Guild Wars 2

This has to go right up there with the flaming human cultural armor for “Biggest Bone-head Decision Involving the Gem Store” trophy.

Charr! Fifteeeeen Charrs!

Sinikka.2794:

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>>> Rangers just need to learn <<<
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Yes they do, lol. I know this is anecdotal, but in my experience, I’ve only met maybe 1 in 20 rangers who are even remotely good at combat. Basic things like dodging, weapon swapping, using their skills properly instead of just spamming LB 111111111 5 111111111 5, etc. In PvE it’s hard to discern if the class is bad or just the players in general. Something about the class seems to attract baddies. Probably the idea of having cute pets.

In PvP I’ve met plenty of what appear to be competent players playing ranger, but I can always faceroll and beat them. I feel kind of bad for them sometimes.

You people have witnessed the evolution of a definition first hand. Words are just words, and their meaning can shift over time. Somewhere along the line, the abbreviation “RPG” started to be used as a blanket description of a genre of video games. Most people who were previously unfamiliar with actual role playing (like DnD or LARP or whatever) simply took “RPG” for their own. Today when we say “RPG” we really mean a video game like Skyrim or Dark Souls or what have you. A game where you play a character that has stats you allocate. MMORPG simply means a video game where you play a character that has stats you allocate and is massively multiplayer. The original idea of role playing was lost from the term “RPG” when such video games became popular.

Astralporing.1957:

Vol.7601:

I didn’t know, as a hardcore player, that I wasn’t allowed to do content in ‘casual areas’.

Because you totally can. Which is part of the problem – you can, but casual players trying to do content in casual areas are told to GTFO, because they are not hardcore enough.

If you are referring to players attempting to do the wurm and asking people to either participate or leave, then why shouldn’t we have instanced raids? It would keep the hardcore people out of the casuals way and vice versa.

[sarcasm=Oh but wait that will somehow create elitism (as if it didn’t exist before) and split the community (as if it weren’t split before) and toxify the community… [/sarcasm]

HOW?

Edit:

digitalruse.9085:

Dev response:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Celestial-Ferocity-nerf/page/5#post3567442

Right. This. The devs are aware and they can rebalance the set as needed. Personally I would like it if they just boost ferocity higher than the other stats.

I think both types of players should be able to coexist. I think both types of content can certainly exist in one game. The problem is that both groups feel entitled to both types of content. Honestly though is the real problem not the attitude of the players? This groupism is so tiresome. Everyone makes up words to describe people. These people are black, white, christian, atheist, tall, short, fast, slow, etc.

In reality there is a broad spectrum of players in GW2. Anet has to draw a line on that spectrum and say “hard content beyond this point.” People who want to do the hard content have to shift themselves beyond that line. If they don’t, they end up here… complaining about “elitism.”

Jeromai.8203:

I’ve run the wurm multiple times with TTS and I’d have to disagree on being able to set up private raid instances.

Instances foster further exclusivity. Given a chance, as an above poster mentioned, the most hardcore will try to separate themselves and as they do so, it’s easy to cultivate an elitist mindset that looks down on others that are at different points on the learning curve. It generates a culture of toxicity and makes it harder for new players to penetrate and be welcomed into the game. It goes against what Guild Wars 2 is supposed to stand for.

Instead, I’d hope we could try to brainstorm other less obvious things that could help besides the already tried solution in other games of private raid instances.

• Off the top of my mind, a way to automatically queue up for a full map or overflow that your party member is in would be less agonizing than having to spam right-click and join on a party member.

• Better organizational tools for commanders such as differently colored tags or whatever else might be helpful.

• A way to SAVE/LOAD builds as in GW1 might go a LONG way towards getting those resistant to change their builds to do so.

And so on…

I think you bring up some good points and some good ideas. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for hardcores to separate themselves from casuals. In fact I think it’s inevitable.

You say raids will create a toxic elitist community. Well why is that? Some people want a challenge, some don’t The ones that do will rise to that challenge. The ones that don’t can just as easily stay away from raiding. Whats toxic about that? And by the way lets talk for a moment about what it means to raid in GW2. You need to be level 80 and have exotic gear. Well how hard is it to reach level 80? How hard is it to get a full set of exotic gear? How hard is it to respec? How hard is it to get on Teamspeak or some other voice chat? I submit that anyone who at least reaches level 80 can easily raid in GW2, there’s almost nothing barring their way. There’s no gearscore. Exotics are exotics. You don’t need ascended gear to do the wurms, so why would you need ascended gear for an instanced raid?

