Guild Wars 2

~Do whatever you like. Provide the boss’s name, skills and mechanics. A bit of lore of you’re up for it!

I’ll start.

Kanis, Banisher of Light

Stage: a 2000 radius circular arena

Persistent throughout the encounter apart from final phase

Passive abilities
-Defiance (we all know what this does)
-Dark Aegis: invulnerable to all damage unless the target has 15 more more stacks of vulnerability.
-Stability

Skills
-Swipe: 200 range frontal melee attack, does moderate damage, cleaves
-Shadowbolt: moderate damage single projectile aimed at random player
-Dark Crash: multiple AoE circles appear around the arena, exploding 1.5 seconds in a shadow pillar, dealing high damage to anyone caught within
-Shadow Lance: 8000 range column attack aimed at random player, leaves a 3 second persisting AoE behind
-Gives self 30s protection and retaliation
-Gives 25 stacks of confusion unto random target, 25 sec CD and cannot target the same player twice

-Into the Void (audio cue ‘Be consumed by the darkness!’): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena and starts a 5 second stationary channel. Gains unpurgable 1 stack of the ‘Void Calling’ boon every second, removes all buffs and debuffs from all players and enemies at 3 stacks, casts Into the Void at 5 stacks.

2400 radius single hit PBAoE, unblockable by normal means, cannot be evaded, can only be blocked by Aegis.

-Shadow Surge (audio cue ‘Burn to ashes!’): infinite stationary channel, effects of Defiance not active during channel. Targets 1 random player and channels a low-moderate damage channeled attack at target until target is dead.

Phase 1

Skills
-Summons shades from sides of arena. Gives boss a stack of ‘End of Days’ boon if allowed to reach boss. Kills all players at 30 stacks.
-Randomly switches the positions of 2 players

-Gives all players a 10 second uncleansible Shadowflame condition, causing a slow-moving 300 radius AoE to follow the player. AoE will do heavy damage on all players it touches, disappears on removal of condition.

-Shadow Beam (audio cue ‘Embrace the corruption!’, casted 2 times during phase1): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena at start of each cast. Shadow Beam links boss to a player with a 2000 range laser, does heavy damage to anyone hit by lazer, cannot be evaded. Kills all shades at the beginning of cast and cannot use any skill apart from Shadow Lance during the cast. Laser lasts for 10 seconds.

1st cast: gives 3 random players 1 stack of the uncleansible Targeted condition every second. Channels Shadow Beam at 5 stacks.

Players with 5 stacks of Targeted take no damage form Shadow Beam but takes constant moderate damage if within 1700 range of the boss. Also leaves behind trails of darkness, doing heavy damage to anyone stepping on them.

2nd cast: places a 300 radius PBAoE peristing throughout the cash. Stacks players with either Targeted or Linked conditions. Both conditions have same effects as above except that Linked takes damage if outside of 800 range instead.

Phase 2

Passive Abilities and skills
-Slowed: movement speed reduced by 50%
-Spewing Filth: leaves behind trails of moderate damage filth. Filth puddles last 5 seconds.
-Boss can gain a purgable boon which gives him 50% more speed.

Mechanics

At the start of the phase, boss will lose all stacks of ‘End of Days’ and summon a Shadow Stalker on top of every player, and aggro the remaining player, aggro on remaining player will persist throughout the phase until that player is dead. If targeted player downs, the boss will target another player.

Shadow Stalkers have 10m HP and moves at 50% speed. Each stalker will target a player and aggro them until they are downed, at which point the stalker will suicide. Will respawn on top of a player if a player resurrects. Gains 1 stack of unpurgable Entropy boon per second on spawn.

Both boss and stalkers will have the Spewing Filth passive. Boss will have Entropy as well, starting to gain stacks at beginning of phase transition.

At 5 stacks of Entropy, boss/stalker will do an instant cast 200 radius PBAoE which instantly downs any player hit if any player approaches this range.

If the target goes outside of 900 range of stalkers, stalker will pull player into melee range.

Final Phase (starts at 20k HP)

Boss will shadowstep into the middle of the arena, loses Dark Aegis and start to gain 1 stack of End of Days every second. Boss will have a One with the Darkness passive which makes him undamaged by any normal attack.

Bow of Light environmental weapon will drop at player’s feet. Bow of Light has 2 skills:

1. does a fixed 400 damage per hit to boss. Damage not affected by any boons or conditions.
2. applies user with 20 second Aegis (coodown 7 seconds)

Boss will cast a lot of Dark Crashes around the Arena, and will cast Into the Void every 10 seconds. Boss will not cast any other skill.

Azure Prower.8701:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Azure Prower.8701:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You mean instead of finding myself getting OHKOd they can do it even faster? Awesome, how does that work? I die before they attack?

You must not be running a bunker build.

