Guild Wars 2

SeanConroy.9580:

We’ve been monitoring discussions about the Hearts and Minds instance and I’d like to take a moment to communicate the plans we have to address your concerns. The recent release of the Caladbolg content made it increasingly clear that we should take the time to make Hearts and Minds a more polished experience for all players. I picked up this project and am happy to say that we have a multitude of fixes in progress that we will release in a future update.

I would like to be clear on the scope of the changes being made: It is my goal to fix all blocking bugs within the instance and to address as many QoL issues as are quickly actionable. A major mechanical overhaul of the encounters is not in the works, but I will incorporate small changes that should result in noticeable improvements to the fun and quality of the experience.

When this update goes live, we hope you will share your thoughts about the changes on the forums. As always, we welcome your feedback.

I dont know if you know of this issue but I will post it here in the hopes it gets fixed. I have had it occur that in the challange mode instance with a team there was a marker in the arena to leave the instance (where you fight eir mostly but I assume other fights it could happen too). Since I kite most of the time as ranger I step on it a lot which is very annoying (pop up, accidental confirm), so it would be great if that gets moved or removed completely since its really a pain on top of all the other bugs.

dargon.7253:

X T D.6458:

BOA smid.1783:

LinseyMurdock.4165:

EDIT: That said, I am still very seriously considering things like Chak Eggs, Blood Rubies, and Petrified Wood.

Just a thought….but couldn’t these in fact be considered currencies and be added to the wallet instead?

No because the rubies/wood can be salvaged and sold to merchants.

Except this was the case with pristine fractal relics and they just changed the merchant so one pristine relic, instead of being salvaged into 15 normal relics could be used to purchase the normal relics. Do the same for Bloodstone Rubies and Petrified Wood. The only problem is that right now they salvage for a random amount and instead of being a direct sell x rubies / wood, get y magic, it would have to be sell x rubies, get y boxes that open and give you random z of magic.

That would be too consistent for Anet ;p

Gaile Gray.6029:

For me:

Race/Profession: I play human ranger. Almost exclusively and quite a lot. (Like nights, weekend, holidays…) I started with a ranger/monk in Guild Wars — although I had one of each profession — and I continued with ranger in GW2 in part because, in an RP way, my girl today is the descendant of my girl in GW. (Although in GW, I left my main at Level 7 for reasons too convoluted to explain, where in GW2 I’m a proud 80 working on getting more masteries.)

Build: What’s that? Ok, ok, I joke… but just a little. I play dual-bow pet wrangler, which I confess isn’t the best… stop laughing!

NPC: I fall hopelessly in love with asura NPCs. Started with Vekk and I may or may not have cried when Snaff was slain. And you have to have a stone heart to not adore Zojja or adorable Taimi.

Favorite maps: I don’t even know where to begin, I love so many of them. Sometimes it’s the map. Sometimes it’s the music or sounds in the map. Sometimes it’s the lighting. Sometimes it’s the loot on the map with the good music, sounds, and lighting. I like the lush green maps best for just being there. My favorite place of all is Lion’s Arch, and that is best at Halloween.

Edit: Bloodtide Coast is a definite fave, and the loading screen is my favorite of all.

Now we just need some devs to actually play rangers so they can fix some issues ;p
Longbow is pretty messy ATM :s

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

After putting in the request and thanks to Joel Helmich’s masterful sleuthing into ancient systems and programming magic our Ranger Pets will now retain their customized names between sessions across all your pets. No more sticking to a single pet to keep their names between logins!

WOOHOO!

Great, now next can we have the longbow fixed? I really dont like how half the attacks get blocked or some other kind of not hitting effect. For example in WVW the veteran boss is often just cannot be hit with the longbow.

smitske.4912:

Scott McGough.6897:

Hey all,

Thanks for your patience; I’ve been unable to keep up with this thread due to all the other stuff that’s going on in and around the studio.

We are working on a more reliable and comprehensive method of addressing lore questions, and I will keep you posted.

I do have one more reply to contribute in the short term—I asked for a specific question posed by smitske to be rephrased and it was, so I’m going to tackle that.

We are keeping track of the rest and will revisit the list of questions once we have a plan for exactly how; until then, watch this space for updates, and thanks again.

But on to smitske’s rephrased question:

Still not at liberty to discuss future story developments, but: I understand you see missed opportunities in HoT that could have advanced or resolved some of the big outstanding questions surrounding the sylvari race. HoT’s story (both in story instances and the open world) was conceived and designed with a tight focus on the urgent, PC-led response to Mordremoth destroying the Pact fleet. For example, we initially had plans to include Malyck, but ultimately his plotline fell outside that focus.

This tight focus, along with the precedent of not having detailed backgrounds for every profession in the core game, was also a factor in the decision to not present background lore for the new elite specializations. The elite specs did not all originate in the jungle during the relatively small window of time covered in HoT; exploring their origins would have meant tangential story threads that took place outside the jungle and outside the timeline of the events in HoT.

Thanks a lot for coming back to me! I was actually planning on bumping the thread to bring it back to live just when you posted.

