Guild Wars 2

Here’s how you (the player) should make a suggestion here on the forums. This is for the benefit of your fellow gamers, and the devs as well.

Bullets

1. Before posting, think long and hard about your idea.
2. Ask yourself: Does it fit within the scope of the game?
3. Find a way to distill the idea into a list or series of concise bullet points, like this one!
4. The devs LOVE bullet points.
5. They can read these all day without getting a headache.
6. If your idea is well-formed, it should easily fit into bullet points.
7. These make it easy for devs to sit down and address each point one at a time to see if they can make the idea work for GW2.

Paragraphs

Sometimes you have a short anecdote or a hypothetical example you need to hash out. Sometimes an idea needs more than just a bullet point to become clear. That’s when you break up the bullet points with a short paragraph, like this one. Keep paragraphs limited to between 4 and 6 sentences.

If you need to write more than 6 sentences, start a new paragraph, like this. This really goes a long way to helping people visually consume the information you are trying to give them. If you write everything in one big long jumble, you tend to lose your audience. That’s where the TL;DR comes from. The last thing you want when trying to convince people is for them to go cross-eyed trying to read your giant wall of text.

Formatting

Lastly, you can use some formatting to make your post nice and pretty. A pretty post will attract more attention and higher respect for your idea. On the other hand, if it looks like your cat wrote your post when he walked across your keyboard, people tend to shy away from your idea. Check out this link for all of the nifty formatting options. If you really believe your suggestion is worth it, why not put in the effort? This is as much about respecting your readers as it is about self respect.

spoj.9672:

You guys are still getting hung up on it. Tagging is a niche. I didnt say mesmer gs is bad full stop so please chill out. Maybe get back on topic instead of getting into another mesmer gs debate.

Lol okay well “tagging” may be technically a niche but it’s a niche about as wide as the grand canyon when it comes to pve. GS wins in the open world for tagging, and it remains competitive and more reliable for DPS in the open world IMO. So tagging and DPS. I don’t know how many other niches there are in pve.

I can’t imagine it would be that hard to code player’s avatars to automatically use an emote upon entering a message into chat. The hardest part honestly would be adding a check box to the options menu for people who don’t want the feature.

I mean this might be oversimplifying it, but not by that much.

If (input X) {
output Y;
}

In this case input X would be you pressing “Enter” in the chat window. Output Y would be a line of code that essentially says “play this animation.”

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Whatever, if people want to run around in GW2 using a sword, let them…

The reason they praise mesmer sword is because it’s auto attack has the highest dps of the class, and the #2 skill evades while still dealing dps. In a dungeon everyone stacks for melee anyway, so sword is the only way to go. In the rest of the game there’s this thing called open space that you have to deal with.

spoj.9672:

Ranged tagging is a niche. You can tag perfectly fine with sword auto and wardens.

But you have to actually run up to the mob to get a melee tag. Ranged is faster if you tab through. Also mobs, especially these new mordrem, tend to move out of warden aoe. That’s if the warden isn’t insta-gibbed in the sea of aoe trails and cleaving leap attacks. Warden is also stationary during it’s animation and has a cooldown.

I hear a lot of high praise for phantasm builds in pve, but in my experience they just die instantly. That’s with the health trait and signets. I do far more reliable, albeit bursty, dps kittenter. Maybe that’s just me, idk. I also find it more fun to actually press my clone and shatter buttons rather than ignore them in favor of phantasms.

We’ve been hearing about NCSoft reports of GW2 expansions for over a year now. I personally don’t believe Anet has anything in the works. They seem perfectly content churning out these filler episodes. I’ll believe there’s an expansion in the works when they announce they are taking a break from the living world to work on “other things.”

Dear Anet,

The living story journal is a nice distraction. The missions are cool, the story is not bad (so far), the locations are amazing. It’s a nice filler. Key word. Filler. It’s like the mozzarella sticks appetizer at Applebees before they bring out the Quesadilla Burger. We, your loyal customers, fans, and humble MMO players can only take so much mozzarella before we LOSE OUR FREAKING MINDS. Please bring us our full course meal (expansion). Thank you.

Edit:

To reiterate, I don’t believe they are currently working on an expansion. I think they have their heads in the clouds so to speak. That’s not to say I don’t believe they will ever do an expansion. I think an expansion is inevitable. We just need to give Anet a nice shake and wake them up.

spoj.9672:

Probably because mesmer gs is a pretty poor weapon for PvE except in extremely niche situations.

