Guild Wars 2

Tom Gore.4035:

Exotic set is supposed to be easy and cheap to get. GW2 is not a gear grind game. Now legendaries and ascended are a different thing, however. Neither of them provide any game-breaking advantage over exotic, though, so there is no point shelving off a lot of gold for them.

I would say traditional MMOs like WoW are “stat grind” games, whereas GW2 is a “skin grind” game.

Anet’s policy on discussing the future of the game and the details of development is really bad. Lots of new companies nowadays openly discuss everything with their fans. That openness drives development in a direction that most suites the audience. The reason is because with openness comes responsibility and accountability. The fans hold them responsible to deliver on the things they want. It becomes the developers best interest to do what the fans want, when they want it. Those developers make money by making promises and then keeping them.

Anet on the other hand is vague at best and 100% silent at worst. They have no incentive to meet our demands. They are like a flakey friend who says he will pick you up from school on Wednesday, but never shows. Anet said they would have precursor crafting before the end of 2013. How’s that coming along? Anet’s policy allows them to make money by stringing us along with vague ideas and unfounded hopes. It allows Anet to continue making a profit without ever being held accountable for delivering the product we want.

Frankly, Anet’s veil of secrecy is making them lazy and apathetic. They have no responsibility to us because they can make plenty of money from the gem store.

Lets just dumb the game down even more by nerfing this semi-useful boon! In for a penny, in for a pound am i right??? This is Casual Wars 2 after all.

Forget that you can choose to stop attacking.

Forget that you can strip boons with certain skills.

Retal is an offense to my desire to “play how i want” because “play how i want” for some reason always means turning my brain off and winning every fight without trying!

I’ll never understand people that simply don’t like pvp. You guys are like my cousin who doesn’t like chocolate… not allergic to chocolate… not afraid of chocolate… chocolate never hurt him… he just doesn’t like the taste… bugs the crap out of me.

I’m a proud owner of one of these. It used to be town clothes, but when Anet scrapped town clothes, they turned most of them into tonics, and the rest into skins… I want this T-shirt as a skin… Or at least a costume. I want to be able to wear it in combat and mix/match it with other pants and stuff… Having it as a tonic is just… useless… It collects dust in my bank. Please change it Anet!

Am I missing something or did the old system not have several WvW and PvP only achievements as well? There was always a PvP match completer, a WvW capturer, etc… It’s not like all 10 of those dailies were PvE. Seems to me we have the same system in new wrapping paper…

I’ve been talking about this idea since I heard WP mention it in one of his videos a few weeks back.

I would rather use Vitality to scale endurance regen, because I feel like Toughness should be used to address the Defiant mechanic. If they made it so that you can strip 3-5 stacks of Defiant at 2500 toughness, you could truly perform the “control” role Anet talked about before launch. 2500 Toughness is not 2500 armor. Check a gw2 build editor to see just how hard it is to reach 2500 toughness. This would be a specifically non-zerker build that can effectively reduce a boss’s DPS, and thus the longevity of the party. You would be tanky and deal low damage, but you could still help the party immensely.

The whole point of this log-in rewards is to bribe you into logging in where you can see the latest gem store sales. They should just cut out the middle-man and have a gem store website with a big quaggan-shaped button that simply transfers money from your bank account to Anet. Why should Anet waste valuable development resources on fun things when they can continue peddling the gem store…

Honestly, Anet should cut out the middle man. They should add a gem store section to guildwars2.com. Why bother logging into the game when we could just buy gems straight off the website? Hell, why even have a game at all? There should just be a big quaggan-shaped button on the front page that transfers money from your bank account directly to Anet.

DanteZero.9736:

Something like this has been requested a while back and I think the devs listened up. Also, Colin mentioned this change in one of his posts when he talked about what to expect for 2013.

Children often beg their parents for cookies and toys and things. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to spoil them.

This change should be an insult to everyone’s intellect.

“You guys aren’t good enough to earn your rewards, so we are just going to give them to you for logging in. Oh by the way did you check out the latest gem store sales? What a coincidence there’s new gem store sales while we are bribing you to log in!”

