Guild Wars 2

florence.1674:

Edit: just saw the Ranger CDI thread get shutdown. Bad form.

It didn’t get shut down.

“Given that, I’m going to lock the thread for now so that the team and I can catch up and discuss/summarize the feedback we’ve gotten”

It got exactly what some posters said it should get – a chance to get read and digested before it got more out of control.

Iason Evan.3806:

No offense against you. I have seen it implemented in several games and it is an inferior method. I am not saying that this thread is working, but the other CDI’s will yield results.

No, I’m not the one advocating player councils or whatever. I’m the one going “please don’t let people who play at a higher level than most casual folk be the ones to tell the casual folk how they have to play the class”.

Because despite the amount of time I invest in this game . . . which is actually more some infrequent serious bursts of time . . . I am a casual player in that I don’t go deconstructing the damage curve or measuring other classes’ efficiency. All I really know is how the ranger has worked thus far and what I don’t really like about how to play one, and what I do like about the class.

And a lot of options want to transform rangers into something I wouldn’t have fun playing anymore. Like a “Warrior-lite”. If I wanted a warrior, I’d be playing my warrior more.

kokiman.2364:

Why not add a small aoe explosion to the auto attack?
Also: I really like your Rapid Fire suggestion.

Because that is something I don’t think the engine can do, though it does remind me of a Preparation from GW1 . . . one which was really annoying to use due to enemy behavior forcing them to scatter on AOE damage.

Xukavi.4320:

I honestly haven’t posted here yet but I wanted to point some things out:

1- What you’re asking for is basically exactly how the LB works right now but with increased damage unless I’m understanding something wrong.

Yup, because I like how the longbow actually works. I think it needs tweaks but not a complete change.

2- All RF really needs is to have a shorter channel time so that it actually does more damage. I’d honestly rather have it do more damage with the same channel time as I see the Longbow as a long range pressuring and control weapon and not the long range snipe the kitten out of you weapon (though I wish it was).

The Ranger has the longest range when traited for it, so it really kind of should be the “snipe the crap out of you” weapon. It’s what Keiran did with it too when we had a “taste” of it back in Guild Wars Beyond.

3- I’d say increase the stealth duration a bit and make it on cast and not on hit.

Eh, that feels like ‘toh-mato, tah-mahto’ in getting to the same result I was looking for. It needs to have a bit more usefulness if it’s supposed to be our way of getting Stealth.

4- No. Just. No. That suggestion just goes completely against the concept of Stability which in other case would mean you’re breaking the game by giving a skill that would render stability useless

Point. But worth discussing something to do with the skill, because I don’t think it interrupts if it hits a Stability-carrying target.

5- The main problem with Barrage is how long it takes to channel it. Lower the channel time and increase the cripple time and it should be good imo.

I don’t have trouble with the Barrage channel since you can break it by dodging and it will still go off for a little longer. It’s actually something of a tactic I’ve had to use in WvW when Retaliation was a killer – if I see Retaliation damage, roll to interrupt. If I see enemies turn my way? Roll to run.

mrstealth.6701:

That’s a lot better value than a single copy you’re stuck storing.

Still hoping they find some way of letting me “save” skins I’ve earned rather than bought so I can reuse them. I’m okay with having to purchase Gem Store skins again so they don’t balk at people buying one skin and not paying again. (Or as okay as I can be – truth is I find most of them just ugly as your choice of sin)

I am with you on the earning of keys via personal story. I’ve done a little of that myself, and I won’t even consider using cash to buy BL keys. But the fact that these skins keep getting pushed out more frequently is evidence that they are seeing significant profits from key sales, either directly from the cash gem buyers or indirectly though gold>gem buyers.

The skins keep getting pushed out more frequently because people said they wanted it that way, and would rather like to have premium skins through the Gem Store. Honestly, at least they added the Claim Ticket Scraps so it wasn’t a total screw like before (Consortium Crates). Still not very good though, would prefer a way of earning and Account Bound skin for game participation. Say, flag it as Exotic and purchased skins as Masterwork rather than the other way around. So the “more prestigious” item can only be earned through play.

Jocksy.3415:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Touche Amore.2083:

Plus, it didn’t help that they postponed it for about a week and a half without notice.

…probably hoping we’d forget and sweep it under the rug.

Or, just maybe, the person running it got sick and nobody stepped in because they want it to remain consistent? I dunno, that doesn’t have enough tinfoil hat going on, forget I said anything.

The person running it is actually having a discussion with thieves…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Re-Pistol-Whip/first#post3721002
:(

Eh, so you see, she can’t have been sick at all because she’s discussing another topic rather than the one which is toxic for anyone with a red tag.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

whyme.3281:

GameMode
Overall, weapon suggestion

Proposal Overview
change Longbow to AoE-control ranged weapon
introduce rifle as ranged single-target weapon
change axe (mainhand) to melee (or <=600 range) condition weapon

Your proposal would give the LB a niche he could fill but I don’t like direction you’re going. The warrior LB is also a AoE-control weapon. Yet I want to use the ranger LB to kill people, not to CC the to death. I don’t want a counterpart to the warrior LB.

Try this:

Longbow skills:

1. Long-Range Shot. Gets increasing damage the further it travels to the target. Starts lower and gets higher than it is currently, so you will want to use it at range and so people will not want to be at maximum range against a ranger.