Show me a mesmer weapon that can reliably tag anything or deal nearly as much damage at 1200. GS is good for everything but condi. The only time it’s not optimal is in a dungeon stack, which I’d argue is more “niche” than the myriad of other pve situations.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Those people should play Dark Souls lol.

I wish everyone would play and appreciate Dark Souls from an academic perspective; both players and devs.

I’ve had 4 friends return to the game since the NPE and all of them hate the changes. They find it far more frustrating to have to wait to unlock skills, and they hate having to wait to do personal story. 3 of those 4 have since quit again. I suppose NPE doesn’t care about returning players, only brand new ones…

It’s not that they actively punish you. It’s that they don’t reward you for solo play, and NPCs are just poorly designed with achievements in mind.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

/no

While your class is cute, it doesn’t fit into the GW world.

1) It’s far too anime

2) No race even remotely similar exists in lore, it would have to be retconned in (good way to really kitten people off)

3) The charr are already a race of cat people. I’m sorry you don’t like their design, but they are true to their GW1 counterparts.

/agreed

The design for Neirr looks like it came right out of a generic Korean game. I would much rather have Tengu or Largos.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Xenon.4537:

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

I’d rather it be more like Fringe, honestly.

. . . what? I can see Walter as an asura.

Never seen Fringe lol. But what I’m getting at is this:

GoT style:
1. Exposition
2. Rising action
3. Climax
4. Falling action
(you know… like normal friggin storytelling…)

Lost style:
1. Exposition
2. Plot twist
3. Climax
4. Cliff hangar
5. Plot twist
6. Plot twist
7. Rising action
8. Plot twist
9. Cliff hangar

Basically I’m afraid of journal episodes falling victim to the writing cliche where they force a plot twist where none was called for; the sole purpose of which is to force you to stay tuned to find out what happens in the next episode. But then they pull the same crap in the next episode so that you have to keep checking back in each subsequent episode with no real resolution in sight. It’s the latest ham-fisted approach to television shows, and it sickens me.

A good story has a beginning, middle, and end. And when you get to the end, you start a NEW story. You don’t try to prolong the first story ad nauseam. That’s called being a hack. Hacks don’t know how to write new material. They use plot twists the same way Michael Bay uses special effects. I’m not saying we will never reach Mordremoth, but the journey there doesn’t need to be a convoluted pile of spaghetti noodles.

The “stuff” they are working on in the background could just be the next set of journal episodes. Same old, same old. Just because this guy saw some devs working doesn’t mean Anet has anything substantial planned (like an expansion).

By the way would it really kill Anet to get with the times and be transparent? I mean compare the Points of Interest with a dev stream of Warhammer Eternal Crusade. When Anet “communicates” with us, it’s to answer non-questions and talk about fluff that we already know. When someone asks Behavior Interactive a question, they answer it directly with details. None of that “oh we cant say much, but we promise you’ll like it” BS.

Think about that for a moment. Anet says they want to hear our feedback, but they don’t share with us what they are doing until they release it, and by the time they release it, they are moving on to the next project and don’t seem to care for going back and reiterating. BI on the other hand shares everything so that their customers can give active feedback during development and help them make sure the product is what the customer actually wants.

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

Anyone take a close look at the trailer right here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bb31EADk9eA#t=30

Seems to me like the NPC asuras have some kind of frontal aoe cone that moves with them. Perhapse it’s a detection field? Perhaps we are going to replay Caithe’s memories of escaping from an Inquest lab or something?

They should do an arc of the living story on a more personal, breaking-bad-esque style where you track down a serial killer who’s M.O. is to kill sylvari and eat them as salads. A sort of vegetarian Hannibal Lecter.

Togashi Jack.9531:

ungh.. I remember back in Beta when defeated Ranger pets would just limp around doing nothing and needed to be revived in the same way a downed player was… I also miss the “I Will Avenge You!” shout..

I hated that dead ranger pet crap, lol. I would be trying to res a player and some ranger’s pet would get in the way…

Cole Eyre.8471:

If there was a forum where my customers were discussing my business the way people here are discussing aNet, I would be very scared for my business.

