Guild Wars 2

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Survey is missing options… I mainly find the support skills on land pets lacking.

um, that would be either “skills are too weak/underpowered” and/or “lack of depth”.

Malkavian.4516:

If a ranger does not have a pet, then what different is he from say, a warrior or a thief other than it’s skill set? I know that pets still have yet to be improved upon but removing them is just counter productive.

You’re not thinking laterally enough. What if when you dismissed your pet you acquired their “aspect”, which granted you a proportion of the dismissed pet’s stats and a species-specific ability?

eg: dismissing a spider pet → immobilise targets that you poison (20s CD), dismiss a devourer pet → evade when disabled (20s CD), dismiss a canine pet → your opening strikes knockdown targets (20s CD), etc.

I think LS was not a good content-delivery vehicle simply because the content wasn’t very good nor engaging and – the main reason – consumed so many resources that updates to the rest of the game suffered badly.

I would have much preferred to have seen much more frequent balance updates, new skills/weapons, new PVP game type(s) and WVW BG/mechanics. So for me, the whole LS experiment was a failure and not something i’d like to see repeated.

The other thing is that the LS content and story was not at all engaging for me because it felt so contrived, and it was all very 1-size-fits-all. I think more sandbox elements and open-endedness would help a lot.

Prysin.8542:

Get better internet or play a class that can be more efficient with such ping ?

Get better educated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_

latency != throughput.

As I clearly said, sword is not an option when latency is a factor. My character is uncontrollable while executing basic attacks (a pretty sad indictment of the level of care Anet have for their game and its players IMO).

Eurantien.4632:

Hmm, I was curious about this form you created and was dissapointed.

I wasn’t aiming for comprehensive, I was more trying to take the pulse of the community on how players felt about the pet being compulsory and where pets are lacking.

Personally I hate the compulsory pet, mainly because I think the whole pet implementation is very lazy/sloppy and wasn’t thought through well at all, eg: pets are basically pointless or are an outright liability in most of WVW.

I also find pets to be really unbalanced as well, with at least half of all available pets being far below the power level of the upper tier pets.

Also, the controls are so poor that – as you said – even the best players of this class struggle to make best use of the available skills.

Would it really be too much to ask if AOE pet skills used the same targeting reticle that players use to place their own AOE skills? Why are the cast-times of pets skills so much longer than comparable player equivalents? Given that player control of pet position is virtually non-existent in this game (only attack this target, or come straight back to me), why isn’t there any kind of passive/active defense(s) available? WOW for example has passive AOE dmg resistance and 3 entire trait lines devoted just to the pet.

In short, pets and pet skills in this game are second-class citizens, which I’m fine with, because i like the class not the pet, but given its current state I think Anet ought to just make having the pet a utility skill and be done with it.

What’s your opinion of ranger pets?
http://goo.gl/forms/43PhmcWDyd

Travis the Terrible.4739:

Granted gw2 is not gw1 but anet needs to realize that pets need to be optional.

Or at least make them worth keeping alive.

Have said it many times. This game has the worst implementation of pets of any MMO to date, even the indie MMOs do better.

GW2 pets are nothing more than copy-pastaed animal assets with standard mob AI and copy-pastaed generic skills, and one crappy player-controlled skill, most of which aren’t worth considering because of how slow-casting and/or mind-numbingly generic and/or ineffectual they are.

The pet is hands-down the worst thing about the class. Adding more pets wouldn’t change the fact the basic design is total crap.

loss of character control with australian ping makes sword not even an option.

uri.6521:

And that requires programming, which Anet won´t do easly

correction: if it doesn’t help sell gems, they don’t give a kitten.

Sebastian Knight.4736:

Axe 5 still roots in place? Booo!

The real kicker is that the skill would still be crap even if you could move.

Not to mention:

• sword #1 still roots the user. quite frankly it’s pathetic this bug is still there 2 years after release.
• traps still only 600 range – half the range of necro marks even after taking a GM and master trait.
• pets are still kitten

I don’t think this game will ever be e-sports while it has such big watchability turnoffs like downed-state, excessive particle effects, and the conquest game type.

Anet’s apparent lack of interest in player issues like game balance & build variety definitely doesn’t help either.

I can’t believe this is all there is for 6 months.

It’s been over 2 years now and we still have largely the same skill set that was there at release with the same tired weapons, a large number of bugs unaddressed, and the same, shallow build diversity with still a huge number of blatantly terrible skills/traits around.

