change my stack of Basics into something useful

Have you tried fighting destroyers with a guardian ? That’s a nice little chunk of your damage that goes bye bye, especially if you specced for it. And it’s not like you could use something else like an elementalist switching to an attunment that doesn’t rely on burning, virtue of justice is there all the time and cannot be changed.

So before you start accusing the devs of laziness or failed logic and saying this is something that needs fixing, ask yourselves if you really want a game where you can loose half your effectiveness depending on the nearby ennemies. When I see how some people react to the Risen being a bit hard I can only imagine what sort of righteous fury some of the ‘realism’ discussed here would cause.

Making creatures immune/more resistant to certain conditions or damage types was possible in GW1 because changing your whole build before going anywhere was the way to play the game. In GW2, I’d rather accept a little more suspension of disbelief than have to pay for traits refund everytime I have to face a specific type of creature.
So I thank Anet for being wise enough to realize that while tiny bits of immersion are nice, they should only be placed where it doesn’t hurt the gameplay.
There are elements to this game that are far more immersion breaking than condition immunity (especially since conditions pretty much only show up on your UI), starting by the simple fact that anything we fight has to be smashed, hit, shot and cut so many times before it can be considered dead. Sometimes it’s quite ridiculous to see how much hits a simple human can take, yet I don’t think anyone would like GW2 to become a simulation game.

I remember Kristen Perry said something like she wanted to make some more “alienish” options for sylvari but she had to stop at some point because of the obvious technical problems (gear, animations, all this sort of stuff…). The few asymmetrical faces are probably as far as she could go in terms of crazy plant shapes.

But in the end one of the very first influence for the sylvari are fairies and fae for their youth and joy. Going all treant wouldn’t have been the best way to communicate this aspect of the sylvari race.

Electro.4173:

Calling your pet back to dodge AoE’s or powerful attacks is all well and good if you’re playing ranged.

Yes. There were a few boss fight events where I managed to keep my feline alive the whole time simply by using F3 and F1 so it would always end up behind the boss, or stay with me if it needed to recover a bit, but I was using a bow.
If you’re playing melee you cannot ask your pet to stay away to recover by using F3. It will only stay next to you and therefore be right in front of your ennemy, taking damage… so if you melee you can only choose to sen your pet on suicide mission, you cannot get them out of a fight like you can when playing ranged.
So F3 should not only make the pet dodge (or at least get out of the way quickly and reliably) and come back to you, it should also put your pet in a mode where it tries to stay away from ennemies and AoEs (and not following you right into the heat of battle).

If it could be done and be reliable it would be much better than a straight up stat increase or some artificial protection against AoEs that I see suggested here and there. It’d make managing our pets rewarding because we’d have the tools to do it properly.

I am a Kodan and I find this offensive.

Seriously though, that’d just be overcute

Natural.7013:

More gear progression is the only way this game will last.

Or more fun content. Because gear stats, in the end, are just numbers and nothing else. I don’t know of many people who have a love for numbers… All people I know, however, appreciate fun content

Believe it or not, but I like to explore maps again, redo events and jumping puzzle and mini-dungeons that I appreciated and basically just enjoying the content. Playing with friends too of course.
WvW sometimes (when I can play in the morning and avoid the queue) and dungeons when there are enough guildies.
In short, I’m just playing normally and enjoying the game, slowly earning enough money to get exotic gear and more importantly, buy enough gems to create all of my other 15 planned characters (being a roleplayer doesn’t help reroll at all) x)

The real problem here in my opinion is that now that they’ve done it once, nothing can prevent them from continuing to add new gear tiers with other updates and expansions.
They can always make promises, say “ok, we just realized we needed a max tier that’d be a bit higher, but now that it’s settled we won’t add anything after that.” but you know how easy it is to break promises.
The current addition of ascended gear isn’t necesarily going to create a gear treadmill, but the fact that they now have an excuse to add other more powerful items in the future can definitely create.

I have no problem with the concept of infusion, since it only affects a specific kind of content that was precisely designed for this. Ascended gear however affects the whole game which I believe was designed with only exotics in mind. You can already see how easy and trivial lower level areas become when you level up even without a full set of exotics and even with level scaling (which is not powerful enough it must be said). Adding stats will only trivialize this content even more, becoming an uninteresting experience for fully geared players and a painful experience for low lvl players if hl players are given more tools to exterminate any content before they can even start doing sufficient damage (it already happens in some places).
In short, not really a good idea for a game that promoted its replayability :/

If Anet are already breaking their most sacred rule from GW1 this early after the launch of the game what can we expect in the future ?
It feels like a betrayal indeed, and if they do it once, there’s nothing preventing them from doing it again.

But since it just feels so obviously wrong from ArenaNet and I still trust them enough to think that they’re more intelligent than that and more respectful of their principles and philosophy, I hope this is more complex than just “moar powaaa !”.
The reference to “infusion” may not be a coincidence at all. Maybe just like how infusion in GW1 only affected our capacity to deal with Mursaats, infusion in GW2 will only be meant for a specific type of content. Since they say infusion can be found in dungeons maybe infusion are the thing that allow you to go deeper in this new infinite dungeon called Fractals of the Mists. And outside of this activity infusions have no influence.