yayuuu.9420:

Personally, I want more “guild wars” in Guild Wars instead of “world wars”. I’d like to see raid instances for around 25 players.
- they don’t have to drop anything really cool (maybe some unique ascended armors, like world bosses),
- no more tiers of equipment,
- they don’t have to be the only way to play

This is something I feel a lot of the “anti-raiders” don’t understand or skim over. Raids in GW2 absolutely DON’T have to follow the WoW formula. There is no law stipulating that raids MUST have a new gear tier every X amount of time. What causes new gear tiers? Raise of level cap due to expansions. Anet have already put forth a lot of discussion about progression in the CDI threads and have stated that they want to develop progression through new skills and abilities rather than higher level caps.

In other news:
The wurms and Teq already feature small chances at ascended gear as reward. That’s all an instanced raid needs in this game. I’m not suggesting we change that. Anyone can still go to the raid with exotics, you know those things you practically get for free when you hit 80 assuming you didn’t spend all of your karma on Lemons. On top of that, the wurms have demonstrated that we can certainly have raid mechanics that require a diverse comp. You need at least a few Condition builds to kill the Husks. Who’s to say Anet can’t develop mobs that require more CC, more tanky builds, more this that or the other, etc etc. You don’t necessarily have to get pidgeon-holed. All we’re asking is that you be open to change. Your build designed for soloing Heart quests might not be the best build for killing a Husk. It baffles me why someone would blame the “…elitist…” group leader for their own shortcommings as a “husk killer.” If you have to adapt, then adapt and stop calling people “elitist” for asking you to adapt.

Simonoly.4352:

Well seeing as this Wurm content is designed for large, organised multi-guild groups, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for it to be instanced. As far as I know, the group from Deso completed it by literally having to ferry people into one server, so that they knew that everyone there was a part of the organised raid.

I think having raid instances for these events will actually encourage more participation and formation of large focused guild groups, which is exactly what this content is for.

The way that Deso did it was pretty clever. All of the hardcore types that were on Teamspeak, were willing to listen, were willing to change gear and builds to adapt, etc. They all ran it for 30+ hours and failed because there is always that ~20% of the people who refuse to get on Teamspeak, refuse to change their gear, refuse to admit that their ranger running sentinels with a bear is a terrible build. That 20% is hurtting the rest of the group effort. So what did Deso do? They decided to take a 14 hour break, agreed through Teamspeak. They all left the casuals to fail for 14 hours. The casuals gave up or guested to different servers. Then after 14 hours the hardcores were all rested and refreshed. They logged back in and ferried each other back in, and defeated the wurm with much of the “fat” trimmed away from their group comp. Call it elitist if you want, but it got the job done. I really wish people would quit hating this idea of “elitism” and change their attitude. Stop being selfish, look at the game as a challenge to overcome. How do you overcome a challenge? You have to do what is necessary. If you have to change you build, DO IT. If you need to communicate with people better by using Teamspeak, DO IT. It’s not that difficult to adapt.

Edit: I would just like to reiterate, no one is forcing the casual player to fight the wurm. You don’t have to change your build, just go do something else with your build and leave the “… elitists…” alone. The problem is that Bloodtide Coast is an open world map, and the entire point of this thread is to discuss moving events like the wurm into an instance so that casuals don’t have to deal with “…elitism….” in their open world.

Distaste.4801:

Xenon.4537:

JoxerNL.3752:

NO thanks, no need for this elitist wow bs in this game.
GW2 is open world everyone can join in, don’t like it? go back to wow.

This is a very weak argument. It’s obvious by the amount of participation that people like these large group effort fights, and the game can only benefit from having stronger ways of organizing large groups, which is what I’m asking for. Please stop wielding the term “elitist” like a cudgel to smash what you don’t like. It doesn’t form good discussion.

And what would your stronger ways of organizing entail and what would they accomplish?

Build check- Pidgeon holing people into certain specs
Gear check- Same as above
Instancing- Segregating the community so those that don’t want to join a big guild/alliance can’t participate?

Those things will foster an elitist community and give rise to big guilds. That is not what this game was designed around. I understand people want some harder content, but do not try and push instanced raids into the game or you will potentially ruin it. How? Well besides the elitism it breeds it then becomes an issue of rewards. “We did a hard raid and got greens and yellows! Rabble! Rabble! Rabble!”. Suddenly raids are where you must go to get good loot, then new tiers of loot because Raid X is harder than Raid Y. At that point the entire casual nature of GW2 is gone. It is Raid or Die, WoW 2.

