Guild Wars 2

“Translation: We need boring bullkitten that wastes peoples time so they don’t notice the game is stale.”

Please don’t use ridiculous statements, it just ruins your credibility.

Every game needs time sinks. Otherwise, what’s the point of playing? Why dont’ we just hand you everything and you win the game the moment you install it?

No, games doesn’t need time sinks. They need challenges, not time sinks. If something is a grind, it should NOT be in the game. Grinding isn’t fun. It’s the definition of work. Things get worse the more you do it. It’s a fact. Sure, great things last a bit longer, but nothing is fun forever. To trick people into doing it by holding shinies over their head is just disrespectful.

There is nothing wrong with my statement there and it’s exactly what is happening. The way they should do it (and I see in some situations that they legitimately tried) is to have the overall experience be different each time you do it. However, the difference is so small that it’s not even worth mentioning.

Mirta.5029:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

you want a developer to re-put spawn points every day? Yeah, make your own game and you do that. Remember not to bug it out either.

With a system already in place, it’s as easy as moving a few things in an editor. I’ve been designing games for a while. It’s really not bad at all with all mechanics and world spaces already created.

you would still be paying someone money to mix up the spawn placement every single day. It would also confuse the players “Why are mobs here 5 levels higher than yesterday? There was inquest in this base yesterday, why is it Sylvari now? That doesn’t go with the lore!”. When it comes to events if it was random whether small mobs or a few champions spawned the same event could be really unfair on day 1 and 5 and be completable on day 3 and 4, preventing it from becoming a game with a steady difficulty setting, so no, mixing spawn points is a bad idea.

Here’s an idea: Don’t suck at placing the mobs. All of what you said are just bad ways to do it.

Are you listening to yourself? Why on Earth would anyone want to waste so much time to get a Legendary in the current state? Just make the game more challenging! Put hard mode in for all of the dungeons. Time attack for Jumping Puzzles.

That is why we need clovers, the mystic toilet and high costs for precursors.

Translation: We need boring bullkitten that wastes peoples time so they don’t notice the game is stale.

That’s just plain evil. This game is meant to be fun, not a second job that you pay others to do.

As for inflation, my first reaction is “Who give a kitten?” but in reality, there are other amazing weapons that are dropped. Super Hyperbeam Alpha is just plain awesome, and it’s a dropped weapon. Those would do it. Also, materials for crafting, Superior runes, special services, mini pets and siege for WvW. Oh also bags. There’s also some armor in the game that is like 70g (Assassin’s Armor for humans).

Legendaries are FAR from the only expensive thing in the game and FAR from the only cool thing.

Also, why is three weeks of challenges not a long enough period of time?

Indoles.1467:

Of course they want you to be “addicted” (they really just want you to play). The longer you play, the more money you pay (WoW) and in the sense of GW2, the more likely you are to spend money in the cash shop. So, I don’t mind them adding features somemay find pointless as long as the population doesn’t die out.

There are other was of getting players to stay. Less evil and greedy ways. I don’t mind microtransactions, I just mind game design that is geared towards making money instead of fun.

you want a developer to re-put spawn points every day? Yeah, make your own game and you do that. Remember not to bug it out either.

With a system already in place, it’s as easy as moving a few things in an editor. I’ve been designing games for a while. It’s really not bad at all with all mechanics and world spaces already created.

RyuDragnier.9476:

eisberg.2379:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Think it’s more fun this way?

yes, your idea is much more fun to achieving a legendary, and is far more difficult then the the current system.

More difficult? Let’s be honest, it’s not.

For the current system, you have to wait for a precursor drop from something (which can take a month) or buy from the TP (will also take a month to get that amount of gold), and then spend months to get the materials necessary to upgrade it to Legendary. The way he mentioned can be done in less than 2 weeks easily.

There’s an important distinction to be made. He’s talking about difficult in skill requirement, not time taken. I’ve seen what goes into getting a legendary. It’s difficult in RNG and time spent, but none of it has to be difficult.

Vol.5241:

I think Arenanet wants legendaries to be rare and not worn by everyone. I think that’s why it’s a good idea to have a huge gold/rng sink tied to them. Quite frankly I don’t know why they’re sellable on the TP and that is one thing I’m disappointed in. I can’t count the many times I get accused of gold buying because I carry around two of the most expensive legendaries around.

Legendaries should be representations of your skill, not your lack of life or huge amounts of money. (No offense xD)

I find the current system to get a legendary to be adequate, but they should also include more skill-based requisites. But it needs to be designed so that it’s not easily completeable and that it cannot be ‘exploited’ by certain classes.

Perhaps retain some of the crafting requirements. Maybe require you attain 400 in two crafting things? That said, Crafting to me seems more like a grind rather than a skill challenge. I would want to avoid all grinding whatsoever.

That’s why time achievements for puzzles just isn’t a good idea. Just get a mesmer and you can get a portal to the end. It is very, very difficult programming something that takes this into account, and it’s just not worth the time invested in.

That’s fair, but in the end there has to be a mesmer there to do it. There are a lot of jumping puzzles and most likely, there will NOT be one at every single one. Just the super hard ones. Also, simple way to fix it is to not allow the skill portal in jumping puzzle areas.

