Leger.3724

GW3 on the 25 year anniversary of the IP in April 2030 confirmed.

There's an obvious difference between building a team comp to intentionally cause the GW2 engine to lag because of how it handles player abilities and a group using specific armor types. If someone is pressing their buttons and they have celestial on and beat me it is what it is, I can put on celestial. If a group of players knows they can't beat another group of players and lags out the GW2 engine at the start of a fight to make it a dice roll where they have an advantage because they know what they're about to do..... and it doesn't matter if I press buttons outside of WASD because my abilities won't go off because they're in the game engine queue buffer... that's bug exploitation and it should be something that gets people banned. I do wonder how many people here participated in abusing it given how contained the response seems to be when you compare it to the pages about willbender or boonball.

I get it, sort of. I personally haven't experienced it but I can understand the fear, the idea that you'd have to compete amongst a larger playerbase. I'd have feelings of inadequacy too. I'd be playing the game throwing up artificial barriers at players too. Arena Net has their internal numbers. They can continue to lose money catering to people like you and maybe justify it with "well 95% of people will buy it and not touch the strikes but I think we need the strikes in there as a selling point to those people" or they can face down reality and stop catering to a tiny, whiny group of people with fragile little egos who think more buttons = more skill when the games that are popular prove this to be wrong. An entry barrier is not an indication of skill. It's just an entry barrier.

You don't have to do anything in any game. If you want to be competitive in RTS you'll need to memorize the optimal build order and assign each villager/worker in the correct order. Your early games are going to look extremely similar every game if you want to be competitive. Of course you have to optimize and remember things in League of Legends and Counterstrike. Are you arguing you don't need to do any of this in a typical MMO like Guild Wars 2? You're making my point for me. League of Legends and CS are incredibly difficult games to master. But they're still way more accessible to a casual player. Guild Wars 2 is not. MMOs more generally are not. You don't need 20+ skills on a bar. You don't even need 1. Players don't need 20+ skills on a bar to show off that they're better than others. They can do that with no skill bar at all. The ultra casual crowd in GW2 doesn't do strikes either. Should Arena Net just abandon strikes like they did with raids? I would say if it's an option - tear up combat and come up with a better and more accessible system so people will actually play the content. But this game is so far gone we're really talking about a GW3 or some future game they have in development. This has to be the take away message. You don't need to throw massive amounts of abilities at people. Your first expansion doesn't need to be "yeah 15-20 skills on a bar is too few, lets add even more to confuse the casual player". I just want to point out one argument another person was making is you can just hit 1 repeatedly with a few other abilities here or there and get to ~15K DPS. Again, is that fun for a casual player? They go around spamming 1? Why do we need 20-30 abilities on a bar to confuse the casual playerbase? Why is this game's combat so bad? And this is why you get posts about DPS checks and stuff. The combat is brutally bad. It's not accessible or understandable to the casual playerbase, it doesn't feel very good when you put in effort either. And nothing is going to change until the combat fundamentally changes (which I don't think it will). The reason this matters is because Arena Net has abandoned content in the past - raids, spvp, wvw and it's forever alliances that are essentially just a server merge due to low pop. I get there are people here who really love raids or whatever else. The business model is not sustainable. They're taking from Peter (casual players) to pay (give content) to Paul. And with SOTO they slowed down on that. If you're a Strike/Raids enjoyer you should be very concerned about the future.

Do you think the RTS genre is in a healthy place? They struggle for a very similar reason, my first games were also RTSes, I played Age of Empires 1 and 2 on The Zone. I remember playing Random Maps, joining VoE (Villagers of Eternity) when you had a bronze age consistently under 13 minutes, I remember playing Archer War deathmatches. Yamato had half gold cost and were a favorite as a result. But people don't like the RTS genre much anymore for their pvp experiences. They don't like having to memorize build orders. Having to manage a bunch of different things all at once. Sound familiar to where we are today with MMOs? You can almost track the progress. RTSes and FPSes were the big games in town. And then MMOs came out and millions flocked to the MMO instead of the RTS. And then MOBAs based on DOTA (from the Warcraft RTS series) came out like League of Legends and the people playing MMOs for their pvp moved to MOBAs. The one consistent genre over the years has been FPSes where it's almost exclusively about reaction times and tactics. You don't have 20 abilities in Counterstrike. It's very simple, very intuitive and yet still extremely competitive and fun for the people who play it.

