Guild Wars 2

Algreg.3629:

lordkrall.7241:

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

then you may want to check your sources of information or your memory.

There was already a discussion about this that was mostly resolved a few posts up. With sources even! Might want to take a look.

Also, I finally found the patch that referred to the change in target limits and the language does indeed only refer to healing.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012
“Many skills, items, and traits were applying healing to an infinite amount of targets and have now been limited to 5 targets.”

lordkrall.7241:

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

I wanted to chime in on this. At launch, aoe skills were unlimited in the number of targets. I remember this quite pointedly because I ran a healing banners warrior for a while and remembered seeing way more than 5 ticks of regen during world boss fights. When the change to limit that and other aoe skills to a maximum of five targets, I rethought what sort of builds I was running. There was a patch referring to this change but I forget when it was.

Edit: Check out the notes here from a dev live stream. There is a section on AOE that refers to this change. http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Arkinos.7245:

Do you really think that a “problem” that was here since release is really something anet considers worth fixing?

I know that development takes time. But its been 3 years and there wasnt even any sort of communication that indicates Anet has this on the radar and is working on it.

There is literally no reason to believe that Anet is doing anything to fix conditions for pve. If you can post a link to a devblog or something that would be nice, because I want conditions to be viable.
(I went for a Rampager build on my Warrior right after release, unaware thats this buils is 100% inferior to Berserker in any situation and have basically stopped playing my Warrior ever since because I like the playstyle, but its not viable)

But just saying that its going to be fixed with nothing to show for it is, well lets say bold.
And yes the fact that there is nothing to suggest that anet is working on this is evidence that Anet either doesnt seem to care about it, that they have no idea how to fix it, or that Anet is seriously terrible at communicating.

This isn’t the first time your position has been mentioned to the devs.

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“Actually…(condition damage) is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.

Jon (Peters)" From 2013_

It is what it is. You are talking about core combat mechanics and stuff that’s under the hood. Other mmos have taken years to implement balance changes, even stuff that might seem simple to us. I personally feel this is no different. They haven’t made any promises so I don’t really know what else to say. Would you like them to offer you a firm date on when they can fix it?

Arkinos.7245:

To be honest the easier change would be to increase the bleed caps based on enemy rank.

Give Veterans, Champions, etc different bleeds caps.
This would not change sPvP at all while fixing a lot for pve.

But then again Anet did nothing for 3 years so its rather obvious that dont give a kitten about conditions for pve.

So, absence of evidence is the evidence of absence? This expansion must have been a rush job since they were doing nothing for three years prior like so many people claimed. I mean they didn’t tell us about it before the official announcement so it didn’t exist.

I get it. You want results and you want them now. If only development worked that way, we’d all be a little less grumpy.

Is it possible that we don’t truly have all the info needed to fully realize where stability fits into combat in the future? For WVW, which seems to be a hot button topic, we haven’t been able to get an idea of how a fully fleshed out Revenant fits into the picture. Nor do we have any idea on what the new specializations bring to the table or how the Defiance mechanic will be applied to players. We can speculate on what the stability change means for balance currently, but in all likelihood we will have to revisit our assessment as new information is released. And that might be pretty soon. So, please consider the transience of this particular concern.

I just wanted to add this segment of the interview from tenthonhammer to the conversation as the interviewer touches on this subject for a moment:

“Ten Ton Hammer: Do you envisage players moving away from pure Berzerker builds thanks to things such as Defiance?

Jon: I think the hope is that the more we can do that – we don’t want to discourage it. There are places where we want you to do that, it’s more about diversity. Undoubtedly it will but when you fight the Wyvern, even if you bring maximum damage you don’t always use your maximum damage skills and will use crowd control instead. When the Wyvern takes off you really want him to get knocked down. Although this isn’t finalised, when you pull him out of the sky you deal triple damage to him until he gets up. It’s way more important in this fight that you deliver on spiking that crowd control when he takes off than consistently dealing damage. You start to create builds that are good at spiking damage – they can do a heavy amount over a few seconds but you then have to wait thirty seconds. Those builds are really good against the Wyvern because when he gets pulled down, they can unload more than anyone else can. When he gets back up it’s not as important to be doing as much damage because he’s really tough."

