Guild Wars 2

alceste.8712:

I hope that Arena Net designed content for all types of players this time.

You mean content that is doable by the lowest skilled players? That’s not content for all types of players though, that’s content for those players, still not for everyone.

Devata.6589:

So to get this to work many items should get implemented ingame. And so while I would love to see a better reward system (it’s something I talked about in this forum for multiple years) I am not sure we wil still be likely to see it happeng now. It should have happened years ago. Still yes, I like the idea with the reservations I made in my comment.

Well they’ve added many new reward systems to the game over the years and apparently PoF is adding a new one too, unidentified items. It’s highly unlikely that older content will be updated to use newer reward methods, there is hope for newer content and especially expansion content, to use a much better system.

Although their latest idea of unidentified gear doesn’t seem to be very well liked. We’ll see about it

Devata.6589:

What you would then normally see is that it balances out. So let’s say doing one Arah run is just as hard / or takes as much time as 5 CoF runs, then the price you would earn with 5 CoF runs is similar to the price you earn with 1 Arah run.

I made another thread on the SAB system and I think this is also off topic now

I’m not sure that’s what will happen because you need to also account for the regular dungeon drops/rewards or those won’t exist anymore? Or the “good” items will be so expensive that will dwarf the regular dungeon rewards?

Balancing reward/effort between types of content is not as easy, even if you say it will balance itself. To me it looks like a dream rather than something that can happen in reality, players will always find a way to maximize their profits for the least possible effort.

This is how the super skins work:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_weapon_skins

The Masterwork version of the skins are account bound and can be purchased by Moto with Bauble Bubbles and gold.
The Rare version is dropped from the zone completion chest and is not bound, therefore it can be sold on the Trading Post for gold.
The skins are the same between the two versions, and they both count for the same collection achievement.

I think it’s a great reward system that should find it’s way outside of SAB. It provides a way for those who dislike SAB to get those skins, it provides a more transparent way, that doesn’t involve luck, of getting the skins for those who like SAB, while also providing that extra reward thrill every time you complete a zone and an extra income for SAB runners.

What are your thoughts on having the same reward system on other types of content too? A token based version that is account bound and an rng based version which is not bound.

Devata.6589:

And the system you talk about we did have in SAB.

You are right, it was used in SAB thanks for reminding me!

Devata.6589:

If all content / rewards where implemented like this the rarity is also important for the price. So there would not be a cheap way to get it.

I’m not exactly convinced that the same problem won’t appear with your system. Let’s say that the dungeons of the game got 2 to 3 unique items that only dropped with rng and not available with tokens. What would prevent everyone from farming CoF P1 (or any other because it’s faster then use the gold they earn to buy the Arah rewards?

With the token system you simply know I need to do x more runs and then get the item.

Combine tokens and RNG then this is no longer a problem. You can get your rewards by rng OR you can use the tokens to get that very specific item you want. The best of both worlds, you get the thrill of “will it drop” every time you kill the boss, however you don’t know which reward you get, you might get a sword but you want a hammer, you might want the mini of boss A but get the mini of boss B. Repeatedly. There is nothing more annoying than having a bunch of item rewards with low chances and you keep getting the same one over and over. Having both tokens and rng as rewards fixes the problems of only rng, and fixes the problems of having only tokens.

Shirlias.8104:

I mean, the way someone could get an item does not really bother me.
I am more interested in having an extra choice, in order to achieve something.

The problem is how to balance the different acquisition methods.
If an item has a currency value, a sell price, then it must maintain a certain level or rarity to keep that value. This makes items that can be traded (expensive ones) have much lower drop chances, in order to maintain their rarity. If a ghostly infusion had a 20% chance to drop then it wouldn’t be as expensive. The Chak Egg Sac is stupidly expensive because it has a very low chance of dropping, weapon precursors are expensive because their chance of dropping is low.

On the other hand, account bound items do not need such a low chance because they have no currency value. They do not affect the economy directly.

See a system that could work:
Let’s say that they add two versions of the same item in a new Fractal CM.
One version drops with high chances but it is account bound.
The other version has much lower chances but it’s not bound and you can sell it.

Both types of players are happy now. How possible is such a system though

Devata.6589:

And this is simply factual false. That is exactly what I tried to explain before. You are thinking with a GW2 mindset where some content gets grinded for gold, because gold is so important here (for a big part because of the gem conversion). The number of times you would now have to do content to get the gold to buy item x would then be the same number (or likely lower!) of times you would then have to do content y to get item x.