Luna.9640:

Xenon.4537:

The OP (the bolded part anyway) is a steaming pile of hyperbole. I would be happy with 5% of what he mentioned in an expansion. That 5% would still be more than what the LS has given us.

And how much you are willing to pay for 5% of what I’ve listed ? (5% is close to Dry Top+Silverwastes+Aetherblade path+Marionette fight+ maybe the latest fragtals)

So how much you pay for that ? (10$ ?)

I never said I wasn’t willing to pay for content. There’s $50 burning a hold in my wallet for an expansion. A real expansion. I would never pay for piecemeal junk like Aetherblade path or the Marrionette fight. I hate paying for content piecemeal.

If you want my personal definition of an expansion here you go:

• New continent (roughly 10 open world maps)
• New world boss events (on par with triple trouble wurm)
• 3-5 new dungeons
• One new armor set and weapon set per dungeon
• A cohesive storyline with a complete beginning, middle, and end. Totaling at least 10 hours of story-driven gameplay.
• 1 new playable race

~~~ PLUS~~~

Either

• A new type of weapon per class
• 5-10 new traits per class
• 3-5 new utility skills per class
• 1 new elite skill per class

Or

• 1 new playable class

This is really the bare minimum that countless other games have given in their expansions. There’s no reason Anet can’t do the same. They’ve done it in GW1. Anet has some of the greatest artists in the industry. Personally I think it’s a tragedy that their talent is kept on such a short leash in GW2.

Rozbuska.5263:

Daily monthly change looks very cool for me. But log-in rewards? WTF? I know you want keep players coming back but this idea is bit too much dont you think? Rewarding players for participation instead of win is generaly bad idea and its something kitten ruining game industry.

#LogInWars2

This was a completely unsolicited change. It seems like a nice change on paper (obviously everyone is worried about laurels) but its nice of Anet to give us stuff like this.

My problem is with the why. Why did Anet spend time on this instead of fixing more pressing issues? My theory is this is the other half to the NPE “solution.” The NPE was to get new players to stick around. These free log-in rewards are to keep old players logging in.

Think about it. Everything Anet has been focused on developing are initiatives to incentivise players to buy the game, never uninstall it, and keep logging in at least every 2 weeks, if not more frequently. The more frequently they can get you to log in, the more chances they have to float Gem store stuff in front of you. That’s just more potential revenue.

The OP (the bolded part anyway) is a steaming pile of hyperbole. I would be happy with 5% of what he mentioned in an expansion. That 5% would still be more than what the LS has given us.

Honestly… I’m starting to feel insulted by all of the free rewards in this game. You can’t trip over a skritt without being handed a champ bag full of ascended crafting materials and rares. Now you are being handed free stuff just for logging in? What happened to earning rewards? Where is the challenge? What is the point of playing if you just hand me free stuff for nothing?

Why are you REALLY doing this, Anet? Are you still losing players after the NPE? Is this yet another short-term attempt to boost sales? When are you going to start working on long term solutions like say… I dunno… An expansion??

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

munkiman.3068:

Pretty sure his point was EotN was the only expansion, Factions and Nightfall were stand alone games which didn’t require owning the others. Also, EotN only expanded Prophecies. I think his hope would be the same/similar model to the first game.

The fact that Factions and Nightfall could be played as a standalone game doesn’t mean they weren’t expansions. They were both. Saying that they weren’t “true expansions” suggests that they were less than that, where in truth they were far more.
So, GW1 did have three expansions. Two of which could be also played as separate games.

It’s true that the original standalone games Nightfall and Factions were also expansions. They added both skills and character professions to the game as well as a ton of new areas, and even, in the case of Factions, new types of PvP.

No one can say that Factions and Nightfall didn’t expand Guild Wars significantly even if they were also stand alone games.

Oh my god, thank you Vayne. You have no idea how much it drives me crazy when people try to act like Factions and Nightfall weren’t expansions. They were stand-alone, but they still expanded on the original game.

I love this game as it is. All I really want out of it is a series of true expansion packs and more PvE endgame content like dungeons or raids.