2. Rapid Fire. Needs to be no longer a net loss of DPS. So make it a stacking ability with 0.5 sec recharge; each hit adds a stack which makes the next shot of Rapid Fire stronger to a value something on par with a full Might stack. Any other skill than Rapid Fire will have the bonus but set Rapid Fire’s cooldown ticking. A shot after Rapid Fire reaches full stack will also reset it. No matter what, if you keep this skill it has to be stronger instead of a net loss of damage vs auto-attack.

3. Hunter’s Shot. Leave it alone for the most part, maybe increase Stealth duration a little and let the pet inflict Vulnerability on its next attack if it hits.

4. Point Blank Shot. Knockback and Interrupt in case of Stability. This doesn’t need changing, really since it’s supposed to help keep an enemy out of your face where LB is weakest.

5. Barrage. If possible, the first hit Immobilizes, then it Cripples. If not, then Immobilize followed by Crippled when Immobilize ends. If that’s not possible, Immobilize 1s per hit and call it a day.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

In regard to topics I would like to see (if that’s ok):

- Continued discussion about lore in fractals.
- Suggested scenarios (boss, encounter and level design) based on current mechanics and systems in fractals.
- Anything else that takes your fancy.

Chris

1. Lore in Fractals. If we’re going to throw open the door a bit, then let’s throw it wide. A series of Fractals which would progress not unlike the missions from GW1, where you would do a Fractal and then unlock the next in a chain. Or maybe two options, following threads of lore through a storyline but not excluding any one branch to a character. I’d be happy to dash up a mock-example if this is interesting enough.

Otherwise, I’d suggest an old idea talked about – a “Journal” of sorts which would record snippets of lore for a player to go back and read about while they’re doing Fractals. Something like a yellow text in the chat box; “Your Fractal Lorebook has been updated.” and they can peek at it and see some information about the Fractal they either just entered or just finished (maybe two ‘phases’ of entries).

2. Suggested Scenarios. Let’s start with the obvious. “Destiny’s Edge vs Kralk”. As it should have been, if Logan hadn’t left. And this could be a test of ideas for confronting an Elder Dragon which doesn’t boil down to “get on cannon, press 2 until dead”.

“Flight from the North”. Play as your own characters, but you’re trying to help the norn escape Gunnar’s Hold while Jormag is being held at bay. Try modeling it after Escape from Lion’s Arch to save norn who can’t fight and to bolster events which give them more time to get away. End it on a battle against a Claw of Jormag different from the one in Frostgorge Sound.

“The Guild Wars”. Play either as Krytan guildmember, Orrian guildmembers or Ascalonian Guildmembers, during the great Guild Wars which predated the Searing and revisit them. A battle taking place in Orr/Arah during the height of the Third Guild War?

“The Fall of the Sunspears”. The party are cast as mercenaries helping the last of the Sunspears escape Elona with the Mystic Forge and Miyani. Because Tyria shouldn’t get all the fun.

Forzani.2584:

Apparently you didn’t read what I posted.

Yes I did, and I still don’t like it no matter how you spin it.

Just like the Devs haven’t read the million stupid ideas from non Rangers in this thread. The way it’s set up now..won’t work. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. This is a simple PR stunt that is doomed for failure.

The whole game is doomed for failure, inevitably it’s going to be shut down due to lack of funding. So chew on that too.

I didn’t say 4 people would decide the fate of Rangers. I said 4 people would be chosen by the community. Those 4 would likely be well respected posters that have shown great knowledge of the class…and also have the credibility to know what is over powered or under powered.

No. No, you didn’t read what I posted either. It’s the same difference. These four people aren’t going to care what I think about the class, and they’re not going to bother listening to some “noob ranger” if they’re already supposedly the most knowledgeable. And to be fair, I care more about what they think should be done for the class than they would care about what problems I’d have about their solutions. They’d only care if I liked an idea.

The community would then spam their ideas. Same as they are doing now. The difference is the 4 reps, along with the community, would filter out all the BS spam. They would throw the crap out and put together a package for the devs that was readable and reasonable…that fit Anets vision.

Nope. You grossly underestimate what’d get put forth. It wouldn’t fit ANet’s vision at all, it’d fit their distillation of everything they think is sane and possible while discarding anything outside of that. So what they’d put forth is more “this is what we think should be done”, and given the tone of this topic? It wouldn’t be ANet’s vision, though it may possibly respect it.

I doubt that.

So many posts that have completely redesigned the class is laughable. The bad news is that spam has covered up the actual good ideas. Ideas that are simple tweaks that have an actual chance to be used and would help the class.

That’s why this topic should probably stop for a bit until we see a red post outlining what they see here and where they’d like to take this.

mrstealth.6701:

Gemstore is outweighing content 4:1 on the launcher.

And general information outweighs gemstore, but nobody is going to mention that at all. Also, nobody is going to mention what the posts are? 2/18 (Which announces also some changes to the chest drops, the ending of some items, and free stuff), 2/25 (Thresher, lovestruck weapons, and more free stuff), 2/28 (“March Daily Deals coming”), 3/3 (Tormented gear, another finisher, and minis for Battle for Lion’s Arch).