These forums are filled with a lot of this:

User: please give us anything in the way of information about what you’re actually working on. You’re not communicating with us.

Them: yes we are, we are communicating with you.

Have you ever heard the phrase “he talks a lot but says very little”? That’s kind of what Anet does. They don’t want to commit to empty promises, so they wait until the last possible minute to reveal information when its all set in stone. In the meantime they pay lip service and provide idle chatter.

I think what people really want is to know this game has some kind of bright future. It’s like Kate Welch said in that video above. We want to become personally invested and we want true transparency. That means we want to know what is being developed, how it’s being developed, and we want to be able to provide our feedback on it before it gets dumped in our laps.

We don’t want to be strung along by vague ideas (and gems store items) only to be given content and features that they consider 100% done, when in fact they are sometimes flawed and need further attention. We don’t want to wait until after it’s released to give feedback because once the devs kick it out the door, they tend to want to wipe their hands of it and leap-frog to the next thing; leaving a potentially buggy or flawed thing for months or years before it gets fixed. That’s what we are getting now, and it’s the opposite of transparency.

Shield is practically useless in pve. It has a blast finisher for Engies, but since Engie can only use it with a pistol and pistol engie is condi… Well that’s pretty useless in pve. Warrior and Guard have far superior options for dps, and dps is king in pve.

Vayne.8563:

I can honestly see a new race being added through the living story. Hell Edge of the Mists was added through a living story so why not a new race?

Well I got halfway through a rebuttal before changing my mind. I do have some reservations though. I don’t personally believe Anet has any plans in the near or far future to add a new race via the living world, and here’s why.

Let’s use Tengu as an example. If Anet were to somehow introduce them as a playable race, they would have to draw them in to the story in a huge way. It would probably require an entire arc, if not an entire season to do it justice. Here’s how I see it happening:

Pre- Season X
- Tengu are mentioned more and more
- the story hints at Tengu involvement in the future

Season X
- episode 1: something big happens causing Tengu to be dragged in to the fight against the elder dragons, the become a playable race. This opens a starter zone for players to bring their Tengu in to the world in the proper context of the story having Zhaitan and Scarlet defeated, etc etc.
- episode 2: The Tengu are still new to the alliance against the dragons and political drama ensues. New content is added/revamped to a low-mid level zone allowing for intermediate Tengus to progress as characters.
- episode 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Tengu continue to develop as a race in the story and establish their place among the other races. New content is added for every 10 or so levels up to 80 to allow fresh Tengu players to progress through a story similar to the personal story.
- episode 8: Season finale. The Tengu as a race establish their roll alongside the other races as a powerful force to fight the dragons. Tengu players are expected to be 80 by the time they play this episode.

The reason I see it happening this way is because it would make little sense to just throw Tengu into the old personal story. Releasing them via the living world means they should take center stage in the story. What kind of story would the Tengu have, and how could it possibly be condensed into anything less than a whole season with multiple episodes? Or at least one very big episode? But then it might as well be an actual expansion.

Anyway, I would love to see it happen, but chances are Anet is going to just keep churning out the same thing they have since season 2 started: ~2 hour story bites with a nifty new map and some armor/weapon skins to work towards.

Ykfox.3825:

So, I’m curious… why exactly is everyone assuming there won’t be a new dungeon/raid/etc. introduced via Living World?

I mean, they’re clearly moving us towards a confrontation with Mordremoth, and assuming they follow the method they used for Zhaitan, there will eventually be a new dungeon.

I think a lot of people are rather cynical about the direction of this game nowadays. A lot of glass half empty. From the player perspective, the game moves at a snails pace, and the communication is just not there.

- Raids might be a pipe dream
- Zhaitan was a terrible fight that no one wants to see repeated
- thus far the story has only come in ~2 hour bite sized pieces
- each episode feels like a promotional release alongside gem store items
- the cool new maps seem to be the one most redeeming element in GW2’s future

People are starved for some kind of really big, amazing thing that (from past experience with other games) only an expansion would bring. Can you honestly see an entire new profession, continent, or playable race added through the living story? The scope of each episode is much too small to accommodate those things.

Speaking of new continents, at the rate Anet is releasing new maps, it will be 2035 by the time we make it to Elona or Cantha.

