Guild Wars 2

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

champ.7021:

I find it more annoying that if i do a fair amount of dungeons and a fractal or two in a day i can manage to get enough leather, wood, and mithril to craft the time gated mats. Maybe not the entire amount but factoring in the cost of those mats from the tp, enough that it doesnt really take away from my gold. Silk on the other hand ill end up with at max 40 bolts of silk, and thats if im lucky, often times i get 30 or so. Buying the other 50-70 is like another 4-5g on top. The mats are already time gated putting a pressure on the player to make sure to craft it every day…yet you cant manage to get enough mats to craft it every day. The whole experience just feels backwards. I think they should both put the amount of silk needed to 50 and make it drop more from salvaging since we cant get it from nodes. I dont mind having to purchase the mats from the tp to craft it every day, but i shouldnt have to spend as much as i do each time, and i should feel like the silk i get from playing the game is actually worthwhile.

I guess, if Anet puts bolt of damask on a 3-day cooldown, you shouldnt have a problem anymore.

that would be incredibly unbalanced with respect to other materials aquisition. I know you arent really serious, but you cant come up with solutions that ignore all their other interactions and have a good answer.
In math terms this would be solving a system of equations.

essentially you need to get an answer that solves ALL of the issues, not just one or two. The current design of silk within ascended has many flaws.

Youre right, i wasnt serious. But I also havent seen a single solution pointed out here that would remedy everything and wouldnt inflict other problems.

But I do know that Anet rebalanced cloth output in general since season 2 started, which resulted in lower costs for silk and bolt of damask. Damask went from 17g to 13g (over 20%) and bolt of silk went from 11.5s to 5.75s (50%) in about 3 months.
So their macro-economic solution seems to work just fine.

Just because people complain that they cant farm 300 scraps of silk per day doesnt mean that the amount is unreasonable because you still have to consider the supply that comes in from people that have no use for it. If everybody could farm his daily needs in a timely manner, it will result in oversupply pretty quick (see leather).

its unreasonable because it takes too much effort as compared to all the other materials.
weather you define that in gold, or in personal farming it still requires .5 gold versus 7.5 gold.

I wouldnt reccomend bring leather and metal up to silks cost

i would say the effort required for silk, is not in a good place, taking 2-3 hours of farm time, or .7-1.5 hours of gold grinding.
thats for the people who are doing either semi effeciently btw. People playing normally would have to dedicate even more time. AND thats just for one of the required mats.

If Anet wants to gate asc crafting its reasonable to rebalance the one mat that is required for all classes and not all individually.
And it wasnt introduced for casuals, so the argument that those cant get it on a daily basis doesnt have much weight.

And the status quo doesnt handicap any particular players, just certain classes.
If we just look at exotic gear, production costs for heavy armor outvalue light and medium but no one complains about that.

I, as a warrior, dont complain about the engineer because he has to craft 7 asc weapons less than me to get a full ascended weapon set.

Gating a tier with a unevenly required material isn’t reasonable in a game, nor is it required. You can balance over multiple factors, for example the ascension crystals, by adding additional obsidian shards, more Thermocatalytic Reagant…all needed for ascended crafting.
If you really think that it’s reasonable to gate it via armor-class-specific materials, why would you bring up that exotic heavy armor costs more than the other classes? Wouldn’t that be a given then?

Neither is this about casuals/non-casuals. No matter how much time you play a day, the difference in gathering the materials will still be there. Someone who just does his daily each day and has a longterm goal of light ascended armor will still need more time than someone who is just in for the dailies and wants to make a medium ascended armor.

You say you play a warrior. Is it your main-character? I’ll assume it is, since you aligned yourself personally with that class (“I, as a warrior,…”).
So tell me: How is the status quo not a handicap for everyone with a light-armor profession as his/her main-character?
You seem to have checked if heavy exotic is more expensive, so I guess you ran into a similar situation of being unhappy in that regard.

I got a full set of ascended celestial gear with divinity-runes on my ele.
I’m using it with a support build 0/0/6/2/6. Signet-heavy, low dps but a heck of cc’s, dodging and condition-removal.
It can be fun in groups when you need to keep people alive, but don’t expect to do a lot of damage, that’s what zerker is for.

I find celestial with divinity-runes good for two things:
-Eles with supportive builds, since the raw stat can be helpful for each attunements strength like healing, conditions or a bit of damage
-If you got multiple professions with the same armor-class, different strengths and still want an armor that you can somewhat use on everybody without getting total crap on any of them

In the end it’s up to you and your playstyle. Don’t go into zerker-only parties with it(as you won’t meet that requirement naturally) and be prepared to meet some stupid folks who will rant about you and try to kick you. Also be prepared for your belly to hurt from laughing, if you actually get into a dungeon with those kind of people, only to discover that most of them are too dumb to dodge and require a full zerker-party in order to kill the enemies before they suffer the first hit.
In the end your skill determines your effectiveness, but as I said: Be prepaired to meet a lot of bad players who think having zerker-stats will somehow improve bad skills.

Last but not least: Never stop learning. If you find a good zerker-player, try to observe him/her dodging. If you find people dishing out a lot of boons with your profession, try to integrate it into your supportive builds. The real good players will always have an ear open for one or two questions to help you out with knowledge.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

champ.7021:

I find it more annoying that if i do a fair amount of dungeons and a fractal or two in a day i can manage to get enough leather, wood, and mithril to craft the time gated mats. Maybe not the entire amount but factoring in the cost of those mats from the tp, enough that it doesnt really take away from my gold. Silk on the other hand ill end up with at max 40 bolts of silk, and thats if im lucky, often times i get 30 or so. Buying the other 50-70 is like another 4-5g on top. The mats are already time gated putting a pressure on the player to make sure to craft it every day…yet you cant manage to get enough mats to craft it every day. The whole experience just feels backwards. I think they should both put the amount of silk needed to 50 and make it drop more from salvaging since we cant get it from nodes. I dont mind having to purchase the mats from the tp to craft it every day, but i shouldnt have to spend as much as i do each time, and i should feel like the silk i get from playing the game is actually worthwhile.

I guess, if Anet puts bolt of damask on a 3-day cooldown, you shouldnt have a problem anymore.

that would be incredibly unbalanced with respect to other materials aquisition. I know you arent really serious, but you cant come up with solutions that ignore all their other interactions and have a good answer.
In math terms this would be solving a system of equations.

essentially you need to get an answer that solves ALL of the issues, not just one or two. The current design of silk within ascended has many flaws.

Youre right, i wasnt serious. But I also havent seen a single solution pointed out here that would remedy everything and wouldnt inflict other problems.

But I do know that Anet rebalanced cloth output in general since season 2 started, which resulted in lower costs for silk and bolt of damask. Damask went from 17g to 13g (over 20%) and bolt of silk went from 11.5s to 5.75s (50%) in about 3 months.
So their macro-economic solution seems to work just fine.