Also, there are two content release notes. Escape from Lion’s Arch and Battle for Lion’s Arch. So it’s 2:1, or 3:2 if you discard the “March Daily Deals” thing.

The funny thing is, I’d almost be agreeing with the spirit of your posts if it wasn’t bone-simple to get your Black Lion Claim Tickets through ways other than spending on Gems. Which is more entertaining too, at least for me. Completing the first chapter of a character’s Personal Story will net you one key. Completing the one at Level 30 will net you another, which I think is the one you do as part of choosing an Order? To note, those three parts are the best part of the Personal Story.

As for Ascended? When they start putting out content outside of Fractals which requires me to get it? I’ll start worrying about it. As it stands, it’s an ugly-looking useless grind. It’s the grind for Legendaries which is really, truly atrocious . . . and the ability to sell them off is what I find much more worrisome than whatever’s going on with Ascended.

It’s just not really something I see as a major focus of the game. It’s a minor focus, but this stuff was started long before Guild Wars 2. Shall we discuss “Game of the Year bonus items” with unique art, or the costumes?

KyreneZA.8617:

If ArenaNet has to truly crowd source in order to fix their own product, you know something is seriously wrong. Either that, or it’s just lip service to placate the vocal forum minorities until the next shiny in the game draws their attention away form the torches and pitchforks. Also, fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind…

. . . well Lion’s Arch is on fire.

wolfyrik.2017:

All good points except 3, I feel, goes a bit off base. Developing ranger as anti-thief would only ever aid PvP and WvW, it’s also a bit spiteful methinks. Alot of the Agro at thieves comes from people who PvP but can’t be bother to learn how to counter thieves. Making one class a Thief Hunter is just adding to that agro for no good reason I can see. It’s essentially bullying of one class.

It’s just the point I grasped on, having seen nothing on a more general “control” basis which I really liked.

Now Better control against all classes I can get behind. Our lack of control is pretty embarrassing given our mechanics.

It’s something I reflected on but really, our control is just off-tune. It could work, except there’s again nothing really to help us pursue a runner or catch a target as evasive as us. (We do have decent evasion, let’s recognize that.)

Engineer, for example, has more control than us on a single weapon than we have on several and our pets, combined together. They also have the likes of net-turret available. Even those who use pistol can have glue shot, then there’s the kits which add glue bomb, frost grenade and box of nails into the equation, along with the other skills on those kits at the same time AND Tool-belt skills. An engi can have any combination of these without hindering their playstyle options or damage ouput. We have to go trapper-Bow-spider at the expense of everything else, to get anything near what they have in terms of CC.

Engineer also has a small weapon selection and those toys of theirs are all they have. Compared to us, I think we have a broader answer without needing to spill a lot of effort into our pets the way an engineer needs to pack turrets/kits.

Taken at face value this seems fair and it seems a bit strange to compare Ranger with Engineer, ’til you consider that our role is suppose to be about “sustained damage” and working with our pet, which means locking down targets so that the pet can actually hit them.

Or helping the pet catch up to them. I find “Signet of the Hunt” with the passive speed boost helps us keep up with most people until the difference between it and Swiftness (25% vs 33%) lets the gap widen out some more. It definitely helps the pet stick to targets which aren’t running directly away.

Of course, the pet isn’t big on damage short of the two out there which are almost insane. I saw mentioned in here the “stealth kitty” which can get almost ludicrous.

Forzani.2584:

Agree 100%

1. Community decides on 4 people to represent their class …the Ranger.
2. Internal CDI with the Ranger community and the 4 reps monitoring the debate.
3. The 4 reps talk to Anet to better understand what Anet is able to, and willing to do for the class …IE what is their vision
4. The 4 reps produce a well thought out, legible, accurate report to present to Anet that reflects both the Ranger communities ideas that correspond with Anets parameters.

It’s not like the above format is a ground breaking new idea. It’s tried and true. Strange how it’s not being used.

No.

I don’t want “the best four rangers” to determine how to run my class the best, I don’t want ANet to only listen to “the people who know the class”, because that immediately pushes me out of the focus because I don’t do as much WvW or PvP. And I don’t sit there crunching numbers and stats and agonizing over what to change with the Ranger. I’ve learned how to use what’s there which works for me.

And I have this . . . not unfounded suspicion . . . those people who the community would elect? Wouldn’t care what I thought, wouldn’t care how I want to play, and would put forth a design paradigm which wouldn’t be the ranger I like to play or want to play.

I did this once before where I went looking on PvX Wiki for a ranger build in GW1. Four builds, and I couldn’t handle any of them because of the sheer amount of micro two required, one was gimmicky as all heck, and the fourth was purely PvP focused. I can’t play a class exactly like another person says I should be playing it.

The longer this thread gets, the more I just see if the “top community” gets to work on this, then I won’t be able to play my ranger and I’ll have to make the decision to jump to another class and start learning them . . . or just leave.

Aberrant.6749:

CDI’s don’t seem to be very productive… just go take a look at what happened to the WvW ones. It’s seems like they try to make us feel like we’ve been heard… a little bit. I wouldn’t expect any major changes that weren’t already planned before the creation of the thread with any of them.

They had said, numerous times, they weren’t going to result in immediate effects

khorne.8592:

At this stage i’m believing it was never about fixing rangers it was a case of the devs band-aid box being empty so they wanted to see if the community had a spare.