Paradox.1380:

So far story wise there has been HOURS of content added just with the story instances. Couple that with the replay ability and yeah it could be Expansion worthy. Just because its trickled in doesn’t negate it. When the season is over you can put it all together and play it all at once… most people consume Expansions in a couple of weeks… it doesn’t take that long.

You could consume all of season 2 in as little as 8 or 10 hours, even with taking the time to read dialogue and not rush it. People expect a lot more out of an MMO. As I said, so far there’s been less than $20 of content released in season 2 so far (add up the gem costs for those that missed it). When it reaches $40+ we can start judging it for expansion worthiness.

Thing is, we can pretty much extrapolate with some simple math. If it took me 10 hours to clear $20 of stuff, logically it would take me 20 hours to clear $40. Now for a $40-$50 game, 20 hours is pretty standard. But for an MMO? Idk.

John.5732:

Xenon, point taken. But, Anet came out and said after the NPE that the things I listed would not be added in a feature pack. So I was asking when and how do those things get added.

Can you link where they said that? Again, some of the things you listed count as features, and some as content, and according to Anet they would not be released simultaneously. That doesn’t mean they would never be added. Features would be added via feature pack, content via content pack.

That said, I’m starting to believe they might be changing their minds on this policy. The story journal with it’s episodic format creates a great opportunity to (for example) add new weapons or traits as part of the new map and story.

Actually I think I made a small mistake. Things like traits and weapons aren’t necessarily content or features. They are really game mechanics. Traits could be added through either type of pack. We saw the 40 new GM traits added in the April Feature pack. However, I see no reason a new set of GM traits could not be unlocked via a new world boss in Silverwastes. A new world boss in a new map counts as content. The same could be said of new weapons, and possibly professions and races, but new professions and races would be a gigantic leap from just traits. I would expect an actual expansion pack for those.

This is all very “what if”. I doubt Anet is willing to shed any light on it in the near future.

Verificus.4320:

Don’t know if this has been posted/linked already but Kate Welch, who recently left Anet (you probably know her from the first 5 episodes from PoI) implores developers to be more transparant. I wonder if this is a hint at her previous employer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEAUIiD4DHw&list=UUrbBjHMbepzay_485wAsO8A

Wow that video really hit me in the feels. Everything she said addressing players was spot on.

Healix.5819:

The trail their charge leaves blocks projectiles.

I would have never noticed that. I would say the trail they leave needs a complete visual overhaul. It doesn’t convey damage or mechanics properly. It damages you when you are clearly 7-8 feet away, its really short and small and in no way looks like something that would block projectiles. It makes no sense whatsoever.

What’s really sad is this is not even that hard to fix. You can’t tell me it is. I know how to scale up a polygon plane in Maya…

Labjax.2465:

“It was easy for me, therefore it should be easy for everyone else.”

-_-

Really, though, I just found them tedious, as I explained here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Living-Story-Bosses-Feedback/first (and I’ve held that opinion since dragon’s reach, which is where I started seriously following the living story stuff)

But I’m also an experienced gamer with decent reflexes and reaction time. And I used to do raids with one-shot mechanics, where you either dodge or you’re dead, and your only chance of coming back that attempt is from a limited amount of battle-rezzes from one of your teammates.

So for me, these fights are like watered down, extremely forgiving, raid bosses. I’ve done much, much worse. I feel for those who just want a breezy fight though. The fights are a breeze to me, for the most part – they just take way longer than they feel like they should.

I can’t honestly imagine the majority of players lacking the skill to beat these bosses. It might be hard for some, but they get through it. Threads like this represent a minority of either exceptionally low-skilled players or simply cryhards. Now I’m not calling anyone a cryhard right now, but you know they exist and they post frequently. Don’t forget that most GW2 players never even come to these forums. They are too busy playing the game.

Anyway, my point is that the game difficulty should be designed to fit the bell curve of player skill. The majority lie in the middle, while the minority occupy the outlying sides. If you tune the game down to the lowest common denominator, you only end up ruining the experience for everyone but the 1 guy on the very edge of the bell curve.

John.5732:

So, let me ask this question clearer: Where are the content updates that would include substantial content like new weapons for professions, new professions, new legendaries, precursor crafting, new races, new dungeons, new fractals, and other large updates?