>>>Instead lets build hard content that doesn’t depend on certain gear or builds and doesn’t have mechanics that trolls can ruin. We can keep things hard but without exclusion and elitism. <<<

The problem I see is with the bolded (edit: it didn’t bold correctly so I made arrows >.>) part of your post. How do they create something that is both hard and yet doesn’t require anything specific? There has to be some level of specificness. If anyone can do it in any spec with any skill level… then how is it hard? Running the 100 meter dash is relatively hard for overweight, out of shape people, but you are suggesting we design a “dash” that doesn’t exclude them? How then is it a difficult event for anyone? You are suggesting we design content for the lowest common denominator?

I get that there are casual players in GW2, and I’m not saying we should force them out of the game. There’s nothing forcing you to go to an instanced raid. If you don’t want to do something, don’t do it. But if you do want to do something, and that thing is difficult, prepare to change your attitude and possibly your build. Yelling “elitism” is getting old.

cherrycola.3127:

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s just going to take a lot of repetition. I’d never heard of this might stacking thing before and I’ve never been asked to do it in a Marionette match either, and I’ve been running them repeatedly since event day one. And I had no idea about stacking for commanders to count until this event. There are a lot of PvE players out there who just don’t know about stuff that’s commonly done in WvW.

How long have you been playing? That just seems kind of crazy to me to have never heard of might stacking unless you deliberately never stepped one foot inside WvW, or have been playing for less than a month. No disrespect, it just goes to show that Anet probably needs to somehow do a better job of teaching the whole combo field mechanic to new players.

Enko.6123:

That “I play how I want” attitude is one of the reasons why they should have made large scale encounter content be instanced. It’s already been stated that the Wurms was designed for large hardcore guilds in mind but then they make it in the open world where you have to deal with any randoms that are in the zone as well. They can leave it in the open world so if by some chance a server wanted to get together to do it but have an option for it to be an instanced raid type.

I made a thread about this.

Open world raids like this are fine, but adding instanced content would be better. It would relieve the pressure of hardcapping open-world pve maps while also giving raid leaders more control over their groups and how they deal with encounters.

Squee Squashington.5189:

I PLAY HOW I WANT!

I’m quite certain this post was in jest, but it’s attitudes like this (the ones who are serious) that ruin group content throughout the game. People who want to be selfish instead of helping the group, go play a single player game like Skyrim please.

@OP: It sounds like Anet wants to slowly teach the community to play better over time. Several recent dev posts have indicated that they want to “raise the aggregate skill level” of all players as a community. I applaud them for setting forth on such a bold initiative, but I fear this road will be muddied with many tears. Time is what it will take. Either people will adapt, or they will rage quit. Eventually we will have a community that cares more about the game and less about being lazy and unhelpful to each other.

JoxerNL.3752:

NO thanks, no need for this elitist wow bs in this game.
GW2 is open world everyone can join in, don’t like it? go back to wow.

This is a very weak argument. It’s obvious by the amount of participation that people like these large group effort fights, and the game can only benefit from having stronger ways of organizing large groups, which is what I’m asking for. Please stop wielding the term “elitist” like a cudgel to smash what you don’t like. It doesn’t form good discussion.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Instance suck in general. GW2 is about open world. People can come to events, learn new things, meet new people and work together and even overcome griefers and compensate for the real bad players that are still part of the community.

If you want an instance like with a larger guild just go to an overflow. There are enough that are empty quickly as famers and likes leave quickly. So no biggie to get your own instance if you really want to.

But as said GW2 is open world and it should stay this way. There are tons of players who do not want to join some larger guilds but prefer to meet new people and play together withthem and overcoming a challenge.

“LFG 15 condimancers, 10 guardians, 125 zerker warriors, full ascended, gear check” is just bad for the game. It’s already hard to find players for existing instances as more experienced players stay to themselves. How are new people supposed to learn?

Yeah, I despise any kind of instances…

What I would like to see though, are 10-20 player dungeons, where they have to play coordinated…

What is more important: if you have a DC, your spot on a map (including WvW) is reserved for about 60 seconds.

I don’t agree. GW2 is about whatever you want it to be about. I love doing dungeons, and so do a lot of people. And it’s obvious a lot of people like large raiding content because the mainflows for Wurm are always hardcapped. Why not give those types of players the things they need to really enjoy that type of gameplay? One of the biggest issues right now is getting people to join teamspeak and getting them to run proper builds and strats. You might not like it, but the wurm requires a lot of dps, and we simply can’t down it with (for example) 60 bearbows in sentinels gear.