I think it started about fixing rangers, then the board exploded. People wanted the pet removed, and they said no. People said “well fix the pet AI then” and got back “that’s a tall order of work, we’re not sure we could realisitically do it”.

The board exploded again. Allie got sick (if you believe that) and the thread didn’t get a secondary contributor from ANet taking point.

At this point there’s no value left here until some direction is given to the discussion from ANet. In my opinion?

Top three things needing to be addressed.

1. Pets need to have tweaks done to make them more responsive and less likely to die in massive AOE attacks. A full overhaul of their behavior may not be a good application of time, but we do need some more control and/or usefulness added.

2. Some damage outputs in our skills need to be looked at. We’re supposed to do “sustained, long-term, reliable” damage, but as pointed out Longbow #2 (Rapid Fire) does not achieve this. Other weapons are less about damage and more about particular skirmishing options. This in and of itself is not an issue, but with these options we are decently survivable alone but not as useful in a group.

3. We lack a good means of keeping an opponent in range if they decide to run (nearly everyone who starts losing to a ranger opts to run then double back to fight when the distance closes), and we really have bad options against competent thieves. It was said we could in theory have our utility tweaked to beat stealth and thus be desirable as anti-thief options. I like this idea.

Touche Amore.2083:

Plus, it didn’t help that they postponed it for about a week and a half without notice.

…probably hoping we’d forget and sweep it under the rug.

Or, just maybe, the person running it got sick and nobody stepped in because they want it to remain consistent? I dunno, that doesn’t have enough tinfoil hat going on, forget I said anything.

Nope, she was simply too dangerous and too unpredictable to let have longer than need be. And we didn’t need to know what she was doing this for, we wanted to know what she was doing this for.

Besides, you’ll note Braham didn’t succeed with putting her down right there, she threw those crazy Scarlet downed abilities on us. Where can I get some invulnerable shields for my downed characters?

PSX.9250:

Brutal Arts.6307:

The audience for GW1 isn’t the audience for GW2. This game is aimed at the people that would spend hundreds of dollars on farmville or other casual facebook games.

^This.

/endthread<3

Not really, the people who would spend hundreds of dollars on Farmville or Candy Crush Saga (trademark) are already doing that and losing their plastic to the insidious lure.

The people who play Guild Wars 2 are mostly warriors, thieves, and the odd mesmer.

Nage.1520:

HappyPrimes.3904:

You’re not wrong for giving up on the game. Anet should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to the Guild Wars franchise, GW2 is an embarrassment and an unforgivable slap in the face to the people who played and enjoyed GW1.

Not everyone who played Guild Wars 1 feels this way.

No, no but it is an unforgivable slap in the face for the minimum specs they released with. I thought I had it, and once more, my computer apparently doesn’t work with the latest release of the Living Story.

Talk about insults . . . thing keeps losing connection for some reason and it’s only inside Lion’s Arch.

Tormented weapons on the gem shop means I might actually get to own one now.

Bran.7425:

Regardless of what they can or can not do, one glaring issue is that it seems that no one in Anet is really excited about the Ranger CDI (not how Whiteside seem for the fractal one) and it give the appearance that Allie has to pull teeth to get anyone else involved.

Seems to me that she drew the short straw and got stuck with dealing with that CDI.

I think I know why they’re not appearing as excited . . .

They knew the whole pet thing was coming up and they know that fix would take an incredible amount of manpower to actually work on. And it’s a good chance trying to reinvent the behavior engine (stop calling it AI, it’s not) would screw it up in some other way to make things worse unintentionally.

Could you imagine three months from now “yeah the enemy AI is kicking your teeth in because now it can dodge, but we had to put that in so pets could too”. People would be flipping tables over mobs being able to behave like people want pets to.

darkace.8925:

Vol.7601:

Your first sentence ruined your credibility for this post.

Are you saying the Living Story – with it’s bi-monthly release schedule and temporary nature – isn’t designed to be a vehicle to deliver cash shop items? Answer carefully, because YOUR credibility is at stake.

I’ll take a swing at this.

Not solely designed for that.

There.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

How quickly you can revive someone?

Was much quicker in the previous game with “Flesh of My Flesh”, let alone “Resurrection Signet” or a couple other skills.

Good luck with that when I’m playing ranger.

Ranger/Rit was rather useful for that.

And currently, strangely, rangers are kind of resilient enough to heal. And if they pack “Search and Rescue” it counts twice as much. Seriously that skill is kind of underrated for ressing.

DeceiverX.8361:

If there is overwhelming support for certain changes, why are these ignored when feedback was asked for to begin with? Why waste everyone’s time if the community’s opinions do not matter regardless of their magnitude and merit?

Anyone feel like possibly explaining this absurd behavior?

If the owners of a restaurant wanted to figure out how to work over a portion of their menu, and then figured out the one which needed the most work. An employee is sent with a small bit of data and told “go poll people”. People go “we want X” and the owners go “we can’t afford to do X the way they want” “tough, we want X anyway or we’ll stop coming”.

That’s pretty much what a large chunk of that CDI discussion was, along with the coordinator disappearing for a period (due to illness, but then who’s going to believe that when everyone thinks they’re already being fed a line) so it ran a bit wild . . .

It’s a mess and probably not salvageable at all at this point.

