Guild Wars 2

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

I’m surprised it’s taken as long as it has for this topic to surface.

It has surfaced, sunk and surfaced again.

The general issue is that while telegraphed spike attacks work in PVE while facing down 1-2 enemies, they quickly become an annoyance when models overlap and covered in particle FX.

Running away from a veteran toxic nimross is acceptable, those ettin hallucinations it keeps summoning, along with the extra health from its veteran status, and the constant DOT circles, just make it not worth the effort to fight.

Its like it is specifically designed around the zerker meta, expecting anyone that takes them on to drop the ettins in no time flat.

If only they could jump…

When it comes to dungeons, yes the game community has developed a elitist subset.

To them, either you speed clear or you can’t come near dungeons at all.

Oh, and they will defend the zerker meta with every cell of their body. Wanting to play anything but topped out zerker builds is to them a sign of weakness to be mocked and shunned.

KarateKid.5648:

Tman.6349:

Also, why in the world does the camera spin 180 degrees or even a full circle when I am revived, rally, or revive someone else sometimes!?! This is so frustrating and I can’t count the number of times this ‘camera spin’ glitch/whatever has caused me to turn in a circle and run/dodge directly into a huge aoe/boss attack. It is incredibly frustrating as generally things are a kittenaotic as it is when you’re trying to rally/revive in the middle of a fight.

I get this when running around trading, banking, etc.

It’s because the direction in which your character (as opposed to the camera) is “pointed” (or was pointed, as far as the game is concerned) takes precedence to where your camera is facing.

Ask any Ride The Lightning or Burning Speed user how AWESOME it is to have to slightly tap the intended direction in order to preclude plummeting to certain death EVEN THOUGH your camera is pointed where you really wanna go.

You can often see this if you do a ranged attack without a selected target. The shot will go in whatever direction your character is facing, unless some potential target happens to be within the unspecified auto-targeting parameters (best i can tell, undisturbed LOS, within 1200 range, and as close to the center of screen as possible).

I really “love” how Jon Peters showed up on Reddit once and claimed that providing us with a toggled camera control would make the game too action oriented. Right now the game is a mishmash of action and classic MMORPG UX elements, and it is making for a poorer experience overall.

It would not surprise me if JP was behind the artistic decision that gave us the current camera code as well.

While it may be a start, ANet would also have to change the how additional mobs spawn during a fight. Right now they spawn at virtual random around the edge of the event area, often behind or right next to characters already engaged in battle.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This already exists. Anet programmed some events to actually punish zerging. Take the LA rescue event that happens hourly. If you zergball that, you’ll never get to the top tier 1200 citizens rewards.

And the zergs could not care less, as they end up with multiple stacks of alliance supplies.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bart Weird.9671:

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Whilst we don’t mind a comparison here or there, let’s keep it on-topic to Guild Wars 2 gameplay. Thanks!

That’s all you got to say from reading this post?

That’s probably all which should be said from reading this post from CC Danicia. She’s not PR or developer, she’s basically a non-automated moderator. (Though I can’t be too sure about that, the asura have made lots of progress in auto-moderation.)

I mean, there’s a lot they could probably say, but how much should they say as far as their superiors are concerned? Remember there is a limit to how candid they can actually be, and probably err on the side of caution to avoid white knighting their own game.

. . . or worse, one of them getting a green light to be 100% candid and proceeding to say things people don’t want to hear.

Aside from “we think we made a great game, even though it’s still got things we need to fix”, which is exactly what you’d get with varying degrees of verbosity if another red post was dropped in here.

I really wish that this forum provided a way to tell a proper dev post from a CC post. Seeing a thread icon go red, just to learn it is yet another CC notice, is disheartening.

And the dev tracker is useless, as it fills up with account issue responses.

Stormcrow.7513:

I haven’t given up but the game certainly needs more depth to it. The combat is getting pretty stale with zergs/dodge. It still has potential.

Yep, if the dungeon speedrunners would stop claiming cleric is OP. Apparently certain builds can outheal dungeon bosses, just make sure to get them into such a position that they leave out half their kitten nal first (melee subject alpha, pull spider queen to a wall, etc)…

And here i have gotten no less then two pink…

Sold one on TP, keeping the other even tho i really want that black one (have a soft spot for the orca look).

Ganathar.4956:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Yup, racial skills are for flavor but no one ever uses them so at this point they are just a waste of disk space. The fact that they are not available in PvP means that there is less of a reason for them to be useless.

It is in part because they are not found in SPVP that they are weak. This is because seemed to have a progression in mind for players.

They enter via PVE for the MMO exprience. Then they progress to WVW for the initial PVP fix. Then they graduate by going into SPVP and perhaps joining a esport team. Or at least that seemed to be the thinking at launch.

Anyways, they didn’t want people to get too attached to their racial skills during PVE and WVW. And this transition thinking is also why PVE and WVW skill balancing is subservient to SPVP balancing. Because ANet want’s people to get to know the skills in PVE/WVW, and then bring that knowledge into SPVP.

In effect, PVE and WVW are overly elaborate training areas for the MOBA known as GW2 SPVP.

