Guild Wars 2

Khisanth.2948:

There are actually 2 champion giants. One in Harathi Hinterlands and one in Diessa Plateau.

I also killed a few in Brisban for an event called Broken Golem.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Nerelith.7360:

They did a good job with Guild Wars, although I really think this is a different Anet from the Anet that produced Guild Wars, maybe this Anet may not be up to the task? I mean they cannot balance the limited set of skills they have now.

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Nerelith.7360:

Opinion is a personal observation, and cannot be wrong. it can be agreed with or disagreed with.

I’d have said that an opinion is a personal truth – it doesn’t necessarily need to be based on observation. It’s neither, objectively, right or wrong, unless backed up / challenged with hard factual evidence.

For the boss fights, I’ve recommended before that they have a scaling formula attached to the mechanics of the fight (and not just health and add spawn) in order for the fight to retain a set level of difficulty, rather than it getting easier when you throw more bodies at it.

For example, The Shatterer. Every fight, regardless of how many players there are, it spawns 5 healing crystals. This means that 10 people will have to be on the ball, but with 50 people, 40 can ignore it and the mechanic becomes unimportant to the majority of players, thus making the encounter easier.

Attaching a scaling mechanic to this would mean less people could AFK, since you’d require more bodies to take the crystals down in a timely manner.

As for the pre-events, I haven’t really got anything more creative than a buff for anyone who participates that gives better loot.

I personally like the concept behind Hearts; multiple ways of completing it, and you get a vendor at the end of it.

However, in the end, they’re limited by what you can actually do; kill, gather, click F to do something. That’s not really the fault of the Hearts, but of the limitations of what you can do with tasks full stop.

Not only that, while some vendors have unique items (recipes, for example), a lot have generically-skinned armour and weapons.

Nerelith.7360:

1. Trait Unlocks are Nothing Like Elite Skill captures from Guild Wars. The only thing they have in common is,…they both unlock something. Aside from that. Nothing else is the same. Nothing is even similar.

GW1: You buy a SoC, hunt down a boss and use SoC on it’s corpse to get the skill.
GW2: You hunt down a boss (or complete any other activity) and then use the item given to unlock the trait.

They’re not, word for word, exactly the same, but trait unlocking has the essence of skill unlocking; you do something to unlock a component that you can use in your build.

After all, you don’t simply copy and paste things from one game to another; you need to adapt it to fit it into the game.

Skill hunting in GW1 wouldn’t have worked in GW2 since, for starters, you’ve got an instance generated for you and bosses you can hunt at a whim vs an instance that you will potentially share with 100’s of other people with bosses spawning at certain times.

Even if they did the buy SoC > hunt boss > capture skill, it wouldn’t be exactly the same as in GW1. Players wouldn’t need to sacrifice a slot, since they could just slot the SoC in after the boss fight, and you’d have to potentially wait around in order to get the skill you want.

Nerelith.7360:

2. In MY opinion, having weapon locked skills makes for less customization. When you have hundreds of possible skills, and can load each individually, that means if all you have are 5 “weapn skills” that are freed up and Individual…. you have many more combos… even if it’s just exactly 100..that’s 100C5 possible combinations… not even counting utility skills. 3 mainhand skills + 2 offhand skills or 5 two handed weapon skills… does not mean more customizability, but less.

I didn’t say it adds more customisation. I said it adds a bit more depth to it. You have to make a meaningful choice as to what weapon(s) you’re going to take for your build other than what stats it has.

Of course, as I said, I wouldn’t say no to more weapon skills -in fact, I would very much love this – but I’d still like to see these skills tied to the weapons, and possibly even the slot.

Nerelith.7360:

3. Play Guild Wars. All I need to say.

I did, and still do on occasion. What’s your point?

Nerelith.7360:

PS: All those troubles they had… provided the playerbase with a FUN awesome game to play.

Gw2 is what you get when you make a game that is made for the convenience of the devs, that cashes In on an awesome IP. and that has managed to get enough players that are willing to accept." this is the best we can do, without doing hard work."

Fun is subjective. I agree that GW had it’s merits, and that there were things that they should have brought over to GW2 (things like GvG, Guild Halls, skill functionality and synergy ect). At the same time, I don’t think that they should have copied everything from GW and ported it over into GW2 simply because it was in GW1 (sub-professions, heroes and henchmen ect).

That aside, you have no idea what they do on a day to day basis. You can’t say that they’re not working hard without that information, and I’ve never seen any dev say “this is the best we can do without doing hard work” – unless you can quote where they’ve said that at any point?

Azhure.1857:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Azhure.1857:

Dardevilmon.6702:

Dont touch the combat that is the best part about this game the thing they need to touch is the balance of skills no the combat.Combat is incredibly fluid and responsive and non other mmo or rpg or mmorpg have combat as good as this 1.

Zerg warfare, spam1 fest = Death to nearly everything

Yeah…. sure…. best there is.

Combat system =/= encounter design.

You’re splitting hairs.

Not really.

A game could have, subjectively, the best combat system ever. However if the actual content, AI and all of these combining factors that go into encounters don’t bring out the full depth of the system, then it brings the combat system down.

It doesn’t mean the combat system is bad, it just hasn’t been done justice.

Azhure.1857:

Dardevilmon.6702:

Dont touch the combat that is the best part about this game the thing they need to touch is the balance of skills no the combat.Combat is incredibly fluid and responsive and non other mmo or rpg or mmorpg have combat as good as this 1.

Zerg warfare, spam1 fest = Death to nearly everything

Yeah…. sure…. best there is.

