Guild Wars 2

Since launch, wanted to just be able to use the elite slot as a 4th utility slot.

They have fixed the Guardian elites a bit since then, at least we have options now. But sometimes I still just want to stuff some utility skill in there, “Stand Your Ground” is arguably more powerful than the elites anyways. And Sanctuary was originally planned to be an elite, and still feels more like one that some of the elite’s we’ve had

@ Randulf

The whole ship movement in PS, is because the engine really can’t handle moving ships, so the map/instance fakes it, by moving the rest of the map around the ship (somewhat). And yes that is buggy as heck

Had a guildie fall off that once, he ended in a huge teleport loop, as the game tried to teleport him back, but failed, missed the spot, and repeat. He ended up somewhere inside Zhaitan and couldn’t get out, as we fought him.

Many elite skills have already been improved a good bit over the years, and also reduced in CD. At launch it was much worse, and some classes didn’t even have viable elite skills at all. The racial elites suffers even more from this.

Some classes have thankfully gotten some variety, with some low and some high cooldowns, so you can pick the kind you want. Which helps a lot, some prefer to just have an extra utility skill, others wants a big finisher, some wants a good way to survive a kittenstorm.

Personally I’m mostly fine with how it works on the professions I play the most. But I do really wish they changed how the Norn Transformations worked, love them for style and thematics, but not how they work. Considering how weak they are, there really isn’t a point in not letting you remain in them for as long as you wish, and let you use your normal stats instead of getting nerfed by the transformation stats, or not use your utilities etc.

@ Redfeather.6401

I’ve ended up playing mostly with Celestial stats because of just that, I’m sick of swapping stats back and fort for different things. Most of my toons now play with Celestial armor + traveler runes. And weapons/trinkets a bit more mixed, since I’ve collected up a good bunch of different ascended trinkets, so I can swap them out without much cost for myself.

My way of getting around the constant re-gearing issue in the game.

Personally wish they tied all the stats into just the Trinkets, so I only had to change trinkets to change stats. And keep armor/weapons for the defense/attack, runes/sigils, and skins instead. Would actually help a bit with the same.

Like OriOri’s suggestion.

Another alternative would be to make the Celestial stuff require less charged quartz per piece. So instead of 5, perhaps 1-2-3. Though they might have to upp the amount of Quartz to be used to make one that way. Say 100 to make 1 charged quartz, and the receipt only needs 1.

Personally am mostly done with the charged stuff, got 4 ascended celstial armors, and a pile of weapons, so don’t have much use of it any longer. Would like to charge to sell though.

Always said that the game should have a generic signet for all classes either util or elite with 25% move speed. PvE/WvW only skill just like the racial skills. Just because of this, make the activate power horrible, like a tiny heal and remove 1 condi, to make the other 25% move signets look good compared.

But just to give that convenience for everyone that wants it.

Main guardian, and while at times I do find the lack of a flat 25% annoying, it is easy enough to get past. Staff+retreat will get you 100% swift even without stopping to stack, so you don’t have to slow down, but you do have to activate skills off cooldown, which a lot of people don’t want to do.

Leveling a new Revenant I noticed how much I missed the Dragon form while leveling for the swiftness. But after experimenting with the other forms a bit, I found that the Dwarf form is surprisingly quick, it has a combo lightning field on low cooldown, pair it with any weapon except sword and you have a combo blast finisher on demand, to give aoe swiftness.

Ended up running Dwarf + Mace a whole lot, I can just run the lightning field forward and hit 3 for the double blast, permanent swiftness. But after 10 maps doing that, you get tired of it and just wants to put it on passive.

A large part of the wanting a 25% passive speed increase is about lazyness, not what can the class do. Guardian can have permanent swiftness from level 11 or 13 (iirc, first level with a utility skill unlock) if they want to. But spending the next 70 levels repeatedly hit 3 and 6 over and over to keep up that speed is going to get you really sick of it.

<3 my Traveler Runes, and I have WAY too many sets of it.

+1 Like this post.

But to be fair, the WvW population is a pack of headless chickens running around in circles trying to find corn. Everyone wants different things, everyone perceives things differently, what is the problem, the cause, the reason, etc. And everyone demands everything Right Here, Right Now.

Someone linked to what I think should be the WvW forums theme song: Queen – We Want It All

Because you don’t receive actual XP in PVP or WVW. So the Tomes are the only thing you can level with.

sniperman.1738:

1. How do you feel about this proposal?
I personally don’t like this form of a proposal because this idea is pretty much the reason we started world linking because there were to many servers in the first place. Reality is some of us would still prefer to ditch world linking and would rather have you guys come up with a better algorithm that based matchups purely on the population of your WvW rather than the amount of glicko and rank in which you hold. But it seems you guys working on the WvW team don’t want to bother taking the time to create a algorithm which bases matchups purely on population, cause i’m sorry if Planetside 2 can do a population balance system although there’s is slightly different i’m pretty sure you guys can to.
…

Actually the LINK’s are based on population calculations, and not glicko. The first link was just a reverse order combo, but after that they’ve actually changed it around. The match-up’s however are still based on glicko.

One of the devs mentioned in another thread that going by pure population numbers, the last CD link would be similar or slightly larger than BG or JQ etc.