I can understand you are not able to discuss further development, I just hope you wont try to ‘force’ Malyck etc in in an unnatural way now because people mentioned that, at this point I somewhat have the feeling that perhaps the right moment for that has passed, unless can you make it feel natural enough to bring him in in some way. I read a lot about how things have been scrapped because they did not fit the atmosphere of the ‘sense of urgency’ you wanted to bring over, but now at hindsight and looking at the opinions about it do you still stand behind this decision? From my point it seems that that was actually the whole problem with the story, a focus on urgency but not letting the story flow its natural course, leaving some plot holes. For example Malyck has been scrapped because it would derail us from the path you have chosen, but should he really derail us? I mean he could have been an enemy we met, but lore wise to me it makes no sense whatsoever with the knowledge I have now that there was no trace of him whatsoever. This ties perfectly together with another gripe I have, the 3 legendary commanders, we don’t know anything of them. Why not make one of them Malyck? Only one directions you could take. But anyway my point with that is that someone else said that originally all 3 should have been in the PS and eventually 2 got scrapped, again for the sense of urgency of the plot. To my view that plot idea was the one that was the real problem and should have been scrapped. I have no doubt a lot of other great ideas you guys might have had were scrapped in favor of that, things that we don’t even know about.

The thing is, to me with the original 8 profession is that they have lore within the universe before the start of GW2, they existed and were already there with some legacy from GW1. But the new ones came out of nowhere and what bugs me the most is we don’t see anyone else with those elite specs of the npc’s even in the HoT maps, with the exception of Marjory with a great sword, on the other hand Braham doesn’t even use the bow. You say they did not all originate in the jungle and indeed they don’t have to nor would it make sense, but I do not think that view holds to not put their lore in HoT. Before the HoT release I already brought forth an idea of having mentors that could be put in a story line. For chronomancers for example Anyse, reapers had Marjory, DH some quest to slay a great beast in the jungle with someone and so on. The argument brought forth against it is that it would not fit with the flow of the story, but the technology is there already (at least partially) to not make that an issue, the story journal. You could have just added another section for your class that we could do at our own leisure, independent of our progression on the main story line. I don’t really see how that would break the sense of urgency of the main story more than mastery gates put in place to stop us from progressing too fast. As a question for future expansions, if you are at liberty to talk about that of course, are you open to placing certain lore bits like this for coming elite specs, to give them a proper place lore wise in the GW2 world, or is it completely of the table? On one end it would not be very consistent to do so which I personally am not really a fan of, unless you place origin stories for the current set of elite specs in the game. On the other hand we do have a saying on Anet and consistency on reddit and I do think that making those origin stories would contribute greatly to GW2 and could bring some interesting lore perspectives. As well as give us more to do on expansions.

Anyway thanks for your time and I hope to read something soon about getting that more reliant way of interacting on lore.

Since the thread is active again, selfish bump :p
Also Bobby HoT set a bad precedent on fleshing (more like not ) out vanilla lore, LS3 luckily seems to go out a different direction though.

Gaile Gray.6029:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We are looking at more meaningful and easy ways for players to report forums issues, but that’s a bit away. More on that at a later time.

Please don’t say you are considering using players as moderators.

Not on my watch. Never on my watch.

penelopehannibal.8947:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We are looking at more meaningful and easy ways for players to report forums issues, but that’s a bit away. More on that at a later time.

Please don’t say you are considering using players as moderators.

Are the current moderators not players also? Though, if they were to expand their workforce with current players, I hope they are well well vetted.

Yes, everyone on our moderation team has a game account, so they do play the game. I believe as a lead that this helps everyone, when the moderators are also familiar with the game.

It’s important to note, though, that they have a very explicit set of guidelines on how they perform their job. Hey, I wrote the policies, so as you can imagine they’re 107 pages long, with 3,201 bullet points.

Given that being a moderator is holding a job, and that one’s job is one’s livelihood, moderators don’t mess around. I have been happy with our mods and believe they are performing in a reliable and capable manner.

Question is does the general populace that is being moderated think so too? Now I don’t know how recently that has been instated but in the past I sometimes had the feeling the mods were as trigger happy is a 12 year old that got his first moderation task in a forum for a game they liked to play, which isnt a good thing. That being said it is already a while ago and I have not been all that active in general in here lately so it could as well have improved a lot.

Gaile Gray.6029:

smitske.4912:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I do not know that the team is looking at expanding the options/selectable reasons for in-game reports at the present time, but I will share your thoughts on this subject.

We are looking at more meaningful and easy ways for players to report forums issues, but that’s a bit away. More on that at a later time.

In the meantime, I can’t help but think that in-game reports are good. They usually are easy to make and in most cases they do the trick. But sometimes, a ticket is better. It allows you to go into details and at the same time, you can mention whether you have screenshots or other files and attach them if the team requests them. (You cannot send a screenshot with your initial report, but do mention that you have them, because attachments are possible in subsequent responses to the ticket.)

In all fairness you guys should have added more reporting options ages ago because they are hopelessly insufficient. How do you expect to make a healthy competitive PvP environment if you do not even have the proper tools in place for us to report toxic behaviour such as afk’ing or just trolling matches? I have consistently reported them under botting, I just hope that does not bite me in the kitten because they weren’t really bots but trolls/afk’rs. Also I want to bring up the apparant lack of action on those reports. I literally have been told to go and kill myself but I get the impression such reports are not taken too serious.

Both the report system and how Anet deals with reports needs to be seriously looked into.

