Guild Wars 2

Jana.6831:

bigbobpataki.4796:

Call me ignorant, but I’ve only seen this issue raised on the forums. Should anet address this issue (and I can be wrong on this) based on what I think is a vocal minority of the forums?

Really? I know no one who isn’t annoyed by this force fed relationship.
If I had a choice none of the characters would have a relationship- it’s plain annoying and none of them is that liekable or has got that much character/story that one would wish him/her to “find the right one” anyway.

Whats exactly force fed? What would you do if you were in the developer’s shoes? You cant necessarily say that you’d have “no relationship” because you’d get blasted by people who’d want one.

Call me ignorant, but I’ve only seen this issue raised on the forums. Should anet address this issue (and I can be wrong on this) based on what I think is a vocal minority of the forums?

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m looking forward to HoT, but I think it remains to be seen whether or not their expansion is going to keep everyone busy on par with the expansions of other games. Especially if they offer less content area than what most consider an amount appropriate for a true expansion.

It almost looks like GW2’s expansion will be more in keeping with small content updates of other games with the exception of a couple of things. Adding a new class feels very “expansion-y” and they’re trying to make the old classes feel fresh with elite specializations, but again, how good are these specializations?

If everyone decides that those lines are worse than what was originally introduced and no one uses them long-term, then that is a ton of their expansion content out the window.

Honestly I think we can only reserve speculation on these issues until HoT is released. Small content? It comes down to how many zones/depth of zones are at release. How much E.Specs refresh classes come down to how much anet changes current professions. If anet fails at releasing deep, content rich zones and equally rich new profession E. Specs, then yeah they have failed in diversifying their xpac enough gameplay wise.

Its really, really important to note that we cannot pass judgement on these things until the final product is released.

To those that think that the “poison” of the WvW community should block the implementation of this idea, every portion of a game has a toxic population that shouldn’t be considered the majority. Most consumers are smart enough to realize this. From my experiences in game, and from the simple fact that I do not know the OP personally, I can’t really say that the WvW community is majorly “toxic” and “hostile” enough to warrant blocking the addition of a game system that not only draws upon a well beloved game system from gw1 (GvG) but a much sought after system in the current game.

(Tl; Dr at bottom if you don’t want to read a 5 minute post) A good portion of the current discussion for this game is focusing on HoT. Is this justified? Entirely. Should we ignore the post HoT-future of the game we all love? No.

I really like the current way guild wars is handling expansion progression. Not many MMOs have bothered to expand in the way HoT is planning to expand, and if all things go well, we’ll have an expansion that not only expands in ways that traditional MMOs haven’t bothered to experiment with, but will actually surpass traditional MMO expansions. In some ways we can see the market expanding to gw2, an example being that WoW, the juggernaut of the market, is “adapting” to a gw2-like model in introducing scaling dungeons (i.e you can run BC dungeons as Lvl 100 and be rewarded appropriately ). But I wonder how well gw2 can use the same HoT model in expanding past HoT. Is such a discussion premature? Yeah probably.

But I think that we should partly focus on the future of xpacs past HoT. How well can anet apply the HoT progression model? How well can anet keep players focused with things like masteries, exploration and new shiny legendaries (after all, some players currently log in simply to fulfill daily requirements)? Should anet increase the level cap by 5/10/x levels? I do not feel like such questions are being addressed in part because yeah HoT looks pretty kitten awesome (I cant wait personally), and yeah such questions are premature, but I think its a part of a discussion that has been in lost in the current HoT craze (again which is not a bad thing).

Tl; Dr: Considering we have a pretty basic understanding of gw2’s xpac model, overall, I just want to hear everyone’s opinion on the longevity of anet’s xpac model (such timeframes being 1-2 xpacs past HoT imo). If this is has already been discussed to death feel free to ignore it, but in my short time on the forums I have not really seen any discussion on the topic.

Why does it matter? Its a game, make of it what you will.