Just because people complain that they cant farm 300 scraps of silk per day doesnt mean that the amount is unreasonable because you still have to consider the supply that comes in from people that have no use for it. If everybody could farm his daily needs in a timely manner, it will result in oversupply pretty quick (see leather).

…or see Deldrimor Steel Ingots, or see Spiritwood Planks or see any other ascended material that we can craft. Basically every other full ascended material balanced out at 2-4g. Damask at 14g.

It’s the highest in demand, since every armor-crafter needs it for insignias and inner layer. It’s the one with the highest material-requirements for their pre-mat.
Together with leather cloth is the only material you can’t get from nodes, but as you stated yourself: Leather is oversupplied.

You mention 300 silkscraps don’t have to be unreasonable, considering supply from other people. That argument applies to every other material on the market and look at their requirements for ascended crafting and their respective prices. Your argument even befits leather, the most oversupplied of the four material-groups for ascended crafting.
Not even deldrimor steel and spiritwood, required for every ascended weapon. comes close in price.

This is not just a matter of the economy or the supply/demand-situation on the market, since it’s a game, it’s also a matter of balance.
Ascended armor is the highest tier we got, it should be costly, it should take a considerable amount of time and resources, but it shouldn’t be gated by one material.
A material that different professions need in different quantities.

Will silk ever drop in price? No, not with the current implementation of ascended crafting.

Dave.2536:

tekfan.3179:

I got a suggestion on how to equalize and spread the costs for the materials you need for ascended crafting:
Insignias could be made with one of each(damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel), instead of three bolts of damask.

That would close the disparity greatly, but it may end up shifting the pressure to heavy armor.

Deldrimor steel is used extremely heavily in crafting ascended weapons, while damask is not used at all and elonian leather used very rarely (in bows only).

The new material-requirements would be…
-For heavy armor: 13 bolts of damask, 22 deldrimor steel ingots and 6 elonian leather squares
-For medium armor: 12 bolts of damask, 6 deldrimor steel ingots and 24 elonian leather squares
-For light armor: 24 bolts of damask, 6 deldrimor steel ingots and 12 elonian leather squares

I think the impact on heavy armor and weapon-crafting wouldn’t be that large. Contrary to cloth, you can mine every ore in the open world with a 100% success rate.
You don’t need to hope for a salvage-item or a bag with some luck in rng, just get a pickaxe and onward you go.
I agree that deldrimor steel is used in weapon-crafting.
However, a full set of ascended armor consists of six pieces, I listed the mat-requirements in my previous post. Even if you chose to craft every weapon-combination your profession can carry, I think only the warrior would need to have a stockpile of deldrimor steel that equals the current amount a light armor profession needs of damask. Not to mention that light and medium professions would only require 6 deldrimor steel per armor set each, not 18.

My problem is not the cost or the grind. It’s a high tier armor after all.
What I dislike is the imbalance between the different armor-classes.
Heavy armor needs 25 bolts of damask and 16 deldrimor steel ingots.
Medium armor needs 24 bolts of damask and 18 elonian leather squares.
Light armor needs 36(!!!) bolts of damask and 6 elonian leather squares.

So not only do you need the most of the most expensive material for light armor, but you will also need the longest time of at least 36 days to craft your armor, if you craft all mats yourself.

I got a suggestion on how to equalize and spread the costs for the materials you need for ascended crafting:
Insignias could be made with one of each(damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel), instead of three bolts of damask.

I want to unlock them in an epic, lore-rich and story-driven quest. I’d even like it if there is one quest per profession.

I just hope they don’t remove the attunement-system from the elementalist.
It is what makes the class so interesting to play.

I start to despise outfits.
Especially the mass of human-centered stuff that clips like heck with asura- and charr-anatomy.

Non-clipping armor-combinations. Anet has a thread where you can post screenshots, which seem to have the sole purpose to be ignored by ArenaNet. I haven’t heard of a single issue in that thread being resolved.
They couldn’t even fix the clipping of the profane greatcoat’s sleeves through almost every glove except the profane one’s on asuran chars. And the profane armor was one of the first armors to hit the gem-store.

I understand that wish for peaceful areas. In Kessex Hills, before the lake became a ruin that noone cares to do something against, I often would just stand on the hill above the truffle-heart and look at the amazing landscape.
Sometimes I just travel to the hidden garden in Mount Maelstrom, or the secret strawberry-patch in diessa plateau just to have those peaceful moments in the game(mostly when I’m eating while playing XD).
In the newer maps it’s a lot harder to find a place to just take five minutes to enjoy the art-design of the game without getting eviscerated by something that can one- or two-hit you.

As for complex enemies…I can’t remember any of those in the whole time I played the GW-games. Which I kinda like actually.
There is the chance that we will see some brainwashed Sylvari in the story of the expansion who try to return to their former self, but can’t because of the dragons power.

I don’t think Golemancer is something an Engineer should be specialized in.
First off, golems are magical constructs, derived from different schools of magic, while engineers use machines.
Golemancy is an asuran invention. There may be golems of different kinds in multiple magical disciplines, but only asura have created golemancy as a specialized discipline. And asura barely share knowledge between each other, let alone other races.
Remember the Beetletun-dungeon? The path where an asuran specialist follows you through the dungeon to destroy all kinds of asuran tech, because it isn’t allowed to have their tech?
Each gate in each city is run by asuran krewe’s.
One of the first heart-events in Metrica Province has repairable golems. Asura-characters get some technobabble, while all other races get descriptions like red or blue thingie.
I can’t imagine asura sharing their tech with other races, even if they allow them to use it for a fee. Only the orders and the pact have cases of asuran tech being shared with other races, whereas this technology still remained in the hands of the pact/order.

The idea in itself is nice though.
Maybe in the expansion after HoT we’ll get something like a racial specialization. Aviable for each profession, but differing by race.
Each centered around giving us some golem-like add that we can use like an armor and is upgradable by the mastery-system.
Could be something like:
Asura: Golemancer(get’s something like Taimi’s Scruffy)
Charr: Drone-Engineer(A nice, steampunk-robot)
Human: Automaton Tinkerer(A clockwork-mecha)
Norn: Spirit-Armorer(A spirit-imbued creation of steel and wooden totems)
Sylvari: Oaken Rider(A symbiotic oakheart that can take the sylvari into it’s chest)

Each of those adds wouldn’t change your profession-related weapon-skills and would allow you to run around with giant versions of your professions favourite weapon. Imagine an asuran elementalist entering his/her golem and using a huge staff with it to blast out massive fire-balls or whole tsunamis.
In turn riding the suit exchanges your utilities and elite in racial suit-skills. Something like self-repair for asura, while charr get a shouldermounted mortar-barage.
In exchange for being a huge, tough version of your profession, the suits could be unable to dodge or something like that.

Weapons I don’t want for my ele:
-Mace
-Warhorn
-Axe
(Gimme a sword!!!)

Of course I’d like to have the expansion rather sooner than later.

But there are is one thing in the gaming-industry I despise with a burning hate:
Early release-dates that lead to rushed and half-developed content.

