Guild Wars 2

Beorn Saxon.4762:

eisberg.2379:

I love playing alts, and I hate it when things are account bound, I want everything to be character bound, I want all my alts to not effect the other alts. This WvW Ranks thing is a fantastic idea, it lets each character progress, and not just 1 character progressing all the other characters. I hate how daily’s, achievements, laurels, monthly are all account bound and it kitten the progression of my alts

Sounds like you hate content that is time gated. Anet introduced laurels/ascended gear to the daily so that you could only earn one per day. It’s also lame that dungeon tokens are time gated and we hit DR even when we swap toons.

Fact is, all new content is time gated and grindy. Anet swaps character based and account based mechanics depending on which one will take us longer to achieve, which is the exact opposite mentality of their pre launch manifesto, a game with no grind.

Ranks are not new to GW2. It’s just new to wvw. Everywhere else in the game ranks are account bound and measure player progression, so why did they make them character bound for wvw?

WTF? Ill repeat again, W T F.

ok heres how i see it.

truth is, it probably shouldnt be account bound.
this is PvP is charachter based. Your achievements and skills you have learned and show off, are with a specific charachter. You could have played mesmer for 300 hours, it doesnt mean now you are a master ranger. Your Thief could be a master at sneaking up on people, taking camps and getting in small skirmishes, this doesnt mean your guardian would be built the same way. It doesnt mean you ve earned and mastered how to execute a similar playstyle on your guardian.

Truth is, the titles should be charachter bound.

however i do understand what people mean by it feeling like a grind, and maybe making you play one class. I mean it makes sense, why people are upset, but it makes more sense that you have to actually progress on a charachter individually.

Ensign.2189:

The biggest issue I have with the economy is that far, far too many items are bind on acquire. High end valuable rewards keep being introduced, but are kept off the market. Consequently, money keeps chasing the same things. Precursor demand is so high because, well, what else are you going to spend big piles of money on? Once you have your exotics it all goes into precursors, (charged) lodestones and ectos/T6 mats.

the items are bind on aquire because they game is already too heavily gold wars at level 80+ They want to build endgame content that rewards people for playing the game, not cof speed runs, farming 3 events for hours upon hours, or playing monopoly mad men the videogame.

Ideally money would act as a means for trading time spent and aquiring things you may like to have but dont want to get yourself, however with the current systems the money hunting is the best way to achieve anything anyone is selling.

This means if they want to make the over all world more rewarding, they cant make everything about money, because that just gets people doing only the highest money earning activities

Calae.1738:

penatbater.4710:

Calae.1738:

emikochan.8504:

Downed is about as forgiving as healing in trinity games. As a support I take abilities that let me pick up downed players more easily, I cast protection/reflection/blind etc to buy time to get people up, I take traits for 10% faster res etc.

When a supportive player is in the group it makes it a lot smoother for people that make mistakes.

Yes healers cover mistakes, so does any supportive class. If everyone stops to res in gw2, the party usually dies to an aoe. Also many mobs HATE people ressing, and some even finish downed players.

The system is fine, just needs some tweaks to the numbers.

You bring up an interesting point here.

If NPC’s turned around and knocked you down when trying to resurrect your fallen ally; now could work. The game would be letting the player know that resurrecting your ally is dangerous.

Or how about this.

An NPC puts a bubble around your fallen ally when you go in to resurrect them. The NPC would be using your ally as bait. You’re trapped inside the bubble and the NPC just shoots you like shooting at fish in a bucket.

Then what would be the point of downed state? :|

In a game that provides a dodge mechanic; it is my opinion that any and all attacks should be telegraphed to provide enough time for the player to dodge out of the way.

In other words you should see the bubble and the knockback coming; if you don’t dodge; you’re toast.

dodge is a method of avoiding damage, but you arent given enough endurance to dodge everything. There is also skill in surviving and coming back against unfavorable odds.

You seem like you are more like the guy to start a game over when it starts going bad, for you thats a loss, but there is a whole nother skill set that says, ok im dealing with a bad situation, how do i adapt, and can i come back.

It was never meant to be a game of getting a perfect, the goal is to succeed, even through adversity.

Calae.1738:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Calae.1738:

I think the (GW2) developers will have a hard time making any content challenging. The game doesn’t punish bad play and encourage players to improve. Instead it creates an environment where making mistakes can be covered up by a friendly ally taking the time to help you get back up.

GW2 doesn’t punish bad play? Why does mob AoE always seem to center on the downed player? Why does every third thread in the dungeon forums seem to be about dungeons being “too hard?” Why is the response to these threads almost always “You just need to learn how to dodge, use skills, position, etc.?” In other words, “improve?”

Calae.1738:

When they enter content that prevents them from healing their downed allies (assuming this content exists) wouldn’t this cause confusion and make them think that the content is broken or too hard?

Since that is what is occurring, yes.

You’ve made the point in other threads that you do not find GW2 challenging. This thread seems like just another means to deliver your request for content that requires your level of dedication and twitch reflexes. My suggestion would be to ask for hard mode dungeons. While you’re at it, also support “easier mode” dungeons to keep the “too hard” crowd out of the theoretical harder content.

Open world content? MMO open world difficulty is always going to be tuned to the middle to low end of average play, not top tier skill. It does not hurt to ask, but don’t hold your breath.

I don’t think challenging content can co-exist with the downed state and rally mechanic.

Take the Grawl Shaman as an example. In my opinion; It’s one of the most fun encounters in the game and there are many complaints that it’s too hard. However there are elements to this fight that makes it feel weird. If the group AoEs all the elementals while putting up projectile deflection walls; their odds of rallying off one dead elemental is quite high. I have gone down and rallied at least 4 consecutive times in this encounter.

What I’m getting at here is that I’m purposefully playing bad by abusing the rally system. Unless of coarse this is intended design which would be quite funny to hear a developer admit.

that is good play and tactics, and it probably is intentional. the boss can one shot people with agony mechanics. except agony is a slow death, it give you time if you are good and dont panic to position yourself take actions to prepare, etc.
for example as a mesmer you may throw down a null field right before you go down.

there are also examples in the game of tough to revive fights, like subject alpha. but it isnt impossible to revive, if your team members are slick, and you save your skills for the right time, you may be able to ressurect.

You start off already believing that rally mechanics make things too easy then you look for justification, but it simply isnt true. Using the tools you have at your disposal is skill. Someone who is better at treating thier wounds doesnt have to be as good at avoiding injury. This makes the skill broader.

Your idea of a good test of skill is a 1 hit type, fail or succeed. But one that requires more trials and allows you to come back from failures is actually a deeper and more complex system, and usually a better test of skill.

you have already decided the best test of skill is who can do the most damage and take the least, but that is only testing one skill set. How good is your teams communication when the pressure is on. How well can you coordinate to save a fallen comrade. How do you react when you know that what you do over the next 30 seconds will decide whether your out the fight for 10 seconds or for 3 minutes. What is your contingency plan when things go awry.

now, in some encounters, revives or rallying may be easy, but this isnt due to the system itself, this is do to how they design the encounters, and you can be sure that they probably actively make rally/revival easy in some encounters.

Do you think rallying off flowers in twilight arbor or claws in subject alpha is a mistake? i highly doubt it.

Moddo.7105:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I tend to use ranged weapons in WvW so I hold my pet for the first 5 seconds of the Zerg clash, which gives the AOEs a moment to end and be in CD.

See and here in lies the issue. You are limiting your dps because of the way ranger is setup. If you where a ele your would go 100% at start of the fight not having to worry about your meteors kitting killed and you lose 30%+ dmg for 60secs.

anyone who jumps in the front of a zerg will probably get melted in 10 seconds, unless they have built themselves to be incredibly tough or escapable
building yourself to be incredibly tough lowers your dps

keep in mind you can do the same for your pet.
signet of stone, call of the wild are meant for this, even guard gives protection and some pets have defensive abilities.

do you see how most players play in wvw?
they generally stand in the backlines waiting for the initial zerg goers to clash peppering the enemy with fairly weak ranged attacks. very few people can go balls to the wall ikittenerg and survive.

my biggest problem with such ranger tactics, is the cool downs on the signets are incredible, usually like 120 seconds i mean yeah they are essentially timed like they were elites.