Celtic Lady.3729:

phys.7689:

Colin said they dont really want a very big world.

Are you serious?! Why would they feel that way? More zones means more content to keep people busy. A large world also brings in new players that want to get a lot for their money and justify the length of time a game has been out.

I’m supportive of more zones, no matter how empty or busy they are. However, how can you justify having anet make zones like say lonar that are very large but abandoned/empty aside from the odd world boss? If the game’s direction is going towards more smallish (I really hope 1.5x the size of silverwastes at the least) but more content rich environments vs. empty but large zones like Lornar’s or Mt. Malestrom, I’ll take the former.

Although it really sucks to have some items like giant eyes be so unobtainable, at the same time I feel like its a cool feature to have the “rare, ‘mysterious’ crafting items” that giant eyes represent.

That being said, they should be at least as common as large skulls because they’re a similar rare crafting item that should drop from a specific racial creature (giant vs. grawl). Be nice to have more giants in the game as general.

+1

As a causal WvWer, I dont even GvG or do 20v20 but anyone can recognize the significance of having more game modes (and ones that can easily be created at that) or having a boarder appeal for prospective players.

So we all happy now? Got a preview of every trait in HoT outside of elites, and the weekly elite specialization preview has begun.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve only looked at 4 of the professions so far, but I see plenty of, “WTK would I want in that slot?!?!?” questions. The changes, so far, seem designed to funnel me even more into choices I don’t want. It feels to me similar to the feeling I get when I look at weapons — like ANet is deciding what my play-style should be. While some of that is inevitable, the traits so far look like a move away from freedom and towards shackles.

They’ve also eliminated some of the (admittedly) quirky synergies I grew to like. My guardian 1-hand sword build got killed, specifically. Not sure if my engineer build is dead, as the engi traits were not all that fleshed out on Dulfy.

I’m not upset, just not excited. I was hoping trait revamps would revitalize my interest in playing, but so far no joy. Oh, well.

They’ve taken away tons of bad traits that were either useless or so good that they felt needed (blasting staff). I see this as a positive.

As a neco main I’m really bummed over changes (or lack of). That being said we havent even had a chance to play with the new traits yet, nor have we seen any elite specializations. We’re not even in beta yet either. Theres a lot of time between now and release and so I’m remaining cautiously optimistic and reserving judgement till then.

Galeskyring.9617:

Like 2% of the whole overhaul for each profession was justified while the other 98% was a complete funeral service to a vast majority of builds mine and many others just got buried in an unwanted grave.

I have no clue how you even arrived at these numbers. If you want to enlighten us all I’m sure we’re all listening.

Considering that about 60% of the traits look solid during the work in progress stage (not even in beta yet), I’m pretty happy with what turned out. Instead of builds being a trait or two different from the meta we’ll have builds that have 4-6 different traits from the meta.

I honestly think you’re complaining just to gain attention gale.

Currently, it looks like the elite spec that makes ranger into druid is a spec line. So if you’re a druid, you’ll have the Druid line and then Nature Magic and Skirmishing. Still 3 lines. We do not know if the druid line will replace a line that rangers have or if using an elite spec means you’ll have all 5 regular lines to still choose from. My money is on the former.

tigirius.9014:

I was saddened to see this as well. I would have loved for Guardians to have had the chance to become Miko like characters (bowwomen shamaness’s in Japanese culture who symbolize purity). That would have been awesome.

And I agree with the OP on yet another point, transferring stats to the armor is not a smart thing to do it will increase the already present gear treadmill problem not solve it!

There’s a gear treadmill problem? Since when? If you’re talking about the gap being potentially widened between exotic and ascended, theres no way that happens because no matter how much stats increase on gear, its still going to be a 10% gap between ascended and exotic regardless.

MokahTGS.7850:

This. I’m very concerned that the “material” given is going to be some useless account bound thing like bloodstone dust turning valuable skill points that are worth gold right now into useless junk filling my bank.