Not in the least. I run something I enjoy, with a few tweaks here and there. But I prefer being “Tobias Trueflight” instead of “cookie_cutter_ranger_o6”.

Welcome to Guild Wars 2. Where build diversity is not really encouraged. Please enjoy your stay.

Build diversity really is rather slim in GW2, but to be honest, there’s always the ‘best’ builds in every game for each piece of activity. Even in TSW with its hundreds of slottable skills and passives, there’s basically the standard fotm builds for everything which if you don’t use, you are playing a sub-optimal character.

1. It gives rubbish rewards
2. Too. Many. Particle. Effects. I can’t really fight well enough to PvP when I’m having a seizure all the time and I can’t interrupt/dodge anything when I can’t see.
3. Asuras. I can’t tell what they’re doing unless I place a microscope on my monitor.

Valanga.5942:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Anyway, for purposes of this discussion, herd play does not for the most part require any skill — no matter if you’re talking about player skill or skills on the hot bar.

And that’s quite true… Sadly, herd play represent the vast majority of GW2 “endgame”.

It depends on what you see the endgame as. If you want your endgame as content which gives the most loot, yes: champ trains all the way.

When the game gets difficult, it does give some of the most difficult content I’ve played in MMOs, and I’ve played since RuneScape classic was around. I don;t think I’ve ever watched PUGs fail harder than in Arah or around lvl 20-ish FotM (where it gets hard but the difficulty filter hasn’t really kicked in yet).

Romo.3709:

Xae Isareth.1364:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

At the same time, the only sure way to kill Teq is by organized group of people, planning ahead of time, giving out specific roles across groups of people participating in said battle. Not everyone can work together, not everyone can even fit on the server that the groups is trying to carry out the strategy. That being said, small sized servers will have very hard time participating in those big open world events.
At this point in time, you have to be in the specific server or overflow an hour before the event starts if you want to have any possibility of defeating Teq. This causes problems for people that have limited time to play the game, while being restricted to one map while they wait for the fight to start. Also waiting so long in advance creates many AFK players because they couldn’t keep themselves occupied for the time of the wait that is required for the Teq fight.
Some will say that they got in just fine at the beginning of the battle. But that’s not the case for all.
If skills are going to be based off events like Teq, we’re limiting the accessibility of those skills to a wide population of players based on either low populated servers or that are very casual.
While myself I slain Teq a few times, I have a large amount of friends that never seen him go below 90% health.

And Teq isn’t even a complicated boss. The strategy is essentially spam poison cleanse on a spot, have every attacker stack and nuke the dragon, everyone else splits up and defends turrets. Split up into 3 groups for defend phases.

That’s nowhere near the difficulty of mechanics you usually see in a raid in MMOs. Its actually basically impossible to make difficult content in the open world, because simply not everyone can do difficult content, and open world content is for everyone. That’s a clear contradiction right there.

Immensus.9732:

I dont want to be pessimistic but i doubt that most of the ppl that were playing in launch they still play, but yeah there are more new ones came as well

Yeah but that’s kind of how every MMO is like. People play the game, they get through all the content they want to do, they move on, leaving the relatively dedicated few around.

^ depends on how good you are. That’s the ideal kind but if you’re new, you may wanna play around with more defensive builds first to get used to the class.

A Guardian doing lower DPS but stays alive is better than a DPS Guardian getting downed every 5 seconds.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

Zeldain.5710:

Healix.5819:

Would you be happier if 1 ascended weapon dropped and everyone who participated got to roll on it? That’s why RNG can feel so bad.

Personally, I think they should have gone with a limited personal and traditional loot system, because people would feel more rewarded for seeing the possibility of winning an item, rather than not knowing. In the end, it’s the same thing rewards-wise.

This would be a great change… there should be a really good chance for it to drop, with everyone getting a chance to roll for it.

Something to be said for traditional loot systems. Across the board this would be a great change to the game. Eliminate personal loot.

I would personally hate that. That system is literally like putting a cake in front of your face and then proceeding to eat it in front of you. In the games I’ve played that has turned people in the same guild against each other and generally left people annoyed and frustrated, especially if its a rare and valuable item.

Its statistically the same thing as the system we got now, but just the way it works leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Also, have you guys considered what if they made Tequatl skins relatively easy to acquire like dungeon skins? Often items are valued not because they look amazing, but simply because they’re rare. If you take a rare item like the Sunless skins and make it so that everyone who wants one can get it, it loses its appeal.

For me, Tequatl just needs 2 changes.

1. Instance it. Raids aren’t supposed to be PUG-able by anyone because it involves a learning process, and Teq is basically GW2’s raid. Make it a guild alliance mission.
2. Give it tokens that you can buy ascended mats, ascended chests (with a LOT of them), T6 materials, and crafting boosters with.

deathklock.4961:

Tera had a dodge mechanic before gw2 did so your wrong about that too, swotor graphics and gw2 are pretty close , the story line is swotor is awsome, the garbage personal story in this game looks like it was put together by middle school kids on a class project, i have yet to finish one, because its one long slide show of yawn and boor.