I think their answer is a bit of a deflection in part because the interview is mostly supposed to focus on the new mechanics. How zerker specifically fits into all that is a much bigger discussion. In particular, not addressing why you should use other gear stats that bring less damage and the same level of crowd control, active defense as zerker. But, it’s there for your perusal.

I should also remind everyone to try and keep it clean. Remember, if this devolves into name calling and personal attacks, that is a good guarantee this thread gets closed real quick.

Aidan Savage.2078:

After skimming the thread, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I decide to open steam ogre’s room exactly 20-21 minutes before fire elemental, thus depriving azhure’s guild an ogre spawn in favor of generating one in time for the world train to arrive, I’m fully within my rights, I’m not trolling, and azhure can suck it up. Sound about right? Anyone see something wrong with that?

Man, we’ve really gone leaps and bounds from the days of kill claiming. This sort of animosity used to be welcome….nay…..enshrined! in game design. What have we become? Care bears. Bears….who care…about others.

Edit: I think you should be able to kill what you want when you want and choose to be kind and courteous as you see fit. As I mentioned before, I think it’s up to the devs to settle disputes where serious conflicts of interest occur. Again, not sure this counts as a serious conflict. It probably depends on how many reports occur/people speak up about their specific grievances.

So, add fighting steam golem before FE to the list of things that shouldn’t be done in addition to completing temple defense events, and fighting champs in FGS outside the train. Anet sees these conversations and chooses to make a move depending on how bitter the conversation gets. The underlying theme here is clear. The community has many different play styles and “schedules” and some play styles don’t agree with each other, i.e. this current subject and the aforementioned. It’s up to Anet to intervene in arguments like this because the game allows for conflict of this nature. Although, it has to reach a tipping point and I don’t think we’ve seen that yet. I should also add that Anet hasn’t necessarily sided with the “champ train” crowd in the past. They know they will just move on to the next farm anyway. It’s just how it goes. Anet has basically said they will let people farm whatever so long as it doesn’t adversely affect the economy or in some cases cause/take part in conflict.

Test.8734:

Ensign.2189:

There is always in every game some portion of the population that only plays PvE, has no regard for balance, and is vehement that nothing gets nerfed every under any circumstances.

I’m very much surprised you are still around.

And this isn’t a matter of “OMG, let’s never nerf PvE!”. It’s a very big change on the way the game works, and everything we have today has not been built to work with stability being different from what it currently is. If ArenaNet went back and reworked the current encounters in the game that rely mostly on enemies using CC on players, then it would be ok – it could actually be a good thing.

But let’s be realistic, ArenaNet will NEVER go back to each PvE encounter that they have based around monsters using CC and rework them. They will see it as being too much work, and leave behind broken scenarions in which we have a round key to fit into a now square hole.

This is made worse by how ArenaNet often uses CC effects from monsters as a crutch for when they want to spice up a fight, but have no idea of how to do it. Just see how Orr is basically a sea of CC effects, or how many of the season 2 encounters relied on CC from monsters, and so on.

After years of building a game in which CC on players is their default answer when trying to spice an encounter, changing how CC on players works without changing those encounters is not going to work.

While I don’t disagree with your point that devs shouldn’t rely too heavily on enemy cc to spice things up, I feel like they aren’t just looking at PVE design with this change. It certainly affects PVP a lot in terms of safe stomping specifically. If you listened to the recent POI, it sounded like they felt this change to stability and the new resistance boon, etc. gives them more tools to make encounters in PVE more interesting. So, with new encounters especially, I think we will see just where exactly they feel stab should play a role. I also don’t think that we should expect a huge revamp to pve enemies (i.e. risen), but I also think the Orr example is a bit exaggerated. Stability has only ever been one tool in avoiding multiple CC attempts. There are blocks, dodges, blinds and simple repositioning. The effectiveness of each requires some level of situational awareness. I think this change simply moves the numbers around a bit in terms of how effective stability is. I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing even in older pve scenarios. You also have to take into account that we are getting new tools to address older scenarios as well such as resistance.

TeddieJ.2495:

Also, gliding =/= flying. Gliding needs air presure (turbulance ?) to move up. Only if Anet make some mechanic in the air at some point , i think gliding in GW2 is always going downward.

Did they not mention in the initial announcement that there were mechanics to help you go farther in gliding? I may be making it up but I thought something like what you are suggesting was mentioned.

