Guild Wars 2

Considering some/many/most of the traits will be changing, and we will find out what they are tomorrow, I will be holding off until then

I’m about 90% sure that I saw an interview stating that the Revenant would not have access to racial skills, but I unfortunately don’t have a source

robertul.3679:

If you want a class that’s solid in every game mode go elementalist, thief, warrior, guardian.

These are the 4 classes that I have level 80’s of. In terms of open world PvE, where let’s face it, any build is viable, the Thief, Warrior, and Guardian are all easy-mode compared to Ele. I just hit 80 with a thief and my autoattack on sword is doing like 4k damage, not to mention I have basically a perma-blind. I don’t think the inherent squishiness of the class is justified except to the really top tier players who care enough to have like 15 skills on cooldown and spend time to get 20+ stacks of might.

What sword is that?

It has been stated multiple times that the new weapons are for the specialization only.

Thanks! These are both extremely helpful answers. For leveling, I have been running S/P because the #3 skill seems to destroy everything.

Hi all,

I am new to the profession and have a few questions -

First Question –
I had been using the combination of Black Powder and Blinding Powder, but I am realizing now that this seems like a waste for multiple reasons:

1. - Black Powder already blinds, so no reason to waste the Blinding Powder
2. - the combo of Smoke + Blast gives area stealth, but Blinding Powder already gives stealth.

Am I correct in assuming that it is ‘bad’ to use these two skills together?

Second question -

Are the effects of Cloaked in Shadow trait wasted on Blinding Powder, since BP already gives both stealth AND blind? Or is there an additional benefit?

Thanks for the help. In terms of open world PvE, is it worth it to trait for stealths/blinds, or is pistol #5 generally enough blind?

Thanks!

I was wondering if A-Net regretted removing the energy bar from the original 8 professions. If they could do it over, would they add it back?

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

BrunoBRS.5178:

oh, i figure i’ll drop a question too.

Q: Will the core professions get new utilities and reworked skills to embrace the new tech we’ve seen with the revenant, or will we have to specialize to have access to those new toys?

+1 This question is very important to me. Cause putting the new (resistance boon etc) stuff behind specializations, will make the old ones feel inferior, utility wise. Can’t let that happen imo. Old profs (non specialization) still needs ‘looking after’.

I literally was about to post this.

BrunoBRS.5178:

The Great Al.2546:

I’m almost positive this is wrong, and is going to confuse people further.

It’s more like -

You are a Ranger, you have access to trait lines A,B,C,D and E.

Once you ‘unlock’ the specialization (you either have it on or you don’t, there are no ‘levels’), then you lose, for example, trait line E, and gain trait line F (Druid). In the process you also gain access to a druid specific weapon, elite skill, healing skill, utility skills, and probably also lose access to some of the core ones.

they said new traits, not a whole new trait line. it’s entirely possible that they just sprinkle druid traits on the existing lines.

This would probably make more sense. Thanks for the additional clarification.

Mortifer.2946:

I have a feeling that many people here on the forums didn’t quite get the concept of specializations. I will explain it without many words on one example:

You are a ranger, you have ranger traits and skills. After level 80 you gain some specialization points from doing the Xpack.

There is a new specialization tree for each class (even thought there will be probably just one branch in this Xpack and next one in the Xpack2). You have the first point – you spend it (click) – congratulations! You now have a choice to use new class special F1/2/3/4 ability

2nd point – you can use staff and you automatically unlocks 5 weapon skills for staff druid.

You gain more specialization points – click- congratulations! You have unlocked a new healing spell for your druid.

More points >> utility skills

Final specialization point – click – and now you have the access for a new elite skill!

---

that’s it… You are still a ranger, but you can use new F-skills, a new weapon and a bunch of new skills from the right half of the action bar.

---

X-PACK2————
You gain more points from Xpack 2 content, you unlock new skills like mentioned above. You click on a “switch” and congratz! you have Tomb Raider specialization (or whatever the name will be) and now you cannot use the Druid ones, but you still have RANGER ones.

I’m almost positive this is wrong, and is going to confuse people further.

It’s more like -

You are a Ranger, you have access to trait lines A,B,C,D and E.

Once you ‘unlock’ the specialization (you either have it on or you don’t, there are no ‘levels’), then you lose, for example, trait line E, and gain trait line F (Druid). In the process you also gain access to a druid specific weapon, elite skill, healing skill, utility skills, and probably also lose access to some of the core ones.

Diovid.9506:

My biggest fear is definetely that the HoT maps are too similar to Dry Top and the Silverwastes. In my opinion Dry Top and the Silverwastes are way too focused on zerging and farming. They are also lacking in the variety of their events.

I understand that they try to have this map-wide event that they want to tie everything to but I enjoy the way it is done in Orr (specifically Straits of Devastation but also the other two zones) way more than the way it is done in Dry Top and the Silverwastes. It feels much more organic and there is much more variety in the look and feel of the events and of the areas in which they take place.