Less grindy? Do i need to even comment on that. I guess if your happy with exoctics then ya, but if you want full ascended and legendary, i think not. Lets not mention how meaningless pretty much everything you do in this game is, loot wise, oh hey i just spent my time killing that dragon and got 2 silver and a worthless yellow to de (golf clap) i have never played a game before were you literally get bags full of worthless garbage, no matter what you are doing.

I don’t think GW2 really was that original about anything but it either improved upon what other people have done or brought back things from the past which has long died from MMORPGs.

The dodge mechanic isn’t new. Most action MMOs and semi-action MMOs like TSW (sorrrt of) has it. It just that dodging in GW2 feels fluid and part of the combat, as opposed to being this jerky mechanic or a big panic button you push when you really screwed up your positioning.

Loot is quite a relative thing. Now imagine if every event gave you an exotic. Then exotics would become the new rares and everyone would want Ascended drops instead. I don’t feel that everything is meaningless, but more so that some things are too meaningful: why does mindlessly farming champs give you more gold than doing the hardest dungeon in the game?

I agree with the storyline though, its pretty garbage.

I was taken out because there was no point in doing events. You got karma so fast anyways that there was no incentive to do DEs.

He made a bet with Grenth that he’d beat him in tic-tac-toe, and Grenth betted that he’d beat Dhuum. Of course neither knew that it always ends in a draw.

The last we heard from either was ‘You have Dhuumed us both….’

misterDEAN.3027:

You dont know what i want. I was never a big raider. I would do them once or twice just to experience it. I mainly did PVP. Im not going back to wow. And i dont want a game like wow. I played enough wow. What i want is variety deep customization and strategy. And you wont find that in GW2. All you gotta do is DPS.

In gonna ask you what dungeons have you done so far, because the game doesn’t get deep or challenging until you hit max level. ‘You won’t find x’ statements can’t be made until you’ve actually done everything in the game.

Also, are you implying DDs aren’t deep and doesn’t involve much strategy? As a DD/tank in a decade of MMO playing, I beg to disagree.

Besides that, you aren’t just DDing. You are healing, buffing, debuffing, CCing, all at the same time. Especially as a Guardian. If all you do is just DD, then why should anyone take you over a Warrior, who is superior in almost every way as a DD?

I do agree with him about the lack of defensive builds in the game though. We got a lot of them, but there is barely any content which makes you use them. In fact, that’s a massive problem with the game: you can do everything in the game using one build.

Morinmeth.9823:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Morinmeth.9823:

Reason why GW1 players feel so “bleh” about GW2, is because it doesn’t give them the satisfaction of building something unique. It’s a general demand on gaming, people prefer building their specs rather than actually playing the game.

I used to think that, but after playing MMOs for so long, you start realising that in every game there will always be the one best build for each aspect of the game, and pretty much everyone will use that best build until the devs change the meta. So you aren’t really unique if you want to play efficiently.

It’s great if you want to play just for fun though. Good times where I made some awesome builds that are hilarious to watch unfold but are pretty much useless.

That realisation comes from playing games in general, not just mmos. In MTG there are best decks, in MOBA games there are best champions and so on.

But I agree with you generally and that’s what I’m saying; you’re not playing a game to express yourself or anything, you’re playing the game for training your mind, reflexes and decision quality. I don’t want what I play to feel unique because that’s a way to express myself or anything, I want to play a good build and be as efficient as possible with it. If I want self-expression, there’s art for that, not games.

That self expression has taken form in making my toons look as unique (in a good way) as possible. I spend hours on that.

Shademehr.1397:

An Oak Knob.1275:

misterDEAN.3027:

little strategy required just DPS everything

“PvE is ez-mode most of the time. Try Tequatl once.”

Tequatl is easy, try dodgeing once.

Just once? Clearly I’ve been doing it all wrong.

@misterDean.3027 No one here can tell you your opinions are right or wrong. They are opinions, after all. Some of our posts were simply to point out some things that you incorrectly stated. No worries though, there’s no way anyone can know everything there is about this game, or any MMO really, in two weeks. It seems like you’ve made up your mind though, so I’m moving on. No sense in beating a dead horse and frankly there are some folks in here that just seem really angry. o.O

Tequatl isnt really hard in the traditional sense of things. It isn’t a ‘normal’ fight. It’s more like commanding an army in a war. The difficulty doesn’t really come from the fight mechanics themselves, but from organising 80 people and orchestrating your army during the encounter. It’s definitely an epic and impressive encounter the first time you experience it though.

For actual difficulty I’d go with something like TA Aetherpath if you want to retain your sanity, or Arah P4 if you want to live the rest of your GW2 life as a madman.