You seem to have a misunderstanding of the difference between “content” and “features”. They are indeed two distinct things in game design. A good rule of thumb to tell the difference is that “Content” is stuff you play through, while “Features” are things you use to play the content.

Of the things you listed, here is the breakdown.

Content:
- new fractals
- new dungeons

Features:
- new weapons
- new professions
- new legendaries
- precursor crafting
- new races

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I want to see more content and features added as much as you do. I just hope I can clarify any misunderstandings. When Anet said they would not add features and content together, what they meant is that they would not add content like a new map (such as Silverwastes) while introducing something like the Wardrobe (a feature) in the same patch.

Anet seems to think we are incapable of digesting more than one thing at a time. It’s beginning to feel like they are treating us like small children. This is the consequence of having people throw temper tantrums on the forums every time Anet tries to add anything meaningful to the game.

Knighthonor.4061:

3block breaker

Guard Break would be a really cool mechanic to introduce. I would actually put it on slot 5 (with a longish cooldown) and make it work like this.

Quickly smash your foe with a deft strike. If they are blocking, this skill bypasses the block and deals 50% more damage. This skill consumes 25% endurance (or some other specialty cost)

Additionally, they could add traits which add stun and other effects to Guard Break skills. Such skills could be added to other classes too. I’m a fan of this idea because I love Guard Breaking in Dark Souls 2.

This whole situation stinks of some higher-up trying to squeeze a few extra pennies out of this game for short term benefit. Reminds me of the Ferengi.

The living story isn’t going to be “expansion worthy” until all of those journal entries add up to roughly $60 (that’s if we’re lucky). Each entry costs $2.50 to unlock if you missed it. There will be 8 entries before the end of the year (from Gates of Maguuma → present). That’s only $20. It will probably take till this time next year for $60 worth to be released. If they keep with the same format the whole time, it will be missing things like new dungeons, raids, playable races, skills, weapon types, classes, etc.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

…trying to redirect the topic of the thread back on course from another Vayne segué.

First of all, Vayne is only trying to point out logical fallacies.

Vix.6730:

For NA we’re looking at thousands, if not hundreds.

The very same flawed anecdotal metrics you accuse Vayne of using. Arguably, Vayne at least went down his roster and counted. Vix was making up figures off the top of his head. Vayne’s reply to Vix’s this post is perfectly valid.

You can have a thread with perfectly good intentions, but if you are going to fill it with logical fallacies and disrespect, I hardly blame Anet for refusing to respond here.

Azhure.1857:

Toughness is for physical damage.
Vitality is for conditions.

I was about to post this, so maybe I’ll just elaborate.

Toughness is your armor. Think of it as a metal shell that deflects hard blows (physical damage and crits). More armor means you can resist damage better, but only of a certain type.

Vitality is your health pool. It’s a measure of how “meaty” you are. The healthier you are, the longer you can endure damage over time. Hey guess what? Conditions are damage over time!

I’ve got a bad feeling that the new format of the living story journal is going to promote a sort of “Lost” style of storytelling.

1. intro
2. exposition
3. rising action
4. plot twist
5. tangent
6. plot twist
7. repeat 4-6 a few hundred times
8. unsatisfying conclusion

This patch was noticeably harder than the first half of season 2. However, it’s still pretty easy in my opinion. I run all these things on my full zerk glass cannon shatter mesmer, and I was taking a lot of damage, but not enough to 1-shot me. I’d like to see more of the auxiliary boss mechanics from Glint’s lair. That kind of thing makes a fight more interesting to me (grabbing a debuff thingie and putting it in a buff stealing thingie to weaken the boss). The Predator on the other hand was mostly just AoE spam, so avoid the AoE. Sorta fun the first time… not very interesting though.

To people like OP, I would suggest using some Soldiers or Knights gear if you can’t take the hits. Beyond that it’s a simple matter of paying attention to mechanics.

Vikkela.7261:

Try equipping full berserker gear for more DPS

Not sure if troll or not, but that’s what I’ve always run since launch lol. I cleared all the living stories so far with only 1 or 2 deaths.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Bubi.7942:

I heard a rumor that is possible to shatter clones using the f1-f4 buttons.

Shatter mesmer in PvE? Ha-ha, good one!

Whats wrong with shatter in pve? That’s what I’ve been running since season 2 started. If you are having trouble keeping phantasms alive, try a build that doesn’t rely on that.

