Valfar.3761

WoW and FF14 have allowed people to inspect transmogs for years, but GW2 fans throw a fit?

Just because GW2's content isn't utterly trivalized by level cap increases (the ergregious powercreep we have is pretty bad, Mouth of Mordremoth dies in less than 90 seconds and you never get to see his other mechanics) doesn't mean it is relevant to most players. For each map you complete the hearts, complete the masteries, maybe do the Season of Dragons achievements and mine pick 10 flowers, and then move on. You have no reason to come back unless you're going to work towards some legendary that requires you invest a hundred dollars into levelling up crafting and buying mats off of the auction house to finish. For most people there is no reason to go back to Lornar's Pass or Elon Riverlands or Bjora Marches. FF14 does a better job keeping more of its content relevant to most of the playerbase. You can level up other jobs through duty roulette (whereas in GW2 the optimal way to play is to just PvP and use the hundreds of tomes of knowledge you get from there to boost a character to 80 upon creation), and you can do old FATEs (dynamic events) and instanced content to acquire Memories which can be used to create relic weapons, which do not have the deterrent of requiring you to spend a lot of cash in mats to finish or spend thousands of hours farming.

People don't want to use 20 different social medias. They want to use one, and since Twitter is the biggest that's the one everyone uses. People aren't going to leave unless there is a catastrophic failure. Isolating yourself to forums only visited by fanboys doesn't help you garner visibility with normies. That isn't to say that devs shouldn't interact with their fans on forums (devs should indeed interact with fans on their forums) but they need to be interacting with normies where the normies hang out, which means also being on twitter.

The problem with FFXIV is that the story is 1. mandatory and 2. it is 400+ hours long, half of that time is spent watching cutscenes (many of which are unvoiced and feature stilted animations and finnicky lighting and are overall unattractive to look at), and the other half is reading paragraphs of text while the camera is zoomed out from the NPCs and doesn't frame them attractively. It is supposed to be a VIDEO game but most of the time it isn't appealing to look at like other video games or real visual novels. Another issue is because FFXIV is willing to have unvoiced text, the writers forgot the art of brevity and you wind up with a script that takes 10x longer to get to the point than it should. The story is 400+ hours long but it is most certainly not 400+ hours of pure entertainment. Only a small percentage of it is very enjoyable. It's good that Anet has committed to making GW2's story almost fully voice acted. Due to the time and expense required for voice acting, it forces the scriptwriters to cut out the fat and get down to what matters most. GW2's story is only 100 hours long but I enjoyed a higher pecentage of it than FF14's. The only thing that sucks about GW2's story is that you can't skip the scripted RP segments like you can skip cutscenes in FF14, which makes going through the story on a second playthrough a bit more tedious and I find myself alt+tabbing out until it finishes. As for the setting, I initially preferred FF14's setting to GW2's. I found ARR through Stormblood's Eorzea to be a lived in setting and I found the countries to be interesting, with their internal problems and their tensions with each other. Even the expansionistic empire wasn't completely evil and was interesting and was looking forward to adventuring inside it and getting to work for good Legatuses. Then the writers changed and by the time of Shadowbringers it became a Kingdom Hearts ripoff of dark vs light, the country vs country focus of the setting is discarded as everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, Garlemald is wiped out offscreen, etc, and I started losing interest. I don't care much about GW2's setting. The only thing that appealed to me were the Charr Legions, but they suffered from the same fate FF14 countries in that their problems were eliminated and they got along with everyone else so there was no tension anymore. I thought GW1's Cantha was interesting but that didn't carry over into EoD. I was mainly interested in the Elder Dragon magic plot and the spectacle of the ED fights. Another issue with FF14's story is that the main cast are all scholars who came from the same island country with pleasant personalities. You don't get someone different until the last expansion and he's not enough. At least in GW2 you got people from different backgrounds with different personalities. WoW has the best looking environments, especially those gorgeous painterly skyboxes from WoD onwards. GW2 has much more fluid character and mount animations, though. I also liked the war feel of WoW and the large scale PvP with mounts in battlegrounds, but I am not as into the gameplay as GW2.

I exclusively play Ranger. I only played other classes to get my required ranked PvP wins for the legendary achievement and then never touched them again. Last month's Ranger changes have destroyed my favorite builds (Fervent Force double axe which I liked for when I was playing by myself or doing meta events, and my casual low APM hammer/spirit build that allowed me to contribute in group content and relax) and has dampened my enthusiasm for playing.

Got sick of staring at the same maps. You can only spend so many hundreds of hours in the same green plains and beige desert environments before it becomes boring. Anet needed to add more maps and visual variety. Desert map was poorly designed but sometimes I just had to go there because I couldn't take alpine and EBG anymore, and eventually I got sick of desert too and that was it.