When you want something and the players tell you “just buy it from the TP” it’s what I dislike and what makes content not rewarding to me anymore. And that’s what happens if the drop chance is too low. Why bother with a 0.1% chance when you can go grind something more profitable and then buy what you want? That kills content in my opinion, it doesn’t make it better.

That’s how the game is now for many items btw, I’m not saying this isn’t happening now.

You said I want to lower the rarity of items but I do not want that. Having low chances to drop is one way of making something rare but it’s not the only way.
Putting it behind harder content is another because the fewer players that can finish the content, the more rare the item.
Adding a weekly or a daily lock is another, by limiting how many times someone can roll for the reward, they can make the rolls more favorable, because excessive farming won’t be a thing anymore.
Putting them as rewards for collections/achievements is another, requiring the player to do multiple types of content all over the game to get what they want.

There is more than one way to ensure the rarity of items. I want items to be rare, but I don’t want them to be a chore to get.

But you just changed the subject. I was talking about how things are implemented in GW2 now against how I would want them (for tradable items!)

And I’m expressing my dislike over tradable items in general. If the entire thing is only about tradebale items and how to acquire those and not about rewards in general then my mistake.

You could also solve that in the RNG. Like every kill after x number of kill’s the probability of it dropping increases until it eventually becomes a guaranteed drop. No need for tokens to solve that.

Aren’t tokens doing exactly that? With probably less development work needed. And more importantly: transparency.

Shirlias.8104:

maddoctor.2738:

sephiroth.4217:

(last time though incase you seriously don’t understand: old rewards were earned, not RNG. They were also limited to that time era and was stated it would be a valuable item due to not returning to the game – the point of the thread, pointed out to you, again)

No they weren’t “earned”. The era of limited rewards and limited content is over, LS2 isn’t limited, LS3 isn’t limited. They changed from a temporary model to a permanent model, returning old limited rewards and make them like all new ones is making things consistent.

There is no longer temporary content in the game, therefore there shouldn’t be temporary rewards either. I think it’s not rocket science is it?

Dude you could made this post earlier.

If only I didn’t type the exact same thing in my first ever response to Sephiroth:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-thought-season-1-items-weren-t-coming-back/page/2#post6737602

Unless you mean even earlier than that.

sephiroth.4217:

(last time though incase you seriously don’t understand: old rewards were earned, not RNG. They were also limited to that time era and was stated it would be a valuable item due to not returning to the game – the point of the thread, pointed out to you, again)

No they weren’t “earned”. The era of limited rewards and limited content is over, LS2 isn’t limited, LS3 isn’t limited. They changed from a temporary model to a permanent model, returning old limited rewards and make them like all new ones is making things consistent.

There is no longer temporary content in the game, therefore there shouldn’t be temporary rewards either. I think it’s not rocket science is it?

sephiroth.4217:

No it’s not irrelevant and meaningless just because you say so.

But it certainly is. It was made at a time when the company was releasing temporary content. They changed their attitude towards content since then and no longer release temporary content. Therefore the quote is completely irrelevant and of course meaningless now.
And I kind of explained this to you multiple times and instead of understanding it, you re-posted the quote as if it means anything. Re-posting the quote when it’s already proven irrelevant won’t help your argument.

Where to begin…

Arden.7480:

The breaks between the LS3 episodes were very annoying, even if it was about the quality I was really upset for waiting next 2-3 months for almost the same things.

We got a new map with every LS3 release, LS1 did not have any new maps. Although the story part of LS3 was short, the map content wasn’t. Each LS3 episode has way more substance than any LS1 episode.

LS1 lasted for over one year (from January 2013 to March 2014) and had probably 20 episodes (correct me if I’m wrong).

Fractals were released in November 2012. So how do you say that Fractals were released as part of LS1?

Let’s do a quick analysis of LS1. There were about 24 releases in LS1.

The first 4 releases combined formed the Flame and Frost storyline. Each one individually had very little story, very little content, much less than a whole LS3 episode. All 4 of them were roughly similar to an LS3 episode, although I’d say still smaller because they didn’t add an entire new map to play in.
To complete Flame and Frost it took them from January to April 2013, that’s 4 months, longer than the average LS3 episode, with less content.