I’m worried about the level number going away now. There is no way to see if anyone is 80 or lower for core content. This will really divide players more and make new players feel left out of old and new content.

Instead of looking at my party area, I will have to ask what their level is… of course 80 is required for southsun, orr, frostgorge and wastes areas and the new HoT maps, but dungeons? I should only have to look at my HUD!

Since masteries are only unlocked when a character is level 80, you do not have to worry about this. When you see a character’s mastery points you automatically know the character is level 80.

This is my exact worry as well. Dry Top and Silverwastes are fine for people who enjoy farming and grinding, but that goes against the spirit of the game. I find the rest of the open world to be much more enjoyable (even with less ‘rewards’), than those two zones.

Anyandrell.6238:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Braham will toss a protective shield onto the cogs periodically, which will grant you Stability if you’re a class that doesn’t have it. Beyond that, and assuming no sources of self-Stability, try to light the fire shortly after the dragon tries a paw attack. That should give you enough time to do it while the dragon does its other attacks.

Braham’s shield didn’t seem to have any stability effect. I was getting interrupted all the same even with it on.

Yeah, this seemed to be bugged. Hint to all elementalists: Take Arcane Shield, makes this part 100 times easier.

Grimrah.9256:

Warning Fan Boy Alert

Ok on the subject of an expansion. I am not reading as much about wanting or needing an expansion as much as I am reading many players threatening to leave the game. I for one am happy to see GW2 finally settling into the really hardcore and dedicated player base that is starting to emerge. The reality is that with the content additions that have been made they have really satisfied more then they have disappointed. I am happy that they are creating new and innovative content on a regular basis and if you have come to a point that you are bored in the game it is not anyone’s fault but, your own. The game is meant to stimulate your imagination and provide a platform for one to build characters that you love enough to stay with and play the game. If you are 100% on all your characters and you have done or seen all that the game has to offer then maybe this is not the game for you if you are still bored. I would bet that most of the people posting that they need an expansion are not 100% complete on all character types. The reality is that I can create another elementalist of a different race and have a whole new experience that last ages. The reality is there is more then enough to do to keep us immersed with out any question. Thank You Arena net for not charging me every time you add a new zone or redo the features.

At the end of the day, there are so many games to choose from (and so many things to do in lieu of playing games), that most people have no reason to literally obtain every single possible achievement in the entire game. Additionally, it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective that Anet would only want to appeal to the group of players that you describe, because then how do they ever make money? The GW1 model was, as far as I remember, certainly more well received, and I would be surprised if it was not more profitable as well. How many games have you played in your life for over 2 years? Games still need wide sweeping changes and additions to stay fresh, it is no one’s ‘fault’ to get tired of a game that has not had as much ‘expansion-like’ material as the fanbase had come to expect.

having the same problem

I also found at seemingly random times, having both buffs and getting knocked back. couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, although eventually I was able to get the vortex enough times.

Looks like other people started experiencing this about a month ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-CAP-at-32/first#post4444756

izzy.5876:

The Great Al.2546:

Admittedly haven’t read the entire thread, but I have a laptop with an 860M, i7 processor, and used to get around 50-60 FPS and now can’t get above 32. Changing the settings have no impact (including Shadows, which I would expect would be a big FPS increase to turn off).

I recently installed the latest nvidia update which included the NVidia Experience for GW2. I haven’t tweaked any of the settings but could this be related?

THIS. THIS IS MY EXACT ISSUE.
I have a laptop with, as previously mentioned, Nvidia GeForce 755M 2g, 16 GB of RAM, and an Intel i7 processor. Previously ran the game at high fps, now I can barely get above 32 as well. Periodically I’ll climb to my previous FPS but it lasts in short bursts and I’ll go down to <32 again.

When the patch first came out I had this issue, so I tried to fix it and updated my Nvidia driver to the new one, same problem. I just cleaned my fan after forgetting to for four months – computer performance has improved but my FPS and overall GW2 loading times have stayed the same since patch. I’ve also run -repair on GW2 and no changes, it’s stayed the same no matter what settings I use, high or low.

izzy, I believe I found something that may or may not be related to your issue. Please see my thread that I created here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Major-FPS-issue-with-the-Frame-Limiter/first#post4545218

Hi,

I have a laptop with an NVidia 860M, and the new i7 processor. Latest NVidia driver.

I noticed that as of fairly recently (can’t put an exact time on it, but seemingly within the last few weeks), I was unable to get more than 32-33 FPS, regardless of whether I used low or high settings.

I noticed just now that if I set the Frame Limiter to Unlimited, I immediately jump up to 60 FPS. When I set the Frame Limited to 60 FPS, I go down to 32-33 FPS. When I set it to 30 FPS, my FPS is in the 20s.

Is this an issue? Anyone else experiencing this?

iNovikov.1053:

The Great Al.2546:

Admittedly haven’t read the entire thread, but I have a laptop with an 860M, i7 processor, and used to get around 50-60 FPS and now can’t get above 32. Changing the settings have no impact (including Shadows, which I would expect would be a big FPS increase to turn off).