But there are other problems interfering in this, the main one is Fair-Weather effect, if Server A leads in the weekend, the other servers Fair-Weather population tends to grow bored with losing, and just logs off for the week waiting for next week. This makes all the Fair-Weathers on Server A come out of the wood works for easy wins. And you end up with the common Server A karma trains all week long, Server B+C has a few rabid roamers left, and a small zerg in prime, outnumbered entire week etc.

There is absolutely nothing ANet can do about that, since it is player behavior.

Other problem is Coverage, if you have no players in NA, but a decent amount in all the other timezones you’ll win.

I was all ready to write a huge wall of text, then stopped thought for a bit, and figured I didn’t see any point in writing a huge wall of text that nobody would bother read anyways and just get ignored.

• Players and commanders play as they want to.
• As long as they have fun, they’re doing it right.
• Commanders are not a public service.
• PVE is no challenge
• PvP map cap 10
• Zerglings hate splitting, more so than the commanders
• Spies are players sabotaging, or giving information to other side. Typically players with extra accounts on enemy server.

Isn’t the role of a player in a WvW map to help their world win rather that doing their own chores?

From my signature: “The objective is to win. The goal is to have fun.”

And to the idea: No. I do not want to be put in a map squad. I’d have to turn of all squad, party, team, etc chats from my window, and completely ignore them. I’d still be forced IN a squad, and couldn’t make a own group with my guildies to form a havoc or roaming group. It would be annoying as all heck, and I’d play less WvW. It would also likely tick of the CMD that have a dozen people in squad that ignores him, and he can’t do anything about.

My main annoyance with the system is that I can’t level with the new weapon Love making new toons to try out new weapons and skills etc that I haven’t played much with. This new specialization system means I have to hit level 80 before I can even use the weapon and skills etc.

I understand the why, and the reason it is done as it is etc. Doesn’t mean I have to like it

But still hoping they actually make an effort to balance the Spez with the core traits etc, but at this stage even if they did, the whole “Elites are cheese!” is inbreed in the players, so gw2 players will spend the next 5 years screaming that they hate all elite’s ever when they lose to one in pvp/wvw etc.

Personally I’d love to be able to turn it all off >_< Just because when 5+ players gather in the same spot and uses skills, it looks like a disco on happy juice in a mix-master.

They have already toned it slightly down because of this, there used to be more visual effects back at launch, but when 10 people where melee against a champion, and 20 people pewpew’ed from behind, you didn’t see a thing other than flashing lights. Had times where I kept attacking for a couple of minutes after boss was dead, because everyone keep attacking and all the lights mask the actual champion, so I can’t see if he’s dead or not.

Don’t mind it when fighting alone or 2-3 though.

So an option or setting or something to reduce the visual clutter from others would be great, but I have no idea how that would interact with WvW/PvP as you kind of need to be able to see what the enemy does against you.

One way they could fix/change this, is to take one of the existing core traitlines and “upgrade” it to a specialization line. Probably easier for some classes than others, but for Guardian for example the Virtues line would work very well with this.

This means they could beef up Virtues a little bit to be on par with Dragonhunter, and you’d have to pick ONE of them, not both at the same time, thus also weakening DH a bit. Virtues also changes a good bit on how the class mechanic works etc.

Main disadvantage I see to this, is that it probably means you couldn’t use Virtues while leveling until level 71 when you unlock the spez slot ?

Yeah, can imagine it would get a bit expensive to setup a new server structure somewhere in Australia for example just for hosting 3 worlds, for the WvW population, which will hold what? 1200 people online at the same time tops ? Is there even enough players left in those time zones to queue 4 maps on all sides ?

But I can completely sympathize with the ping/latency issues.

Don’t know how different their chinese servers are from the eu/na ones, might be possible for them to add-hoc the na/eu client to a couple of servers there ?

@ starlinvf.1358

Excellent posts, +1 and +1.

I to have always missed a bit more of a challenge in the Core Tyria, and do miss the Champions in maps like Queensdale, even if I certainly do not miss the Champ-Train. Loved trying to handle those champions with as few players as possible, and learn how to solo them etc.

But at the same time I realize and can sympathize with others that would hate this. There are many reasons for such, some just don’t enjoy the combat itself as much as I obviously do, others might find the more action combat hard to get used to or have problems with reacting fast enough for reasons, some just likes to kick back and mindlessly grind some mobs etc.

What I would like to see however is that most zones got some harder content. Could be a couple of specific mobs a bit out of the way, or a couple of events that spawn in a chain etc. For example if you have longer event-chains, perhaps making the last one very hard, so the last push would be difficult, and failing it would kick you back a step on the chain, perhaps the Centaurs rally and starts pushing back again etc.

That way we can have some hard content, without interrupting everyone’s game time. They do some of this already, the sea hag in Kessex for ex, and the Centaur chain in Hinterlands ends in a world boss. But this would also set a more limited scope to what would possibly need to be updated.

I must agree with the posts that the AI scripts alone would help so much, most enemies just feel so … dumb, useless, passive etc. They’re just walking potato sacks of HP, waiting to be beaten up. And I hate the annoying “design” that “more hitpoints = challenge”. I don’t mind that some enemies have high HP, if it is the exception and not the norm.

My personal dream for what I would love to see, is replace most of the AI’s with the “Training Characters” in PVP man heart of mists. One for each profession using class skills etc, I’d like to see those replace most mobs, functioning as Veterans, and give the normal mobs half the hitpoints. Heck make Centaur groups of those walking around in groups, it would be so much fun to fight against.