I think they need to emphasize a whole lot more about taking part in the entire game, so WvW has to be included.

Need to be careful though. If you make the supply used achievement in there, people will just waste the supply on stupid things to get the achievement. Certain ones like player’s killed and castles/keeps taken are good though. They encourage gameplay.

TBH, 500 badges is nothing. They need to make a requirement of X # of kills or a higher badge amount, like 1500.

The problem is that this encourages players to do the jumping puzzles for badges with a portal mesmer. I’d make it WvW kills instead.

Or for you explorer people out there, how about getting 100% map exploration (not the same as map completion)

Already in there It’s part of Hero Achievements.

You should know it by now but all MMOs are about grind. There just isn’t enough manpower to program something that would take weeks to get yet not be considered ‘grindy’

OP’s suggestions are ‘challenging’ but easy enough to be done in a few weeks.

God Walking Among Mere Mortals. What if the challenge of getting that title was what you had to put in to get legendaries in this game? Same challenge, but remove the stupid grindy ones like sweet tooth.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Ayestes

From my experience, the AoE damage it does that is not “inside” the ennemy isn’t that great, but maybe I should build more glassy!

Don’t mistake me, I think it’s a good build (outshining any other build we have, yes even DS build), but I don’t think it cut it. In the current meta, we are pitted again BS thief, GS Warrior and others.

If a BS thief is a 10/10 and a GS warrior is a 9/10, this is probably an 8/10.

Think it’s more fun this way?

Evalia.7103:

^ hell of a task given amount of servers!
But I have to agree with you, the more interval between mobs conquering and players taking back, mobs should do something meanwhile(build some defences, increase their population, get a boss for themselves). To encourage players destroying their forces and not just abandoning, reward would scale with difficulty just as well.
As of now it doesn’t make sense that a group of centaurs/undeads(though who knows in second case?! they are undead.) just stands there doing nothing after they’ve captured a camp/whatever.

Give one person an entire server. Every day, they come in and change where the mobs will attack from during an event and maybe even create giant patrols that are trying to take over certain cities. You could even design it so that they slowly build up an army so that players have a chance to prepare themselves for battle. There doesn’t need to be voice acting or anything. Just control where the mobs are to keep things fresh.

You’re talking about every single event only repeating once and changing everything around it. Let’s say there’s 10 events in a zone daily. How much programing do you think they would have to put in to change the world in every zone 10 times daily? I don’t think that that’s even possible to implement in an MMO.

10 times per day would be impossible. Once per day isn’t really that bad. Hell, you can have it be the same for every server to save time. Just have it ready for server reset time. All you need to do is put objects that are already in the game and work in new places and in new arrangements. Assuming they didn’t code this game like an idiot, it really shouldn’t be hard to place mobs/spawn points in a new location.

Mirta.5029:

I have a far simpler explanation:
If an activity is fun to a person, a person will feel joy repeating it on their free time. That’s why some people watch TV, read books or play games. In order for you to have a hobby it was to be addicting (fun) for you in some way. The addiction for video game is not the same as the addiction for marijuana. It’s the same as an addiction for anything else that’s really fun for you. No theories are needed here. I know people that love knitting and can knit for 6 hours a day. However their thing is not called an addiction, but gaming is?

The addiction part comes in when it starts to interfere with a healthy lifestyle. If you play a game for 10 hours straight to get a legendary weapon doing things you don’t like, something is VERY wrong. The key is that you don’t like it anymore, yet you continue to do it.

Honestly, I thought this game was going to be different in PvE than it turned out. I expected our actions to actually matter. When we defeat the Shatterer, it would actually matter. If we let the Centaurs take camps, it would affect things all over the world.

That kind of gameplay would keep PvE fresh eternally, but instead it’s just events that are “Keeping you pressing the lever”. It should be like WvW, but in PvE.

Unfortunately, they didn’t do that. If they did, they wouldn’t need all this addictive bullkitten in there. Instead, you have events that are exactly the same coming up at set intervals which only change how things are in THAT worldspace, rather than the entire world. If they just had someone monitor what was going on in PvE and moved mobs based on what players were doing (A director of sorts), then they could really make PvE awesome.

They didn’t.

Vol.5241:

Too easy, unfortunately.

I think it says a lot about this game that completing pretty much everything that the game has to offer is “Too easy”.

Lets say they added a ton more achievements (Skill based though) and added time attack to the dungeons and the jumping puzzles. Think that would be hard enough?

eisberg.2379:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Creeper.9360:

eisberg.2379:

Gehenna.3625:

Sleel.8365:

Yes, but your post was about people putting theirs up for sale and people buying them. Takes a lot of work either way.

Except if you buy gems and trade them to gold to buy the legendary. The ratio between hours spent in game to get a legendary or hours spent making the real life money to buy gems doesn’t compare at all.

So, there will be people running around showing off their legendaries that put in the work and then those who simply bought them via real cash.

I can imagine that people who worked for it in game might feel a bit cheated. All in all the karma system should provide unique rewards that are only attainable via karma. That side of the game is not used nearly enough. A missed opportunity.

