Guild Wars 2

Time and Money. The biggest reason not to do that.

To do the port over they’d have to hire people to do the port. Not just the coding, but making the interface more suitable for mobile technology, testing etc. Can you honestly say that they’d make the money back (and more) if they did a port over to mobile?

ham.8209:

TheDaiBish.9735:

ham.8209:

Just look how the gem store is . If that ain’t pay to play I will buy a Daniel Webster cigar and give everyone a free good cigar.

I guess you owe everyone a cigar then. You can hold mine though since I don’t smoke.

Pay to Play – or subscription – is when you need to, you know, continuously pay to be able play the game.

In no way do you need to buy something from the store every month to be able to play the game.

oh really then what about black lion salvage kit,s and mystic stones to make the 250 salvage kit,s then humm

Because if you don’t have them, you can’t play the game at all?

No, them items are convenience items. They’re not items that you are required to have in order to play the game.

The thing is, Shaman could be added as an Elite specialisation for an existing profession.

For example, the Necromancer could be given access to the Spirit utility type, or Master Togo could be made a Legend for the Revenant.

ham.8209:

Just look how the gem store is . If that ain’t pay to play I will buy a Daniel Webster cigar and give everyone a free good cigar.

I guess you owe everyone a cigar then. You can hold mine though since I don’t smoke.

Pay to Play – or subscription – is when you need to, you know, continuously pay to be able play the game.

In no way do you need to buy something from the store every month to be able to play the game.

Na, it’s just in terms of announcements.

Join Mike O’Brien and Colin Johanson as they reveal all of the details behind the challenging group content you’ll encounter in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. This is in addition to other announcements not just for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns but for the core Guild Wars 2 game as well.

As in, we’ll be revealing HoT’s challenging group content and a bunch of other stuff to do with HoT and the core game.

Donari.5237:

This line intrigues me:

“There they’ll be making a number of big announcements that will define the future of Guild Wars 2 and—as many of you have been waiting for—reveal a major feature coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™.”

So it’s more than just the challenging group content.

Ya:

Join Mike O’Brien and Colin Johanson as they reveal all of the details behind the challenging group content you’ll encounter in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. This is in addition to other announcements not just for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns but for the core Guild Wars 2 game as well.

Zalladi.4652:

tl;dr: You will need to earn mastery points which can be from the new expansion maps, and then you will need to complete events in Tyria in order to level up the Precursor Crafting Mastery.

From my understanding, you also get Mastery Points from core content completion as well:

Things like completing a chapter in your personal story, completing certain achievements, reaching hard-to-find locations, overcoming challenging encounters, excelling at adventures found within the Heart of Maguuma, or earning 100% completion for a map will award Mastery points.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/reimagining-progression-the-mastery-system/

Although it is entirely possible it’s referring to the new story and and maps.

1. Mesmer actually gets 9 new skills: 1 class mechanic skill, 2 weapon, 1 heal, 4 utility, 1 Elite. In EotN, there were 10 Mesmer-only skills.
2. Currently in the beta, only 25% of the first map is being shown. We know that we’re not getting much in the way of maps, but at the same time it’s not as little as you say it is.

Specialisation: Berserker

Weapon: Torch

Utilities: Meditations

• The theory behind this is being a Berserker, they go into trance-like states fueled by their anger.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they revealed and discussed the challenging content at Gamescon in Germany, kind of like how they discussed Guild Halls at PAX (or was it E3?).

Monk Tank.5897:

Why does it not come in men’s colors and why is there no Sinister stats?

Do Legendaries not have Sinister stats in their stat swap?

Also, what are “men’s colours”?

Ctrl+Shift+H to toggle on and off

Orpheal.8263:

@ daibish:

Sure, and thats exactly why all Stealth Skills count in GW2 as “Deceptions”…

Hide in Shadows – Stealth Skill, Deception, cause you deceive your foe through vanishing right in front of their sight and appearign somewhere else again
Shadow Refuce > Deception (Stealth)
Blinding Powder > Deception (Stealth)
Shadowstep (Deception) (Shadow Step)
Smoke Screen (Deception) (Combo Stealth)

Your argument is not really fully fitting.