If ANet turns them into something like “Forge tokens” that can be traded at the forge for anything we can currently buy for skill points then I will be ok with that.

We cant jump down anet’s throat until we know enough info. If worse comes to worse nobody is stopping you from converting your skill points into gold/stones/crystals etc. right now.

maddoctor.2738:

So I will be losing Blasting Staff but gain access to many new abilities, will apply more vulnerability, get Access to GM Air trait, for example Tempest Defense for an extra damage modifier with a Frost Bow while I can choose between Diamond Skin and Stone Heart, based on the encounter for extra defense. All while keeping the same, if not MORE DPS than the old build. It’s a boost (can be a big one too) for a Staff Elementalist

I’m sure if you try you can modify any build to be better with the new system.

Whats even nicer about the current system is that you’ll still have blasting staff, it seems like a good candidate for becoming baseline. Guess we’ll see in 3 hours when the AMA starts.

Nike.2631:

I used nothing but 6/6/1 spreads to demonstrate we lost almost 99% of our build diversity. None of this 3/3/3/3/2 straw-man junk.

Math is in the main response thread feel free to go there and laugh it off.

The majority of those 6/6/1 spreads weren’t all that diverse though. I can go on my necro and change one trait, say take Chill of Death over Axe Training, and technically have a new build but a new build that doesn’t feel unique. Thats not good diversity. Its looking like the new traits are much more impactful on your build and while we’ll have less traits the traits we choose will matter alot more. Less diversity? Yeah. But the quality of the diversity is a lot higher.

Not to sound like “that guy” but it sounds like you’re talking about a l2p issue.

RabbitUp.8294:

I don’t think changing the nature of a skill through your settings is a good idea.

They could make a key bind that does that for all ground targeted skills, though, like Alt+key to automatically cast under your feet.

That being said, solid suggestion.

binidj.5734:

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

Ground-Targeting Wells
Please, I beg of you, do not make this obligatory. Having a trait that allows me to ground target my wells is just perfect for me because I can ignore it. If you make ground-targeting compulsory then chances are that I’ll be changing my entire build, and not for any good or positive reason. I’m sure that it’s incredibly useful to have ranged wells, however it’s not useful to me.

Please let us choose the way we want to play this great game, don’t shoe-horn us into a way of playing or building our characters that you think will be better. We’re all different, and sometimes what we enjoy playing isn’t necessarily the most optimal build or stat combination.

I’m not too excited about not being able to pick an adept trait in the master slot either, but a lot can change between now and release. We also do not know what the traits are going to look like, and could potentially not be a problem if the master traits are better than the adept traits.

Also, I don’t understand why you aren’t a fan of things like targeted wells being baseline? Do you not want skills to be buffed and made better? How could having ranged wells baseline ruin anyone’s build?

Ragnarox.9601:

They are taking away guardians virtues.-..nice…kill us more and give us warhorn and 6x shouts. R.I.P. Longbow.

Lol where the hell did you hear this?

Gale, I really do not think you read the blog post carefully. Yeah losing the ability to take various minor traits sucks but we don’t even know whats going baseline and what is not. An example being thrown around is losing fast hands on warrior, but anet confirmed that alot of the old traits are going baseline, so until we know what is baseline and what isn’t we can’t really begin to speculate on what builds are going away.

I also think people are making a kittenumption in that the current 3 Grandmaster traits in any line will be the 3 grandmaster traits in HoT. Considering it seems like anet wants to make the major traits (ones we pick) compelling choices I’m sure that some of the weaker traits will be either reworked or removed and replaced.

Doggie.3184:

They don’t want you to put stacking sigils on water weapon, max stacks under water and then exit water and be able to use all your main weapon non-stacking runes in combat. It makes sense, really. And if they didn’t do that you’d have to endure the tediousness of being compelled to do it, so it’s a good thing.

Just put the stacking sigil on water weapon too if u wanna use it.

Pretty much this, take the extra few gold to buy a second sigil to save yourself the frustration. That being said putting you into a float mode where you do not immediately dive underwater and lose stacks would be nice and probably do wonders towards solving this problem.