Given you’ve not been satisfied with the outcome of your previous reports, have you used the ticket system, and the expanded options it affords you?

Given that you already tell me to use another system, isnt it pretty obvious the in game report system is insufficient? Also apart from adding more options, add a text field so we can at least clarify the report a bit, that would make there being too few categories less of a problem.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I do not know that the team is looking at expanding the options/selectable reasons for in-game reports at the present time, but I will share your thoughts on this subject.

We are looking at more meaningful and easy ways for players to report forums issues, but that’s a bit away. More on that at a later time.

In the meantime, I can’t help but think that in-game reports are good. They usually are easy to make and in most cases they do the trick. But sometimes, a ticket is better. It allows you to go into details and at the same time, you can mention whether you have screenshots or other files and attach them if the team requests them. (You cannot send a screenshot with your initial report, but do mention that you have them, because attachments are possible in subsequent responses to the ticket.)

In all fairness you guys should have added more reporting options ages ago because they are hopelessly insufficient. How do you expect to make a healthy competitive PvP environment if you do not even have the proper tools in place for us to report toxic behaviour such as afk’ing or just trolling matches? I have consistently reported them under botting, I just hope that does not bite me in the kitten because they weren’t really bots but trolls/afk’rs. Also I want to bring up the apparant lack of action on those reports. I literally have been told to go and kill myself but I get the impression such reports are not taken too serious.

Both the report system and how Anet deals with reports needs to be seriously looked into.

SarahWitter.2317:

Reading this thread, we understand your questions and want to share a little information: This set is designed to be a special, exclusive set and therefore it’s a little different than most. There are a couple of other interesting factors that you’ll want to know: The set is available for one ticket. It will remain priced at one ticket into the future, so someone who wants it now doesn’t need to be concerned about it becoming unavailable or about it rising in price in the future. Other sets currently available are not account bound, such as the Cavalier Weapon Set which was recently released at a price of 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket and remains at that price now. In addition, we do intend to continue to offer tradeable sets in the future. If you’d like a preview of the new set, go to your bank wardrobe and filter for “Privateer.” We hope this answers your questions, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

-Sarah

Can it be I just saw you in Divinities reach on FSP? Yes I am stalking you, I told you that. (its a joke please dont ban me :s)

Scott McGough.6897:

Hey all,

Thanks for your patience; I’ve been unable to keep up with this thread due to all the other stuff that’s going on in and around the studio.

We are working on a more reliable and comprehensive method of addressing lore questions, and I will keep you posted.

I do have one more reply to contribute in the short term—I asked for a specific question posed by smitske to be rephrased and it was, so I’m going to tackle that.

We are keeping track of the rest and will revisit the list of questions once we have a plan for exactly how; until then, watch this space for updates, and thanks again.

But on to smitske’s rephrased question:

Still not at liberty to discuss future story developments, but: I understand you see missed opportunities in HoT that could have advanced or resolved some of the big outstanding questions surrounding the sylvari race. HoT’s story (both in story instances and the open world) was conceived and designed with a tight focus on the urgent, PC-led response to Mordremoth destroying the Pact fleet. For example, we initially had plans to include Malyck, but ultimately his plotline fell outside that focus.

This tight focus, along with the precedent of not having detailed backgrounds for every profession in the core game, was also a factor in the decision to not present background lore for the new elite specializations. The elite specs did not all originate in the jungle during the relatively small window of time covered in HoT; exploring their origins would have meant tangential story threads that took place outside the jungle and outside the timeline of the events in HoT.

Thanks a lot for coming back to me! I was actually planning on bumping the thread to bring it back to live just when you posted.

I can understand you are not able to discuss further development, I just hope you wont try to ‘force’ Malyck etc in in an unnatural way now because people mentioned that, at this point I somewhat have the feeling that perhaps the right moment for that has passed, unless can you make it feel natural enough to bring him in in some way. I read a lot about how things have been scrapped because they did not fit the atmosphere of the ‘sense of urgency’ you wanted to bring over, but now at hindsight and looking at the opinions about it do you still stand behind this decision? From my point it seems that that was actually the whole problem with the story, a focus on urgency but not letting the story flow its natural course, leaving some plot holes. For example Malyck has been scrapped because it would derail us from the path you have chosen, but should he really derail us? I mean he could have been an enemy we met, but lore wise to me it makes no sense whatsoever with the knowledge I have now that there was no trace of him whatsoever. This ties perfectly together with another gripe I have, the 3 legendary commanders, we don’t know anything of them. Why not make one of them Malyck? Only one directions you could take. But anyway my point with that is that someone else said that originally all 3 should have been in the PS and eventually 2 got scrapped, again for the sense of urgency of the plot. To my view that plot idea was the one that was the real problem and should have been scrapped. I have no doubt a lot of other great ideas you guys might have had were scrapped in favor of that, things that we don’t even know about.