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Do you know how much 2500 toughness is? You can’t achieve it through berserker armor… You need almost entirely knights or some other primary toughness gear, plus food. I agree Toughness is an odd stat to chose here, but the idea is to make non-dps stats worth taking in PvE. A berserker hammer guardian would only take away 1 stack of Defiant. He would need to be a bunker guardian to be able to strip more than 1 stack at a time. Then his DPS would suffer, but he would be able to benefit the team in a new way by mitigating the boss’s damage through CC. In retrospect maybe 5 stacks per CC is too much. Maybe it should be 3.

Vitality is another story. It’s harder to balance that idea, but I couldn’t think of any other stat to tie to endurance regeneration. Right now dodging is OP because every build has the same access to it. Vigor is out of control. Just about every zerker build has 90% or more uptime on vigor. Builds that don’t can easily take some shared vigor from an ally. Maybe vitality isn’t the right answer, but I think endurance should be looked at. It should be harder for zerkers to just dodge all the time without someone in an actual non-zerker support build providing vigor or some other form of endurance boost.

My suggestions for adjusting the PvE meta:

• Add more enemies throughout the game that only take condition damage (like wurm husks)
• Add a new condition called Hemorrhage that gets applied whenever Bleed reaches 25 stacks. Hemorrhage is twice as strong as Burning and lasts 3 seconds and does not stack. It is only meant to proc when Bleed gets too high on PvE mobs, and give an actual benefit to condi players working together.
• Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.
• Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.
• Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

This skill does not need to be adjusted for the sake of your loot… Pull out a ranged weapon or use a leap skill.

Everyone can DPS. Engie is OP in pvp. Its also good in PvE but no one realizes it.

Astralporing.1957:

Xenon.4537:

Again, there’s nothing in there that prevents an asura from learning dervish techniques from a human master, and then passing those teachings on to other asura, or norn, or sylvari, etc etc.

Of course. On the other hand, those “techniques” are prayers. Learning them would let you to call up on human gods, but the gods would still need to answer. And i really doubt they would answer those prayers for beings that didn’t worship them.
It’s not even sure dervishes can still exist since gods have completely withdrawn and stopped responding to their believers, but at least human racial skills show, that some prayers are still answered. To humans. Not to Asura, Norn or Sylvari. And most certainly not to Charr.

(of course, the magic went through such retcon in GW2 that some elements of the lore do not even have sense anymore, especially in Charr history, so mangling it even more to introduce Dervishes would be okay, i guess)

From what I understand, the eternal alchemy vision shows us that every type of magic is represented as a separate entity or realm. Each one is tied to a dragon, and they also match up conveniently with the human gods and their domains (underworld and FoW). Now the gods are gone, but the magic is still here. There’s so much magic in fact that the dragons woke up to start eating it. Wind and earth prayers are just a way of accessing magical energy, same as elementalism, nature magic, holy magic, and necromancy. Necromancy didn’t die out when Grenth left, so why should wind/earth prayers stop working for the same reason?

By the way I’m sure everyone remembers M.O.X.? An Asura-made golem with the capability of performing all the spells, prayers, avatars, and skills of a dervish. If an Asura can build a dervish golem, I daresay he has at least some understanding of dervish magic. Which means dervish abilities are not limited to one race. Just look at all the non-human monsters that had dervish skills in GW1.

Honestly lore is about the weakest reason to keep dervish out of GW2. Game mechanics are far more pertinent. A GW2 dervish would essentially be a guardian who consumes his own boons for bonus effects. Is that really different enough from a guardian? I think the discussion should focus more on coming up with a creative way to tweak the mechanics of the dervish to make it fill a more distinct role in the context of the GW2 meta.

Oh look, its this thread again!

It sounds like you really want to play a mesmer, OP. You should give it another shot. Condi mesmer is getting stronger over time, though it still needs work. It fully embodies the staff-wielding mage archetype you are looking for. If you want to be meta, you should go for a sword/sword + sword/focus phantasm build. They are a spellsword playstyle that has some of the strongest DPS of the class (if you can keep the phantasms alive). GS mesmer is for shatter builds. Shatter is fun and powerful for general use, but it’s not the only way to play, and it’s actually the worst way to play in dungeons.