Geikamir.6329:

So they designed unique armors, weapons, hair styles, and possibly faces JUST for two NPCs?

How come computer characters get better cosmetic progression than we do?

probably because for an npc they only have to make one model work with the design rather than 10 (each race male and female)

However, i think maybe they should expand racial armors more in the future so there are more different looks to obtain, and less work with doing each armor set. They can then expand slightly different versions of the most popular racial sets in the future if many other races want it.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’m not sure why people think playing the TP has to be some thing you do at the exclusion of all else.

You can play the game AND play the TP. It isn’t necessary to stand at the TP all day babysitting orders/posting as soon as possible.

I usually logout at the TP. I login, place some orders and put some stuff up for sale, then go play.

i ve done it, and it starts to make other activities feel less worthwhile (anything not earning a decent amount of gold) your constantly checking the market, analyzing time spent/maximizing earnings. When your way of best achieving your goal becomes to get money, and you get more money in a half hour than you would from doing other things for 3 or 4 hours, it starts to kill your desire to do other stuff.

Ooshi.8607:

You are only at a disadvantage if your principal goal in GW2 is to maximize your potential gold/hour ratio.
I could spend 100% of my game time TPing stuff and make loads of shinies, but what would be the purpose?

the problem is when you set your sights on endgame goals, it starts becoming money focused.

I will agree that when you decide you dont care about those type of goals, the game gets to be more fun again, but then you lose a sense of purpose in playing. (once you ve done most of the content)

Rhysati.4932:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Conner.4702:

I don’t think you truly understand what makes a guild a guild.…

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about what a guild is. Guild content, however, is designed to be about challenges that can only be overcome by working with other people. The new mission type is not intended to change that by circumventing the content that’s already in place. All it does it make it more accessible.

Look mate, I respect that you are replying here and I respect that you are trying to help folks out…but who is this change supposed to benefit?

Small guilds could amass the influence via gold-spending if they /really/ wanted to. But for what benefit? Unlocking guild bounties doesn’t help anyone actually DO the guild bounties.

So you have helped out small-guilds who simply couldn’t GAIN or BUY the influence. What makes you think these guild can then DO the guild missions as they currently stand? That’s the problem you are missing here. And by adding more rewards to them(skins), you are screwing over the rest of the populace even more because they refuse to compromise and get into a big, impersonal guild.

we did guild bounties with 7 people the other night.
It takes more luck, and it takes pre planning, but unlocking higher tiers is not undoable. I imagine that tier 1 guild trek also seems fairly doable by a 7-10 man group, guild rush im assuming yes but i have no idea.

lets be honest here. 10 people isnt a big an impersonal guild. The big guilds will get there faster, but now once you have both unlocked the same content, who are people going to prefer to hang with? probably who they would have prefered before. Essentially this is giving you the means to build your guild up to compete, though it may not be as fast, its definately more possible.

Pandemoniac.4739:

phys.7689:

i sort of agree, but it doesnt have to be just crafting, the key here is to make it intentional, whether that be hunting specific monsters, going into some hard to access zone, or crafting it up. The problem with farming in this game mats is your still competing with tons of accidental competitors, take the bags for example. did 90% of the people farming in cursed shore want to actually get a peice of leather? probably not, but you will have to compete with them in the market.

Well does it matter if it’s intentional or accidental? You’re always going to be competing with tons and tons of other players. As soon as the price of leather goes up, more people will go intentionally get leather because it’s more profitable, then the price goes back down.

No matter what mechanic is introduced, there will be thousands of other players doing whatever it is and earning more gold. More gold getting injected into the economy will cause things to get more expensive, and then you’ll need more gold for whatever purpose you’re collecting it for, and then you’ll be right back where you started.

The only way to make more money than the average player is to know more about what’s going on, know the best places to get certain materials, have a character build that lets you get those items more efficiently, etc. In short, you have to know more about the game than the average player, and it’s a moving target. As soon as someone posts a video on youtube about some farming spot that will earn you tons of gold, that spot is worthless. You have to keep ahead of the herd

Theres whole point is that what feels forced into an economy where one will be at a disadvantage unless one plays the game a specific way IE TP hustling. you can compete with hours spend in the right farming areas, but your only competing with the mid level TP hustler.

If people actually have to actively choose what they want to obtain, they will value obtaining it, at the same time if they want to sell such a thing they would be competing with people who also are spending their time getting such things.

overall more goods and services will actually have a value closer to what they are worth. farmers will farm the hot item, and tp players will make money hustling, however the average player will be able to either get the things they want themselves, or sell something that has value, and have a real basis for its worth.

Imagine instead of getting paid in money everyone got paid in random items, some people got cars some people got milk some people got beef.

Everyone would HAVE to sell almost everything they earned, and none of it would feel like it was valuable because none of it was what you wanted.

The market for said items would be incredibly cheap, because most of the people who get items have no need for them. This makes it feel even less rewarding because 90% of the random items you get are worth less than the materials they are made out of now.

The people who make money off of the back and foward and trading of items from hand to hand however would earn money exponentially.

the value for the rarest items goes up insanely because no one can actually purposefully obtain them and that value is determined by the people who either grind massively or know how to work the TP.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

is it intentional that guild trek doesnt award any token/rares/money?

lordkrall.7241:

Sindex.9520:

You forgot that merits have a weekly cap, and they are unlocked in order (not by choice).

No, I didn’t forget that.
You could however unlock the second type a week after the update, and a week after that you should be able to get the third one. After that it goes quite fast, since you get merits for each of the mission types, independent of each other.

remember each unlock takes a week, then again i guess if they got enough influence they can rush that, didnt calculate that. but even minusing 4 weeks, youd still take like 5 weeks i think. too lazy to do the math again though

lordkrall.7241:

Sindex.9520:

Instead of Guild Merits, 3000 Guild Influence will be rewarded

In my opinion I would rather have the Merits then the influence. Also it’s still disheartening to see that Guild Puzzles are still a long while from being unlocked. It begs the question why were they added to the game, if it takes a couple of months to unlock anyways?

It don’t.
Unless I miscalculated it is very possible for a guild to have every single Guild Mission unlocked by now.

its not possible, influence isnt what holds back large guilds, its merits, and its only been about 4 weeks
guild bounty unlocked week zero
25 merits max
week 1
25 merits
unlock guild trek
20 merits left
week 2
2510+20 = 55 merits
week 3
55+25+10= 90 merits
unlock guild rush
10 merits left
week 4 (this is the first week guild rush is actually playable)
20+25+10+15=70
week 5
70+25+10+15= 120
week 6
120+25+10+15=170
unlock guild challenge
20 merits left
week 7
20+25+10+15+30=
100 merits
week 8
100+80 = 180 merits
week9
180+80 = 260 merits
unlock guild puzzle
week 10
guild puzzle playable

soo yeah, right now i think the highest any guild can be is guild rush.

this is pretty good, i wonder how often you can do the training mission per week, its actually a pretty good idea to award decent influence for guild activities

Pandemoniac.4739:

John Smith.4610:

Here are the assumptions that I’m operating under for this question:
1. You feel that PvE and TP have difference levels of gold earning
2. You feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning

What would be your plan for implementing a reward system that would achieve what you desire, given the constraint that you may not get rid of the trading post?

Well given that folks probably want more gold so that they can buy things from the TP, and that the traders will capitalize on that newly minted demand, that’s a tough nut to crack. The only thing that comes to mind is highly desirable items that can only be crafted from materials collected by farming. Geez, it’s a wonder that isn’t already in the game.

On the other hand, I don’t think the traders have an advantage over farmers. Folks who pay attention to the market trends have an advantage over folks that ignore the market. For example, it makes no sense to farm Karka shells if the shell prices have tanked or if there’s a huge demand spike for powerful blood.