The thing is, to me with the original 8 profession is that they have lore within the universe before the start of GW2, they existed and were already there with some legacy from GW1. But the new ones came out of nowhere and what bugs me the most is we don’t see anyone else with those elite specs of the npc’s even in the HoT maps, with the exception of Marjory with a great sword, on the other hand Braham doesn’t even use the bow. You say they did not all originate in the jungle and indeed they don’t have to nor would it make sense, but I do not think that view holds to not put their lore in HoT. Before the HoT release I already brought forth an idea of having mentors that could be put in a story line. For chronomancers for example Anyse, reapers had Marjory, DH some quest to slay a great beast in the jungle with someone and so on. The argument brought forth against it is that it would not fit with the flow of the story, but the technology is there already (at least partially) to not make that an issue, the story journal. You could have just added another section for your class that we could do at our own leisure, independent of our progression on the main story line. I don’t really see how that would break the sense of urgency of the main story more than mastery gates put in place to stop us from progressing too fast. As a question for future expansions, if you are at liberty to talk about that of course, are you open to placing certain lore bits like this for coming elite specs, to give them a proper place lore wise in the GW2 world, or is it completely of the table? On one end it would not be very consistent to do so which I personally am not really a fan of, unless you place origin stories for the current set of elite specs in the game. On the other hand we do have a saying on Anet and consistency on reddit and I do think that making those origin stories would contribute greatly to GW2 and could bring some interesting lore perspectives. As well as give us more to do on expansions.

Anyway thanks for your time and I hope to read something soon about getting that more reliant way of interacting on lore.

Less ‘loaded’ it is then. (at least an effort)

What about the future of integration for sylvari PS in a way that makes sense? (Somewhat like humans now with white matle, I hope we get to kill caudecus or something) Like I said HoT was the perfect oportunity to do so, but it was decided not to. Which kinda contradicts to what you were saying earlier where you said you prefer to tie up knots instead of going for new plots, exactly what you somewhat did with HoT IMO. Will the sylvari PS be properly tied in the future, even though a very great opportunity to do so seems to be passed, or will the knot remain untied.

Also you talk about classes and specializations about how they are just there without needing to provide lore because they are just a gameplay thing. While true for the original 8 who already had an established history if you like, I disagree for the revenant and the elite specs. I still hope to see some lore with the first revenant Rytlock (after all the lack there of was a running gag in the story in the xpac) and i do think it warrants some lore because it is completely new and he is the first revenant. Also I think there should have been lore for the especs instead of them just appearing like is the case now, most of them apart from the necro (marjy + GS) dont make any sense since you are the first character we known that has it, just out of the blue. I am afraid the ship has sailed to do anything about now though.

Scott McGough.6897:

Jaken.6801:

Oh, a dev. Quick catch him.

Nah, my only question is, if the near future will trim some of the “loose” storylines, that are mostlikely not being resolved in the next 1-2 years.

Jaken,

Sorry, I’m a little unclear on the specific storylines you mean. I’m not playing dumb or trying to assert that there are no open-ended plotlines from GW1/GW2 that need resolution—it’s just that I’d have to guess which plots you mean. Which brings me to:

This is a great example of the type of question we’d love to answer, but really can’t. We do have plans to address some of the big questions/unresolved plots that players (and especially players on the forums) have been asking about, but to confirm or deny which ones (or even when) would directly or indirectly create a spoiler for the upcoming storylines. “Directly” as in we say an upcoming release definitely will feature <fill in the blank> plot; or “indirectly” by saying an upcoming release definitely won’t feature <fill in the blank> plot, so by the process of elimination, we make it clearer what the upcoming release will be about.

Add to that the mad skillz of our community’s theorycrafters, and we quickly find ourselves in a situation where the plot we’ve settled on (and dozens of people from various departments and disciplines are working on) gets thoroughly discussed, dissected, examined, and evaluated before it ever gets released, so that by the time it does get released, it’s old news and there are no surprises.

if you have those incentives, why did you completely ignored the perfect opportunity to do so? Namely HoT release. I am not going to lie, to me HoT can only be described as missed opportunities everywhere on the level of the lore. It fit together so well with all the sylvari PS and I think many people expected parts to be there, only for it to be completely ignored. I just need to ask, why did you leave aside the perfect opportunity to tie up that lore in favour of a rushed and small story behind silly timegates?

Josh Davis.6015:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

When will anet realize, that amulets are not the (main) issue?

As mentioned in the OP, there will be a few balance changes coming next week as well, but runes/sigils/amulets are one of the things the PvP team can change on our own without impacting the rest of the game. To be clear: the PvP team, just like fractals/raids/wvw/etc, does not handle profession balance – there is a separate team for that.

Which is a shame because profession imbalance is still quite a problem, especially for pvp, in this game and very little effort has been made to not make elite specs just straight up buffs in many cases.Balance wise Anet needs to step up a bit.

Out of curiosity, where did the bottleneck in the proces lie? The ideqs for the legendqry design? Qctuqlly mqking the legendqry? Thinking out the collection or actually making it in game?

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

You might take issue with it, but that doesnt take away your players see it that way. HOT is for many players an unfinished product, myself included and this for obvious reasons since ahlf a year later we are still waiting on things said to be part of HoT to be released, how some lore just feels unsatisfying, how we go into region and see something that we expect to be an important event but it just seems somewhere along the way it got scrapped (the mordremoth minion in the traris map that is constantyl trashtalking). I can understand you our proud of HOT and it hurts a bit that people say it, but that doesnt change the fact that many find it was an unfinished product content wise and the execution was a bit sloppy. Yes saying we only got half an xpac is not the truth, but can you honestly say, looking at what was delivered with HoT and lets say the 2 months after it that you have truly delivered a fully completed and polished xpac? IMO if you have to be honest the answer there is no.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

In the upcoming Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, we’ll launch the new legendary short bow, Chuka and Champawat. The team outdid themselves on this one. This new precursor journey takes you through a memorable experience inspired by a real-world story, and the bow you craft at the end is the perfect commemoration of that journey. I hope you all check it out.

