Firebeard.1746

It's not like they don't already advertise already. They advertise cosmetics all the time. And yes, i agree. I don't want to see any other types of ads. This is not an F2P game.

I don't really feel like there's power creep. I just think players get better and bored. I do think we get some new outliers from time to time, but for the most part, anet has been nerfing old elite specs or core to encourage playing new specs when expansions come, so that illusion we're getting stronger exists. Case and point, I don't think anything power DPS is benching above 40k now, I believe we had a few specs that could bench well above 40k before some of the balance passes they've done in the last couple years. Really, I think Anet needs some dynamic content that scales with your skill somehow, but gives higher rewards for players as they do the higher levels. That way people who really like pushing things will stop making these posts whenever they're bored.

I agree AR needs to be reworked, but for none of the reasons you mentioned. The *REAL* issue I have with AR is that for a solo player, it also involves the fractal level climb, and getting through T2 and T3 can be REALLY hard because there isn't really a strong enough population to support actual roles, and you're basically punished for being a DPS because 90% of the time you can't find a healer, but if you play a hybrid or healer, it's slow. T4s give insane rewards. There needs to be some kind of gate on it, and anet I think liked the idea of dedicated players reaping great rewards. AR is supposed to be that symbol of dedication(along with fractal level). As above poster mentioned, AR has gotten real cheap lately. You'd make the 64 gold back in a week or so. IIRC, doing just dailies + recs was about 20g last I did it. And I thought it was raw gold. Also mechanics in T4s are harder. I'd expect a little head banging/carrying for someone completely new, even with the AR.

The focus in gw2 has rarely, if ever been on instanced content alone. When i dabbled in HoT and started playing in earnest in'19, the major focus has been on map releases. And the maps are far more engaging than say WoW. So it's not really an apples to apples comparison to solely compare one game mode type. Also, the content lifecycle is largely different. to me gw2 is permanent quantity, but at a slower pace, whereas WoW basically invalidates all specific mechanics you've earned in maps like nazjatar and all the learning you did in previous dungeons every expansion. Right now, i prefer gw2. I like being able to play a variety of activities and still get decent rewards. Usually the new stuff is better, but even though i've been much busier lately, i've enjoyed bouncing between different content in gw2. So to me, a sub doesn't really win anything. I do spend money on the shop because i appreciate Anet's work for the most part (DE meta had me feeling raw, but rumor is it's less punishing now). I also like being able to just step back into the game at will. A sub is an artificial barrier between players and their hard work.

Yeah but it still stops short of special protectiles and footfalls. And like I said, they're cutting off their nose to spite their face with that. I don't want them to go any further than this, but if they do, it's their coffin.

Is there a gemstore feedback thread? I want to compliment the dragon armor's subtle color changing effect on the scale portions of the armor. Kudos to the artist! I also want to call out that some dyes make it less visible. And as general feedback: I think some of the texture experiments are super cool, but sometimes they easily get lost on your character when actually playing and the dragon armor feels this way most of the time. My character looks best when logging in or panning the camera around him, moreso than acutally playeing. Also, I don't think the pharaoh or dragon skins are done justice in the gem store previews. Neither I believe showed off their effects. Also want to call out trying to get them to work with more dyes, The pharoah outfite looks best not dyed at all, otherwise luster is lost, even on lighter colors. Both of those skins are incredible in terms of art, just giving some suggestions for improvement.

So for me personally, the effort involved makes legendaries feel better. Unless they actually sell Nevermore, I don't feel like this applies, for me. I understand your concern now and I'm sorry if you're feeling this way. I do think Gen3 is really epic, and it would be hard for them to make them feel less than a GS item unless they started outright selling legendary effects. I will say though, they're probably cutting off their nose to spite their face if they do this, because the economy alone already makes legendaries more expensive in terms of gems. I like to mix and match both in-game rewards and gem store items, and I would only really buy a GS weapon skin if I felt like it synergized crazy well with another setup over a legendary. And I don't mind people with less time but more money doing a gem to gold conversion as long as the other way exists. They support a game I love, the devs have more money to do stuff with. If they stop releasing content, then I might feel different.

Yes, during some periods of development I wondered if they were focused on content over making money. Things look way better now, and I hope they continue this trajectory. But this is the quesiton I need to see answered. I don't just play to look shiny, though it helps.

Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I kind of feel like legendaries and gem store items don't need to be mutually exclusive. For example, i bought the dragon armor last night, but I love how I look in it holding eternity and wearing ascension with a full set of legendary trinkets. I look like a dragon knight demigod. The pharoah costume is a great synergy to almost any legendary setup outside armor slots (for males, the female costume is disappointing, because it doesn't shine as much because it's trying too hard to be skimpy). Legendary weapons usually beat the gem store weapons. They have special projectiles, footfalls. Though I'll say legendary weapons, based on gem vlaue of gold alone, are worth more than the gem skin. One could theortically buy gold to make a legendary weapon (though you still need farm particular things to actually finish it outside mats, like map completion), so even wearing one, you're beating the whales. You're still more prestigious. And Aurene weapons + skins, even more so. The line is getting thin, and I don't think anet should release weapons that are too flashy on purpose for that reason, but I'm not really concerned. I don't feel worth any less than people using special skins. Outside animations, envoy armor really isn't that flashy, but people still wear it over other things to show they're a raider. So a legendary, because of the effort involved and the rarity of them by nature, will always carry more prestige.

It depends on what you want really. The end game is to play content you enjoy, or farm flashy things. Which isn't appealing to 90% of MMO players because they're addicted to illusory power gains. I fall prey to this too, but resets are a rude awakening that usually send me back here.

Absolutely! Jk. That's 1 WvW player. That being said, being ignored that long can weigh on you. Also the speed at which things have gone have caused some to get really nervous. I sympathize with both of you. It is annoying if you're a PVE player to see that, on the other hand, WvW players are experiencing deep pain, with a glimmer of hope with this upcoming beta.

I was really sad that they tied the effect to the boon and having this equipped. I would love it if they let us have a way to keep it permanently, it looked amazing.

I think the op's comments are relevant for PoF raids. PoF raids have far more punishing mechanics that make the emboldened buff less useful. I am appreciative that rifle mechanist exists because it gives me hope that i'll still be able to play this when i'm old. @OP i am appreciative of your post because hopefully the devs will listen and have good content if i age out of what i do now.

Because the whole point of the OW is random player interaction, reserving an instance entirely for your squad defeats that purpose, so when that happens, the content might as well be organized instanced content. And even if you have a comm, and your players zone in with you, I still think that the map should have randos that are outside your group to at least give the potential of interaction between your guild and new people.

Good point. They do feel more effective and responsive in their dev cycles these days, but maybe you're right. I guess high-end players don't want any kind of competitive PVE with compelling rewards either given the reacts. This community seems to be at war with itself and anyone who wants to help everyone is crazy. Lulz.

I disagree with the first part of this, agree with the second. The whole purpose of the OW is to interact with randos, so the moment people feel like they have to have a fully organized group to succeed, it belongs in instanced content. Essentially, the organized group is creating their own instance and populating it without the game's help. And furthermore, I would say a fully orgnaized group doesn't deserve full control over shared infrastructure (maps). I get anet was trying to be epic with this, but so much of this feels wrong.

I agree with you here but i feel they could make both sets of players happy, which i think is really important. You want the content on a level most people feel it's worth engaging in, but give elite players a chance to prove themselves and also flaut it, as they're your content creators, i would rework strike cms as follows: 1) make a CM mode that is a "normal raid" difficulty 2) make mutually exclusive cms that are incredibly difficult like ht cm. I.e. it's its own cm and acts like a unique version of the encounter. Release these seasonally for various strikes at least every 6 months, even if there are no new strikes recently released. And as a way to encourage high end play, they could make the first clear race an event kind of like a pvp tournament: the first 3 unique groups from unique guilds to beat the encounter get a legendary choice box. They could even make an in-game global tracker like they've done for other events so everyone is aware they're going on. Leave the unique cms around, perhaps with slightly higher rewards than a normal cm, but the main purpose of the uniquely hard cms would be for practice for the next one. They could even use systems like the WvW alliance system to allow players to declare which guild they're trying to win the race for. And optionally send rewards (but perhaps not a full blown legendary) to all members of the guilds that tried and won one of the top 3 spots so as to encourage collaboration and teamwork across more than just the 10 players.

Does it really take that long to wipe enough to get max effect? Can't you just gg?

I could have sworn I heard SOMETHING about them opening up new areas in Cantha after EoD launch. Whether it's explicitly tied to a LWS, I'm not sure, but really new areas are the main draw for a LW season. Honestly, if they do living world they should either 1) Tie it explicitly to an expansion meaning purchasing the corresponding expansion automatically unlocks it 2) Just give it out for free. I feel like seasonal content tends to be very transient in terms of player base attention, and player concentrations in areas is something they have to pay close attention to as they give us more areas. It gets even more complicated with seasons like 3 where I feel like there's little reason to go back once you have Aurora/neck and it doesn't give anything particualrly unique/rewarding.