There are two things happening here. 1) People didn’t pay attention to/didn’t know about what was outlined to be discussed at this POI and 2) People don’t care about point one.

Essence Snow.3194:

Way to turn inconsequential comment that derived in statement that focused more on stylization into a full blown gender issue……..This is why we can’t have nice things.

This is why people need to be more self aware. Context is important. The OP got legitimate answers to his question about whether or not other legendary bow styles are available and people responded to the tone of his question.

I…..just can’t sit idly by and let this slide. I get that you want a different style legendary. That’s totally cool. But implying that rainbows and unicorns aren’t for guys is just silly. I’m all for Long Bows of the deep deep dark of the underdark. But at the same time, I dig the rainbows and unicorns too. There’s nothing inherently female about rainbows and unicorns. On a personal note, my older sister was always upset that she never got action figures as a child because our mom thought they weren’t appropriate for young girls. Girls can fully appreciate a nice Longbow of World Slaying with fire and brimstone shooting everywhere. Just saying, the world is a big place.

Alright, now that that’s out. We are probably getting more legendary bows with HOT. My guess is that they will probably be pretty different from the aesthetics of what we have now. Hopefully, they will be more of what you are looking for.

I just wanted to remind everyone of this interesting little tidbit from the devs back when the much loathed ferocity change was launching.

“We want to make support roles more viable so they are not supporting other players by just killing things faster.”

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/496005243?t=8m40s

In that video, the devs discussed briefly their motives for making the change which was partly because player damage was considered way too high by the balance team and in part because of player criticism with how “support” was being defined by part of the player base. Anet understands the issues with condition damage imbalance, they understand why players complain about the best group support, and they probably agree with some but not all points on this many faceted issue mentioned in these numerous threads. It’s also hard to say whether or not they agree with certain balance issues given the pace of balance updates. A pattern is difficult to discern.

It’s been discussed at length that the current optimized builds and gameplay can change for the better and it’s only a matter for Anet to determine what they feel better is. This meta that we’ve settled into has its pros and cons. When continuing to discuss what we have and what we could have, remember that balance as it is can be improved upon. It always can.

The amazing thing is that all of those threads in the 2nd post were linked and none of them were the one thread with a dev popping in to say they were working on templates. Just take heart in knowing that it’s another background project that you will never hear about until “when it’s ready.”

Also, someone mentioned in an older thread that there were design issues with how templates were done in GW1 that wouldn’t necessarily work for GW2. I can’t remember what exactly but I believe one of the potential issues had to do with GW1 saving data locally for templates.

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“Actually this is not true and is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.

Jon (Peters)"_ From 2013

There has been “dev intervention.” I’m not sure what more we can add since it sounds like they have been pondering this issue for a very long time already and probably trudged through mounds of feedback and suggestions over the years. But if you choose to continue this discussion, it might help if you format it like a CDI since people are going to gravitate toward offering solutions anyway. What’s really important is that people try to wrap their heads around the potential issues their solutions will create. It’s a great exercise in problem solving to understand that there may be consequences (warranted or not) to suggestions.

Astralporing.1957:

nightwulf.1986:

Jurah’s Jewel is available at the laurel vendor for 30 laurels. Verata’s Seared Ring is not.

That is only after you buy it for crests.

I didn’t buy it. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I’ve kept a decent record of where my crests went.

Even the wiki appears to confirm the laurel merchant:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jurah%27s_Jewel

Jurah’s Jewel is available at the laurel vendor for 30 laurels. Verata’s Seared Ring is not.

BentoDetective.6491:

I think back to when I played WoW, for something like this. WoW had talent trees which are similar to GW2’s traits. The talent trees allowed you to unlock an additional configuration slot for a different setup due to the game’s trinity system. So, config. slot #1 could be for example, DPS. Then, #2 could be for say, tank set up. Not suggesting to copy, but to use this as a blueprint to adding a functionality to GW2’s trait system.

Furthermore, the additional config. slot was unlocked for a few silvers. So, here’s to hoping (if introduced) Anet does not put an insane amount to unlock.