Combat system =/= encounter design.

There’s no point us sailing off to Cantha just to have to fight our way in at the moment.

So no, not to anyone’s knowledge.

Nerelith.7360:

1. Elite Skill capture off Boss Mobs.

2. Hundreds of skills that are not Locked to a weapon, so that all players can use any skills they wish, and not be limited By weapon choice.

If 2 is not possible.( not sure why, other MMO’s do it)…then more weapons.

3. Sub-classes.

To each i got the same response from players defending the current Gw2. " It’s too hard for the devs"

1. We have this in the form of unlocking Traits (except it isn’t restricted to simply find boss > kill boss > use SoC, which, IMO, is an improvement), though they could have branched out with the requirements a bit and not lumped every professions’ traits to a single task.

2. I personally like that each weapon has it’s own individual skills (although I wouldn’t say no to more skills tied to the weapon and the ability to swap skills out). It makes the weapon something more than simply a stat-stick and adds a bit of depth to the character customisation. Not only that, in GW1, there were quite a few skills that were tied to a weapon that you couldn’t use with any other weapon type.

3. I honestly don’t see the point in adding sub-classes. IMO, the amount of time it would take them to implement the system and balance all of the existing Skills and Traits to follow this would be time better spent fleshing out the professions more (skills, traits, weapons ect). Not only that, players would simply choose the most wanted professions and pick and choose bits from other, less desirable professions. It wouldn’t improve anything while consuming a lot of resources to implement.

I wouldn’t say it’s “too hard” for them, but I think in terms of resources and time, it’s a smarter choice to do what they’ve done.

They simply learnt from the all of the trouble they had in GW1.

ThanatosAngel.8024:

Only ANet can save this game. But they need to listen to us to do that.

What group of ‘us’ should they listen to? After all, the entire community will never agree on what is the best way to address an issue.

SyllyReth.2495:

I really didn’t think I would ever get it, but after about 174 tries and retraiting, relearning my class, and beating my head against a wall…. I got it, and it feels good.

That’s an awesome shot (pun possibly intended), fair play.

Xenon.4537:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Dungeon Vanquish

No need to change anything. However, I’d say that dungeons and mobs would need to be retooled before this is implemented.

Yeah, I imagine they would need to simply replace all of the mobs with generic ones, or even new ones designed specifically for vanquishing. For example there’s a lot of gravelings in AC that despawn when you get the scepter pieces. For vanquishing there would be no scepter pieces, just an open map and mobs to kill. Furthermore it would be more fun is the packs of mobs were more interesting, such as special patrol patterns, more diverse group comp (like enemy healers) or some such things.

I was thinking more about mob AI and mob group composition.

In terms of replacing and removing mobs for Vanquish mode, just ‘mark’ which mobs count towards the vanquish i.e. Mobs not tied to dungeon objectives, that are constant regardless of path.

Guild Vanquish

I can’t say I’m a fan of this idea in the proposed implemetation. At the same time, I can’t really think of another way of doing it, short of something like Scarlet’s invasions; you start the mission, and a number of armies spawn all around the map. Maybe a system where the mobs don’t become hostile as well until a guild member is in the area to prevent random people simply killng them.

Personal Vanquish

I suggested a while back that this could be combined with the journals from GW1 to have different sorts of vanquishes:

• Bestiary vanquish – kill x of a species. For example, with drakes you’d have to kill 10 reef drakes, 10 swamp drakes ect to complete that page in the journal.
• Event Vanquish – complete every individual event in an area. Rewards are based on the level of the area.

Dungeon Vanquish

No need to change anything. However, I’d say that dungeons and mobs would need to be retooled before this is implemented.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/

TL;DR

• Log in during the chapter to unlock episodes permanently on your account.
• If you can’t, it’s available for 200 gems.
• Completing an episode will unlock achievements to do. These have been described as ‘challenging’.

Some will be two weeks, some will be a month, but I wouldn’t quote me on that.

If I were to wager a guess, I’d say feature packs would be implemented after LS. For some reason I got 4 months stuck in my head.

ricky markham.8173:

i wouldnt mind if all dungeon currency was the same. one currency instead of the several we have now would be a good way to go

I disagree. If this was the case, there wouldn’t be a point in having armour unique to the dungeon (unless you had some sort of system where you had to unlock the vendor by completing all paths of the dungeon before being able to purchase it).

Xillllix.3485:

I think, judging from the last of content in the last 6 months, that since EOTM the map developers are working on GW3 which according to rumors may be using the Unreal engine.

Where did you hear about GW3? Or are these just rumours with no basis?

apriores.4926:

The way I see they could implement that new precursor system is through Living Story. They will have LS permanent, that means you can access even if you missed some episodes; it could reward you on every episode (or some episodes) with precursor pieces. When the LS is ended, you’ll have all the pieces together and can craft/forge the one you want it.
Since LS is account bound, you can have one precursor per season; this precursors will be account bound as well, to not interfere too much with the TP.
That is just what I suppose it could happen and I’m waiting for 1 July to found if its correct.

I wonder if you’re on to something there.

Anet mentioned that the precursors were delayed because of the way that reward structures had changed.

Given how each chapter is supposed to be unlocking ‘challenging’ achievements, I don’t think you’re too far off the money with that.

Adry.7512:

TheDaiBish.9735:

I’m going to flip that around and say you don’t seem to understand.

1. People enjoy different things, and depending on how much they enjoy it depends on how long they can do it for before getting bored. For many people, it’s also not just the PvP, but also things like build experimentation and perfecting their skills. I’ll ask something; has there been anything that you’ve enjoyed so much you can do it for hours and hours, so much so that time goes quicker than it seems? For me it’s reading and learning. Many a night I’ve spent up without realising the time.