For exploring I recommend using a pure shatter build with centaur runes and a focus. You can maintain swiftness easily, and a shatter build bursts down enemies like no one’s business in open world. Don’t run phantasm for open world. Phantasm is for longer fights because the damage builds up over time. Phantasm does tons of damage over a long period, wherekittenter does a lot of damage right away. The phantasm damage adds up to more over time, but it takes a lot longer to get there. In the open world all you need is a good shatter bomb.

Wolfey.3407:

Xenon.4537:

Wolfey.3407:

Xenon.4537:

@Wolfey.3407

Again, there’s nothing in there that prevents an asura from learning dervish techniques from a human master, and then passing those teachings on to other asura, or norn, or sylvari, etc etc. Just because they have avatars means nothing. The human gods are clearly linked to the eternal alchemy anyway. It’s all part of one great thing. That’s the whole point of the living story so far; the eternal alchemy, the dragons, the gods, etc are all linked.

I played a dervish too and I played GW1 for 5 years. You don’t need to throw wiki copy/pasta at me, thanks.

Kk be right back, putting on a head dress and buying a bow, I’m going to be a Seminole Chief even though im white., but hey I live in Florida so I know what the seminole tribe is at least. I just made the same exact point that you just did, don’t you dare scream racism.

Are you suggesting that it’s impossible for a white person to learn about Native American culture? What does that have to do with guild wars 2?

Hmm? Are you so highly offended that I showed something from Guild Wars 1 that you missed the comparison completely?

I’ll break it down for you If you get confused let me know and I’ll put it in spanish or french for you ^-^

Dervish: HOLY WARRIOR Very Spiritual People.
They Believe in the HUMAN GODS their outfits are in dedication to the HUMAN GODS.

The Seminole tribes wardrobe is done on a spiritual level, each feather, bead, hide means something to them spiritually.

Just as it would be offensive for an Asura who does not believe in the human gods to wear a traditional HUMAN DERVISH OUTFIT, it would be offensive for me to wear Seminole Chiefs Outfit,

I don’t believe in their religion, I believe in a higher power which is all that we really have in common spiritually.

With your logic that other races can wear a Holy Classes Outfit because they have a common ground that they believe in a higher power (O WAIT CHARRS DONT BELIEVE IN GODS OR A HIGHER POWER BUT THEIR LEADERS) I digress, back on topic, with your logic that other races can wear and desecrate the principals and morals of a class based on a common conception, you are saying it is fully ok for me to dress as a Seminole Chief and partake in their rituals as their spiritual leader.

After all, I read a book by a Seminole chief which would be the same as your comparison of a human teaching an Asura or CHARR.

Go a step further, this will probably have you lost and confuse so try and catch up,

Lets say an atheist learns about Catholicism from a Priest, does that by virtue of him learning Catholicism from a priest give that atheist the right to dress up as a priest and preach Catholicism even though he doesn’t believe in their foundations?

You seem to be the one who is offended by the notion that an asura could learn to be a dervish. Who is the racist here? Real-world bigotry has nothing to do with this video game. If you think the game should be limited by real-world bigotry… I just… I don’t even. There is nothing in-game that prevents a human priest from teaching another race how to be a dervish.

By the way, if you watch any shows like The Atheist Experience, you will find out a lot of atheists know more about the bible than actual christians. In fact, one of the quickest ways to become an atheist is to read the bible.

I’m not going to entertain any further religious debates with you. Such topics are inflammatory and serve no constructive purpose. I’m open to discussion about anything within the context of the game itself.

sorudo.9054:

Xenon.4537:

sorudo.9054:

No Walking.6349:

fireflyry.7023:

Rits plz.

kthx

The role of Rits is pretty covered by Engis. Almost exactly.

erm no, not even close.
engi’s are more a different sub class, rit’s buff allies, heals allies, supports allies and does massive damage.
engi’s however are more the stationary attackers with self made backup, that’s about it.
they are children in terms of DMG compare to a rit, not to mention how well rits are made to have total CC throughout the whole battle field, something the engi can only dream of having.

maybe they seem the same because they can make turrets but they are miles apart from even imitating rit’s.

Are you playing the same engineer class I am? Because my engie can do all those things…

so they can buff the weapons of other characters, heal from a distance, do massive damage (equal to that if an ele), it’s able to support allies, enhance condition effects?
i am a GW veteran, i know the difference….