And I know that if this ever gets implemented, 90% of all PVE players will hunt me down and get me hung. But using the above suggestion, having a group of 4-5 Centaur war-veterans walking around patrolling the map in Hinterlands, using a mix of those PVP AI’s, as a group/hard content, Would be fun.

The answer is: “It depends…”

If you post what server you play on, and what time zone you’d play the most in, it might be easier to answer.

There are problems with WvW, but there has been problems with WvW since launch. The current hot topics are:

• Population differences between servers is a bit out of whack
• Coverage/time of day playing still wins the week
• Skill/class balance is pretty messed up, especially relating to the HOT specializations

Despite this, the game works, and is playable. They implemented a “link” system half a year back so there is generally activity on most worlds/match-up’s, even if you’re on what used to be a “dead server”. Middle of the night etc might still be quiet, obviously.

If you want to get started with WvW the best thing to do is find a friendly PvX guild on your server, and play with them. Most will have a weekly WvW day or something, play with them, and learn what they do, this will likely be zerging. Ask them if they have some roamers to teach you small group stuff if your’re interested, good bit harder but can be very fun. Don’t run Solo, that way lies madness and ragequit.

I believe Maguuma World is the main exporter of Salt to the rest of the Mist. They do have a reputation for being slightly over-eager in delivering their services, but can you really fault someone for showing too much enthusiasm for their job? Think about all the poor Camp guards that would suffer from malnutrition if the Mist-chefs didn’t have enough salt?

Yeah discussed this with said friend today, he also mentioned that WoW originally had pretty poor story as well, but has overhauled it in several expansions. But WoW has the funding to do that. I also think they moved a lot of the story to later in the game now, not entirely certain how that works.

Gemstore makes money, but at the same time, it is unpredictable, seasonal, and is driven in good part because of their constant content, stop the content, and the gem sales also weakens. If they take a year to re-haul the story, that is going to take a lot of dev’s away from making the new content.

Combine that with most people seemingly being happy (enough) with the story, why should they ?

On the other hand GW1 was generally considered to have good story, well at least some of it (Prophecy can go kitten!), and there is a surprisingly large amount of Lore-players in this game. But GW1 was designed entirely different. Heck they even had Henchmen and later Heroes that you could bring along to fill parties etc, some of them had interesting personalities (Herta, I will always miss you!).

But anyways, it really sounds like you’re more interested in a single player cRPG, something like Witcher or whatever Bioware is making. MMO’s never been the best Story-game market, and honestly in my opinion the WORST role-playing media in gaming :p

But I understand you, there are many things to like in this game, and when you find one that sticks out like a sore thumb, you really want to see that fixed. I’ve had plenty of those over the years in this game. Starting with Ranger 1 hand sword ruining the entire class for me at launch, no idea how many hundreds of deaths that sword caused me in the mountains of Wayfarer Hills…

Just a comment on the legendary armor thing, always wondered why they didn’t split it up. Go to PvP to get the helm, WvW to get the boots, Raid for the chest, etc. That way it would at least somewhat resemble “Legendary” to get it, not just grind an over-glorified dungeon over and over.

General Health.9678:

The Monsters are Too Easy Mastery
For all those complaining on the forums
Tier 1 Every mob now has a chance of a debuff
Tier 2 Every mob now has a chance to crit
Tier 3 Every mob now has a buff
Tier 4 Every mob can now summon another mob as a pet
Tier 5 Every mob can now appear at any level on any map and will attack only you or anyone partied with you who attacks the mob. Leashing is removed from mobs and they can follow you across maps and wait for you to log back in if you log off.
Tier 6 Every mob can now do any attack of any other mob. As the animation department is overworked and understaffed, in some cases attacks will not be signaled by any animation and in others animations from other mobs/attacks may be used as placeholders.

Do want…

(You can call it Lets Make PVE Great Again!)

Have to agree with all the above reasons for why adding a race would be a bad economical move.

But if I’m going to add in my own wish it would be Lizardfolk, I just like the reptile aesthetic. While I like a lot of the background and style for the Hylek I just don’t like the frogmen look. And while I like some of the look on head/arms for Krait, I dislike the whole snake for legs thing. (And for the love of kitten! No dragonmen! ugh!)

But I agree it would take a miracle to add a race to the game at this point.

@ Jotunhammer.7029

Really comparing it to SWTOR is a bit much, BIOWARE lives on story, and tend to botch everything else There is no way Bioware would make a MMO with as great combat as GW2 for example. I’ll take combat over story, so I pick gw2. Friend of mine prioritize story over everything else so he plays SWTOR and can’t stand GW2 (much same reasons as you list).

Unfortunately, they likely don’t have the resources to re-do story mode now, that’s a lot of money, especially when they’re dependent on releasing new content to get people to use the gemstore. Since this game has no monthly fee etc, they don’t have a fixed plan-able income they can budget around. So we’re kinda stuck with what we got.

@ Vayne.8563 +1

@ Jotunhammer.7029 (again)

The events can be fun, and feel very under-used. Love some of the event chains where they push and pull back and forth depending on how it goes etc. Unfortunately they really made these too simplistic and generally way to limited. Example the Centaur event at west side of Kessex, it’s a fun even of pushing centaurs battle lines north and south etc. But it’s only 4-5 events long, and most of the time because of MegaServer you won’t see 2-3 of them, and only see the “kill the centaur officers” and “kill the centaur warlord”.