Also I prefer having no release-date at all over having one that is being shoved and shoved into the future. (Still better than rushed bug-crap though).

For me the hype is dependant on the features and content I can expect. And my further investment in the brand is dependant on how Anet lives up to what they promise in the final release.

• 28 years old, male
• I’m from germany
• Since I had an autoimmune disease for most of my life, I couldn’t get vaccines and therefore can’t really say I traveled a lot, except for skandinavian countries
• I’ve been a labrat! Well, so to speak. My disease is so rare that they developed new therapies while trying to treat me. It makes me happy, since I could help other people who will have that disease in the future
• Decided I’d make up for traveling by visiting exotic places like Tyria in my free time
• Still catched some computer-viruses, though
• I defeated my disease a few years back, when it came for a hard hit during my studies and cost me a lot of time
• I got a Bachelor Degree in Engineering, spec’ed for R&D, over a year ago
• I love technology, especially things like bionic prosthetics, exoskeletons or artifical organs. Everything that saves and improves lives
• I’m fascinated by robots and 3D-printing
• I didn’t get a job yet
• I’m a cynic who tends to be an optimist
• No matter how many stones are placed in your path, remember that stones make strong foundations
• I love my family
• I love my two dogs, both mixed as they can be
• I love cooking and baking, learned both from my grandma who was a professional cook
• I love to learn new things. It resulted in a nice chunk of general knowledge

I remember your Review Joe. I really liked that one.
OK, if you don’t mind I’ll start with how the game evolved(PvE, since I play barely anything else) and then add my questions:

First off the multi-server-system, which is pretty much the biggest change since it impacts a lot of the gameplay.
If a map is full, a new instance of it will be created, running parallel and independently from the others. Event-chains may be completed on one map-instance, while the same event isn’t even triggered on the other instance.
As long as there is room, the system tries to put parties or even whole guilds on one map so they can play together. If you join a party over the new lfg-tool and see it’s on another instance of your map, you can join there instance via right-clicking on one of their pics in your party(at least as long as their map isn’t full).
While this is mostly a great system, it’s now kinda hard to find a map in Orr where you can do one of the temple-events.

Dungeons got a rework. Each path of a dungeon only rewards you fully once per day. You can still grind that path, but the reward is kinda small.

Armor-repair is free now.

While you had to buy mastery-books in the initial release to unlock higher tiers of traits, you now get that pretty much for free. In turn you have to travel the whole game-world with each new character and do specific tasks to unlock each and every trait. The highest traits are linked to the temples in orr, which is kinda hard to fullfill with the new mega-servers.
Of course, you can ignore that mechanic and buy each trait at the trainers for gold and skill-points.
Btw: You can change your traits on the fly now, as long as you’re out of combat. No NPC or fee required to reset them anymore.

You can still apply each skin you like to your respective weapon- or armor-class.
While there are still some you can only buy at the ingame-story, you can exchange game-gold for gems and buy them with that.
Some of the skins from events or the black lion weapon-trader are really expensive at the trading-post. The greatsword skin from the first halloween-event is up to over 1000 gold.

Now about some of the content:
We got story-content for freeeee! Yay!
The first of them were grindy mega-events with a bit of story and unique design. They got mostly better with each new event, so Arenanet was improving.
Then game the Living World seasons.
The first one you could only play at the time it was released, shortly after it went off-line, never to be experienced again. Along with small goodies and skins you could earn.
In the late episodes of season 1, some of the goodies like resource-nodes for your home-instance returned. They could be purchased for event-tickets you earned.
Season 2 improved on that.
Each episode of season 2 was free as long as you just started the episode during the 2 weeks of it’s release. If you couldn’t be online in the game at that time, you have to buy that episode in the gem-store. Again, you can exchange large amounts of gold for gems and practically pay no real money for it, even if you have to farm a lot of gold to buy something.
Also the second episode contained a slightly grindy crafting-hunt that allowed you to craft an ascended(new, highest gear-tier for lvl80 chars) backpack for your characters.
The story was delivered via small cinematics and text-conversations. All the time your character would be mute.

Do you remember the manifold of gear-stat-sets you could equip? Berzerker, cleric, etc.? Well, in PvE the meta has become zerker-sets with barely anything else. You’ll even encounter players who despise anything and anyone that’s not running around with zerker-stuff.
Most of the community is still great though.

World bosses now run on a timer. In two ways actually. If you can’t beat them in a set amount of time, they just leave. Also, they spawn at specific day-times now. You just have to complete their pre-events at xx:xx am/pm and they’ll hop out conveniently.

Now my questions:
-Will asura finally get some shoe-skins for their armor, that are not just resized human shoes with nude asuran toes clipping out at the side? Even the paid armor-skins got that. It’s just a design-thing, but if you got a character with skins for thousand of gold, only to see nude toes clipping out of flashy caster-shoes or even armored boots for warriors(seriously? Heavily armored boots with nude toes?!), it’s just ridiculous.

-Will there finally be more female versions of armors for charr and asura?

-Any infos on guild halls would be appreciated.

-Some infos on the presentation of the personal story in the expansion would be nice.

Haishao.6851:

tekfan.3179:

You can be viable in the game, doing nothing but supportive deeds. Heck, if I join an event with my supportive build, you can easily observe how players drop less.
But neither the reward-system of the game nor the meta-crazed kind of players will notice that. All that’s registered is the dps.
I do low dps on a champion, because I chose to keep a glassy thief on his feet with the water-attunement? Green bag.
Even better: Besaid thief turns around, thanks me for the rez and then says I do kitten low dps.

Why are you locking yourself into a single role in a game that was specifically created against that?
Support is needed but you’re making yourself as useful as only one third of another player who could also do some DPS and some CC along with the Support.

read this.
http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

…

While I count cc into supportive deeds, I’m not limiting myself to sole support. There are times where I do it, simply because the water-attunement keeps my party alive, but mostly I’m hopping wildly between all attunements and do whatever is needed on the field.

However, I feel that it shouldn’t be a problem for other players if someone plays a build that favors support over sole dps. While a zerker is still capable of doing support, that player is pretty much a glass-cannon.
What I want to emphasize is that someone who does everything, but would favor a more supportive build with faster recharging heals/condition-removals/cc’s over sole dps, shouldn’t feel less significant on the field, at least if he/she is using their skills in a productive way.

Ashen.2907:

tekfan.3179:

Ashen.2907:

Milkduds.7109:

Shocked to see people stand up for the stale meta of this game. Dungeons in this game could be SO much more.

Forget the trinity. Just make more playstyles viable. Wanna hybrid support/DPS? Go for it. Wanna hybrid tank/heal? Go for it. Wanna hybrid range/melee DPS? Go for it.

Forget trinity. Forget that garbage that WoW put into your mind. Go back to the classic RPG’s, where imagination was king, and the only limit was our own ideas.

We don’t need the trinity, but we also need a game that allows something besides “STRAIGHT DPS D00D” to be viable. Otherwise, the PvE will continue to suffer and be extremely bland.