When you are good at video games it translates. The people very good at Guild Wars 1 were also very good at League of Legends. We're not talking about radically different skillsets here. I think a 15-25 step rotation is a barrier and not an indication of skill so if Arena Net is working on their next game that should be consideration #1 so you know... people play the game, people try the pvp, people try the end game content. The goal is to have people play the game. The goal is to have them do content together. The goal is to have them stick around and spend money and create communities. I'm trying to give some perspective here. We have some egos out there who want to think they're hot stuff. Okay so you're above average on an active playerbase of what? 1,000-5,000? How many millions play a game of League of Legends in a day? How many go through a World of Warcraft raid in a day? If you want to claim you're skilled and competitive... generally you go to where the competition is. You don't sit in the MMO with the smallest pvp and end game pve playerbase lording over the community. Well you do if........ and I've already explained why.

Yes, it's bad. The goal is to have players play the game and do the content, is it not? The goal if your a game developer is to have people playing your game. why do you and others feel it is so necessary for anyone who wants to participate to memorize a 15-25 step rotation? Why is that necessary for your enjoyment? I'm still waiting for someone, anyone to explain this. Nobody can. Because it's not necessary.

That MMOs are designed around DPS checks and there's no changing that until you fundamentally change combat in MMOs. Of course that's not the only problem in MMOs but it's a big one.

Yes, 4 skill games have "rotations" and combos. But players quickly move beyond that because it's not hard to remember 4 abilities and the handful of ways you can use them. The games become more about positioning, decision making and coordinating with others. That's why 150 million people play League of Legends each month and 150 play GW2 sPvP. Nobody wants an unintuitive game where you have to practice for hours and hours and hours so you're not absolutely trash on a DPS meter or boon meter. You and others can keep deluding yourself that there's some inherent skill to putting in countless hours learning dozens of different 15-25 step rotations and that is what makes a player skilled... but then there's reality. The reality that none of you matter in a game like League of Legends, none of you matter in the raids scene in World of Warcraft. If you were as good as you think, why couldn't you succeed in these games? Why is your only success in Guild Wars 2? Soccer could add all sorts of stupid rules. You must hop on one foot without the ball, you must tie a hand behind your back. You need to clap 5 times before you take a shot. But they keep it simple. They keep it accessible. And despite being simple, soccer is extremely competitive and I'm nowhere near the level of Messi. Arena Net needs to ask themselves - should we continue to cater to this extremely small group of self-deluding gamers or should we try to make a sustainable game and game modes?

I've stayed on Tarnished Coast since launch. Guild Wars 2 end game and pvp content is trash so I'm not about to pay money to go from one trash can to another. I'm sure I'll get "then why play it", because I like playing with friends and people I know above anything else when I play video games.

Look at an optimal rotation on snow crow. If you want your problem that's it, right there. Nothing is as consequential as maintaining a decent rotation of your abilities. Does anyone deep down honestly believe that's a good game design? That the game is better served with a player remembering a 20 step rotation than making active decisions? The answer to why this game's end game content and pvp has not and will never succeed comes down to this. There is literally nothing rewarding or engaging for a player. Nothing. You memorized the rotation or you did not. It's that simple. The only reason people do these game modes is for gear or because they want to feel like somebody and they failed to be a somebody in the games with bigger communities like pvp mobas or World of Warcraft raids. The combat design in this game was so fundamentally flawed from day 1 and then their first expansion they quadrupled down on every bad decision from launch. The state of the game right now should surprise no one. The only thing people care about is open world pve where combat matters the least. Until this basic reality is addressed (with a Guild Wars 3) expect to be making another post like this in the future.