May and June had the Southsun and Dragon bash/Aetherblades releases. The story was minimal, there was hardly much open world change, they added one world boss and one dungeon. The average LS3 episode has way more open world bosses, more events, more story content than those releases. It took them 2 months to finish those, less time than an LS3 episode but with far less content.

It continues like this mostly. Labyrinthine Cliffs was a new map, but much smaller than an LS3 map. They added a new world boss here, a new dungeon/fractal there, done minimal changes to a zone here and there. That’s LS1.

Let’s take a look at LS2. LS2 lasted 7 months July 2014 → January 2015 and had 8 LS releases (also a Feature Pack and 2 festivals). However they gave us only 2 maps, Dry Top and Silverwastes. 2 zones in 7 months is very similar to LS3. In LS2 they released the maps in small segments, revealing new parts of the maps with every release.

So that’s what you want? To release the LS4 maps in a way similar to LS2, in small pieces and not the entire map at once like in LS3? Why? It’s like saying that you want them to release 2 shrines in Siren’s Landing per episode, and make it last 3 episodes instead of one. Why lock the rest of the map and not release the entire map at once?

OriOri.8724:

This would lock them to LWS3.

^^ This. You cannot get unbound magic without LS3 so what happens to those who don’t have it?

Vayne.8563:

But I don’t want to play in one place for one specific item. In Guild Wars 1 it was Bogroots Growth to get a Frog Scepter I never had. I don’t want to farm over and over again for a voltaic spear.

In Guild Wars 1 you could buy that stuff with gold, but most of that stuff inthis game you can’t. There are obviously reasons for that as well.

Right now, no matter what I ‘m doing I’m making gold or something that can become gold. I don’t need to “farm” it and I don’t. I just play the game.

And why did the Frog Scepter or the Voltaic Spear or Bone Dragon Staff had such abysmal low chance of dropping? Because you could sell them. Allowing players to sell those items means they have to be rare (low chance of dropping) to keep their value up. If they were account bound you wouldn’t need to farm the dungeons over and over to get what you wanted.

And if they offered the rewards with tokens too, then you’d get all the rewards from all dungeons after running them a very limited amount of time. No grind/farm needed.

sephiroth.4217:

By your logic, everyone will have “God Of PvP” title within a year.

You do know that God of PVP is still available right? Everyone has access to it because it will never go away and the winner of every pvp season for the rest of the game’s life will get that title. The jetpack wasn’t available anymore, that’s what temporary means. It was a temporary reward for temporary content, now that temporary content isn’t a thing anymore, temporary rewards aren’t needed either.

Is it fair that new players can get Maudrey? It’s a LS2 specific reward and they weren’t there when LS2 was first available.
Is it fair that new players can get Aurora? It’s a LS3 specific reward after all.
If we followed the molten jetpack example then players who weren’t there when LS2/LS3 was released shouldn’t be able to get those specific rewards that came with it.

But everyone can. Much like God of PvP. Because they aren’t temporary anymore, honestly those LS1 rewards should’ve been added in the game much sooner and not wait for so long to do so.

sephiroth.4217:

maddoctor.2738:

sephiroth.4217:

This is the quote he was referring too:

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

Was that quote from the era of temporary content? If yes then the quote made sense, the policy of the company was to release content that would disappear after a while, which meant the rewards in that content had to be kept unique and not given again, much like the content. However, the company policy on temporary content changed with LS2 (and that was a good change)

Temporary content required temporary rewards. Now that content is no longer temporary, having temporary rewards isn’t needed either.

It’s the quote OP referred too. Please don’t try and spin it either, it is what it is, stated by Colin himself.

A quote that was said in the era of temporary content. That era is long gone so the quote doesn’t apply anymore.

sephiroth.4217:

This is the quote he was referring too:

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

Was that quote from the era of temporary content? If yes then the quote made sense, the policy of the company was to release content that would disappear after a while, which meant the rewards in that content had to be kept unique and not given again, much like the content. However, the company policy on temporary content changed with LS2 (and that was a good change)

Temporary content required temporary rewards. Now that content is no longer temporary, having temporary rewards isn’t needed either.

Murdock.6547:

Distortion working on green circles for VG is an exploit, not a bug.

No it’s not. What are you even on about here?

Devata.6589:

So people are grinding.