It amuses me we’re still going on about this and that in the lore and there’s an occasional flippant “well I guess prior lore doesn’t matter” comment or something similar. We’ve been over this a lot trying to either reconcile the lore between the two games, or arguing it should have turned out differently, or how it’s implausible X because of Y.

There’s one very simple thing which you’ll note if you step back and take a look at humanity on Tyria.

Humanity are massive . . . donkey-pits . . . and have been since they decided they were chosen by the Gods to rule all of Tyria. Forgotten? Chase em out. Centaurs? Get off my new lawn. Charr? Bad kitty, no catnip, no go over there while I fence my new game preserve. And because one of those gods decided the world owed Him over some super-massive dump taken on Him for questioning the consensus, humanity got raked over coals on three continents to the point they either were incredibly weakened or survived by becoming even more antagonistic wieners to those around them.

Seriously. Humanity is one act of puppy-kicking after another.

The only bigger wieners are asura. And that’s just because they’re not as bright as they are intelligent.

(Note, some word choices made due to needing to keep this PG.)

Substance E.4852:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

McWolfy.5924:

I think they wont solve pet problem.
Who remember the I will avange you skill from gw1?
What if you gain a bonus like that if your pet is down or merge it with the rampage as one elite.

That wasn’t just for pets though, it was just famously used with pets for easy boosts

Revive IWAY?!

The collective reaction of everyone who played GW1 during that nightmare…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc

Oh I’m not advocating it since it was just that much more effective than probably intended.

. . . but I would love to see it for two days get given to Rangers and see what happens. Probably nothing.

Nike.2631:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Not really relevant, but DarcShriek, when was the last time you saw a giant dredge? (Not counting Molten bosses who are big but not big enough)

The legendary Great One, the Liberator, he who doft his stout helm before the start of Rest-Shift, creating what the unenlightened races call “Dredgehat Island”

He shall rise from justly-earned slumber and lead us to glorious freedom.

Believe, Comrades. Believe.

I do believe, in the idea Molenin’s descendants finally brutally murdered every single Kurzick in Echovald and took the stonewoods for their own. To repay them for their “kindness” during the time of the Afflicted and Betrayer’s Return.

Farzo.8410:

A Human found a seed in a Wurm cave. He planted the seed at his family grave. Ventari wrote a tablet with beliefs.

This ’’cured’’ the Pale Tree and the future Sylvari for being dragon minions.

In the future, Ceara experimented around, and entered Omadd’s machine. This machine returned Ceara to what she truly was, and what every Sylvari is, a dragon minion.

Ceara, now named Scarlet, wanted to awake its Master.

Mordremoth is now awake.

Half-Life 3 confirmed.

By the by, still don’t buy in to the Pale Tree being a dragon champion/minion unless they show there’s something more at work to have made it so decidedly anti-dragon focused.

“It just raises too many questions.”

Shiren.9532:

I don’t get that part, what’s the purpose of the probes if she knew LA was the destination all along?

Were they also intended to locate Mordremoth as well? It doesn’t seem like she did anything to channel the ley line energy once the drill pierced it, it just kinda travelled to Mordremoth on its own. So why have probes all over Tyria and the Mists?

My interpretation?
She knew she needed to nullify LA, not that LA was going to be the target.

Well we had a kiss and this topic rocketed right back out of the dump.

Just as planned.

lordhelmos.7623:

Ranger with passive bleeds, kills self yay

Nope, I didn’t set that trait and I had to swap off my Shortbow to Longbow for this so I wasn’t doing condition type damage. And after I’d been retraining myself AWAY from it. Sigh. At least my pets stay upright more often than the people splashing conditions without paying attention.

Rox got told pointblank during “Origins of Madness” by Rytlock “You kill Scarlet, you’re in.”

Zylonite.5913:

Vol.7601:

Your first sentence ruined your credibility for this post.

So have you seen the patch notes today? Half of it is on new gem store items….BTW it it makes you feel any better being the judge of my credibility then be it….

Have you not heard they’re holding on balance and feature patches until after this LS bit is done so they can focus on that instead of LS chapters? So, you know, we get primarily bugfix/features March 18th or thereabouts.

And we knew this before this year’s LS entries started. We knew it back in January.

So, ever since the first roun of hotpatches in “Escape from Lion’s Arch” . . . which fixed the citizens counter, I’ve been experiencing incredible lag any time I get near an event.To the point I need to reset my connection to the login server.

This isn’t FPS drops, my FPS still sits at 20-30 . . . it just stops everything.

Flytrap.8075:

Maybe he meant something along the lines of pets having literally no value in large-scale WvW.

Let’s be fair. A singular character anywhere in large-scale WvW (i.e. “WvW zerg blobx”) isn’t of much consequence. That’s why they blob up and fight, to take advantage of having multiple targets and multiple sources of damage. That’s the whole reason zergs work against nearly every target ever since the advent of combat tactics. Throw enough people together and you can overwhelm a significantly smaller force.

There are two things of value in large-scale WvW. Strong enough defenses to stall out the enemy force by attrition inflicted by the second thing – rapid, powerful AoE damage . . . such as those of arrow carts or a few places where cannons can be of some use.