But on the other hand, MMO’s never really been known for storylines, GW2 was actually considered pretty good for a mmo story, at least back before SWTOR, that really is an unfair comparison. As someone said above, that’s like expecting all MMO’s to have WoW’s population, and GW2’s combat system etc.

If I where to expect Planesape: Torment quality to stories in every game, well I’d stop playing games, that’s for sure! Heck after playing that game I’ve moved more and more towards action based games with less story, simply because I can enjoy combat/game mechanics even if it has no story or the story is bad.

Random idea:

Those 3 personality traits you can use in the game: Honor, Compassion, Force. If they had developed these into giving a personality in your Personal Story, you could have gotten a more “personal” feel to it, rather than the “generic” one we have no. If my Norn Guardian is Honorable all the time, have the Personal Story conversation reflect this and give me a more Honorable lines, perhaps even alter how the character stands and reacts.

Way too late to implement this now, but it might have solved some of the issues. Looking at it now, this might have been what they planned from the start, but had to drop?

My question is: Why are you looking for the NA world with the highest EU population ?

Are you wanting to know which server has biggest EU so you can play with them, against other servers that won’t stand a chance in EU time zone?

Are you wanting to know which server has biggest EU so you can pick a server that will play against them often, so you have a challenge and people to fight?

Are you wanting to know which server has biggest EU to increase your chances to find a Community to join?

Hoping you answer so ANet can see why people transfer, they really should ask that of every person that move servers, so they actually know peoples motivations.

The main thing here is: “It’s all in the Eye of the Beholder.” Everyone will have different likes and tastes, in very few things is this as obvious as with “stories”. Met people in the game that didn’t know the game had a story-line! Others that tried it once and never touched it again. Others that keep making new characters to replay their favorite bits over and over.

Personally, I used to love all kinds of different cRPG stories etc, from basic hack and slashes, to more developed stories. Then I played a cRPG named “Planescape: Torment” back around year 2000, and since then I haven’t liked a single cRPG story since. Tried so much different games, but absolutely nothing interest me at all any longer, that game has the single greatest game story I’ve ever seen, and likely ever will… it makes everything else look like a bunch of kinder-garden kids pretend to play Hamlet.

So obviously, going into GW2 I realized that the story wasn’t going to be what mattered to me. Thankfully Combat and Exploration has been fun in this game, and kept me interested for most of 4 years.

My opinion on the Story-line:

• Way too generic, in order to make it work with all “characters” and not force the character into a style/role the player may not want. (This also reason for Treherne, but personally didn’t mind him, since I was already bored at that stage)
• Some good ideas for the early branching system, Race/Background/Nation/Order etc. And a few of them are pretty decent, but most of them get stale the further out you get in the line. Once you start with the Claw Island and later, I get so bored I tend to lose concentration and do other stuff instead of playing.
• ANet is not very good at writing characters you feel for. Which makes me detached to most npc’s, they just don’t feel likable or interest, just doesn’t make me care. And in some cases backfires (Tieran…. I regret even starting that storyline).
• ANet is actually pretty good at writing comedy characters, and have several decent to good ones. (Still laughing at Logan playing damsel in distress)
• They also have a few decent/good “gruff kittenes” that are well done, like Rythlok.

Should also mention that I like that you often get options, and they often play very differently. That is a very good idea, that unfortunately gets lost in that you often don’t know before hand exactly what you get yourself into. Sometimes you take a story mission that sound exciting to avoid combat, and end up in lots of combat anyways, often harder because you’ll have to defend something, or make something in time, or heck just use some random transformation item instead of your own skills which often makes you less effective in combat. (Stupid Priory artifacts!)

I honestly think ANet could make a pretty good humor based story, and would like to see them try that sometime. Not exactly sure how that would work or where it would fit in, but essentially make something completely silly, with lots of comedy and humor. Not quite Monty Python, perhaps more like Princess Bride ? Most of what I think they get right leads toward that direction.

DreamyLove.8947:

i don’t think is map has too many ppl make ppl can’t use skill at “now”
my ping is ok, my fps is ok, but sometime when i see some group
i can’t use skill
it that realy is cos there has too many ppl?

Honestly I have a hard time understanding what you’re typing.

And yes that is lag because there are too many people at the same time.

There is less lag with less people, so lower map cap gives less lag.

There is more lag with more people, so larger map cap gives more lag.

DreamyLove.8947:

and i still wanna know what is max limit at wvw map?

joneirikb.7506:

Also, ANet has never, not even once, and never will, reveal the max cap on maps/servers etc. They flat out refuse to give us numbers on those kinds of things. Presumably because they don’t want players to game the system/numbers. Also it has changed a few times, but it’s assumed that it is somewhere around 80vs80vs80 on each map.

That’s as close to an answer you can get.

Already answered.

@ Balthazzarr.1349

Not saying it is easy, they have already been trying for years to get this to work with MegaServer/EotM etc, and we can clearly see the problems there. But it is also a technology they already have and is working on, despite how much improvement it needs! :p

Obviously allowing 1 server to create 14 maps, while the opponents can’t even fill 1 map is going to fail. The above should be read as a concept/TLDR version, and it would need a whole bunch of rulings and extras to fix things like that. Like for example to not create a new map until 2 servers have queue’d a map. There has to be a reason to make people want to transfer down after all, to even out pop.