Engies can share buffs by throwing elixirs and deploying traited turrets. It’s not the same as weapon spells, granted, but this is GW2 not GW1. The mechanics are quite different. Engies can also support allies with combo fields, supply drop, and thrown elixirs. Engineers are extremely powerful condition dealers, so idk where you got that from. And have you ever used an HGH or Static Discharge build? Engies can deal a kitten-load of epic damage…

Galen Grey.4709:

question is though takes how many people 1 month to make a map like dry top?

Depends on what you mean by “make.” If you mean the entire completed release, probably at least 20 people. If you mean just the physical environment, probably around 5.

As for Make magic buttons there is and there isnt.

The only sort of “magic button” would be some kind of instancer script, which would take a programmer significant time to build anyway. That’s what the program tools designers do. They build actual tools for artists and programmers. I have a few of them on my friends list actually.

You mentioned blades of grass for example. I very much doubt, in fact I am nearly sure that grass isnt simply modelled as individual models and physically placed one by one on the map.

Grass is modeled using several polygon planes. They make a patch of grass and then copy/paste that around the map. However it’s not as simple as making 1 patch of grass. They make a bunch of slightly different ones to avoid making it look artificial.

Its more likely they create a few models, mark areas on the map where they want grass to “grow” and the engine will place those models.

That would be the instancer thing I mentioned, and honestly it’s the same amount of work to mark a spot on the map as it is to copy/paste a model. Both actions require the artist to click a spot on the map.

(well in many cases grass isnt even models they generally use billboards for grass)

If you mean polygon planes, sure. That would count as a model though. All models are made of polygons. There are things like sprites, but grass in video games hasn’t been made of sprites since like 1995. Sprites are used nowadays for particle emitters.

Now Gw2 does do some interesting things. Like there are seemly a large variety of grass and flowers that make it seems like grass isnt simply copy and pasted.

Exactly! They do seem to have a lot of different-looking plants, almost as if they were hand crafted each time! That’s because they were. Each different-looking plant was custom made. That’s the only way to do it. They can copy/paste some of those around, but they make sure to have a lot of variety and never place the same copy too close to each other.

However I dont expect they do that by individually create a separate texture for every billboard. There probably is some randomizing transformation magic they do on the textures themselves. If I had to guess I’d say they have the engine map multiple levels to every build board and do transformations on layers. That still means compared to other games they’d need to develop more billboard textures but its still a lot less work then creating and placing individual models.

I’m sorry but this is just not how it works. Like I said, they hand craft each model out of polygon planes. The planes are then given a texture. Then they copy/paste the model throughout the map, while making sure never to put two copies of the same model too close to each other. This gives the illusion of natural vegetation. Same deal with rocks and debris and everything else.

Grass on a map is probably more like a 2 – 3 day job then it is a 2 – 3 week job.

Grass may be done in 2-3 days, but then there’s rocks, rubble, lost badges, gathering nodes, dynamic events, buildings, mountains, set dressing, NPCs, the sky box, enemies, etc etc, the list goes on. By the way They don’t just dive right in to modeling all of this. They spend at least a week in pre-production. That means they plan every nit-picking detail out on paper. It’s the only way they are able to make sure the map flows together properly. None of this would be possible without pre-production. And again, they give at least a week or two of post-production to QA testing to make sure there are as few bugs as possible.

Don’t take this as an attack. I just want to clear up misconceptions. I’m a game design/animation student, and it breaks my heart when people don’t appreciate or understand what goes on behind the scenes.

sorudo.9054:

No Walking.6349:

fireflyry.7023:

Rits plz.

kthx

The role of Rits is pretty covered by Engis. Almost exactly.

erm no, not even close.
engi’s are more a different sub class, rit’s buff allies, heals allies, supports allies and does massive damage.
engi’s however are more the stationary attackers with self made backup, that’s about it.
they are children in terms of DMG compare to a rit, not to mention how well rits are made to have total CC throughout the whole battle field, something the engi can only dream of having.

maybe they seem the same because they can make turrets but they are miles apart from even imitating rit’s.

Are you playing the same engineer class I am? Because my engie can do all those things…

Wolfey.3407:

Xenon.4537:

@Wolfey.3407

Again, there’s nothing in there that prevents an asura from learning dervish techniques from a human master, and then passing those teachings on to other asura, or norn, or sylvari, etc etc. Just because they have avatars means nothing. The human gods are clearly linked to the eternal alchemy anyway. It’s all part of one great thing. That’s the whole point of the living story so far; the eternal alchemy, the dragons, the gods, etc are all linked.

I played a dervish too and I played GW1 for 5 years. You don’t need to throw wiki copy/pasta at me, thanks.

Kk be right back, putting on a head dress and buying a bow, I’m going to be a Seminole Chief even though im white., but hey I live in Florida so I know what the seminole tribe is at least. I just made the same exact point that you just did, don’t you dare scream racism.

Are you suggesting that it’s impossible for a white person to learn about Native American culture? What does that have to do with guild wars 2?

I would rather they make us pay upfront for the content and give the rewards free for completing the content. That means the priority for making money goes to the quality and quantity of the content.

Instead we have black lion weapons and gem store armors. Pay for the rewards up front and play the content later for free. Where is the incentive for the content to be fun? The only incentive here is to make the gem store skins as pretty as possible.

@Wolfey.3407

Again, there’s nothing in there that prevents an asura from learning dervish techniques from a human master, and then passing those teachings on to other asura, or norn, or sylvari, etc etc. Just because they have avatars means nothing. The human gods are clearly linked to the eternal alchemy anyway. It’s all part of one great thing. That’s the whole point of the living story so far; the eternal alchemy, the dragons, the gods, etc are all linked.

I played a dervish too and I played GW1 for 5 years. You don’t need to throw wiki copy/pasta at me, thanks.

Silvia.9130:

Genlog.4983:

i stile think selling a dungeon for the final boss is a abuse
and i hope some1 from Anet can confirm this

a dungeon run is for fun for every1 and it must be free also
and not to be come a model to earn money

It has been stated and confirmed that selling a dungeon is not an abuse and is licit to do, unless the seller/s has used exploitable cheats to complete the dungeon.
Everyone can run dungeons for free, the fact sellers exist don’t imply anyone is forced to buy unless it’s what they want.

This is correct. And the fact that sellers exist is not the players fault. It’s Anet’s fault for designing the dungeon poorly. If their original goal is for the dungeon to be cleared by 5 people, then they failed in their design, and the design should be adjusted accordingly. Oh but wait… they killed their dungeon team… such a great plan!

Devildoc.6721:

Dervish won’t work for any race but humans.

If they retcon the lore that much to make it work I’m done.

The only thing that makes a Dervish a Dervish as far as lore goes, is they are in tune with the earth and air in a magical way. It’s just a form of elementalism mixed with holy magic. The same reason other races can be Rangers, Guardians or Elementalists lets them also be Dervish.

This must be Blipp’s doing. Master Blipp was known for his redundancies as well as his redundancies.

A traditional expansion has a bunch of things, typically:

Content:

• new lands
• new enemies
• new dungeons

Rewards:

• new weapons
• new armors
• new minipets

The problem with the current setup of GW2 is that you get all of the Content stuff for free (if you log in on time), but 90% of the rewards are locked behind a paywall. We buy most of our minis with gems. We buy most of our weapon and armor skins with gems.

What’s the point of content if you can just buy most of the rewards separately? Is it not more satisfying to pay for an expansion, and then play the content, and be rewarded?

Here’s another question: Why the effing kittens can’t we have a gem store AND an expansion?

I believe a traditional expansion system is far more satisfying and honest as a business practice, and as a player experience.

I think the glow needs to be lowered. I like the idea, but it’s so bright that I can’t tell what it is I’ve got. It’s just a bunch of white squares.

If I had to come up with a way to bring back the Dervish, it would be through an expansion into Elona. The Elonians would bring us teachings of earth and wind prayers and mysticism. The class would operate by providing a lot of boons similar to the guardian. However many of his utility and weapon skills would consume boons for bonus effects. The class would be a lot like a Necromancer, only instead of redirecting conditions, he consumes his own boons for spike damage, healing, and other effects. He would be able to change certain boons into other ones too. For example he could turn protection into stability, or retaliation into might.