What I would like to see though, are 10-20 player dungeons, where they have to play coordinated…

You want this? That’s exactly what I’m asking for. So I fail to see where we disagree other than the philosophy of individual freedom vs the group in the context of a multiplayer game.

Thank you Tarrek and Spiral! I was beginning to feel like the odd man out.

In regards to colorblindness, I totally understand, and YES aoes need to be marked clearly. I suppose I didn’t clarify one thing that has me very concerned about the potential replacement of stickers over animations.

Go back to the punching example. This is a melee attack. The Marionette’s kick could be seen as a melee attack as well. Traditionally only Aoes need to be marked by circles and shapes. But in Wildstar, literally every single thing a character does is covered by a swatch of color. In GW2 this would potentially mean putting an orange triangle in front of every warrior that uses Hundred Blades. Every guardian staff auto attack would have a cone. Every mesmer using greatsword auto attack would have a giant orange bar painting the ground beneath that purple beam. Guys, the purple beam is enough is it not? Even for color blind people, you still see the physical shape of that beam, don’t you? Likewise if you are fighting Giganticus Lupicus, you can clearly see his arms waving up and down whether you see colors or not, correct? These are my concerns.

And for clarity, I’m okay with the Marionette kick and stomp etc having the orange telegraphs, because in this particular circumstance it is necessary. The marionette towers WAY overhead and it is too clunky to see her animations from down on the ground while focusing on the regulator.

MassDelusion.9130:

They should just give us the option of which rings we see on our side.

They did that for Wildstar, sort of. I watched my friend play the beta. You could either enable or disable the telegraphs. Turning them off was not very good. Due to the fact that encounters were designed around those telegraphs, the animations no longer suffice as a visual reference.

panzer.6034:

Orange circles have nothing to do with whether or not a game is “art”, much less “good art” or “toilet art” (whatever that means). Art isn’t arbitrarily limited to imagery being naturalisticly rendered or animated any more than op-art or modern art or abstract art or any sort of more wildly experimental art is not art simply because it doesn’t involve an illustrative rendering of a subject. Using abstract shapes and colors in a non-representative format to lead the viewer’s eye has been a tool in art long before video games existed.

That is true, but I believe GW2 should look more like this and less like this.

Zoid.2568:

I like the new orange circles. They show the danger perfectly. Better than the red circles.

Yes they do, and that’s fine. That’s what they were designed for. But Anet can do better than that. It’s not the only solution.

timmyf.1490:

I’m going to agree and disagree. I like the new circles for many of the same reasons. But if your primary concern is letting the animations shine, you’ve got the wrong target.

I can see animations above the red circles. I cannot see animations through the light show of particle effects.

When I’m fighting bosses, I find it nearly impossible to see what the boss is doing. Until they properly clean up the particle effects, the new red circles make it easier to avoid the hits.

Yes they make it easier to avoid the hits, but one can not deny that the orange circle takes attention away from the animation, and places it on the circle. That’s the whole purpose of their design. I’m saying that’s an unfortunate compromise to the fact that there are so many particle effects and other mechanics going on. Yes, you can see the animation over the circle, if you look for it. I’m talking about the natural impulse. Your eye looks at the orange circle, unless you manually tell your eye to look elsewhere. I believe is it the better course of action to train your eye to look at the animation, and do things with that animation that make it easier to see that animation. Using larger character models for bosses helps. Culling particle effects on the character model to near-zero during a critical animation is something they haven’t tried. Developing better wind-up animations would help too.

BrunoBRS.5178:

please add these new circles (and their white equivalents) to player skills. you want GW2 combat to be clearer, that’s the first step.

Go play Wildstar if you want that. I for one desperately hope that Anet doesn’t sink so low as to literally steal another MMO’s combat system, and shoe horn it in to GW2.

Orpheal.8263:

Praise me, cause I suggested this like a half a year ago, that they should improve this by the inspiration of Wildstar ^^

I only hope now, that they build up now also onto this improved telegraphing of attacks and update all the rest of the game with it too as a next step.
I see this features now beign used with the Marionette now just only as a “Field Test” to see, how people are reacting on them and if the community likes it and responses very positively about them, or if most people don’t like it out of whatever for reasons….

But from me Anet simply gets a big thumbs up b^_^d for this and this is for me personally just the proof, that our suggestions get really read here by the devs

These orange circles could potentially destroy the artistic integrity of the industry. But I’m sure you have no idea what I mean, and probably don’t care either… Anyone who laments the state of music devolving from things like Pink Floyd to Skrillex, then you know what I mean.