It cost like $700+ and upwards to $1400 to buy enough gold from a gold selling sight to buy a legendary from the TP. I highly doubt we will see that many people who are willing to spend that kind of money

I find it quite mind boggling that anyone would spend that kind of real currency for a virtual item. Really, I don’t even believe anyone would.

I’m in college for game design. You learn about people like this. They are very very real. The term is whale. It’s how facebook and app games make their money. Most of the money comes from a small portion of the player base. Literally thousands of dollars…on Farmville.

It really is all irrelevant, if anybody wants to spend real life money to get the “best” items in the game, they will find a way to do it. One can easily spend real life money to get all the best gear in WoW as well. In other words, it wouldn’t matter if Legendaries were account bound only, someone with money could still get the legendary with real money, whether that is through paying for a service to do the grind for them, or just buying a max level character with the legendary already.

So talking about gold selling services really is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

It’s the biggest part of this. The only reason Legendaries are on the TP are so that ANet will make more money. Maybe they’ll get a whale. Maybe it’ll just be a few small purchases to save time. But in the end, they’re up there so ANet makes money.

Can clones have buffs/conditions on them?

Creeper.9360:

eisberg.2379:

Gehenna.3625:

Sleel.8365:

Yes, but your post was about people putting theirs up for sale and people buying them. Takes a lot of work either way.

Except if you buy gems and trade them to gold to buy the legendary. The ratio between hours spent in game to get a legendary or hours spent making the real life money to buy gems doesn’t compare at all.

So, there will be people running around showing off their legendaries that put in the work and then those who simply bought them via real cash.

I can imagine that people who worked for it in game might feel a bit cheated. All in all the karma system should provide unique rewards that are only attainable via karma. That side of the game is not used nearly enough. A missed opportunity.

It cost like $700+ and upwards to $1400 to buy enough gold from a gold selling sight to buy a legendary from the TP. I highly doubt we will see that many people who are willing to spend that kind of money

I find it quite mind boggling that anyone would spend that kind of real currency for a virtual item. Really, I don’t even believe anyone would.

I’m in college for game design. You learn about people like this. They are very very real. The term is whale. It’s how facebook and app games make their money. Most of the money comes from a small portion of the player base. Literally thousands of dollars…on Farmville.

1. Time attacks for JP don’t work when it’s entirely dependent on the player’s skill and computer setup on how fast they can complete one.

I think the time attack thing will be fine. Just make it a bit generous. It doesn’t have to require a perfect run. Another solution to it would be to have it be a perfect run. No falling or something like that. Also, it should be based on the player’s skill. That’s the point of a game. Computer set up…I’ve never heard of lag issues in a jumping puzzle.

2. This isn’t really a complaint, but a notice. You set it up like this, then almost everybody and their mother will have a Legendary, which could possibly defeat the purpose of having one.

This requires full map completion, 5000 events done, all dungeons with all paths, 5000 kills with that weapon, 500,000 exp without death, every boss defeated, every location found, every dive location found, every jumping puzzle completed, and every hidden achievement done.

That’s kind of a lot. What if you add in that you have to complete every single event? That would not only make it take longer, but also fit the bill of you having to be legendary to complete it.

The Gates Assassin – Five years ago, when “Fractions” came out (I was young), I made an assassin in a guild called The Keepers of the Gates. We all named ourselves after the guild. I made The Gates Assassin. People started calling me Gates and it really stuck.

Raine Avina – I’m a game designer and one of the games I’m making is Forever Rain, where Raine Avina is one of the main characters. Friggin love this character, so I made her my main.

eisberg.2379:

Gehenna.3625:

Sleel.8365:

Yes, but your post was about people putting theirs up for sale and people buying them. Takes a lot of work either way.

Except if you buy gems and trade them to gold to buy the legendary. The ratio between hours spent in game to get a legendary or hours spent making the real life money to buy gems doesn’t compare at all.

So, there will be people running around showing off their legendaries that put in the work and then those who simply bought them via real cash.

I can imagine that people who worked for it in game might feel a bit cheated. All in all the karma system should provide unique rewards that are only attainable via karma. That side of the game is not used nearly enough. A missed opportunity.

It cost like $700+ and upwards to $1400 to buy enough gold from a gold selling sight to buy a legendary from the TP. I highly doubt we will see that many people who are willing to spend that kind of money

Think again. There’s a game design term called a whale. It’s people who get so invested in a game that they spend literally thousands of dollars in game on it. And don’t think that GW2 is immune or not good enough. People do this with games like farmville. I know for a fact that some people have spent hundreds of dollars on this game already through microtransactions. There DEFINITELY people who have spent thousands.

The way the legendary system is right now encourages players to repeatedly do certain actions beyond the point of them being fun. I’ve been thinking, what if you had to complete certain achievements to unlock a legendary weapon. The achievements might have to be modified, but what about this. To get your legendary weapon you must:

1) Complete all jumping puzzles

2) Complete the weapon’s Master achievement (5,000 killing blows with that weapon)

3) Complete all dungeons and all explorable paths.

4) Complete every boss achievement

5) Complete every explorer achievement

6) All non-story related Hero achievements

7) Defeat Zhaitan

To make this a bit harder, it’d be kind of interesting to have some sort of time attack for the jumping puzzles (not including a few that don’t really work for them). Each could have an achievement that is necessary for getting the legendary weapon.