Infiltration is the mastering of deception, if you can’t master the Art of Deception, you’ll be the most poorest Infiltrator ever, because only when you know how to deceive enemies, you can infiltrate places, get in, and get out unseen and get your job done, without that anyone even noticed, that you were there.

Sure, a Swindler frauds, thats what you can understand out of it, when you look at its meanign from just a real world view point. But looking at it from a fantasy world view point, you could see into a Swindler also practically an Infiltrator, one, who masters Deception to the point, that he/she easily can not only just fraud enemies and to believe into something as being real, what is in fact false, but also as someone, who uses deceptions to make enemies do things, that they usually wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.

A Swindler basically deceives with his deceptions for others their perception for reality, so that they can infiltrate alot easier places, to get important and very valuable infos from enemies, which in return they can use to fraud enemies..

In the end its all just name gambling and trying to see the things more outside of the box, than just looking only onto the plain surface of the concept and taking a Swindler for what it is only in reality, when it could be just simply more in this fantasy game.

There’s looking outside the box and then there’s completely throwing the original concept and meanings of the words out of the window.

Swindling – Misdirection through interaction with the person, which means their attention is going to be on you. You want their attention on you, for the most part, so it’s not on what you’re trying to do.
Infiltration – Misdirection through diverting that person’s attention away from you to enter sneakily, either through distraction or being unassuming.

The thing they have in common is that you’re deceiving them.

However, when you look more into the nuances on what makes them different (drawing attention to you vs away from you), it allows you to create two different play-styles for that class:

Swindling – More of a ‘duelist’ – for lack of a better word – game-play through feints and bluffs to confuse your enemy.
Infiltrator – More of a sneaky game-play using stealth and your environment to get to the back line.

Saying they’re essentially the same is denying the opportunity to analyse what these words mean and developing play-styles around the image these words evoke, and this is why I say the original concept fits way better thematically.

Dracocyborg.5049:

so you’re telling me to accept they get a free game for which i paid 60 euros. yeah… really makes sense. that’s a lot of money, guys

Welcome to practically every game ever, where the value at launch is greater than the value a few years down the line.

Orpheal.8263:

Wat.

What has infiltration in the way you describe got to do with swindling?

With swindling, it’s based on interaction with your target and using misdirection and deception in order to cheat something out of them. In other words, fraud.

Basing the Swindler around stealth and shadow-step game play just doesn’t make sense, whereas the original concept based around Deceive, Manipulations and Confusion fits in well with the swindler theme.

As for the concept being based too much around condition game-play I feel at a glance there’s enough there to make it workable to pure non-condition builds:

• Weapon Skills – Dance of Blades, Swift Riposte, Vile Shot.
• Buff – Persuasion (Crit Chance and Damage Reduction).
• Manipulations – Misleading Images, Swindler’s Bluff, Shameless Onslaught.
• 1 Trait Build – Forceful Bluff, Deceiver’s Frustration, Last Resource / Master of Deception.

Thornwolf.9721:

Honestly this game is probably gonna be all open world events with world bosses, the bane of all things i swear.

Very unlikely:

• They hired a Raid Designer and an AI designer a while back.
• Colin has specifically said that while it’s not the challenging group content they’ve mentioned, they want to make the open-world more challenging and that they’ll discuss the challenging group content when they’re ready to.
• They’re introducing a Fractal Mastery track.

It’s not concrete evidence, but it does hint at something other than purely OW content.

Oneabove.4167:

A veteran who really loves GW and played probably through the whole series has to take out of his pocket another at least 45 eur for expansion pack, a player that has been loyal to you since a long long time and which seems now you don’t give a kitten about. Yet the new players that pay 45 eur will have access to content valued at 90 eur.

Welcome to every game that has paid expansions / DLC ever.

Of course new players will get a better deal. As time goes by, the value of the game depreciates. Anet has probably looked to see how many people are buying the game and have deemed that they’ll get more players buying if they include it free with the expac.

Oneabove.4167:

1. Showing up his own name tag on the HUD (really ANet? Sorry but I’m a programmer and I know for sure that this is not a big deal.)