All of the options you list are viable.

Yet, what do you see in the lfg-tools, especially for dungeons?
“Zerker only!” “Only Zerker!!!” “ZERK!!!”

I have done every dungeon (except Arah exorable) using either the old off-site tool or the official LFG, and yet Ive never once played in a zerker only group.

Even so there is a huge difference between not being viable and not being as popular as zerker on the LFG tool.

Same here, I’ve done it with my friends. We got a mini-guild, mostly just four people around, the fifth has lost the interest in GW2. So we take a random with us via the lfg-tool.

I stopped counting the times a random sees a signet in my build, blabbers something about it and leaves or even tries to kick me. Even if I just got the air-signet for the movement-speed, I get such comments.
Or someone comes in and demands a gear-check for zerker-only, despite our group not being advertised as such.

Meanwhile Arenanet slapped a countdown on each world boss and the new events, so dps is further emphasized.

You can be viable in the game, doing nothing but supportive deeds. Heck, if I join an event with my supportive build, you can easily observe how players drop less.
But neither the reward-system of the game nor the meta-crazed kind of players will notice that. All that’s registered is the dps.
I do low dps on a champion, because I chose to keep a glassy thief on his feet with the water-attunement? Green bag.
Even better: Besaid thief turns around, thanks me for the rez and then says I do kitten low dps.

Ashen.2907:

Milkduds.7109:

Shocked to see people stand up for the stale meta of this game. Dungeons in this game could be SO much more.

Forget the trinity. Just make more playstyles viable. Wanna hybrid support/DPS? Go for it. Wanna hybrid tank/heal? Go for it. Wanna hybrid range/melee DPS? Go for it.

Forget trinity. Forget that garbage that WoW put into your mind. Go back to the classic RPG’s, where imagination was king, and the only limit was our own ideas.

We don’t need the trinity, but we also need a game that allows something besides “STRAIGHT DPS D00D” to be viable. Otherwise, the PvE will continue to suffer and be extremely bland.

All of the options you list are viable.

Yet, what do you see in the lfg-tools, especially for dungeons?
“Zerker only!” “Only Zerker!!!” “ZERK!!!”

Milkduds.7109:

Shocked to see people stand up for the stale meta of this game. Dungeons in this game could be SO much more.

Forget the trinity. Just make more playstyles viable. Wanna hybrid support/DPS? Go for it. Wanna hybrid tank/heal? Go for it. Wanna hybrid range/melee DPS? Go for it.

Forget trinity. Forget that garbage that WoW put into your mind. Go back to the classic RPG’s, where imagination was king, and the only limit was our own ideas.

We don’t need the trinity, but we also need a game that allows something besides “STRAIGHT DPS D00D” to be viable. Otherwise, the PvE will continue to suffer and be extremely bland.

Amen to that.

Haishao.6851:

tekfan.3179:

Lets take the thrasher-champ at the Vinewrath for example. If a guardian drops down a reflective wall or a mesmer drops this projectile-absorbing dome on the thrasher, it’s a great contribution to the success of the event. Buuut: It’s no dps.
The game doesn’t even reward you some xp for it, while you get the killing-xp for popping the spore-blisters.

I’d like the game to actually reward those supportive actions.
The game should account for everything from cc’s to heals.

If it is just about DPS why does the mangler fail so many time?
DPS is easy no?

It fails a lot for you? I barely encountered any fails on that boss. The beekeeper is the one I encountered the most fails on, since people forget that the tiny trolls can push them away from the safezones.
But to answer your question: DPS means damage per second. Dead=0 dps.
As I mentioned in my post, the silverwastes reward you for two things: DPS and standing on your feet.

DPS is easy. Yes.
The SW are finally more challenging.
Among the most vocal zerker-fanatics I encountered, were the most terrible players I’ve ever seen. They couldn’t dodge for their digital life. Anything beyond “smash it” was above their play-grade. Everybody drops from time to time or has a bad episode in standing upright, but those guys really told me a whole new level of failing.
I love to integrate support into my builds(doesn’t matter if I run around in my zerker or celestial gear), since it not only means that I need to take care of enemies(dps, evasion), but also of other players, if they need buffs, heals or if I have to put a cc-field between them and a charging enemy so they can get up again.

OK, I think I’ve got to clarify my post from before

@rotten, phys, Ashen:

I don’t want to be rewarded for playing a supportive spec. I want the game to reward supportive actions like cc’s, buffs, debuff-removal, heals, etcetera, in an event.
Every profession in the game can use those abilities, no matter if they are in zerker-gear or, celestial, sinister,… those are actions, not philosophies or specs, your choice of gear doesn’t take them away from you.
In the end those supportive actions factor into the success of a large event. But the game doesn’t care about them when it slaps a bonus on the rng for your reward.
If the event itself consisted of killing a champ, your drop from the champion is only based on your dps, not the removed conditions, heals and what else you might have dished out while hammering on the boss. No matter if those supports kept the group alive that did more dps than you did.

Lets take the thrasher-champ at the Vinewrath for example. If a guardian drops down a reflective wall or a mesmer drops this projectile-absorbing dome on the thrasher, it’s a great contribution to the success of the event. Buuut: It’s no dps.
The game doesn’t even reward you some xp for it, while you get the killing-xp for popping the spore-blisters.

I’d like the game to actually reward those supportive actions.
The game should account for everything from cc’s to heals.
Right now, someone who stands at a save spot, activates the ranged auto-attack on a mob and then takes the hands off the mouse and keyboard get’s more rewards and does more in the event than someone who dodges through the enemies, rezzes players, removes conditions from his allies and heals them back up to join the fight.

I’d even say the game should be designed, so that people should actively need to use these support-abilities for a success.

Rezzing their fellow players for example.
Even at the Claw of Jormag with it’s DoT-debuff people would bow down and rez players. I find that amazing. While people didn’t get big rewards for it, the game had told them that supportive play means success. Each player was important.
Join the SW-event chain. People don’t rez that much there in the large fights. Instead you get “friendly” reminders like “OMG! DEAD NOOBS WP!!!”
Because everything the game rewards you for, in the SW, is dps and staying on your feet.

Why not emphasize on those supportive deeds again?
Here’s an example of what I mean.
A new kind of large, stationary mordrem-boss. In it’s initial form it’s too strong to be beaten.
People will die. The boss shoots out vines and drags the dead players into a bed of vines, where he feasts on them and gets even stronger. He can pull only a specific amount of players into the bed at a time, so it doesn’t get too bad for everyone.
However, every living player inside the vine-bed will receive a small DoT, but will weaken the boss’ attacks by walking over the leaching vines.
Even more so: People need to get to the corpses the boss is leeching on, free them from the vines and then rez them. The rez will daze the boss and weaken him tremendously for a short time in which he can be damaged.

People would actually be happy for those tanky players to get into the vine-bed, instead of kitten ing them for having low dps.