I recently installed the latest nvidia update which included the NVidia Experience for GW2. I haven’t tweaked any of the settings but could this be related?

What is your GPU/CPU heat like?

Nonexistent. Cool to the touch. I use a separate laptop fan, and the internal one doesn’t even always need to turn on.

Admittedly haven’t read the entire thread, but I have a laptop with an 860M, i7 processor, and used to get around 50-60 FPS and now can’t get above 32. Changing the settings have no impact (including Shadows, which I would expect would be a big FPS increase to turn off).

I recently installed the latest nvidia update which included the NVidia Experience for GW2. I haven’t tweaked any of the settings but could this be related?

CMM.6712:

The Great Al.2546:

CMM.6712:

The Great Al.2546:

As a longtime player but by no means ‘hardcore’, I would hope that any instanced raiding implementation would also have a ‘normal’ mode. Otherwise, you guys will be putting out new instances/areas/mechanics/etc that only the top 10% (for example) will ever be able to experience. This would also help any raid-related releases generate excitement for all players, because even if you don’t have hours at a time to spend raiding, you could still somehow enjoy the content in a more relaxed way. (with obviously significantly reduced rewards).

Or potentially if some large scale events happened in the open world at a ‘decently hard’ difficulty, with the potential for guilds to create instanced ‘hard’ versions of those events.

No. Too much is already catered to casuals and new players. We want this to be confusing and difficult.

Yes, and you will get the confusing and difficult. I am asking for a separate version that is catered to the casual player that will have absolutely no negative impact on the real raiders. Think about regular vs hard mode in GW1. You can play hard mode and not even know that regular mode exists. Why would you be against everyone else being able to play a toned down (in terms of difficultly and reward) version?

The only reason I would be against it is more work for the team. Other than that, I don’t have a problem with it. Seems like double the work to me though, just saying.

I think taking the time to flip the difficulty from hard to easy (lowering enemy health/removing some difficult mechanics/etc) would potentially be significantly less time than designing brand new casual content. Depending on what causes the raid to be difficult, it would just be tweaks, hopefully.

CMM.6712:

The Great Al.2546:

As a longtime player but by no means ‘hardcore’, I would hope that any instanced raiding implementation would also have a ‘normal’ mode. Otherwise, you guys will be putting out new instances/areas/mechanics/etc that only the top 10% (for example) will ever be able to experience. This would also help any raid-related releases generate excitement for all players, because even if you don’t have hours at a time to spend raiding, you could still somehow enjoy the content in a more relaxed way. (with obviously significantly reduced rewards).

Or potentially if some large scale events happened in the open world at a ‘decently hard’ difficulty, with the potential for guilds to create instanced ‘hard’ versions of those events.

No. Too much is already catered to casuals and new players. We want this to be confusing and difficult.

Yes, and you will get the confusing and difficult. I am asking for a separate version that is catered to the casual player that will have absolutely no negative impact on the real raiders. Think about regular vs hard mode in GW1. You can play hard mode and not even know that regular mode exists. Why would you be against everyone else being able to play a toned down (in terms of difficultly and reward) version?

As a longtime player but by no means ‘hardcore’, I would hope that any instanced raiding implementation would also have a ‘normal’ mode. Otherwise, you guys will be putting out new instances/areas/mechanics/etc that only the top 10% (for example) will ever be able to experience. This would also help any raid-related releases generate excitement for all players, because even if you don’t have hours at a time to spend raiding, you could still somehow enjoy the content in a more relaxed way. (with obviously significantly reduced rewards).

Or potentially if some large scale events happened in the open world at a ‘decently hard’ difficulty, with the potential for guilds to create instanced ‘hard’ versions of those events.

Palador.2170:

Think of it like a typical multi-level dungeon in most RPGs. The first level is easy, but it gets harder as you go down. Getting to the boss requires good skill and equipment. Players are free to go as far as they can get. That way, only a part of the new content would be “raiders only”.

This is the opposite of what I would like to see. Hardcore players have to sleepwalk through ‘easy’ content, and casual players miss out on potentially some cool levels. I’d rather just see two versions of the same dungeon, one that is beatable by more or less everyone, and one that is truly difficult (with higher rewards).

Devildoc.6721:

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

The steps to complete a heart aren’t much different or less interesting than the escort events, or events where you stand in a red circle, etc. If the rewards are equivalent then how is it such an awful idea to expand the things that you can do in a zone after completion?

Devildoc.6721:

Arghore.8340:

tl;dr, Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

---

The combination of Hearts and Dynamic events was one of the things I looked most forward to when GW2 was announced, to me it was one of the big selling points and a step away from the traditional ‘pick-up quests -> do quests -> turn in -> rince -> repeat’.

