Guild Wars 2

Not providing a character slot in an expansion that adds a new class, is kittening the playerbase, whichever way you spin it.

Not even counting the other 3 issues:
- expansion is very light on content for $50/bad value
- old players effectively subsidising new players/old players getting kittened over
- blatant bait and switch on discounting base game recently to suck in players with FAQ clearly stating base game required to play, then give the base game away for free, then editing the FAQ.

kittening your customers over is never a good move. The Anet/GW2 brand has just taken another serious hit, and for what? you could have given existing customers a free character slot or 2 (or some other minor upgrade) and the backlash would have been greatly reduced.

But you’ve shown your hand now (greedy, manipulative, disrespectful), and that perception is going to be hard to claw back.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Ascended Gear will be staying 5% better than Exotic Gear.

Good call, a great relief.

Now if the expansion (which adds a new class) could include a character slot (to use it) by default….?

Not so much because of the money, more out of respect for existing players.

Spaceman.4027:

Bought the game on release. Don’t mind the $50 price tag. Would like it if veteran accounts got a bonus character slot with xpack.

Yep, this would be the fair thing to do.

As to whether there’s enough content to justify $50 is another thing, IMO it’s a pretty kitten lightweight expac for $50… 1 new class and 1 new zone for $50? Doesn’t seem like good value to me.

Yeah except for all the good condi clears being in the one trait line i think they did a pretty good job of ranger.

Now if they could just unkitten their kitten for my other fave class, ele…

well, i’m mad because not including a char slot in an expansion that adds a class is a pretty kitteny & cynical move, that’s for sure.

the other thing I think people are mad about is there doesn’t seem to be a lot of content for $50, ie: the value isn’t there.

$50 for a class and a few PVE zones is pretty bad value IMO.

Harper.4173:

I feel pretty bad when I see Anet’s recent focus has been almost exclusively oriented towards new players. New players get this, new players get that. Old players? Not a lot.
…
I’m upset because for a long time veterans have been getting nothing, no recognition for their love and support for the game.

That’s the problem with the B2P model — once they get your money, they really don’t need to give a kitten about you, they make more $$ chasing new players not providing content for old players except as far as it will coerce you to spend $ in the cash shop.

I think it’s a pretty cynically cheap move not to include a char slot in an expansion that adds a class. If that’s not screwing your playerbase, I don’t know what is.

The other thing is there doesn’t seem like much content for $50. I don’t really care that much about PVE zones anyway so I won’t be buying it – the value is just not there.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Well darwinism says we are most likely very closely related to apes and monkeys

Actually it’s scientific fact, there’s no “likely” involved.

Angelica Dream.7103:

As a player since GW1 I am not buying HOT until we see some resolve.
I would be happy with a $10 price reduction for current players and an extra character slot.

If Anet wants Loyal players to stay they need to show it.

Yep.

For $50 i got 31 zones, 6 dungeons, 7 pvp maps, 8 classes, 5 races, and 5 character slots.

How is 1 zone (with 3 levels), 1 new class, 1 new WVW map, and 1 new PVP mode + specializations (really just another trait line) worth $50?

Should be no more than $40 and include a new character slot.

Nothing, you keep playing with all the existing classes.

warbignime.4610:

scerevisiae.1972:

WOW provides a lot more content for $50 for starters.

I don’t think there is $50 worth of content, and not providing a character slot for that is effectively a huge “kitten you” to the whole playerbase.

But the main reason I won’t be buying HOT is that I don’t think the content that’s come out in the 2.5 years since release has been any good, so I don’t really see much value in investing any more money into the game when it’s not providing content I’m interested in playing.

It’s that simple.

Since you are no longer intersted in the game. Can I have your stuff?

Reading comprehension is hard I know, but nowhere did I suggest I’d stop playing. I’m just not going to buy HOT.

WOW provides a lot more content for $50 for starters.

I don’t think there is $50 worth of content, and not providing a character slot for that is effectively a huge “kitten you” to the whole playerbase.

But the main reason I won’t be buying HOT is that I don’t think the content that’s come out in the 2.5 years since release has been any good, so I don’t really see much value in investing any more money into the game when it’s not providing content I’m interested in playing.

It’s that simple.

water/arcane/?, same basic pvp/wvw build we’ve always had.

Naturally I’ll try other stuff but I highly doubt it will be as good.

No, I’m disappointed for the sole reason that water and arcane are still going to be mandatory in pvp/wvw, and that this has been the case since the game’s release.

They just don’t get it.

I prefer sub-based games for the simple fact that the content and updates are much better.