Elite specs are straight up better than running core classes. The Druid spec ignores the pet and the Soulbeast spec cannibalizes it, leaving the Untamed spec as the only one that vaguely lets you retain the pet and still pretend to be a ranger, but you get this green goo magic aesthetic thrust upon you whether you want to or not.

Pet still dies instantly in WvW zergs, which is not fun. Should have a 90% damage reduction to incoming AoE like hunter/warlock pets in WoW, which can survive an initial zerg in an epic BG and only start dying once people deliberately target them and kill them to cripple their master class' damage dealing capability.

I don't feel that bad, given that I followed Dulfy's guide and it only took me about 3 hours of running around to complete, but yes your prior work being invalidated by later revisions is one of my beefs with live service games.

Same here. It would be nice if a very low APM Untamed build was viable, within even the same ballpark as the higher APM ones. This isn't just an issue with GW2, but with WoW clones in general. They are pseudo-action games with high APM and the content is designed around dealing as much damage as possible. So your eyes are not looking at the actual game world, enjoying looking at the characters or the animations or the environments, but are instead fixated on a tiny strip at the bottom of the screen staring at meters and cooldowns. That's not an entertaining fantasy adventure.

The dagger's unleashed ambush skill where you shadowstep teleport to your target is cool, but the range is only 600. Too short, it would be really easy to be too far and press and then not go there. Should be the same 900 distance as Unnatural Traversal. The fundamental problem with the clunky Unleashed Ambush mechanic would need to be addressed first, though.

Heart of Thorns was fantastic! I liked the theme and it was cohesive: bushwhacking into a hostile jungle to fight an evil plant dragon. Everything tied into this. All of the events you join are you helping the Pact army push into the jungle and fight Mordremoth's forces. The maps were multilayered, packing them with more content than ordinary maps. Adventures were fun. Difficulty. The mobs were threatening enough to force you to respect their mechanics. Also incentivized you to group up with other players. The design of the geometry and the multilayered maps also made navigating the maps challenging, which is good. Managing to climb up into those crashed airships in Verdant Brink felt satisfying. Fun fights. The Wyverns in Verdant Brink that take place high in the sky and you getting blown off the platform and having to climb back up. The Chak Gerrant in the tunnels in Tangled Depths. Pushing down the tree lanes towards Mordremoth's tree, and the Mouth of Mordremoth fight. I didn't like PoF very much. I didn't like the themes. The two main enemies, the Forged (generic firey/metal guys), and the Awakened (generic egyptian zombies) felt meh. The Branded (purple crystal monsters) were okay. The events in the zones felt random and did not feel motivating like HoT where every event has you help out your army in the fight against Mordremoth. Aside from the Desolation, every map was boring. Flat deserts, or generic snowy mountains. The desolation had the yellow sulfur areas which were cool. Furthermore, the maps were not packed with content like HoT's maps. The mobs were not challenging. No fun meta events. I didn't enjoy End of Dragons content very much. The mobs are braindead easy. The maps are not interesting to navigate. They are not packed with content nor multilayered. No adventures. The maps also suffer from missed potential in the aesthetic department. Seitung Province looks like a generic Asian game area. New Kaineng does not feel like a packed city to adventure in (contrast that with Suramar or Boralus from WoW), and the buildings are samey. Echovald Forest looks incredibly generic. Anet did not utilize those concept arts that they commissioned from Salvatorre Yazzie that depicted an interesting fantasy environment. And then the top 2/3rds of Dragon's End - the area you spend the most time in - is again more generic grass and rocks. The only interesting area is the Jade Sea in the last 1/3rd of the map, but you are only on the surface of the sea for 5 minutes when fighting the minibosses or travelling to help out another lane's fight against a miniboss. Again compare that how much time you spent on the Jade Sea in GW1. Also GW2's version of the Jade Sea looks like neon green plastic and is not pleasing to look at. The underground tunnels are not used for content at all. The constant instance changing disincentives me to play on the maps, knowing that I might be building up stacks of toughness or fishing stacks or progressing an event changing only for the instance to be closed and I have to start all over again. The metas aren't as fun as the HoT ones IMO.