Tman.6349:

Knight and Tefkan, great couple of posts to prove that this is a psychological deal that’s stems from the tunnel vision so many people have acquired from years of previous trinity MMOs. Everyone needs to have their specific, specialized role where I only need to be good at that one thing and someone else will do the other things for me and, if they’re not capable, we’ll wipe, start over, and it can be all their fault. So many players still haven’t accepted that one of GW2’s primary tenants was/is to do away with that notion completely.
…
snip
…

*Gear prefixes are just words. They don’t have any intrinsic meaning. Please don’t get so hung up on arbitrary words. We could easily just have the Devs change the name of the Pow/prec/fer prefix to ‘Super Uber Battletank OP Heelz’ and the placebo effect would be quite strong I think.

Actually, I think you didn’t understand my point.
I’m not saying we need specific roles. I’m not saying we need gear for that. We’ve got all of that. Before taunt was ever mentioned, you could take one of the stat-sets and become pretty much any role that befits the usual trinity, was inbetween the three or even had a bit of everything. The game itself allowed for you to become pretty much everything you want and emphasize on the playstile that you liked.
My point is that the game currently is designed to give rewards mostly per dps. You don’t get a reward for anything else.
As you mentioned yourself: Everyone does a bit of everything.
You dropped down a reflective wall and saved a dozen of dps-ing players?
The game doesn’t care.
You just pulled the conditions from a small group of players?
The game doesn’t care.
You dropped one of those weak heals and saved a bunch of players with it?
The game doesn’t care.
Your cc’s kept the mobs away from the squishy, crucial NPC and dps-ing players?
The game doesn’t care.
I think it should. Those are importan things and the only thing the game cares for is dps, even if it comes from a player that is downed half of the time.

Let’s go with an example I encountered multiple times in the last few weeks:
Everyone is zerker and half of the players can’t dodge, because they lack the skill.
Let’s say I’ve got five of them(sadly it’s mostly more) and they all down at the same mob.
Now I have two options:
-Give a kitten about them, I’m self-sufficient, I keep dps-ing and ignore the five players in downed-state. I can dodge so I stay alive.
-I get them up and switch into the water-attunement. I may not dish out any dps, but I keep those five less surivable players on their feet with the healing and together we blast out more dps than I would have done it alone with the fire attunement, resulting in the boss being slain.

What do you think would be smarter? And what would you think would the game reward me with, for being a healing team-player, instead of the fiery solo-zerker?

You mentioned players want trinity-roles so they can be the best in one of the fields “bro”.
To be honest, this statement is so ridiculous I don’t even know what to say. We got that with dps right now. This will always be a thing, even if there is just one role/stat the people care for, instead of three, seven or 201643 roles.

Let me tell you something about my tanky celestial build:
One of it’s core-elements is the combination of “Written in stone”, “Evasive Arcana” and that neat little trait that refills your endurance with signets and arcane spells. Trait-points: 0-0-6-2-6.
With the signet of air I keep mobs from landing that killing-blow on someone while I achive 25% higher speed. I use the earth-signet to bind enemies in AoE’s. With the endurance gained from that, I dodge, switch into the water-attunement and take some conditions from players who need it, right before I switch into fire, drop a fire-field, attune into earth and dodge-roll into the field to blast might around and give an extra-bit with the arcane blast utility.
I see someone downed in a dot-field. With all my hp, refilled endurance and the toughness from earth I get there and pick him up, then heal him again.
All the while I barely get a single hit on me, except for that brief moment the dot-field damaged my while I rezzed the player in there.
When no one is in need of support and the mob is nicely pinned, I switch to fire and dish out some dps. As to expect: It’s a tiny amount compared to a zerker-set.
But in the end I kept a lot of players on their feet and held the boss where he got hit.

The only tunnel vision here is that zerker has to stay the only way to go in GW2.

No one has to be a specific role. No one should have to be bound to the specific role of dps with a bit of everything else.
If someone is good at certain tasks(plural), he/she should be able to fill them, get rewards from the game and players acknowledging it.

Knighthonor.4061:

tekfan.3179:

Knighthonor.4061:

I would like to ask. But why do some of you all care so much if a trinity system was added to the game?

If you dont like it, just dont play the trinity. Why do any of you care if it gets added?

One problem that you have with a hardcore trinity system is that you need one specific class to do one specific task. The whole success of something depends on that class doing its job right.

Imagine you can’t do something because the new content in GW2 would be designed with a trinity in mind and you would lack the profession in your party that’s the new dedicated tank/dps/healer.

I remember RF Online, a korean mmorpg I once played. The game had a trinity and the tank was a terrible class to play when you weren’t leveling in a party. Pretty much the only thing it was good in was taking hits, taunting and burning through hp-potions.
But when you wanted to level any character in high level areas, you needed a tank that could pull and keep an enemy and had the gear to keep standing in these areas.
This resulted in very few good tanks and therefore long waiting-times to form a party.
When I decided to play a tank and was pretty decent at it, the guild started to throw expensive gear at me to keep me playing, that’s how desperate everyone was for tanks.

But if all classes can be a Tank,

All classes a DPS

and all classes a Support

How can you ever “NOT have any of those roles”?

thats what I dont understand about the argument against the trinity.

this isnt Everquest 1 where a class was locked into 1 and only 1 of the trinity roles.
The MMO genre moved away from that back during World of Warcraft’s first expansion which was years ago.

A Guardian for example, can spec into better Control, or they can swap into better support, or better damage.

and thing for a Warrior, except as of now, support for them is not as good.

Eles can spec into control, support or damage.

ect

With changes like this, all classes still can play any role.

only difference is that the group content cant just all be Zerked down like current.

If it would be like that and everybody could do everything, I’d have no problem with that. In fact, I even think it was almost like this in GW2, before someone at ANet had that idea of putting timers on everything. Last but not least, the game appears to have never been designed to put your non-dps activities into account for rewards.

In my opinion we don’t need additional trinity-mechanics in the game, we’re good on that with the equipment, traits and skills we got. We need less time-limits for bosses, a reward-system that takes cc’s, heals, rezzes, buffing and condition-removal into account as much as dps and bosses that make those roles more important and helpful.
Support-, zerker- or trinity-gameplay shouldn’t be required for events, but the experience should feel better and more smoothly if all of them are around, instead of just one.
In an ideal GW2 a zerker should squeal in joy when a heal-spec’ed water-ele joins the fight and heals the crap out of them, as much as the zerker would with a glass cannon ele coming in.

Knighthonor.4061:

I would like to ask. But why do some of you all care so much if a trinity system was added to the game?

If you dont like it, just dont play the trinity. Why do any of you care if it gets added?

One problem that you have with a hardcore trinity system is that you need one specific class to do one specific task. The whole success of something depends on that class doing its job right.

Imagine you can’t do something because the new content in GW2 would be designed with a trinity in mind and you would lack the profession in your party that’s the new dedicated tank/dps/healer.