I specifically chose only these achievements because:

1) They aren’t grind achievements

2) They aren’t PvP related, so it won’t affect combat.

3) It encourages players to play all paths of dungeons, rather than just the lucrative ones.

For each weapon that you want, you have to get that weapon’s master achievement along with every other achievement listed. Because you wouldn’t be able to sell them anymore, you’d be able to unlock multiple if you wanted a few of different types of sigils. The only thing holding you back from getting multiple would be the weapon master achievement. If you have, lets say the twilight, and you want the axe legendary (w/e that is), you need to get the axe’s master achievement (5,000 killing blows with an axe) and it’s yours. No need to repeat an insane process to get another one.

What do you guys think? Is it enough to be considered legendary? Is it more fun this way?

Kardiamond.6952:

@The Gate Assassin

I don’t know if you tried the build in competitive tPvP, but it doesn’t work as well as you make it sound.

To pull this combo, you have to take your ennemy by surprise. Any good pvpers will know when you try to pull off this combo. You have to be inside the ennemy.

The usual net shot + jump shot and 100 nade combo won’t take you far, as most people learned how to block it.

And you always get 17k combo? Man I’m lucky if I can get a 10k combo. I’m not full glass, I’m +power +prec +vitality.

Most combo will miss because the ennemy moved a bit to the side, because they blocked, because your jump shot failed, because of lag. There are so many reason this combo can miss. A bit to the side, and 4-5 of your 6 grenade form kit refinament are out.

Now you missed your super combo? Good luck with the rest of the fight And good luck using this vs any descent Bunker Guardian/Elem.

the 100 nade combo do a similar job then BS thief in tpvp, but is subpart. The BS thief will do the same damage or better, a lot easier, a lot harder to counter, and with better mobility.

Like someone said in another thread, it’s not that engineer is bad, it’s that our builds are all outshined by another class. (Condi P/P vs Necro, Bunker vs Guardian, Burst vs Thief/Warrior).

The thing is that the thief doesn’t have the AoE part of our spike. If there’s a big battle, I just jump right in and spike. I’ve gotten 3-4 people at once before. In tPvP, I can see how this wouldn’t be likely. It’s more of an sPvP build.

In my opinion, Legendary Weapons should be given out when you get full map completion, full dungeon completion, full story completion and full achievement completion (Ignoring PvP ones). Then you get an account bound weapon. Only then do I really consider you going on an epic journey to unlock your legendary weapon. The current system is a grind, not an adventure.

Kit Refinement is too good to pass up. That spike is just glorious.

So uhhh yeah. There’s no skills there.

Here are the main builds people use. I will put these in order of my person thoughts of how effective they are:

Super Super Elixir(Support): Take the trait Kit Refinement and the kit Elixir Gun. This will allow you to drop a Super Elixir at your feet every 20 seconds when you switch to Elixir Gun. The Elixir Gun skill also has this skill. Thus, you can either maintain it forever OR stack two on each other. Because it’s not regeneration, it stacks. It also removes conditions. Statted correctly (High healing power), you can heal your team for a good 20k over 10 seconds and remove tons of conditions.

100nades(Glass Cannon): Take Grenade Kit with the trait Kit Refinement and Static Discharge. If you stand on a foe, hit F3 (grenade barrage) with your finger and click on grenade kit, you will throw about 20 grenades at your feet, along with the damage coming in from static discharge. Mix this with Analyze (Utility Goggles’ tool kit skill) for even more damage. Because of the trait Grenadier, you will cause vulnerability with each grenade. This means you can instantly stack 25 vulnerability on someone. The tricky part is you need to be right up next to the guy to get the damage in.

Pistol Pierce(AoE Condition Pressure): Take the trait that causes pistol shots to pierce. Get as much condition damage and power as you can. Also take the trait HGH. Take ALL elixirs, besides your elite. The heal skill one is optional as well as it’s generally suppar due to it’s randomness. The effect of this build is very high AoE condition damage. I find it better with dual pistols, but keep a shield around to allow for more defense in PvE.

Juggernaut(AoE Condition Pressure/Bunker): Mix the trait Juggernaut with the trait HGH. Put a bunch of stuff that makes your flamethrower stronger and invest in condition damage and power. Take some elixirs. Good for tagging and great constant AoE with some nice control.

Some people discriminate against Engineers. I prefer to tell them “Don’t hate cuz I’m awesome.” or “It’s CoF.” If someone is stupid enough to discriminate an entire class, you don’t want them on your team anyways.

SimpleKingly.5021:

What do you guys mean when you say STOMP regarding Elixir S? Also, I don’t use kits because i focus on mobility and CC for PvP and it works out great for me.. Please explain “STOMP”. Don’t know what you guys mean.

Stomp = Finish

The nickname for Elixir S is Elixir Stomp because when you have to finish a downed opponent, you basically stomp on them. If you have shrunk, you are immune to every single ability that could stop you from finishing an opponent. If you have stability, you can only be stopped by stunned I believe. If you invisible, all targeted control effects won’t stop you.

Kit Refinement + Elixir Gun is obscene amounts of healing. It can total for over 18k and it’s AoE. Not to mention it packs in some AoE Condition removal.