The problem I see with this class would be that he would be overpowered in groups where he has access to lots of shared boons. However alone, he would be extremely weak unless he can generate enough of his own boons. But maybe that’s the niche of the Dervish in the GW2 meta. I just fear that it would be too much like a guardian.

No Walking.6349:

The play-style of Dervishes is the only play-style not already covered by something in the game

What exactly about Dervish playstyle is not already covered? Or are you simply referencing the visual style of robe-wearing, scythe-wielding magical melee fighters? Visual style alone is not sufficient to create a whole new class.

I’ve been having a lot of really bad lag lately. I thought it was just my garbage apartment internet though…

I wouldn’t buy one of these for anything more than 150 gems… It’s like a mini pet that you only see some of the time. They should be cheaper and possibly have some as achievement rewards.

You like seeing big numbers and dropping enemies… Anything more specific? It sounds like you love glass cannon spike damage gameplay. You could go a lot of different ways with that with a wide variety of styles. Warrior, Engie, Ele, and Thief are my suggestions, but I can’t help you narrow it down without more info.

I want more mundane armor styles like that of Dark Souls.

Ayrilana.1396:

The story has been fluid.

You call stopping at that cave door fluid? That was the most jarring, frustrating cut-off I’ve ever experienced. I gave me blue balls, seriously. If the entire season was developed as a cohesive package, there would have been no cutoff right there. You wouldn’t even have that door. The only reason for that door is to give you and Jory an excuse to stop and wait till the next episode.

My suggestions for adjusting the PvE meta:

• Add more enemies throughout the game that only take condition damage (like wurm husks)
• Add a new condition called Hemorrhage that gets applied whenever Bleed reaches 25 stacks. Hemorrhage is twice as strong as Burning and lasts 3 seconds and does not stack. It is only meant to proc when Bleed gets too high on PvE mobs, and give an actual benefit to condi players working together.
• Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.
• Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.
• Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

I feel like sometimes Anet’s dedication to their iterative design process is so strong, it prevents them from pursuing really good ideas. Anet dogmatically refuses to consider things like GvG because they don’t fit within the scope of the current iteration of the game which is centered around living story.

Rytlock uses an offhand pistol. Either Warriors will get pistols one day…. Or… Rytlock is really a Thief… who is just too awesome to use stealth.

You can play how you want.

I can play how I want.

I chose to play as full zerker. :P

Vayne.8563:

I doubt very much it takes a year to make most maps.

I would speculate (using my semi-limited experience as a student) that it takes them about a month to make a map like Dry Top or Silverwastes. And I’m talking about the environmental design and construction (modeling) from pre-production to finish. It probably takes them another 2-4 weeks to get the dynamic events working. They can probably start roughing in the dynamic events before the map is fully modeled, which would actually give them more time. Some things can be worked on simultaneously. Then there’s QA testing. You can begin to see why they take a good 4 months to produce these patches.

I really wish Anet would do some kind of documentary on the whole process behind the scenes. Not a reveal of any content. Just show people what exactly game designers, artists, and programmers do all day. I swear that the majority of gamers just don’t seem to appreciate the work that goes on. There aren’t magic “make game” buttons. There’s a hundred or so hours that go in to making just one new character. Everything from modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, scripting, etc… Likewise there’s no magical “make map” button. Some guy has to spend 3 weeks putting blades of grass everywhere. Imagine you have to trim your lawn with a toe nail clipper. That’s what the environmental artists have to do on a daily basis. A documentary would help gamers appreciate all of this a lot more…

hydeaut.1758:

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

Actually what’s most wrong about this assumption is that the information is still accurate at this very moment. Game studios are made up of highly talented programmers and artists collaborating. Everyone has a number of different skillsets. People can shift jobs all the time. The structure of teams is subject to change. They will organize their employees in whichever way they need to in order to get the project done. All we can say for sure is that at the time they made the statement about 20 people, there were 20 people working on that particular project at that particular time. They could have completely changed that the week after.