I remember RF Online, a korean mmorpg I once played. The game had a trinity and the tank was a terrible class to play when you weren’t leveling in a party. Pretty much the only thing it was good in was taking hits, taunting and burning through hp-potions.
But when you wanted to level any character in high level areas, you needed a tank that could pull and keep an enemy and had the gear to keep standing in these areas.
This resulted in very few good tanks and therefore long waiting-times to form a party.
When I decided to play a tank and was pretty decent at it, the guild started to throw expensive gear at me to keep me playing, that’s how desperate everyone was for tanks.

Arenanet made one huge mistake on their part to emphasize this mono-meta-crap that’s going on: The timer on events!
Wanna do a world boss? Do it in this time!
Wanna do the Silverwastes? Do it in this time!
…

Also it seems your loot depends to some extend on the damage you caused to a mob.

While there is nothing wrong with the zerker-builds, they can be quite fun to play, I love supportive builds as well. I’d like to play the way I want without the game ignoring my part in something. Or the toxic players that is. It’s always so rewarding to cc the crap out of enemies, keep them in aoe-fields, heal players, remove conditions on players, buff them, rez them, only for some of them to rant about “those players who don’t carry themselves”. I almost had a heart attack because of the surprise I had when a warrior actually was thanking me honestly for the healing in a random dungeon-group, when I was around in my celestial build.

You were always pretty much free to play as you like. There was no special new mechanic needed, you could always work out a build that allowed for your favourite way to play. I’ve got a tanky celestial build for my ele, greatly emphasizing on healing, tanking(/rezzing players in dot-fields) and cc. The dmg-output of that build is pretty low, so I tend to get a lot of green champion-bags with it, no matter if I pretty much healed the whole group of zerkers and kept mobs from attacking them.

Yeah, the game allows you to play the way you like, put it’s a piece of junk in regards to keep track of any deed in crowd-events except for dps or mini-events like ammo-gathering for siege carriers.

Muchacho.2390:

Mhh for me the indicators work fine with the traits. I just tested blasting staff with all placement-indicator options (fast one and the 2x click).

And i am certainly not using the chinese client. I have that client installed since the beta weekend.

I also think the bug forum may be a better place for your problem then the hot one…

I made pretty sure to check if it’s a bug before posting it here.
I asked several of my friends and they have the same problem with the respective traits for their professions. I remember seeing some posts regarding the problems some time ago.
I can’t say I remember it ever functioning right, it’s especially visible at the static field and the meteor shower for me.

Hiho!

Might we get any dev that could tell us if we get a fix for traits like Blasting Staff with HoT or even before that?
All those new mechanics we’ve seen in the Revenant-PoI made me think of those old traits that never got the fix.
I mean, in the chinese client the size-increase of the fields is properly implemented for the placement-indicators with these traits. In the other clients the placement-indicator remains the old size, while the trait only increases the size of the resulting field.

Bathos.6341:

Ah well, I figure Logan takes more after Keiran Thakery than Gwen. A guy so lazy he sends out any random adventerer he meets to do all the work of setting up his date with Gwen. Then takes all the credit himself!
;)

Don’t be so hard towards Keiran. You’d probably try to send someone else, too if you knew the trip would be way too dangerous for you.

In my opinion this has been the best POI regarding HoT so far, I agree on that.
No repetitive abyss-jumps or the like of it.
Some scenic map areas, more organized presentation of the announced PoI-content.
I liked the little cut-scene inbetween. You could see it’s still in the works(at least I hope you will put some impact-debree in, once the vine penetrates the rock, dear devs ), but it was nice to get some impressions.

Last but not least:
I even like Ruby’s performance better this time. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate the hard work in the previous two episodes.
However, in the previous episodes I sometimes had the feeling that Ruby’s primary task, aside from a friendly moderation of the stream, was to prevent an uneasy silence, since the devs weren’t really allowed to show much of the content in the works.
This time it was a really satisfying balance of content and community-event.

Potato Slayer.3107:

…so he could stop seeing Logan run away :p

HOW DARE YOU!!!

It isn’t so he stops seeing Logans backside!
How could you forget that Rytlock now can channel Gwen, so she “sees” what a royal lapdog her descendant Logan is! There is not just one benefit, there’s at least two!

Hello. Around 10 minutes ago the game got stuck in the loading screen for the Silverwastes while traveling from Caledon Forest. I had to stop the game.
Now when I choose my character at the selection-screen, the game will load a bit, then display something about a Network Error and restart to the basic login-window.

Anyone else having those problems?
What is going on there?

I’d rather have some decent, non-toe-clipping boots for my asura-characters, instead of putting work into a pillar for the select-screen.

Elementalist, for two reasons:
1: My main is an elementalist.
2: We already saw several professions using new weapons in trailer-material. We got nothing halfway solid towards ele or warrior.

I’ve played a large variety of multiplayer games.
You find flaming, name-calling and this kind of stuff in every single one of them.
As with other games, you’ll find some of the worst scum the internet has to offer, right here in GW2. I’ve had my fair share of these stereotypes in dungeon-groups when I played with friends, we needed a random and had the “luck” of finding one who thought every dungeon-group should be a zerker-only group, even if not advertised as such, flaming at each of us 4 when his kick-votes didn’t work.

However, one thing really makes this community(at least in PvE) shine: The high likelyness of finding a player who is not only helping you via chat, but also takes his/her own free time to help you directly. Personally I found it to be contagious…the times I taught players how to get through the Rhendak Mini Dungeon instead if spamming the map-chat for a mesmer-portal, are really piling up.

It’s not that there are no ugly sides to this community, but there are some extraordinarily shiny ones as well.

It would have to be limited to certain positions on the map or in the personal/living story, of course.

I just think it would be nice to have some profession-related interaction-possibilities with the world, aside from eles being able to throw a boulder like a meteor.

I remember the old Ride the lightning or the lightning teleport. I really liked to be able to travel the world in these interesting ways, teleporting or riding over huge cliffs…nowadays all the ele got is a modified shadow-step.

Often I just think there is so much potential to go a little deeper with world-interaction of professions or even races.
A warrior smashes in a wall with brute force, an ele attunes to earth and commands the stones away, a thief shadowsteps through, a mesmer teleports, an engineer plants an explosive to blast the wall away…

A thick maze of vines blocks a path: A norn rips the vines out of the way, a charr uses his claws or military equipment, a human climbs over the vines, an asura is just small enough to walk through the gaps between the vines or simply summons a massive golem to bash through the vines, a sylvari either communes with the vines or climbs over them.

Well, we know now that Marjory’s new greatsword was a preview to Specializations. Some people speculate that Kasmeer’s “lie-detector”-ability in the living world was a hint at a mastery.

So I’m wondering…Marjory summons a bone bridge, Kasmeer bends the abilities of the mesmers portal…exploration masteries…

Will we actually be able to have some profession-related ways of exploring the Maguuma Jungle?
Will players get to do that in HoT? At least at specific “exploration-spots”?
Will Necros summon a bone bridge they can cross just before it crumbles?
Will Mesmers teleport over gaps?
Elementalists ride the lightning or transform into a gaze of wind to traverse?
Warriors make huge leaps or use a standard for pole-jumping?
Thiefs use a grapling-hook or shadow-step?
Guardians summon a bridge of light or summon a helpful spirit?
Engineers use jetpack-jumps or pop a self-unfolding clockwork-bridge out of a box?
Rangers summon a vine-bridge or use an animation similar to the gs-leap?