But the player base didn’t play along, and so ANet has been trying to rething their plans over the last year while ratcheting up the Living Story as filler. This is why SPVP is being brought more in line with PVE in terms of rewards, and WVW got its own overflow system.

ProtoGunner.4953:

+1

Couldn’t agree more. Why did they create it if no one is using them?

Because the PVE side of development was style over substance.

Invasions anyone?

Ok, just as a curiosity. Those that claim that open world PVE is easy, what profession do you usually play while roaming?

Kiba.9701:

Is a shame you can’t handle the difficulty of the game, specially when most of the people playing says is too easy.

Yep, clearly a l2p issue… /S

I may have stated this earlier in this 12 page monstrosity, but one easy “fix” could be to shrink existing packs and have them hang off the left hip weapon point. the weapons gets hidden when a kit gets equipped anyways. And would be a indicator that something is equipped if med, grenade or bomb kit is equipped, as they do not place a weapon in the engineer’s hands.

That we are going into the drill was almost a certainty. There are objects dotted around the harbor that are likely to be transporters for that task.

As long as the mobs are bags of health that is only there to be attrition-ed down, yes it needs to. Right now defensive gear is worthless in PVE thanks to mob design (big health pools, spiky damage), but improvements are held back because PVP has become all about bunkering.

If you get the recipe, and enough blade shards, you should be able to do it at any time afterwards. The only recipes so far that has been deactivated were the original mystic forge halloween skins once halloween rolled around once more.

Oil, what else is there that can drive someone to perform a invasion using biological weapons?

lordkrall.7241:

You are aware that people on these forum have been more or less demanding something like this for about a year, right?

As a in game feature…

lordkrall.7241:

digiowl.9620:

Or they could just do as every f-ing other game, and give the players a list of overflows, and the ability to pick the one to go to. No need for taxi parties or any of those over-convoluted workarounds…

Oh?

I was under the impression that more or less every kitten other game simply didn’t let you play when the server/map/whatever was full.

Cryptic for one seems to get it right in their games. And i could have sworn i have played others in the past with a drop down instance list somewhere near the minimap.

Simple fix: Allow players to hold down the button of a autoattack marked ground target skill, thus having it go off where the mouse pointer is on every recharge.

Darn it, people are already using gaming keyboards and whatsnot to get around the need for hammering the key to death. Put an equivalent right into the game already.

I swear, ANet seems to have designed the UI under the assumption that everyone is playing with gaming keyboards, rodents, and third party VOIP servers for coordination…

Or they could just do as every f-ing other game, and give the players a list of overflows, and the ability to pick the one to go to. No need for taxi parties or any of those over-convoluted workarounds…

GMT and UTC are not the same during summer, as GMT follows UK daylight saving while UTC does not.

hendo.1940:

Tim.5681:

IndigoSundown.5419:

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

I agree with this. Bosses with 30-60 stacks of Indignant, immunity to half your control skills (pulls, blinds, warding lines etc), “structural” bosses that can’t be critted (and the loss of all the CC that depends on crits), gigantic HP pools: these things contribute to the DPS fixation. If boss mechanics were redesigned to make CC viable & needed you would see less of the DPS mentality out of necessity because right now it’s 100% DPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtFWy-ccTk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1-rF2Q3uw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKQtrOVR7w

I hear voip, and i hear kittening on PUGs. PVE should not be tuned for the former, and should be tuned for the latter. If you need a drilled group and VOIP to pull of interrupts, they are worthless.

timmyf.1490:

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already to to break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

Or you’d have to learn to stun an enemy before a killshot. Or wait until an enemy has burned its dodges.

You do make good points, though. It’s something that would have to be done carefully.

With stuns at 60+ second cooldowns? Yeah, right…

Skillshots are not worth it unless i can be 100% sure that where i point the camera is where the shot will go. If not i am fighting the UI and not the enemy.

Any kind of player behavior triggered rage mode or such would violate ANet’s anti-griefing design.

Me, i’m for a simple solution. Have damaging conditions “explode” and reset when they reach a certain limit (max stack on those that do so, some multiple of 10 seconds on those that don’t).

If need be, only make it relevant with mobs that have unshakable. Thus to avoid problems with WVW and SPVP.

What you’re seeing, Mystic, is ANet’s attempt at forcing us to play the fight actively. The damage spike is from the mob’s “telegraphed” attack, that you are supposed to dodge/block/interrupt.

All well and good fighting 1-2 mobs solo while out in the world. But during these massive events, spotting the telegraph in the mass of models and FX is difficult. And the difficulty is amplified by the aggro mechanic.

The other day i was at a molten miasma event, fighting a oversized protector. Suddenly when someone ran by, or something, it just ignored me, spun around, ran off in some direction for a bit, then spun around and came right back at me.

This means that you don’t know who the target of the mob is at any one moment. It can all of a sudden spin around and drop its spike on someone completely unrelated simply because of some black box aggro trigger.

dietzero.3514:

digiowl.9620:

Other games needed something like this because they were balanced for PVE initially, and so PVP became a gankfest of massive bursts.