We all (well most of us at least) know that the Hearts were added due to people not entirely comprehending the DE’s. We have been ‘conditioned’ so much by the traditional way of questing that ‘things just happening’ was such a turn in our gaming experience that it was hard to grasp. The thing with ‘conditioning’ is, that it is very hard to just turn it around, sure you may be able to use hearts to steer every character to level up enough that they make it to level 80. But what about after that…

This is something that I noticed about my own behaviour, I somehow still do not ‘go out’ to do DE’s … for some reason they do not offer some sort of ‘hey go here’ kind of thing, like quests with !-NPCs used to do. And seeing I’ve come to understand that if I myself think or do something, that it is not unlikely that there are others with the same thought or behaviour…

This lead to think about what could entice me to actually ‘DO’ go out into the world, and what I liked when i first started. Well these were the hearts, as I ventured into the game I moved towards hearts, and while doing so I ran into events. After a couple of hearts (and knowing somewhat how they worked) I tended to also hang around the hearts after completion just to see if something would start off of it. This made the ‘living world’ feel rather easy to pick up on, and it felt rather natural…

Yet, after I completed all the hearts, hmm well, it just felt that there was little incentive to go back out and hunt DE’s. It may be weird, but that is how conditioning works, it cultivates a certain behaviour that is very hard to break, you may be able to coach into some sort of other behaviour, but if you remove the incentive trigger, it’s very likely you lapse back into your previous behaviour. The hearts basically functioned like the well known ‘quest hubs’ we know from more traditional games, and once they were done, it just felt like ‘I was done’…

So this made me realise that in order to revitalize the game, the trigger for going out should be reset. Which means: Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

what do you think? do you miss incentive to just go out into the world to do events? do you think this could solve part of it? any other thoughts?

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever read. Sorry but it’s just bad. People aren’t going to come back and do the worst content in the entire game (hearts) for a silver or two every month. As it is you ONLY do hearts for world completion.

As it is I wish hearts had never been added. They’re MIND NUMBINGLY BORING. God I hate doing them for map/world completion as it is.

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

Branden Gee.2150:

Alright just trying to get all of these thoughts into a single concise list. (Please note this does not mean that any of these things will happen)

• First person camera
• Increase max dolly (camera distance) distance
• Decrease min dolly distance
• More finite dolly control
• Automatic camera height adjustment on /sleep emote
• Manual camera height adjustment
• Stop ‘random snapping’ from happening
• Look at camera
• Free orientation movement
• Fix automatic camera height so that the over the shoulder camera works as it would be expected to work
• Manual FoV adjustment

Please let me know if there is anything else I’m missing.

Really appreciate your responses to the thread!

I know there are some hesitations around a first person view. How about an option to make your character invisible while taking a screenshot, similar to how you can make the UI invisible?

I would like to see the sandstorm element of Dry Top applied to other maps as weather events (lightning storms, blizzards, etc). This could be applied to one or two random zones per hour/day/whatever. During this time, there could be region-specific buried chests/geodes/etc that would have a chance to drop from the existing events in that zone. I think that the lack of true region or zone skins is hurting replayability of existing zones, and a mechanic and rewards like that could help revitalize them.

Shiren.9532:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I really dislike the design of Dry Top’s event system and I really hope ArenaNet doesn’t see that as the new bar for Open World maps going forward.

To me, the Open World (or zones) is about exploration, immersion, world story and smallscale content. If I run into other players and we share a similar goal for a short while, awesome – that’s why I play MMOs. Every time I run through a map I’ve played before I might come across an event I didn’t see, the world changes based on the events I complete and generally Tyria feels literally dynamic.

Dry Top kills one of the most unique and greatest strengths of Guild Wars 2’s open world – it is not dynamic. Dry Top works on a time table, it was really saddening for me when I discovered that all the events on Dry Top occur like clockwork. Golem event spawns in 5 minutes, devourer event spawns in10 minutes, crystal event spawns in 15 minutes etc. I hate that. It seems necessary to have scheduled events for these organised maps to occur, but it really loses site of what I personally think the Open World is about.

The Open World should be about slower paced exploration, not madly waypointing around to suit the timetable of the new events as the commander reads out the schedule over map chat. Talking to that NPC and triggering an escort which then establishes a camp and then triggers another event regardless of what’s going on on elsewhere on the map. Picking up a runestone in a cave and attracting a powerful monster, coming across a mysterious largos that needs my help – none of this happens because I was told by a commander who is looking at his/her timetable, it happens because I spoke to that NPC who asked me for help, because I went off the beaten path and swam into that obscure location, because I saw that cave opening and thought “What’s in there?” and discovered a little part of Tyria I hadn’t seen before. It’s really hard to design events that meaningfully interact with the world when they have to occur on a time table with a strict beginning and end.

The Map Level rewards are also poorly implemented imo. The timer placed on them creates pressure to do as many events as fast as possible or you get worse rewards. The incentive to do so is very weak because the majority of the time players will only want a T6 merchant once or twice – you save up for it and buy all at once, the rest of the time it doesn’t matter if you get T6 (so why work hard to support others other than altruism?). Personally I don’t think making a T6 map get a “T6 Chest” at the end is a good solution either (that feels like punishing players for being on the wrong map), I don’t like this system period.