HoT maps are the pinnacle of GW2's overworld content. Multi-layered which makes navigation a challenge (which is a good thing! if a game does not have a challenge, I am bored, not engaged, and would rather play something else). The multi-layered design is interesting and packs more content in. The mobs were also threatening, meaning you had to actually respect their mechanics and you were incentivized to group up with other players. The HoT maps are simply the most entertaining to play around in. EoD's maps are not fun to play in. The mobs are braindead easy. The maps are not interesting to navigate. They are not packed with content nor multilayered. No adventures. They also suffer from missed potential in the aesthetic department. Seitung Province looks like a generic Asian game area. New Kaineng does not feel like a packed city to adventure in (contrast that with Suramar or Boralus from WoW), and the buildings are samey. Echovald Forest looks incredibly generic. Anet did not utilize those concept arts that they commissioned from Salvatorre Yazzie that depicted an interesting fantasy environment. And then the top 2/3rds of Dragon's End - the area you spend the most time in - is again more generic grass and rocks. The only interesting area is the Jade Sea in the last 1/3rd of the map, but you are only on the surface of the sea for 5 minutes when fighting the minibosses or travelling to help out another lane's fight against a miniboss. Again compare that how much time you spent on the Jade Sea in GW1. Also GW2's version of the Jade Sea looks like neon green plastic and is not pleasing to look at. The underground tunnels are not used for content at all. The story was bad. It was 11 hours long but only the first hour (airship setpiece) and the last hour (Dragon's End) were fun high fantasy adventuring. The rest was you standing around listening to soap opera. Contrast that with HoT's story, which was 4 hours long but it almost entirely packed with high fantasy adventuring as you pushed into a jungle, liberated prison camps, run away from giant spider ladies while carrying an egg, the final fight with Mordremoth, etc. The only boring thing about HoT's plot was the 30 minute long Rata Novus detour that amounted to nothing.

I only really play Ranger. Out of the classes that were available before HoT's launch, Ranger was the only one that appealed to me. I liked the fantasy of fighting alongside a pet. Sadly HoT's new druid elite specialization didn't really help me since it ignored the pet and was some sort of caster healer, only viable in instanced raid content which I did not do. I disliked PoF gameplay wise because it added Soulbeast, which cannibalized the pet, and Soulbeast was straight up better than core ranger so you were forced to abandon the pet fantasy of ranger. Untamed finally made it viable to fight alongside a pet again, but introduced a new issue with the clunky Ambush mechanic. I played a little bit of Berserker in rated PvP to work towards the legendary achievement. He felt very fragile, like I would be bursted down within a few seconds. He also didn't feel very powerful, since you have to press several buttons very quickly and your attack range is very short. Often times I felt that my hits were not connecting with my target and I would die. Never felt that enemy berserkers were much of a threat either. I played a little bit of rifle Deadeye in ranked PvP, again for legendary achievement. Having to constantly roll around felt clunky and bad. Enemy deadeyes don't feel dangerous either. Played a little bit of rifle mechanist for ranked PvP for legendary achievement. I liked that I felt powerful playing the low APM build. It was great during a short period of time when my desktop computer was broken and I had to play on a sluggish laptop. I wasn't attached to the character though and didn't like the neon green Jade aesthetic (the mech also feels light and flimsy and fragile). Enemy mechanists in ranked PvP feel somewhat threatening. I played a little bit of Vindicator Revenant, using runes that refilled vigor upon killing an enemy. Spamming the dragoon jump over and over was a cool for a little while.

Yikes at the new ranger changes. Talking about Untamed here because that is the only elite spec that services the classic ranger fantasy of fighting alongside your pet (Druid ignores the pet and goes for some weird caster/wizard thing, and Soulbeast cannibalizes your pet). Spirits no longer give alacrity. RIP the low APM alacrity hammer build where all you had to do was keep your spirits up and press hammer 2 and 4 every 6 seconds. They reduced the cooldown on the Untamed's pet abilities which you have to manually press (unlike vanilla ranger pet abilities which can be automated). Even higher APM whether you want it or not! Fervent Force is dead! RIP our high survivability double axe build. The devs increased the damage of the unleashed ambush skills. Fervent Force has been replaced with Let Loose, which causes your Unleashed Ambush skills to give boons. None of this matters because flipping back and forth between unleashed pet/ranger stances is still clunky and not worth the bother. You have to press F5 to enter unleashed ranger, press 1 to use your first weapon's unleashed ambush, press ~ to weapon swap to your second weapon, press F5 to switch to unleashed pet, press F5 again to switch back to unleashed ranger, and then press 1 to use your second weapon's unleashed ambush. That is a 5 step process to use this trait. Dagger's unleashed ambush skill is a shadowstep teleport. That is cool. Combined with Unnatural Traversal, you could become a some sort of nature ninja teleporting all over the place, though the fundamental issue with how clunky Unleashed Pet/Ranger swapping is would need to be addressed first. Feels really bad. 😞