The biggest flaw in the B2P model is that once they get your money, they have no incentive to keep you playing, they just need to keep the cash shop turning over. Whereas a sub-based game has to earn your loyalty every month.

Eg balance update frequency in GW2 is appalling.

Most of the changes are good, but as long as Elemental Attunement is in the Arcane, we’re going to be stuck taking Arcane.

Water is still a given too, so every PVP/WVW is still going to end up as Arcane + Water + ?, which overall is a bad outcome.

The other thing is, with the damage reduction down to 10% from 20%, Earth looks pretty weak now.

Laraley.7695:

Part I
First step would be indeed making Elemental Attunement a baseline. The problem with ele is the fact it has the lower hp and armour pool AND it depends on healing. You have very little ways of mitigating the potential damage unless you trait for protection on earth, which still worse than for example Blurred frenzy or stealth since protection can be stolen/removed/corrupted. The fact they think you should trait for this and put it as a GM trait makes me feel like they do not understand how difficult it is to play without these traits. Such a squishy class shouldn’t be revolved around healing, but rather avoiding the damage.

There are several ways to fix this, but many of them seem rather crazy such as increasing the hp pool, removing cd from attunements…

What they need to do is simply improve the base defensive mechanisms of ele, while removing/nerfing/reworking traits that improve only ele’s defense, such as Geomancer’s defense, Stone heart…Ele cannot really afford losing more support traits (Evasive Arcana, Healing Ripple, Elemental Attunement…etc.).

To me this is the core issue with the class. Baseline survivability is too low, so everyone who wants to be competitive in PVP/WVW specs defence (cantrips) and sustain (arcane/water).

If a trait/trait-line is chosen in 90+% of competitive PVP/WVW builds, then it’s no longer a choice and probably should be nerfed or made baseline. I’d argue strongly that EAtt is fundamental to Ele survival/sustain and core to the feel of how Ele plays, to such an extent that making a solo version of it baseline is the only practical way to go, with a trait in arcane for the AOE version.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Yup. There is another weapon set more focused around ‘High" DPS, but can’t talk about that yet.

My worst fears confirmed:
Revenant legends are effectively just Elementalist attunements.

Jallys = Earth (tanky)
Mallyx = Fire (with extra condi)
Ventari = Water (support/healing)
(next legend) = Air (dps)

runeblade.7514:

Can Ele be viable without Elemental attunement or Evasive arcana?

If so, it doesn’t need to be baseline.

If we’re talking PVP/WVW, then no, it can’t. Even berserker Fresh Air specs used to take EAtt.

So in practise, looking at the past 2.5+ years, every competitive PVP/WVW spec has involved EAtt.

If a particular trait ceases to be a choice, then surely it should be baseline, even if it means bringing other stuff down.

Revenant’s already had enough coverage, i want to see the other specs.

a lot of reading comprehension fails here…. dps hasn’t changed. Mesmer GS and Ele lightning whip have already had skill cancel nerfs.

yep, trap makes the most sense. just needs some interesting trap mechanics added,

eg:
heals for X when laid, and grants 3sec regen every 3seconds until sprung. HS trap can be sprung by pressing heal again, or by an enemy entering the AOE. when HS trap is sprung, allies within the AOE are healed and condi cleared & enemies are immobilised.

Jski.6180:

After the update i think stone heart builds are going to be big.

i don’t… mainly because the problem is that earth attunement is not an attunement anyone wants to spend much time in, even defensively.

I think stone heart is more of a conjure weapon trait, but then, conjures suck balls.

that said, i think earth will be a thing in HOT. but only because everyone gets a free 3rd line, and earth is debateably the best out of fire/earth/air for PVP so it will get used.

Zaklex.6308:

So ArenaNet isn’t adding anything that doesn’t already exist in the current WvW maps both EB and Borderlands.

Except that they’ve made the central goal of the new WVW map a fedex-style kill-ten-rats PVE quest…. worst map design concept ever….

Sizer.5632:

Is there any game where content (pve content specifically) is not considered by anyone to be a “grind”?

And no i’m seriously asking.

CureForLiving.5360:

Here’s the thing: it is literally impossible for ANet to produce content faster than players can consume the content. So repetition of content is an inherent part of extending the life-span of the content.

Kartel.2561:

What we have now isn’t a “living world”, it’s a fake scripted one.

yep, and this is the core problem with themepark-style MMOs (where devs attempt to create all the content, and in-game player-player interactions are superficial) versus sandbox-style MMOs (where the devs create systems for players to create their own content).