Oh the PVE map switcher is hilarious, it does so much weird stuff. Favourite is being in a map right after a World Boss been killed, think my record was being chained through 7 map-instances before it finally left me alone in the empty map! Nowadays, I just ignore the note and stay on the empty map until it kicks me out

@ X T D.6458

Asuming you’re referring to the same as Tim did, about 1000 players in Server A creating 14 maps, and no players on Server B and C. Then as I answered above, there obviously has to be some limitation for that, and actual Queue system, something has to encourage people to even out the pops.

The main idea is about making it dynamic, to have something that can adjust itself, without having Dev’s to manually sit and adjust and fix things. I also imagine that everyone sitting in Queue for EBG on reset would appreciate another copy or two to play on. While roamers in off time might actually meet someone if there is only 1 BL map.

@ Diku.2546

Think I just answered that twice already or at least my idea on it.

Uhhm… not quite certain I understand the point of your post.

You want that the moment you enter WvW you and everyone else gets put into 1 Squad?

Might be different play styles here, I’ve typically avoided squads unless it’s my own guild running one. As they bore me, and I hate listening to all the useless stuff they talk about, and whining at people to do this or that etc.

This is also another reason why I keep suggesting the Dynamic Maps.

Make the number of maps adjust itself after the active population, avoid queues, and avoid empty maps. And also reduce map cap a little bit to avoid the lag while at it.

If 200 people per world wants to get into EBG, and only 50 wants to go to BL’s, then roll up 3 EBG’s and 1 BL. If 20 people wants to go to EBG, and 120 wants to go to BL’s, then 1 EBG and 2 BL’s. (Min 1 of each).

Best way to fight queue’s, let people play where they want, reduce the empty maps, and can even be used to counter off-time PPT advantage somewhat.

Offair.2563:

GoB is like 2% of the total grind and you complain about that? Wvw players have to endure 98% of crap to get their legendary.

This so much.

After I got my first (and only) gift of exploration and and picked up a Gift of Battle after playing WvW wondering what that merchant was selling.

Looked up what was needed to actually craft a legendary.

Looked at all the mats needed, all the stuff I need to gather up, and especially all the Mystic Clover I need to make in Mystic forge on the RSI panel. And just went “screw this!” and sold my GoE and GoB for vendor price to the master chef in LA.

Haven’t regretted it.

The WvW part is the EASY part. It’s the rest that is crazy. (Thankfully I think every single one of the legendary skins are ugly as SIN anyways. And I wouldn’t be caught dead in a halloween costume with one of those, and even less so outside of halloween)

edit: found the screen-shot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kh6xfa6ajdtwmo/gw161.jpg?dl=0

DreamyLove.8947:

any reason we shouldn’t have more ppl come play if all sever has queue?

I feel so ignored right now :p

Each mount is only useable in WvW

Lost it!

From what I understand, the game can’t handle it. Even the final fight against Zhaitan is actually a map where the airship stands still, but move others things around to pretend to make it look like it moves. And even that is buggy as heck.

Did that with a couple of guildies once, and one fell off, and it was a mess and we couldn’t get him back onto the ship again. he kept getting teleported back and forth and stuff.

Same reason I believe we don’t have ships etc. Seems the engine can’t handle it.

@ DreamyLove.8947

Well, There are some different reasons for why not.

• Lag, there is already enough of it with 2-3 sides have large groups fighting. More players would mean more lag.
• Limit, there has to be a limit to how many can get into WvW, in order to have some kind of balance, doesn’t mean it works, but it would be worse without it.
• Same with World population, the system isn’t meant to have people stack on few servers, and this is another tool in the design to encourage people to move to other servers. Not working as well as it should either, but again better than nothing.

If ANet where to remove the cap, well, for one thing I don’t think you’d see other skills than #1. The game would further focus more on stacking single servers at cost of every other server. And I honestly can’t see a single good thing come out of it.

Also, ANet has never, not even once, and never will, reveal the max cap on maps/servers etc. They flat out refuse to give us numbers on those kinds of things. Presumably because they don’t want players to game the system/numbers. Also it has changed a few times, but it’s assumed that it is somewhere around 80vs80vs80 on each map.

That’s as close to an answer you can get.

Random rant from my head:

If we’re going to take this “more players on map, more players on worlds” idea to its extreme, or final destination. We would end up with EotM actually.

The way the WvW mode and servers vs players and lag, map caps etc work, they probably can’t get it to work any better without a huge engine re-write. At which point it would basically require a new game.

So the only way ANet could supply any match-up with more people on EBG is either to open the map-cap and turn the game into a slide-show with randomly functioning buttons (yay!). Or by opening up a second instance of EBG, the way Megaserver/EotM does.

And if they do that, there is absolutely no point in not just moving right over to a 3 faction system for good, and move everything into 1 match-up. Since people are going to stack servers like mad, since there would be no queue to block/limit them. Then we just sit back and watch the game collapse as 75% of the players stack one server, so they don’t get any resistance…. sigh.

Ironically, I’m ALL FOR testing a couple of weeks with doubling the map cap!

I’ll be standing in EBG spawn for hours, with my mega bucket of popcorn, a whole box of salt, and fill my fridge to the brim with drinks, and just enjoy the SALT-NADO in map chat as no one is going to have any fun at all, with so much lag they can’t even navigate out of spawn!

\m/ ^_^ \m/ Please let this be a thing!

