keramatzmode.1906

Borderlands and Marvel ruins modern writing. Everyone are forced to give out one liners in every oppoturnity they have, and the hack writers think its a dopamine hit for the players so they'll cram as much of it in any form of media. If everyone loves canach, then they'll make everyone canachs. If everyone loves Joko, now we give everyone "Joko moments" and call it a good writing, disregarding the plot. Now in regards to the woke writing. Western population has been brainwashed into thinking, shoehorning these virtue singalling and political commentary in their "works of art" is similar to the Reneissance works, and get internet brownie points as a form of "reputation". Hoping they'll get a noble prize in literature one day. In the world where public attention is a commodity, it is understandable they claw their way to the top to chase clout and their careers. There is no concept of art anymore. It's all just people trying to be relatable as much to the general public to reap as much oppoturnity as they can. In my opinion any type of story that comes out of modern western writers is unsalvagable, uninspiring, full of hypocrisy and without care to the original "material". And it's not just Guild Wars either, Warhammer, WoW, all had to be retconned in some ways to become more inclusive (read: to boost their popularity by becoming more relatable). I'm not angry. It's just that I have to accept the fate of the failing country that I look always look forward to when I was a kid, but now crumbles in its own pursue of greed and colonialism in the form of social terrorism. If I want to stay alive in their systems, such as this game and its forum, I must follow their "code of conducts" (read: censorship) otherwise I will be silenced and be dragged back into the cell. I might even be removed entirely from the system. There is no hope for dissenters, I must waddle through Guild Wars 2 experience that imo is a really well crafted MMO, but plagued by the storytelling that simply does not work at fundamental level, on top of all these nonsensical tokenism and downright sexist undertone. To a point if this game does not have a story, it would be an upgrade.

The Jade Mech still did not recieve 100% precision from the player after today's patch, it seems to be capped at 2500 precision. Please fix.

OP I will give it to you straight. You should only buy EoD if you want the specs. Or you are bored of PoF and HoT content. You are not missing much, treat EoD like a badly written fanfiction expansion. If you care about the story of this game, my condolences. Skiff is somewhat faster than Skimmer, but it is a bit scuffed in terms of how good it handles, but its a fun trip with friends. If you haven't done IBS, do that first. If you haven't done Roller Beetle, Griffon or Skyscale, DEFINITELY, do them first. You will need that skyscale for EoD anyways. Buy the LS4 packs if you have to, rather than having to rush to EoD. All other gear stats that is gated by EoD, is not that important for PvE. Vipers are still good. Plaguedoctor still claps. No specs runes. Despite the nerf of PoF specs, EoD specs is not that much of a powercreep, and people would still rely on PoF specs for most activities. I can't say much about PvP, but WvW, Scrappers for example are still the bread and butter. Strikes are not that amazing presentation wise (I wished they had more of a FFXIV presentation value, considering this expac really reflects that style of content), but we're waiting on CM if it turns out good, or poop. Fishing is leisure activity, if you really care about it. I find it relaxing, some find it worthless. The value proposition may vary. And as this person have said, if in doubt:

No. EoD story for some reason takes 20 steps back, only manages to be better than the worse story package, that is LWS2. Not only they force their fanfiction, now even the ambient NPC talks like teenage schoolgirls when the world is practically minutes from destruction. I'm all for diversity, but the political correctness has been tuned to 100 to a point its not only an annoyance, but became the writers attempt at satire. If Postal was to make fun of "being offensive", then End of Dragons is the exact opposite of being extremist in PC. Oh wow, human drama where everything is just disagreements, and here we have female Jeff Bezos that is a god prodigy basically got a deus ex technology but still being dumb as hell, and all of this would not happened if we "didn't misunderstand her intentions". Not to mention they managed to write a worse antagonist than Mary Sue Scarlet who knows everything. This villain's motivation is basically an edgy Nine Inch Nails fan that is just there for the sake of padding. As if, the whole story is a stringed LWS scraps and drafts, sewn together into a frankenstein plot for the expansion. Don't get me started on the writers trying to modernize the dialogue. All in all, EoD story is probably the worst writing, only a step above LWS2 garbage fire. The whole thing reads like a badly written fanfiction. I always had low hopes with GW2 story and I would lower my standards, but based on past releases, IBS is still pretty good on its own right albeit having to be slapped with rushed ending, LWS3 feels very mysterious and intriguing, LWS4 feels very good with enjoyable villain (which they had to remove from the story halfway through because the writers hate it when players enjoy a good character once in a while). EoD is just kitten poor attempt at comedy-adventure, ended up making the franchise look like a Barbie movie joke even if the devs insists its a 10 year dragon saga conclusion.

What's the point of playing when you get disappointed every night, wasting 4 hours of entertainment that turns out to be pure frustration? It's not even l2p issue, because the more I play it, the dumber I became, and the more irrational I wake up every morning thinking what went wrong. Pretty sure the community, even the most hardcore auto attack bots, knows where to go and what phase goes next. No way this meta was designed with through QA testing. In fact, the expansion made me hate the whole game. Can't even have the motivation to login when you remember your 21 failed attempts because the boss decided to fly invulnerable right after we CC her perfectly, or a CC phase right after we kill the tail and failed the CC because half of them got whirlpooled (ie. not allowed to play the game). Because of this scuffed, luck reliant, coordination heavy (im cool with managing 10, but 50 risk factors though), I really just don't want to play anymore. Heck, it might even feel better if the whole meta never there in the first place. Or the whole expansion never happened. That would be a much happier place.