It's cute people who main this game for their competitive content think there are tradeoffs. That wrongly held belief is probably why they're maining this game and not League of Legends or DOTA 2 or Counterstrike or Valorant or Fornite or any other game with an actual sizeable playerbase that makes the game modes competitive. It's why in MMO terms they're not in World of Warcraft or New World or Final Fantasy 14 either. I desperately hope Guild Wars 3 is coming and they consider reviving the monk profession and taking a long hard look at how little tradeoff there is in this game when you spec into certain things (guardian, thief, mesmer, necro in particular in pvp modes).

I think most of us are aware that it's causing "skill lag" for everyone so it's not something one group can inflict solely on another. But it's like chess, white has an advantage once you reach a high level of play. You go first, you have an advantage. In GW2 if you know what you are about to do you get your stuff out first, trigger the queue. Thankfully I haven't had to make hard choices about avoiding playing with groups on my alliance, nobody seems to be using it from who I have played with but a couple of nights so far in this beta I've seen opposing zerg rosters stacked with a couple specific professions and any time we engaged them we got our skills buffering and not registering. And really the way the engine works just highlights another reason for the need to move on with a new, fresh Guild Wars to make the trilogy.

No but it's obvious alliances aren't about to lead to any revitalization if this test is any indication. There is primetime NA and then there's "does your server have 5-6x the players in off hour? Congrats, have fun. No? You can't fight anyone 1v1, you can't take a camp without 2-3 people coming to contest you, your only option is going onto EBG and hoping you have enough people to organize so you can sneak SMC or retake some objectives on your third of the map". They should consider having hours and shutting off WvW. Something like 5pm-3am EST. Outside of that, no WvW on NA. You can be a mercenary for EU. Same for EU. Set up a third region where the same is true. And then start balancing regions. If you're a mercenary you don't get a choice of servers. You get filled into one based on need.

It's great and no one will be punished. They just accidentally decided to stack their roster with it. Clearly not intentional.

Yes, do you know what garbage time damage is?

There aren't any easy answers here. I would tend to lean towards this beta being yet another useless to bad experiment. 1) Opened with WvW Rush immediately before it into the actual beta itself. Hopefully the last week of WvW didn't factor into the beta at all when assigning those who didn't pick active wvw guilds 2) Call of War is on which is great if you're trying to farm Gifts of Battle and you main pve. But it doesn't give us an accurate idea of who will be sticking around. I'm not here to blame pvers. But the reality is putting in place call of war messes with player counts and puts more dedicated players into queues. 3) "Play with your friends and guild" is a counterproductive concept when the pvp player pop whether we're talking wvw or spvp is miniscule. Especially when there's no adjustment for size, you just get more magic find if you're outnumbered 3 to 1. All you have to do is look at New World to watch how monopolizing the winning of wars has cratered the pvp population. If they go ahead with implementing these beta alliances into the game permanently you'll have people who decide queueing isn't worth their time. The best guilds will have already consolidated and will bully the other servers. The game dies out. That's what happened with New World. Funnily enough you can look at New World and exploits as well. The past couple of weeks I'm sure anyone participating in a zerg has noticed skill buffering in some of the fights they engaged in. It reminds me of the early ice gauntlet days in New World. It's an interesting window into how the New World game engine is different from the Guild Wars 2 one. Ban exploiters Arena Net. Please. When a guild comps to take advantage and exploit a server/engine limitation and then you see them again and again it gets old fast. We shouldn't have to play the game assuming a certain Guild tag will be exploiting tonight and so we need to use our abilities fast and early and hope they have more people buffering skills than we do.