If the Ranger is made to be of “value” in large-scale WvW, there are thus two options by this conclusion. They either need to be able to dispense the large-range damage of an arrow cart, or be resilient enough to stand 1 v 10. Either case runs the incredibly likely and high risk of making them unbalanced for any other use . . . or on the other side, being so useless for small-group usage we’ll be back here in six months talking about how Rangers are always beat 1 v 1.

McWolfy.5924:

I think they wont solve pet problem.
Who remember the I will avange you skill from gw1?
What if you gain a bonus like that if your pet is down or merge it with the rampage as one elite.

That wasn’t just for pets though, it was just famously used with pets for easy boosts

sorudo.9054:

in GW1 i can easily play without and still get a few K, there is no chance in hell to get that much in GW2.

If you mean a few thousand gold, without figuring the difference in coinage? Yeah, kinda difficult to get 1k Gold. If you mean by actual coinage value then that’s more . . . hmmm. 10 Silver. Which is incredibly easy to make

If you mean making 1 Gold, also fairly easy to make in a few hours of prime time WvW. (The secret is not to spend it on upgrading camps/towers.)

KarlaGrey.5903:

That is rather odd, I don’t think I had a particular problem finding a group, but I suppose having a few regular pve mates helped in that regard. Moreover, I doubt you were trying a lot, because sooner or later you find people who are willing to educate a nablet, as long as they are ready and willing to learn.
Moreover, if you couldn’t farm for ecto/shards you could always opt for the pvp and trade pvp rewards for pve items, but I do admit those additions were implemented later on in the game.
Instead, you could try farming ettins for sup vigour runes, or do runs for money (I LOVED the first time I was ran to droks, and would eventually do runs on my own just for the fun of achievement).

I did say I mained a Ranger right? I didn’t actually get groups regularly until I found a great Alliance I’m still with today. There were stretches of time days long where I could sit for a while trying to get a group, and not. I’d had enough of that in my EverQuest days so I’d hench up and go find something else to do.

As for the Ecto/Shards, I just calculated the amount of plat needed and went “nope” to using the Rare Materials Trader.

And making money for me in GW1 really was more lacking in Drok Runs for cash (couldn’t quite get past Dreadnought’s Drift), and I didn’t exactly have the best drop luck so farming runes was mostly out. No I made my money selling unidentified gold items. One run for my Wisdom track, one run for gold.

Sirendor.1394:

1. Obsidian was purely cosmetic, the stats were equal to basic armour that cost 1 platinum per piece… you didn’t even need to farm for that, but got enough gold by the time you actually got to level 20. With ascended that is not the case.

On top, armour in GW1 didn’t have stats, where armour in GW2 does… this makes the grind 5 times as hard. In GW1 you needed just 1 armour set and you simply had to swap the runes and insignias if you wanted to change your build.

And yet, everyone behaved as if Obsidian was the end-all of armor for the longest time. It’s still the measuring stick for “grindy as heck armor” for me, because of the incredible expense and time consumption when it was released.

(And yes, the current Ascended passes this up. But considering both are unnecessary . . . )

2. R8-R13 didn’t make any difference apart from being able to equip the weapon with a lesser requirement. For example R8 Swordmanship required you to have only 8 in Swordsmanship.

It did make a difference – the top damage range rarely went lower than 10 and it’s only rumored (as in, I never saw one) to go as low as R8. Good luck getting R13 for the Gothic Sword you saw dropped, with a less-than-maximum damage spread. (This happened more often than I liked.)

Besides, the gold weapons cost only 2 platinum each, and you could get green ‘boss’ weapons that were the same stats and usually better. You got those from missions and from lucky drops (I think I had like 10 stacked in my bank after 1 year of playing). On top weapons were accountbound: you could use them on any character you wished.

Unless they got customized for the +20% damage bonus, and you can’t tell me Urgoz’s Flatbow was much more powerful than a gold Vabbian Flatbow. It could be argued it was worse on a metagame level due to Sundering being less useful on a Flatbow.

But there were intriguing things, such as unique items which could not be recreated in any way statistically. 50 or so items, in fact. Really do miss having that, but on the other hand . . . my bank is cluttered enough :P

3. Please, don’t say gold farm in GW1 was bad… Do a couple random arenas, fort aspenwood or jade quarry and you got balthazar faction points that you could trade for zaishen keys that sold for easily like 1-2 plat (depending when you played). The only items that required a lot of gold were prestige items with the same stat value as any other item.

In my opinion and through my experiences? It’s as bad as the gold farming of GW2, or worse. Take that as you will.

sorudo.9054:

that’s moot, you’re just trying to find an argument to win, not to argue the issue at hand….

Winning isn’t my goal here, it’s rebutting your nostalgia with what I actually experienced.

lovely isnt it, so many ppl raging about such a trival thing yet it balances the game allot better then you can even imagine…

Try to stick with me here, it doesn’t matter how balanced a game is if you tick off a significant portion your players to that extent. Adding Ascended annoyed more than it angered. This move? This would be so much worse.

I can agree, there would be something “lovely” in the released rage. What wouldn’t be lovely is the result of that rage.

really, just as bad?
i can get a few plat in GW1 while playing regular areas, it takes me weeks to get some gold in GW2.
not so “as bad” as you’re claiming, it’s actually better and more casual friendly.