Type out exactly how Anet have their code. Only if you know how they’ve done it can you say it’s easy.

Oneabove.4167:

3. More dungeon content.

Dungeons aren’t all that ‘basic’ when you consider what goes into developing them.

Oneabove.4167:

4. A bit of a revamp of the drops since it takes literally ages to build a legendary.

We will be having a revamp of the drop system:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-legendary-journey/ (look under Map Bonuses).

Oneabove.4167:

Why do we have this expansion and this outrageous marketing strategy and no listening to what players do actually want?

1. Different players want different things, and if you think it’s feasible that they cater to every player, I got some bad news for you.
2. Funny thing that; players asked for an expansion.

Daegony.3604:

Posted this as a submission to WP’s contest but figured I could post it here aswell.
A thief who… deceives: The Swindler (That’s a literal translation from a portuguese word. Hope it fits =P)

I don’t play Thief so I’m not sure what this would add to it – though I’m wondering what will happen to Steal traits – but you nailed the presentation.

Thornwolf.9721:

1. Immunity to diseases and poisons.
2 .Give them a parry mechanic making them able to dodge ((while not a vampire))
3. Give them increased battle sense’s
4. A damage reduction to physical combat?
5. A buff depending on the class you choose.((Without vamprisim.))

1. So basically make an entire race immune to Poison and Thief Venoms?
2. How would this work? Would it substitute dodge rolls or would it be a passive thing?
3. What does this mean?
4. Damage isn’t divided into Physical and Magical, so how would this work?.
5. If Humans had a buff regardless of the profession they choose, why would anyone pick any other race?

Thornwolf.9721:

Then it was a waste of time and the racial elites should be botched entirely since most of them are completely useless.

That’s the point. It’s a flavour thing rather than a choice that cripples you if you choose a certain profession.

Thornwolf.9721:

Werewolves should be more notable, if ESO can do it then guild wars 2 can do it better.

Why should they? Because they would genuinely add something to the game or because you played another game and want them?

After all, what works for one game doesn’t necessarily work for another.

Traits

Minor

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Specialisation: Hexer
Profession: Necromancer
Weapon: Longbow
Utilities: Spirit Weapons
Mechanic Change: Hexer’s Shroud

Background

Necromancers that follow the path of the Hexer gain greater mastery over debilitating their foes, whether it be them utilising unique effects while in their Hexer’s Shroud, desecrating the battlefield from afar or allowing their allies to do so through ordering weapons created from life force to imbue their effects into the Hexer’s allies attacks.

Hexer’s Shroud

Hexer’s Shroud replaces the abilities while in Shroud Form:

Longbow

Utility

The whole point of Elite Specs is to change how the class plays. Following on your argument, even if they added Overload as baseline, they’re still pigeonholing you in that you need to pick Tempest for the weapon and utilities.

Not to mention they’d have to go and add traits to the baseline specialisations to account for the the Overload being baseline.

Necro and Guardian have their class abilities changes, Mesmer gets an additional class ability and Ele get additional functionality to their Attunements.

Where’s the conundrum? o.O

genotec.4308:

Last time I checked, solo/small guilds were allowed as well as solo gameplay. If that was not the case then guilds would need a certain amount to form or keep active. I have no issues with the guild’s having group content. Gating housing is not fair for everyone. Yes, there are more people that have solo/small guilds than you think. But we think and play differently than what others think. All MMOs and housing should have groups and nothing solo. Sounds good to me.

At no point did I say that there shouldn’t be anything for solo players or that solo players are excluded. i was making a point that you can’t cater to every player’s preferences in every bit of content.

These are Guild Halls, not Player Housing. The content they provide – which would be content for groups, since that’s what a Guild is – shouldn’t be balanced around solo players since a person on their own isn’t a guild in the literal sense.

genotec.4308:

That is my point, why does it have to be a group event in the first place? It is only a “housing” feature that if easily offered in most MMOs.

Except it’s not just a housing feature. It contain features aimed at groups of people (dueling arena, Guild Missions, WvW structures etc) as well.

genotec.4308:

It is like penalizing and discriminating certain players for a feature they fairly paid for.