Nothing can be done to level the playing field between the high-information player and the low-information player; the high-information folks always have the advantage.

I don’t play the market because it’s too much work to do it properly and I already work a too much. I’m sure if I put as much effort and thought into my gathering as some folks put into their TP strategies, I could make comparable money.

i sort of agree, but it doesnt have to be just crafting, the key here is to make it intentional, whether that be hunting specific monsters, going into some hard to access zone, or crafting it up. The problem with farming in this game mats is your still competing with tons of accidental competitors, take the bags for example. did 90% of the people farming in cursed shore want to actually get a peice of leather? probably not, but you will have to compete with them in the market.

Vol.5241:

So from what I’m understanding from you phys~

is to remove the gap between buy/sell so that the TP players can’t profit off of buying/selling. You do this by discouraging sellers from pricing stuff below what they think is worth.

In a perfect world that sounds nice, but again, there are people who are impatient and want their money now. Get enough people to farm these intentional onyx locations and you’ll have several players on the market. Maybe they’ll keep undercutting themselves by 1C, maybe a few here or there by a few S. Next thing you know, there is a large enough gap for tp players to profit off of.

In a perfect world you’d have all sellers agree to a fixed price and stack all their items on that price. But in a game where you need to survive with gold, and gold is the currency, more often than not you want to make a reasonable amount of gold rather than no gold at all.

You see this undercutting all the time. In real world, you have businesses undercutting others with deals like (we’ll beat the competitor’s price by 5%) because it’s better to make some $ rather than none.

Im not really saying you eliminate TP playing, like i said people whose primary focus is earning money will always earn money, and yes patient people can earn money just for that patience, etc. However the game will have a more balanced economny, where you actually feel rewarded for your time. When you start to feel like onyx lodestone market isnt worth your time, you swap and become a crystal lodestone hunter. At least you get a somewhat realistic value for the item, with other suppliers being actual competitors.

The key here is not to get rid of TP profiteers, or farmers, but to make it feel like you can actually earn something of value or work towards something in PVE, by making item distribution more intentional, you start to create a real economy with real suppliers and real value on items. Currently there is usually an inability of supply to match demand. People want 300000 charged lodestones, but the game creates 3000 peoplle want 3000 crystal lodestones but the game creates 30000. And regardless of what lodestone people want, the best way to get a lodestone predictably, is by buying it on the market, and selling a whole bunch of stuff you never wanted as fast as possible.

Ursan.7846:

phys.7689:

The reward system needs to have more controlled means of obtaining highly desired items, this way the cost of a highly desired item is based on deciding whether its worth it to do whatever is required to get the items. Not only that, but it sets up a real market in which people who like doing X or are good at doing X can sell their services.

IE the real problem is random number itemization. Desired items should be consciously created, and require some sort of quanitifiable effort and use of time to create. This gives them value

I’m very confused with this statement. Even with the RNG nature of the creation of certain items, there are still very real markets for them and they have very real values as determined by the market.

items creation has too many unintentional creators, thus everyone prioritizes liquidizing things, to get the stuff they actually want.
For example, exotic weapons tend to cost more to make than they do to buy, this is partially because the pursuit of precursor creates many exotics with no/small value to the person who made it.

lets say some one wants to make a rune of divinity, in the process they will probably create 50 other superior runes they have no need for.

in a market where too many items are created randomly, its most peoples best interest to turn everything into gold, so they can get the things they want. This makes any activity that is not getting gold feel unrewarding. There is no way that players who are not seeking gold will ever be able to compete in gold earning with players who are seeking gold. However, they can feel rewarded if they can obtain things they want directly, or sell the things they obtain at a decent value.

as far as creating real markets for items, that will always be the case, any item that has more than npc value will have some type of market, but thats just equilibrium. that will occur no matter what.

Just like there are real markets where people get paid virtually nothing to work for long periods, or unhealthy conditions. But that wouldnt make a very rewarding or intresting gameplay for those people would it?

Vol.5241:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Vol.5241:

This is really all silly.

Vol, I appreciate your point of view in many threads, but I implore you to read my previous two posts and consider that as a viable way to make playing in PvE more valuable and more in-line with the TP in terms of value for time investment. The key problem right now, I feel, is that there is a severe lack of suppliers to the economy because items have such low drop rates and there’s no reliability. Remember GW1 how you were guaranteed ecto and shards from the end chests of UW/FoW, respectively? That sort of thing is what is needed in GW2, just with cores/lodestones/rares and dungeon/fractals chests.

Increasing the value of the supplier role will encourage a lot of people to branch out, make PvE feel more rewarding without breaking the economy, and enable people to feel like they can make progress towards a goal by playing the game rather than playing the RNG. That is why it’s so valuable to us.

Even if you increase drop rates (which would more than likely result in a drop in price too, lowering your gold rate), a person who plays the TP will still come out on top.

I liken it to farmers. No matter what you do in game, whether you nerf Cof1 or even shelt/pen, there will always be that one activity or event in game that a farmer will take advantage of. Because there is no way to make a game that is unique but also have equal rewards for equal activities.

Same with the economy and drops. No matter what you do with the drop rate, there will always be inefficiencies and gaps in the outpost. People make money on the outpost because they are feeding off of player’s
-lack of awareness
-lack of patience

You can’t get rid of that because it’s human nature.

So let’s say we have a 1-item economy of crystal lodestones, and you have get a drop boost for them to drop it from 3g to 1g. Completely ignoring the fact that you probably don’t even make as much gold as before, there will still be people who will be buying/selling the lodes. And fluctuations throughout the day can be ‘exploited’ to make profit.

Increase the # of items in this economy and you further increase the inefficiencies of player’s in the market.

tldr:
People make money off the TP due to differences in buy/sell orders and player’s impatience (sell now or later?). Altering drop rates will do nothing.

you dont have to increase the drop rate of items, you need to make it specific.

right now, lets say 1000 onyx lodestones come into the game a day.
the supply is something like
20% from hunting sparks
45% from dungeon/boss chests
15% from mystic forge upgrades
15% from mystic forge attempts at mystic clover
5% somewhere else, i dunno

point is out of those sources only two of them are intentional, but now they have to compete with3 other sources in the market, which are people who may have absolutely no need or desire for said items.

if all methods of obtaining onyx lodestone were intentional, now you have a functioning market, and a more rewarding world. People spend time to create onyx lodestones because thats what they want to do, people who buy it are paying people who purposefully created item, based on how much they thing that time is worth. If onyx lodestone uncharachteristically valuable, more people start creating them and balance the price.

So lets say if you want to get onyx lodestone, you have to get lodestone hunter status from an npc, and go to the types of content where it drops, mines, fighting eles, and boss chests, now you only find the onyx type of lodestones. Now you are competing with other lodestone hunters, but not random drop man who just needs to offload items. items that are low in demand will be low in production, which will bring their price in line with the value of the time.

TP guys will still be the richest guys, but now they will have to pay people what that player thinks their time is worth, rather than what someone who didnt want the item at all thinks its worth. As well, if a price gets too high, a player can decide to obtain the item directly.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this isn’t getting us far. Instead let me ask this.
Here are the assumptions that I’m operating under for this question:
1. You feel that PvE and TP have difference levels of gold earning
2. You feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning

What would be your plan for implementing a reward system that would achieve what you desire, given the constraint that you may not get rid of the trading post?

The reward system needs to have more controlled means of obtaining highly desired items, this way the cost of a highly desired item is based on deciding whether its worth it to do whatever is required to get the items. Not only that, but it sets up a real market in which people who like doing X or are good at doing X can sell their services.

IE the real problem is random number itemization. Desired items should be consciously created, and require some sort of quanitifiable effort and use of time to create. This gives them value.

Very few items should be created by accident, random’s influence on item generation should be limited.

See, pve doesnt need to make as much money as being a great businessman, but it needs to be able to compete in terms of getting content in the game, the best way to do this is to make getting content in the game and doing things with a purpose be the primary way of obtaining an item.