Maybe if there was no timer, maybe if each map progressed as players engaged with the world anyway, the difference between an organised map and a casual one was the speed at which they reach T6. That preserves the Open World’s design of being exploration based and it also removes the need to schedule the “Dynamic” Events around the world. Honestly I feel like Open World design should reward players for exploration and interaction with the world, not taxiing into a map with a commander using a spread sheet.

I think there is room in GW2’s design for large scale and organised Open World events but I think that should be primarily reserved for content like Tequatl – world bosses that occur on longish spawn timers. I think designs like Dry Top sacrifice so much of what makes the Open World engaging and fun and it fails to reward players for exploring the world. I think we will also see longetivity issues, even with megaservers. I’ve already seen very few T6 maps during Oceanic hours, when the content becomes older, players acquire their rewards and move onto the next farm, this map will be far less sustainable than Cursed Shore.

PS: Geodes really need to go into the account wallet, just like Amber needs to be deposited as a crafting material along with Foxfire Clusters.

100% agree with you. I find myself playing in Dry Top just because it is more rewarding than many of the other zones – but I am having less fun in the process.

Yoda.2839:

I think a (major) part of the communication problems anet has can be seen from how the announcement of this feature pack was handled. I would also argue that it has something (a lot) to do with the PR mess of the recent days.

Firstly it was announced at a time of anniversary, for which many people were expecting something big. Secondly it was announced to span over 3 weeks, which is a huge amount of time further inflating the idea of a big change (and by big I mean expansion size).

With that in mind lets consider an interested player who is keeping up with the announcements as they come out. First day it’s just a pvp tournament, exciting for hard core pvp players, for anyone else not so much, “I’m sure they have something better in store for tomorrow.”

PvP visual and rewards – “This looks neat, I might even start to play more pvp, I’m getting exicited”

next day

Balance – “Nothing I already knew/to vague. Just a filler post and my wait is in vain”

next day

Big changes to commander system – “Omg I can’t wait to read that, this might be the blog post I was waiting for. Oh no wait new colours and account bound. BIG changes indeed. Are they mocking me?”

I could go on but it is beyond the point since it just repeats it self , up to Improvements Galore, of whole 3 changes.

So in short what I am trying to say is that this update seems quite substantial but they way anet is releasing details about it is simply horrible. If there were 1 (or 2) huge blog posts where everyone could find something to get excited about there would be far less fuss about it. Instead players are sent on an emotional roller-coaster which results in being disappointed to a varying degree for 90% of the time.

There is no way to deliver the news that many/most (matter of opinion) of the features are minor or not impactful to you, in such a way that you are going to feel less disappointment. It’s a matter of either being disappointed during the actual announcement, or during the ‘announcement of the announcement’ that you are asking for.

Hi Chris,
To what extent does player feedback drive priorities? For example, if somehow tomorrow a 40 page thread appears about <insert feature here>, does current work get reprioritized to make room for that?

As a software developer myself, I’ve found that the end user of the software drives about 80-90% of the prioritization, with the rest coming from developer knowledge (for example, if something of a less priority is a ‘quick win’, it generally would happen sooner, and also some flexibility on pushing back massive projects if they would take a long time). I would expect similar practices at Anet. Why then, for example, do seemingly ‘quick wins’ like many of the profession bugs or unused traits/skills stay that way for such a long time?

Thanks again for all of your hard work and interaction with the community!

CptAurellian.9537:

Ele has 100 % vigor uptime for mere 10 points, in contrast to a guard’s 50 % uptime for 5 points. Fair deal, and both of them are in rather weak lines. Besides, the ele can either have more distance to the enemy (staff or DD) or has regular blinds, too (LH).

I wouldn’t mind seeing vigor getting nerfed across the board or at least made less accessable. Removing dodges would actually force players to take vitality and toughness points. There are definitely some boss attacks that would have to be nerfed as well. Just in general getting tired of the berzerker + dodge meta in PvE.

Simon.3794:

Light armor and medium already have tons of damage migation, that’s why you see them in dungeons or playable in pve.

i can just spam pistol whip doing tons of damage aoe cleave while evading everything.
and some even have 50% ~ perma vigor uptime with only one trait. and heavies dont have.

and if you want to add another endure regen on top of that, idk, you will need to nerf other stuff 1st

TLDR: Medium and Lighter already dodge damage way more then heavies (except necro), you probably don’t play most of them to know.

My primary is elementalist, but I have also leveled to 80 a guardian and warrior. 5 point vigor on crit for Guardian never felt fair considering the blind and aegis spamming available to the class.

Harper.4173:

Terrible idea.
The difference between different armor types is minimal and it would create huge discrepancies in WvW and PvP.
This game isn’t only PVE. And even there a lot of things would have to be reworked.

There are many other less destructive ways to improve this game.

I understand that the game isn’t only PvE, but I did mark this thread as a PvE only suggestion.