Hello, this is a topic I feel strongly about, and I believe my point of view will be tragically underrepresented. I don’t like the new orange circles. Let me explain, from an artistic perspective…

If you do not believe video games are art, I direct your attention to Exhibit A and submit that anything modified or affected by humans may be considered art.

The question then is what do we consider good art and what do we consider toilet art?

The orange circles accomplish a clear goal in regards to gameplay functionality. Their utilitarian purpose (as I see it) is to give players a very clear, immediate heads up to incoming threats under circumstances where there is an excess of gameplay information for the player to process. Basically, with the players concentrating on the regulators (Marionette) and all of the adds and wurm mechanics (Triple Trouble), it is unreasonable to expect players to notice certain boss animations and avoid them without the orange circles as a warning. I understand the need for this on a functional level, and I support their use in large chaotic boss fights with an excess of gameplay mechanics going on.

I’m currently a student of game design and character animation. Animation is one of the most difficult artistic rolls in the industry to master. The work that goes in to animations can mean hundreds of man hours for something as simple kitten seconds of a single character moving. Add to that the hard work that went in to the modeling, texturing, rigging, scripting, etc. A lot of hard work and amazing talent goes in to bringing things to life in a game. Anet has some of the greatest artists in the industry.

What I’m getting at is that I feel that animation should be the key to anticipating mechanics. If a boss is going to punch you, it should pull it’s fist back and you should clearly be able to understand what is about to happen. If you slap a brightly colored aoe sticker on top of it, the players attention is shifted from all the hard work and talent that went in to creating that fist-pull. The attention is instantly redirected to this simplified orange sticker.

If you are going to boil everything down to simple brightly colored geometric shapes, why bother animating at all? Is it the goal in the industry right now to phase out animators and utilize gimmicky visual effects to save money on development? Is Anet really willing to sacrifice artistic quality just because some other game is doing it? I would be appalled if indeed Anet has decided to emulate other MMOs “just because.” Anet always talks about pushing the envelope and pioneering ground that no one else is covering. If that’s true, then Anet should be sticking to their guns and remain true to the quality of art they have been putting forth thus far.

I write all of this because I desperately don’t want to see Guild Wars 2 devolve into a clusterfrakk of brightly colored stickers which amount to a gross oversimplification of visual information. The orange circles are, at best, a functional compromise to the fact that the Marionette is literally kicking people from off-screen and way above their heads. At worst, they destroy the quality of video games as art, and vastly diminish the efforts of every artist that touched the character(s) involved. They have no place in small-scale content such as spvp and dungeons. Please, Anet, keep these orange circles to a minimum. Use them only in extreme circumstances when combat mechanics simply wont work without them in these large-scale battles. Allow your talented animator’s work to shine through!

Edit: Again, I understand the need for them on the Marionette and Wurm fights. What I’m advocating against is the idea of slapping these stickers across the entire game. We don’t need them everywhere. There are better ways of doing things.

Exedore.6320:

WvW will never be balanced, nor was it intended to be. If you want balance, play sPvP where food, power creep, etc don’t exist.

This is kind of true. Anet from the beginning talked about balancing the combat towards 5-man teams. The skills are meant to have impact on that small level. When you multiply the number of players to zerg proportions, you get completely out of control results. They can’t tone down conditions for WvW’s sake without creating some kind of WvW-specific condition-culling mechanic. Which is kind of funny because everyone wants the exact opposite in PvE. A couple years down the road, we may indeed have some kind of split mechanics between WvW and PvE in order to make zerging more reasonably balanced.

digiowl.9620:

I suspect that a large reason for the deploy and destroy behavior with healing turret is that turret cooldowns do not start until after the turret is destroyed. As such, leaving the turret out is much less cost effective in terms of health pr second than using it as any other healing skill (fire and forget).

This is why the other turrets are getting so much flak, because they have long cooldowns, that only start after destruction, and have paper thin armor.

My personal fix would be to remove overcharge and detonate fully, and rebalance the turrets around being disposables. Meaning that once deployed they stay out until destroyed, and utility skill cooldown starts on deployment.

This would make fighting a turret engineer an escalating threat unless the enemy makes sure to keep the turrets culled.

And it would fix the issue with turrets being a siege mentality while the rest of the game is about mobility.

I love that idea, but the potential for performance issues is high. If for whatever reason, the turrets are not killed fast enough, the engineer could build up a ridiculous number of them in a protracted fight. Stacking turrets out of combat would also be a huge issue. There would have to be a hard limit on the number of same turrets deployable, like mesmer clones.