Two things. A dev randomly commented some months ago that templates are in the works but they obviously won’t say anything more until they have something to show. It’s not the same system as GW1 so it’s not like the concept can be ported over. And two, if I remember correctly, the dual speccing talent trees in WOW were implemented several years after launch. WOW launched in 2004 and dual speccing talents was 2009. Dual speccing was something people were clamoring for for a very long time. So, in short, these things aren’t always a developer priority even though they are player priorities. Something could be holding them up but we probably won’t hear about it until it’s about ready to launch,

People keep looking to these nerfs as if they are a sum total of balance changes intended to effect a certain goal. It’s pretty clear that the nerfs to might and the ferocity change are piecemeal changes so that they can see how the changes are actually affecting things. Again, they’ve said as much when they started with the ferocity change. We’ve only proven with this discussion that we are only capable of thinking short term. I still agree that it’s an onerous process for us to wait for additional changes that may or may not come. But, at least for now, it is what it is. The might change, along with ferocity doesn’t address core issues that people have identified with the “zerker meta.” I don’t think anyone, even anet, claimed otherwise.

Pandaman.4758:

lordkrall.7241:

Pandaman.4758:

One day I’d really like to see ANet’s justification for charging a premium for individual armor pieces, particularly for pieces that don’t appear to require any extra work to implement across weight classes (only chests and legs need separate models for each weight class).

Why would they need justification?

But alright then: They need to make money in order to survive. They choose to do so by charging for completely useless optional things rather than things that actively effects game-play.

Would you prefer being able to buy items that makes you more powerful than people that can’t/won’t buy stuff in the gemstore?

What? Re-read what I wrote. I’m not complaining that they’re charging at all, I’m complaining they’re charging extra for less work.

I don’t think they really make an effort to justify the cost of items on the gemstore much at all. Isn’t that a case of “knowing how the sausage is made”? Price points are set internally without needing to communicate a clear justification of it to consumers and are changed (like with the infinite use tools) based on customer reaction and what they feel they are worth. They could have kept the lower price point on infinite mining picks etc. but they chose not to. In the end, whatever justification they used internally would never match the desire of people who wanted the lower price point so why argue?

Edit: And for some of the interesting issues being raised here, I would also like to point out —
1) Players in the past have complained about not being able to mix heavy/light/medium looking armors and having a uniform armor piece is a compromise on that issue.
2) It’s rather presumptuous to believe that the armor sets like lawless, scarlet (spiky version), are unfinished. It’s entirely possible, even likely at this point, that they were finished as they were. It’s a matter of perspective.

Old thread but now there is some point of reference for the initial complaint. Fine Wining and Brewmaster were activated on the December 2nd update. No explanation for why those two were introduced at that particular point in time. Release notes show no indication of a bug. Still no info on Hero of the People collection. Basically, players were calling Anet out on content that wasn’t rolled out on the live servers and we only had knowledge of because of an unofficial video preview. The popular assumption was, probably still is, that the 3 missing collections were bugged at launch. I see two possibilities. We might have been asking Anet to comment on the equivalent of datamined features with clandestine release dates, which they have commented on in the past with VIP status but haven’t with things like the school outfits. Or it was bugged somehow and they just didn’t want to tell us for whatever reason. Believe what you want. Hero of the People TBD.

DarkOcean.8746:

Wanze.8410:

Its probably a free expansion.

And those people that asked for a paid expansion for the last year and a half will be disappointed anyways because they didnt get what they wanted.

Just chiming in, I would actually be disappointed if it were not a paid expansion. I know a lot of people jumped on the Guild Wars 2 bandwagon because of the lack of subscription fee, but I really don’t see how ArenaNet can create meaningful, complete, well-written, polished, and worthwhile content without charging a fee for their major content updates. Coming from Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 I was expecting, and more than happy, to pay additional costs down the line for expansion packs. If anything, these Living Story updates prove that an intervention of some sort is needed. I do not believe the quality of these content updates is going to go up until we are ‘forced’ to pay for these updates.

That particular monetization model does not directly equate to quality or quantity in the manner you are suggesting. It’s the same sort of correlation drawn between subscription fees and content/development quality. You can throw all the money you want at some projects and it still won’t churn out the quality/quantity you expect. Not only that, I get the feeling that there isn’t a whole lot of understanding behind how GW2’s current budget is allotted with regard to development. I keep hearing the refrain that all the money coming from the gem store is going back into the gem store, and nothing else. Not quite sure that’s true. GW1 experimented with their no subscription model and found success. Anet now has to prove that their new monetization model is capable of delivering what they want it to (content or otherwise) in order to stay afloat.