So to put it short
1.Items are created by accident by millions of players with no desire for said item
2.Items created on purpose have to compete with accidental items
3.Since no one can get anything they want purposefully in a competitive way, money becomes the best answer for obtaining what you want
4.Of course the people who dedicate themselves primarily to earning money, and prefer that gameplay style will be the most rewarded player in this scenario.

Sifu.6527:

Can we please have one developer devoted to each class? If not, at least do a better job of hiding your bias.

Robert Hrouda “I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively.”

I vote for Jon to represent Elementalist!

you seem to not see the context that was in. Essentially Robert is a dungeon dev, people in dungeon forums were remarking on how dungeon design basically kills pets, which is ranger’s whole mechanic. he then went to respond in the proper forum talking about rangers/pets/dungeons so as not to derail dungeon threads.

Also im sorry but getting the input of someone who actually plays the class is probably only a good thing for the balance team, theres a difference between a guy who plays a class regularly as his main, and a guy who has to play every class probably only for an hour or so at a time.

the other factor is Hrouda said that there are many people like him, whom have more experience with a particular class, who chime in at balance meetings, however most of them dont post on the forums.

ranger is a really bad class for you to decide is getting too much attention, seeing as how it has very few actual changes of import since launch. and yes necro has gotten some pretty meaty patches the last few.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@phys

It’s not so much lackluster as incredibly incredibly limited.

The biggest problem with that Attack of Opportunity is that it’s multiplying your next hit in a very literal sense. Drake breath, Rapid Fire? Just the first hit. Bird F2? Only half.

It’s a neat concept.
But aside from Maul and Swoop, a large swath of Ranger and the Pet’s damaging skills are delivered through multiple hits. It seriously needs to multiply all the attacks within the next skill that connects, instead of just the next hit that connects.

yeah but in terms of spike its powerful, and useful in times where you probably wont need run speed for the next 25 seconds or so. While it would be better all around if it multiplied multiple hits, its pretty decent depending on the pet, and if you trait signets, 150% on yourself is pretty decent especially with a maul dmg boost, mmmm tasty spike

Aridia.3042:

I actually run pure GC and tried it with 25 stacks of bloodlust and might stacks. That signet’s active effect is garbage. Under no circumstance is it better than taking piercing arrow and eagle eye if you care about damage. So in no shape of form is that skill perfectly fine. But if you think that’s a good active signet by all means use it.

In my books, all the signets need to be reworked and/or have their cooldowns drastically reduced.

You re confalting the signet and the trait here. But ill argue the trait is pretty awesome IF your not using longbow all the time, or that often, especially if you have some points in BM.
Which is basically if you are a skirmisher type ranger. I dont love longbow, its best use is at a distance, and to apply some strong vulnerability/interupt for me. Hence signet of the beast master looks better to me than eagle eye. Also you can use it to give yourself invulnerable, which is pretty useful in WvW or if you are skirmisher/melee type. and a 12 second stability with 25% damage boost is also pretty useful. I understand for you, youd rather have longer range, but its about build diversity here, its a trait for a different type of build.

I will agree that signets cooldowns seem out of wack. while i think signet of the hunt has a really good cool down time, and a complimentary passive ability. (give up speed for more damage for a short time) its only 30 seconds, and gets lower with traits. However the other ones cool downs are so long it doesnt give you much to play with

anyhow, ill keep my signet of the hunt, works pretty well for my BM, i understand you just want run speed and active you find more useful for your build, but like i said its about build diversity

Lafiel.9372:

I think the TP is full of careless people who don’t check properly what they’re buying sometimes. I’ve seen cases like these many times, lvl 6x exotics being sold for 5g with buy orders for 3g while the same item but a tier up (level 80) only had a highest sell order somewhere under 3g. So why are these lvl 6x pants worth more than the same ones at lvl 80 lol.

because low level exotics are much rarer, and give you an advantage earlier. you cant craft level 6x exotics, and you seldom find them. Essentially the guy who wants to twink his charachter with the best gear and immolate low level stuff is the market. Also if you can be a level 60 with exotics, your fairly close to a level 80 with exotics in level downed areas.

Aridia.3042:

phys.7689:

signet of the hunt is about having a preparation where you give up your speed to make a powerful attack, aka a prepared shot. I dont think ranger should be giving up 50% damage boost in class that is low on burst.

Also you are neglecting that every signet active primarily effects the pet, and must be traited to effect the ranger (though maybe this should change)

Unless they give us the equivalent of a killshot, I see very little value in using that 50% boost since it’s very anemic even on glass cannon specs. Secondly, you’re not really stopping to make a powerful shot, the current active effect is stored until it’s fired and has a 15 min window on it which is silly, both on the efficacy and thematic level.

In a perfect world, we should not trait signets to get the active effect. Traiting it should grant all active effect to your allies nearby.

50% damage boost is far from anemic (especially with open strike and high crit dmg) not to mention traited its 50% for you and your pet) the idea is preparation, if you prepare your next attack you can have a huge hit, it lasts a long time but its still only 1 hit. imo its a pretty great signet (keep in mind 50% damage was so good they removed it from sigils in beta)

anyhow giving signet effects to the party would be insanely op, 6 seconds invulnerability to the party? everyones next attack does 50% more every 30 seconds? 25% more damage and 12 second stability?
and people think mesmer elite is OP, your talking about a god grandmaster trait.

im not saying they shouldnt add a utility for stealth or camo, i think it could be interesting (especially if you could get back opening strikes during combat) but signet of the hunt is actually one of the better signets, even if you dont want to use it, its worthwhile when used properly and works well with pets. signet of hunt+ sic em is pretty big dmg. Just cause you dont like it, dont go ruining a perfectly fine skill.

Wow, there are a lot of alt abusing people here. you really are complaining, that you alt is now horribly disadvantaged because it cant get a guaranteed rare from a chest? keeping in mind people without alts cannot even get squat from another chest? keeping in mind that there are a great number of guaranteed chest events in the world?

I didnt realize thier were so many entitled mechanic abusers out there. The truth is, it kind of defeated the purpose of having the chest lootable once per day if the only real limit was on the number of charachters you have, that seems to be giving people with alts an unfair advantage (and yes i have alts, i have 6 level 80s) and no i didnt abuse them for rares, mostly because many of the events was unfun once you put it on a timer, and added so many people that it was just a lag battle, or a competition to hit it once.

the beef is about signet warrior, and its more about using signets only for their passive effects. however its a valid playstyle, and i think the real problem is many of the active effects they put on the signets are lackluster. If you give people a worthwhile skill on signet use without an insane cool down, people will use it.

Aridia.3042:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Aridia.3042:

This should be the effect for Signet of the Hunt when you use it.

Speed for passive. Slow stealth for active.

I agree. But not slow stealth. Immobile stealth. Something like up to 10-20 seconds or until you move.

A bit more damage in a few attacks is not useful enough to lose the speed, but if you can stealth in place for a long time unless you move, there may be no reason to run at all.

Run to a corner, hide on it. Ding. No need to run. And a reason for people to stick around searching in keeps after conquering them is always neat. That is always fun.

You’re right, that makes more sense both logically and thematically. Camo is only suppose to help you hide if you remain immobile. Plus having a signet that does both ends of the extreme (going full speed and full stop and waiting patiently) works with the theme of the hunt.

signet of the hunt is about having a preparation where you give up your speed to make a powerful attack, aka a prepared shot. I dont think ranger should be giving up 50% damage boost in class that is low on burst.

Also you are neglecting that every signet active primarily effects the pet, and must be traited to effect the ranger (though maybe this should change)

Tibbel.3450:

phys.7689:

…what many of you are asking for (an unstoppable 40% ranger damage bot) is completely unreasonable.

That’s an inaccurate generalization of what most people are asking for.