I’m pretty sure the human gods each govern a domain or seprate realm of existance. Balthazar has the Fissure of Woe, a place of fire, ash, and war. Grenth has the Underworld, the realm of death and cold. Presumably Lyssa, Melandru, and Dwayna have realms as well but we haven’t seen them. I’m not entirely sure but I think the realm of torment was Abaddon’s place, or maybe that was just created as a prison.

Anyway the eternal alchemy is the greater structure of the universe in which magic flows from these alternate realms into Tyria. The magic travels along extra dimensions that we normally cannot perceive (check out string theory). The magic emerges in Tyria through ley lines where it builds up over time. When the magic builds up too much, the dragons awake to devour it. When they eat magic, the energy is transported to whichever realm that particular dragon represents, and the cycle starts over.

I think what we will find out is that without dragons to recycle magic, the alternate realms such as Underworld and FoW will crumble to dust and be no more. Magic will continue to build up in Tyria, possibly to the point of overloading it and causing a big bang. It could be the end of one universe and the start of another.

Thaddeus.4891:

I play against Modrem with my full zerker guardian with 11k hp and they are not that hard. I was surprised at the dmg they can do when I first fought them and get killed a couple times at first, but they are so much funnier to fight. They can actually kill you if you play like an idiot, that’s great, I want more of that.

/Agree

I have fun fighting the spin2win mordrem flower things on my engie because i can lock them down with lots of immobilize, thus negating the trails they leave. It’s more fun fighting something that could actually kill you, and doesn’t just stand there and die to auto-attacks.

Icealen.3802:

My background – I’m a casual player. I never completed the Mad King Clock Tower. I’ve never done any dungeons or fractals or anything of the sort (my personal story will be forever sitting on the final storyline Victory or Death). I don’t do WvW or PvP, just PvE (and I’ve only fought two world dragons).

So I’m a really casual player.

I didn’t find this content too hard. I died once at the end, but came back and picked the battle up right where I left off.

In comparison, the Grove dragon fight was much harder for me to complete, but even I also completed it, broken armor and all.

Coming from a casual player, I thought this content was extremely good and fair. I really liked the healing NPC if I was downed.

Just my take on the difficulty level.

You are exactly the kind of player I love. You admit you aren’t perfect, but you didn’t just throw your keyboard and stamp your feet. You calmly kept trying and beat the content. We need more like you.

Leo G.4501:

Xenon.4537:

pandas.9450:

Still waiting for axes for guards, my poor tooth of frostfang is still in storage and waiting to turn into frostfang for my guard, come on anet ;-;

I think what this thread needs is more detailed ideas for what weapon skills will do. What do you think guadian axe skills will do? Will they be distinctly different from warrior, ranger, and necromancer axe skills?

I believe there’s a thread here>>>> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Your-Ideas-for-Weaponskills-existing-weapons/first#post4566782

Let’s consolidate ideas if only because it’s fun to read them!!!

That thread was kind of necro’d. Maybe a mod can merge them?

Either way the format for suggesting weapon skills should be like this:

[profession] [weapon]
skill slot 1: [name of skill] : [description of skill] [cooldowns, damage data, conditions, etc]
skill slot 2: [as above]
skill slot 3: [as above]
skill slot 4: [as above]
skill slot 5: [as above]

Furthermore, suggestions need to be made with consideration for all other weapons on all other professions. Each weapon needs to handle differently and fill a niche, not only from the other weapons of that profession, but for all the weapons of all the professions. Otherwise the idea would be redundant (i.e. giving rifles to rangers and making them function just like longbows).

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

How about an temporary waypoint pops up near these raid like boss battles during the fight? Only dead players within the proximity can use it of course.

That would only increase the zergyness and trivialize everything. Dead? Respawn 10 feet away and instantly be right back in the fight. We don’t want to just shotgun players at a boss until it dies. Death needs to have real consequences. This problem isn’t about making encounters easier. It’s about changing the behavior of dead players so that they naturally want to waypoint and run back.

pandas.9450:

Still waiting for axes for guards, my poor tooth of frostfang is still in storage and waiting to turn into frostfang for my guard, come on anet ;-;

I think what this thread needs is more detailed ideas for what weapon skills will do. What do you think guadian axe skills will do? Will they be distinctly different from warrior, ranger, and necromancer axe skills?