X T D.6458:

joneirikb.7506:

X T D.6458:

Not sure if anyone has already suggested this, but for nameplates would it be possible to fit in an abbreviated server tag for linked servers, for example:

[ET] Crystal Desert Invader (ABC)

I didz! (somewhere near end page 3 if you feel like a wall of text).

Red Invader [SIN][Kain]

Ah sorry, was too many posts to go through lol.

Understandable, threads like this always ends up into a pile of replies to the OP, and no one can be bothered to read past halfway first page.

Nejra Korjenic.5238:

So,…
- give us a new tab for town clothing, like we had during the beginning times of the game
- give us the choice to obtain costumes also as skin-packs

alternatively:
- give us the option to toggle all slots of a costume on/off and also a second option there to toggle if we want to show nothing or the item of our current actual armour

Unfortunately:
- They moved away from that system entirely in favor of costumes, it won’t return ever. No matter how much we beg and whine.
- That would require even more work than making the skin packs in the first place, not going to happen.
- Not possible either, the costumes are made as a complete set, many of them doesn’t have anything at all under the shoulder-pads etc. It would unfortunately be too much work for what it is worth (for them, they’re a company). Afaik there is no possible way to even accomplish mixing armor/outfit parts like that, the game can’t do it the way it’s setup.

I’m not happy about these things either, but if we’re going to ask for something, it would be better to ask for something that has a chance of happening.

X T D.6458:

Not sure if anyone has already suggested this, but for nameplates would it be possible to fit in an abbreviated server tag for linked servers, for example:

[ET] Crystal Desert Invader (ABC)

I didz! (somewhere near end page 3 if you feel like a wall of text).

Red Invader [SIN][Kain]

Servers follows UTC (Old GMT) time and resets at 00:00, so they don’t use daylight savings/summer time.

So in short, they run winter-time all year.

Edit: Hover the mouse over the reset time and it lists UTC 00:00, it just converts the number for you to be nice. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Server_reset

Ah I misunderstood somewhat. So server link’s can “Guest” to each others fights.

Opens ability for guilds to recruit from a larger pool without having to move anywhere

You didn’t read. Teams would be linked by server links, not colors. Guilds are already split every two months with server links if members do not consolidate on a single server. This wouldn’t change that, but it would encourage guilds to consolidate on an open server if they know they will have greater choices in who they will be able to fight in the future because they won’t be locked to single match-ups.

In short not very different from now. But more options to play against different people if the full servers can split up and play mercenaries I guess. Not sure if I really see this one.

(And if you followed the sarcastic server links above, Full servers like BG would not have their own match.)

A full server could be made “match less” with players only being able to participate on linked server matches, thereby spreading them out.

So a full server would NOT get a own match-up or link, but is purely mercenary players for ALL other match-ups? Can’t imagine they would very fond of that.

- Restores linked server identity through separate matches; FABL and SORBL become separate maps, FA and SoR players would have home position on both maps, FA nameplates show as SoR in the SoR match, etc.

With the linking system as is, wouldn’t this create 3 EBG and 9 BL’s in the current T4 match-up. And 1,3 EBG and 4 BL’s in the current T2 match-up ? How will this handle match-up’s with different numbered links, and servers with no links? If next week T1 is BG+JQ+TC all with no links, they would be stuck on 1ebg 3bl’s ?

I don’t mind either, my main annoyance is that most outfits doesn’t let you disable shoulders and gloves. If they did that I’d like a lot of them much more. Would love to see full head/shoulder/hand on/off as per normal armors.

And still want GW1 style outfit options for on/off for city/combat-maps. And hopefully also separate all head gear from outfits, so you can wear ANY headgear with any outfit etc. Oh and make more of the old Town Clothes into outfits (anything else is not going to happen, unfortunately).

Danikat.8537:

Elder Scrolls Online, did something similar recently. They still have levels but the entire game is scaled to max level and if you’re below that you’re scaled up too. You only have the skills you’ve unlocked but your stats are maxed and it means you can play anything in any order.

People are really struggling with it. A lot of people simply cannot grasp the point of playing anything except the previously designated end game areas. You don’t need XP to level to enter those areas so in their eyes there is absolutely no point in ever doing anything else. (I don’t understand this myself, to me the point is to see the maps, play through the storylines…actually play the game instead of seeing it as something that’s in the way of getting to the end.)

Other people want to play everything but feel lost. They don’t know what map they “should” go to next or what order to do quests in. Do they do all the starter zones first? Do they do the main quest in an area before the side quests? Before it was simple: you did quests at or below your level ad. Now there’s no clear direction and it leaves a lot of people confused.

I’m fascinated by this, people keep wanting to play “open world” games, but also want to be rail-road’ed. But most games tend to solve that by using the “story”, and GW2’s story would work pretty decently for this. And others like me is just going to run around trying to find every nook anyway and doesn’t care about that or other restrictions.

Danikat.8537:

I still think it could work, but I think the game needs to be designed that way right from the very beginning. Trying to modify a game that relies on a levelling system to work without it just makes a mess.