And with your system they won’t grind? The system you described is very similar to the system in Guild Wars 1. Grind til your fingers bleed a specific dungeon to get that skin you want or grind elsewhere and buy that skin. There is still grind, and too much grind in some cases.

Don’t get me wrong, adding specific rewards behind specific content is something I will always support. All types of content, all dungeons, all pve maps, everything needs their unique rewards not found elsewhere.

This is the part I disagree with:

Now person x wants multiple rewards but has his focus on a reward that drops from dungeon 1. He could do dungeon 2, get the reward, sell it and then maybe buy the reward from dungeon 1. More likely is he does dungeon 1 (first) because selling the item will also mean he lose some money, but anyway, he has the freedom to go for the different approaches.

Adding unique/specific rewards to content is fine. Giving them currency value is not, and the main reason is because if that happens there has to be an insane RNG behind those items.

The drop rate of Raid miniatures is great, you don’t have to kill the bosses a billion times to get the minis. The drop rate of Ascended boss skins in Raids is great too. However, Ghostly Infusion drop rate is garbage. What’s the difference between the two? Minis and Skins are account bound, ghostly infusions can be sold, and in order to keep their gold value they must be rare, which means their chance of dropping is abysmal compared to the other Raid-specific drops. The tokens help you get a specific item you want, because there are LOTS of potential drops, the tokens also help players with bad luck to get what they want. After running that Dungeon 1 for the 1000 time without getting the reward you want, would you feel happy? I wouldn’t, at least with tokens I know I made some progress towards my goal. Having both tokens AND rng is the best way (account bound always)

Although it gives a way for those who don’t like the content, to get the rewards from that content (by farming something else and then buying it) it DOES make everything worse for everyone who actually likes the content.

Devata.6589:

And lastly have a boss drop a specific item with RNG. The Decorative Molten Jetpack was a great example of this when it still dropped in the Molten Facility dungeon (With the only big problem, that is was temporary). This should be the most desirable item.
How rare / hard to get this is, can still be controlled by the developers based on the drop-rate.

If they make it a drop of a specific boss then what will happen is players running that boss 100 times per day in order to get it and then making the item practically worthless since players will now be deleting it. To keep it valuable in that case the drop rate needs to be abysmal low, to counter the “Law of the big numbers”. That’s how some of the very expensive skins worked in Guild Wars 1, creating entire meta compositions of farmers doing very specific dungeons for the very specific rewards at their end. Personally I didn’t like that approach because it meant “normal players”, those who do not farm the dungeon many times each day, had a very low chance of getting those skins.

What you probably fail to see, is that a token system works better because you cannot abuse it by over-farming those tokens. You can only get a very specific amount of tokens each day and if you repeat the content you get none. This means the developer can better pace the rewards and make assumptions on how many days it will take a player to get the reward. For example, this is how the Raid boss reward chests work, you can only loot their big end chest once per week, and BECAUSE it’s on a weekly lock it has much better rewards than other reward chests. If Tequatl was on a weekly lock then you’d have 100x times better chance of getting anything from it.

It’s not only the drop rate that can make things rare. It’s also the difficulty as well as weekly/daily locks on rewards.

This approach over the token approach means that instead of looking at some number slowly going up and exactly knowing how many more runs you have to do to get the item, now every time you kill the boss there is the rush of ‘will it drop this time?’.

You may like this but I, and I’m sure many others do too, dislike the “will it drop this time” approach with a burning passion. It doesn’t make content better, it makes it boring, players get sick of it and when they do get that reward they are after, they never visit that content again in their lifetime.

You can craft the great lucky lanterns then sell them on the TP for good profit. The Great Ram especially is very profitable

Note: you need the non-great versions for it to be profitable

Bratec.7136:

People are getting kicked from WvW groups are both condi and power rangers. They kick just all rangers from squad, no exception.

I saw an all-ranger squad yesterday in WvW. It was fun.

And those "no rangers’ in fractal groups dont check either your power or condi ranger, they just dont accept class.

Only for level 40 farm groups, regular fractals ranger is fine.

About raids, you play druid (heal-buff bot) in raids because no one wants you as dps in raid (or other rangers as dps).

Condi ranger is quite effective in Raids even after the nerf due to the simple rotation.