In that case then they shouldn’t add any group content, because that’s penalizing players who want to play alone and who have fairly paid for it.

Traits

Minor

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Profession: Necromancer
Weapon: Longbow
Utilities: Spirit Weapons
Mechanic Change: Hexer’s Shroud

Background

Necromancers that follow the path of the Hexer gain greater mastery over debilitating their foes, whether it be them utilising unique effects while in their Hexer’s Shroud, desecrating the battlefield from afar or allowing their allies to do so through ordering weapons created from life force to imbue their effects into the Hexer’s allies attacks.

Hexer’s Shroud

Hexer’s Shroud replaces the abilities while in Shroud Form:

Longbow

Utility

I think it’ll depend on what traits and skills will be on offer with the Tempest line. Even if the overcharging thing is less useful, other aspects of the spec may enhance builds.

have you tried finding a guild?

So the lack of content is the reason for the lack of Trinity?

No, the reason for the lack of traditional Trinity is two-fold:

• The classes weren’t designed with the Trinity in mind (no dedicated, sustainable threat skills, no dedicated healing).
• The content wasn’t designed with the Trinity in mind.

As for some of the other issues:

• Farming is prevalent in dungeons in other games too. You farm for tokens, rare drops, xp etc.
• Selling dungeon runs happens in other games too (ever heard of ‘boosting’?).

Sword auto-attack also has a pierce on the second skill, similar to Ele’s Vapour Blade on dagger.

EDIT: Too slow.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The first and third hit of the auto attack chain hit 3 targets each, and the second part of the chain is a piercing projectile.

Can the projectile trigger finishers? Or is it more of a projectile in the Vapour Blade sense?

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Has anyone noticed that all other legends are defined by their race (e.g. Legendary Dwarf Stance) but Shiro is defined by his profession (Legendary Assassin Stance)?

Where is it called Legendary Assassin Stance?

Personally, i think Legendary Betrayer Stance sounds better.

Evans.6347:

aspirine.6852:

I miss battle scars and Impossible odds

Not to mention meditation of the reaper.
What is this jade dagger shenanigans anyway? Meditation of the reaper already was an offensive heal skill.

From what it says I’d say it’s a watered down version of Battle Scars, in which while it’s active your attacks gain life-steal, except it’s not dependent on incoming damage.

I’m wagering a guess that his heal skill is an upkeep skill and Jade Wind is the Elite.

Xillllix.3485:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Dinks.2478:

They could have re-released previous content and nobody would have minded. Like they could do a Wintersday and July thing, which would both give people something to do and give people who missed it a chance at the star of gratitude. They could also do a bunch of other stuff like SAB, Halloween, take the daily activities off their rotation so we can at least do the ones we enjoy every day, re-release dragon ball, lots of filler content to pick from. But instead we’ve gone over half a year without a single piece of content. Not encouraging for newer players coming in for the expansion when they notice there is no content coming out at all.

With regards to SAB, I’m pretty sure they said they couldn’t do it because of changes to the game engine.

That’s a pretty bad excuse. Why would you develop content that breaks other content?

It wasn’t content that broke other content though.

It was adjustments to the physics engine. Something to do with the movements all needing changing.

http://dulfy.net/2015/07/01/gw2-colin-explains-why-sab-is-not-returning-soon/

I don’t know what’s going on in the background, so whether or not it’s a bad excuse – or even an excuse at all; could be a legit reason for all we know – I haven’t the slightest.

Dinks.2478:

They could have re-released previous content and nobody would have minded. Like they could do a Wintersday and July thing, which would both give people something to do and give people who missed it a chance at the star of gratitude. They could also do a bunch of other stuff like SAB, Halloween, take the daily activities off their rotation so we can at least do the ones we enjoy every day, re-release dragon ball, lots of filler content to pick from. But instead we’ve gone over half a year without a single piece of content. Not encouraging for newer players coming in for the expansion when they notice there is no content coming out at all.

With regards to SAB, I’m pretty sure they said they couldn’t do it because of changes to the game engine.

Taiyoroku.1028:

That guy again… lol one of my favorite enemies of GW, hes kind of a undead – spirit MTFKR (read that with samuel jackson voice), so HoT is going to be pre Cantha?