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Xenon.4537:

Malediktus.9250:

All weapons for all classes would be a good start.

What the hell would a warrior do with a scepter or focus? Lol.

Focus is more tenuous (perhaps it could be an adrenaline-producer), but Scepter is actually a surprisingly easy connection to make.

Scepters, in real world history, were symbols of authority, command, and/or nobility. For a Warrior, this means that the Scepter would likely be a melee weapon based not on magic but on command – the MH equivalent of a Warhorn, or perhaps a Banner, if you will.

And really, that would be a great unfilled niche for the Warrior.

I get your reasoning, but the problem is that scepters in the Guild Wars universe have always been mediums for casting magic. Foci as well. They are purely for channeling magical energy and amplifying it. Warriors have no real magical ability. They spend their lives training in purely physical ability.

So what would the auto attack on the warrior scepter be? Smack like a mace? There’s already a mace. Not to mention most scepters are more delicately made. Same with foci. I couldn’t imagine using those items to physically beat on people without them breaking.

Atherakhia.4086:

My only concern with ANet introducing new weapons is the game still isn’t properly balanced. For the half that are the new weapons would be new toys they’d get to use to break out of their current mold and develop exciting new strategies and playstyles.

For the other half they’ll get nothing but a useless weapon that does nothing but fills in the gaping holes the class currently suffers from and will still be far behind the others because of their new weapons.

I’d also hope new weapons actually did something for the class. Take Ranger for example… while a rifle would be a fun weapon to see added would it be sufficiently different than a longbow since they already have a single target burst weapon? Or should we give them a staff so they can turn into more of a druid with cool nature spells and a lot of group utility.

Like someone else said, if we had to wait for balance before adding new things, we would never get anywhere. Balance is always fluctuating. Nothing is ever perfect. If it was perfect, every class would be carbon copies of each other and there would be no point in it in the first place.

The right thing to do is get it to a reasonable level of balance (it’s pretty close right now, imo) and then add some new stuff into the mix. Adding new stuff inevitably throws the balance way off, but that’s what further balance patches are for.

In other news, I love your staff idea for rangers! I would love to see that, and I think it makes a lot more sense than rifle from both a thematic and game mechanic standpoint.

Malediktus.9250:

All weapons for all classes would be a good start.

What the hell would a warrior do with a scepter or focus? Lol.

The likelyhood of getting new anything for our characters goes in an order like this:

1. New gem store outfit
2. New gem store armor set
3. New BL weapons
4. New hair and face styles only through total makeover kit
5. New backpack crafted through LS
6. “New” outfit which is really a reskin of existing outfits (looking at you, Hexed outfit)
7. New armor skin earned through achievements or LS (carapace/luminescent)
8. New weapon skin which has some absurd RNG or crafting requirement
9. 1 new useless healing skill (antitoxin spray…)
10. New healing skills with a range of usefulness depending on profession (signet of vampirism lolololol)
11. New GM traits for everyone (finally something good!)
12. I got nothin….
~~~~~~
9001. New minor and master traits, some better than others I’d imagine.
9002. More new healing skills, some better than others…
9003. New utility skills, potentially causing game-breaking balance issues and a flood of player tears.
9004. 1 new racial elite skill per race, but just as useless as other racials. Possibly sold in the gem store.
9005. 1 new elite skill per profession with a very limited usefulness on all but one or two professions.
9006. Unlock 1 existing weapon type per profession they previously couldn’t use (axe for guardian, sword for ele, main hand pistol for mesmer, etc) causing even more balance issues and a tsunami of QQ.
9007. FINALLY add a new weapon type to the game like polearms or something.
~~~~~~~
321467437645. Add 1 new playable race.
321467437646. Add 1 new profession, possibly heavy armor for symmetry.
~~~~~~~
??. Launch an expansion pack with content that actually satisfies us.

As you can see… tiny little Gem store knick-knacks are right at the very top of the list. Stuff that would really satisfy players is pretty far down…

Black Frog.9274:

This is mainly an issue of stupid, greedy people. How anyone can do the mental math and count the seconds it takes to get from WP to event and then sit there saying “res res” like a moron? On the flip side, how many people see dead people for more than 20 secs and not tell them “respawn, moron”?

Actually this is a 2 part issue.

1 – Conveyance

This is a game design term for making players aware of things. Right now the game does not convey the importance of waypointing when dead in a DE. This would be easily fixed with some kind of pop up message with large bold text and an orange arrow or something.

2 – Mechanics

This partially ties in to Conveyance. Right now the game does nothing to convey the fact that the boss scales based on dead bodies. We only have evidence from personal experience and actual hacks (someone made a mod that reads the hidden health data of bosses) to prove that it is happening. This mechanic is unclear to players and seems poorly designed for promoting a cooperative atmosphere for players. Indeed it causes living players to lash out at dead players, which promotes bickering and a toxic community. The mechanic should be tweaked.

Conclusion:

This isn’t necessarily the fault of the players. Players will act naturally and behave in the way the game sort of guides them to. If the game leads them astray, then it’s the fault of the game’s design.

A lot of players are conditioned from other games not to waypoint out of a fight when they die, because in those games you lose all credit and rewards for doing so.

Many players are simply unaware of the scaling they cause because the game does not convey it to them. All they see is angry players yelling at them in chat. In today’s society, people don’t take kindly to strangers yelling at them and are less likely to appreciate anything the stranger has to say. Many players simply turn they map chat off all together.

Gaile Gray.6029:

This is an interesting idea. I’d love other feedback on this before taking questions to the dev team. (I’m sure they’ve thought of this, but there may be info to share on the subject.)

What do you guys think about auto-waypointing people (assuming after a certain period, of course) in the midst of specific types of combat encounters? And because I don’t think it’d work for every situation, can you specify which combat instances you believe would benefit from this functionality? Somehow I think dying to a rampaging bandit in Ashford wouldn’t count.

Crovax — I hope you don’t mind, but I changed “bad” to “downed” in the subject. It just seems better (and more relevant) that way. S’ok?

My suggestion is to simply change the scaling code so that it doesn’t account for dead bodies in the area. Additionally you could put a big annoying pop-up on the dead player’s screen that says "YOU’RE DEAD. YOU SHOULD PRESS “M” AND WAYPOINT."

I would really… really hope the devs have been aware of this and just decided not to change it for whatever reason… I mean there has to be a really good reason for bosses to scale off dead bodies right? Seriously, there has to be. Because if there isn’t and the devs just never thought of it… Thats… Thats… I’m just gonna stop now before I say a bunch of mean things about the devs…

The only good reason I can think of is to give the boss a sort of snow-balling advantage, thus increasing his chance of defeating the players. Sort of like a berserk timer. However, in it’s current implementation, it’s not that the boss is winning by his own accord. It’s that lazy, inconsiderate, dead players are refusing to waypoint out because they are not prompted to do so. If you want to improve the player experience in this situation, you need to properly prompt dead players to waypoint, and remove dead body scaling.

I think its pretty obvious by now that we are heading toward the bloodstone (Bloodstone Fen) and that each dragon corresponds to a particular human god. This latest patch has been amazing for revisiting the awesome GW1 lore. It would be a crime not to continue down that path. I think they are going to tie the human gods in with the dragons and the eternal alchemy. It’s all connected.

I really love this painting of King Doric begging the gods to help him stop the wars caused by unhindered magic. The gods responded by taking his blood and creating the Bloodstones. My favorite thing about the painting is how powerful and intimidating the gods are depicted. I only hope that if Anet brings back the gods, they make them appear as stoic and imposing as they do in the concept art.

kristof.7182:

I rember an interview when I read that IF we’ll ever get any class it’ll be 3rd heavy class.

And I don’t get that “Engineer replaced ritualist”. I see that argument everywhere. For balthazar sake! How? They’re Charr invention – pure technology. Just because they summon something that doesn’t move it doesn’t mean they’re Ritualist’s successor.

This topic https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/New-teaser-image/first#post4543641 (about new teaser image) and mine = hype.

Weapon spells and ashes = kits
spirits = turrets

It’s a rough comparison, but the idea is that engie is the “spiritual successor” to the ritualist. Engie is only inspired by it. The basic idea of the mechanics from the ritualist were used as a spring-board for designing engie mechanics.

Think about it. An SoS spirit spammer functions pretty similarly to a full turret engie. A DwG or GwK rit is not that dissimilar to a bomb kit engie.