Lets start with removing SEA IPs from NA WvW so we don't have to worry about balancing the offhours and those timezones completely screwing up the server rankings for the only time zone that should matter - NA primetime. If you want something less offensive - I want them to make Guild Wars 3. Ignore any feedback you got from the end game pve community. Those modes are basically dead outside of T1-T2 fractals where the combat mechanics frankly don't matter much. These end game pvers have no idea how to attract people to a game or game mode... they're just happy being "the guy" and lording it over everyone else. And those are the last types of people you want to be taking advice from. You see all the complaints about Boonball and it highlights the problem the same way end game pvers unintentionally highlight the problem. Combat is bad. Really bad. From the decision to remove monks in the design phase, the size of the skillbar in design phase, to the massive expansion of the skillbar from 2012 to 2014 and continued expansions with PoF and EoD. Boons, reflects, the ranged some specializations get. It's all bad. So the meta is now - memorize your rotation, sit in a giant ball of people or a ball of 10 if we're talking strikes/raids with some minor variation like maybe stack as 5 for certain raid phases/mechanics. Positioning doesn't matter aside from being stacked as close together as possible. Even when we talk solo roamers - things like thieves and mesmers have multiple abilities to escape from their own poor positioning choices. This game's combat doesn't reward skill as much as people want to believe that. This game is much more like attending lectures, memorizing the content for the exam. And if that's how your game is being described it's probably time to look at it and ask yourself: where is the fun? Where is the player decision making that impacts the outcome? The developers need to take a hard look at what makes the pvp games successful, what makes end game pve in other games successful. Players like decision making, intuitive combat design, rotations that don't take time to memorize but rather take time to practice mastering. And they'll find the common themes. Positioning matters. When you use your abilities matter outside of a set rotation you're trying to maintain 100% uptime of. And then of course there are benefits to a new engine, how many players you can have on a map, more technical things than fixing this awful combat system.

The core game almost everything is soloable and then mastery points are generally behind popular content (world bosses, fractals, etc...) The problem here is on Amnytas a lot of mastery points explicitly or implicitly require multiple people to tackle it. I can understand where they're coming from - locking this kind of content behind groups is kind of lame. Like getting 4 more people for Lyhr event. But on the other hand if you advertise in LFG or in map chat and you do a bit of research I don't think they're too bad to complete.

I don't understand. How? The 2,620 skirmish tickets is the cost of a set of Mistforged Triumphant. But to be able to purchase Mistforged Triumphant you have to buy the corresponding Triumphant set for skirmish tickets. Preview from the Skirmish Supervisor/Skirmish merchant is my recommendation. The Triumphant sets are identical from Ascended to Legendary. The Mistforged Triumphant sets are identical from Ascended to Legendary. Triumphant and Mistforged are nearly identical but Mistforged adds a slight glow that moves, pulses around certain pieces of the armor pieces, the chestpiece adds a big particle effect of 6 beams of light when you are wielding weapons. I really do recommend previewing from the vendor and wielding weapons, the top dye channel is the slight blue hue you'll see on the Mistforged version of the armor and it's pretty easy to overshadow much of the effect with a darker color. You can save up for Mistforged Triumphant legendaries or you can craft the Triumphant and return later to purchase the ascended Mistforged Triumphant and transmute. Again - there is no visual upgrade from the precursor armor pieces for sale from the vendor and the legendary you will be crafting. The Triumphant set you see at the Skirmish supervisor will look exactly the same when crafting to legendary. The Mistforged Triumphant will look exactly the same when crafting to legendary.

The OP can craft Triumphant legendary armor and transmog once they have purchased the ascended version of Mistforged Triumphant. The only difference will be when they look at the armor or ping it in chat... it will say "Transmog" and next line will say "Triumphant Hero's Breastplate" for the heavy chest as an example. That's it. That's the difference. Otherwise Triumphant exotic/ascended/legendary all look the same. Mistforged Triumphant and Sublime Mistforged Triumphant chest piece - look the same regardless of ascended or legendary. So it's up to the OP and anyone interested. Do you care if when you look at your armor pieces or ping them in chat they will say "Transmuted - Triumphant"? Most won't but I'm sure a small section might and will hold out for a full set of Mistforged ascended precursors. Like here is heavy gloves - Mistforged Triumphant ascended on the left, Mistforged Triumphant legendary on the right: https://i.imgur.com/vSguwQq.png And then if you were to transmute the skin you want on it, there's the text letting you know the base legendary: https://i.imgur.com/gQv1gnP.png Except in the OP's case it would say "Triumphant Hero's Gauntlets" in white down below and the purple name up above would be "Mistforged Triumphant" since that is the skin the OP would equip.