From your posts it’s almost as if you live in 2015, pre-HoT era where Rangers (together with Engineers and Necromancers) were kicked from all types of content. This is 2017, things changed

For fractals: that only happens in farm groups, they use chrono+warr+3 ele for maximum damage to do the farm as quickly as possible. Fast runs = more runs = more gold. Although Ele isn’t the top dps anymore so those farm pugs need to update.

As for WvW, once upon a time I was told not to bring a ranger because of Epidemic. Enemy Necromancers could use Epidemic on the pet, which then spread conditions that were active on the pet on nearby targets (the pet cannot dodge it). Since then they changed how the skill works so it’s no longer such an issue.

Your commanders / party members are really behind in terms of meta lol

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And here you’re wrong. Xera was trying to revive Lazarus – she had the four real aspects and one fake one, and didn’t know why he wasn’t reviving so her solution was “feed the aspects magic, lots of magic”.

That’s an interesting idea, feeding the aspects magikittenil it works. I never thought of it that way.

False. They prepared a stasis chamber for him, they put the artifacts in that chamber (I’m actually now curious if we can spot the goblet, sword, book, container, and whatever-the-fifth-object-was in that stasis chamber).

Now I’m curious and next time I beat Xera I’ll go look for the aspects around the chamber!

Balthazar took advantage of the raiders assaulting Stronghold of the Faithful and interrupting the resurrection of Lazarus. We do not know how he knew, but he was not there pretending to be Lazarus in front of Xera.

Well he somehow knew about Taimi’s machine too. Maybe we’ll get some info on why he knows so many things in Path of Fire

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s one of the reasons I think they need to put more energy into creating more classic organized/instanced content.

Or try their best to split the players. Forcing players to defeat bosses at the same time is an excellent way to keep the boss in the open world but at the same time reduce the amount of players (and the scaling) when fighting the boss.

Octovine, Chak Gerent, Dragon’s Stand, Night-time in Verdant Brink, Triple Trouble and Silverwastes all do this. If you get 50 players in one map, splitting them in 5 groups of 10 in order to complete a meta is a great way of dealing with scaling issues.

Einlanzer.1627:

This is why I favor giving melee weapons deflection or armor bonuses.

Which would affect content where melee is just fine, if not overpowered, that’s not a solution. Making scaling work better, adding more mobs, giving scaled mobs better skill sets is what can help. Mobs inside instances tend to have more complex skills to deal with, while in the open world they use less skills but up their hit points and damage by a lot.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Not So Secret is a pain. It and Draconis Mons are probably the two worse puzzles in the game, and both of them are from problems at the beginning of the puzzle.

I disagree. Draconis Mons is an easy JP and I don’t remember it having any issues at the beginning. The one that is hard (and really hard at the beginning) is the one in Ember Bay

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Anything “equal” to you would be something actually way harder to get than the raid one – and likely practically impossible to get.

Legendary armor is available in PVP and WVW

And i have already seen many raiders complaining about it, saying that it’s way too easy to get it there. Even if it doesn’t have any special skin.

Those who complain about the PVP/WVW legendary armors are just sad people. I for one think it was an excellent idea to add them to WVW. Not so sure about PVP though because the legendary ability to swap stats is useless there so I don’t see a point to have them in PVP (since the skin is mostly the same)

Doggie.3184:

maddoctor.2738:

Tip for those jumping puzzles: use a mesmer, or even better, a necromancer character

Why Necro?

This makes JPs much easier as a necromancer: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Walk

It has a lower cooldown than Portal AND it can protect you from many missed jumps that Portal cannot (if the fall leads to your death)

Danikat.8537:

So no – gathering the aspects did not summon Balthazar. He turned up for his own, entirely separate reasons ( currently unknown to us). As far as we know there isn’t a reliable way to summon the gods. Which makes sense, they’re gods, not servants – you can ask for their help, try to persuade them…but ultimately it’s up to them whether they answer and what form that answer takes.

They put him in a stasis chamber (Stronghold of the Faithful) to give him strength for crying out loud. They forced the Bloodstone to explode so he could absorb the magic energy from it!

Yes say that he appeared on his own, but wouldn’t Xera and the rest of the White Mantle notice it if that was the case? They didn’t notice what they were putting in the chamber to power up? And also, the White Mantle had the aspects, wouldn’t it be super weird for Lazarus to appear in front of them, before they used the aspects?