That’s totally an easy fix on paper, but now you gotta think about skill balance. If the engie is allowed to deploy, say, 3 of every turret maximum, then how much damage should that many turrets be allowed to do? How easy should the turrets be to kill? How long should the cooldowns be for dropping those turrets?

My suspicion is the cooldowns would have to be rather high and the vitality of the turrets rather low. Right now with traits, turrets are pretty darn sturdy in small-mid scale fights. Partly because people don’t prioritize killing turrets, especially well placed ones that are out of harm’s way.

I kind of wish 100b was the GS f1 skill. Feels like it should be there. It used to be an elite skill in gw1, now its this super easy to use #2 skill.

I think they mentioned the concern about crafting costs in the stream (or maybe that was WoodenPotatoes I’m thinking of) but yeah, I don’t think it really matters. Worst comes to worst, anet can amend the crafting recipes for 2-handers to require a few more materials. IMO the skillset of the weapon far outweighs the consideration for crafting and sigils. I’m never going to stop using GS on my mesmer, I don’t care how many people praise the 1h-sword lol.

Oh yes, because warriors need yet another stun and/or immobilize skill. And better yet, they need it conveniently on their big DPS weapon so that they don’t have to bother swapping! Because we all know how arduous it is for warriors to swap weapons. Being the only class in the game that can reduce swapping to 4 seconds is really tough…

Have you really not tried using mace f1 or shield bash before swapping to GS 100b? Pin Down on the longbow anyone? How about traiting leg specialist to immobilize on cripple, then use blade trail. WAIT A SECOND!!! Blade Trail is on the GS!?!?? Holy. Crap.

What does “decap” and “carry hard” mean? Lol. I can infer that “decap” might mean like… taking the point from enemy to neutral, but why wouldn’t you stick around and just finish capping for your team? Shouldn’t it be called “capping”?

It’s called saving your big AoE and cleave attacks for when they cast Shadow Refuge. When you see that, dump an AoE duce on top of it, or better yet use a knockback skill to push them out of it.

coglin.1867:

It has bothered me for a long time that I spend traits or utilities for mobility just to see some other profession create a gap while running away by using skills designed for gap closing.

I am okay with the skills that require ground targeting of some kind. But skills like rush should require a target that is in range to function.

In before they nerf such skills the same way they nerfed Ride the Lightning. Gonna be a tear-filled day…

I feel like all CC should be governed by high-level traits and armor bonuses, such that you really really have to spec specifically for them in order for them to work. Im talking like remove or reduce CC on base weapon skills and minor traits, and put somewhat stronger buffs to CC on grandmaster traits. Maybe change some rune sets to buff CC, but only on the 6th rune slot. That way DPS and CC builds can be mutually exclusive.

Exedore.6320:

They will have 356 Ferocity with the change.

We don’t actually know this for 100% fact do we? I mean we are pretty much just inferring from the numbers that currently exist on armors? Could Anet not simply put higher ferocity on celestial than the other stats to compensate? Or better yet, what if the weighting and scaling of ferocity is exponential, multiplicative, or uses diminishing returns, or some calculation that causes the end result to be different from what we would expect from say precision→crit chance?

Evo Sapien.5298:

I had hoped that after being absent from this game due to the devs lying to me and tricking me into purchasing this game, that maybe GW2 had returned to the wonderful game they had promised. But I see the power creep, gear treadmill, nonsense in the ‘game without grind’ is still one of the most notorious examples of false advertisement, lying and outright thievery I have ever had to deal with, outside of being actually mugged in Dublin, Ireland.

Ascended gear now? Sigh. I spent more on this game and gems and just about anyone and it was all a colossal waste of time and money based on a false premise and several lies. I definitely used to pay more a month than if i had a subscription and now I wont even log onto it for free. I dont like being lied to.

Your whole life is a lie.

These things take time. They can’t just change every stat in the game in the same patch and expect things to go smoothly.

Also, what you think sounds good and what is actually viable are two different things. The devs have no doubt tested iterations of the game where they increase vitality, healing power, etc. That’s called internal testing. If they haven’t released a patch containing such changes, it’s because their testing found too many problems with it.

Randulf.7614:

There is usually a weekly thread about wanting Tengu as a playable race. Reading between the lines…I think that means the community may want Tengu characters added…

Personally, I’d like to see dwarves (not going to happen though the way the lore is) or Hylek (they have cool animations!). I would say Kodan, but I’m unconvinced their philosophies entirely match all professions.