Edit: Just wanted to clarify that a free expansion wouldn’t really be free. If the cost isn’t upfront, it’s paid for through another project or form of monetization.

Dinks.2478:

lordkrall.7241:

Dinks.2478:

You people keep using this nonsense excuse when the reality is that it is a poor move resulted from poor planning. We just had 5 weeks of nothing and will probably have 2-3 months of nothing after this. Yet people will keep claiming an imaginary 2 week content release schedule regardless.

I had loads of stuff to do during that time.
With Wintersday and quite a bit of new rewards and so on. Claiming there was nothing is false.

I also question if you would actually prefer to have to potentially wait weeks for potential game-breaking bugs being fixed due to people not being at work, if they released it before the christmas break?

Even when they are at work we get stuck waiting weeks for game breaking bugs. Your point is invalid. And no, wintersday was a repeat of last year. There was nothing to do, please don’t make kitten up.

This is clearly a personal issue. I had stuff to do during that 5 weeks. Therefore, my experience invalidates yours. Unless you would like to retort with your experience invalidating mine?

MAGpie.7962:

Gregori.5807:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Colin Johanson and I had a chat about this thread today. He actually brought it up because he wanted to make sure that forum members know that the dev team is very aware of the concerns that our players feel about traits, and also to let you know that the devs read and refer to this subject (and particularly this thread) quite frequently. We’ve said it before, but it remains true: Your voices are being heard and your input is valued.

We wish there was more to say today, but please take heart that this subject is part of current development team discussions and we’ll let you know more as soon as we reasonably can do so.

Uh huh. I have no reason to believe the bolded part. The time for nebulous promises like these to smooth things over has long passed.

You have a bad job… I do not envy you. You are the one stuck coming into this thread to give the bad news, or no news, which is the same as bad news. I am another one who gave up hope a long time ago.

I wonder what prompted the devs to ask you to come in today. Usually its something specific like when the commander tags were fixed or the gem store was fixed. Or a big release.

It could be that there have been a number of trait threads starting outside of this one recently.

It is always something.

Been playing the game for a long time, and I enjoy it. I really do.

But I agree. I have absolutely no trust in Anet or value their word in the slightest. They have never given me any reason to believe they “listen”.

I never understood the point of view that because something doesn’t turn out the way they expect, it means they weren’t heard or understood. It is not an individual idea that often shapes an outcome like the trait system changes but a myriad of them. I bet all those people asking for mounts and the holy trinity back feel like anet doesn’t listen either. Keep the perspective people.

Wanze.8410:

I blame the player base for voting for Ellen Kiel.
They gave usa choice, we mucked it up.

Soooo….

naiasonod.9265:

saalle.4623:

I like new trait system.In fact they should force us to do some other things as well.If we have everything we want under our reach,then we have nothing to do,no reason to play this game at all.

You might feel that way, but clearly, a good many of the rest of us don’t have trouble finding purpose in doing what we please rather than what we’re forced into just to function.

Those of us that dislike being herded into a list of chores don’t share your opinion.

1:

It seems they were trying to base the trait system off a similar one in Guild Wars.

Definitely a big part of it. This specific complaint from the OP about having to travel to random parts of Tyria just to get a trait is pretty much what people enjoyed about elite/normal skill aquisition in GW1. Again, transposing that system into GW2 was…not well thought out.

And 2:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/first

Yup, a merge is coming.

Also dredging this back out of the archives for reference, from an old interview:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow them more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could, say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

Ezeriel.9574:

^I’ve seen Husk downed with 3+ minutes to spare, and I’ve seen it fail with 40 people there, and they weren’t doing AOE.

If enough people show up, that boss scales out of control, because after the first few condi builds, more people only hurt the situation.

Like a maxed out condi guard, that can’t get any burn damage in, because four other guards are all procing burning, and they’re spec’d to bunker.

nightwulf.1986:

Ezeriel.9574:

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….snip

That is wholly untrue. One of the biggest threads involving conditions Anet stepped in to explain just part of why conditions are the way they are (e.g. cost, sever bandwidth).

Saying “we can’t ’cause bandwidth” and “we’re looking into it” isn’t feedback.

Feedback would be explaining why some of the thousands of suggestions, made by players, won’t work.

