Guild Wars 2

I can just imagine the ability to simply press a button to equip my birthday blaster… awesome.

‘This isn’t all that useful at the moment for me, delete it please’ … wut?

I agree that the home instance is largely useless for most players, but why on earth would that mean it should be removed? Why would you ask a developer to put in work to remove something that has zero negative impact on the game at all for you, and has positive impact for others? Do you covet thy neighbours harvesting nodes or something? Haha.

On a different note, I’d like Anet to have a look at what Wildstar did with housing (probably the only truly fun thing in that game to me!) and absolutely rip it off. I’d love to be able to build a house in GW2! Provide me with an instant teleport to it in the UI and I’d be extremely happy.

Indeed, as everyone has said, due to megaervers the LA map you’re in will nearly always be ‘full’. It’s just that everyone is spread out more in the map.

Personally I’m under the assumption that a paid expansion is in the works somewhere. The living story content updates are pretty good overall lately, but not ‘the whole of Arenanet working on it’ good.

For example, I can’t believe it would take ~200 people (apparently about 300 people work at Anet, but I’m taking a wild stab in the dark based on my experience of mid-large software houses and assuming about 1/3rd of the staff don’t directly work on the game in any form) to make a replica of Pacman over two weeks :P Especially now that, after two years, the tools for designing content will be a lot more refined than they were whilst they were building the game.

There’s got to be something else being developed in the background too!

If the limitation is how the server calculates the bleed, then I very much doubt this would help seeing as it still has to track all of those different sources of bleed. Even if there’s a reduction in calculations on a per player basis, it would be applying those calculations for up to 25 players. At the moment, those 25 stacks are simple (apply x damage every second for y seconds). In your system they are far more complex. It wouldn’t get around the server issues as a result.

Also, in response to the person that suggested doing the same damage over a shorter time: that would drastically change how conditions work. Doing the same damage in half the time would like the Ranger rapid fire buff for EVERY DoT condition! The reason why condition removal is quite important is that, even now, conditions hurt a lot if you don’t remove them. That change would halve the opportunity a player has to remove them.

You could, of course, make the change only apply to PvE mobs, but even that would make condition damage extremely potent at ‘spiking’ compared to now.

skullmount.1758:

And patch notes are up. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-18-2014/4568956

A new Pact weapon set is available at Black Lion Weapon Specialists for a limited-time price of one ticket per weapon. Tickets can be found inside Black Lion Chests.

Of Kittening course. Shoulda known that was coming. For every one ingame acquirable weapon set the BLTC gets at least 5-10.

I generally see it as the BLTC sets being a major way of funding the free content anyway. It’s not like you HAVE to buy those sets, and you certainly don’t have to buy them with real money with how the gem store is set up (plus, ~100-120g for a really nice skin is probably better than what it would cost if it were just a random new exotic drop or mystic forge recipe).

Seems fair to me, plus they add a lot more free content than most sub games add ‘free’ content! haha.

They’re fairly different games, outside of being in the MMO genre. I personally don’t find WoW fun, but I can definitely see it being easy to enjoy both. I couldn’t imagine playing a game like Wildstar and WoW concurrently though!

That’s RNG for you! I’ve had two precursors in two years. Both of them made my friends howl in annoyance due to how I acquired them:

Dusk: I smacked an Orr mob. No event, not a champion. Level 80 Risen. Dusk drop. Fun times! I immediately ran to the nearest safe-ish corner and proceeded to be stunned for a bit. It also happened January 2nd 2013, since I updated GW2Wiki at the time as random mobs weren’t a listed source!

Dawn: Got this the other day – I’ve never really been into the whole ‘mystic forge ALL the things!’ culture. But I decided ‘eh, I have a ton of t5 mats that I’d have more fun MFing than selling directly, plus I may get a precursor’. Note that I am going after Sunrise, so I thought I’d try crafting some greatswords for the mystic toilet. I made a grand total of 73 rare greatswords. I got a Dawn and 6 other exotics.

On the flipside, I’ve known people who have spend hundreds and hundreds of gold in the MF to no avail (it’s partly why I never really spend anything on the MF – I prefer the certainty of saving up – using t5 mats didn’t really feel like ‘spending’ to me haha).