Really just as bad. If you know how or where to work the farms, you can make gold/plat in either game. I mentioned consets as one potential, another is simply farming the heck out of feathers – you can make a lot that way.

There are ways in GW2 to make that kind of money, with that kind of speed. And there are ways of very steadily making money without playing the Trading Post, which aren’t quite as “get rich quick” as “get rich with less risk”.

Astralporing.1957:

Blanger.3162:

Yeah they did destroy my favorite place to stand around, chat and go afk, but it was totally worth it!"

Except it wasn’t…

Nah, it will never be worth it. I mean, to some it will always be equivalent to punching a puppy in the face.

sorudo.9054:

in GW1 you can get every single armor in the game by simply playing, in GW2 you need to grind your perverbal behind off to get even a shred of good gear.

You did? Really? Please enlighten me how, by simply playing, I got to Obsidian Armor? I had four trips through UW and only got three Ectoplasm; I only got two Obsidian Shards through two trips of Fissure of Woe.

And I didn’t have to grind very much at all for my old Exotic longbow, or my Armageddon armor. Notably, I suspect very few people who play WvW have to “grind” for their exotic Invader’s set.

heck, in GW1 a basic armor/weapon is enough to get what you need, it’s all equal in stats and it eventually is about cosmetic instead of stats.

They’re not all equal in stats. In any maximum-level end-game zone the swords would drop anywhere from Req 8 to Req 13 and were not always guaranteed to be maximum damage range. I had a gold, Req 13, 13-20 sword drop from the last mission in Prophecies.

Though the gear is somewhat moot because all you really needed for PvE were two Rits and a Necro.

in GW2 you need allot of gold to get anything good, stats become really important and with the additions of jewels it made gear even more stat depending.

With the addition of Inscriptions, a lot of weapons farmed outside of Nightfall/EOTN became useless. So . . .

what if all the jewels are removed from the game and the highest stat you can get is from white armors/weapons, gear grind becomes optional because now it more about the cosmetic part rather then the gear grind we have now.

We’d see half the players who spent actual time and/or money getting Ascended or specific Exotic gear quit loudly and rage forever. Not to mention those who would get jailed for homicide over the new adjustment to Legendaries.

oh and BTW, i used to have problems getting gold in GW1, now even i can get plenty of gold if i wanted to.
gold grind in GW2 is still horrible, zergs and speed cleans is the only way to get gold, something that doesn’t even exist in GW1 because zerging kills your team faster then you can cast a spell.

Gold/Plat grind in GW1 is just as bad as Gold grind in GW2. Also, can’t compare zerging in GW2 to trying it in GW1 since you’d have at most 12 people doing it and that’s really not enough. Though I did successfully have a group which zerged Kanaxai, so there is that.

KarateKid.5648:

So you’re saying you never had to spend gold to travel to Lion’s Arch?

Gold? No.

A couple silver which was made back through one trip through Urmaug’s Secret? Yeah

KarlaGrey.5903:

Vanquishing is something I did when I felt like dabbing in pve with a friend or two, but why grind the title, if it’s no fun?

I didn’t grind the title. I was going to try for the completion and so I could get my Hall of Monuments points up. But it was either boring or really difficult for some places so I just gave up on it.

I never did exploration for cartography titles (I am actually proud of my Tyrian Explorer [60%]), but I can imagine completing the game without skipping large chunks of content gave you about 70-80% already.

Tyrian was almost the worst due to large swaths which you didn’t ever have to visit. Canthan was almost bad since there were a few places which you had limited access to counting on the %. Elonian was just more frustrating to get a proper “scrape” going.

However why would you compare something completely optional to the far-from-optional gear grind here? A change in numbers is still a change, no matter how minor and insignificant it may seem.

Because, and once more try to follow me on this, it is optional. The game is balanced, mostly, towards Exotic-level stats and Ascended being higher means it’s over the point of balance. So really, all you need to be on the ball for PvE is Exotic. PvP? Doesn’t matter, everyone’s leveled out on stats. WvW? Only if they make an Ascended Arrow Cart.

Also, to me the ecto/shards farming was a lot of fun during the OS days, but hey. Old-school sf 4 man runs were awesome too, and that feel/atmosphere is completely lost with GW2. I get the feeling you didn’t play during those days though, which is a real pity.

No, I played during those days but my primary focus was at that point Skill Capping and more exploratory. I couldn’t get into Sorrow’s Furnace because . . . survey says . . . not having done it before. So because I hadn’t done it before, nobody would take me to do it. (Similar as to why I got passed over again and again for UW/FOW.)

How quickly you can revive someone?

Was much quicker in the previous game with “Flesh of My Flesh”, let alone “Resurrection Signet” or a couple other skills.

Keep improving, keep working this type of presentation and inclusion. If you move the cycle outwards in time, maybe you’ll have time to not rush and polish these bits to be in more often.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Weird how the grind on GW1 somehow never felt as revolting and bothersome as it did/does on GW2 though.

Vanquishing felt very bothersome, Cartography half required me to use extra resources to compare maps to try to suss out the last 0.5% I needed more than once, and any of the PvP events felt revolting to me. (Especially Fort Aspenwood.) Also, while I might find something which looked neat or possibly could have been valuable? Lolz, no, it’s not even 1k. So making money was a lot of scraping it up or abusing the desire for “consets” to turn a quick buck.