Grenade Kit + Static Discharge + Kit Refinement is obscene amounts of damage. Defense is still great with medkit, and you can mix it with Utility Goggles, which are not only anti-blind, but a stun breaker and 10 stacks of vulnerability.

Engineers are easily the best class for stacking vulnerability to 25 and keeping it there. One Grenade kit kit refinement spike and they’ve hit max.

Anyone who says Engineers are sup par have not fully explored the class. They are certainly not as easy, but there are a couple great builds. Does the class need work? Of course, but it’s far from useless.

“Hey, know what annoys me? Going into the jungle and getting mauled by bears just because I left my character alone. ANet should really fix that.”

Better answer:

Judge the area you are in. If there’s a crap ton of conditions, go Elixir C. If there aren’t, go elixir S.

I’m not saying they’re totally OP omg nerf hammer. I’m honestly wondering, how do you kill a good mesmer? Every time I think I found the real one, it’s a clone. Rinse and repeat and die. I honestly have no idea how to fight them one on one.

I am a spiker build. Specifically, 100nades Engineer. I’m not really looking for build specific ways of defeating them, just in general, how do you keep track of where the real mesmer is if they don’t suck?

SimpleKingly.5021:

Why Elixir S? Yeah it breaks stuns and evades but the toolbelt isn’t as good as utility goggles or rocket boots?

Toss Elixir S is great for helping yourself and allies stomp. It can also come in handy with resing allies by either remove aggro or making it so they can’t interrupt you. It can also either moderately help or massively help you with escaping battles.

Certainly not perfect, but very strong. It’s one of the better random skills.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Thieves still kill me. Warriors still kill me. I feel like I’m on par with them though. It’s really nice using this build because of that. Normally, I see a thief and I just run, but this build dares me to fight them.

This is kinda shocking. Thieves, I can somewhat understand, but you get killed by warriors?
What is your build exactly? Are you using all offensive gear or something?
Thieves and warriors are by far the easiest classes to handle for me.

Mostly offense. My defense is Med Kit, My stun breaker (Goggles) and my other stun breaker (Elixir S). I can kill warriors fine, but it’s certainly not going to happen against someone who has 3 times my rank. I’m just not that good yet.

Pride.7591:

Anyone that thinks no money or “artificial rewards” in an MMO would be successful needs a reality check. LFk gave a very eloquent response, and it’s pretty much the best you’re gonna get. The amount of people on this forum that want the game to conform to them, instead of making a compromise that enhances your game is absolutely mind-blowing. This game doesn’t revolve around you. Also, the group of people that play for the “Experience” probably won’t buy gems anyway, so why cater to the person thats not going to pay the bills?

Because that is the most evil thing I’ve ever heard. You really need to quit game design if it gets to the point where you’re making game design decisions that generate money instead of fun. Who gives a kitten about who pays the bills? I’ll GLADLY start using the gem store again with REAL money if this bull kitten with grinding and the Nexon company kittening stop. Until then, I’m not spending a DIME. I will not do ANYTHING in the game that I don’t want to do. Ever. If that means I’m going to be poor, fine by me.

This is the kinda kitten that Zynga pulls. It shouldn’t be what we see from ANet. I played GW1 all the time because I ALWAYS felt like the design decisions were in the best interested of the players. Everything you could buy with real money was fair. You got to the LOW level cap and there was some cheapo armor that you could easily attain which was MAX. All of the runes that you needed were relatively cheap. In short: there was no need to grind ANYTHING if you didn’t want to and there was no inherent disability for doing so. Now, you can just pay your real money to get the best armor along the way and get everything you need. That, or you can grind until your arm falls off. That, or be poor.

GW1 survived for YEARS without this Pay to Win strategy in there. And don’t hit me with “Oh, certain armors don’t work with Pay to Win”. So what? You can buy full exotic armor on the TP with all of the runes without having to do anything but give them credit card info. THIS IS NOT WHAT GAMES SHOULD BE!

Look, obviously money has it’s upsides. That’s fine. But GW1 had it right! Make it so if I just want to be efficient that I do the basic work from the story and I can buy max armor and some basic good runes. If you really want the pretty stuff you can work for it! If I want Scholar Runes, it’s like 12 kittenin gold. If I want max armor, I either have to grind dungeons or cough up a crap ton more gold. What’s the difference? I spend nearly 4 weeks getting gold from dungeons. I had about 60g that I worked for. Yeah that’s right, I worked in a game. I feel stupid about it but I did. To get full spiking armor, runes and accessories, I had to spend literally all of it. ALL OF IT. This was the cheapest armor available that was max and the right stats.

Seriously? Come on. Unless January 28th brings something new and less evil to the table, I’m probably just going to uninstall. This game is too bitter sweet, and the bitter is starting to take over the sweet.

Neither. Elixir S will not only allow you to be invulnerable, but you can stomp anything. It also breaks stun. If this is PvE, Elixir C or S would be equally useful.

Side note: Elixir C will give you a boon no matter what. It also will take effect AFTER Cleaning Formula 409, so you get one less boon than you might think.

Do we consider these AoEs to be effective/have synergies with our other skills?