2. What’s saying that everyone has been playing every day for hours and hours for 2 years? I’d say the amount of people who have been playing for hours and hours every day for 2 years with no breaks are very small in comparison to players who have a combination of these factors.

everything you stated was horrible. you made no valid points…..first ooff im only talkin about spvp..therefore i am saying playing spvp a lot within the course of two years….like a lot. if you still think thats ok, i have no reason to even discuss this topic with someone who lacks…..many many things, once again, you dont understand and sadly, you wont until later. which would be when you yourself go through the experience because you seem to lack basic role taking skills.

Firstly, why aren’t my points valid? Instead of throwing out the ad hominems about what I may or may not be lacking, discuss (if you can) why my points aren’t valid in your eyes. Simply saying “your points are horrible” doesn’t really add much to the discussion.

The bulk of your OP amounted to asking how people could play SPvP repeatedly when not much has been added to it, and that’s exactly what I was discussing.

At no point have I said if I think SPvP was in a good state or not, or whether it was OK regarding the time spent on adding things to SPvP, or the different game modes ect.

On a final note, I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean by ‘role-taking skills’ in regards to this discussion. A note as well before you decide to palm this off as ‘I was proven right since you don’t understand anything’; you’ve given no context as to what that is supposed to mean.

Adry.7512:

TheDaiBish.9735:

So you can’t understand why people repeatedly do something that, assumingly, they find fun? How do you know that these people haven’t taken breaks, or whathavenot?

you dont seem to understand do you……i dont mean the an event like a tourny where its a more challenging environment. i mean the same TASK, CAPTURE 3 POINTS WITH RANDOM PEOPLE for over two years? for HOURSS AND HOURSS! do u think thats fun? if so…..i question many thing about you……many things.

I’m going to flip that around and say you don’t seem to understand.

1. People enjoy different things, and depending on how much they enjoy it depends on how long they can do it for before getting bored. For many people, it’s also not just the PvP, but also things like build experimentation and perfecting their skills. I’ll ask something; has there been anything that you’ve enjoyed so much you can do it for hours and hours, so much so that time goes quicker than it seems? For me it’s reading and learning. Many a night I’ve spent up without realising the time.

2. What’s saying that everyone has been playing every day for hours and hours for 2 years? I’d say the amount of people who have been playing for hours and hours every day for 2 years with no breaks are very small in comparison to players who have a combination of these factors.

So you can’t understand why people repeatedly do something that, assumingly, they find fun? How do you know that these people haven’t taken breaks, or whathavenot?

Lian Olsam.9541:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Lian Olsam.9541:

other games have a deepest gameplay and i’d like to see it also in gw2

If you’re told what you have to take, that doesn’t add depth; it takes away from depth, since the player can’t make choices themselves.

and now what choice do u have? zerk then zerk then zerk? or what? explain me dude, cause i dont see too many choice, i see ppl lf zerk, lf guard war mesm i see necros, engins being kicked from party when they join a lfg, they didn’t have the time to say “hello” they will be instantly kicked…. where is the choice?

I never said that the current situation is any better, although you do have choice, since for the most part you can complete content with any profession. All that changes is the time it takes to complete said content.

What the game needs is the middle ground; freedom to build your character how you want while having mechanics that get the player to think “what can I bring to this fight that will help it go easier?”. More openness like this also gives groups the choice on how they want to approach the content – each player specialised (dedicated roles) or everyone brings a little of each thing (hybridisation and co-ordination).

When you look at it alongside horizontal progression, this is the whole point of horizontal progression in the form of skills and traits; as the player acquires more tools, more situations where they’re effective should be introduced.

Not content that tells the player “you need to bring classes / roles X, Y and Z otherwise you can’t do the content”.

Lian Olsam.9541:

other games have a deepest gameplay and i’d like to see it also in gw2

If you’re told what you have to take, that doesn’t add depth; it takes away from depth, since the player can’t make choices themselves.

If you infuse one of the rings, you can wear them both then.

Plated Armour is quite beefy looking.

Roundabout.1752:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Roundabout.1752:

Randulf.7614:

Yes to the banker and hero’s band. Each toon gets one.

No, players who earned the Hero’s Band in GW1 get them the rest of us don’t but it’s still worth it if you do a lot of Keyruns or like collecting skins.

The Hero’s Band is the ring that comes with the digital edition. All it does is give a little boost to every stat (something like +2).

I just recently purchased the Digital Deluxe edition, my copy did not come with a Hero’s Band, wonder why?

Did you check your mail? That’s where it goes when you create the character (along with the golem banker).

Roundabout.1752:

Randulf.7614:

Yes to the banker and hero’s band. Each toon gets one.

No, players who earned the Hero’s Band in GW1 get them the rest of us don’t but it’s still worth it if you do a lot of Keyruns or like collecting skins.

The Hero’s Band is the ring that comes with the digital edition. All it does is give a little boost to every stat (something like +2).

Devata.6589:

Or the thief makes everybody invisible? And remember the Take Root? That also makes you invulnerable. Ranger can have pets that drop weapons including Elixir of Heroes what also makes you invulnerable. Again there are possible ways it’s just up to you imagination (or lack of that). But indeed not everybody might have something for it. That’s the whole point of focusing more on roles. You are depending on each other when you get in the situation where you need the skills from another player / role. That what makes team-play important.

Stealth doesn’t prevent damage, and that Ranger pet skill is a 1 in 3 chance of getting Elixer of Heroes, so you can’t rely on it.

