Firebeard.1746

One last comment: the selling point of this game is permanent progress. Metas should not shift super wildly in PVE and WvW. Like maybe the strategies that teams use in WvW should to keep it fresh, but it shouldn't be the case that gear and trait combinations that were super effective or effective suddenly become garbage. It's disappointing when i finally have time to play with my WvW guild and the build they told me was fine a balance patch ago when I played with them is suddenly garbage. This happened literally yesterday. A full set of ascended anything is around 300+ gold. That's about a years' to 6 months of play for a more casual player who doesn't understand the economy. Some exotic stat combinations are still really expensive ( think minstrels still is). YOu guys need to be very careful making all that time and effort into a character or build feel suddenly useless. My biggest concern for the balance team is that because it's their "job" they'll just make changes to make changes to prove they're doing something without considering the time, effort and even dedication that some players have built towards builds and playstyles they're completely gutting. Most of their effort should be in the next system or enhancement being added to the next expansion and it should prop up playstyles people enjoy while buffing ones that seem to be underplayed or utilized. That's not to say there shouldn't be shifts in metas in PVP and WvW at all: they need to be kept fresh as there isn't much new content coming, but for WvW it should mean that group tactics should be shifting, not necessarily builds or most importantly gear. For PVP you can do whatever the kitten you want because there's no real investment when it comes to making a build there as almost everything is available almost all of the time. Also, please make the change to mirage cloak usability PVP/WvW specific. I don't know, I'm not sure that mirage will be as strong without that and I don't think mirages needed a PvE nerf.

If you guys are going to go all-in on forcing this plethora of boons and trying to spread them across all classes, then you need to step back and ask "how are we preserving profession flavor"? I feel like there isn't a ton of class identity lately and it's just going away. Also what's with the nerf on mesmer focus pull? Mesmer pulls have been a staple of so many encounters and dealing with their mechanics, I'm not even sure how groups are supposed to kill certain raid bosses now. It might have been too much range for PVP/WvW but the PVE nerfs are unwarranted. Also just as a general comment, I feel like people like class identity and mechanics over boons, and if it was me, I'd actually step back and give more class specific mechanics and shared buffs and pull back on the boon soup. Just give every class something special that matches their fantasy. I don't think that boon soup is the selling point of the game. Also it'd get rid of these stupid mono-comps. I think my last HT CM video I saw was all guardians.

QA testing isn't what it used to be. Live services fly by the seat of their pants more. There should be UTs and in many cases integration testing, but code isn't quite beaten up the same way it used to be because fixes can ship faster than in early phases of the industry.

This post is a perfectly good example of why so many software engineers seem on the precipice of insanity. It's entertaining nonetheless.

I was logged in about 15-30 minutes ago and the game became suddenly unresponsive like the connection was lost. Every time I try logging in since gives a network error. I think something just broke. And it's only when i try zoning in, not logging into the game EDIT: Obviously I can use the internet if I'm posting here. I've checked other sites. The zone i was trying to zone into was Seitung Province, not sure if that matters.

I was finishing up an LLA in Timberline falls and going to look for the unbound magic that drops when all of the sudden my client ported me to the Fields of Ruin. Not even close to a waypoint. Is there any valid mechanic that can cause this? I was teleported to Gillscale pond.

I was tickled pink when I saw the announcement. I love the boss. The add pressure is an interesting new mechanic. I still need to run around some more to be sure, I think it could use something more, and I actually really like it when you can beeline for the boss directly and quickly like in the new zone. W2Z3 is terrible to have to play through if you're doing a playthrough. I hope that the new SaB zones become something with a bunch of different strong objectives, not just the boss and have the same creative mechanics that the other worlds have. That way, you go in for what you want & do the mechanics for it and, it can be something quick if you want, but there's still tons to do.

TLDR: probably not, but for power gamers I guess achieve fishers are sad. I was more into the g/hr and how zen it felt. I'm sure some people will still fish because they like it. Also tons of gw2 players don't know what good g/hr is so they'll still see the lower priced ambergris as a good deal. So the fishing community is more losing their power gamers.

I'm just a tad bit sad that fishing isn't a viable gold farm anymore since they added the pools with the higher legendary fish drops at the end of the meta. Ambergris is down 25% from last week. Pretty sure there's better things to do now.

So the thing that's difficult about what you're saying you want to do is that there's so many different roles in the different raids. two of your stated goals are contradictory, you like being a support and you like being an enabler. There's a lot of roles that the supports are specifically kept off because it ruins group DPS (see W2 sloth shrooms). The best I can come up with is perhaps being a tank on the bosses that require them. I think healbrand is probably the best pick because it has actual blocks for encounters like Deimos, but Druid is another option on encounters that require tanks but have no 1-shot mechanics. Chrono tank could work too and I think would work on most encounters where an HB is used, but chrono isn't really considered meta right now, though you'd get another encounter where you're "special": escort. My vote is for guardian or mesmer, learning how to tank in raids. Outside raids you could be heal support or boon DPS support on either.

I hope so.

It's not so much the global threat as it is what that kind or power introduces into the world. For example, the Sylvari were created by mordremoth. You have less residual fantasy elements as a result of that kind of creative power missing (magic, minions, etc). That's my concern. But i'd like there to still be an entity that could spawn a new race or reshape the world in some way because that would give the devs room to create really fantastical environments. For example, what if lyssa created a magical island we could explore? For me asura gates don't kill fantasy. And there's still plenty of ways to introduce those elements and have technology with it side by side. As far as threats go, An idea i have with what we still have in game is an expansion where we fight demons in the mists, but i wouldn't want our victory to be final so we can fight them again later. To me fighting other people like us sounds really boring. I'm not saying we should always be fighting a fantasy character but i'd feel really bored if it's just factional conflict from here on out.