I would love to see endurance regen be based off of armor type – i.e. heavy armor would have slower regeneration than light armor. It doesn’t make sense that the Guardian, for example, has so many different ways to defend against attacks (multiple blinds, aegis, protection, etc), but at the end of the day they can still dodge roll out of everything. Warriors too, would be less inclined to run Berzerker-only if they could not dodge as often. This would force players to actually time blinds, aegis’s, etc, instead of wasting them when not needed. This would also be more ‘realistic’ in the sense that wearing heavy armor with restrict dodges.

What does ‘when you are stuck’ mean? Is that supposed to say ‘struck’?

Also, I have to echo that the new air grandmaster seems really awful.

I would love a Reddit style system where the most popular comments get voted to the top for more people to see. In fact, if the tech is too hard to build out here, future CDIs could even be posted on Reddit instead of here, to make use of that functionality.

I’ve tried playing WvW leading up to this release, for the past few weeks. I love the new map, the design and asthetics are amazing.

But here is my WvW experience from the last few weeks -

Find an uncontested waypoint.
Run around until I can find a commander to follow (usually takes a few minutes).
Spend a few minutes following him around, until I get defeated.

Rinse, repeat.

Is it just me, or are there not enough waypoints? I spend more time wandering through empy sections of the map than I do in a battle. And when I am in a battle, generally don’t last very long (playing as an Ele).

The elementalist changes are appreciated, but the interesting thing is that these are changes that were made to spells that are already fairly popular. Why not buff skills that are hardly used in PvE, like most of the focus spells and glyphs?

I’d also go as far to say that the Ele is a bad example of balancing damage and durability. The inherent squishiness doesn’t seem to be justified.

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

I also have to echo the sentiment (in my opinion, also as a software developer) that player housing doesn’t really seem ‘worth it’ to build and also, doesn’t really expand the horizontal progression ‘journey’ in and of itself. It’s been made fairly clear by a big chunk of the community that many (most) of the current playerbase is very willing and able to spend $40 bucks for expansion content (new zones please), so I don’t know if something like player housing can be justifiable to build unless much of the content is from the gem store, which is not going to make many players happy. At the end of the day, the problem is that housing only appeals to a small percentage of the GW2 population, whereas things like new skills, new zones, and new items would appeal to practically everyone and are probably all cheaper to develop.

Chris, if I may ask – is there a team devoted to ‘CDI-influenced content’? Or if an amazing idea comes out of a CDI, can entire teams be shuffled in order to devote more resources to a specific idea that may be easier/better than whatever that team was already working on?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

In all seriousness:

Starting on a basic level:
Daily achievement always in cycle like Gatherer; “Daily Visitor: Visit 5 houses”.
Social achievment “Houseguest: Visit W/X/Y/Z Houses; Title: Couch Surfer / Neighborhood / Honored Guest / Toast of the Town”

Personally not feeling any of these. I already am under the strong impression that probably 90% of players will spend less than 1% of their time in these ‘houses’. Forcing it with a daily or achievements isn’t going to make it a more attractive option.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Well hard Content doesn’t Need to exclude casual Players … if there are gambits / instabilities ect for dungeons. Casual Players see the same Content as hardcore Players do.

What would be the Problem to reward Special tokkens if you complete the dungeon while gambits active. Allow Players to Change those tokkens for ascended armor weapons and stuff. I mean i feel like I am forced to farm and grind things because I have a Feeling that fractals will Need certain ar I can’t get with just showing my skills at playing fractals. So for me it be a nice solution to get ascended armor while testing my skills in existing dungeons with gambits / instabilities.

I know People will still complain that it is unfair that he can get that armor ect ect but in the end everyone can see the Content ( Play the dungeon) and everyone can get ascended armor.

I think it would be a really nice solution to create some hard Content in a relatively short ammount of time without designing new Areas ect…

Would you think this would lead to elitism as well or would you be fine with such a Content?

My idea for Hard Mode was built around basically this idea. You could get gambits or instabilities that only affect you (you dealing less damage doesn’t affect just you, but you taking more damage does). These gambits could then appropriately affect potential rewards, which might be tokens in dungeons, or pseudo-magic find in open world, or the like.

I also like the idea that you can run “normal explorable” for exotic gear, and “hard explorable” for ascended. This would allow almost a new set of dungeons for people who choose to have gambits (maybe they’re preset based on run, or maybe you need to add a minimum amount of your choosing to qualify for certain tables) while allowing them to continue to group with players who don’t want to add gambits. All of this, while not trivializing their hard mode experience. Something like a constant burning would require a player to have some form of healing to offset the damage over time. He could get this from himself or from his normal mode party members while still having to complete the path with a constant source of damage.

The key to this would be to find the appropriate gambits so that they can only affect the difficulty of the player they apply too, and don’t allow normal mode players to trivialize the difficulty increase compared to the loot increase. I’ll also mention, like in the current game, zergs trivialize a quite a few things, so there’s not much you can do about that, but there would be a greater chance that hard mode players would get downed.