I’d love to see that scene, Balthazar appearing in front of the White Mantle disguised as Lazarus telling them: “Oh those aspects? You don’t need them to resurrect me because I’m totally here alive, so please do all you can to power me up and forget the aspects. Please?”

Astralporing.1957:

Anything “equal” to you would be something actually way harder to get than the raid one – and likely practically impossible to get.

Legendary armor is available in PVP and WVW

Arden.7480:

So to summon the Gods we can gather some aspects?

That’s what I was wondering and it sounds rather silly but that’s what happened, unless of course they didn’t tell us the whole story (which is more likely).

He consumed the Bloodstone who might have a connection to the Gods, then he discuised himself as Lazarus

You got it backwards. By the time the Bloodstone exploded, and then he consumed its magic, Balthazar was already awake and disguised as Lazarus. The White Mantle performed a ritual to destroy the bloodstone, to power him up, which means he was already up and running and the White Mantle had already finished the ritual to summon him, before the explosion of the Bloodstone.

Which is one of the parts that make no sense. The White Mantle used the fake aspects to revive something, then that something proved to be Balthazar. What happened in that summoning ritual? How come the White Mantle didn’t notice it wasn’t Lazarus? Did Balthazar already possess Lyssa’s mirror when he appeared after the ritual? Otherwise wouldn’t the White Mantle know it was Balthazar and not Lazarus? It’s a really hazy part of the story

I’m sorry if this has been discussed before.

In Salvation Pass, Matthias was sacrificing people on the bloodstone to feed their souls to Lazarus. In Stronghold of the Faithful, Xera was feeding Lazarus bloodstone directly to revive him. After Xera dies we see a Mursaat-shaped chamber empty, apparently Xera bought enough time for Lazarus to revive and then escape.

Another part of the White Mantle experiments with the Bloodstone and cause an explosion, Lazarus absorbs the magic and appears in front of Caudecus.

Up to this point the story makes sense, but then we learn that Caudecus replaced some of the aspects and that “Lazarus” was an impostor.

Then we learn that Lazarus was Balthazar… this is really far fetched, but it became worse when we saw the last episode. In order to summon Lazarus, we gathered the aspects, placed them in a ritual, performed a short ritual, and he appeared.

Since Xera and Matthias were feeding a re-formed Mursaat it means they already finished the ritual. This means that after they used Caudecus’s fake aspects, instead of Lazarus they got… Balthazar, that was already disguised when he was summoned and Xera’s fanatics didn’t notice his real identity.

Caudecus’s fake aspects summoned Balthazar? There is something missing here! Also, when we re-formed Lazarus he appeared directly and didn’t require sacrifices, nor bloodstone to be empowered, he seemed pretty “complete”. Xera didn’t know how Lazarus’s magic work? For their “god” they knew nothing about him and how his magic worked.

I hope some of the secret behind the appearance of Balthazar in front of Xera will be explained in the expansion as right now it seems like a giant plot hole.

Tip for those jumping puzzles: use a mesmer, or even better, a necromancer character

Blaeys.3102:

I believe that there are fundamental flaws with how they implemented raids into the game that give the worst of our community the excuse – and even encouragement – to behave the ways they do. Until those flaws are addressed (and, at the very least, acknowledged by Anet), the community fracturing you hint at in the original post isn’t going anywhere.

If that’s the problem then remove the excuse. Do it this way:
Add a new Raid LFG called Raid Training, anyone who makes a training LFG posts it there, so it’s much easier for new players to find a training run and much easier for training guilds to find people. This is the first step and is probably the easiest to implement.

Optional/debatable: make sure there is strict policy in this LFG part so it only contains training runs and not instance selling. If that’s the case then another LFG part can be added called Raid Selling. Again so the LFG listings aren’t confusing while selling runs, training runs and normal runs aren’t being put on the same list.

Optional 2: Gate the actual Raid LFG behind boss kills. In order to see the Raid LFG you must kill all the bosses at least once or to see listing for Boss A you must’ve killed Boss A. This will make sure those without boss kill experience can only join the training runs and not join groups that aren’t meant for them. All-welcome groups can be created in the training tab.

Instead of “fixing” the community split, try to go around it and make sure the split parts do not play with each other.

Leafy.5407:

Quick Question, initially GW2 promised that they would never add mounts and now I see they will be added in PoF. Not that I mind mounts but does anyone know why the change in thinking and game design on this point?