I’d like to know why the bleed damage on rifle was removed, and yet every third crit a warrior lands procs a bleed.

If you’ve got five warriors at a world boss, and each one has five stacks of bleeding, and a necro shows up…

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“Actually this is not true and is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.

Jon (Peters)"_ From 2013

I get it, an answer isn’t an answer unless you says it is. That’s cool but this is effectively the level of communication you are going to see until they have something concrete to show. There is no point in repeating it and they have repeated it. They aren’t going to reveal everything to us. They’ve said as much and you are free to hold your breath until they give you the specifics you are asking for. I would love to see some action on this as well, but I’ve waited years in other games to see similar fixes come through. It’s already been 2+ years with conditions being the way they’ve been and the game hasn’t collapsed yet. If I could get developers to fast-track all of my suggestions I would but my impression is that development doesn’t work that way.

Ezeriel.9574:

Anet has given zero feedback on the issue….snip

That is wholly untrue. One of the biggest threads involving conditions Anet stepped in to explain just part of why conditions are the way they are (e.g. cost, sever bandwidth). Most people who cared to follow the issue know this. Then not too long ago, Anet commented again on it stating that they have been looking into it but not promising or saying anything more than that. You might have to do some research but if you take the time to look for an answer instead of just going with how you feel, you might surprise yourself.

This goes for everybody commenting. I know searching the forums is nigh impossible, but this issue has been commented on officially by Anet. They are aware of the state of condition damage. We won’t hear anything more until they have something worth talking about.

Galphar.3901:

For some of us it’s not the end but the journey.

Careful there, that’s some PHIW talk right there. #divisive jab

Brahmincorle.1264:

I wouldnt hope for too much. At best it would be another quality of life patch and LS3. Expansion without any infrastructure such as PTR? No 100% “unintentional” leeks about it on twitter, no accidental mentioning it by devs to any gaming magazine in otherwise unrelated interview? No leaked screenshots, concept arts etc? These are staples of pre-expansion hype building in MMO industry ;-)

pic related

This better?

felessan.9587:

The season will wrap, ArenaNet will be silent for four weeks…

Galphar.3901:

My guess would be that we’ll find out what’s gonna happen w/ S2 and after on Jan 24 at Pax South.

Yarrr, thar be schedules in the deep waters of the internets.

Guardian of Angels.9867:

Bolbo Baggins.8594:

The Sign on the wall at 0.50 is exactly the same as this one:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Elona_Reach_Tablet.jpg

Connections to augary rock, elona reach? Ascencian, the doppelganger? who knows

I looked a bit further, and I’ve found the other 2 symbols aswell:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_Ascension

I don’t wanna go hype this stuff up, but sounds like we’re going back to the Hall of Ascension!

Nice find! We went back to glint’s lair, and it was relevant to the story at hand. I wonder what the Hall of Ascension has to do with anything, although if Turai Ossa is around, there must be a thread there somewhere.

gusy.5216:

It is more like Ghostly Hero

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ghostly_Hero_

I think technically, lordkrall still hit the mark on the head.

lordkrall.7241:

The Ghost looks more like Turai Ossa than Rurik I would say.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Turai_Ossa

“This Ghostly Hero was once Turai Ossa.”

But you know, which is more accurate? Poobadoo or the ghost of poobadoo?……….note to self, make 70’s spinoff entitled “The 13 Ghosts of Poobadoo”.

Palador.2170:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Can we at least wait and see before airing negative, and sarcastic, comments?

…. no?

Sorry, but so long as their policy of not talking about the future of the game is still in place, they CAN’T say anything big. Pretending they’re going to is just a farce, and everyone knows it.

It doesn’t matter if they’re secretly cracking genetics problems and planning to clone charr buddies for all their players, they can’t talk about it due to their policy. All they can give is, at best, vague hints of anything more than a week or two out. We can either laugh about it, or get upset about it. Personally, I’d rather laugh.

I never understood their position to be that they won’t talk about the future of the game or that they can’t say anything big. It’s always been that they will discuss the future of the game on their release schedule. If they planned for a press release ahead of time, odds are there aren’t any huge spoilers in it and they can control the flow of information. Example being, we were told we were getting living story season 2 some time ago. No more, no less. That was the info we had to work on. We asked for what was coming beyond that and the content of such, they said they can’t comment on that. We asked if they planned on releasing very specific things we wanted, they said they can’t comment on that (although that’s not entirely true depending on what the subject was but again, they wouldn’t go into detail). There is a difference between not talking about the future and controlling the release of information. They can botch whatever it is they plan on saying but it sounds like a scripted release, so it’s kind of hard to do. Kind of. (Looking at you Squenix.)