Example of sandbox MMOs: Eve, Archeage, Darkfall. If you really want to play a “living world” MMO, you really need to be playing a sandbox game like one of these, they kill this game for dead in the lving story department, it’s not even comparable.

Sandbox MMOs generally still do offer grindy PVE-type content, because that’s what some players like, the difference is, the high-end PVE rewards are almost always in full PVP zones, so surprise fights/ganks can and do happen. Of any MMO i’ve played, i’d probably rate Darkfall’s PVE as the least grindy, simply because the mob AI is pretty good, the combat is very active, and high-end mobs are generally pretty hard (plus the good mob spawn areas see frequent PVP action).

The closest GW2 comes to being “living world” is in WVW, and even then, the original WVW in DAOC was a lot more sandboxy in the sense that owning and holding keeps actually meant something, and keep takes often took hours or days, not minutes.

In any case, Anet haven’t shown any interest in even flirting with sandbox-oriented concepts anywhere, so I highly doubt they’re going to change now.

I swung a sword, I swung a sword again.

Actually, scratch that, I just pressed auto-attack and beat 99% of PVE content.

Sylent.3165:

I see where you are coming from but I do 210% disagree.

What has ruined this game from start is any level 80 in zerker armor can beat everything with ease. By making the content 2 or 3 times harder I think this will change the game from easy, to builds. We will start wanting people in knights gear or clerics gear and doing more then just mashing 1 through 5 on keyboard.

I hope this new hard content actually means if you run in with full zerker gear you are going to die and be useless to team.

Agree, the PVE in this game is far too easy, and the AI far too dumb.

Huggywuggles.2814:

Much to my surprise, I found a very welcoming community which is very active (and by “very”, I mean I can’t help but stumble over huge groups no matter which zone I’m in),

That’s because the megaserver feature merges everyone in all servers in that zone into one (or several) instances of that zone. Ie there could only be 300 people left playing the entire game and they would all appear in that one zone instance.

maddoctor.2738:

Actually by percentage there are more builds in GW2 than in GW1

not a chance. you have to multiply skills x traits in GW2 for a fair comparison, and even then, there were more builds in GW1.

also worth mentioning there was a lot more “wiggle room” in GW1 builds compared to GW2, even the “most meta” builds in GW1 usually had 1-3 free skill slots that left plenty of room for customisation/experimentation.

Vayne.8563:

In Guild Wars 1 … the idea that you couldn’t even jump over a log and continue on your way never ceased to bother me.

I don’t think there was a single GW1 player that ever said they liked not being able to jump.

Crossflip.4390:

I’d say the feeling is less ‘hype’ and more ‘game is dead until xpac’

This. Everyone I speak to is bored. PVP flopped big time (even with mega handouts, it’s struggling) and now we’re essentially down to being forced to pay $50 for content we used to get for free.

The one big success of this game (IMHO) was WVW (which they thoroughly mis-managed with highly questionable (read: terrible) updates), and the GVG that evolved organically (which they failed/refused to nurture).

I don’t really begrudge them needing to make money to keep the game alive, it’s just frustrating to see the game flounder due to neglect and design decisions that at times are 100% contrary to community consensus positions.

rotten.9753:

scerevisiae.1972:

I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ve never played it.

He’s quite right. That profession is never balanced properly, it’s either overpowered or underpowered and anet balance team has no idea how to make that class tick. The next patch will swing the pendulum to the underpowered side for about a year.

Totally agree that Anet don’t know how to balance Ele, that much is obvious, it’s gone from UP at release to really OP to UP to reasonably balanced in 2.5 years, while being stuck in water/arcane for the entire time (and for the foreseeable future).

I only meant that Ele hardly needs to be “nerfed to the ground” atm.

I think what it does need is greater baseline defense, such as caster-only, shorter duration Elemental Attunement as baseline, and then other stuff needs to be brought down a bit (or maybe not, as everything else is going up in power).

I ran nearly the same build solo roaming in wvw almost 6 months ago, I found it overall weaker than a “regular”, balanced build in pretty much every way, albeit pretty amusing.

I think the signet fire aura share version for roaming 5man is better.

Simzani.4318:

This class needs to be nerfed to the ground or redesigned. Sadly arenanet neither have a class team or a balance team.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ve never played it.

Loxsus.3841:

As someone suggested above, I think this is being done because I think Druids will have a fair bit of cleansing to their names. If this is true, then having THREE trees that give cleansing would be kind of crazy so I imagine A-NET would want to be cautious about that.