Ah cool, I was a returning player too after 3 year hiatus. There are still weapons skins that are not legendary, but still has unique sound and projectile effect, namely the pistol crossbow and rifle bolt thrower "Ironsight".

The plasma rifle skin has been there for a while, way before PoF even. LWS stands for Living World or Living Story. In the journal, you can see there is a gap between expansion stories, PoF, HoT. The gaps are Living Story 2, 3, and 4. There is also IBS (Ice Brood Saga), which is "expansion level content" in Living Story Package. Think of them as DLC missions, where you need to spend gems to unlock them. They also unlock a new map for you to explore and they have currency, vendors that sells exclusive items and ascended trinkets. They are however, free, for a time period (about 3-6 months or so) between the time of their release, up to the next LWS content release. Past that time period, you have to buy each for 200 gems, or get the whole package of LWS for cheap. They often go to sale so I suggest you wait for those. Remember you can exchange gold->gem, and its totally worth it, especially for certain maps and you need ascended trinkets for fractals. LWS return achievement is an achievement list you need to do at the map for each of the "DLC" maps. It's simple stuff like doing events or gather some materials at the nodes. The LWS return achievement is added during End of Dragons announcement, so its an incentive for people to do the LWS content while waiting for the expansion. It will remain there, and you also get a legendary Amulet, where you can give ALL your characters Legendary Amulet with changable stats on-the-fly once you unlock it. It's pretty good. The green bullets you see from Jade Brotherhood are specific to the NPC. Weird, I know. However, the gun itself does not give any projectile effects if you use it. If you buy the skin, all your attack projectile remains the same. Seems like you're a new player, I suggest just buy the skin because its pretty cheap at 31 gold. EDIT: The LWS youre looking for is LWS4, for Path of Fire. You only need to do one map return achievements, and you get the Plasma Weapon Cache, and choose the rifle. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plasma_Weapon_Cache

favored, good idea. So I can just have my muscle memory tied to Holo and Function gyro.

The rifle is a Plasma Rifle skin. You can buy it from Trading Post, or do LWS return achievements.

How they even thought of delivering this meta for public participation and call it "challenging", baffles me. This one time, I ran with a goated DPS pugs, we CC'd her, and IMMEDIATELY, she does the death circle. We peaced out and get ready to close in, only for her to swap place immediately after, and a tail phase, undoing whatever exposed debuff duration we should have gotten. Did they even run, or heck, even have QA staff for this content?

Mechanist does not recieve 100% precision from the player, it seems to be capped at 2500 precision. This is a bug that is very recent, it was fine before today's patch and they can hit 80% crit chance without buffs or boons. just fine Also, Fractal Potions stats bonuses from AR (Precision, Concentration and Toughness) does not transfer to the golem. Please confirm if this is intended.

Anet, why can't my golem get 80% crit? Did you capped their precision at 2500? This might be a bug. It was fine before the patch today.

You speak in circles reward person. It's no secret login rewards are the ones flooding the MC market without playing the game (unless you want to spin the fact that typing passwords 40 times everyday is a GW2 core gameplay). If CM does not contribute to overflowing Mystic Coins into the Trading Post, then why the minority of the playerbase is getting shafted? 2.7 gold per CM daily is STILL 2.7 gold. And again, CM runners are less likely to sell it because of MYSTIC TRIBUTE. Gen 2 legendaries are more premium than Gen 1. Some trinkets needs Mystic Coins. And if a small number of players buy mystic clover from the fractal vendor, why would you nerf it even more? Stop lying and be honest with us once of why you planned all this. Is it because you are willing to take the risk of losing the 10% of players to make 90% happy? Or you want to keep the gatekeeping barons with 50+ alt accounts and keep their MC wall up for quite some time without risking MC flooding into the market? It's funny because despite your heavy "acceptance" and "diversity" agenda of the game, you did the exact opposite when it comes to exploiting your minority playerbase, disregarding their PvE, WvW or PvP activities preferences. Worse, why even announce the nerf 14 days before the expac? Something does NOT add up.