The graphics look good to me. Reminds me of Hogwarts Legacy. I think Guild Wars 2 has stood for a long time with its painterly artistic style. But it launched in 2012. I don't think it's some big loss to admit a game developed for a decade that launched in 2023 has better graphics. I would hope 11 years of advances in game engines, hardware has netted some benefit. Having more detail, being able to plug in seasons, rain, sun, clouds. From the looks of that review of Throne and Liberty they have two significant problems beyond being a typical Eastern pay to win MMO: 1) The combat is better but you still feel it's not great. They had a few months to overhaul and it went from really bad to acceptable. The grappling and other stuff is a bit janky and unintuitive. 2) Questing is a bit rough for leveling. They went halfway between traditional MMOs like World of Warcraft and events like Guild Wars 2. And it just makes things unclear and more grindy. I genuinely believe Arena Net should be looking at Guild Wars 3. Huge fanbase. Other MMOs are starting to plug in the "good" parts of Guild Wars 2. Arena Net has a good base in Guild Wars 2's event system and open world in particular but there are flaws, there is bloat and there are opportunities that a new game on a new engine would provide for. No one is saying "abandon GW2 tomorrow" but rather it's time to plan for the future.

While I think it's a cool the floating islands, dream world concept is a bit rough for being an inviting world you want to inhabit and be a part of. I think it sort of hits on the drawback of flying mounts like the skyscale and a world designed based on travelling with them. I think for me in terms of "I want to spend time here": Core Game and End of Dragons are probably the best at it with Path of Fire in third. Core Game is so many zones I'll explain in terms of End of Dragons - the first two maps are filled with allied NPCs everywhere. Seitung has the palace, then a city to top it off but then there are multiple small villages all over the island. Kaineng is one big city. They also have the fishing Leviathan farm. They're places you want to spend time where you'll find other people. I think if they had a bit more event frequency like the core maps they would be amazing. And then Echovald gets a little more sparsely populated like a Path of Fire map. And then you have the massive Dragon's End Meta event. I think that's a good philosophy and it's a similar one they took to the core game. You start with inviting friendly zones like Queensdale and by the end you're in Orr and they're large meta event maps. I wish SOTO was less intense on needing a skyscale and wanting a griffon for fun/speed. I understand it's something people were working towards before SOTO if they didn't have them but I think the maps should always be designed with someone who has no masteries in mind. Auric Basin where you start high and go lower. Kaineng with its staircases.

Celestial is never getting reworked. All you have to do is look at the new player feedback once they hit 80 or boost to 80. You'll see complaints about the game being too hard including Path of Fire. Celestial coming free with the boost is meant to counter this. Is it the ideal, perfect gear? No. But it gives you more stats overall and spreads them out evenly to help that newer player succeed in content or feel more successful. So the options 1) buff all other stats for gear 2) screw over new players and nerf celestial for the benefit of wvw roamers (lol) 3) rework combat and abilities so the difference between a new player and an experienced, knowledgeable player and their DPS isn't 900% more DPS for the experienced player but maybe 25% or 50% more DPS. 4) do nothing And do nothing is by far the easiest and most appealing. 1) and 3) are massive undertakings, 2) appeals to a tiny segment of the playerbase. None are happening.

Thief mains seem to think we're impressed, that they're skilled or that we think they're OP. LMAO. They truly do main Velcro shoes IRL. There is a difference between "this is not fun to play against" and "this is overpowered".