That being said, I too am curious what is going to be released. The way they phrased it suggests that they have been tinkering with a new content release system. Maybe.

I wish I saved the reference but several months ago a similar suggestion was posted and a red post basically said they were working on something along the lines of templates but didn’t have anything to show at the moment. So, I believe they know we want them. It can’t be a 1:1 version of GW1 templates can it? The design implications are different as the combat environment has changed. Do they allow it in wvw? Will attrition battles be about who can swap out to the best counterbuild after disengaging? What are some other considerations that weren’t present in GW1?

Garambola.2461:

You people really don’t think there are more important things to be concentrating on than VIP lounges?

The question is, do they have to “concentrate” on VIP lounges in order to make them? I think it’s been stated repeatedly that they don’t. Multitasking is a thing in a team environment.

I will post this for the hundredth time.

From an article on the Living Story on Zam’s website. “Therefore he (Meelad Sadat, Head of PR at Anet) didn’t want to say how many episodes are going to be left in the season, but did say that starting with the Halloween episode they are back on their two-week cadence up through Wintersday on December 16th before going on holiday break. As to what is going to happen after that, Meelad said that they will keep players informed of when there will or won’t be a patch, like how they announced the Halloween and start of each half of Season 2 well in advance.”

To be fair, this is from a website that I didn’t learn about until a month or so ago but if you came across it and read the article, you would have known the schedule. For some people knowing this info ahead of time matters and for some it doesn’t, but the point is, the break wasn’t a surprise and they let some people know well in advance.

Edit: And we still don’t know when the actual end of the season is. All they’ve said is that it will start up again on the 13th.

Devata.6589:

cranked.3812:

Consensus.2785:

I completely agree. One thing that makes me quite uncomfortable is the feeling that everywhere I look I’m being asked for gems, gems and more gems. If you don’t have skill you need money, if you don’t have time you need money, if you want to get a certain skin, you need money. The current approach is excessive and disappointing (In my person opinion) considering the usual MMO approach is: go on an adventure, face a challenge and get rewarded, which is basically being bypassed by anyone with a fat wallet.

I’m not getting your point here. If you don’t have skill or time and you want something, the answer in any other facet of life is to have money.

What it basically boils down to is you either put in the time to grind for what you want or you spend money on it. That is, and always will be, the trade off. Everything in game can be obtained either way. This is not something anet has invented.

It’s a game, it’s supposed to be fun, it’s not supposed to be a real live simulator.

You should go into the world have an epic adventure (doing a dungeon) and get a cool drop related to that adventure. That is fun loot, thats a game.

Buying an item with cash is not playing a game. And doing some brainless thing like killing champions over and over again to get stuff you don’t want to sell that to earn money (so grinding) to then buy what you want thats also not what a game should be about.

I think what’s missing from this analysis is perspective. There has been and probably will always be a market in mmos for people who want to use money instead of time and skill to get what they want. It’s pretty much the entire reason for the RMT industry. There are many facets to the decision to implement a gem for gold system in Guild Wars 2. Illicit RMT is one of them. Even in games where there is no official cash to in-game money system, third parties stepped in to fill that lucrative void and made/make a lot of money in the process. In a perfect world, no one would want to pay real money to skip to the end of an in-game goal. But we don’t live in that world.

We can argue on what is a worthwhile task in game to achieve something but I just wanted to get the elephant in the room out of the way.

szygum.2607:

The simpliest answer is always the best answer.
They aren’t annoucing anything because there is nothing to announce. Simple.

I like this answer if only because in its simplicity, the meaning behind it is totally a reflection of the person reading it.

Behellagh.1468:

One story goes that they added ascended because the devs were surprised how easy it was to get Exotic, either via crafting or opening up the temples in Orr. Orr was suppose to be this big multi-stage series of events that would open the temples up for a short time and then close as the hoards of risen surged back. They really underestimated what a determined large, unorganized mob of players can accomplish if the reward was right.