Definitely. Kit Refinement has given this skill the name 100nades, where the engineer gets up real close to an enemy, to the point of occupying the same space and using grenade barrage + grenade kit at the same time with Static discharge. The spike without Kit Refinement is easily 11k damage, so the same together is about 16k if not more.

In PvE, these are fantastic. Great damage and the above spike can really lay down the damage. Skill 4 is a great escape skill.

In WvW, these are fantastic for attacks on the front gates. Fairly balanced too, since you need line of sight.

How do these abilities fare in comparison to our single target skills?

What single target skills? The only ones I can think of are Elixir Gun’s #1, Tool kit’s melee attacks and… that’s it. Tool Kit’s Melee attacks are underpowered. Elixir Gun’s #1 is fantastic for support. It achieves a different goal. OH! There is Pistol 2 and Overcharged shot. Overcharged shot is great damage and has that knockdown. It can also help you escape sometimes I’ve found. Pistol 2 is kind of bad. I have poison on grenade kit and it’s not only AoE, but it stays on as long as they are in there. That said, I think Pistol 2 is underpowered, not Grenade Poison is over powered.

How do these abilities fare in comparison to other classes AoEs?

In PvE, I think I see warriors out damaging us, even if they don’t have all of our conditions. Eles I think are just a tiny bit below us with this.

In PvP, we’re pretty much unmatched. Hate to say it but if I jump into a crowd and throw this down, I get dead bodies. I probably get killed right afterwards, but they die too.

How do these abilities fare in comparison to other classes single target skills?

Thieves still kill me. Warriors still kill me. I feel like I’m on par with them though. It’s really nice using this build because of that. Normally, I see a thief and I just run, but this build dares me to fight them.

Honestly, I see grenades with Kit refinement as the build that allows Engineers to be as good as other classes. Touching it would fully put the engineer behind all other classes without a doubt.

The only “Problem” skill is grenade kit when mixed with Kit refinement. It also for a spike that can absolute annihilate targets that are stuck in place. It deals about 17k damage in under a second. The key here is that this is against a not so well defended target AND they have to be standing still. The grenades from Kit Refinement are different than the grenades from Grenade Barrage, because instead of going towards your target, they go all around you, a bit randomly. Thus, the closer you are, the more damage you deal. It’s very strong, but also a bit difficult to pull off.

This is what the build can do:

1) Spike for about 16k in under a second if everything goes well. If the Kit Refinement grenades miss, it’s about 5k off. If the main grenades miss, it’s about 7k off. Neither are easy to hit when it’s moving targets.

2) Elixir S is great for stomping and staying alive.

3) Goggles are a decent stun breaker and allow me to not miss spikes (immunity to blindness).

Problems:

1) The spike isn’t amazingly easy to pull off.

Verdict:

1) This is pretty much the same damage pulled off by the warrior. The player needs to be still for it to work, so I don’t see the issue with this build.

Grenades make us relevant. I wouldn’t touch them.

Kimbald.2697:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Elixir Gun’s ultimate trait is Kit Refinement. Dual Super Elixirs is just plain awesome. Trait for healing power and you heal about 10k hp in 10 seconds, AoE.

Hard to pass that up if you want support.

Kit refinement is a trait for all kits, about the only decent one we have that works on all.
By no means was it designed to be stronger for Elixir Gun than for other kits.

And 10 k in 10 seconds? before the ‘fix’ perhaps. Now it does nowhere near that.
With zero healing power I think it heals about 175 per tick or something, and healing power scales baaaad.
So even when doubled up with Kit Refinement I doubt you reach 1k per second.
And if you do, you have sacrificed ALL versatility for healing, you can’t have any damage left.

But this aside, my main point is: a wonderfull trait like Kit Refinement is not enough to say it’s the EG’s ‘ultimate’ trait, sorry.
There has to be something more, like Grenadier, Elixir-Infused Bombs and indeed Juggernaut.

I’m sorry that was a rough estimate. It’s actually more like this:

3k + 500 from each blast x2 = 7k healing

Regeneration from tool kit skill is 4k healing (11k total)

Dropping Bandages are 2k each assuming you are at max hp (17k total).

If you take healing turret, that’s an extra something…not sure actually I never take it unless it’s supply crate. But either way, it’s a kitten ton of healing, especially if you take two healing turrets. Mix this with elixir throws for a bit more support.

In fact, it’s so much healing that often times I’ll just sit on a cap point in PvP and do literally nothing but cast these skills. I don’t even have to move if the player is bad enough.

hharry.1967:

If you remove money there would be always be a new kind of ‘money’. That’s how people work, they trade stuff. Remove money, and you will see ‘selling legendary sword for 500 lodestones’ for example, would still be the same.

No there wouldn’t. If you can’t trade, you can’t have a money system.

IndigoSundown.5419:

FotM, Ascended gear and the planned incentive adjustments for open world play are all indicators that ANet has learned that players will not repeat content without rewards. Since players devour content faster than it can be programmed, incentives and rewards are going to stay.

The only reason people will ignore places with low incentives is if the reward is higher somewhere else. If there is no reward, then people will gravitate towards the fun ones and the ones where people are. Ask PvPers if they play PvP because of the rewards. I guarantee most if not all will say the main reason they play is because it’s fun, not artificially rewarding.