Yikes at the new ranger changes. Spirits no longer give alacrity. RIP the low APM alacrity hammer build where all you had to do was keep your spirits up and press hammer 2 and 4 every 6 seconds. They reduced the cooldown on the Untamed's pet abilities which you have to manually press (unlike vanilla ranger pet abilities which can be automated). Even higher APM whether you want it or not! Fervent Force is dead! RIP our high survivability double axe build. The devs increased the damage of the unleashed ambush skills. Fervent Force has been replaced with Let Loose, which causes your Unleashed Ambush skills to give boons. None of this matters because flipping back and forth between unleashed pet/ranger stances is still clunky and not worth the bother. You have to press F5 to enter unleashed ranger, press 1 to use your first weapon's unleashed ambush, press ~ to weapon swap to your second weapon, press F5 to switch to unleashed pet, press F5 again to switch back to unleashed ranger, and then press 1 to use your second weapon's unleashed ambush. That is a 5 step process to use this trait. Dagger's unleashed ambush skill is a shadowstep teleport. That is cool. Combined with Unnatural Traversal, you could become a some sort of nature ninja teleporting all over the place, though the fundamental issue with how clunky Unleashed Pet/Ranger swapping is would need to be addressed first. Feels really bad. 😞

Just tried it out myself. That is cool. Combined with Unnatural Traversal, you could become a some sort of nature ninja teleporting all over the place, though the fundamental issue with how clunky Unleashed Pet/Ranger swapping is would need to be addressed first.

Yikes at the new ranger changes. Spirits no longer give alacrity. RIP the low APM alacrity hammer build where all you had to do was keep your spirits up and press hammer 2 and 4 every 6 seconds.

I only play Ranger, so I voted EoD. Druid is useless for open world and story, only good in raids which I don't do, and in WvW zergs which I only occasional do but you don't get rewards as a healer so I would rather play core ranger than play Druid. I don't like Soulbeast as it removes my pet, when I picked ranger to have a pet. I would rather player core ranger than Soulbeast. I like Untamed. I get to keep my pet, get a damage boost, and I can use a hammer. Some of the new abilities are cool too.

For WvW roaming I am using Mell.4873 's Untamed celestial build (axe + warhorn/hammer), with runes of the thief on the armor and a sigil of perception to build up precision. I don't have the post saved where he explained his exact playstyle, but basically you're just juggling stuns trying to keep the player target on lock down as much as possible. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEcEmosUWHrlxyOxS7ZN6Wi0jD-e For PvP I use another one of Mell's builds (axe + warhorn/shortbow). Again, you're juggling stuns. Mell explains the build here and here. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEcEWpsiMmXhrrjR11Oz1y7pNWliKHzbPA-e

DPS is not the end-all-be-all. You only need high DPS for a very small fraction of GW2's content, namely the hard mode instances. If you aren't doing CMs or running fractals then don't worry about maximizing DPS, worry about having fun playing the game. If Fervent Force is too intensive then you can just use Ferocious Symbiosis and signets and you'll be fine.

Would you like a WvW map set on the surface of the Jade Sea? In Echovald Forest? Ontop of the ruins of Drowned Kaineng with bridges connecting buildings? Or some other location, like the Fire Islands? And what features would you like it to have? Or would you want it to mechanically be a clone of a pre-existing WvW map?

Design wise, the new map feels lackluster. There is only one layer. It's not multilayered like Tangled Depths or Draconis Mons was, which had far more playable space packed into the same area. It feels more like a flat map with a ceiling rather than a vast cave network. Once you've been down the three lanes, you've seen most of the map. After the boss battle, 5 other arenas open up where you have a Dragonfall-esque victory lap against minibosses, but that's it. Maybe it's because I'm using the griffon and roller beetle to get around, but it feels small. Also, your ability to explore the map is limited by meta event progression and the map closes 15 minutes after the end boss fight, and thus far I have had no luck opening up LFG and trying to join other squads are in an instance that is further along so I can explore more. After beating my first meta and then getting kicked out 15 minutes later, I had to join a fresh instance and then wait half an hour for it to progress far enough that I could grab screenshots. The meta event finale is rather lackluster too. It culminates in three boss fights on the three platforms, but the bosses are just slightly tall humanoids. I was expecting a huge monster. The spectacle of giant boss fights is what GW2 shines at. Each of the three lanes has two gates that can only be destroyed by Siege Turtles. A nice way to make them relevant, though stomping on a gate for two minutes isn't very fun.

It wouldn't have been so underwhelming had there been a satisfying conclusion or progress made, like figuring out why the Void was back or meeting a villain. Once Rama carries you back to the surface and you finish the episode, the story hasn't progressed any further than when you first went down into the cave at the start of the epiaode.

I like how it looks now but an option in the menu would be nice.