Black Teagan.9215:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

joshc.3129:

How many times now has Anet said they have no plans to bring GW2 to consoles?

Let’s add one more to the tally.

We currently have no plans to port Guild Wars 2 to console.

And for mobile phone’s? :=)

In the time it’d take to develop GW2 for something like a PS4 or Xbone, they may as well, since the best phones will outstrip them! Especially on the graphics performance side.

@Etien Don’t get me wrong, I’d much prefer to see a full expansion, but now that the living story content is starting to be good, I can see the argument for ‘incremental expansion’ in that method (especially if the releases start to come out even more frequently). It also has the benefit of not splitting the community in the open world, as everyone can access the maps.

However, this incremental expansion method comes with the caveat that, to make it worthwhile, Arenanet need to make sure they’re releasing enough content! If they current rate persists, we’d probably see 4-5 maps a year being added, along with the story. In that case I’d much rather see a big expansion every 18 months with a continent :P Plus they have to deal with the downside of not having a big ‘oh look at me!’ when releasing an expansion. Guild wars 2 has come on a long way since launch in many areas, but a lot of lapsed players don’t have the motivation to come back yet. Small and frequent updates are great… for the people already here! Others need a bigger push to bring them back.

Arenanet has a studio of around 300 or so, and a revenue of about $70m a year at the moment. If we assume around a $60-70k average salary (the main bulk of expenses for any software house), that would put them at expenses of around $30-35m at most, surely. As a real world example, the company (software developer, but not games) I used to work for employed roughly that number and had a revenue of about £20m ($30m) a year. They considered that a pretty nice turnover, and it was certainly keeping them in business with plenty of room for expansion. Also note that programmers in the games industry are generally paid less than the financial industry.

So to those who say ‘oh noes, Anet are failing’, really need to look into how much well managed (which Arenanet seem to be) games studios cost to run XD There’s a reason Arenanet have not shown even the remotest sign of financial trouble; They’re not even close to being in any.

AAA studios usually end up in trouble because of hugely bloated marketing budgets and the console market being very much a ‘one shot’ deal. If a developer doesn’t get the sales within the first month, then they’re likely going to be doomed, since they’re not going to gain many more sales on a console. The PC market tends to have a long tail when it comes to sales.

Plus, at any rate, Arenanet could always strike up a deal with Valve to get GW2 onto Steam if they ever desperately needed a sales boost (I’m assuming it’s down to how the Gems are sold, but I could be wrong).

I don’t think they need to ‘fix’ stacking in existing content, just make it so it’s not a feasible tactic all of the time in the ‘difficult’ content they plan to create in the future (raids). Not every single boss in the game can be stacked anyway, it’s just that for many it’s a good tactic.

It also works well for pugs because the reduced skill requirement on each individual. If you’re stacked, you can more easily carry the people who are terrible by easily reviving them or buffing them.

I’ve missed out on loads of real life items due to RNG too :/ Where’s my lottery win?!

As for games, there’s lots of items I’ve missed out on, but my luckiest drop was a Dusk in GW2! So I think I’ve balanced out over time.

I like being able to play with my friends. If a friends gets the game and wants to complete a map, I don’t necessarily have to go and make a brand new character and doggedly ‘lock’ that character to my friends progression to continue playing together. I can just grab any of my existing characters and play. No fuss. Easy.

I can also play through any content on the map that I want to do, regardless of level, and it’ll still be rewarding.

What I can’t do is ruin all the lowbies’ day by one shotting all their mobs and bosses (mostly, anyway, crits do have a habit of insta splatting some types of mobs in the 1-15 zones). However, I still feel ridiculously powerful in the easier zones when walking around as a properly geared/traited level 80.

Essentially, GW2 is an co-operative MMO. Other MMOs are single player experiences with other people around you playing their own single player experience (until the laughably termed ‘real game’ starts at max level. I will personally never waste dozens of hours of my life to start enjoying a game). Therefore this game is far more about being able to play with others, with the mechanics reflecting that. I think every co-op game with levels should have this system!

One thing I should note though: why are you expecting to feel like a god at level 15? You’ve been playing the game for, what, 2-3 hours at most? o.O Combat should still feel challenging wherever you go, since you’re still but a mere novice adventurer :P If you want immersion, why would a ‘hero’ that has barely beaten up a few Centaurs and Bandits feel as powerful as those that have fought foes that threaten the entire world?