Elixir Gun’s ultimate trait is Kit Refinement. Dual Super Elixirs is just plain awesome. Trait for healing power and you heal about 10k hp in 10 seconds, AoE.

Hard to pass that up if you want support.

AwwGee.5628:

Rehashed Jibe Tube.7102:

to sum up:

i play the game in the style of “x”, can we please remove all the people who play the game in the style of "y"please?

or we could go plan B and remove all the people who don’t care about money cause they just ruin the fun that those who do

From the fact that you’re comparing gameplay in ff9 to gw2 is a clear indicator you’re all up for cookie cutter experiences all the time. As much as I enjoyed ff9 I won’t be revisiting it anytime soon.

Trash mobs are called that for a reason – they’re uninspired, unrewarding and boring.
GW2 gameplay is pretty open and that’s what makes it great. How exactly is killing this really tough pack of wolves to move past them rewarding when you can sneak past them or run past?

Trash mobs are terrible design. Every single encounter should be interesting for some reason. Otherwise, why have us do it? Why not just delete those stupid trash mobs and have us get to the parts people actually consider fun? Shadow of the Colossus this kitten.

LFk.1408:

I love this actually.

The OP is endearingly idealistic, kind of the way you think of the world when you’re still young, which is nice.

Many above me have already tried to help explain reality of the situation: That without money, or loot, everyone would play the content once, and that would be that. The game would probably have died back in October, since no loot = no players = no gem purchases = no income. So if you did have a way to magically make material incentives vanish, making the only “incentive” the experience, the tradeoff is that you probably won’t have anyone else to play with.

The MMO design is most likely not for you. I would recommend a single player game, or one with multiplayer functionality, but is ultimately based on player experience without the massive world, such as Torchlight II.

If you love Tyria, and want to enjoy it the way you wish, one solution is to find a group of people that are of the same mindset as you, and ignore the rest of the players. You have to realize that the only reason your current dungeon groups are playing with you at all is for the loot. You might be after the player experience, but for all you know, they’ve already done the path 30 times, and are not interested. The fact that they exist to play with you at all is because of money: without money, you’re just on your own. What you want to find is other players that are interested in the same things you are interested in.

Finding different-minded players and complaining about the result is not the way to go. What you want is not what others must want.

I understand certain servers have Roleplay guilds that are devoted to preserving the RPG experience within guild wars. If you find one, you might just find what you’re looking for

EDIT: This is just from a single google search, and might be a good place to start:
http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/home

From what I can see, the focus for this group of players is on making believable, heroic characters, and having them journey through the world. Loot, rewards, and other such things are only sought after in the scope of the journey. Probably closer to what you’d like.

I’ve had this suggested to me before. It’s not my style. I think the MMO community and designers are too afraid to remove things like that. This game has AMAZING things in it. I don’t WvW because I get rewards. I don’t do dungeons because I get rewards. I don’t do PvP because I get rewards. I do them because I love this game. I had 57g that I had been saving up from dungeons and such for about 3 weeks now. I spent it all yesterday because it was ruining the fun. I got myself some functional spiking armor and had a blast killing people in WvW.

There really don’t need to be this economy for there to be players. In fact, I think there’s an entire player base this game scares away just because there are these artificial, non-skill based obstacles in the way.

Also, just putting this out there, I have no issues with getting money myself. A few dungeon runs gets you a good 5g in under two hours. The problem is the way it is done and the requirement to repeat it.

I’m idealist about this because this isn’t the real world and I know, in video games, having no money works just fine.

But why have any trading? It’s killing the meat of the game, which is combat. Why do we have to spend so much money just to get max gear and good runes? Why do I have to pay money to change my traits?

At least jumping puzzles are completely unaffected.

Minion of Vey.4398:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

So basically, they’re tricking people into playing. Yeah. That’s better.

Do you feel tricked playing MMOs?

That’s the reason I don’t do dungeons unless I want to anymore. I play to have fun, not work.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

So basically, they’re tricking people into playing. Yeah. That’s better.

I see the issue in the way a party forms, rather than the individual classes. I’m sure that if you try, you can make a cool team that utilizes each other’s strength’s fields and stuff like that. The problem is…why do that? Unless it’s PvP, why even bother? Nothing is hard enough so that it requires the team builds to work together well. All you need are skilled players and decent individual builds, not a coherent team.

Cowrex.9564:

Removing money is like removing incentives in the game. Without it, everyone might as well have the same gear from the market. No sense of difference, uniqueness or achievement either. I think that by removing money would render a game…. bland and tasteless.

I can get money in the real world. If the only reason I play this game is to get money, it becomes a job. If fake money is your only incentive to play this game, I suggest you play a different game. The incentive should be fun, diverse and interesting gameplay, not money/rewards.

I guess the trade off for no currencies would be camping boss respawns for loot.

But no loot either. No artificial rewards. After you complete a dungeon, you have nothing more than a wonderful memory of what you just did. The reward is the experience, and I don’t mean the kind that levels you up.

I like the money because you can buy things and feel special having lots of gold.

I dont like legendaries because thats what people waste their time getting and dont socialize or have fun with too much grind grind grind not enough hi wanna kill with me?