You can have dependency on people doing their role without having flat-out reliance. You simply make that role integral to completing that encounter, but not to the individual’s survival.

Devata.6589:

“If you can be smart and build your character to be effective in a role” Effective in a role thats never really needed because everybody can take your plays always. I can’t even define that as a role anymore. No it’s no problem if you can’t do content if you are not able to provide in a few specific roles required for that content. Some roles might be available for 2 or even 3 classes of course.

And yes a role is also depending on the content. But it’s also based on your skills. See your own example. Immobilize an enemy. Then you need the ability to immobilize or a role based around that. But you also need an enemy that required to be immobilized. You need both.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the whole locking people out of content thing.

As for the ‘role never needed anymore since people steal your plays’, one, you’re wrong since the role is still needed to complete the encounter and two, you reduce the amount of people running a build for the same mechanic by having multiple mechanics in the fight

For example, imagine you have a three-boss fight. You’re fighting these bosses at the same time:

Boss A has a stacking buff that is permanently applied for every second they’re moving. That buff doubles in stacking rate if they have Swiftness, and is reduced to 2 seconds if they have Cripple. The buff is prevented with Immobilize.

Boss B has a stacking buff for every second they’re still. That buff doubles in rate if they become Immobilised, but only applies every 2 seconds if they’re moving. The buff is prevented when subject to CC that moves it.

Boss C has a stacking buff that stacks at a rate dependent on it’s distance from the other two bosses. This buff slows to a rate of 1 stack every 2 seconds if it’s more than, say, 900 units away from the others, and stops completely at 1,200 units. It stacks at a rate of 2 every second if it’s near one boss and 4 every second if it’s near both.

Here you have 4 roles inherent to that encounter:

• Keeping Boss A still
• Keeping Boss B moving
• Keeping Boss C away from the others
• Damage

Now, this fight can be approached by you in a number of ways:

• Groups can choose to share the roles out so damage doesn’t lag behind. It’s a quicker way but requires co-ordination and timing.
• Groups can choose to specialise, each building with one boss in mind. It’s a safer way but will take longer.

For you, option 2 would allow you to fulfill a role of, say, kiting Boss B around, with no-one taking that role from you.

Devata.6589:

I was talking about the armor not the full build. Mistake. But even then a build should only help to help you specialize in one of the roles as a class can likely have multiple roles or to tweak it a little to your liking. It should not make your role completely (so that without a build everybody is the same)

I’ll be disagreeing with you on this. I see absolutely no objective reason why ‘role’ should be limited by profession.

Devata.6589:

“if I only had one way of doing content with no room for experimentation.” Where did I say you only have room for 1 way of doing anything? I just gave examples how you can make attacks or dungeons that give value to a specific property of a role and that is what you need. That does not mean there are multiple ways to solve a problem.

If you can’t find more ways that has more to do with lack of your imagination.

For example the spreading our of damage over enemies. Roles that have many minions have an obvious advantage there. A ranger has only 1 pet so less likely however if you have multiple ranger it might still work. Or you use the Silvary ability Take Root that puts down multiple turrets that also count as an enemy. So there are still multiple options. But you do make roles more specific and build the content in a way that every role can make more use of it’s own advantages.

Your example with the Mesmer portal. That’s where I got that from. The only other professions with self-teleports are, as far as I know, Thief, Guardian, Elementalist and Necro (providing you’ve either put the worm out of the area or got enough time to). Unless you make the actual attack unavoidable / countered with Stability or escapable with Leaps, if you’re a Warrior, Engineer or Ranger in that situation, bad luck.

Devata.6589:

“You want to run the piece of content with 5 friends and no-one has a Mesmer or Ranger? Well, can’t run the content then. ” That however can indeed happen and no that’s no problem. That also means those roles have there real use in stead of how it is now. Just all do as much DPS as possible and so the class that is best in that is the best overall class or how it worked out in this game, the armor that provides that the best is the best overall armor.

Trying to make everything work for everybody is what was the cause for the way roles and content is designed and is what is the core of the problem being talked about here.

So it’s not a problem where you require specific classes otherwise you can’t do the content? Sorry, but I’ll have to disagree on that one. If you can be smart and build your character to be effective in a role, you should be able to. You shouldn’t be restricted by your class. The content should bring the player, not the class.

Also, since you keep mentioning roles, I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be roles outside of DPS. I’m saying that instead of tying the role to the profession, you tie the role to the content. The definition of ‘role’ is your purpose in the group. If you need to Immobilise an enemy at certain points, that shouldn’t be restricted to 2 or 3 classes.

Devata.6589:

“I’m just saying the role isn’t dependant on class, but on build, since the role is provided by the encounter, and not a pre-defined [class] is a [role]. ”

I say it’s both. The encounter decides what roles you need and the classes (and / or build) makes the role for the player. You then need to match the two (what the encounter requires and what roles are available) for the best outcome of the fight. That does not mean that 1 class can not have multiple roles. However I do feel classes have more to do with the roles then builds. Builds is playing a little with stats while the classes are about the skills and abilities and that’s what makes the role of a player. So as an example. There is a encounter that really requires a healer then you brind somebody with a healer class to fill his role in the encounter.