Last year we talked about plans to gradually build out a second set of legendary weapons through live content updates. That’s a big responsibility. We have a team of six developers working on that, who could work on it for years to come.

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.

So, after shipping Chuka and Champawat, I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

I know this will be a controversial decision. I’ll hang out with you here on the forums for a little while today to discuss it. And I’m always available by email.

Mo

I commend you for coming out like this with the communication on the point and for taking the decision on itself, its a hard one and I have no doubht you though this true and come to the conclusion that this would be best.

I can somewhat see where it is coming from, lets be honest here the story in HoT was a bit underwhelming, that after a great lack of lore after LS2 and now again while we wait for LS3 to eventually come out. People have complained about it, I know I have, and it seems you wish to go out another direction and try to be more lore centered in the future. Hopefully this will also lead to faster LS releases both in high quantity and of high quality and that there is no 1 year + hiatus between meaningful lore.

That being said, this just pushes us again in an IMO huge issue that HOT is brought with it, namely that we are almost half a year later and things that should have been delivered with HoT are still not in game and more importantly you are indefinitely scrapping developement on one of the selling points. Obviously this is a huge problem for the players and rightfully so. What are the plans for the future? Will the next xpac (hopefully a lot less sloppy and a lot more finished/polished/complete than HoT, most importantly an xpac that is not rushed) be released before we have all the new legendaries? or will they be part of it? Like I said its a though choice to make and I have no doubt you have though it trough and think its necesary, BUT are there any ideas on the future plans or can we scrap this is a “HOT” feature and just wait for some more to be released with a next xpac even though they should have already been released?

Also i would like to thank you for this communication and transparancy, in the past Anet did a very poor job on it and it often seemed that Anet choose the much less appreciated method of lets just be silent about it and hope the community doesnt notice. Yes people will be kittened about it and will comment on it here, but I think many more players appreciate te openness shown here even if its negative news than the ’’secretive’’ behaviour from Anet in the past.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey all,

We’ve been discussing potential improvements to existing PvP maps, and we wanted to get your thoughts on some ways that Skyhammer could be updated to be a less of a frustrating gameplay experience.

So, what would you change? What would you keep the same?

Not on skyhammer but this needs attention:

Forest of Niflhel has multiple places where you can get stuck in walls due to displacement skills, meaning you have to relog top be able to participate again. This should seriously be looked at ASAP.

I am talking about extra report features, especially in pvp there is a need to report people griefing and afk’ing and ruining games. This is a minimal effort to put it in the report system and is always required in a competitive environment, why hasnt this been added yet?

Nike.2631:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I love threads like this. They can be very creative, constructive, and helpful. I hope more forum members will share their ideas!

Gee, Gaile, I wish I didn’t genuinely feel like I’m wasting my time sharing stuff like this if I don’t also cross-post over on Reddit where the Devs actually read and respond to people.

Today’s been particularly egregious.

TBF the responses on reddit are also limited, just sneering at data miners only to realize the issues is the vague description in the blog post. No real in depth conversation.

Dont have completely worked out ideas for an elite spec yet, but I have 2 things I would like to see with the next round of elite specs.

1) Please add completely new weapons, just introduce 3 new weapons and give them to 3 elite specs each. I can see why you have not done it this round because the groundwork had to be laid and took a lot of work, but now that is done some room has been made to do this. It would be very nice if new weapons were finally introduced (explosives themed crossbow for ranger please!)

2) When adding elite specs introduce them in an original way. How the introduction of elite specs is handled in HoT is plain boring, no story, no meaningful NPC’s that have it, just dump hero points and thats it. It is not very fun nor exciting to get elite specs that way.

Ayrilana.1396:

Frenk.5917:

RedBaron.6058:

WvW big overhaul later this year will be too late…:(

If they released the overhaul on Jan 26 that would have already been too late. This overhaul being released “later this year” is gonna be money spent for nothing ’cause WvW is already dead.

You don’t know that. People can always come back.

To do that it would have to be a massive success. Also it is easier to keep the people you have than pull back the people that were so disappointed they left.

Nike.2631:

Donari.5237:

As I read it, it remains a HoT mastery that you must train in HoT. But that is an interesting question, is it possible to make mastery xp earning more global?

As long as the corrupt cesspit of CoF exists, don’t expect anything of the sort.

If they close that loophole, then things might happen.

TBF doing fractals at this point is also a very good way for the exp.

Quite disappointed to see there wont even be some new stories/lore in the near future (I mean who knows when LS 3 happens since its on long term), while it is a point on which HoT disappointed hard. Not so much on the quality, but quantity wise HOT lacked a lot on story telling, many missed opportunities (hello specializations), hell the lack of story is even a running gag in the story that does exist (Where you get that rytlock). I mean a full blown expansion is worth half a living world season of story, doesn’t that seem a bit short? Also having to gate that little amount of lore there is behind grinding for masteries so it takes longer is not really fun either for people who really want to enjoy the storytelling.