Or something entirely new to the franchise!!

Haha I love the way you put “read between the lines.” +1 for Tengu!

As for Kodan, I’m kind of suprised its such a popular request. They don’t seem that interesting to me, especially since according to lore, the Norn are basically their descendants. The Tengu have a much more interesting history in my opinion.

OP, welcome to game forums in general. Every game has a forum, and they are all filled with tears and bile. GW2 is no different. The whining has been like this since the 3 day headstart. The only time it wasn’t this bas was during the beta, because the beta community was cool and cared more about giving constructive feedback and reporting bugs, than about crying.

juno.1840:

Xenon.4537:

Since celestial has higher crit damage than zerkers, I would think that it would still be higher even with ferocity. Yes it will be lowered a bit, but it would still be slightly higher. By the way how can someone have calculations already when we don’t know any of the numbers or formulas?

Not correct based upon the information we’ve received. The celestial will have a ferocity stat at the same level as all the current stats (47 in the OP’s example). So the drop in effective critical damage for celestial gear is more than the drop in the zerker gear.

There’s little that can be done here other than bump the stat bonuses on celestial a bit to compensate. I’m not sure we’ll see that either.

As someone already said, Celestial is a generalized gear set. It doesn’t make sense that it has such a high +crit dmg right now — almost like it was an accident or something on the dev’s end. However if it was intentional, then maybe the celestial gear will get slightly higher stats in general.

Also by the way… When I said “numbers and formulas” I was referring to exactly how much ferocity would be put on a given armor set, and how exactly ferocity is calculated to give a crit damage %. We simply don’t know those things. We can try to infer the former, but we absolutely don’t know the latter.

morrolan.9608:

Xenon.4537:

Since celestial has higher crit damage than zerkers, I would think that it would still be higher even with ferocity. Yes it will be lowered a bit, but it would still be slightly higher. By the way how can someone have calculations already when we don’t know any of the numbers or formulas?

You need to read the OP :
“Ascended celestial coat has +47allstats and 6% critical dmg
after the patch it is going to be +47allstats and the 6%critical dmg is converting to 47 ferocity
Ascended berserker coat has +106power +76precision and 5% critical dmg
after the patch it is going to be +106power +76precision and +76 ferocity”

Therefore it doesn’t matter how ferocity translates to crit damage, celestial gear will have far less than zerker whereas previously it had more. I can only think this change wasn’t completely thought through by the devs cause this change is ludicrous especially if they aren’t going to give us the opportunity to change stats.

I did read the OP. Id like to know where the OP found official confirmation that ferocity would work that way. AFAIK the devs didn’t give us any numbers or formulas. This is all conjecture based on numbers from a system that is going out the window when ferocity gets added. By the way, Celestial doesn’t have something called “allstats” it has each individual stat separately listed. Yes all of the numbers are equal, but there is no law saying they have to be equal. The devs can put as much ferocity on a piece of armor as they want. Whether it says “berserker” or “celestial” in the name doesn’t technically matter.

This thread isn’t helping anyone. You should please be more specific about exploits so that devs can use the information in the future. Don’t specify names of players here. Just report them in game and post detailed information about what they were doing.

Also if you have concerns about the design of the game, whether it be class balance, dungeons, or any content, there are specific forum sections for each of those. And again, you need to be more specific about your concerns.

The most specific thing you got in to was the DPS pve meta (and I agree there should be more condi, CC, and support in the meta), but there are countless threads on that topic already. What many people don’t understand is that caring and doing are two different things. Designing games is not as easy as you think. It’s not like the devs are too lazy/careless to press the magic “fix everything” button. Such a button does not exist. The iterative process takes time. Every single nit picking thing in the game does not exist in a vacuum. You can’t change one thing without affecting dozens or hundreds of other things.

Since celestial has higher crit damage than zerkers, I would think that it would still be higher even with ferocity. Yes it will be lowered a bit, but it would still be slightly higher. By the way how can someone have calculations already when we don’t know any of the numbers or formulas?

Oh look it’s this thread again!

a·chieve·ment
n.
1. The act of accomplishing or finishing.
2. Something accomplished successfully, especially by means of exertion, skill, practice, or perseverance.
3. something that has been accomplished, esp by hard work, ability, or heroism
4. successful completion; accomplishment

Map completion is a feat which requires you to do a lot of things to complete. Going through the WvW maps is a significant part of the journey full of its own unique challenges which must be overcome. Without WvW, map completion would simply not be the same thing it is right now. Doing map completion requires that you do certain things in order to earn it. If you can’t, or are unwilling to do those things, then you don’t deserve it.