I would agree if not for the massive use of the up/down leveling system GW2 uses. It already largely negates most of the leveling in the game. For good and/or bad. On the whole I like it, but honestly think that it could be replaced with something like this:

Alternative option for leveling:

• Set all base stats to 1000 from level 1
• Remove all stat upgrades from leveling
• Remove up/down scaling
• Stat progression is now gear based (somewhat horizontal, depending on options)
• Advancement is now based on unlocking skills/traits (horizontal)
• This removes the weird artifacts from up/down scaling, like the weird critical hit rates
• Reduce to smaller amount of levels, give significant upgrades (unloks, traits, skills, heropoints. Depends on leveling design)
• Alternatively remove leveling entirely, progress by capturing heropoints, map completion giving hero points, chain events give hero points etc.
• Depending on which level design, lock quality types of gear to levels. 5 for blue, 10 for green, 15 for rare, 20/max for exotic for ex.

Note: the higher level areas would still be harder since they’re balanced (well somewhat…) against you having access to more gear stats and traits/skills etc. This would probably need some tweaking, but shouldn’t be far off as is. But honestly most open world PVE content is way too easy anyway.

Danikat.8537:

I think it could work in a single-player game where you can show your progress in other ways. Dragon Age Inquisition for example has maps which start off as absolute chaos – a civil war raging across the landscape, deadly monsters everywhere, people injured, lost and starving…and you gradually transform it into a safe, and liveable area, so you see the progress you’re making in the game world itself rather than your character sheet. GW2 does that with event chains but the problem there is it’s not specific to you and it can reset as fast as you make progress. Save a town from centaurs and by the time you’ve been thanked by the grateful populous and are ready to move on the same centaurs are attacking again.

Honestly thought this what was they where going to do with the event system when they talked about it before release. Or at least set all events into a sort of chain system. Say for ex Kessex hills, that you had a continual struggle against the centaurs, but as long as people where there and beat the events back, the centaurs would be thrown out of the map. And having periodical Breakout events to try to regain a foothold on the map.

Basically if players camped a map, they would retain control of it. As soon as players went elsewhere (bored, little to do etc), the chain events would regain foothold and start expanding. So if you came to a map that nobody been in for a while it would be overrun, and you’d have to fight defensive battles to beat the centaurs back from sieges around the last towns etc.

Unfortunately, this didn’t happen

It still wouldn’t let you make a lasting change in the world, but it would at least let you feel a change depending on what you did. And would be a good way to make players cycle maps.

Danikat.8537:

More generally I disagree completely with your assessment that GW2 is dead, or even dying. Partially because I’ve been hearing this from various people since about 2 weeks after the game came out (and I’ve heard it about every other online game or on-going franchise I’ve ever played). But mostly because it doesn’t match my experience of the number of people in-game and on the forum at all.

The end is nigh! Complete agreement with this, my personal favourite was watching someone claim this in the 2 days head-start.

No real opinions on BLC, I saw them for what they where at launch, and blankly ignored them ever since. If they make money on them, good for them.

Danikat.8537:

Finally I agree with everyone else that you need to clarify what making it about fun means. Huge maps with lots of hidden things to find? Big meta-events? Open-world PvP? Player-housing? More emotes for role-playing?

Yeah, this game has so many different people with so many different opinions and definitions of fun. Kind of the problem with open-world and MMO games. They try to carter to everyone.

For the record, “Huge maps with lots of hidden things to find?” I’m down with that! That, and you made me tempted to try ESO >_< I’m trying to stop testing more MMO games!

In general really liking your post Danikat. Also warning, I’m going to rant my heart out now! Skip the rest of the post if you don’t like walls of text, lots of dreamy stuff about re-designing gw2, and prefer your sanity as it is.

Regarding gearing and stats:

While ideally I would agree with the idea of setting up your own stats and all that, I don’t think it is feasible in this game. But I do have a few ideas for how I think it could be improved (naturally).

poked at it in my previous post, but basically remove the prefix/stats from weapons and armor.

• Weapons = Damage + Sigil
• Armor = Defence + Runes
• Trinkets = Stats

You would still want an exotic weapon for having good damage, exotic armor for having a higher defence rating. And you use trinkets to change stats.

This saves the need to have to change out armors and weapons, and often also sigils/runes for every build. You can use the same runes/sigils with a different build for example. Also less items to carry around if you bring some trinkets to tweak stats instead of multiple armor/weapon sets.

Finally, if combined with the level stuff I mentioned in the next post, you could even standardise the stats for all armors/weapons/trinkets based on quality instead. To clarify this also means that item progression is through quality and not level. A white starting sword will always do the same damage no matter what map/level you’re at.

• White/Blue = single stat
• Green = Dual stat
• Yellow/Orange = Tristat
• No idea where to toss in 4 stats in this, probably just as alternative orange/red options as is.

The negatives of this system:

• You lose some minor fine-tuning of stats.
• You lose the ability to have 2 different stats set on 2 different weapons for swap (think this is the only major loss)
• Would remove the one mechanical benefit the legendary weapons got (replace it with always making all skins free to apply for legendary weapons instead, most of pve only use zerk stats anyways)
• It would make less demand for lower level stuff, that already is flooding the market. (counter weight this by having less craft-able variations of the same thing. Ironically making most crafting less of an RSI chore.)

(More to come… Omnious)

This is based around the old idea of opening World Guesting over the same colors right ? I’d definitively would like to try that, could be really interesting. Like the idea

+1

Test.8734:

• Remove levels from the game.

• Remove all stats from gear. Let players set and rearrange their characters’ attribute points freely. All remaning items would be cosmetic only. Refund everyone who got ascended gear.

• Refocus the game from being about grinding to being about having fun. Stop wasting resources on fake longevity that only pushes players away. Double the efforts to actually make interesting content that people want to play, as opposed to catering to compulsive behavior only.