At first I was skeptical but so far I like the direction they’re taking with the new hylek. They flesh out the lore and environment of maguuma better than some other race that sides with us because dragons are bad, and are certainly better than nothing at all. I also like how they’re going to provide some “old-new world” type interactions with the hylek we currently know about.

If you don’t like them thats fine, we know at least that the exalted will be another npc race, and there is probably another 1 or 2 we do not know about since it sounds like the two hylek will be confined to the area around the zone we currently know about. Admittedly that last bit is speculation but I hope (and think) that it goes in that direction.

I think a much simpler solution would just create a pool of stats, say 300 or so points, that you individually assign in blocks of 20 or 30. People who like the “stats are linked to traits” system or have concerns that unlinking them would create balance issues are happy, people who want more freedom in builds are happy. Things like NPCs in the game would also be scaled up a little to compensate.

Chrispy.5641:

I can’t prepare for the expansion if I don’t know what to prepare for

I think the key here is that its better to slow down information while the expansion is still being finalized rather than jump the gun. I’d imagine you’d be more upset with anet if they indicated that you should prepare for a certain thing with a premature announcement, only for that certain thing to be axed later on in the development cycle. Slowing down the information being released 4 months out of the xpac date largely prevents anet from releasing some information about ideas for the expansion that everyone runs with but may have to be cut due to time constraints/limitations.

So let me get this straight, you want them to release more information, but just about certain aspects of the game? But not only that, but that anet should avoid certain topics? Pretty hard to please. And I doubt the small previews they have given are “spoilers”.

Akagami.9861:

Another week with little to no info…new blog posts designed to buy time. It’s been over a month…since we got some actual interesting, usefull…wanted information…

We got a reminder that there will be masteries…could’ve been something way more interesting and detailed about them…but ofc we didn’t get that…

and the wildlife of maguma jungle…recycled species we already have…not even new ones…or at least something that is not frog based…

I wouldn’t consider the new Hylek to be recycled really, they look different enough from our current hylek and behave differently. I’m not that big on lore but I can appreciate the role that the hylek are going to serve, namely to not have the jungle just be “mordremoth is bad” lore wise. From the trailer it seems like theres going to be tons of new wildlife, and a few people that reached the jungle floor in the closed beta took pictures of new wildlife enemies, so they’re in there. We also don’t know anything about the exalted.

I agree that the mastery post sounded pretty rehashed, but at least we got an indication that Tyria masteries will go beyond precursor crafting. They can’t reveal everything at once or else they will have no buildup during the summer or worse take flak for removing announced features that didn’t work/couldnt be ready in time.

Creating three sPvP queues out of the current maps into Conquest, Deathmatch (Courtyard), and Stronghold could really help diversify sPvP and allow them to release new maps in an orderly, consistent fashion. The fact that they won’t budge on this is crazy.

I think people are getting too caught up in a “lack of information=bad/no content” line of thought. The fact that people are taking statements like “handful of legendaries” and equating that to “5-6 legendaries at release” is pretty insane. How do you justify that other than you’re being overly pessimistic because you want a reason to complain on the forums? If you have information that confirms that then please, by all means share.

Do I think the amount of information released thus far has been low? Yeah, they could tell us stuff like how specializations will be unlocked and whatnot, but they’ve given us a basic rundown of most features in the expansion. Revenant? Multiple weapons and half the traits. New WvW Borderlands? A 20 minute tour. New sPvP mode? We just had 24 hours to play it ourselves. Masteries? They showed us a good amount of the lines. Maps? The top portion of the 1st map is leaked, and they moved Rata Sum more south, (hopefully) signifying that new maps will stretch down that far at the least. Prescursor crafting? A decent breakdown. All that’s missing really is guild stuff/specializations, and they need to reserve that info for some sort of blitz of info during the runup to the betas/release.