I realise there’s an expansion in the works but this game has been seriously boring for far too long.

+1 pet implementation in this game is way below par for an MMO. The feel is all wrong IMO.

Activated abilities need to be equivalent to weapon skills in cast time and utility and survivability ought to be way higher.

celestial ain’t the problem, it’s might stacking.

i’d pay $$ to permanently trade downed state for 10% extra HP.

They can call it what they like but for this fan of the original, this game was, and continues to be, a major disappointment.

Yes, cast times for pet F2’s should be reduced across the board to the instant – 3/4sec range.

I still am of the opinion WVW should have a PVP/PVE dungeon similar to DAOC’s Darkness Falls.

Ele elites have been very underwhelming and frequently derided in these forums since release, and now even the niche uses of them have been mostly nerfed.

Agree, the UI is awful.

The most important transient information, buffs and conditions, have the smallest icons.

I realise the intent was to be able to glean this information through the action onscreen, however the sheer extravagance of mostly superfluous particle effects makes this unworkable in practice.

Because anet.

The real question to ask is why there’s only been 1 new skill per class added in 2 years.

coglin.1867:

scerevisiae.1972:

The FPS market is much larger than the MMO market so the population would probably be bigger for a start.

No reason why you can’t have both in a game, it’s not an all or nothing thing. Case in point, GW2 already has a number of aimed skills. Personally I’d like to see more.

There is a very good reason. A large number of MMO players will find a game without it to go play. It sounds to me as if you are suggesting that it will pull the FPS market over. It won’t help much. Many of those may not like the MMO aspects, while most of the MMO players, in my opinion, will dislike the horrible controls.

Better to aim for mainstream mediocrity right?

The FPS market is much larger than the MMO market so the population would probably be bigger for a start.

No reason why you can’t have both in a game, it’s not an all or nothing thing. Case in point, GW2 already has a number of aimed skills. Personally I’d like to see more.

Still the same crappy game mode. Still the same crappy mandatory downed state.

Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.

Zypher.7609:

If they have not played in a while, between living story and feature packs there has been a good amount of content added.

Many players don’t consider LS to be real content. It’s sole purpose is to drive gem sales.

Zaklex.6308:

scerevisiae.1972:

~Snip~

Anet have > 300 employees. At roughly 100k per employee and ignoring operational costs, that’s a burn rate of >30 mill per year on salaries. Then there’s (high) operational costs, etc.

First off, you’re most likely overstating the average annual salary, and second…Arena.net doesn’t have high operational costs, as a matter of fact, the way the code is written GW2 is probably the cheapest MMO to operate out there, factoring in the servers are owned by NCSoft(not leased), and even with overhead, they’re still making money…which is the bottom line. Plus, the initial 3 million in sales in NA and EU, combined with the initial sales of 3 million in China(as stated after release in China)…and the 4 markets the game has still not been released in…I wouldn’t worry to much yet.

Any high CCU Internet game has high operational costs.

60k is a grad programmer fresh out of uni. Snr devs, dev mgrs, architects etc will be well clear of 100. In any case, 100k is a realistic mean salary figure, once on-costs and insurances are taken into account.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

So according to this report, Guild Wars 2 is making $5,968,222 per month…roughly anyway.

Seems pretty good for a two year old game without an expansion…to me anyway.

aion is way older, lineage 1 is way older. Its doing as well as blade and soul virtually which has started off with a lot less numbers.

If anet hadnt reached so many people it would be doing ok, but it started high and has consistently sunk this year. blade and soul for example, has been generally stable. Whereas say a blade and soul can still hope to expand, gw2 has basically gotten and lost all of those customers. They wont get most of them back unless they give them something substantial.

Lineage is Korea’s WoW. I’d be stunned if it wasn’t doing amazing. Lineage servers in the US are all shut down because of lack of interest. That’s the thing. Lineage is a phenomenam in Korea, but failed in the US. It’s a bit hard to actually compare games in different markets, because they’re completely different markets. Lineage makes ton of money for NCsoft, but none from the US. Guild Wars 2 still exists in a US market. I’m not even sure why anyone would compare a sandbox game from a different region with a themepark game.

I’m not sure this game is doing as badly kitten many people are trying to say.