Think I disagreed with everything else in the post, but these where interesting.

So basically you miss GW1 leveling/gearing and how it impacted the game/gameplay. 20 levels (basically tutorial/training), and have horizontal advancement after that by something similar to capturing skills like in GW1. While you could buy a full set of max armor, but stats where set by the “traits” system you had in GW1. And because most of the game took away most of the things people associated with grind (leveling, and grinding gear) people where left to find their own entertainment in the game.

I kind of agree on some of that, I’ve disliked the leveling in this game since the start. Not because it is a big chore or anything, but it just feels so useless. Over every iteration to the leveling system since launch I keep wondering “Why do we have these bunch of levels? They could easily have crammed all the important parts into 20 levels like in GW1”.

The closest thing I can find to a logical reason to change from the 20 to 80 levels is because “All the other MMO’s has level 60-80-100, and the typical MMO player will go: bleeh GW2 only has 20 levels man! That is weak! I’ll play World of Grinding instead and get to level 80 and be POWERFUL!”

On the other hand, while I do want to remove stats (power/precision/fero etc) from Weapons and Armor, I’d like to keep it to the trinkets. So you buy Weapons for the DAMAGE stat and place Sigils on. Armor for the defense rating and to put runes on. And trinkets for the stats. Clear separation, easier to adjust stats for build without having to buy bunch of more items, runes and sigils etc.

Honestly, lots of things they could do to change/simplify the stats system. Atm it’s designed to be just a whole lot of bloat.

But yeah, fun is “In the Eye of the Beholder”, so yeah some people like grinding, others doesn’t. GW1 was pretty unique and will be remembered for that, doesn’t mean that it was all perfect and butterflies. I personally can’t even fire up the game any longer because I just flat out can’t STAND the combat in the game after having played GW2.

Unfortunately I think most of these where made for the old “Town Clothing” system. And they probably planned to open up more of them over time, but never got around to it, or realized how much work it was to make those town clothes (and the clunky mechanics that they had, pity, it could have been great, still miss parts of it).

Couple of them like the Chef town clothes got changed into Outfits, rest wen the way of the Dodo, I mean Endless Potions.

So in short, I think all of those are still using the old “Town Clothing” system, as they probably never changed that for NPC’s (less work for them). Which means we won’t get them unless they redesign them to either become Outfits or rework into armor skins (honestly doubt they will ever do that).

So at this stage, the best we can hope for is that they make them into outfits, AND makes head, shoulders, gloves removable as on normal armor (some outfits do this). So we can at least color them.

Man I miss GW1’s option to enable/disable outfits in city/combat area, wish they did that with the old Town Clothing system instead of replacing it. Really miss being able to dress casually in towns.

/rant

Fremtid.3528:

More points per capture would increase karma training because people who do ppt would not care about keeping kitten (fights/defense) and they would only kappa kappa kappa all day long. You’d have to actively seek and hunt them down whereas in the current system you at least get fights because of defense.

Actually with the system proposed in the OP, if 50 people karma train an empty map, they’d get next to nothing from captures. So if the PPT was also small they would get next to nothing.

Personally I’m more for reducing the personal rewards for zerging, so not a very popular opinion

I’d probably be bored if we rolled back, what is it, 2.5 years now since the stab changes ? I’ve lost track. It would just get so stale if nothing ever changed, though I can understand some of the thoughts behind the idea.

Well more or less disable transfers, guess I can see that, but at current stage with f2p or even the old 10$ accounts, I don’t see that working. People would find a way to get where they wanted.

Any ideas on how to reward server loyalty ? I mean short of making items “Server Bound” which strikes me as a really stupid design for so many reasons. Actually, I was pondering the other day to actually have WXP server specific, but I bet people would just get really ticked :p

Give me an option to disable all other players backpack animations first, then I don’t mind if you walk around with entire Glint in your back. (Since I won’t have to see it, or all the other annoying wings)

@ xXBAKESXx.6731

If ANet where to delete all worlds and create new ones, they would very likely go with their idea of creating more servers, but reducing the max size of each of them. So there wouldn’t be any worlds as large as the current big ones. It would have some problems with communities having to reset, a lot of people would be pretty mad about that.

A community/server/world chat would be very useful.

I’m not certain what you mean by using the megaserver grouping system for WvW, since if we’re on the same world, we’re going to be put together in WvW anyways ?

I like the idea with having a server symbol, and combining it with team color for easy identification. (Or server tag, also works)

@ Kaldo.7960

How many worlds that would work depends entirely upon what numbers are allowed on each servers etc. They can make that adaptable.

If total population is half of the current maximum, we would probably need all the existing servers. If they decided to set max to 1/4 of the current, then we would probably need a few more. Etc, they have the numbers to know this, we don’t.

I agree that a good part of current communities would be torn up by this, some would survive in various states, most of the guild based communities would survive fairly unharmed. But there is also a possibility that new communities would spring from this, hard to tell.

Just curious, what do you (OP) mean with “reset” in this case ?

• Full roll back to how everything was at launch ?
• Before HoT ?
• Before Stability change ?
• Reset/Nuke servers ?
• Something else ?

Curious, since people seem to read different things into this, and you where not very clear on this.

This primary solves points, but does nothing for the actual fights, also how does this affect personal rewards?

Many would rather have the “easy win” in fights over the win in points. And might not even notice or care about the change to points.