Armor, accessories and a backpiece.

I’m with the OP.
While there are people who save up their gold for a long time to buy a legendary(which can be hard work indeed), you can get gold pretty much by RNG in this game. Find a rare skin that’s high in demand or a specific precursor and you’re made.

However, taking the effort to earn all the dungeon-tokens for the respective gift, completing the map and amounting everything else you can’t just buy…that’s something you achieved.

ANet needs to make money and given that financial success means continuation of GW2 and new content, I’ve got no problem with that.
Additional bag-slots are a convenience-item. You don’t need them but it’s nice to have them.

However, I think ANet could come around with some more special offers in that regard. Maybe an item which unlocks all bag-slots on a character, but costs as much as if ANet would give you one slot for free.

Everyone shouting and flaming at people for map-completion in WvW, no matter if there is a queue or not, deserves a report and a ban.
When someone pays money for the game, he/she is entitled to play it. There is no single player in this game who deserves PvP, WvW or PvE any more than the other people.

On the other side, every player doing map-completion, who thinks he/she is entitled to demand help from the players on the map, deserves to be run over by hostile zerks for the rest of the day.

I could understand a certain degree of anger when suddenly a large group of players makes a map-completion-event in WvW during WvW-primetime.

I don’t understand the lack of pork either. I mean…a pulled pork sandwich? Why not?
You can’t even go so far as to say it’s a thing of religious tolerance, since red meat also drops from different kinds of pigs and boars.
Another thread I’ve seen contained the wish for dino-bacon. That sounds awesome!
Pulled T-Rex sandwiches XD

Gear-inspector, huh?
How about we add that feature and it becomes a ban-reason to try to kick or flame at people in groups that were not labeled “zerker only”, because they haven’t full zerker builds?

Seriously, all this zerker-meta-crap is going on my nerves. I play zerker, I also enjoy a supportive celestial build from time to time.
I get really annoyed if a player joins a group, demands that everyone is zerker, then shuts up once he reads that everyone is, just to be the first and most frequent to be downed because he doesn’t know kitten how to play the game.

Zaklex.6308:

tekfan.3179:

~Snip~

Spamming AoE’s at the husk and it’s healing minions, cc’s at the thrasher

~Snip~

First off, you’re not quite on the ball there with Husk…the adds give minimal, very minimal regen to the Boss, so insignificant that it can be ignored. The proper mechanics for Husk, if anyone really paid attention and read descriptions is Condition Overload…load up Husk with every condition, and I do mean every, not just the HP degen ones. Also, kite the adds AWAY from the Boss and AoE the Bubbles BEFORE they reach him as that is what causes him to heal. In addition, if someone has the Husks aggro, they absolutely must bring him over to near the ledge at the entrance to his area. IF enough conditions are applied, full stacks of ALL conditions then the Husk will melt in less than a minute.

I forgot to mention the conditions, true.
However, did you ever see how the husk heals up after an ignorant ele, probably with berserker-gear, drops his base-combo of Meteor Storm and Ice Bow 4 on the husk right when all the minions are cuddling with it? Especially if the group in the hole isn’t the biggest, one player can kitten it up big time.

Zaklex.6308:

The Trasher Boss I have had people say no CC, but really they mean no hard CC, what ever that happens to be, and here is where you shouldn’t AoE, because when you pop the poison bubbles it charges one of the Thrashers attacks. However, I rarely see the Trasher fail so it’s not really a problem what people do there.

I counted the bubbles as CC. I explained the tactics in the chats quite often, not as often as I read them, luckily. No offense, but I didn’t expect that I need to post a guide here in order to convey my thoughts.

Zaklex.6308:

I do agree on the Griff twins, but there’s another factor that people need to take into affect, and that is trying to kill them both at the same time. Pick one, either silver or gold and just attack that one first and only that one, individually they melt pretty fast and one by itself will melt faster than two together. I’ve seen first hand the Griff twins the first to be killed in under 2 minutes, and that was by an 8 man unit.

People not able to focus on one of the twins is a problem too, I agree. However I always found the griffs not being interrupted by the bubbles and therefore blasting through the group to be far more problematic, especially if the other one is coming around the corner in the exact same time.

Zaklex.6308:

As for VW, North doesn’t need more than 10 people to succeed, as a matter of fact, the more people you have the greater chance you have of having to defend the siege carrier from Champions and Elites. Even the Dark Wing can be killed by only 10 people, especially if you get the buffs from the other siege carriers, which actually help kill any/all of the VW Champions.

My problem with the VW-event is not player-sided. I just wanted to bring up that the AoE-indicators of the attacks from the VW-champions are too small. The real effect of multiple attacks is bigger. Same for the Husk Stingers and the dmg-effect of the vile thrashers, which is bigger than their green track of goo.
Pretty much like the field-indicators of Eles with the Blasting Staff-trait.
Especially in large battles with a lot of fields this can be irritating.

I really like the way the Silverwastes work and how the concept requires you to use certain tactics. I’m really looking forward to that kind of content in HoT.
But there is one thing that makes the whole concept go down the sink:
Players -who have no intent of learning or thinking- ruin it for the players who stick to the tactics.
I can’t count the times anymore, that people don’t care about the tactics for the different bosses. They ignore the chat, even if multiple languages are used to give hints as to what to do. Say, map…they should see some of it.
Spamming AoE’s at the husk and it’s healing minions, cc’s at the thrasher and mindlessly destroying the bubbles at the terragriffs.
I want content that is hard and rewarding…and punishing to people who don’t care about using their mind or listening to hints.

Let’s look at the husk under red rock bastion for example.
Upon death the minions of the husk should apply a debuff to the player that killed them. As soon as the player stacks the debuff up to 3, the player will die and be thrown out of the hole with another debuff that hinders them to enter again. Similar to the debuff you get after one of the champions at the vinewrath.

I encountered another problem while fighting the mordrem in SW. Some of my friends experienced it too, so I think it’s nothing client-sided:
The AoE-indicators of the mordrem are too small. Thrashers poison-tracks damage you much further than their texture on the ground implies. Same for the usual red circles at the vinewrath-champions and husk stingers. Especially the thrasher at the vinewrath with the huge circular poison-field. Even if you are just outside the circle you will get the damage from it.

Last but not least: Chest farming. Don’t get me wrong, I like it and have done it myself. Two times already I encountered the problem that a player threw his commander-tag on, declared a chest-farm and ruined a map that was on 70 percent preparation.
How about we keep stuff like that limited to maps under a certain completion? So that chests can’t be unearthed once the map reaches 50% or something like that.

Keep up the hard content ANet, but please make it so that map-leechers can’t ruin it for others.