Most rangers in this thread (and with whom I’ve talked to outside of this thread) don’t want an unstoppable AI beast that does 40% of our total damage. I know what I personally want is to be able to control as close to 100% of my damage as possible. If the AI beast following me around can’t be adequately controlled (in other words, if whether my pet lives or dies is not up to me), then I want most of that 40% of damage put back into my hands.

If my ranger accounted for, say, 90% of my damage (with my pet as the other 10%), then I would be much less irritated when 90% of my damage dodges out of the AoE but 10% does not, or when 90% of my damage can be dealt from on top of a wall while 10% cannot.

I didnt say most, i said many, because i dont really think its 51% or something, also i was specifically refering to people who dont want more control of their pets, and want them to have more uptime.

Very simple equation here.
A pet that can survive and thrive without any input from the player in difficult content is by definition a 40% damage bot. This is not a solution.

Now im not saying everybody is saying they want this, but more than a few in this thread are asking for that. As for the people who want to make the pet vestigal, i understand where they are coming from, however, it would make no sense. The class is a beastmaster class, i know many people wanted the marksman but that is simply not what the class is. It is a class that is about finding some balance between the ranger and the pet, using both to compliment each other, it may be falling short and need to be improved.

if you want a gw2 ranger without a pet, what you really want is a whole new class. i suggest you try to get them to make one, i think there is room for a marksman class, with a class mechanic of prepartions/ammunition. They could use rifles/bows/daggers/cqc with their F skills be about preparation.

Interesting idea, but its not really the wilderness beastmaster that ranger is.

btw since i mentioned new classes, im required to throw in, martial artist should be next proffesion!

Sebrent.3625:

I didn’t say anything about QA fixing. It is their job to check if current fixes correct known bugs and to check for additional issues/bugs.

Programming is programming. You have your desired functionality and then there are issues/bugs that you try to avoid and/or deal with. Websites are not simply HTML/CSS. They are not just Javascript/PHP/etc. There are backends coded in any number of languages, including C, C++, Java, etc. I know for a fact that a good bit of Amazon’s backend stuff is coded in Java (I authored some of it … if you’ve used their cloud [AWS] or a Kindle, you may have used some of my code).

I just find it amazing that something as obvious as Mesmer clones not having weapons wasn’t picked up before the patch went live. That’s a blatantly obvious thing.

I found it amazing that the Mesmer spears no longer hit.

I’m still amazed that my target and I can be on an open field and I will (seemingly randomly) receive “obstructed” for some of my shots with my Ranger shortbow.

Perhaps it isn’t the QA isn’t finding them and it’s the devs introducing bugs more quickly than they can fix them.

Either way, I’m not impressed with the code quality given that you have what I and many other programmers would assume should be largely (if not completely) unrelated aspects being broken by changing one of them. Seriously, look back at the last patch for Mesmer changes and tell me what their is related to the spear’s hitbox or the Mesmer clones having weapons.

It is true there seems to be a problem with seperation of concerns, if in fact unrelated bits of code are effected by every change that occurs. While its pretty understandable this would happen sometimes, with extremely large code, and many different people putting hands on it, it seems to happen fairly often.

The other issue, is monthly updates, i really dont know if this is a good update structure for bug fixes. Generally i assumed bug fixes should go in as soon as they are working. I can see some advantages to testing, however, at the same time there are many disadvantages to introducing many changes at once, making it harder to track down what is causing errors, and at exactly what point errors occur. Also as far as QA, its needed, but it really is just phase one. Unless they can create a QA environment which is roughly equivalent to live (which it seems is not possible) there will always be the bugs they didnt see. I know pts is essentially a spoiler for the game, but if this leads to a better ability to test and QA things, it is probably worth the loss

many of you guys who want full uptime of pet with minimal involvement are essentially asking to do 40% of your damage at all times with no risk.

yeah, when you call your pet back you are losing 40% of your dmg (depending on your build) however, do you really think a theif/warrior/melee mesmer anyone in melee doesnt lose damage when they have to retreat?

i understand the desire to avoid micromanagement, but you should still have to manage your pet, just like a guardian or warrior can build and stat so that its less reactive and use general boons and other things so they dont have to react instantly, there is no way your pet(or any class at all) should be able to do 40% of your damage with no risk/tradeoff/player input.

the balance may have to be tweaked, maybe the benefit should be higher, and they really do have to look at the effect power creep they instituted with ascended gear is going to effect pet usability (perhaps we will need to ascend our pets) but what many of you are asking for (an unstoppable 40% ranger damage bot) is completely unreasonable.

Daemon.4295:

Sebrent.3625:

That’s part of what a QA team does. They look at changes to make sure they fix what was intended and not break other things.

Simply as an analogy, if Amazon’s QA team let as much get through as ArenaNet’s, customers would be griping left and right about being overcharged, receiving the wrong items, etc. simply because the site was made “more flashy” or new items were added to the site.

That isn’t really the most appropriate analogy, you can’t compare videogame development with website development. Of all the MMOs I’ve played, I’d say GW2 is one of the most bug-free at launch, and probably has the best class balance as well, if only because skill factors so highly into GW2 combat mechanics.

actually you can compare the two, in fact in many ways programming a site with as much traffic, functionality, and dollars riding on every bug is actually more complex than programing a self contained videogame. It really does depend on the product we are talking about here, programming for mysplashpage.com is fairly simple, but so is programing for my bouncingballgame.exe

anyhow, they arent going to be perfect, nothing is perfect, and programming regardless of how its used will generally involve bugs. How fast they are identified and repaired, and how often they pop up is probably on the skill of the devs involved. (and QA for finding them)

KStudios.2850:

Never understood the lack of any real stealth on a ranger. As typically in reality a seen Army Ranger is often soon a dead Army Ranger. Not asking to be as exclusive as Thieves or anything, but a limited stealth would make sense. Maybe a better camoflage ability that only functions if the player remains still. So I came up with the idea for the Ghillie Suit utility skill! Hear that Anet? I want to become a bush! Possible example…

Ghillie Suit:
Description: Ranger assumes the form of random local foliage while immobile.
Duration: 15-20 seconds (based upon Wilderness Survival traitline?).
Cooldown: 30-90 seconds (again, possibly based upon Wilderness Survival traitline?).
Dis-spell: Upon moving, taking damage, or end skill duration.
Misc: Cannot be activated when already in combat.

The possible applications, and sheer fun and hilarity potential, of this skill I think are fantastic. Especially in places such as WvW.

I think it would probably be problematic, after all random item that fits into the map properly changes very often. Also as someone said, a skill that cant be used in combat isnt that great a skill for the bar.

I do think ranger needs to be able to disapear some times, How about a skill that works like this (lets call it predator for now)
invisible while not moving (cant be seen)
moving makes you look like predator, without a nameplate to enemies (or how stealth looks to other players on your team)
say it lasts 3 seconds, and has a recast of 30 seconds.

Its also possible to have this as a trait like, predator at end of a dodge roll, for 1 second.

Or maybe go predator for 2 seconds when using a survival skill, (make lightning reflexes a little more useful)

I would tie tie this into one of the opening strike traits, that it returns opening strikes. I really think ranger needs some means of returning opening strikes. In the long term fights we often have, and will likely continue to have in high level play, getting opening strikes once per fight is pretty much useless. getting it back on enemy death is also pretty useless for the type of fights we often get into at a high level of play. (where things arent dying often/bosses)

Mackdose.6504:

Lady Lozza.9670:

The new daily system and the new guild mission system is gated. I use this term because there is a hard limit to the number of laurels and guild commendations you can receive for any day/week/month.

Not everyone can earn 40 laurels a month, or X commendations a week. And those of us who cannot have no way to make up for that loss. The people I’m talking about are people like me, the workers in the resource industry.

I am severely punished by the game for this style of play.

Anet if you want to support players who don’t have the time to grind out high level gear, why are you gating ascended gear in a way that punishes those of us who spend time doing necessary jobs in remote areas where game play every day simply isn’t possible?

The forum topic is misleading. The rewards are gated, certainly, but outside of high-level fractals you’re not gated from content at all.