Unlikely.

I mean if that’s the case, HoT is also pre-Elona because of Mallyx, or pre-Shiverpeaks – though this is more of a possibility because of Jormag – because of Jalis.

Goo.7926:

but seriously how hard you think create Mawdrey path was for A.net? We get specifics items at a specifics places that will be melt with water from another specific hellish fountain place……all thoses places and events already existed before Mawdrey so….I’m guessing that precursor path, recipes and all will be the same.. And I don’t think it’s hard for them to create it because all the mechanics, characters and items are already in the game :’(

Let’s say for arguments sake that it took 3 days in total to design, create all of the assets for and test Mawdrey and that it takes the same for the legendary.

That means that it’ll take a maximum of 57 days, or just under 2 months, (assuming that there’s one team of various disciplines working on Legendary weapons) to create the legendary weapons alone, not counting the precursor component. This is also assuming that every piece of the HoT content that is required for creating the legendary weapons is finished.

Now, if you were making a game, would you spend them 2 months designing one set of weapons that won’t be accessible straight away, or would you use them employees in areas of the game that will be accessible to everyone in a shorter time-frame after launch – such as the current precursors and legendaries, map assets etc – than the new legendary weapons, and then finish the legendary weapons?

Agent Noun.7350:

I know there won’t be new dungeons when Heart of Thorns releases…

Where have they said this?

I keep seeing people say this, but the only thing they provide is an interview stating that they won’t be making any big changes to the current dungeons.

On topic though:

With the Fractal masteries, I’d be surprised if they didn’t add new Fractals.

As well as this, while the ‘challenging group content’ hasn’t been revealed, I’d say there’s a pretty high chance that it’ll be instanced content of some sort given Colin’s comments here.

What use would there be for creating clones of an enemy?

Goo.7926:

It’s too much for the actual content for sure! HoT is just scraps of nothing..

For example: Only 6 new legendaries for HoT release (and others during ‘’next releases’‘)!
-Cause it’s sooooo hard to create legendaries you know !
-Oh sure Mister-16-new-black-lion-weapons-a-month-Dev!

Frowny face

What content does the expansion contain, specifically?

As for the Legendaries:

• Legendaries aren’t simply skins and stat changes anymore. From the looks of things they’re trying to put more into the lore and context of them. That requires more than just designing the skin.

• I’d say it’s pretty unlikely that Legendaries are going to be the only new skins in the game – both in terms of armour and weapons. I’d also wager that many of these new skins would be more easily accessible than the Legendary weapons – the new legendary precursor skins, for one – in which case it makes more sense to design and create them skins before the Legendary ones.

This is only really an issue if they don’t roll them out within a reasonable time-frame after launch, since not only do players need to fully complete the mastery reward track to unlock the new precursor crafting, but players also have to get said precursors.

You’ll also have some idea at what the Legendary will look like as well since the precursor skin will be a toned down version of the Legendary.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Sounds like Anet is giving in to power creep. Players who buy HoT will be given an extra weapon set for each profession and 1 extra specialization to choose from…. That seems like a barrier there for players who do not get HoT.

In which case, Anet has ALWAYS given into power creep.

After all, in GW, without buying every campaign and EoTN you couldn’t access the new professions or every skill for a profession.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Yes I can afford spending $50. No HoT is not worth $50, because I know a little something about value.

Value is in the eye of the beholder.

Personally, if I just get 150 hours of entertainment out of HoT (which isn’t a push since I’ve gotten around 700 hours so far in the core game and still haven’t experienced everything) I’d have spent a grand total of 25p an hour which, in terms of entertainment, I consider pretty good value.

Looks like we’ll be learning about Shiro this week.

Edhedal.7192:

Yargesh.4965:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-Price-Feedback-Base-game-included-merged

No. This isn’t a question about price. It’s a much more encompassing topic. That is just part of the question. You did a wrong.

It’s two questions, so with regards to one of the questions Yargesh is right.

No-one can say why that price, though I’d wager that it has to do a lot with numbers, expenditure, forecasting and a bunch of stuff I don’t really understand.