I disagree. Builds have a lot to do with what your character can bring to the fight, moreso than class. Class is more of how they can handle specific things. For example, Incoming Conditions in respect to helping team-mates, most of the ways are either removing, drawing or converting conditions:

Warrior – “Shake It Off!”, Warhorn remove conditions.
Guardian – Ray of Judgement, Cleansing Flame, Purging Flames, “Save Yourselves!”, Bow of Truth, Purifying Ribbon remove or draw conditions
Ranger – Healing Spring, Nature’s Renewal, Brown Bear remove conditions
Engineer – Healing Turret Cleansing Burst, Toss Elixir C + R, Fumigate, Drop Antidote removes of converts conditions
Thief – Signet of Agility removes conditions
Mesmer – Null Field, Mantra of Resolve, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Harmonius Mantrkittentered Conditions removes conditions.
Necromancer – Plague Signet, Well of Power, Grim Specter, Unholy Martyr removes or draws conditions.
Elementalist – Healing Rain, Cleansing wave (both skill and trait) removes conditions.

Any profession isn’t bound to a specialised role if they don’t wish to be, but can still provide utility in that event anyway. I personally love this freedom.

Devata.6589:

I mean put in a boss that damages all enemies in the room and he does huge damage but the damage does get spread over all enemies. Then a class with minions becomes required. There is also no content that requires portals or invisibility. Adding such mechanics and AI tactics would already help a lot.

If you give rangers more control over pets (stay) then you can have a 5 man dungeon with 6 levers you need to stand on requiring a ranger that puts his pet on the 6th lever.

While this is a cheap example. Putting in AI tactics and attacks that requires roles is more interesting. (like the damage spread out over enemies). Or an enemy that teleports everybody to one place and then traps everybody there and then drop a hammer on them killing everybody instantly. How to get out of that situation? Memsmer drops a portal before the attacks comes and when being teleportet by the boss people can teleport to safety. So there are for sure many content improvements that could help a lot. But then still I do find roles are not defined specific enough.

Sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. While you might feel it’s interesting, I’d find it quite boring if I only had one way of doing content with no room for experimentation. The only way this could possibly be a good idea is if the dungeon had adaptable mechanics based on group composition.

Having mechanics that require you to bring a specific profession and a specific skill? That just removes all depth. Why? Because the player can’t choose how to approach and tackle the content. It removes all player agency. You want to run the piece of content with 5 friends and no-one has a Mesmer or Ranger? Well, can’t run the content then.

However, what you’re saying – having enemies that require roles – is exactly what I’m saying. I’m just saying the role isn’t dependant on class, but on build, since the role is provided by the encounter, and not a pre-defined [class] is a [role].

Taking your levers example. As well as a Ranger pet being able to trigger it, Blast Finishers can also trigger it. Or maybe you passed some rocks that you could place on it.

Devata.6589:

The problem mainly is the lack of real defined roles.

I don’t even think this is much of an issue.

I think the main problem is that content doesn’t require people to do anything other than damage.

Look at a game with defined class roles a la the Trinity. If the content in that game didn’t require someone to constantly be healing, or for someone to draw aggro and soak damage, then it could have all the class roles in the world, people wouldn’t bother playing the roles that aren’t needed.

What content needs to do is replace the class roles by adding roles unique to that encounter. With an open system like GW2, the content needs to get people to think “What can I bring to this fight that will get us past it?”. Content designed as such adds much more depth than having defined, required roles.

Imagine the Lover’s basic mechanic of needing to keep them away from each other (forget the actual implementation).

One group might decide to take one heavy control + sustain to keep the one busy, another with control and damage to join 3 other DPS to burst the other down as quick as possible. Another group might split into 2 equal groups and tackle both of them at the same time, while another is dedicated to taking down adds.

Even a fight as basic as the Effigy in CoF can have roles, even if everyone is DPS. One person’s role is to wipe the crystals out, while the others attack the Effigy. Tweak the crystals slightly that add a stacking debuff (say, a DoT that can’t be cleansed. Increases in intensity), and then you have a fight where a small amount of co-ordination is needed (swapping from the role of damaging the boss to crystal-clearing duty).

I personally think it’s a terrible idea since, despite your intentions, it still pigeon-holes players into playing certain professions for certain gameplay choices. Want to play a condition Warrior, or a burst Guardian? Sure, but you’re gimping yourself in terms of effectiveness.

Not only that, but then you have to design content that requires roles x, y and z. Players figure the best way to do it, and you’ll get 3 professions excluded – same as we have now. Unless they bring in dungeons that adapt the mechanics based on group composition, it improves nothing.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the system we have now; you can have variations within each profession as to what they do. A Warrior with a Greatsword is different to a Warrior with a Hammer, for example – the former being about more damage and the latter being about more control.

Dun dun duuuuuun!

Could this have not gone in the other thread?

Anyway:

1. Where are you pulling these numbers from? Making up numbers really doesn’t make your argument more right.

2. We know why they haven’t released any new content; they were working on the China launch.

3. It seems you’ve misunderstood what will be happening in S2. The story elements will be the ones that you unlock as permanent content. The ope-world content is there to compliment the story. Once complete, it’ll unlock achievements to do, which they’ve described as challenging (of course, we’ll have no idea until it’s actually released). They’re moving away from the meta-achievements. This content is most likely to be solo-content, given how they’ve said it’s sort of like a continuation of the personal story.

4. In terms of new maps, I doubt we’ll be pushed into an existing map. Not only have the devs hinted at S2 branching to a new location, but someone has also datamined a new area.

They do something called data-mining.

On occasion there’ll be files of things in the .dat file of things that haven’t actually been implemented in the game, such as models and item descriptions.

Of course, you shouldn’t take these files at face-value.