Rewards != Content.

If you can play the content in whatever gear you may have, you’re not being punished. Having the gear doesn’t unlock some hidden zone that is only for elite 10 hours a day types.

you are incorrect, guild missions are time gated, and influence gated. you have to earn X influence, which is pretty hard for smaller guilds, but even then you have to earn merits, how many merits you can earn per week is limited per mission type, this basically means
at least 2 weeks to get guild trek
at least 2-3 weeks to get guild rush (depending on if you had merits left over from getting guild trek
3 weeks for guild challenge
3 more for guild puzzle unlock

so yeah the trend they have is to time gate content.

also ascended necklace is completely a laurel gate, which is a time gate.

honestly this is a bad trend and very against their initial design philosophy. Time gates should be minimum limits, like worst case secenario if you participate over time you get X, much like pristine relics. there should be other ways to obtain and experience content that arent limited by X amount of time passed.

this time gated content is too heavy handed, and generally bad long term, as time starts to go by, it will seem more unattainable for newbs with more time building up. 5 months from now, a new player will be looking at like 5 months between getting ascended acessories no matter how hard, or how well they play. Now of course they may make it easier later, but that will make reg players feel like the classic treadmill is in place, only longer.
(get items, items become easier, new hard to get items come out etc)
break the chain now.

not only that but they are starting to time gate content as well as rewards, guild missions, even aside from the influence has fairly sever time gates, that have you essentially only doing the content once a week. This is bad design, if people enjoy content, let them play said content.

the idea of a longer term best gear spec isnt guaranteed to be horrible, if it feels like its attainable through effort, in a reasonable time frame. But, as is, ascended is looking like a 8 month endeavor per stat set, and most likely it will be trivialized or made obsolete in the future. By making this ascended take so long to get, they must realize they are marrying the concept of no higher tiers of gear. Getting exotics again is manageable if they increase level cap, getting ascended again is a no go.

no offense, but the writers need some interaction with event planning people, maybe this is the wack part but the actual events are on par with the most vanilla dynamic events in the game. The tools are there, make an interesting encounter and a fun story. The missing items should be tied to meaningful places, not randomly dispersed, i understand wanting to make it so people dont just go online and faq through the content, but you re telling a story here, that is the first and foremost concern, if some people faq through and do it fast, thats fine, as long as the overall storytelling and presentation is good for people actually looking for a story.

hopefully these last two months are basically horrible trash they threw us because they failed to meet their deadlines. Its really crappy though. Im sorry if it offends the devs, but this is the truth. even teasing is an act of story telling, and these events fail to generate the desired effect.

your not going to remove pets from ranger, ranger is THE pet class. I think people who are trying are expecting too much of a shift. just like your not going to remove illusions from mesmer, or kits from engineers, and attunements from ele.

making your pet essentially completely set and forget, is a bad game mechanic, people talk about WoWs solution, but remember wow is a game with and equipment based focus, most of the game and encounters are built around stats, GW is more active, and more about positioning and reaction, hate it or love it, thats the game. Making pets able to survive without positioning/reaction/planning at all, is not a feasible answer in this game. It wasnt even an answer in GW1 with heroes (high level hero play essentially involved actively managing your heroes, position, disabling abilities, enabling, making them target specific enemies etc) and gw1 was more stat focused and less anyhow.

come up with solutions for pets that dont involve making them undefeatable without the player being involved.

that said, i think we can all agree, in most cases the F2 skill needs to be instant or much faster, they have cool downs, its not OP to be able to use an F key with speed, every other class can.

One thing i think is certain, pets are still using a very early monster rule system, probably because they didnt want to tweak it until they got the AI better, still it doesnt work where every other npc, or pc can attack while moving, and has in general quick firing skills. Some skills really make no sense with such long start ups, daze for example, a skill primarily used for interuption, takes like 2 seconds to start, whats that about.

Ision.3207:

Robert, here is what I think adding a pet dodge mechanic will resolve for 90% of your Ranger player base: nothing.

Like Gutbuster has stated, “Often it’s difficult enough to know exactly when you need to dodge in order to avoid some damage, with a pet dodge you’d be required to not only keep track of your own position but also your pet’s exact position which also trying to see your pet amongst all the spell graphics surrounding bosses getting nuked, seeing red circles on the floor which may be behind the boss since that’s where your pet is, camera angles etc the list goes on a bit. In addition you’d also have to hit your own dodge key as well as an additional F key or any other key bind you have.”

I agree with him whole heartedly.

Yes, without a doubt there will be a small fraction of Ranger players that will benefit from the mechanic: the “Pro” player, if you will. These people have ridiculously quick reflexes, as well a superb RIGs and a mouse with dozens of key binds they have no problem dealing with. I’m NOT talking bad about these players; hey, god bless ’em, they are the exceptions to the general rule, and they make the most of it. These tend to be your best of the best players and are often found in sPvP/tPvP.

But for the non-PRO player, adding a dodge mechanic for the pet will be an utter waste of time in dealing with the problem of Pets dying from AOE too much in dungeons —- the difference will be insignicant for the typical Ranger player who is under heavy duress from swarms of mobs, surrounded with heavy particle effects and trying to keep himself alive and contributing to the party.

Look, I’m not talking about that bottom 5 to 10% either, the folks that really have very poor reflexes and positional awareness, and who really can’t cope with the basic pace of this game. At least not in a difficult dungeon setting anyway. No, I’m referring to that big fat mass of players in the middle: also known as: the “majority” – the “average” – the “typical”.

For this group, many of the ideas being offered here will only result in the outcome stated by Shiren, “So micromanaging and resource management are the game-play being pushed by that kind of design. A lot of us play the class for the AI companion, not a micromanaged companion. Micromanaging, while increasing the skill cap (in a certain way), isn’t going to solve the problem for a lot of rangers, and for many players it takes the class in a direction they don’t want to go in.”

In essence many of the changes being proposed would transform the Ranger into a class that does not resemble the one that many people were looking for when they rolled it. Please keep this in mind as you consider the many OTHER options that exist to address pet mechanics and survivability.

Thank you.

thing is we are essentially talking about how pets work in high end content here, dungeons, WvWvW etc. Dungeons were announced as, and meant to be a place for challenging content. This is where people go who play their classes at a high level.
It really is not feasible, and can never be logically, for pets to be able to do what players do with substantially less risk. If pets have mechanics that just make them stronger and better than regular players, then pets will be OP.

Rangers are fine, and probably even overpowered in mid level combat. they can do better in the open world, and in dynamic events that arent scaled high, they can get out of most tough situations. Rangers non pet based combat is actually fairly simple, probably the most simple aside from maybe warrior. people talk about lots of button presses and things to manage, while on my mesmer im managing clones, illusions, cool downs, shatters, and utility. On engineer, your managing multiple toolkits, changing f1-f4 abilities, greater access to self created combos etc. Theif might be simple except its one of the most papery classes in the game, in a dungeon a good theif MUST avoid or predict enemy attacks in order to survive.

having to press buttons is part of the game, your pet doesnt need to survive forever, just long enough be swapped out with intelligent play. Supporting your pet is the identity of the ranger class.

As i said in previous posts, i can understand a desire not to need split second timing, however, you should definately have to either sacrifice some pet offense for defense, or actively manage how your pet reacts. Pets arent just the flavor text of ranger, its the class mechanic. people who enjoy ranger should basically want to have pets, and to some extent control pets.

LadyLad.1389:

phys.7689:

LadyLad.1389:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP. That’s one of the core reasons we can’t just increase pet attribute numbers. Without a method for avoiding damage, it also means your pet takes 4 hits in dungeons instead of only 2 or 3, so it doesn’t really solve the problem.
We have WvW reps in the balance meeting as well, so I’ll be sure to poke and prod them about ranger pets in zerg battles to get their opinions. Personally I tend to do well keeping a pet non-hostile until the zergs actually clash – then switching him to hostile and managing his target. Otherwise when I try to shoot some arrows at somebody, Cuddles the Black Widow decides it is time to charge into battle. I really don’t feel like this is a bad solution. While most people may resist it, if you want your pet to charge the front line and lead the attack, consider grabbing up the signet that makes your pet invulnerable for a few seconds.