This will be a long one but trust me, this whole write up is the core issue that has been plaguing GW2 since release and its expansions. TLDR: Axing your "legacy" content kills player interest in the game long term. 10 man content does not compete with 5 man content. Fix LFG first before you fix rewards. Anet, just drop the whole corpospeak, spreading "positive vibes" with "Spreading the love to other content" because we all know what you really did since the game launches. What you did is basically taking away "love" and put it on your shiny new stuff. It's not a "spread". I get it. We get it. You want players to do strikes. And it's totally fine if you want to give more MC faucets that compete with other activities. But you don't have to take away rewards from a game activity just to "push" people away into your shiny new thing. Or maybe, "strikes" you made isn't as fun as you advertised, so you had to put everyone in a stockholm syndrome to keep up with the legendary crafting mats grinding. But I think, hopefully might not be the case. I will present some key point why nerfing CM rewards, is a big mistake. Competing Activities Fractals is a 5 man content, and strikes is a 10 man content. The statics are different. The playerbase (that's tryharding it) is different. The level of "risk" you're undertaking is different when pugging. 1 player that needs to be replaced is easier than having to find replacement 6 players for example. Not to mention, you have to pug on peak hours for 10 man content, vs Fractals that's always available. But I can theorize Anet's fear of taking this action in the first place. Palawadan meta, (and most PoF activities/S4 except Dragonfall/Pinata) is pretty dead. Because it is triggered by event timers, and competes with HoT that just gives out better rewards. But here's the thing, it does not have to compete with Fractals or Raids. Mystic Coin Dillema Mystic Coin has always been the economy indicators for legendary crafting and most "shiny" items. Reasoning behind this has always been the Gen 2 legendaries that is Mystic Tribute. It has been hoarded, flipped and speculated to make easy gains because of how stable the coin is. Yeah sure, people would make Mystic Clovers out of it, but MC itself has since gatekeeping people from making Mystic Tribute. Mystic Tribute is the big issue that Anet should tackle. Yet, they had to remove an MC faucet for the sake of marketing EoD. 5-man content Back to 5 man content, Fractals is the last bastion of good, easy to access activity in the game to run a chill instanced content. Ever since you killed Dungeons (which IMO, have better map design) Fractals is the one stop shop to get your golds, get some lads together quickly and just do stuff. Fractals is also the only consistent gold faucet in the game (encryption). By gutting the top tier challenge of fractals that is CM, you basically kill any chance of new players to get into endgame content, and introducing them to instance content roles (Quickness, Alac, DPS, Heal). Which is exactly you don't want to happen, because you want to nurture Strikes players for 10 man content. 5 man content is also the best platform for these new players to meet good players. Players that might need that another guy to play for their raid statics. Because communication in 5 man party is much more relaxed than a 10 man squad, where people just bash the boss and leaves without saying a single word. Imagine if a new player asks a veteran. "Hey, do I need to care about CM? Will there be Mystic Coins?". And upon hearing the absymal rewards of hardest 5 man content can offer, they would just pack and leave. Killing the entire activity, even T4 runs and not even bothering putting AR on their gear. Why should they, it's not like they look forward to do Fractal CM with no Mystic Coins (because they want to make Mystic Tribute, not Mystic Clovers). Networking and LFG As I pointed above, Fractals is the best networking activities ever existed next to event meta timers like Auric Basin and Chak Gerent. People would socialize, form groups, and start taking notes of the names of pugs and people around them. See a good player in fractals? Hey, how about we invite them into this little group to run end game content? That is how you form a static, and that's how I get into knowing good players to consistently run CM. It's not rocket science, it's just how a comfy, 5-man content has always work in an MMO. Killing any incentive to play Fractals CM, will kill any need to socialize or participate in Fractals altogether. Now let's talk about LFG. LFG tool is antiquated, and so underwhelming and no changes has been made since it's "refresh". They don't instantly open the correct tab based on your area, and the information of the LFG is so limited the players cannot even find the players they are looking for. If you can't even advertise groups looking for Strikes, there is no point of this reallocation of Mystic Coins. THIS is the main issue of GW2 instance content, the LFG is BAD. The LFG is just very badly designed and anti-user, even new players did not know the existence of it to do AB metas. It should have an option to just display all LFG currently running on all activities (like FFXIV), and by default, show the LFG of activity based on your location. Conclusion I didn't even touch about alt accounts. I don't really care about Mystic Coins or gold per hour, but how you worded the downright nerf out and making it look like a positive thing (even having the audacity to call it "discount" as if we're all illiterates) made me a bit disappointed in the devs and a gloom outlook towards the game's future. You are basically telling everyone to be okay, while you're the one trying the hardest to sink the ship that you have done again and again. I love the game, you can nerf the mystic coins for like 2 MC or even 1 MC for whole CM runs and I would still can rationalize the decision. But having no MC rewards at all on top of upping the Mystic Coin to 2 for a clover, is just a spit to my favourite past time. Really killed the excitement for End of Dragons for me honestly. But then again, nobody can top disappointment better than Arenanet expansion pre-launch announcements.

I'm totally on board with Alliances information hub idea. API can only go so far and new players may not be so keen to rely on 3rd party tools (I know I did, I'm somewhat skeptical about GW2efficiency). Anet should take a step ahead and make a WvW Alliances Portal and update the UI in-game. I mean just look at the LFG tool and Friends Management UI. It is dated as hell for a video game genre that supposed to be social. HOWEVER, I do say Anet has slowly trying to "force" people to play together instead of catering to soloist players which is a good direction imo and I'm prettysure the WvW is getting ready for it too. The two-player turtle mounts. Two-player novelty chairs. Hopefully the WvW devs pay attention on LFG tools for Alliances, Alliance stats, Guild ranks etc.