They never promised that they will never add mounts in the game. In fact they never participated in any of the mount threads ever nor they ever make an official announcement about it.

Sartharina.3542:

It’s the audio for Renewed Focus.

^^ I just heard it today myself

thrag.9740:

If Anet wants to devote more resources towards the casual players, I believe dungeons and fractals would have a better return on investment. However, I do support a quick dirty easy mode for story purposes. Divide all boss stats by 10, remove all rewards, and still allow 10 players to complete the raid. Disable all achievements too ofc.

Remember Arah story mode? If they indeed add an easy mode for story purposes then it should be a solo experience, without rewards and without achievements. Otherwise you’d run to the same problems as Arah story mode, eventually running out of players to finish the story.

Mantra of Resolve:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mantra_of_Resolve

Humans chant “Unbroken. Unshaken. Resolve.” while charging the mantra.
Sylvari chant “Intent. Unyielding. Resolve.” while charging the mantra.
Asura chant “Unbroken. Unshaken. Resolve.” while charging the mantra.

Are you sure you heard Justice and Courage instead of some of the above?

Let’s do a quick comparison.
Malchor’s Leap: 15 Hero Challenges, 37 Points of Interest and 5 Vistas
Verdant Brink: 11 Hero Challenges, 26 Points of Interest and 6 Vistas
Ember Bay: 5 Hearts, 23 Points of Interest and 7 Vistas
Crystal Oasis: 4 Hearts, 5 Hero Challenges, 30 Points of Interest and 10 Vistas

For a map that is MUCH larger than the above maps, it doesn’t look so dense judging by objective count.

Let’s take a look at events:
Malchor’s Leap has 71 dynamic events
Verdant Brink has 64 dynamic events (counting defense events only once)
Ember Bay has 20 dynamic events but also 5 hearts. How many Events are rough “equivalent” for a Heart is the question
Crystal Oasis demo had 22 dynamic events and 4 hearts, we’ll see how many the actual map will have, if it can reach the amounts of the other maps.

In any case with objective count and event count, although the map is more than DOUBLE the size, it’s obvious that it doesn’t have DOUBLE the content, at least the demo version.

Ashantara.8731:

tl/dr; Could we please have the same quality of dialogue and voice acting again like we used to in the old days? Normal pace, neat enunciation, and cultivated vocabulary and parlance?

I hope not because the quality of the “old days” was worse than we get now. No need to reduce the quality of the voice overs to what it used to be in the core game.

Ashantara.8731:

The reason is that I am just playing through the HoT campaign for a fifth time

I think you should play the core game again, probably you forgot how it was back then.

Anyone remember Lionguard Mira?

I don’t think there will be a problem. It’s the amount of content that is problematic to create, a huge barren wasteland with nothing in it to do doesn’t take much development time. Making the maps larger doesn’t necessarily mean they are harder to make, in fact it’s the opposite, a map with lots of vertical paths is much harder to design even if it’s only half the size.

It’s the amount of content that makes maps hard to develop, not their land mass, that’s why a comment like “It has the largest maps we’ve ever created” means little to nothing to me.

Let’s see.
In Core Tyria there are loads of players still playing in Dry Top and Silverwastes. World Bosses still attract loads of players, even the lower level ones, like Shadow Behemoth or the Fire Elemental.
All 4 Heart of Thorns maps have loads of maps filled doing the meta events and other regular events every day.
LS3 maps all have a healthy population of players.

How do you figure that map content doesn’t last? Because I think most maps have already passed the test of time.

I wonder if the elite spec revenants will get in that expansion will be useful underwater or not

Einlanzer.1627:

I should have specified that I meant melee is a problem specifically in larger scale content, but larger scale content is kind of the norm in this game, so it becomes a problem.

The problem with large scale content is that buffs have a 5-man limit and also you can’t make sure the people you want to get your buffs actually get them, like those standing inside the flame breath area of the Matriarch. It’s really impossible to save/help specific other players and that’s what makes melee punishing in large scale content. It doesn’t help when some enemies get leveled and can 1-shot even characters with more defensive stats, like the little wyverns around the matriarch, at 20+ players they get to level 82 and one shot anyone while their attacks aren’t clear and visible at all.