^ that wouldn’t be a good idea.

1,2: Sometimes kicks are quite legitimate. Like a player with extremely bad attitude or someone afking through the whole thing.

4. If they just get sent to an identical instance, then we can just split up at final boss and each sell the path.

Maybe they went Super Tyrian.

Bad jokes aside. Looks like a graphics glitch, my Sunrise does not shine like that.

Morinmeth.9823:

Reason why GW1 players feel so “bleh” about GW2, is because it doesn’t give them the satisfaction of building something unique. It’s a general demand on gaming, people prefer building their specs rather than actually playing the game.

I used to think that, but after playing MMOs for so long, you start realising that in every game there will always be the one best build for each aspect of the game, and pretty much everyone will use that best build until the devs change the meta. So you aren’t really unique if you want to play efficiently.

It’s great if you want to play just for fun though. Good times where I made some awesome builds that are hilarious to watch unfold but are pretty much useless.

Not really all that excited for GW2. I’m quite happy that Scarlet is finally going to go, we’ll start to see some of the CDI being put into practice, and that they’ll start to work on some of the older lore in the GW universe. But without them telling us what’s goInt to happen in 2014, I havn’t got much to be excited about.

I would actually be nice to see the game take a major hit in terms of player count or bad press though. That usually gets the devs to put more effort in.

I want to see:

- New weapon skills for each weapon, and utility skills for each class. By which I mean a lot of them.
- Guardians getting bows as weapons.
- Raids and at least 1 new dungeon.
- More armors obtainable in game.
- More content designed towards having a defensive setup and forcing you to adapt and change your build.
- A revamp of DE rewards and more DE chains.
- An interesting plot which engages the player.

A lot of comments really sounds like you didn’t tak time to read hat the game is like before buying it. Especially the no trinity parts and the lack of vertical progression in PvP.

I agree with there being too much focus on damage and not enough on defence though. Although some end-game content has a lot of focus on defence, we just don’t have enough of them.

caiomacos.1694:

levionan.8506:

For me, this game isn’t something I’d wanna compare WoW with because WoW’s PvE is far superior; unless one prefers disorganized team-based combat.

I guess it depends on what type of PvE content you are talking about. If you are talking about general quest content, than GW2 DEs are far, far, far, far superior than WoW quests (though PS is just bad). But regarding dungeons / raids, I could aggree that WoW´s are more challenging, although I believe theres some much room for improvements on GW2 dungeons.

I think DEs are better, but maybe it’s because I’ve never really bothered to read most of the quest text in games like WoW because a lot of it is just ‘go get me 5 potatoes’, and frankly if I wanted to read a story, I’d pick up a novel, which is likely to be better. The concept of DEs is simply much better regardless of what you can do with a quest however: it makes the world seem alive. Nothing is more immersion breaking to me than seeing a NPC standing idle doing nothing whilst his village is burning around him.

In terms of dungeons. That’s a hard question. I think the concept behind dungeons is better than WoW. The process of trash-boss-trash-final boss is quite bland abd makes you question why is it called a ‘dungeon’ instead of just ‘instanced area’ at all. Adding a structure to it in terms of puzzles, tasks and obstacles the players need to overcome in reaction to events that occur is a welcomed addition.

In terms of bosses. It’s a very difficult comparison. You got bosses than are mundane to the extremes like the jellyfish beast, to things like the guy in the Thermanova reactor and Lupi for which whoever made them needs to be awarded a degree in General Awesomeness for. You also got bosses which are just so cool, like Arah P2’s first and last bosses, that it makes you forget that it actually has very little mechanics, and bosses which have amazing and interesting mechanics like that disappearing priestess in Arah P4 but just are so annoying to fight that you don’t appreciate any of it.

Spending time with your families?

Bah! You get your family to spend more time with you on GW2!

I think before we talk about horizontal progression itself, we need to address how the game promotes horizontal progression. Looking at a game that does it very well, TSW, the game forces you to constantly rethink your strategy and adapt to new situations, this encourages players to unlock all the skills in the game and get new gear with different stats, and make different builds.

That’s a huge issue with GW2. Almost all the content in PvE (and every piece of content people do for money) can be, and optimaly should be, done in Zerker gear, with a single best traits setup, and with a very small set of useful skills. This means that there is no incentive for people to actually progress horizontally in terms of skills and gear setup.

Following on from that, there is a massive disincentive to horizontally progress in terms of cosmetics. Because everyone just uses 1 set of gear for almost everything, you’ll just be progressing on that one piece of gear. Since transmutation crystals cost quite a bit of gold to obtain and you destroy your existing ‘progress’ on the gear you’re transmuting it unto (unless you use a splitter, which is another huge chunk of gold), there is a huge disincentive to getting more cosmetics.