Liken this to hockey or basketball or whatever you want. If you can’t or are unwilling to do what it takes to be the best, you don’t deserve the gold medal/trophy/what-have-you.

How dare they put a specific reward in a specific part of the game!? I am outraged! This is absolutely unacceptable! I mean, for example, what kind of maniac decided you could only get the Master Sword from the Temple of Time in OoT???? I should be able to get the Master Sword without ever stepping foot outside Kokiri Forest!

LOL

This is probably a scripting error or some such. The devs need to go in and fix whatever line of code says “if X amount of bags here is greater than Y, then remove Z amount of bags.”

God forbid you get an achievement which calls for playing the game by actually playing the game. I understand you don’t like WvW or PvP, but you are not entitled to any achievement, or any thing in the game for that matter. Map completion is a feat which shows you have been throughout the entirety of Guild Wars 2, and part of Guild Wars 2 is WvW. It’s part of the game. It just is. You don’t have to go there if you don’t want to, but that achievement is reserved for people who do go there and overcome the challenges it brings.

a·chieve·ment
??CH?vm?nt/
noun
noun: achievement; plural noun: achievements

1. A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
“to reach this stage is a great achievement”
synonyms: attainment, realization, accomplishment, fulfillment, implementation, execution, performance;

P.S. I would add to that definition “overcoming a challenge” as part of an achievement.

If you feel obligated to grind for ascended armor and cannot play the game happily until you have every character slot filled with that pinkish-magenta text, I pitty you. People keep banging this “I feel obligated to get it” drum over and over. This leads me to believe it has more to do with your “psychological conditioning” than with Guild Wars itself. You’ve probably been trained by every game since 1985 to not stop until you have all the best items possible. The original idea of fun has been erased from your mind and replaced with a hunger that cannot be sated.

I shall posit an analogy for your anger. It is akin to the reaction of a young child learning to read. He becomes frustrated and says “books are dumb!” But books are not really dumb. The child simply doesn’t have the understanding, and the most basic primitive human reaction to a problem is to attack it or run away from it.

Ascended gear isn’t dumb, you just don’t yet understand that it’s an optional long-term goal meant for certain players who have the time and resources to pursue it. You are angry because you have been trained to expect something. Well things change. Different games are different. Is it not humanity’s ability to adapt one of its greatest strengths?

Rite
r?t/
noun
noun: rite; plural noun: rites

1. A religious or other solemn ceremony or act.
“the rite of communion”
synonyms: ceremony, ritual, ceremonial

Sirendor.1394:

Maybe we should also introduce the balance of skill-reward into this discussion, since it is something which seems incredibly off balance in the case of ascended armour.

My biggest concern is that the vertical progression we have seen now requires no skill, but a lot of time:
- Gold is the main thing you need (200g per craft + 60g per piece)
- Gold is gained mostly through rather easy activities: dungeons, champion farms, world bosses
- Gold is very very low in challenging content: PvP is debatably one of the least rewarding areas of the game, Jumping Puzzles aswell.

Why do the most easy things in the game give more gold than the kittenes?

I think they want to keep the game highly accessible to players of all skill levels while offering smaller, more specific challenge content for those hardcore players. If you were here around launch you would have heard the deafening cries of people begging them to nerf dungeons (which was a shame in my opinion).

I think you first need to define what “requires skill” means both to yourself and others. Then you need to think about whether that fits anywhere within the overall game design. Skill-gating will do either of two things:

• Create a division where a small % of the players have access, and thus leave out a large % of players, which is contrary to Anet’s belief that everything should be accessible (playable) to everyone. See games like this for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1J2afLOEIo&feature=player_detailpage#t=53

• Create a situation where the skill-based content is eventually “solved” and walkthroughs are posted which defeat the whole purpose of “skill-gating” and allow everyone to easily reap the rewards by following the solved methods of the gameplay. See current Tequatl content on Blackgate for example.

I would like to see less time-gated content, but the sad fact is that type of thing is a nice blanket effect for everyone that alienates no one except impatient people.

In regards to character progression, I would like to see Anet use something more interesting than “25 skill points for a new healing skill” in the game. I would like to be able to unlock a new skill by getting a difficult achievement or beating a specific boss. Perhaps by getting an achievement like Dungeon Master, I unlock a new elite skill. Or they could introduce permanent story meta achievement content which rewards traits for the meta.

This is a real slippery slope discussion because everyone has a different definition for grind.