Why should Arenanet release information about features that are not ready/incomplete just to satisfy a vocal minority on the forums? If they release too much info early and then have to change whats been announced, people who liked that will be upset and the same people who wanted early info will be here complaining about the changes. Its a real kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t. Don’t assume that no info=no new content. If this keeps up till June than be concerned but until then relax.

Now look up the stats on an infusion

ok: http://www.gw2db.com/items/72483-versatile-vital-infusion

+5 vitality, +5 agony resistance.

the +5 vitality will not make or break your character, and the agony resistance is useless outside of FotM since agony is not found anywhere else. Most of these infusions follow this pattern of +5 X state, +5 agnoy resistance.

Multiple threads where people have done the side by side math.

Ok, let do the side by side math.

Ascended ring: http://www.gw2db.com/items/71363-yakkingtons-ring

Yakkingtons Ring
51 Power
51 Precision
%10 Magic Find
+18 Precision
+18 Power

Unused Infusion Slot.

Total of 69 Power, 69 Precision, 10% magic find.

Exotic Ring: http://www.gw2db.com/items/58007-opal-orichalcum-ring

Opal Orichalcum Ring
+48 Power
+48 Precision
+3% Magic Find
and with an Exquiste opal Jewel
+15 Power
+15 Precision
+4% Magic find

Total of +63 Power, +63 Precision, +7% Magic find.

The ascended has 6 more power and precision and 3% more magic find.

63/69=.91

or the ascended has 9% more stats then the exotic, aside from the magic find. Its a boost, but not a major one, nor 20%

It doesn’t really matter how long it will take them to introduce entire sets, but it is coming. No doubt about it. They said so. It’s not a speculation.

They made a comment a week or two back that they plan on adding full sets. Until I see pictures of the set, or they say that after all of this community outrage they still plan on doing that, it is speculating to me. You do not know their plans after a patch like this.

That being said, they have been doing a very poor job at communcating with us.

Columba.9730:

bigbobpataki.4796:

Adding new rings and back pieces that are slightly better then existing ones certianly changed the whole philosphy of the game huh.

I don’t consider 20% plus improvements to be slight.

Where are you seeing that?

Ballistic.4531:

bigbobpataki.4796:

Adding new rings and back pieces that are slightly better then existing ones certianly changed the whole philosphy of the game huh.

I’m guessing you don’t know the game’s philosophy prior to grinding treadmill was introduced.
Yes – it did change the philosophy of the game.

I do, and I was why I bought the game. That philosophy is not dead, at least not yet. The new ring/back pieces are as much of a “treadmill” as legendaries are. Now, if we had full sets of ascended gear I would agree that the philosophy has been changed, but until that day arrives, I think speculating one what is to be on little to no evidence is sillly. Yes they have said that they will eventually add full sets, but who knows when that is, and even if they plan on doing that still with all the outrage.

I think the best way to approach is to either:

a.) Take the gold star way until they complete the new zones or
b.) Make the current gold star into a bronze star once new content hits and give back gold once the player explores all the new content.

You’ll be awarded gifts of exploration for exploring the current areas since it would be unfair to people if you required them to buy an expanision to access legendaries, something that shipped with the original zones. Add new rewards for exploring the new areas.

Adding new rings and back pieces that are slightly better then existing ones certianly changed the whole philosphy of the game huh.

Lets us this picture: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/2/22/Ascended_example.png

First of all, I was wrong, its not 13%, its more around 8%, thanks for pointing this out. I don’t believe its that massive of a boost to break the game like many on the forums are predicting.

Ganzo.5079:

RhysSebastian.7651:

I mean ascension gear is essentially legendary armor, and its not even blocking you from content.
.

So for you its perfectly fine place a huge boost on item that can be aquired only with a massive farm…
on WvW and heavy grinder can have a lot more power then a WvW only player.. this is just wrong.

13% higher stats over exotics=/=huge boost. Considering the fact that most people will never see them, I dont expect for it to have a huge effect on WvW.