I know that you guys can’t just get rid of transmutation stones, so I think the next best alternative solution to the cosmetics problem is as follows. Keep transmutation stones, but instead of it transmuting unto an item, it transmutes an item into a wardrobe item which can be used as a cosmetic override at any time on that character.

It can work either like the town clothes system (but works in combat) or like the skins you get from achievements (can be retrieved as a skin infinitely), whichever is the easiest to technically achieve.

^ the problem really is how the mass market thinks. MMO has long become much more of a game, unto the verge of being a second life for a lot of people. And because of that, people consider the efficiencies of this and that and want to progress. Thus you got the attitude we got now.

Anet tried to make this casual game about doing whatever you want but frankly, the mass market didn’t like it. With a dev team of that size and probably pressure from NCSoft, they can’t just settle for a niche MMO appealing to a small market.

At the same time, they experimented with a lot of new concepts which were never tried before. Unsurprisingly, they screwed a lot of stuff up and a lot of things just didn’t work as they wanted them to. E.g normal MMO can work of the decade of the trinity concept which has be tried, tested, and developed, but GW2 had to start from square 1.

So basically they ended up with a game which is very enjoyable and refreshing, with a whole load of flaws but also amazing potential they have to try and build from.

But as for the kind of MMO you want to see, it’s just not going to happen on a large scale because the market doesn’t want it after being conditioned by a decade of the otherwise.

Aza.2105:

Coltain.1395:

Is it good for soloing PVE? Yes it is, especially if you’re newer to the game and want a “safer” choice. That said, there are better options out there (build and gear) that open up more game styles – team support, tanky DPS, DPS, etc.
IMHO it’s a bad habit to rely on AH(+EM) for survivability when you can use dodging, blinds, retaliation, gear choice and active gameplay while freeing you from a very limited build.

I’m not sure why players gauge their performance with trash mobs. The only time blind is useful is for trash.

Because unlike most games, trash can murder you in this game. Take the Grawl shaman fight for example, without his army of lavas, that fight would be just a tank n spank, but with those things around, that fight obliterates PUGs. You got entire dungeons like CM and some parts of Arah that’s basically about handling trash.

Personally, I think AH is terrible in stuff like CoF, areas where if you’re taking too much damage as a Guardian, you’re just doing it wrong. But in places like some high levelled fractals, where you just will take constant noticeable but non-lethal damage simply because there’s so much crud flying around, AH has some merit.

The combination of increased crit power (if you run a knight/Zerker build) and that with it and you having experience, you’ll very rarely need to disengage to heal, it can be a net damage increase, especially with the mass heal of a staff when you switch to it to might everyone.

The other argument for it is if you use Scholar runes. Having its constant heals means its a lot easier to keep up the 10% damage boost because Guardians have a tiny HP pool.

I mostly run in mes/guard/war parties (don’t judge me) and almost only log on to run fractals these days so I might have a biased view though.

Sometimes you also get people who just follow the meta blindly without even knowing why. A good example is people, including the runners, running Zerker in collosus when most of the fractal really isn’t about damage. Even in level 39, getting themselves wiped every 10 seconds from almost unavoidable 2k explosions.

I don’t do much PvP but in PvE, Mesmers are usually wanted more. A thief’s main use is to stealth the party to skip mobs, but what people tend to do is just switch to a thief alt made for that purpose and switch back afterwards.

Yes, thieves also have very high potential DPS, but it’s a lot harder to fulfill that potential than a Warrior, so it often ends up with the Warrior having higher DPS. That and the Warrior having better utility usually means people prefer a Warrior in the DPS slot.

I really think there’s a lot of core issues which needs to be nailed first before doing stuff like guild halls. Character progression being a massive one.

Ricky Da Man.5064:

Not just that but the difficulty of the content once you hit 80 is a bit meh too.

This is something I don’t understand. I keep seeing people complain about the difficulty, but every time I attempt to PUG something like Arah, half the time the party will wipe over and over until the leader rage quits.

The game has difficult content, that’s not the problem, the problem is how the difficult content is not rewarding enough.

For me, SAB gets my thumbs up not because of what it played like, because frankly, I would boot up my old N64 for a platformer with low polygon count and very basic game mechanics.

What was amazing about it was the principles behind it. You get the achievements and loot from pulling your kitten through the content and actually doing challenging stuff instead of repeatedly press F or hoping the RNG gods would smile on you.

And tribulation mode was kitten ed tough. So when you get that skin from it, it isn’t like dungeon skins where you just go ‘oh, another set to my collection’, you felt amazing about it, and others will congratulate you and respect that achievement because it was hard, and there was no back doors like buying a path for it.

We need that to translate into the ‘actual’ game.

The meta is something which quite a controversial issue in any MMO which has buildcrafting. The meta always optmises a single or a small set of playstyles, so if a person doesn’t like playing those styles, they naturally feel that its unfair on them, whilst to the people for whom the meta falls right on their favorite playstyles, they don’t see a problem.