Anet have > 300 employees. At roughly 100k per employee and ignoring operational costs, that’s a burn rate of >30 mill per year on salaries. Then there’s (high) operational costs, etc.

The first time I experienced down state I thought: wow, that is the worst thing they could have put in a PVP mode, this will kill PVP in this game.

And it has.

Agree with OP, LS is easily the worst content delivery vehicle of any MMO to date for me. I largely find myself in the same predicament as the OP.

I would much rather pay a subscription and get quality content and timely updates to skills/mechanics.

Fistandanthilus.6824:

That’s a total of 600€/600$ for each player of TCG and Abjured at the end of this month.

600 a month is peanuts. Less than peanuts.

sPVP isn’t fun, it’s as simple as that.

Why isn’t it fun? Downed state, game mode, lack of build options, particle effect spam, condescending developers… Take your pick.

Yep, this is a stupid change.

Would it really be so hard to poll the player base via survey before making unwarranted changes?

Why is the gaming industry still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to UX?

It just needs a counter, like you can stun-break out of it or something. It’s pretty OP in anything larger than a 2v2 simply because it’s uncounterable.

the real question is why is there rifles and pistols in a medieval fantasy game at all?

where are the: spears, halberds, pikes, crossbows, morning stars, etc?

Branden Gee.2150:

The death cam spinning bug should be fixed. It will go out at some point.

thanks for the update, i(we) really appreciate it.

could we please get an update on if/when the defeated forced camera pan regression is going to be fixed? I find it infuriating to the point that I don’t want to play the game at all.

I’m not the only one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Death-Downed-Camera
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Camera-moves-when-you-are-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-re-fix-the-Death-Camera
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Camera-Auto-pan-after-death
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Downed-state-camera-is-now-rotating-again
…plus others…

The only thing I dislike about them is that they generally favour the side with the greater numbers.

This stuff is rampant on JQ as well, but only on the weeks we are playing BG…

It’s worse than that. Every time you transfer you are rewarding anet for their lack of changes to address the reason why you want to transfer in the first place.

The last thing BG needs is more people. So unless you like waiting in queues every night, pick JQ or TC.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Ehecatl.9172:

Should add conjured weapons to the elementalist list. Frost Bow is the only utility conjure that gets used, and the greatsword only sees use because the only competition it has is… Tornado and the elemental elites.

I actually use the hammer conjure on my ele quite a bit.

The blind & blast from the AA chain happens very often which can help with damage avoidance for the group & stacking might.

You’re also obviously talking about PVE, everything is relatively viable there, even no armour.

It’s because FGS is only slotted for the mobility, not the damage.

if i were going to change anything about how fields work it would be to buff whirl finishers across the board (currently really not worth using).

the lack of viable builds/choices in this gam is IMO this game’s greatest weakness.

Of the class i regularly play, from a WVW roaming/zerging perspective, skills i basically never use or of very limited/situational use:

Ele: glyphs, signets, conjures, elites
Ranger: traps, shouts, spirits
Warrior: (no real complaints)
Thief: traps
Mesmer: (no real complaints)
Necro: minions, signets (except spite)

SPESHAL.9106:

Would you play ANY game where a RANKED contest could begin uneven?

Would you even play a game CASUALLY where rage quitters and team swappers corrupt the match and have no repercussions?

Would you play a game where you could get 1 shot (sometimes from stealth) on a certain map?

Would you play a game that REMOVES something that adds variety and fun instead of fixing it (i.e. underwater combat)?…Especially after having it in the game and people learning it for over a year!

Would you play ANY game that had the above problems PLUS gave miniscule rewards?

Forgot IMO the biggest two:

• Would you play a game where winning is decided by a crappy 4-skill minigame instead of the actual combat?
• would you play a game where most of the build choices aren’t remotely competitive after 2 full years?

i actually stopped playing because of it.

PPT ought to be scaled by currently-playing population at time of tick to normalise server population and timezone coverage disparities.

Other incentives to server-stack, like reducing capture rewards and slightly increasing AOE caps should also be considered.

Swamurabi.7890:

Every tournament has been a failure. Until Anet comes up with a fix where every server has a chance at winning a tournament regardless of their population or coverage, each tournament should be considered a failure.

I tend to agree. PPT ought to be scaled by currently-playing population at time of tick to normalise server population and timezone coverage disparities.

Other incentives to server-stack, like reducing capture rewards and slightly increasing AOE caps should also be considered.