GW2 on the other hand is balanced for PVP.

Can you say that with a straight face?

While ANet has messed about over the year, their balance focus is still squarely on (s)PVP. Most of the time if a balance complaint was raised in the SPVP forum, a dev would pounce shortly after. Raise it in general discussion (the closest we have to a general PVE forum) or the relevant profession forum, and at best you would get some attention from a forum mod after violating some rule or other.

Other games needed something like this because they were balanced for PVE initially, and so PVP became a gankfest of massive bursts.

GW2 on the other hand is balanced for PVP.

Revived my guardian alt today, just to ram through the racial part of the personal story, and i discovered that GS #5 actually do cooldown in the background while the option to pull in mobs are presented.

Thing is tho that said pull have no cooldown of its own, same as with #1 chains on all weapons.

I do wonder if this is the limitation of the engine that makes turrets, minions and similar wait until destruction/removal.

Are people talking PVP or PVE. The game changes massively between the two in terms of the effectiveness of defense. This because mobs can survive attacks that will one short PVP bunker builds, and do just as much damage in return.

4th will likely be the last patch of the current living story. Then there was to be a major feature patch, and a rest period of sorts.

There is some truth to this tho, as from personal experience what keeps people coming back to, say, WOW is the social element of being able to hang out and do things with friends. The random dispersal across overflows counteracts this.

I am really surprised that ANet have not programmed overflows so that it will attempt to put party and guild members on the same server if at all possible.

It would likely cause a bit more load time tho, but it would be worth it in my opinion.

Outside the priority the equivalent is a son of svanir, and down south it is a very scruffy looking skritt.

Given that they also removed the loot chests in there, i suspect the idea is that now the lair has been broken open and stripped of anything valuable. I have not visited, but others claim the place now looks like it has been ransacked.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

You’re going to need a lot of Watchwork Sprocket for that ascended back piece.

They are cheap on the TP, especially if you have a storage slot maxed out already.

Right now i am using belonging for those shards needed for acended material refinement.

I must start playing with headphones, as trying to pick out that sound from all the other battle noises (never mind the constant electric crackle from strikers and taskmasters) is virtually impossible.

Big Tower.5423:

Hi Aretak. I read trough your whole post and… Well some of your posts are nice but some of those would become EXTREMELY op. Turrets following you around…. I played turret spec some time in pvp and it did really well even though i couldnt move around at the map/chase. so that weighs it up pretty much.

Sadly while skills are shared across PVP and PVE, mobs and characters are nothing alike. End result is that what works in PVP simply don’t in PVE. And this then heavily limits any professions choices in PVE.

turrets work in PVP (particularly SPVP) because you have some reason for the enemy to come to you and stand still (capture points). This means you can take on a siege mentality and set up killing fields by spreading the turrets around.

Never mind that larger mobs can take multiple times the damage a bunker build can take, while still delivering damage that can match or exceed a zerker (and often in AOE form, bye bye turrets). This so that players are forced to used blocks and dodge to stay alive, no matter the build.

herrard.1274:

But remember EG #1 not only applies bleed, it also applies weakness which makes it very useful against power builds.

And this is why these debates go nowhere. Upto 2/3 of any profession’s skill set is tuned for SPVP, and so have very limited value in PVE (or even most parts of WVW).

Maybe after Scarlet is defeated, Kiel can commission a upgrade from the pact shipyards.

Redscope.6215:

Einlanzer.1627:

Mesmer Scepter. Thief Pistol. Ele Staff. I could go on. All of these weapons are clumsy and feeble in large part because their #1 skills are not tuned well. Since the #1 skill plays the primary role in sustained DPS, they all end up being terrible in any even slightly passive or prolonged fight – i.e. almost all PvE encounters.

Mesmer’s scepter feels awkward because its one of the only ranged chains.

I think the real awkwardness comes from the third attack being a second long windup.

That is a attack pattern more commonly found with maces (and IMO it is just as awkward there).

Btw, necromancer also have a scepter attack chain. But there all the attacks are half second windups.

That Tempered list is “weird”…

While thing reminds me of the pre-WW1 European situation, where quite a few military officers had pretty much bought their rank. Come WW1, thing became a hot mess…

If you look across the skills you will find that all defensive skills are on longer timers than offensive skills. This likely to make SPVP fights more decisive and exciting from a spectator POV back when they where still going full tilt esport.

There is also the “player skill” angle. Defensive skills share a design consideration with controll skills. In both cases they are aimed at being used at decisive moments to shift the fight in your favor. This by blocking or interrupting your opponents big burst combo. Again a SPVP consideration, as anything above trash mobs will be able to eat 2-3 such combos to the face before they drop.

Could be a engine limitation, as i think minions and spirits also have the issue of cooldowns only starting on “removal”.

Could very well be that the original code for stacked/chained skills were only intended for no cooldown weapon attack slots, and once implemented ANet had one of their “we can do X now, lets use it everywhere!” moments.

And then you have mobs that do 30000+ damage after armor…

Thing about this game is that gear have a big impact on DPS, but minimal impact on support.