Also, Foundry of Failed Creations from DoA can just go jump off a pier with chains around ankles.

I honestly never did any insane grinding and yet I could still obtain virtually everything bar for some ultra rare minipets.
Must’ve been magic, eh.

Must have been. I won’t be able at all to buy Obsidian Armor due to the pricey components without some serious plat grind.

mooty.4560:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You have a point, but way back when you had to rerun a mission to get one piece infused so you didn’t melt under one particular skill attack? Yeah, that was just ludicrous and changed.
…
But it ticks the boxes of “repetitive, bothersome, and required”. Ascended, well, doesn’t hit all three.

It was somewhat required but I just didn’t find it overly difficult to deal with. It could be done in a day where as getting the most from your ascended gear can take months. That’s really where the comparison ends, when you start comparing the time scale of a day(or even a few hours) to maybe a quarter of a year. So yeah, you’ll get there… by the end of the day, how’s that ascended gear coming?

Really decently, thanks. About halfway there. Don’t ask about the Legendary though.

Re: The “oldschool vs newschool” debate

Look, games weren’t intended to be fun back in the day. They were intended to sit in the arcade and make money quarter after quarter.

A lot of the old classics? Had carried over quarter-muncher philosophy. Konami and Capcom really did that a lot, Nintendo’s first-party games less so . . .

I will agree with the idea something has been lost, and more of the fun games I’ve played have been indie titles. I’ve had incredible amounts of fun playing around with Minecraft and its mods (Mystcraft, TerraFirmaCraft, Millenaire) versus the amount of fun I had playing StarCraft 2. I find “Desktop Dungeons” and “Nethack” entertaining – and one of these is free. (It is also ball-breakingly, keyboard-snapping frustrating.)

I don’t have fun seeing great games and then seeing the tech specs and realizing 90% of that is for the graphics engine to render things with good speed and clarity. I have fun playing games which I can master or feel like I’m getting better over time at playing it. I have fun with games which have compelling and decent stories (or at least good voice acting to cover it up – see FF12).

It’s not a problem of new developers going “good enough, ship it”, because a lot of times it probably isn’t the developers’ fault – that can lie with the publishers who want to hit a specific launch window. Like, say, “rush this out so it can be out to compete with the other triple-A titles” or “this HAS to be out for Holiday 20XX”. It is not always the fault of the developer a game gets rushed or is left less than a desirable completeness.

. . . of course, that still doesn’t excuse DNF. There is no excuse for that.

Laugh and sneer all you want, people did really expect or want GW1 remastered with a new engine and little more. Especially since by the time of EOTN it was showing its problems trying to handle PvE in a game originally designed more for PvP.

Now GW2? It’s designed in the other direction, seemingly. And much like the predecessor it manages to hit the target in the middle ring. Missed the mark by a bit, but still hit the target.

The thing is, I still find it great fun and enjoy it quite a bit. It’s just not the best at any one aspect I could say I enjoy in GW2, even within my limited library of games.

mooty.4560:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m going to try not to laugh loud and hard about that statement of “Time gated vertical progression gear grind”.

I could list, again, a lot of things I know I found grindy in GW1 and I only just hit the tip of the iceberg. While “none of it was mandatory” (a fact I still lightly dispute) . . . none of it is mandatory over here either. Save for one place and detail. Agony Resistance. (Ah, ye olde infusion run, we meet again…)

I hardly think infusion runs are a good comparison to the “vertical progression gear grind” that is ascended gear with AR. That’s not really being honest to the folks who don’t know what an infusion run is.

You have a point, but way back when you had to rerun a mission to get one piece infused so you didn’t melt under one particular skill attack? Yeah, that was just ludicrous and changed.

It’s what sticks out as the only piece of necessary gear grind GW1 had going on if you’re talking about pure progression and not aesthetics. And it was still an annoyance greater than what I’m dealing with with Ascended Gear now (which is just “hang in there and you’ll eventually get it if you’re interested”).

But it ticks the boxes of “repetitive, bothersome, and required”. Ascended, well, doesn’t hit all three.

Actually the PvE balance wasn’t wonky, it was almost completely out of whack as the other campaigns were released and power creep set in.

Should say, when I use the words “balance was wonky” I mean it in the sense of “it really depended on which balance patch you look at whether it was broken one way or another”. 55 Monk, perma-SF, do-everything rits . . . and my personal favorite from the Jade Quarry matches? Suicide bombing necros. This is, indeed, without actually touching those PvE skills from Eye of the North.

. . . Guild Wars 1 was just a weird game when it came to using skills. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing I remember from it. (Second best was pretty much solo-killing Duncan through degen on my ranger . . .)

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Considering the centaurs often ignore the treaty anyway . . .

Doesn’t mean Lion’s Arch has to aid Divinity’s Reach, their purpose is to ensure trade flows not that a foreign nation is secured. Besides why waste their resources on fighting a race that may one day become a client? Isn’t that what we adventurers are for? We the deniable specialists of Tyria that undertake tasks nations would find to risky to send their own forces to handle.

Oh I wasn’t questioning it, merely saying the centaurs don’t care as much as Lion’s Arch’s Lionguard had. The Lionguard weren’t interested in picking a fight with the centaurs, more on maintaining the trade network.

At least that’s what I read into it.