NewTrain.7549:

Okay, let’s assume each metal gets progressively “better” as you put it. For weapons, that would mean a variety of factors including hardness, flexibility, ability to hold an edge, workability, etc. It’s commonly accepted that steel is a better metal for weapons than bronze. Steel is about 90% of the weight that bronze is. Now, let’s assume that that 10% holds up. Heck, let’s orichalcum the benefit of the doubt and say it’s half the weight of steel. I want you to look at the Pearl Greatsword from GW, the greatsword crafted from this metal. First off, it tapers in the reverse manner than any logical sword would, widening as it reaches the tip and putting the point of balance so far up the blade that it would be too slow to respond to any serious usage. Secondly, there is no tip, rather just a rounded edge making the weapon completely useless for thrusting. So now we have a sword that takes an incredibly long time to swing and can’t be used for thrusting. Furthermore, there’s no crossguard, which means that attempting to block another sword with this sword will direct the opponent’s blades right onto your fingers, probably severing them. Next, we have an uneven edge, which (even if the sword was good for cutting) is not optimal at all. After that, on the spine of the sword we see numerous jagged spikes pointed at the wielder. A horrific and dangerous design choice. Now let’s add into this that the blade is AS WIDE AS THE NORN’S TORSO. I’m a pretty thin guy, but my torso is still over a foot in the widest diameter. A sword with a 12" wide blade would be massively heavy. My longsword, which is 48" long 3" in blade width at its widest weights in at roughly 3.75 lbs. Here we have a sword as long as a Norn (7-8 feet?) with a roughly 24" wide blade. Even if orichalcum were half the weight of steel, this sword still weighs in over 20 lbs. Do you know how useless a 20 lbs. sword is? It would be of no benefit in battle, especially considering all the design flaws I pointed out unrelated to weight and length. And this is a single weapon.

I’d totally read a blog done by you.

At no point did I argue that some of these swords weren’t impractical in terms of design. My main argument is that you’re assuming the weight of metals that don’t exist.

Mithril is most often described in pretty much every fantasy game as being harder than tempered steel and much, much lighter. Orichalcum would have to be something pretty special in terms of properties (hardness and weight) for people to use it instead of mithril.

For all we know, Orichalcum could be as light as Aluminium foil but stronger than Mithril, which is why they make the swords so big; to actually give them the weight necessary to inflict damage when slashing.

NewTrain.7549:

If you want to discuss Man at Arms’s buster sword design, do you happen to recall what he made it of? I do. Aluminum. Why? Because steel would have been far to heavy for anyone to even lift had it been to scale. Even with the use of aluminum (a poor metal to use for weapons) it still weighed EIGHTY POUNDS. It was so heavy Tony Swatton actually tore his shoulder and threw out his back trying to swing it, and he’s a pretty large strong guy. That seems effective on the battlefield, a weapon so cumbersome it injures the user.

Tony Swatton wasn’t infused with MAKO energy giving him super-strength. Just saying.

NewTrain.7549:

I get that this is fantasy, but the best fantasy stories at least attempt some semblance of realism or at the VERY LEAST, internal consistency in their rules. GW2 does neither with it’s weapons. It would be nice if, for once, they catered to the people who actually know something about weapon design and appreciate the aesthetics of something that could have actually been used on the battlefield.

You do know that there are skins in the game that cater to those who want more realistic-looking weapons, right?

On topic:

I wouldn’t mind seeing Scythes on a Necro. I can’t really imagine them on any other profession though currently in the game.

skullmount.1758:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Belenwyn.8674:

Season 2 will be very dry and desert-like packed with condition-spewing mobs.

Or it could be a very humid place like the Amazon.

I’d place money on Maguuma being opened up over Crystal Desert, but I could be wrong.

well it is now called the Maguuma Wastes.
(And a big portion of the CD has become non-desert)

Yeah.

Couple that with that Mordremoth is normally associated with venomous stuff (as seen in the CoE), it’s a safe bet that’s where we’re heading.

Belenwyn.8674:

Season 2 will be very dry and desert-like packed with condition-spewing mobs.

Or it could be a very humid place like the Amazon.

I’d place money on Maguuma being opened up over Crystal Desert, but I could be wrong.

NewTrain.7549:

Hit spacebar. What happens? Someone jumps. Do they float off into the stratosphere? No. Therefore gravity has a similar effect in GW2 as it does in the real world. Tell me why physics applies to a player character’s weight but then somehow no longer applies in regards to weapon weight.

Secondly, I doubt even a Charr has the physical strength to wield some of these weapons effectively. I’d advise you to simply youtube Skalgrim’s commentary on Cloud’s buster sword from FFVII to get a better understanding of the physics behind weapon usage. On a backswing, the Charr’s arm would be ripped from its socket by the momentum (assuming it even managed a forward swing in the first place). Furthermore, we have the exact same metals in the game as we do in the real world. Platinum, gold, iron, copper, steel, etc. The argument that the metals have the same name but are atomically different holds no merit.

Finally, I get that you’re offended that you’re being lumped in with the anime crowd. Sorry. It wouldn’t happen if you didn’t share such similar outlooks.

We have no idea of weapon weight though, or what half of these higher level weapons are made of. While we have the same metals, look at the weapons that utilise them materials; they’re of pretty much the same design as real-world weapons.

At the same time, we also have metals that aren’t real – Darksteel, Mithril (although if we’re going to go by common lore on this, Mithril is an incredibly lightweight but metal), Orichalcum (although this is debatable), Mithrillium and Deldrimor Steel. Since these materials aren’t real, we have no idea of their properties – although we can assume that each metal gets progressively better.