I can't say i'm the most well versed person in tyrian lore, but it feels like we've killed off or lost all the major high fantasy characters: the gods and dragons. Does this make sense in terms of a story direction? I feel like gw2 started off as high fantasy and it will lose that feel if all the story devolves into is factional conflict, which is where it feels like it's headed with so many major high fantasy characters dead or gone.

Have you played spvp lately? Getting harassesed after matches is fairly common. Or was like a year ago when i still did it alot. Also i block comms who do nasty things in lfg.

I hope there is. Power creep has only helped popularity of various pve game modes, which is the most important factor in keeping those modes alive.

If they're getting more money, then they should have more money to spend on development, so they're actually more likely to come through on their promises if people actually buy the expansions. The other thing you've mentioned where they've made random promises but not gone through was kind of addressed in the post: they mentioned not having the bandwidth to do everything because they weren't focused. I would hope they don't do 2 expansions per year, that sounds like too much. Some players already play this game because it's cheaper and sometimes struggle to get the next thing, I would imagine for the masses that fall in that category, once a year is the most they can ask. I could pay twice, and I probably would if they don't poop out another DE meta on me, but it wouldn't go over well in terms of maintaining the population.

The only issue I have with this model is that not all maps are released at once. I want to know what the metas are like before I buy.

I think the reason why they keep changing their strategy is because they're struggling to understand what holds player engagement in light of their gameplay models. I'm guessing when they announced IBS they were looking at data and realized that players seemed to always come back for the next LW epsiode and figured they could focus on LW and gem store purchases would carry them. But then players got spooked because reasons and didn't feel there was much to look forward to and then they didn't know what to do. Then with this announcement, they probably looked at the numbers and were like "Wow all these old and new players came for the new expansion, maybe we should do expansions instead!" and now players are spooked for a different set of reasons. I agree they could do a beter job of selling things. I hope that they continue to balance building on systems they have as well as experimenting with new ones. Strikes, one of the most popular game modes, came about because of experimentation, but if they don't release enough content with existing systems, people will run out of things to do. Also this is better than what we had before imo. Living world was already effectively an expansion if you happened to miss the free windows on the episodes. I think this is healthier for start-up costs as long as they cap the number of expansions you need to get going. I actually liked IBS up until drizzlewood, but the feel was way different. I know achievement hunting players didn't appreciate it because it felt too repetitive. The only advice I can give them is to give us something cool to look forward to, and be as in-your-face with cool experiences as possible. GW2 was good beacuse it focused on all the pain points that MMOs had and actively worked to address them while giving players good experiences. I'm actually concerned that more recent content hasn't been as friendly in this regard and content creators that are enjoying core or previous expansions will get rude awakenings in EoD content. Also, they need to do more to encourage positive interactions in high-end PVE and in difficult content. If you're in a failing DE, the comments at the end are kind of awful and it's the antithesis of what they're tring to build. High-end PVE instanced content tends to get less newb friendly because super veterans tend to have 0 patience with anyone learning, they just want their gold. Other people as a means to loot kills games. That's the only thing WoW has given for the last few years and it's just steadily fallen apart. The social aspect has been getting worse year over year and I just can't stand it even though I thought dragonflight was good initially. They also need to figure out good ways to keep the population at healthy levels on all maps at some point in time. I'm afraid their current daily system won't scale as they add more maps. (i.e. gl if you want to do vision in about 3 years from now.)

I guess so, it is a tad annoying to do that, but the bright side is that you can exchange map completion legendary components for badges and sell them, so it's not that annoying in terms of gunking up your inventory.

If they didn't have meta-gated lanterns I'd agree. But now when they do, you have to think about which character you bring to a meta that gates a lantern which sort of intereferes with one of the best attributes of this game: alt friendliness. i'm not saying it's not an improvement or doesn't make sense at face value, but it does conflict with one of the best design attributes on this game, which seems to be lost on some people here. I'm glad the worst meta of the gates isn't actually a gate, let's hope they don't nerf the bypasses, but we'll see. Generally pulsing damage has interfered with other interactions in game like mastery insights or hero points so I wasn't expecting to be able to cap that lantern in pulsing damage.

I say keep it as-is. It's fun whispering people to flaunt their mogs. If it's really that innocent, unless you're rude, most people will reply.

while I appreciate that I don't have to redo hearts and vistas are pretty much a non-issue, it really sucks that lamplighter isn't globally available to all characters once unlocked. I rarely do DE meta and it sucks that I MUST use the one character I've already map completed DE on if I want to do the lamplighter achievement again. This is also an issue for other meta-gated lanters in Echovald and Seitung. Also I'm just going to call out another issue: it sucks that the meta gated lamp isn't available right there at the end of the meta, and is instead tucked away in some random corner of DE. Given how I only see DE groups up in my communities once in a blue moon, I'll have to wait for the stars to align again before I can complete this and remember to take a hike to said random corner

That's my fear.

In a way they're a measure of your engagement in the game, and I'm kind of surprised that they weren't used as a means of scaling up the rewards for WvW at all. Don't get me wrong, I like that rewards are being buffed, but it'd be really nice to have something useful to do with a legendary component if you've already filled your slots. Just a thought.

Ask Sneb.