I would personally love to see raids where the groups of enemies have inherent ‘weak links’ that need to be hit first, lest the group becomes a huge problem. GW1 handled this particular aspect of combat really well, but it’s still something missing from GW2 for the most part. That fear of not properly bursting down the healer of the group, or the Mesmer that will ruin your caster’s day was always something that made each engagement, well, engaging!

In fact, I feel a lot of the more interesting skills from GW1 could be brought back for raid mechanics. For example, a raid with a variation of the GW1 Mesmer’s ‘Panic’ skill in effect would be fantastic (upon using a weapon skill, interrupt all allies within a 200 radius – bypassing stability to prevent easy mechanic negation). This would need to be in tandem with fights which do not involve singular ‘big’ targets though, so that melee could still be useful. Whole parties of purely melee would not be viable in such a raid, however. The point of such a mechanic would be to force players to use movement that isn’t simply ‘stack on a wall’ and naturally make the fight a bit more skilful.

This was something mentioned by a developer waaaaay back before the game was released. It was because players generally prefer to see ‘flavour items’ drop than just adding that gold to the monster kill. After all, a nearly full inventory feels like you’ve been doing stuff! Plus you get that boost in money when you sell the junk, which is mildly more satisfying than getting 1-10 copper more each kill. It’s all very small in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the small touches that make or break a game (and is why games like Destiny feel so sterile).

Romek.4201:

Vol.7601:

Leather will continue to be extremely low because it’s limited by demand, not supply

not when the backpacks all will need some leather as a base reagent^^

Yep Anet will be doing something about the low cost of leather at some point. The t5/6 versions are by far the cheapest materials, so it’s a good pool for them to draw from for future craftable items. Therefore, buy a ton of t5 leather and sit on it for a year :P

One interesting side effect will be that Leather will go up a bit too I’d imagine. There really aren’t many Engineers at all! Rangers are fairly common, but not any more than most other classes. I do think this is a good move for levelling. As for the economy, it depends more on how many of each armour type there are. This may actually drop cloth prices down anyway.

It definitely will lead to light armour classes getting a bit of a loot advantage with the price of cloth. At least in the short term while silk is high. But all players will still get the salvage items and bags, which tend to provide a good amount of cloth materials in my experience.

pdavis.8031:

I don’t understand. As a guardian, you have just as much chance of getting silk (or any other mat) as any other profession. You don’t need to level an alt to get what you need for crafting. Silk is used across all professions, so you wouldn’t need to have a light or medium armor character to get silk.

If you have a higher chance of getting profession specific loot, guardians/warriors will see a drop in light armour pieces. So they wont be able to salvage for cloth. Light armour classes will see more of those armour pieces. I think that’s the concern, at least!

If you need analogy, think of a roundabout with cars, if everyone charges headfirst into it without consideration of all the other moving parts (cars), things get pretty messy pretty quickly don’t they? It’s the same for software development.

It’s not as simple as people seem to think. The coding part is probably the easiest bit!

I would like the ability to revert to the last choice, but funnily such a change will likely take longer to get to us than this fix.

(sorry about the double post, the edit button didn’t appear for about 5 minutes)

The reason, revy, is because it needs to go through the QA process, and random bits of code can’t be throw out to patch fixes if other parts of a patch dependant on that code (which in a game is fairly common) have also been tested. This fix may be ‘finished’, but if another fix due out the day after breaks, and then this fix needs altering as a result (because it is an indirect cause), it becomes a mess and is extremely inefficient.

That’s where the misunderstanding comes in.

Don’t worry about all these whiners, just get the fix through QA and release as soon as you can. I know it can take some time, actually working in the software industry gives you some perspective on what happens (I’m guessing many posters here thing you just do some code changes and press the magic ‘update’ button that updates the game, job done).

I know it’s frustrating as a developer when you have to wait for the cogs in the rest of the machine to turn, but keep it up and know many people still appreciate what you’re doing and actually know what it’s like to be stressed because impatient people with no understanding of the situation keep badgering you.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and the fix is ready for Monday so we can carry on with the story after the main events for halloween