The problem with your suggestion of giving a new mechanic for melee is that it will obviously be used in content where melee dominates already. A better scaling algorithm, better AI, spawn more enemies instead of leveling them so much, 1-shot kills by regular attacks are never fun (see high level Fractals pre-toughness update) they fixed it in Fractals maybe it’s time to fix it in the open world too.

Einlanzer.1627:

First – melee is too punishing. Too many enemies target too many players in melee range too frequently, making being in melee range too big a liability, and defensive stats don’t really help (see below). The AI here needs to be addressed, but I also favor giving an armor bonus (or a new mechanic) to melee weapons to represent deflection – it’s only logical.

Melee isn’t punished in this game, in fact melee in this game is king in most small scale content. Raids, fractals, dungeons and sPVP are all about staying in melee range and using melee builds to better share buffs, to better cleave and to help each other. Mesmer Wells, Guardian traps, Warrior “Empower Allies”, Ranger “Spotter” and all other buffs are only useful in very close range, so staying in melee and hitting the enemies together is important. In sPVP we have point control so melee is the obvious choice there too. There is a reason that the majority of meta builds on all the above are in melee range and even those that use ranged weapons have melee skills (Ranger traps for example)

Melee has issues in world bosses and when event mobs scale too high. But that shows us the difference between an organized group that makes sure everyone is buffed, and a disorganized blob. As an example, the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink is really punishing for melee builds when doing the meta with a lot of other players, however, if you go and fight her with 4 others (so a party of 5) you can stay in melee for pretty much the entire fight and don’t have any issues with it at all. She is much easier to CC to prevent her from flying while at the same time party buffs and heals help the team stay alive even if they take damage by her area of effect flames (Which in a large blob would down you instantly)

Just how a good Chronomancer can distort Slothasor’s shake attack (and make melee really easy on Slothasor) they can distort the Wyvern Matriarch’s flamebreath and give players that extra opportunity to move out of it while dealing damage in melee. But that can only work with fewer people, the fewer people, the easier it is to melee, as the number of players doing the same content increases, melee starts feeling punishing and ranged becomes the weapon of choice.

Before I forget: following a random tag to play WvW means going ranged is the better option to stay alive, however in guild groups there is a “melee train”, a group of players buffing each other (stability is important!), cleansing and rushing the ranged characters of the opposing team to crash them quickly. While roaming in WvW there are a lot of melee range good builds.

I think you are mistaking the “problem” with melee in this game.
Melee builds, or rather close range builds, are the highest damage builds, at the same time offer the best survival options for most encounters. Be it in PVP or PVE, melee builds dominate and I would never say that melee is “punished” in this game. In melee it’s easier to share buffs with your team mates, it’s easier to cleave and it’s easier to work as a team rather than solo. In instances (fractals/dungeons/raids) and in spvp melee dominates and it offers a lot of good options compared to staying only ranged.

Melee is “punished” in this game when you are alone. And by alone I mean when you are among a huge number of people, yet on your own. Like in large open world events when the mobs get leveled and 1-shot anyone, or when bosses get lots of area of effect attacks to affect as many players possible and you don’t have a Druid to heal you, a Chrono to distort, a Guardian to use Aegis and so on.

tl;dr melee is punished when you are on your own and fight enemies that are designed to attack many people at once (like world bosses), but when you are in smaller scale fights, instances or in sPVP melee dominates.

Astralporing.1957:

But the thing that pains me the most (and the thing that is directly tied to what this thread is about, maddoctor) is the fact that raids promote the elitist behaviour in ways dungeons never did.

This “elitist behavior” you are talking about could’ve been very easily avoided if players understood basic English. I don’t think it’s the game’s job to teach that though.

And to tie this to the OP, his suggestion of making the Raids much harder would solve this “problem” really well because if the Raids were indeed much much harder then LFG listings for Raids wouldn’t exist and they’d be only done by guild teams and organized teams.

Without LFG listings, all the problems would disappear right? There would be no need to learn basic English to communicate, no kicks due to dps meters or not having the proper builds, no free-loaders, no carrying, no elitism. Or simply remove LFG listings for Raids without changing anything in the content. Bam, problem solved, no more elitism.

Do you remember what this thread was all about? If not, check the OP.
Hint: it wasn’t about having or not Raids in the game, we have other threads about that.

Since you can similar results between the 2 GPUs it might be that your CPU is the bottleneck. Check to see if your CPU has very high usage while playing