I can agree with this!

I've seen HAM go south in SH, but I also don't have the same amount of experience as you ; ). I kind of would like to see classes that do these things easier and some that do it with more effort, maybe with some amount of payoff if you learn it. i like the idea of a spectrum of players can raid. I feel like simpler rotations allow newer players or less adept players to just focus on mechanics, which can be overwhelming when you're learning a new encounter. I somewhat disagree about BD. It's a dead stat in OW, because it just takes 1 other person to invalidate you with the same build And then you're just wasting your statss and dedicating a whole gear set to it sucks. Meh agree to disagree I guess.

In fairness I've injected "YOLO" into my fractal group descriptions only to get some over-optimizing kitten still joining and proceeding to scream at us. That's another point when I gave up on trying anything off-meta.

Out of curiousity, which PVE game modes are you clearing with no quickness? In honesty I can sort of agree with the "speed creep" concept, but Snowden drifts CM is undoable without it (so they'd definitely need to redo it). I hate being forced to phyiscally rush through PVE content and I hate skipping mob packs. It's an issue I've had both here and in WoW.

Well your post was extremely general, so it sounded like you were talking about everything. You didn't even acknowledge some classes were left behind. So you're complaining that the skill floor was reduced? THat's really all your argument comes down to when you admit that high-end players took a DPS hit. Maximum raid damage was reduced. Ergo, content is now more challenging for the 0.1% of the population capable of doing 40k DPS, which is what I thought they wanted? I thought they were bored? Now, heaven forbid, people who don't play that way are a little more effective and can enjoy the content. Also HAM isn't the end-all be-all. Its Stab is a liability on SH. it requres your group does a really good job of staying out of bad because corrupted stab = fear. Sure, it's strong in a lot of places. Doesn't ham still require BD? That's not for free. If you think that it's OP, that's a different story. Out of curiousity, outside of HAM, what other classes are "giving away boons for free"? Because the catalyst nerfs seem to imply the devs are requiring BD. THough with the removal of class buffs, if they weren't aiming for reducing overall raid damage, one way to increase it is to lower the BD breakpoints for providing boons. Your post still sounded like the boons being provided and more widely available was an issue. Is that the case?

I'm confused because most pe You do realize that the devs are claiming FA power tempest is supposed to provide Alac? You also realize how ridiculous that is, right? claiming "no cost" is inaccurate in that world. Power tempest hasn't even had a viable SC build for months, let alone WH 5 being nerfed in air just before EoD launch. Now they expect a sub-par DPS, thats usage was situational at best. BEFORE NERFs, to sacrifice a high-DPS major trait and add additional BD to make it work, because you definitely can't do it with 0 BD, even with FA because FA only recharges swapping back to air, it doesn't reset the overload. I actually wish this were true though. BD is an awful stat, it doesn't feel good to be locked into a gear set that is only useful when other people aren't running it, as you have 0 control over that. For end players than have tons of legendaries and who buy gear sets, it's not an issue, but for any player that doesn't, it's an awful high tax on your gear and an annoying usage of a build slot, because the gear is only useful in particular situations. Also, I don't really think there's anyhting novel/OP about the current balance. Spot checking a few builds, nothing looks any higher than it was before, if anything DPS should have gone down with the removal of class buffs like banners and spirits. It looks like some builds still edge close to 40k, but even then, that wasn't exactly rare before the balance patch either. If you believe that having to hand-pick people who played 1 of 2-3 classes that had significant amount of BD in their builds was somehow novel and engaging, I respectfully disagree. They've nerfed Catalyst specifically to avoid the situation you talk about, and even as someone who doesn't normally run ele in PVE, I find that ridiculous. Ele, with less built-in survivability than any other profession (requiring you to get mechanics right, whereas some classes can stand in bad with evades), and higher rotational complexity than any other class, is literally expected to get 0 pay-off for it. Elementalist, if they're going to stick with piano-style gameplay, and extremely low and situational survivability in a raid setting, should get some payoff for it. And if they're not going to give it ridiculous damage, it should at least give a freaking boon to give it something over classes that can literally stand in bad while doing full DPS. Not calling them out, don't want them nerfed, just want some concept of balance. Ele, in fairness does have some ways of getting survivability, but even when i do this in my OW builds, I feel like I'm sacrificing damage that I wouldn't have to on other classes that I play.