Well, I hope it’s this…

It’s not about “devaluing legendaries”, it’s about making their acquisition fun (and “fun” is one of Anet’s master words) and an integral part of how the game was designed.

Anet basically said play as you want, you don’t need to grind. Well, sure you don’t ‘need’ to have a legendary and so you don’t ‘need’ to grind. But why have they even designed legendaries to be about grinding in the first place ? It feels like a bit of an afterthought with a somewhat lazy implementation when your quest for a legendary could have been an epic adventure. Using all the fun elements already existing in the game so that all this acquisition process feels like a reward in itself. And when you finally have your legendary, or even if you don’t have it, you can be proud of all what you’ve done and you have an epic story to tell to your friends. Rather than ‘I spent 3 months farming Straits of Devastation with a zerg…’

It’s not about making legendaries easier or harder to acquire, it’s about making them an integrant part of the game an making them fun, which is Anet’s philosophy.

As said above, it’s most certainly the other way around the OP’s view : make the fee calculation intelligent enough to understand that if we can go for free to LA using the Mists there is no reason to charge us when we want to use map travel and no reason to force us to go through an artificially high number of loading screen.
I’m no specialist, but I imagine reducing the total number of loading screens may benefit both the servers and the players’ computers, right ?
Same goes for all cities and also for porting from a city to the outside. If it costs nothing to tp from the western side of the city to the eastern side then it shouldn’t cost us more to tp to the outside from the western side than from the western side

Well yes, it should be about playing the game rather than using gems, or grinding (something that wasn’t supposed to be in this game). That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t take time, that means the way to acquire a legendary should be rewarding (read “enjoyable”) and relevant to the rest of the gaming experience (suddenly not playing the game anymore isn’t the best way to enjoy the game.)

These whales have made quite an emotional impact it’d seem.
Is it bad ? I don’t think so. The fact that many people have such emotional reactions to this is a sign that Anet have done their job well.
I would be worried if people only shrugged at it, or if they laughed about having a whale steak or something like that. But that’s not what happens, people are actually asking for a way to save the whales. To me this means Anet managed to create an empathic bond between the player and the game. This is succesful storytelling and a good way to convey a message.

No please no, never.

The asura female design is awesome precisely because it doesn’t use the human-based oversexualization trope (even though they have this horrible makeup for some faces…) Same for the armor, this is what makes asura unique compared to your generic (absurd) fantasy.

As for mistaking a gender for the other, while I don’t understand why being able to tell someone’s gender seem sooooo important for some people, I really have no problem to tell asura females from males. Maybe it’s my artistic background (I have a good memory of shapes) or maybe it’s me spending so much time on character creation that I pretty much recognize every single preset in the game. Even without that the size of the ears makes any mistake almost impossible, especially when it’s so easy to spot.

The idea is that NPCs can’t deal too much damage because it is the player’s role, and they can’t be too resilient either because otherwise they could be used as tanks by glass-canon players.

I talked about this during the beta and how making NPCs a low priority for ennemy AI and players the high priority could solve the problem of NPCs dying too much (not only in personal story or dungeons but also in events or for filler NPCs like guards and such). I don’t think I’ve seen some update about this since then.

It seems whatever Anet will put in these monthly achievements people will find a way to whine about it. I even know people who were upset by the candy corn achievement for October’s monthly. Gotta get used to it I guess.

I believe the goal of monthly achievements is to encourage people to discover different aspects of the game. Hopefully this game still has months and even years ahead of it. If this month’s achievement is not for you you can be sure there will be at least one month in this game’s life that you find anything to QQ about.

This month instead of the salvaging that I barely completed last month and really is hardly fun at all I’ve got an opportunity to motivate my guildies for some dungeons. Could be worse.
Next month maybe we have jumping puzzles as part of the achievement and those who hate them will make yet another thread to complain about it, or we’ll have crafting and it won’t please everybody either.
So relax. You can’t please everybody all the time but you can please everyone at least once. The philosophy of this game is that you can chose to play only one part of it if that’s the only thing you’re interested in. Monthlies are just here so that you may try something else for once.

zaxziakohl.5243:

I love the new zoom we had in the Mad King instance (and after bug wise ). However, even I will admit that the max zoom, on my asura anyway, is a bit far. I felt like a tiny speck on the ground.

This DOES NOT mean that they should just leave it close up and make us suffer.

I would be perfectly fine with a happy medium zoom. Zoom out a lot, but not as much as the Mad King instance, except in the cases of World events.

I would LOVE to be able to see more than a foot when fighting a dragon lol. A happy medium would be perfectly fine for pvp as well, as it would not be so far as to allow viewing over walls.

IF they do a larger zoom out, which I hope they do, they can solve some of the pvp issues by moving the character down from the center of your screen.

Here is one picture, with some paint drawing explaining what I mean. I think it could be beneficial for all players!