Also nothing about new leggies is kind of disappointing, that was a selling point of HoT, or so it seemed, it would be nice of they are released before the next xpac.

Gaile Gray.6029:

The team is actively working on balance changes. You may have seen this thread about upcoming changes to WvW. The changes outlined in that thread were based on designer analysis, testing, observations, and on input from players. After it was posted, the thread then gathered a lot of valuable player feedback which assisted in the development and polishing of changes that will be rolled out in the future.

You’ll continue to see such threads here on the forums. At least one such thread is coming quite soon.

Game balance is a really important topic, perhaps the most important of all. So watch for threads on that subject and we’ll look for your input, feedback, comments, and suggestions.

You can say its important but the actions contradict it, because there is a lot of imbalance and if you were serious about balance you would have fixed that before starting competitive play.

Balance is just another thing you missed the mark on with HoT and in all fairness I do not get how such a poor decision could have been made to consider HoT as balance patch while common sense would say that introducing so many new things can never lead to balance without some serious patching after getting data.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We began this cadence with the release of HoT in October which undoubtedly changed the way that the game is played across all game modes.

In all fairness the fact you thought this to be a good idea just shows how completely unexperienced Anet is when it comes to balancing. I mean seriously did nobody get the idea hey we add tons of new stuff and will only have 4 weeks worth of data without much time to balance it, this won’t work? Or was it just extreme overconfidence? I doubt if even the most experienced balancers could pull that off and lets face it those do not work at Anet.

Also starting competitive play on a serious level without having a half decent matchmaking? Not a good idea. 2 more dropped balls in my garden, and the layers are already stacked.

This fight has many phases and so many possibilities for buggs, and they are there.
2 runs today both bugged out. One I did alone and I died, restarted the battle and the boss just kept using the circle skill so that you cannot go outr of range even when I needed to close a rift, good luck trying that when you cant move away from the boss. Resetting didnt help.

Later on in group got at the final stage but the boss did not lose invincible state again few ours wasted on bugged run after I did the previous phases on my own.

So anet start fixing the last instance please, making the story last longer this way is not fun. FYI story is a bit short.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Unlocking your elite spec is a training line in your training panel that costs hero points. You do need to have trained all the existing training lines before you’re allowed to put hero points into your elite spec.

If you’ve got all the hero points in the existing game you’ll have enough to train about half the elite specialization training line on launch day. The rest you’ll need to earn in the jungle or via the new system Tyler outlined yesterday from WvW. The number of points to fully train your elite spec is higher than other training lines – but hero challenges in the jungle are worth 10 points each, so it’s not actually as big as it appears.

I’m not going to lie I am highly disappointed all you have to do for elite spec is have all other trait lines and invest hero points. That’s just not epic at all. Least you could have done was make 1 instance with some decent story as to how you obtain the ability to become that specialization. Hell for all I cared you could have even used collections, but just hero points? HIghly underwhelming.

Mightybird.6034:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

On purpose. Remember when turret engi was a thing? How “fun” that was? No one wants to play against A.I./mobs in PvP… they shouldn’t ever be meta in pvp.

Problem is 1 class is forced to depend on that and has 30% of its total potential into it.

So top tier massive AoE classes still make minions completetly useless in pvp.
Are there any AI changes planned for pets? Since you announced you want esports but pet fixing is crucial to actually getting the classes balanced. If you want to take esports the least bit serioious it is a must.

maddoctor.2738:

smitske.4912:

Youve got it wrong there, every week some random missions roll to fill the slots you have whether its 3 or 10 (fictional number). The roll for this week has happened and it did not have a pve mission, the one for next week might have it. ALso you can change whether or not you want pvp/wvw/pve missions to roll or not when HoT launches and thus have pve missions only from then on that change every week.

Yes I understand that about the random missions, but what about that part of the blog post that says:

There are also three dedicated mission slots that are specific to each game mode: one each for PvE, PvP, and WvW. These dedicated mission slots will not change even if players have their mission preference set, and they can be easy, medium, or hard in difficulty.

If there are three dedicated mission slots, one for each mode, how come we get no PVE missions (for the PVE dedicated mission). Unless the “dedicated” ones are unlocked further in the Guild Hall progression

They might have just changed it for all we know, everything is subject to change.

Nike.2631:

Guys, the release date had to be late October so they can get their boxes on shelves for Black Friday. The code didn’t go along with the plan, so now its release-in-stages as pieces come on-line. Its really as simple as that.

Doesnt mean we have to find it okay, like I said business practice wise its just another questionable thing IMO, something which seems to become a standard at Anet.

They ask quite some money for what we get and then they don’t even deliver stuff from it, yea sorry I don’t like such practices.

maddoctor.2738:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The random roll for this week already happened and we’re seeing on our internal servers that week ones missions rolled a mix of PvP and WvW missions for the first three mission slots that guilds have unlocked once you’re able to access the expansion (as you unlock deeper into your guild hall, you’ll be able to unlock more mission slots).

From what I understand this will only be an issue for the first couple of weeks until guilds unlock more mission slots. But the 3 slots available at HoT release will be WvW/PvP only, I assume if a guild level up during that first week and unlock the 4th slot, it might be a PVE one?