No, why? spreading condi clearing around means people actually have more choice in their builds. Who wants to be pidgeonholed into choosing the same spec line in every spec just to provide a baseline level of condi clearing?

chemiclord.3978:

And that is what it boils down to… a significant cadre of GW1 veterans who really would have been content with their old game rebooted with new graphics, and remain very upset that Arena.net changed the whole game entirely.

Yep, pretty much. I’ve no doubt i would have enjoyed GW2 a lot more had I never played GW1.

The depth of GW1 skill mechanics and how one could exploit those deep mechanics through secondary profession choice really opened my eyes to a whole new level of MMO game mechanics, a level that GW2 has still failed to reach.

Theorycrafting/testing new builds in GW1 was just as much fun as actually playing the game; in GW2, traits/skills are so narrowly defined everything can only ever be used in a single, prescribed way, and consequently there’s only a handful of builds and builds are very static, & the meta never evolves.

Pyriel.4370:

How I see it is that they are disencouraging play styles where blobs capture the point and move on without defending it or upgrading it. It also means those poor dolyaks wont be so ignored either.

The proposed changes will achieve the opposite – no need to waste supp/gold upgrading, just blob the objective and leave to blob the next objective, the keeps/towers upgrade themselves.

Whereas in live, if you spend supp/gold upgrading, you’re more likely to want to defend it.

i’m still willing to bet if GW1 had GW2’s graphics & movement (including the ability to jump), noone would be playing GW2.

GW1 was just a deeper, more interesting game. WVW was pretty good (emphasis on “was” because WVW has been largely neglected and/or left to go stale due to bad/no changes) but IMO the majority of GW2 has been pretty kitten shallow & mediocre.

My top list of GW2 shortcomings in no particular order:

• really pathetic mob AI, world PVE is unbearably dull
• lacks the cerebral combat/skill depth of GW1
• downed state ruins PVP
• spammy/messy combat
• conquest

I think the skill system in gw1 was hands-down better.

$45, a lot of people not going to be happy…

Devildoc.6721:

Hopefully this doesn’t translate to PVP or WvW, conditions are already quite powerful in those modes, but they do need help in PVE. in WvW it could be really bad.

A zerg of players stacks 100 bleeds on stonemist keep lord while the defenders are trying to hold it, and then necros just start casting epidemic.

Pretty much instant killing 5 people at a time.

And this would be bad because?

Those kinds of golden opportunities don’t come very often.

for PVP/WVWers (who care about winning) i predict it’s just going to be the same old earth/water/arcane.

it does hinge a lot on what tempest offers but if it’s sword and it’s short-medium range like myself and others predict, it’s not going to be much of a factor in WVW.

posthumecaver.6473:

For WvWvW, when I am in the zerk, I doubt [Elemental Contingency] will be doing anything also, I want the protection before I am hit, not after I am hit and sitting there with %10 HP.

The boon is applied before the hit, so you get the prot before you get hit.

Agree that EC is totally useless for PVE, but then PVE is so easy in this game that it barely matters.

the best advice i can give is if you’re planning on doing any PVP/WVW, you’ll want 4+ water/arcane, or you’ll have no sustain and/or die a lot.

so… universal agreement everywhere that EB and SotF ought to be split and/or added to… but will there be changes?

Woljnir.7810:

Nilix.2170:

Conncept.7638:

Immunity to conditions while above a certain health threshold

Hey man, if you don’t want that, they can always give it to Engi instead

Engi’s can have it as far as I’m concerned. The threshold is 90%. On paper I couldn’t wait to equip this trait, but then I found it completely useless is just about every facet of the game (PvE, WvW, and PvP), since as an Ele getting knocked below 90% HP is far too easy.

Yeah I would love to see Diamond Skin go, it’s a really bad trait: totally overpowered in 1v1s vs condi specs, but close to useless in every other PVP/WVW scenario.

It was nearly universally criticised when it was proposed in the Ele forum, but they went ahead with it anyway…

Ehecatl.9172:

One of the reasons elementalists didn’t like Glyph of Elemental Power becoming a stunbreaker is because it was counter-intuitive to use it as a stunbreaker. It’s an offensive skill that was given a vital defensive mechanic.

Not really, the reason GoEP shouldn’t be a stunbreak is that it’s a skill that sets up a passive proc, which means it must be used before combat to have any effect.