Enjoy! I hope ANet looks at this btw. It would allow both zoomed in and zoomed out modes of gameplay to be viable.

Sorry I can’t think of a way to take a screen shot that would show actual position better, but I think you guys will get it lol.

Ah ! Some constructive feedback ! Thank you for pointing that there is more to this topic than just the value of the zoom.
Your screenshot explanations are perfect

At the risk of repeating what has already been said several times on these forums : I believe skill over grind was the announced philosophy for GW2…

So yeah, more meaningful activities for meaningful rewards.

Getting to choose between different levels of difficulty would indeed be welcomed especially if personnal story becomes replayable some day, which I hope it will, because some missions are really nicely done

This new FoV is awesome. I can now truly enjoy the beauty of this game. Playing for too long tired my eyes real quick, but with this change the image now feels much more natural. My eyes thank you

I’d like to talk about two things that would greatly reduce the frustration that can come from some issues with selection.

Camera control and selection both use right-click. This is probably the most frustrating issue. Most of the time I will hold right-click to move my camera slightly but not move enough for the game to consider that I’m really moving my view rather than clicking. If I’m unlucky -and I often am- it will select another mob, a pet, an ally, effectively interrupting my auto-attack and forcing me to reselect my target.
An option to disable right-click selection would be most welcomed

Allies and ennemies are treated equally by mouse targeting, even when they overlap. Sometimes you’d be in one of those boss events with tons of ads running around and all your allies bashing the boss in melee range. Tab-targetting isn’t always the most practical solution and so you’d like to be able to select the boss simply by clicking on it. But you won’t be able to do this since there are multiple allies between you and the boss that block your targetting.
If GW2 had dedicated healers and skills that can select allies it would be perfectly normal to make ally selection as easy as possible. But as this is not the case I don’t see why I’d ever want to select an ally while in combat and so I don’t see why their presence should prevent me from targetting something more useful.
So an option to make ennemies the top priority when multiple targets are overlapping undeer your mouse would also be welcomed, making combat more intuitive and less frustrating

Thank you for your attention

It’s true that dungeons (at least AC) only get really interesting once you get to know them and understand them. After two or three runs I started to realize how we have to pay attention to the specialties of the mobs we face to establish kill priorities, I began to learn their animations to recognize their attacks, and so on…
It’s true that people were disturbed by the lack of precise role, they kept saying that they didn’t know what to do. It made me think and I began to understand how much each of us could do to collaborate with each other, how we could save someone from a difficult position. All this by looking at the battlefield.
Once you realize all that you can see what impact you can really have. One of my friend complained that he didn’t feel like he had much impact over the fights, but I realized how important any of my decisions could be.
This makes dungeons interesting whatever their difficulty may be.

On the rewards however, especially the special equipment sets, I can’t help but feel like Anet just didn’t have the time to decide how exactly they would handle it. The current implementation with ‘base’ skins in one panel and the true skins in the other is just weird and I’m really not sure the current prices in token are what was intended when dungeons and their ‘no grind’ philosophy was first announced.

When the game was being shown for the first times at tradeshows there was a colored aura around your target instead of the current circle at their feet.
It allowed for perfect visibility even through massive clouds of visual effects and was also working underwater (since the circle around the feet cannot work underwater there is no way to tell your target from the rest of a group currently, and that is annoying).

Some people whined about it ruining their visual experience, that they simply didn’t like it and now Anet chose to use the more mainstream circles around the feet.
I hope these people now understand what the aura was for…

Anet said a long time ago they were looking at it.

Still no upadate about it

I prefer a clear ‘no’ to being left without an answer.

I agree the cycle is not visible enough. Having events that spawn only at night is very nice, but they’re too few to allow night to really have an impact on gameplay. It would be really nice if at least night was darker (not like in Dragon’s Dogma where it becomes mandatory to use torches, fire spells and anything that can do light because that would impact gameplay). It would also be good to make sure that underwater environment are subject to the light variation. Going underwater in Lion’s Arch at night it looks like it is still day down there.
Maybe an impact on mob spawns would be welcome too.

But the thing that disappoints me the most is that the sun (and the moon) never go around the sky like they should. I can understand that having a constantly moving light source would probably be awful for graphics optimization, but I can’t help but wonder “why should it be constantly in the west ?”
Tyria is constantly like it is late in the afternoon and that feels a bit depressing to be honest.
Sunsets and sunrises are particularily disappoiting. The sun just goes up or down perfectly vertically and so does the moon. At one moment they cross and neither of them have their glowing effect on. It’s… well. Let’s just say that I was hoping to see wonderful skies, orange sunsets and pink sunrises, but the way the sun and the moon are handled just ruins it all.
While I don’t ask for a perfectly calculated simulation of all astral objects I was hoping to be able to look at the sky and see that we must be nearing noon and night is still a long time from then.

At the moment the day nigh/cycle feels rather useless except for the very few night events. There is no difference in the general gameplay, it’s not necesarily noticeable if you don’t pay attention to the sky, and even aesthetically the fake sunsets and sunrises ruin the wonderful work done by the artists on the skybox.

It definitely needs more love