Rhyse.8179:

daimasei.4091:

Yikes! You just described me and my feelings perfectly (except I bought my computer in April prior GW2 release).

I’m certainly not an exception. I’ve been playing single-player games more then ever (Fallout:NV and it’s major mod communities have been getting quite a workout from me lately). I still play EVE, although a bit half-heartedly. Seeing developers constantly turn away from themselves (and, in turn, the comunities they’ve gathered based on that identity) has taken away my ability to feel invested in anything online.

Make no mistake, this loss of faith is about communities and not players. Back at release, I almost immediately found a guild that suited my playstyle perfectly- casual people that like to expore, hang out and do random things for no particular reason (party at the LA fountain!), and just go out and have fun with the game. So what if it takes 2 hours to run AC path 2? We had a good time doing it. GW2 was designed for people like us, and we knew it. Then Ascended gear happened, and everyone knew that Anet had given in after only 3 months. My guild became a ghost town over the course of a single weekend. Now, I can’t find a guild I like at all- either they are highly focused on only one specific gameplay aspect, or just don’t do anything with each other. The ‘come hang out and have fun’ attitude is gone. The shape of the entire GW2 community was forever changed. Without that kind of stability, no online game feels like something I’m willing to sink time and money into anymore.

The problem is that a casual MMO just doesn’t really happen. Loot is a huge factor in MMOs no matter what form it comes in, and people want loot fast.

There’s only 24 hours in a day and people want the most out of it. As exciting as any content gets, it gets repetitive after a while and after that point, people just want to run it as fast as they can and grab the loot. No, its not really fun, but MMOs have never been purely about fun in the first place.

The way it happened was that they had this grand and fabulous idea of creating a constantly changing world with a plot which evolves around you, something which no other MMO has achieved.

But then they fell far short of that because, as mentioned, no one has achieved it so no one knew how. So we ended up with this crud.

Valanga.5942:

Flissy.4093:

Shizlam.4310:

It’s called Guild Wars 2 for a reason

>Guild Wars 2 different than Guild Wars 1
>People complain
>Call of Duties or Battlefields all the same
>People complain

Dev’s can’t win.

Actually they could… But it’s easier to just don’t make the game better and keep milking grinders…

Except for when they do, no one wants to play it.

Look at TSW for example. A modern setting, the best wardrobe function I’ve seen in a game, 525 primary skills, 50 or so auxiliary weapon skills, and about 60 more augment skills you can play around with, and a storyline thats better than most console games, with a ton of interesting side missions in every zone (with their own cutscenes etc). You could even say its like an improved version of GW1.

Look at how low the subscription numbers went before they had to turn in B2P….

And armor looks really is quite subjective. Personally I found about maybe 3 sets of armor in GW1 good-looking, and only remembers Lich’s Raiment as being amazing. The most prestigious armor in the game, Obsidian, look like crud, and the mesmer class in its entirety had nothing which didn’t make me question if the devs actually pur any effort in.

GW2’s armor skins certainly isnt amazing when compared to games like Vindictus, but its step up from GW1 for me personally.

Bagel.4598:

Remember Guild Wars 1?
Remember Locked chests and lock picks?
Remember Locked chests were random in zones and lockpicks were bought for 1.5 silver?
Remember there was a chance at a blue/green/yellow from locked chests?
Remember how that went towards a title?
I can’t think of anyway how that perfectly good system could fit in GW2 with some changes/additions.
But hey, GW2 is an all new improvement and advancement on the game, right?

That system is kind of like the tri-key chest we got. The BLC key system is basically a money-grab which I wouldn’t be surprised to be the brainchild of than Nexon micro-transaction guy.

Flissy.4093:

a t s e.9614:

ESO will be dead 2 weeks right after release

No it won’t. I’ve stayed away from any ESO content, but even if it’s as horrible as rumors say, the number of Elder Scrolls fan will ensure success in that MMO.
.

That alone ain’t gonna be enough. Just look at FF14 1.0. One of the biggest IPs for RPGs in the world and just look at how hard that flopped. I’d say the FF fanbase is even bigger than Elder Scroll’s because its older and much more internationally recognized.

Flissy.4093:

Xae Isareth.1364:

And TESO/Wildstar has a lot to worry about. WS is competiting right in WoW’s back yard, down to the artwork and graphics (after WoD’s character model upgrade): no one has managed to out-WoW WoW. They need a reason for people to play it rather than WoW (other than just semi-slapstick humor), which is what I’m not seeing.

One good reason is you can purchase subscription time with in-game gold, much like you could in Aion. That alone is a reason for people to “check it out”, especially given you get 30 days free if you purchase the game (of course). Chances are, plenty of people will stay playing WS to keep it afloat for a very long time.