I’m buying a stack of 25 of black lion keys every few months. The boosters I get from there are sufficient for me.

As much as I despise it when players do this just to troll somebody, I was on the rare occasion that my friends and I decided to kick someone at the last fractal.
We are a friendly bunch. More than once we ran with random newbies and took our time to explain them how to do this and that, what to expect of certain bosses and especially what agony resistance is. Same with dungeons by the way.

So about that time we kicked someone before the last boss:
Besaid player insisted on having enough agony resistance for a lvl38 dungeon. We got suspicious several times because he dropped like a brick at many occasions. And given by his chat, he was understanding english well enough to know what we tried to explain him.
But we gave him the benefit of a doubt. There are points where you can drop dead instantly if you just got berserker gear or are having lag-issues.
We reach the final boss, Mai. As we pass the door to her area, we all get the usual agony and the player drops dead instantly.
So he had barely any AR, had been lying to us several times about it, dropped down once again and we’ve had it after running the fractal mostly with the three of us and another random while he inspected the quality of the dirt and being afk at several occasions.

I support better protection against players kicking with no reason, but besaid protection has to go both ways.
I’m not going to support it if it benefits the kind of players like the one I encountered with my friends.

PopeUrban.2578:

tekfan.3179:

…

But somehow you’re okay with:
…
Rampant sexual innuendo
…
Carpet bombing an entire platoon of friendly forces, by the player, resulting in their mass death.

Oh, and also

The fact that it is an established onscreen and offscreen fact that sylvari were tortured and experimented on in asuran laboratories based solely on their race.

The overarcing thread here is that evil acts are the misguided efforts of bad or confused people. Horrible, awful things have and will continue to happen in this world. The tone, however is consistant. Player characters are always presented as heroic and virtuous, rather than complicit in these horrible acts. That heroism and virtue, to exist, requires evil to fight against.

What makes you think any part of the plot will place us as complicit with the jailing and mistreatment of sylvari? Even if such things come to pass, the trailer seems to indicate that our characters and the biconics are the shining beacon of reason in a world gone mad. You can’t have exemplary characters like that if the thing they struggle against does not exist. A large theme, like it or not, of the expansion, just like the base game, is racism and how it is wrong. In the release content that racism is explored in the continual charr/human relation, and we’ve been killing racist separatists from both factions of playable races for years.

Rampant sexual innuendo? I wonder where you got that from.

Let’s talk about the inquest-asura experimenting on sylvari. The inquest don’t care about the race or nature of something, as long as they can research it and can gain superiority of it.
If glowing rocks had fallen of the Pale Tree, the inquest would have researched those. Sadly, this faction doesn’t care if their specimens are geological material or sapient beings with feelings. Monstrous? Yes. Racist? No.
Asura in general may be arrogant and condescending, but walk through Rata Sum and listen to their widespread believe: “Everything has a place in the eternal alchemy.”

The racist splinter factions are the human seperatists and the charr renegades.
We agree on the fact that the game depicts racism as wrong and promotes strength through unity and diversity, condemning the activities of those factions wherever possible.

The violence in the game is not deniable. Just look at all the conditions of the game: Bleeding, fear, cripple,…quite violent indeed.
Am I OK with that? I wouldn’t have bought the game if I wouldn’t be OK with the level of violence.
However, you mentioned it yourself but didn’t put it in context with your list: We see those horrible things in order to depict how cruel our adversaries are.
The carpet-bombing is actually a good example: We never intended to kill our own troops. It was a orrian mesmer who tricked us. It’s horrible and our character acts accordingly. We don’t go off with a shrug in the story, we find the culprit and make sure it won’t hurt another being anymore.
Another example: Ever since Scarlet destroyed Lions Arch we can follow a corrupt asuran Lion Guard with her new human co-worker. In the end she is shown being racist towards sylvari. However, the human Lion Guard talks her down and they walk off. The human newbe shows the strength the corrupt officer hadn’t.

Now let me answer what I think is your question: Why am I against an internment camp if I tolerate the rest?
For this I need to ask you some questions:
Who would build this internment camp?
Who would be ok with it?
How would the sylvari be treated?

Basically: This world that shows us how racism is bad would in the same time allow for an internment camp. Would the leaders of the different races be ok with that or even build this place?
Will we see un-corrupted sylvari being tortured by guards? Will asura come and conduct more horrible experiments on corrupted and uncorrupted sylvari in order to understand the process?

And my most important question:
Why was the idea of an internment camp so “interesting” in this thread, when we could have a prison instead? I can’t speak for every country here on earth, but where I come from a prison is a place where the inmates are treated humanely, while they are imprisoned to punish them for crimes and protect the society from them.
A prison gives us a place to depict this struggle between fear-induced racism and protecting the innocent, which includes uncorrupted sylvari too.
So why would we need an internment camp? A place that in our real history always involved the mistreatment of people, just because they were of a certain ethnicity or religion?

You mentioned that for heroism and virtue to exist we would need evil. We got 5 terrible dragons with corrupting abilities left. Why would we need to add the most possible amount of racism from formerly free-minded beings to the evil?

I find the armor in GW2 to be one of the best in all mmorpgs I played. Especially since not all caster-armor looks like it’s stolen from the Princess in Star Wars Episode 1.
Well, there are exceptions, the ascended armor with it’s design based on the carnival of venice is one of my least favourite.

I agree with OP that too many armors have been tailored to asura and charr pretty badly. The lack of female versions of armors for both races is widely spread and the QA- and design-department don’t give a crap about clipping ears, horns and toes, as I had to experience on too many occasions to count them anymore.
I find that really sad since a lot of the armors really show how much heart the designer put into the design, only for it to be crappily resized to asura and charr.

I’d like weapons that fit every player, may they go for a darker or shinier theme on their character. Additionally it would be cool if the effects of the weapons change a bit with the profession wielding it…or even the stat-set you got active. Would be great if an ele would wield a legendary staff and the attunement-based rings around the wrists extend in swirly lines along the weapon.

I’d like focus, scepter and staff to have some kind of ancient flair. Like they are old magical artifacts.
I’d like swords, greatswords and daggers with straight, two edged blades.
Firearms should look a little modern. Not like a rugged down musket, but something like the ascendet weapons.

Stick with account bound please.

I like that we get something like POI.
But honestly, after the third jump into the abyss and the third jumping with the mushroom I was more annoyed than hyped.
I can see someone jumping into an abyss anytime in GW2 as it is.
I took out of the vid that pretty much every spec of the glider seems to be a mastery and that there are multiple versions of mushrooms.
Last but not least: What we saw was already Beta-material.
Other than that I can’t remember any remotely important facts.

I know that it’s still pretty early in development and I’m grateful that we get to see something, but please: Make it more interesting.
Tell us a bit about the Mordrem Court. Are they corrupted sylvari or a new type of mordrem? Can we at least have a closer look at the model?

And is it just me, or do the devs, except Rubi, have such a “I’d rather be somewhere else”-aura when they sit in POI?