Referring back to the Charr sword, that was never crafted by players, so we have no idea what it was made of or how it was made, thus we can’t accurately say how heavy it was. Also, don’t need to watch his video – Man At Arms and another guy recreated the thing to scale.

As for being lumped in with the anime crowd, I’m not offended. There are some anime and manga of that genre I enjoy (Rurouni Kenshin to name one). At the same time, there are anime that I find utterly ridiculous and too OTT and don’t watch or read at all (Bleach) – suspension of belief only goes so far. Kinda like in Wuxia films, but I enjoy those.

NewTrain.7549:

Well it’s pretty clear from your post that your understanding of real world weapons is elementary at best. The picture referenced has a sword that would weigh far too much to be swung by even the strongest of non-human creatures. Its length is acceptable, but its width and thickness are ridiculous as is the uneven cutting edge. Assuming that it’s steel (and who knows, it might be made of stone which just makes it even more stupidly ridiculous) it would probably necessitate over a ton of centrifugal force in order to combat inertia and swing it. And even if that were to happen, because of the garbage cutting edge, it would be more like a bludgeon than a sword. Also, what kind of weapon has a spiked edge facing TOWARDS the wielder? Absolutely stupid.

On European weapons, I’ll admit it is. However, you’re comparing the physics of the real world with the physics of a world where people can shoot fireballs and turn into the Avatar of Gods.

The weapon in question is a Charr weapon back when they were ‘beastial and savage’. For all we know, they were designed with the Charr in mind, never meant to be wielded by humans. We have no idea what it’s made of, so we can’t make any assumptions on weight. Metal in that universe may not have the same weight as over here.
Heck, it could have be enchanted to make it lighter – a common trope in the realms of fantasy.

NewTrain.7549:

The point is, weapons like the first one described cater to a group of people who don’t just, as you say, like the aesthetics. They cater to a group of people who are willing to accept that real world physics applies only selectively to characters and objects within the game. The same outlook you have to have in order to enjoy anime. If your fantasy universe has rules, they should be uniform and not buffet-style.

Identify the rules of Tyria then. Without first doing that, you can’t really say if the game is diverging from said rules.

And again, it’s like you don’t understand that just because person A can suspend their belief about real world physics not applying to the in-game world, doesn’t mean person A also likes anime.

NewTrain.7549:

So you’re saying that some people like fantastical over-sized (or downright malformed) weapons that would never be of practical use in real life? Okay, I agree. Now, what other entertainment genre is just chock full of such weapons? Hmm, let me think. Oh yeah…anime.

PS: Was going to insert a picture, but the first image the popped up when I typed “ridiculous anime sword” into Google image search was a screenshot from GW2. I think that speaks for itself.

Just because far-out-there weapons appeal to someone, doesn’t mean that person likes anime though. That’s not to say that someone might not like both, but to say including these sorts of weapons is catering to people who like anime – specifically them, you seem to think judging from you’re constant comparisons to anime – is nonsense. The world isn’t black and white like that.

Maybe them introducing scythes much like a farmer scythe is catering to the people who, you know, enjoyed the aesthetics of that weapon when they played as a Dervish.

Or maybe I’m just crazy for thinking that and it must be aimed at people who watch anime.

Also, that image was from GW1, and it only showed up in the search because it was linked with a post that someone was of the opinion that it was ‘anime-like’ in size. Personally, I disagree. Judging from it and comparing it to the character model, I’d say it’s roughly the same size as a hand-and-half sword.

Wanderer.3248:

If you argue that weapons don’t have to be realistic because it’s fantasy, and coolness outweighs realism, then pretty soon you end up with this .

Or you end up with something like Sting from LotR; despite how cool the functionality of it is, I’m pretty sure it isn’t all that realistic for a sword to glow when orcs and trolls are near.

NewTrain.7549:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Welcome to pretty much every fantasy game ever. Every single one features unrealistic weapons in some way, shape or form. I guess that means that all of these fantasy games cater to ‘anime kiddies’.

You said it.

Na, I was using your line of thought, so to speak.

I don’t really agree that including weapons that aren’t historically accurate = catering to ‘anime kiddies’.

After all, players could be drawn to these weapons because, I don’t know, they’re ‘fantastical’? Maybe the aesthetics of it?

Radakill.3469:

Heres how. In most places of business, employees are tasked to do several things. Not just one thing, several things. And when it gets REALLY busy, employers often times cannot keep up with the demand for a larger staff… SO, what happens is, the extra workload gets distributed around.

By having more people around to do the extra work, this has the effect of decreasing workload for EVERYONE.

Now, I dont know how ArenaNets place of business operates, but its a fair guess that developers and programmers have more to do then just sit around and punch in code.

There are outside sources of information, both in source and outsource. Emails, suggestions, feedback, all this stuff is coming across their desk, for example. Do they have paid employees to analyze, sort, edit and compile all of this? I dunno, maybe, maybe they do it themselves.

There are always little things that even important people do that could cut down on workload if someone was to do it for them, and help them save time for doing the important things.

I’m aware of how businesses work.

If I remember correctly, they talked about how they make decisions before (although I wouldn’t quote me on it since I don’t have proof).

Something about how the community team (as well as the devs when they can spare the time) compiled things from the forum, and then produced it into documentation for the leads in the different areas (content development, economy ect) when they had their meetings as to what’s happening, progress on certain things ect. They’d then plan from there what they’d be doing, and relay to their teams.

Now, while I’m sure this is how it works, as I said it’s not gospel. Hence why I personally think the only things we can

Aside from this, we’ve got all of the issues which come with volunteer staff: legal issues, trusting complete strangers with access to documentation belonging to the company ect.