It’s a good thought but in an open world game, Hard mode could never exist on an individual level. If you are in a zerg of 15+ people, putting a handicap on yourself isn’t going to make it any more difficult, nor would you deserve greater rewards than anyone else.

I agree that rewards should somehow be tailored to skill. This is why I suggested the implentation of an ‘effectiveness meter’ for use in large scale encounters and dungeons.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/46#post3469157

Here is a (hopefully unique/interesting) thought I had with regards to new skill acquisition -

Large scale events (Temples/Dragons, World Bosses, Champions with 15+ players, etc) could make use of an ‘Effectiveness’ player rating system (to be implemented).

How will this work?

New skills will be categorized into offensive or defensive/support buckets. You need a certain number of points in each bucket to unlock a new skill.

The player will gain these points by participating in said events. If you are in the top X% (or maybe top 3, TBD) in terms of damage dealt, you get a point towards the offensive category. If you are in the top X% in terms of overall healing given, conditions removed, boons/buffs shared, etc (basically anything non-damage oriented), you get a point towards the defensive/support category. Achieving Y of these points in a given category allows you to unlock a skill in that category.

Additionally, this can be calculated in a such a way where your effectiveness rating is scaled based on how long you were there (so the first few people don’t have an unfair advantage). For example, as long as you were participating for 75% of the event time, if you do 10,000 total damage in 10 minutes, vs 7,500 damage in 7.5 minutes, this would be considered ‘equal’. Doing 7,400 damage in 7.4 minutes would be disqualified from the top rewards.

An alternate system would be to just have 1 bucket, in this case it would potentially be difficult to weight offense and defenses fairly in such a way that a DPS build, a hybrid build, and a support build are all on equal footing. The advantage of this approach would be that it does allow for hybrid builds, whereas the first one (in most situations) does not.

Other benefits to this system?

-Event rewards can be (at least loosely) based on how ‘effective’ you were during the event.
-This can be extended to dungeons, where the top player in each ‘category’ unlocks gains a ‘point’ and/or achieves more dungeon tokens.
-Encourages players to actually try their best, instead of autoattacking.
-Promotes greater skill variety (i.e. maybe as an Elementalist I would dust off the old ‘aura share’ build).
-Beneficial to the economy – more food buffs may be bought, players will strive for exotic insignias instead of rare, etc.
-Promotes better player awareness – for example, if I am in what I think is the best DPS build that I can come up with, and am consistently (10+ times in a row) coming up near the bottom of the effectiveness ladder, then I need to tweak my build or improve my playstyle (assuming, at least, over the course of a long event, damage output is equal among all classes in PvE – if not, this IMO is a balance issue)
Thoughts?

Conski Deshan.2057:

Shockwave.1230:

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Collect skins: Purchase them for currencies (which becomes play the fastest way to earn currency X), get them as rare drops (play fastest way to kill mob/content type X), or purchase them off the trading post. (Play the fastest way to earn gold)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

You honestly see nothing wrong with a person running Cof but unable to complete Arah getting the Arah armor?
What is the incentive for running Arah specifically then? Cos slightly fast gain of an item doesn’t cut it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The downside is because almost everything can earn you most of the same rewards, this becomes a matter of choosing to do the things you enjoy the most, but getting rewarded slower because of it.

The downside is that you de-incentivise improvement and promote grinding the same thing over and over. The players see an item they like and go I think I’ll add that to my collection, There is no risk that they’re not good enough to get it, they are not challenged into doing a new piece of content and are in no way forced out of their comfort zone. Skill goes under-rewarded.

I think there should be one dungeon currency, and each dungeon rewards a different amount of tokens based on difficulty and could potentially even be a dynamic reward based on how frequently that dungeon path should run. I think it’s a really bad design flaw that each dungeon set requires a grind of the same dungeon over and over – yes, I know that there are multiple paths per dungeon, but for a game that strives to reward doing different things, I think this should be revisited.

timidobserver.7925:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Reading through a lot of the comments on various class diversification (or just stronger trait/skill diversification) concepts, one of the things that seems to be missing is a discussion on how you’d actually earn/unlock these additional abilities to make it a progression system.

One of the goals of progression, in this case horizontal, is to create an extended sense of game play and thus = reward for playing it.

For example, we’ve added more skills to the game recently, but those simply unlock with skill points, which basically means -> play any part of the game that gives exp, or kill champs to get skill point books. That’s ok as systems of unlocking horizontal progression go for the extended class diversification, but game play wise it generally means find the easiest place to get XP/champ-loot and do it over and over again for a large % of players, since folks most often gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

It should be similar to the Signet of Capture system, however I make it a bit more difficult. Give the player a list of X amount of specific named NPCs they have to hunt down, defeat, and use the signet of capture on. They can only completed 1 a day. Once they have completed them all, they get the skill. I would make the NPCs have a chance to spawn in a number of locations across different maps in order to make the chase more difficult.