That’s a double-edged sword. You can buy game time, but you can also presumably sell game time. That instantly stirs up the pay 2 win argument.

RuneScape did that recently with their bonds system. The reaction from the players were not good, with a few player mods even expressing outrage and quitting.

Besides, that doesn’t make the gameplay different or good.

Aeonblade.8709:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Tru Reptile.6058:

Aarean.5398:

Good job anet its definitely a deserved award. Im so glad they could give gw2 its props without even mentioning wow. The naysayers get over it. Its over with and no mmo out nor that will come out next year will be able to compete with the sheer level of injected content at the pace they manage to keep up with. Wildstar. Teso. They wont be able to keep up. Anet has a gold star that wont be beaten for a long time.

Too bad quantity =/= quality. As long as Wildstar and TESO don’t follow Anet’s method of delivering ‘content’ then they have nothing to worry about.

You need a balance of the 2. Too little quality and you got a bad game, too little quantity and you got a boring game.

And TESO/Wildstar has a lot to worry about. WS is competiting right in WoW’s back yard, down to the artwork and graphics (after WoD’s character model upgrade): no one has managed to out-WoW WoW. They need a reason for people to play it rather than WoW (other than just semi-slapstick humor), which is what I’m not seeing.

TESO is already being bashed over its P2P model and shallow combat (the combat on ES games has never been complex and sophisticated but it’s a MMO this time). Not a good starting point.

…What? I’m assuming you haven’t played the ESO beta… Anet needs to get their butts in overdrive before April.

No I havn’t. But that doesn’t mean I havn’t seen the bashing. And looking at what game play vids they have released, it’s worrying.

Normally this close to release (on 4 months), the devs would show videos about the gane mechanics and even explain how specific encounters work. ESO hasn’t shown much regarding actual enemy mechanics other than that goblin boss, which was pretty much a spamfest.

They went lengths to show how well enemies are designed graphically and audio-wise, but I havn’t yet seen an encounter with interesting and sophisticated mechanics other than tank n spank.

Tru Reptile.6058:

Aarean.5398:

Good job anet its definitely a deserved award. Im so glad they could give gw2 its props without even mentioning wow. The naysayers get over it. Its over with and no mmo out nor that will come out next year will be able to compete with the sheer level of injected content at the pace they manage to keep up with. Wildstar. Teso. They wont be able to keep up. Anet has a gold star that wont be beaten for a long time.

Too bad quantity =/= quality. As long as Wildstar and TESO don’t follow Anet’s method of delivering ‘content’ then they have nothing to worry about.

You need a balance of the 2. Too little quality and you got a bad game, too little quantity and you got a boring game.

And TESO/Wildstar has a lot to worry about. WS is competiting right in WoW’s back yard, down to the artwork and graphics (after WoD’s character model upgrade): no one has managed to out-WoW WoW. They need a reason for people to play it rather than WoW (other than just semi-slapstick humor), which is what I’m not seeing.

TESO is already being bashed over its P2P model and shallow combat (the combat on ES games has never been complex and sophisticated but it’s a MMO this time). Not a good starting point.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Flissy.4093:

Fine exactly how it is, boss attacks are extremely telegraphed.

Extremely poorly telegraphed is what you mean. Ever looked at the way other games handle this? In a game with this many players, and this many particle effects, the tells could be a lot better.

Take the Legendary Dredge Powersuit boss for example in the dredge fractal. He has a massive agony attack that has no tell, unless you spot his little stability icon, and then dodge twice.

Now compare it to a game with good boss tells:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRsCBnuk0Xs

I don’t think anyone will dare claim that this boss is easy due to his obvious tells.

If you did the fight a couple if times, that attack becomes extremely obvious.

But you’re right in easy tells doesn’t make a boss easy. Lupi has some of the most obvious tells in the game, but judging by how many PUGs wipe on him over and over, he’s clearly quite difficult,

A better solution would be fix the ridiculous particle effects. We don’t need every 2 attacks to look like a small nuclear bomb just went off. Then boss animations would be enough for anyone to spot attacks.

It isn’t in GW2 because the devs want a gane less focused on managing UIs and watching status bars, and more of an action-orientated MMO, but … particle effects.

Because it would be a massive waste of effort. People will only do the dungeon once or twice, or get carried through it by guildies (and this removing its purpose entirely), and then never do it again.

I think we need a new endgame dungeon with challenging mechanics and unique rewards as opposed to a levelling dungeon for the extremely low levelled which gets done once and then ignored.

The ability to make my clones dance. So my mes can get backup dancers.

The gane has many glaring flaws but it really is quite monumental that they managed to make a MMO where you don’t need to constantly be forced to play keep-up and can just do whatever you want.

And no, Ascended gear isn’t playing keep up. I actually did WvW in half-rares, getting 500 BoHs from player kills only.