See but that second part is exactly my point. Sure, it’s fun to shop. I agree, but the money system straight up ruins that. Why do we have to replay a dungeon multiple times to get the reward we want? Why not just have it so if you complete all paths of the story, you can unlock the reward. Efficiency wouldn’t really matter. People would only replay it if they truly wanted to. It also allows you to really ramp up the difficulty on the higher number paths.

Money.

Seriously, it ruins the fun so much in this game. Why are we skipping mobs? Because there’s an imaginary profit/reward given. Why are we kicking inexperienced people? Because they slow my profit. Why do most groups utilize exploits? Makes the money come in faster. Why are people using magic find armor? Money. Why am I repeating dungeons I am tired of doing? Money. Why do some players descriminate against certain classes? Slows the money. Why are we repeatedly killing the first boss in Twighlight Arbor? Cores = money.

The absolute best experiences I’ve had in this game are when I am with people who don’t give a kitten if we are quick or not. The people who play this game because they want to have fun. It was about the journey, not the destination.

I went to the dungeon Lord Caudicuses Manor. It was beautiful. I really really enjoyed the story and all the gameplay envolved in it. I loved it so much that I joined a group that was doing all three paths afterwards.

Unfortunately, they knew all of the short cuts. All of the ways to get the boss to be unable to attack you. One of the final bosses is chillin’ on a platform while we nuke it with AoE from under it in the water. Boring! So why do we do it? Imaginary profits!

I did Twilight Arbor exporable. There was a spider queen type boss. It looked so exciting! But the optimal way to beat it was to stand outside of the cave at this very particular angle where the boss had trouble hitting you. I stood still, fired grenades and it died. I walked in the room and saw all these spider eggs. I thought that woulda been such a cool mechanic, but we skipped it because there was a reward at the end.

Why can the reward in this game just be the design? The fun of it! There are so many cool bosses in this game that are completely skipped or ignored because there’s a chest at the end of it. I’m so tired of CoF, but it’s a profit center. Super quick and super easy to find a group. Easy money, but I’m tired of it. It was fun the first few times, but I don’t want to do it anymore. Same with CoE.

Imagine this game had no money systems. At all. People played certain areas because they wanted to. Because the design was great.

You know what was the most rewarding experience I’ve had in this game? I got together with four other engineers in my guild and we did Sorrow’s Embrace. Two of us were underleveled for it (One was lvl 56 , one was lvl 64). Three of us had never done path three before. Every single encounter was difficult, but fair! It all lead up to the battle against the Destroyer of Worlds and it was unbelievably epic! What was great was that NONE of us cared about the money. It was about the fun of it. We were in that dungeon hours longer than any pug would have taken, but it didn’t matter. My reward wasn’t 26 silver and some tokens. It was the experience.

Money kills that. Money makes the reward…something not real. I feel like this game has so much potential. Not even potential, the content is there in a lot of places. Arah (Story) was great! I loved Caudicus’s Manor (Or however you spell it). SE Path 1 (The one with the sigularity) is amazing! Money makes people want efficiency, not fun.

And it’s not even just the people, because I’ve done dungeons with people I like to hang out with. It was still boring because we skipped so much! Because bosses could be tricked into doing stupid things that turned battles into literally going AFK while auto-attack kills it. Seriously. Melee bosses NEED pulls to yank players off of rocks.

It just kinda sucks. Of course it’s not the ONLY reason people use exploits and skip mobs, but you can’t deny it’s a major reason.

I mean, compare this to any other game. For those who have played Final Fantasy 9, would you utilize an exploit to kill one of their bosses? Course not! For what? You didn’t REALLY beat it. The fun is figuring out how to beat the boss and seeing if your strategies work. It’s just barely coming out of the fight alive. What about a racing game? What if you could just back up and drive forward to win every race. Would you do that just to be able to get through it? Course not! The fun is driving, not winning or any rewards that they give you! Think of Braid! The fun is solving puzzles or finding out how amazing the solution is from looking it up online (guilty xD). I didn’t play it because I got gold coins from beating the puzzles to get some special armor for my guy.

I know this isn’t going to happen, but I just wanted to put the idea out there. More of a discussion than anything else. Love this game, just get sick of how money tends to spoil it sometimes.

I use it in my main build. Combine Rifle turret with static discharge and you can throw out an extra 2kish damage without spending any time.

Our first dungeon together! SUPER epic! Two of us were underleveled for the dungeon, and 3/5 of us didn’t know how to do the dungeon. But surprisingly, with all that against us, it was probably the funnest dungeon I’ve done to date. We absolutely refused to give up on each other or let each other stay dead. Five supply crates at a time, multiple rocket turrets and a kitten ton of grenades and against all odds, we defeated the Destroyer of Worlds.

Easily the funnest dungeon run so far because it wasn’t easy. We really had to try and use really bold and smart tactics to be able to get everyone to the end and defeat him. Most dungeon runs are so prescribed and boring, but this was something different. Really REALLY enjoyed this run. Can’t wait to do this more ;D.

This is killin’ me. I gatta know. Very simply, can we expect bug fixes for the engineer on January 28th?

I really hope we get a response.

How do know this is going to happen? I tried googling this but nothing but guesting news came up.