One area that I find Guild Wars to be lacking in is profession lore, so it would be awesome if you added in a lot of profession specific lore about these skills.

Artificially inflating the amount of time it takes to obtain these skills isn’t going to be popular.

Additionally, this turns into the same WP jumping that the world bosses and Living Story has brought about. Someone in guild chat links a WP, and everyone rushes to get there. I don’ t think a bounty hunt like that can really be successful in an open world game. There’s no personal skill involved in that, just a rush to get to the NPC.

Signet of Capture was great in GW1, but wouldn’t work so well in GW2. I can very easily see it turning into either boss camping, or continuing on with the current meta of ‘this boss is up…now this boss is up!’ WP jumping. The sheer number of WPs, coupled with the fact that the overall number of skills would be very low (especially with no secondary profession), means that it would probably be a matter of a few hours before all skills were obtained. This wouldn’t really tie in to a long-term horizontal progression.

To be honest, any long-ish term capturing/acquiring of skills would probably be vertical progression, because for a considerable amount of time, some players would have access to skills that others wouldn’t.

I think that anyone that is suggesting guild halls/player housing, etc, has to ask themselves the following -

Assuming that items related to player housing are achieved through the living story /achievement system (i.e. like some of the existing nodes so far, things like the dragon wings which we have obtained in similar ways), are you more likely to play through otherwise potentially repetitive/uninspiring (in my opinion) tasks/progress bars, just to get items that you will probably spend less than 1% of your overall playing time looking at? Unless you are a RPer, what does a player house actually add to the overall experience of the game?

I personally can understand why you would want to potentially grind for an armor skin, or a weapon skin, because that is something that you are looking at ALL of the time.

With regards to figuring out timelines/dev resources for any of these, there are really 2 parts to this – how long will it take to implement housing, and how long will it take to implement a rewards system for housing that is satisfying to the playerbase and creates a more ‘dynamic’ feel to the world, tying in to what is supposed to be the ‘whole world is endgame’ idea? Am I going to go back to Timberland Falls, for example, because I need a level 55 tree node? Or because there are awesome dynamic events/scavenger hunts/quests/hidden chests/etc that allow me to further progress towards my goal?

My top choice would be role diversification, for two reasons –
1. I loved the flexibility of GW1’s skill system, and am tired of the Berserker-only PvE meta.
2. It seems like one of the only points listed here that won’t be directly tied to the current achievement system. I’m tired of filling up a progress bar with uninteresting and grindy achievements. I would anticipate a role diversification system including hunting down bosses for skill capture, which was a beloved feature of the first game.

How many players outside of role-players spend any time in a home instance or guild hall? I personally don’t see the appeal. It honestly just sounds like another ‘do these monotonous achievements to get a skin that won’t even be visible for 99% of your playtime’.

Zone progression would be awesome. I tried spending some time in the 30-60 zones recently, but they are completely devoid of players, dynamic events, or any other reason to go back there.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

The Great Al.2546:

Although there are a lot of great ideas with regards to gear, skills, vanity, etc, there has been less talk about how we are actually going to obtain said items. My concern lies around the fact that each Living Story update has brought about achievements/skins that center around large amounts of grind (following zergs WP to WP) or RNG.

GW2, in it’s current state, has many different looks for endgame armor. The problem is that that the sets either require large amounts of dungeons (repetitive, static tasks) or impossibly low RNG odds. Will Guild Halls require millions of wood, ore, etc, farming? Will new skins be RNG based, either through keys or the mystic forge? IMO, the method of obtaining the rewards mentioned in this thread, is as important, if not more important, than the rewards themselves. I personally would rather have fun obtaining a semi-rare item than get grey hairs relying on RNG or massive grind.

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Some posts come with descriptions on how to obtain. I know on page 4 I tried to come up with a way to obtain legendary dyes. It was basically equal to how legendaries are obtained atm, but you can see the full description here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/4#post3408259

Some posts talking about skills had some different ways of obtaining them. Some involved using the weapon over and over(I’m assuming in relation to achievements related to the weapon), or certain weapon skills over and over like unlocking weapon skills to unlock the new ones. As for utilities, I’m not sure but I think Signet of Capture was mentioned somewhere in the 26 pages of this thread.

The gear attainability was also mentioned in the thread through various means. One post even stated combining crafting professions to make unique skins(armorsmith + huntsman to make orichalcum plated longbows or something).

As for vanity, there was a couple posts on the idea of “Tinkering” that involved creating items for housing along side creating town clothes – all mixed into one third crafting profession that would be accessible to everyone along side the two crafting professions of choice.

People haven’t just been throwing idea’s out into the wind without any thought as to how to get them in-game. The core of the idea’s have had a lot of thought put into them early on in the the thread because people have had almost 2 years to think about these things(I’m considering open beta in that time frame – even longer if you count closed beta players).

I think Signet of Capture is a fantastic idea and one of my favorite aspects of GW1. Would love to see something like that.