Draco.2806:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Frankly speaking, most people don’t enjoy playing healer or tank. Most people prefers playing DPS. Evidence? Just look at the LFG of every MMO since forever. So taking out the trinity doesn’t change things much from the perspective of most players, except being DPS now is more involving.

Actually, “Trinity” is a mechanism of encouraging teamwork between players.

Take it out, and you get The Zerg.

GW2 had an opportunity to replace very rigid class roles (which are the one downside of Trinity and such) with dynamic or universal ones – but it didn’t. As a result, teamwork is non-existent in majority of everything, and effectiveness of most classes comes down to: do you want to play in a fun and enjoyable way, or an actually effective one?

If you have to make that choice, you’re playing a poorly-balanced game.

In most game’s the choice comes down to if you want to play an effective class or a fun one. Imbalance isn’t something new. And there will always be optimal builds and fun builds.

As for teamwork. Have you done a 30+ fotm? Most of the game doesn’t require much teamwork but when the game does, oh boy it does. But I agree we need more content at that kind of difficulty.

Frankly speaking, most people don’t enjoy playing healer or tank. Most people prefers playing DPS. Evidence? Just look at the LFG of every MMO since forever. So taking out the trinity doesn’t change things much from the perspective of most players, except being DPS now is more involving.

The trinity is a broken concept. Having the entire encounter reliant on 2 people doing their jobs properly is just stupid. Have you ever seen a skirmish irl where if the medic dies the entire battalion commits suicide? No.

Not mentioning it massively restricts what you can do with fights. The Thermanova boss would have never happened because it doesn’t need healers or tanks.

As for Zerg Zerg Zerg, I question if OP has ever done high level fractals or dungeons like Arah. I would not be surprised if half the playbase has never seen more than AC3 a d Cof1.

P2W: yes, it’s pay to win. Except half the stuff arent obtainable via paying (fractal skins etc). You can pay for a legendary but hundreds of dollars for pixels? Go ahead.

Also, the kind of P2W people are talking about us starting to become a common sight, even in P2P. You can buy bonds for RS, PLEX for EVE, game time for WildStar, etc. I don’t like it but I guess business is business, what can I do?

I’m very surprised the OP hasn’t mentioned anything about character progression, which is the elephant in the room.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The thing everyone seems to imply in this thread is that Anet just made Ascebded stuff to screw over their own manifesto and annoy everyone.

As a fairly large studio with hundreds of staff, working with millions in budget, in sure they probably weighed the benefits and costs of adding Ascended gear before introducing it.

FWIW, I agree that cost-effectiveness was a major factor in considering how to respond to the complaints of “nothing to do/work for.” It was a lot more cost effective to create a shallow stat grind than to fix cosmetic progression to enable an ongoing, robust cosmetic endgame.

However, I think that the initial negative reaction to Ascended prompted a shift in how Ascended was rolled out. After all, this gear type started as “available in fractals only,” and has since evolved into “put time into the game in a way that utilizes the content that was already developed.”

I’m not talking about that kind of cost. I’m talking about the benefit of giving the game enough sticking power to retain the mass market vs the cost of annoying people like those on the forums.

I agree with everything apart from lowering prices in BLT and dungeons/temples. Why should they be lowered? Temple/dungeon armor is easy enough for anyone know wants them to get already as they are, to the extent there’s nothing prestigious about getting any of the dungeon/temple sets.

The BLT is like a store in real life, prices are adjusted according to profit maximization, which is what companies do.

stale.9785:

Same as always for me – they did a complete 180 on their core philosophy regarding gear. That betrayed every single paying customer who bought the game based on 5 years of advertising/interviews/forum talks and blogging. Having another tier of gear is wrong. Making it the grindiest thing possible is wrong. All around, they screwed the pooch.

Since it’s in-game, and not going away, they should at least make it something that is easy to get. Say, 500 of any dungeon token per piece, or 20 laurels. Anything, that’ll put us back on “You WILL have max gear by lvl 80.”

The whole point of Ascended gear was that its something you don’t need to do anything in the game, and has a pretty minimal to non-existent impact on WvW, but takes a while to achieve so that progressions don’t get bored whilst the people who don’t want to grind won’t get steamrolled in PvP or kicked out of every party in PvE.

That would completely defeat the purpose of it and they then may as well just get rid of Ascended gear and go back to exotics (which will lead to a ton of complaints that there’s nothing to do).

It’s defo worth it if you want all the HoM unlocks, otherwise, personally, I think it would be very much like playing an old Pokemon game sort of thing.

The game just feels to me very outdated in terms of graphics and the general game engine itself. It missions and campaigns are pretty cool sometimes but not really worth playing IMO because you’ll find better stuff in a single player game, or a lot of more recent MMOs like TSW (which to me kind of feels like GW1’s spiritual successor).

So, you definitely wouldn’t regret buying it but it probably won’t blow your mind either.