So basically there are two questions now:
Is it possible for guilds to unlock the 4th slot during the first week?
Is the 4th slot a PVE mission (so is it worth it to go for that 4th slot or not)

And what about:

There are also three dedicated mission slots that are specific to each game mode: one each for PvE, PvP, and WvW. These dedicated mission slots will not change even if players have their mission preference set, and they can be easy, medium, or hard in difficulty.

Youve got it wrong there, every week some random missions roll to fill the slots you have whether its 3 or 10 (fictional number). The roll for this week has happened and it did not have a pve mission, the one for next week might have it. ALso you can change whether or not you want pvp/wvw/pve missions to roll or not when HoT launches and thus have pve missions only from then on that change every week.

Vayne.8563:

smitske.4912:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
Fractal Dungeon Leaderboards

Back when we announced all the updates to Fractals for Heart of Thorns – the announce blog also discussed more information coming before HoT about leaderboards for Fractals. Our team of folks working on Fractal dungeons kept iterating on this concept and ultimately we have decided to make it something more involved (re: exciting) than our original plans which will extend our development a bit more. This also means you’ll be able to earn the new fractal backpack precursor, but a few of the components for the new legendary will come with this expanded future fractals feature.

As always, we’ll discuss features once they’re far enough along to share development details on; our Fractal Dungeon team will be back with more updates about this and other plans for Fractal Dungeons in the future: when it’s ready™.

So again a feature pushed back?
I mean you caught it early that you won’t be able to get all legendaries added so you announced only 3 will be added, raids are also already a few weeks in + the new squad system needing a lot more work.
Add to that limited testing of some classes so there will be issues there too.

Perhaps lessons learned for next xpac, wait longer with a release date until you are sure everything can be delivered and you dont end up in the week(s) before release already needing to tell people yea that wont make it. I mean the price for the xpacis already quite steep without taking things out. Sure they might come at a later date but you should really deliver whats promised at the promised time.

No different from the Guild Wars 2 launch. We didn’t have guesting working at launch (or the trading post for that matter). We didn’t have a way to preview on the auction house even.

Truth be told, if you took a poll, I’m pretty sure most players would vote not to wait. Let us get into the game, start earning masteries and get the other stuff out “when it’s ready”. At least I can move out of the holding pattern I’ve been in.

Oh I do remember the game was launched way too early and unfinished I think eventually even Anet admitted that much, thats why we have some poor systems being introduced and thrown away over the years (traits acquisition).
I have no doubt people want it know because we have been on a serious dryspell of content and lets face it people always want more stuff being added, doesnt mean I like the business decision of lets not deliver what we said when we launch. Then again many of the business decisions made I personally frown upon.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
Fractal Dungeon Leaderboards

Back when we announced all the updates to Fractals for Heart of Thorns – the announce blog also discussed more information coming before HoT about leaderboards for Fractals. Our team of folks working on Fractal dungeons kept iterating on this concept and ultimately we have decided to make it something more involved (re: exciting) than our original plans which will extend our development a bit more. This also means you’ll be able to earn the new fractal backpack precursor, but a few of the components for the new legendary will come with this expanded future fractals feature.

As always, we’ll discuss features once they’re far enough along to share development details on; our Fractal Dungeon team will be back with more updates about this and other plans for Fractal Dungeons in the future: when it’s ready™.

So again a feature pushed back?
I mean you caught it early that you won’t be able to get all legendaries added so you announced only 3 will be added to limit the damage, raids are also already a few weeks in + the new squad system needing a lot more work. Add to that limited testing of some classes so there will be issues there too. Adding it in the weeks after is nice and all but I don’t have any illusions those weeks will be chaos because there will be many issues that need time too, only adding to being behind.

Perhaps lessons learned for next xpac, wait longer with a release date until you are sure everything can be delivered and you dont end up in the week(s) before release already needing to tell people yea that wont make it. I mean the price for the xpacis already quite steep without taking things out. Sure they might come at a later date but you should really deliver whats promised at the promised time.

Gaile Gray.6029:

BooHud.2681:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Irenio and Rubi are talking about the Druid on Twitch NOW!!!

---

And it sounds Sweet! I can’t WAIT to try this!

/Happy Dance

I know. As a lifelong Ranger, I’m stoked!

Hard to believe anyone plays ranger, but if it is true how do you feel about the core ranger now being completely dead and buried? I mean why would anyone take a core ranger over a druid?

Dont get me wrong if you like the arche type that the druid offers its absolutely great,
but wasnt the main idea that it offered a different way of playing while not being a straight upgrade to the class, because lets be honest here druid is both. I dont really like the arche type, its taste nothing can be done about it, but that also means there is no place for me if I wanted to stay the core ranger.

So perhaps with twitchcon they wil give some sort of roadmap?

Same as plan A, not roll one. The concept of druid never appealed to me anyway so I will just stick around to my ranger till they introduce mounted cavalier crossbow spec.

+ I have little hopes they will get it right.

Better than forge, but forgemaster would have still been better IMO.

I had expeceted to see some kind of roadmap with PAX but apparently that was not the plan. A shame really but hey the better for us to speculate a bit.

Its not because you don’t agree its not useful, so dont be so full of yourself.