Yup, this whole topic is a big part of the reason ascended gear got added. For every player who appreciated having BIS gear with little effort, there was someone who thought the very idea of having BIS gear with little effort was ludicrous and diminished their sense of accomplishment. Thus Ascended tier was born. I personally hope that Ascended is truly the final tier (with Legendary being a parallel tier) but they haven’t explicitly maintained that new tiers won’t be added. Just that they won’t be added any time soon. We’ll see what the future holds.

Stormcrow.7513:

nightwulf.1986:

SpeedFiend.4521:

At a glance all I’m seeing is the same old, same old. Maybes won’t cut it. Let’s wait and see? I waited, and I haven’t seen yet. Until there’s a lot more clarity on what exactly is going on, I don’t see any reason to hang around. Waiting. Waiting might work as a game mechanic for browser-based games – for an MMO however, not so much.

Seriously, what’s your cut off? If you guys don’t want to continue waiting, when you are going to say enough is enough? What is the absolute deadline for Anet to get back to us? Or are deadlines only applicable to Anet?

Many have been waiting for 2 years and have reached their limit. I know that I have. I really want to play GW2 but it just isn’t fun anymore.
Anet has the old saying that it is done when it is done™, so really it is pretty much useless to ask for a timeframe.

Maybe it is useless to ask for a timeframe. But still, this entire concept of communicating in a manner that players want revolves around an unspecified interval of communication. Right now, Anet’s stated goal is to tell us what we want to know based on an internal, clandestine schedule. We’ll never know anything until they decide to tell us. What I’ve been hearing is that some of us want, not only direct communication explaining future plans, but we want that information ASAP, not some unspecified later time. Anet plans things out months (as evidenced by stated living story development timelines) and possibly even years in advance. Things can and often do change during development, and some players want to be appraised of almost every change as it happens so we aren’t surprised by anything. Is that reasonable in an “iterative design” environment that Anet touts to use? Do we really want to be informed every time they go back to the drawing board on things we want? Would leaving that sort of communication out be ok? I can guarantee you, no matter how you answer these questions, there will be some sub-faction that always will want more than the last and will be happy to continue the crusade when a compromise is reached. It is still worth fleshing out these details though so they at least have something more concrete to go on than don’t hide anything and tell us everything.

SpeedFiend.4521:

At a glance all I’m seeing is the same old, same old. Maybes won’t cut it. Let’s wait and see? I waited, and I haven’t seen yet. Until there’s a lot more clarity on what exactly is going on, I don’t see any reason to hang around. Waiting. Waiting might work as a game mechanic for browser-based games – for an MMO however, not so much.

Seriously, what’s your cut off? If you guys don’t want to continue waiting, when you are going to say enough is enough? What is the absolute deadline for Anet to get back to us? Or are deadlines only applicable to Anet?

As I said long ago, some players are going to keep asking “Tell us what we want to know!” and Anet will continue to respond with “You’ll know when we want you to know.” It’s a tortured and beautiful dance. Spinning, twirling, for eternity.

This subject keeps coming up so I will add this here as well:
“Therefore he (Meelad Sadat, Head of PR at Anet) didn’t want to say how many episodes are going to be left in the season, but did say that starting with the Halloween episode they are back on their two-week cadence up through Wintersday on December 16th before going on holiday break. As to what is going to happen after that, Meelad said that they will keep players informed of when there will or won’t be a patch, like how they announced the Halloween and start of each half of Season 2 well in advance.”

This thread seems like it would be better served in the profession balance forum.

Zaxares.5419:

No, the PvP patch will not impact the release schedule of the next LS chapter.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/PvP-Update-taking-Place-of-Living-World/first#post4573252

To add something that I believe is relevant:
“Therefore he (Meelad Sadat, Head of PR at Anet) didn’t want to say how many episodes are going to be left in the season, but did say that starting with the Halloween episode they are back on their two-week cadence up through Wintersday on December 16th before going on holiday break. As to what is going to happen after that, Meelad said that they will keep players informed of when there will or won’t be a patch, like how they announced the Halloween and start of each half of Season 2 well in advance.”

I had a secret desire for these in PVE ever since I first encountered them in EOTM. Anet has read my mind and made a dream come true. I don’t care if it’s ultimately hamstrung by design. I’m a METAL Devourer.