Similarly not all F2 skills are meant to be defensive. Say I have my river drake out. Should I blow my 30 second cooldown offensive blast when my enemy isn’t properly lined up? Even with the defensive pets I wouldn’t want to blow my 45 second cooldown AoE fear that is VITAL for my survival because I need to clear two conditions.

what you just described is opportunity cost: do i blow my offensive CD to clear condis or do i wear the condis to use my offensive skill at a more opportune time? this is a good thing from a game design POV.

this is no different than for e.g. running SotF with 3 survival utilities and deciding to use QZ to clear condis vs using it during an optimal burst window.

Making the F2 clear conditions would make this trait highly sub-optimal to anyone not running dual birds, thus making Empathic Bond a bad trait to bring for any build that doesn’t call for two pets with extremely short cooldowns.

“highly sub-optimal” might be overbaking it a little ;-) 2x 30sec F2s would still give a lot of condi removal on demand.

but there could also for e.g. be an offensive component to the F2 trigger, e.g. it could be:
“Remove 2 conditions on swapping pets. When your pet uses its F2, you transfer 2 of your conditions to your target and your pet steals a boon”

That way, the F2 could also be used effectively offensively as well.

Meanwhile pet swapping is something you can usually afford to do fairly regularly, and there’s a ton of synergy with other traits to encourage you to swap pets often.

That’s why I’m in favor of it clearing conditions on pet swap, but not on activation of the pet F2. Pet Swap is already a utility/survival move.

Pet swap can also be offensive too, e.g. the quickness GM.

I too like the basic idea of EB being less passive, and pet swap as the trigger makes a fair amount of sense. It just needs something extra, cause a GM condi clear trait that only clears condis every 16sec is not something i would ever choose.

Ehecatl.9172:

Besides, I really don’t want to be using my pet’s F2 to cure conditions. Those have to be timed very well in order to maximize their effectiveness, and if I’m blowing them to get conditions off me I’m not using them to the best of their ability.

IMO that’s what would make it a good GM – it requires a unique strategy to maximise its effectiveness, IMO the hallmark of what makes a good GM trait.

also, it’s not altogether different to SotF – sometime one needs to blow a Survival CD in order to clear those 10 confusion/bleed stacks, rather than using the Survival skill for the skill effect per se.

In any case, losing condis passively every 10 or 16sec IMO is not a good GM trait. it’s maybe ok for master (albeit a little boring), but not for GM.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Hawk and eagle is 6s on F2 and that would be very OP.

easy, put a 10sec CD on the condi clear from the F2.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zephyr’s Speed is very very good.

2 conditions on F2 and pet swap is not very much condition removal, I would honestly prefer it as is than that, just move it to Master slot in BM. If your pet is dead then you are looking at kitten (if it was in BM) at best before you can remove 2 conditions again with the swap and due to pets having wildly varying F2 CD times, you can’t really do it with that, else everyone will just run birds and it will be OP and then nerfed.

If you put EB into BM, then it is automatically traited for swap CD.

IDK, removing condis only once every 16sec is pretty useless IMO.

2 condis every pet swap and F2 is plenty of condi removal. swap pet, use F2 = 4 condis removed. that’s pretty kitten strong.

that the condi removal requires the pet to be kept alive is a key part of the risk:reward part of the trait.

even running birds, the max condi removal is 2condis/16sec + 2condis/9sec == max condi clearance rate of 1condi / 3sec (0.34condi clear/sec), which is about right IMO.

the difference from this version of EB to current EB is that this impl requires more skill to maximise & comes with more interesting build implications.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

The Ranger traits coming with HoT are pretty nice and most are in a good place, but with Empathic Bond and Wilderness Knowledge in the same tier with Poison Master, it makes PM basically never available for use in PvP or WvW and Wilderness Survival (WS) mandatory as well.

As the author of the other thread on this very topic, I also care a lot about making every trait line roughly equally appealling. Having just 1 trait line with condi removal makes it absolutely mandatory in every PVP/WVW build, as the non-trait condi removal options for ranger are just crap.

Also I want to be able to run poison master & still be able to remove condis half-decently.

1. Change EB to remove 5 conditions on pet swap. That is only slightly better than currently and is counterable by killing the pet.

Dislike, mainly because even traited, this is only usable once every 16sec (20sec when untraited).

I think a better version would be:
“Remove 2 conditions on swapping pets or using a pet’s F2 ability”.

This gives a bit more flexibility to the how & when of the condi removal, and adds some nice build flavour to using different pets based on the length of their F2 CD. There’s also a nice bit of risk:reward friction between using the F2 for the sake of the F2’s effect versus the condi removal.

Everything else in the preview is mostly good to me, though I think Honed Axesis still kinda weak for a GM.