@Swagg – that’s a lovely chart

So while we’re forced to stay at range, at half power because our pet is half of what we are, a Thief, Elementalist, Guardian, Warrior or Mesmer can dart into the Zerg, and back out of the Zerg at full power, while we get to watch until the entire force decides to move in?

I’m glad I left the Ranger right after pre-release.

im sorry but no non defense specced chr hops in and out of a zerg, it generally requires using specific abilities, for ranger this amounts to,
go in with your 2nd most loved pet
cause some havoc, swap pet out
use signet of stone to be invulnerable for 6 seconds with trait
use signet of wild to be stable and get out.

not really that different to a mesmer specing for reflection on distortion, and equiping utilities for reflection and null field.

fact is no one goes in and out of zerg easily. and its not really realistic to ignore the fact that you can essentially have your pet do damage while you are safe, while you are doing something totally different, and swap it out at least 1 time with no penalties.

Yeah, aoe is a problem in WvW more because when you are trying to control your pet you have few actual controls, adding some sort of player controlled reactive ability is the difference between lasting long enough to swap, or not

I actually do go into the Zerg easily, and get kills on my Thief, my Mesmer, and my Elementalist.

It’s an entirely different game for these classes.

It’s night and day difference honestly. A full day on my Ranger, I thought I was doing good getting 100 badges. A full day on my other three classes it is unusual if I don’t get a full stack (250) badges.

The thing I can’t wrap my head around is that it seems Rangers are ok with mediocre. I really don’t care because I can always play the other classes, and if they don’t fix the Ranger, Necro, or Engineer soon, I’ll just delete them so I don’t have to look at time wasted every time I log into the game, or switch toons.

im not saying that ranger pets are great in WvW, but i am saying that you speak about the ability to go into a zerg like it costs nothing, mesmers need to slot skills for reflect/stability/generate clones/ use a weapon that gives invisible or utility that gives invisible. Thieves melt in AOE really, their main defense is the fact that unseen, they become harder to focus on, and have many evades and use initiative, thief who wants to do this pays in utility slots, lets not forget that currently thieves get extra invisibility due to culling, which may soon be greatly reduced.

in all truth i have specced for it, and my ranger gained the ability to survive pretty well in zergs, even the pet, the problem is this is not sustainable, and pets have less control in dealing with zerg life, Im all for solutions,

LadyLad.1389:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP. That’s one of the core reasons we can’t just increase pet attribute numbers. Without a method for avoiding damage, it also means your pet takes 4 hits in dungeons instead of only 2 or 3, so it doesn’t really solve the problem.
We have WvW reps in the balance meeting as well, so I’ll be sure to poke and prod them about ranger pets in zerg battles to get their opinions. Personally I tend to do well keeping a pet non-hostile until the zergs actually clash – then switching him to hostile and managing his target. Otherwise when I try to shoot some arrows at somebody, Cuddles the Black Widow decides it is time to charge into battle. I really don’t feel like this is a bad solution. While most people may resist it, if you want your pet to charge the front line and lead the attack, consider grabbing up the signet that makes your pet invulnerable for a few seconds.

@Swagg – that’s a lovely chart

So while we’re forced to stay at range, at half power because our pet is half of what we are, a Thief, Elementalist, Guardian, Warrior or Mesmer can dart into the Zerg, and back out of the Zerg at full power, while we get to watch until the entire force decides to move in?

I’m glad I left the Ranger right after pre-release.

im sorry but no non defense specced chr hops in and out of a zerg, it generally requires using specific abilities, for ranger this amounts to,
go in with your 2nd most loved pet
cause some havoc, swap pet out
use signet of stone to be invulnerable for 6 seconds with trait
use signet of wild to be stable and get out.

not really that different to a mesmer specing for reflection on distortion, and equiping utilities for reflection and null field.

fact is no one goes in and out of zerg easily. and its not really realistic to ignore the fact that you can essentially have your pet do damage while you are safe, while you are doing something totally different, and swap it out at least 1 time with no penalties.

Yeah, aoe is a problem in WvW more because when you are trying to control your pet you have few actual controls, adding some sort of player controlled reactive ability is the difference between lasting long enough to swap, or not

pets in WvWvW are a problem, however, when he says he puts it on passive, that doesnt mean he doesnt attack with his pet, it means his pet is default to not attacking, and only attacks specfic targets when he hits attack command.

they main problem is that WvWvW is zerg heavy and AOE heavy, however, truth be told, players get melted just as easily, and pets dying, while making you weaker doesnt take you out the game, (like dying on another class does)as well you can swap out pets to get them back.

The problem with what many of you are suggesting is that you either want to make a pet into an invincible, or near invincible source of skills and damage, or you want to take it out of the game, neither one of those are viable solutions.
if pets can survive where even players cant with little risk, isnt that essentially overpowered?

Pedra.4381:

I have all the official ArenaNet quotes to validate my statements here but for various reasons, I’ll hold them in abeyance for the moment.

1) We’ve been told that Rangers are the class “most in need of improvement”. Since then we’ve heard nothing else from that individual and we’ve argurably seen additional nerfs.

2) We’ve been told that part of the problem with fixing Ranger pets is that it’s bad design if two Rangers could team up to kill end game bosses. Yet, we all know there are classes in the game that regularly solo end bosses. That sets off huge alarms in the common sense department and when that happens, there’s something wrong with the statement.

3) With statement two as the background, a certain designer that mains a Ranger believes that he can solo Lupicus (not yet done but seems confident he can do it). This same individual attends game balance meetings and represents Rangers there due to his knowledge of the class. If two Rangers duoing bosses is a problem and this gentleman already believes he can do it solo…then we’re faced with another problem that sets off alarm bells.

Until these diverging views are explained and/or someone explains to us the future of the Ranger, I’m going to remain both skeptical and confused. It’s clarity I seek, not platitudes.

I welcome any insights.

i think the point he was making is not that two rangers can duo bosses is a problem, more to the effect that two rangers can duo bosses easily, without doing much other than swaping out pets when the boss dies. Fighting lupi and other bosses without getting hit involves, reaction, planning, use of defensive skills, reacting to enemy etc. The method of beating bosses with two stat buffed pets involves swaping pets.

i dont think he would have any problem if you can beat or duo a boss through extremely good play, gearing, planning and control of your charachter and pet. However, duoing because pets simply cannot die, and play the game for you is not the direction they want to go.

*Essentially the idea this.
1)Different defensive abilities per species activated at will by player, some are reaction macro heavy, and some are general buffs depending on the pet.

2) different pet behaviors that fit different playstyles, some benefit from micro, some are less responsive, but require more overall stat/trait management in high level play to survive. This includes prefered positioning

3) pet ai behaves differently if being targeted by target

4)pets in peace mode should not cause agro unless they hit an enemy, or maybe use certain buffs in their presence. Chalk it up to being animals.*

this allows micro heavy players to have fun and pick certain pets, and macro heavy players to have fun

Ok, let me start this by saying, its pretty good robert is involved here, and thanksThe fact is, he is one of the main people designing high end encounters, and ranger’s class mechanics need to work within that vision.

i think pet management has to be apart of the ranger class.

Ok: improving pet in difficult content.
i understand the micro management haters, i think the only way that pets are going to fit into this games mechanics is if they have a certain level of control. The game at its core, in high end play is one of reacting, predicting, etc.
If a pet wants to survive he will need similar mechanics, and i dont think its a good design to have the pet handle all of that alone.

that said, some people want direct control, and some want overall control over the pets general behavior.
I think the key here is accepting that people have different playstyles. i think every ranger should have to do some type of pet management, and be aware of the pet to be optimal, afterall its what the class is actually about. I think some pets should cater to different styles.