Hence why I said the only things we could really do are report bugs and compile suggestions on the forum, although this could be extended to feedback as well.

As for things such as helping by answering questions in-game should be a no-brainer, not as a thing to help the company, but as something to build a good community.

NewTrain.7549:

It all depends on who ANet wants to market this game to; anime kids who love completely unrealistic weapons, or people who can appreciate why most medieval weapons didn’t weigh more than 5 lbs.

Welcome to pretty much every fantasy game ever. Every single one features unrealistic weapons in some way, shape or form. I guess that means that all of these fantasy games cater to ‘anime kiddies’.

Radakill.3469:

TheDaiBish.9735:

There’s not much we can really do short of reporting bugs, and maybe collating links to suggestions in a single thread every now and then.

Well thats…. great! Thanks….. uh.. right, Im glad thats official now.

No need for the snark. Where did I say it was official?

Of course, unless you got some other suggestions as to what we can do to help, off-site, without access to any documentation.

Radakill.3469:

TheDaiBish.9735:

For obvious reasons, they aren’t going to be allowing volunteers access to the games code, so that cuts your suggestion of helping to fix bugs.

I never suggested this.

Another poster MIGHT have been implying that they implement a development tool that allows for in game player design, similar to what games such as STO does for example.

No one has suggested players have access to or rights to altering code to fix bugs.

Well, you mentioned, and I quote: “It could reduce workload that in turn, could speed up the process of needed in game content/fixes etc…”

How can anyone do that without accessing the game’s code?

There’s not much we can really do short of reporting bugs, and maybe collating links to suggestions in a single thread every now and then.

For obvious reasons, they aren’t going to be allowing volunteers access to the games code, so that cuts your suggestion of helping to fix bugs.

As much as I’d like to see something like it, I can’t really see them implementing a player-content creation tool; not only would it be a lot of work (not just creating the framework and everything – since the game wasn’t built with this function in mind – but also the assets, player tools, AI ect), but they also got to consider whether it’s worth investing the resources into creating it. I’d say it’s a net loss if they devote, say half a year, to implementing it and only 100-odd people use it. While that seems a lot, how many of them 100 do you think would be capable of creating content of a decent quality?

@Nerelith

I got to ask; did you do any research on the game at all before buying it? Because it sounds like you didn’t and sort of assumed they were just remaking GW with better graphics, jumping and a more open world.

Not saying what Anet did was right or wrong (I still enjoy both GW and GW2) but I can understand why they did certain things. I even like the idea behind certain things, such as weapon skills being locked. It makes weapons more than a stat stick.

All in all for the most part, I’m glad they decided to make GW2 different from GW. It provides me with two different gameplay experiences. But that’s just me.

Nerelith.7360:

That doesn’t give the same effect. The Ritualist had skill that enhanced their spirits. The had skills that would heal for more… based on how many spirits they had out. Thay had spells that would sacrifice all their spirits for a big damage spike… the Ritualist could do a hell of a Lot more with their spirits… without having " traits". Fresh out of the box.

Sorry, but while I can see that they may have borrowed from Ritualist to make the engineer, they made the engineer a sub-par ritualist.

You’ve seemed to got that mixed up. In your example, the Spirits enhance your spells, not the other way around – and yes, I am aware that there were skills that enhanced Spirits (Armour of Unfeeling, for example).

Also, one of the attributes of the Ritualist (Spawning Power, I think), passively enhanced the creatures you spawned. Much like how Traits passively enhance Turrets.

At the end of the day, you won’t get an exact same clone as a profession from GW1 because of different gameplay systems.

For example, chances are they would have taken the skill Destruction and turned it into a Trait – something like “When a Spirit dies, it deals damage to nearby foes”, or Explosive Growth would have been converted to a Trait as well; “Deal damage when you summon a Spirit”.

For the sake of it, take the Engineer back to GW1:

• The Trait Accelerant-Packed Turrets would become a skill that would deal damage and cause knockdown to nearby foes, sacrificing all turrets.
• The Trait Metal Plating would become a skill (similar to Armour of Unfeeling, funnily enough).

In your eyes, simply because of the difference in systems, any profession put into GW2 will be a sub-par version of the GW1 counterpart.

Nerelith.7360:

Fact is, while I wait for Gw2 devs to do the right thing…

What’s that, exactly?

Nerelith.7360:

You just made my point. But they also had attacks where they would recoup health, by a certain amount per mob hit. ets. So when you think about it…Nope, Nothing Like a Guardian in feel…or playstyle. Even if they buff… that’s all they do… that is similar… Buff. may as well say the Guardian is Like the World of warcraft Brewmaster… because they also self buff.

I didn’t say Guardian played like a Dervish. I said the only similarity was the whole ‘sacrificing buff’ thing – Dervish did it to enhance themselves, Guardian does it for allies.

And yes, while Dervishes have attacks like that, they’re are more known for the mechanic of Flash Enchantments and stripping them to boost attacks.

Nerelith.7360:

Except that the Ritualist enhances their spirits. The Engineer doesn’t. They may have things in common…but then again, may as well ay that the Engineer is Like the World of warcraft Shaman. But deep down…are they?

The Engineer can enhance their turrets through Traits though.

1. Trait points are earned by levelling. You get 1 point every 6 levels starting from level 30, and then 2 points every six levels from level 66. In total, you’ll have 14 trait points – they’ve simply condensed the points down. Adept level unlocks at level 30, Master level at 60 and Grandmaster at 80.

2. You earn new traits by doing certain tasks or purchasing books with skill points and gold.