As for the three years, Anet initially said that they possibly weren’t going to do expansions but enable things through free updates. Chances are they saw it wasn’t working as well as they needed it to (in terms of engagement and revenue), couple that with an undetermined amount of players asking for an expansion and there you go.

Derenek.8931:

The word WEEKEND isn’t capitalized n their site. Apologists on the forums clarifying poorly worded or misleading statements on their main site are not the same as a company being clear about their policy to paying customers.

Their stress test announcement came after I paid them money. Their main site needs to be changed to very clearly tell people that many events will only be open to a select group of customers.

Firstly, how is "Pre-Purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns before launch day and receive:
Access to All Beta Weekend Events [and] Exclusive Title* poorly worded and misleading?

Secondly, they gave details on the format of beta’s back on May 8th here where they clearly stated they would be choosing who would be participating, just over a month before pre-purchase was opened.

It says access to all beta weekend events, like the one starting tomorrow.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Wasn’t this where they revealed last year (or was it the year before) that there would be no more new dungeon content?

Don’t you mean where they said they wouldn’t be doing massive changes to the current dungeons?

The Grue.7912:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Noon pacific time both start and end.

There’s no NDA on any of the events so you can record, stream, screenshot etc.

Sweet!

Just to be sure though, where’d you see the lack of NDA info?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-heart-of-thorns-closed-beta-tests/

The Grue.7912:

I know I’ll be there, but my only real questions are;

- What time does it start this weekend?

- Are we allowed to record? Because I’d love to record only if we are allowed to

Noon pacific time both start and end.

There’s no NDA on any of the events so you can record, stream, screenshot etc.

Sid.8512:

2. When did they change that in order to play WvW you have to level 31??. I have not gone to WvW with a low level character recently so I never noticed that. Why did they change this? It is big turn off to new players who are coming to game because they were interested in this feature only.

They haven’t locked it, per se. You just can’t access it from the icons up the top until that level.

You can still get in through the portals.

latinkuro.7304:

You make good points, let me explain my reasoning as to why these are needed.

• Raid shards: reviving someone over and over is not skillful play, in the current system even if someone is fully dead they can be revived by burst revival (many players at the same time) in a raid environment of say 150 players this is easily accomplished regardless or mechanics. raid shards would put an unbreakable barrier and would stress keeping yourself alive, promoting more skillful play and knowing the encounters better. The decision to revive someone would be an intense one, do I revive this mediocre player or do I save my last shard for someone that truly deserves it ?

This is what I’m talking about well-designed encounters negating the need for artificially gating reviving.

For example, let’s say that the raid is a 25 person raid. Each encounter should have enough going on simultaneously to keep all 25 players busy. This is a flaw with open-world events; the actual mechanics don’t scale enough to keep everyone on their toes.

If someone goes down, it’s then up to members of the group to temporarily take up the slack to revive the downed person. Because of the players having to take up that slack, you can’t bomb-res.

If that person keeps going down, they’ll eventually end up defeated in which it’ll take longer to revive them, meaning more pressure on the group if they choose to revive said person.

Heck, not artificially limiting revival like you’re suggestion could open more build options focused around reviving – revive traits, skills, Runes of Mercy etc – at least until groups get a hold of the raid.

latinkuro.7304:

• Raid attunement: This is to prevent what happens already in fractals where some of the mechanics at certain places are negated by simply swapping to the class that is better equipped to deal with whatever mechanic is in place, than swapping back to whatever you were playing. To me this is something that should be thought of before entering "hey we gonna need X class at X point to deal with X mechanic we better bring some of them along, instead of the usual " crap, X class would get us through here in seconds, ok let me swap to it brb"

The problem with this is you’re then bound by design to only design encounters suitable for the same group composition throughout – which isn’t necessarily bad, but it does limit what you can do if you can only play around with a certain number of mechanics.

You can’t suddenly change the required group comp but not allow players to change their profession. That’s like arming you with a cross-head screwdriver and telling you to take apart a laptop that’s got both cross-head and flat-head screws, but you’re not allowed to swap tools.

Not only that, but that sort of restriction pretty much disincentives players to work stuff out for themselves.