Ok, so heres what i think the overall pet functionality should be like.

f1 = attack target
f2 = activated ability
f3 = defensive ability which uses endurance like mechanic.
f4 = switch pet
bindable ability: stance shift. (going to passive will make it run to the player.)

now while i like the idea of giving evade frames on call back, i can see that not every one likes the idea of heavy micro, and it would require pressing more than some people can handle, so i think we should make this a defensive ability which works on an endurance mechanic, but which differs from pet to pet.

Overall i think different pets should have different behavior patterns, this will give ranger a more customizable pet behavior, without forcing everyone down one path.

A bear for example
tries to stay in close melee range
general behavior:holds ground
attacks cleave
behavior when not target of agro: uses faster attacks.
his defensive ability give him two seconds of flat reduction in incoming damage (seperate from protection)
this makes him more of a macro type pet, you can essentially just get a general damage reduction for 4 out 10 seconds, which when combined with tanking stats, healing, and normal boons should be enough to survive 15-20 seconds. The disadvantage is he does less damage, and he is more kitable, with less attacks that can hit moving targets well. The ranger who plays with this pet will probably have a style that focuses on cripples and immobilizes to keep the pet in the range of players. Less of a finesse pet and more of an overal strategy tank style pet.

Feline pet is different,
general behavior, face up when being targeted by target,
attacks single target
when not being targeted, tries to maintain a 400 distance while trying to flank the target.
defensive ability is dodge, with invulnerability frames. Attack animations are fast leaps, and quick multi hit attacks, think iswordsman, with a closer range. It has less hp, but using dodge at the right moment negates attacks, and since it tries to flank, and maintain distance will give naturally be easier to take in and out of aoe ranges, and avoid cones, this is more of a high damage micro pet.
it excels at movement, and is hard to kite due to high speed leaping attacks, and low cast times and animations. however its defense and hp isnt high

avians,
when being specifically targeted by a target, they fly upward and dont use damage abilities, other than f2 and swooping attacks. while flying high, all damage has 50% chance of glancing, however they dont attack very often.
when not targeted they attack fast and swoop, their attacks are multihit they try to maintain more distance than stalkers, in the direction of the ranger. (they will try to position themselves at the same angle as the ranger when not attacking but at say 600 or 700 range)
defensive ability, gain glancing damage buff to ranged, and evasion to melee damage for 1 second.
this pet is in between micro and macro, it has a good buff to incoming damage, when being targeted, but lowers its dps through few attacks, when not being targeted, using defensive ability allows it to attack while not taking damage when hit the right times. Its very good at harrying opponents who dont target it.

cannines close range, with defensive ability like counter hits for each attack blocked during ability duration. behavior when not targeted, flank, but generally stays close.

with other pets. Pets will feel more unique, and have different functionality.

Ok been playing ranger a bit, and pet durability in difficult fights is a problem.

i see two solutions.
1) pets get vigor:
a) activated when using To Me command
b) one second of evade, as they move towards player
c) flash white, or something while invulnerable (visiual cue)
d) when vigor is expended, they behave as they do now when you call them
2)Total damage to Pet limited to 1/3rd of its health per second direct damage.
a) this means pets would take at least 3 seconds to kill with direct damage
b) this allows players chance to try to call back pet and not have instagib pets

I prefer 1 as its more skill based, but 2 is probably easier to implement.

As well as this i believe there needs to be a pet UI for buffs/conds whatever, as well, a now using skill would be nice, since we have no control, at least we can tell which skills they have used. (especially since the animations on pets are sometimes non distinct) a pet skill bar would probably be better (even if you have no control at least you can see what has been used and whats the cooldown) but i dunno if you guys want to add that much info/UI

heres an attachment with a quick rough of what im thinking for the addition pet info/vigor.

I think this is a necesarry step with the likely directions of guild content, this will allow small guilds to survive and retain their identity.

Anybody hating on this video, you fail at life on multiple levels.

A)having fun in life
B)realizing that marketing is part of business
C)talking about fixing the game, for what amounted to a 3 minute video, probably done on a lunch break. (might even be after work)
D)are incapable of letting others experience joy without wanting to smear feces all over their faces.

i mean some people are salty because they just dont like the in thing, or its not their cup of tea, which is fine. But saying they are wasting dev resources, time, and should be serious at work, are ridiculous complaints on many levels.

Well overall though there were some interesting moments, id say the personal story was not well executed. Time constraints and other problems, were probably real. Also maybe some authors are used to writing different types of stories.

Still for most of the story it fell pretty flat.

the dialougue was often poor, even for the NPCs, also, i think the static style cutscenes were handled pretty poorly, im not saying you cant use something like that, but it totally ignores most of the keys of storytelling even within itself.

Even using a standard backdrop and basic story telling techniques you can achieve more with less. Look at most standard rpgs from the 90s, many which use just face shots and straight up text, with like a few face expressions did a better job of conveying the scene and whats going on.

I know they said they dont have any cutscene guys of note, but as a storyboard artist, and a sequential artist, theres lots of ways to handle these things even with a lot less resources.

that said, if you want to do it the same way you are doing it now, look to swtor, they really handled their VA, and choices and writing excellently, of course it probably cost them a lot, but thats what is out there.

Ursan.7846:

Azjenco.9425:

Rarity isn’t my point.

Well, then this discussion is moot.

All your ideas are great and wonderful, and something I’d love to see in the game though.

EDIT: I’m not being sarcastic at all, I really do love your ideas. But we’re at a fundamental disagreement on the “proper” level of rarity of Legendaries, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.

yea, i also disagree here, rarity isnt what makes items cool in games, and legendaries arent just desired for their rarity.
Unique and special visual effects
High level achievements and goals
The only thing to aim for, and main reason to keep playing at 80+

these things have nothing to do with rarity, and would be better served by tasks that show mastery of game, or at the very least time spent playing. Take for example tetris, the highest level can be completed by everyone, what makes it special is that you personally achieved it. millions of people may have beat it, but you having beat it feels special. The same with the Special bosses in offline rpgs. Yeah many people beat them, if the encounter is designed well its still highly satisfying, and worth pursuing if the content is designed well, regardless of how many other people out there have also beat them.

just reiterating here. Most people do not value money or monetization over joy, or experiences. IRL people work because they have to, and pick the least annoying thing over the highest paying thing many times. Many of the happiest people do not try to achieve large amounts of wealth.

point is, precursors suck for people because of their implementation and the fact it tends to require people to play a Gold Wars simulation versus other players rather than an rpg.

Sure one can alter their persepective and see everything as gold, and do the things that maximize profit. However that kills the game for many people.

Vol.5241:

Azture.8632:

I totally agree. All I am lacking now is my precursor, I am farming and playing 8-10 hours a day but the price increase each day is more than I can make each day. And those that already have their legendaries and precursors congratz but Im sure you didnt have the issue of precursors rising each day like this though, beyond the scope of anyone without a huuuge stash of gold. People are buying them just to put up for more now. Dusk was 640g 4 days ago, 700g yesterday and today its 770g.

There’s nothing wrong with prices. Why should I sell Dusk to you for 600g when someone out there is willing to pay me 700g. For all we know, the highest a buyer may go is 1200g for a Dusk.

Prices keep rising because people are willing to pay that much for a precursor. Doesn’t matter about all this market manipulation junk everyone talks about. Yes, it happens, but that doesn’t set the price. When no one bites to pay the supplier’s price it slowly comes down.

and this is the issue at hand. Precursor has primarily become a question of competitive wealth earning. IE, its not just expensive or time consuming, how expensive or time consuming is decided by how much money the top 10% of people are willing to pay, and their wealth raises at a rate much higher than the vast majority of players.

Sure, by carefully using your money, maximizing profit, and time spent, you can probably achieve enough earnings to catch up with them just once, If you time it right. But is that the endgame measure of GW2? how well you can earn gold? is that what most people like from an rpg?

with the current systems in place Precursor will always be a gold battle, the only time this will change is when they add something new that rich players want more than precursors.