About the beta weekends, its only in Anets best interests to do so else they would actually have to hire a good sized QA team to not release a complete disaster.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t get this. Are people saying they’re rather have the game launch delayed longer so that we can have more BWE’s to flesh out the elite specializatons. There were always going to be differences in when things are released.

To me I’d rather see the game launch on time and see the problems addressed as time goes on. Because even a long open beta, like we had with EoTM doesn’t guarantee there won’t be myriad problems after release anyway.

Problem is once the xpac its released its time to move onto the next thing (raids since we wont see them at release, new living story, next xpac, …) and the team working on the state of the expansion will be drastically reduced. Also there will be so many issues with the expansion and buggs (Lets be real here there are always a lot of issues, so this will especially be the case with something this big) that class balancing/tweaking, especially the less favoured classes will not in the least be a priority. So yes I prefer it to get delayed because then we can at least watch over the quality since clearly Anet does not have the manpower to do so, so at least the expansion is somewhat more polished than getting it done after release (a release with lots of issues is never good) when the focus is already going to the next thing and only a small portion of the staff works on fixing.

But I was never warm for the druid concept, here’s hopes the next xpac will get ranger a different concept, if they still do specializations by then.

And some of those classes are actually liked a lot by Anet.

You mean revealed? Because for all we know it wont be discussed here we just have to take it as we get it, if we do get it xp

bloodpyrope.8630:

A while ago, there were attempts from Anet to create Profession Forum Specialists

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Forum-Specialist-Program/first

But it looks like it never got off the ground. I’m wondering if this would be a good time to bring that back? I’m not sure what that that…duty would consist of. But if it’s a way to have a liason between player and developers, it’s a lot better than what we currently have.

It at least solves the problem of needing a dev to read every post and respond to it if we had someone who could do summaries and respond on their behalf.

But that could only work if Anet is actively in touch with those people and communicated with them, and if one thing is clear its that Anet is rather oblivious in how they should communicate properly.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Ive been playing GW2 since the beggining.. I dont play much these days.

My main problem with GW2 and Ranger is that pets are a bad design.
They took some power from the Ranger and put it in a AI. Huge mistake, noone will enjoy it. We all want to have total control over our class.. Noone wants his % dmg to run around in circles.. Huge mistake and never aknowledge it, at least not officially

Not necesarily a huge mistake, the mistake is the AI is so bad and they forget this exists when making content so that the mechanic becomes useless.

Also someone talked about having NDA’s for the devs and thats why they are not communicating, I am not talking about the specific situation here but I remember a dev posting a while back that he had to go trough some communications course before he was allowed to post again. The dev in question was sometimes a bit clumsy and overly enthousiastic (saying things he was not allowed to say yet) but above all that made him a lot more honest with us and I personally liked that, but apparantly within Anet they do not. On the other hand you see a certain employee being quite disdainful and belittling towards players and that behaviour is apparently acceptable. Do note that this was quite a while ago, I don’t know if Anet still works like that.

Also does anyone really know who is working on ranger?

I sincerely hope forge is not the name its as if they got halfway a good name and thought lets stop here. Forgemaster would make so much more sense.

But who knows perhasps it is.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Remember that they are releasing the specs as they complete them. You will notice that the coding and level of sophistication has gone up significantly as the specs were revealed. The first elite they worked on was reaper, and it is basically just necro with chill and a GS. There are no new effects, no new tech, just same old sup-par necro.

Now look at the later elite specs. Bezerker and Daredevil. They have human projectiles, extra endurance bars, moving fields, dodge modification, so on and so forth. They have all the shiny new OP things because they were developed later.

You should be very happy that they are still working on these as it means they will get the latest and greatest upgrades that will almost certainly be unbalanced compared to the early boring stuff.

But to be fair those things are not made by the designers themselve but by the engineers. I sincerely doubt that most tech is not there for a while already.

I am sincerely worried, I have very little trust Anet will get ranger right seeing their history on ranger and then they give us only 1 chance to rectify it which is not enough to actually get our spec back on track, same for engy probably. Especially if AI is involved it will be a mess.

Already had little hope for ranger elite spec, now I have absolutely none might aswell start to main my warrior at least you know they will care for your class then.

Doesnt matter anyway, only one opportunity to test druid, my hope for ranger spec is at an all time low.

There will only be 1 more BWE after the one next week.

With the anouncement for 23 October release start being afraid because the feedback opportunities we will have will be very limited and the chances on Anet getting it right on their own is unexisting :/

LughLongArm.5460:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Darkness.9732:

For all the ones who didn ’ t like my posts of complaints regarding ranger…

Ask yourself why druid will be the last one to be previewed.

And in doing this you’d better dropping your positive attitude.
IT’ s 3 years things go like that with ranger….always left behind…no surprise for this.
Ask yourself why
Regards

What I keep asking myself why about is why you keep coming back to complain about a class you don’t play in a game you don’t play?

I think its Roy that is working on the ranger and he’s super busy creating and balancing a whole new class(the revenant) so it makes scene his specializations(forge and druid) will be the last to be released.

I’m honestly hoping its RG that’s working on it and its being saved until last because its the most game changing.

As far as I know of, -RG is responsible for mesmer/necro/berseker
Karl is DH/tempest/daredevil
Roy is revenant/forge/druid
(3 each)

Dont forget Roy has a whole class with revenant so he might not be the one for the other 2.