Taril.8619

Trahearne's issues are simply: 1) He is a complete non-factor in 4/5 races Personal Story until Claw Island where he'll randomly pop up and insert himself into the limelight. 2) The post Claw Island Core Personal Story is so dumb. In regards to issue 1, if he had showed up literally at all before Claw Island, say during the Order quests to highlight how he is familiar with the Order representatives, it would have relieved the issue of how, unless you're Sylvari, you have no idea who he is only that literally every military personnel scoffs at him trying to offer military advice with 0 experience (That said, whatshisface the guy he was arguing with when you first meet him was a complete tool, ignoring literally the advice of the leader of the frontlines while he was sat doing f all during the attack) In regards to issue 2, Trahearne should not have become leader of the Pact. He should have been 2nd in command as a valuable advisor given his knowledge of Orr and Zhaitan. In addition, Trahearne, who upon becoming leader of the Pact because he has no Order affiliations, should not have made the PC who is a member of an Order 2nd in command (We should have simply been the representative of our chosen Order instead of bland human male, Norn lady or scary Asura girl) These 2 blunders mean that the top 2 positions in this military organization have a shared military experience of 0. No wonder there were heavy casualties jfc... The next blunder was how irrelevant the Orders were after Claw Island. There was no more options to take a Vigil approach to things (Supported by Order of Whispers and the Priory) and highlight the virtues of jolly co-operation... No there was only "Go smash this thing" or "Go smash that thing" with a sprinkling of "CHARR WOO! EXPLOSIONS!". It felt a lot like undermining the entire purpose of the three orders working together when the end result is essentially just Vigil tactics only with NPC's wearing different outfits. The final blunder was the final mission. With the Zhaitan fight being not only without Trahearne (Who had been the star of the story since Claw Island as it was all about him fulfilling his Wyld Hunt with his magical super sword of amazingness, being supported by the PC who's goal or "Wyld Hunt" of sorts was to kill Zhaitan - Leading to the comments Trahearne makes when he goes to cleanse the Source of Orr about how it was fitting that it was "Just the two of us"), but also being a lame sequence of shooting cannons. Meaning that when Zhaitan was dead and we went back to Fort Trinity, everyone was cheering for US, despite all that we did was shoot a cannon a bunch. Anyone could have done that. Heck, Zojja was stood next to me doing naff all while I was shooting Zhaitan with a cannon, she could have done it. When it really should have been Trahearne and the PC who fought together to take down Zhaitan, just like we'd fought together to cleanse the Source of Orr, just like we'd been prophesized by the Pale Tree to cleanse Orr and beat Zhaitan together, just like we as two individuals with absolutely no military experience had been thrust into leading a large scale military operation together. After the core PS, Trahearne takes such a small role in things that he's not really a problem. He's just there every now and then to represent the Pact given that we left and thus can no longer do so... (Though, honestly, he shouldn't have been leading in the first place to allow him to do something else after Zhaitan was dead such as becoming a member of Baby's Edge or becoming involved with trying to help Sylvari whom are succumbing to Mordremoth's call. Or heck, maybe he could join an order such as the Vigil and get some training on how to swing his stupid magical super sword of amazingness?)

There's limited amount of character progression, sure. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many "Gear Treadmill" MMO's literally just string you along with shoddy content under the pretense that obtaining new loot is meaningful and rewarding. But then the next content patch comes out and you're back to square one where your gear is now crap again and you need to regrind out the new loot so you can be more powerful while you... Don't do anything since content is not made to use your gear in it's only made to house the gear you need to obtain. With GW2, the ease of obtaining a full set of gear as well as its persistence (Due to not arbitrarily raising level caps every expansion just so people have to spend a day gaining 10 levels before they can start grinding out gear...) means that content is designed with the sole purpose of being enjoyable to play. This also means that more content is playable since you don't have to worry about gear scaling making older stuff obsolete. Masteries still provide that "Leveling" feeling, without being a necessity in order to start playing the game (Albeit with annoying Mastery Point requirements that can roadblock your progression if you're not explicitly doing content that will reward them) This isn't to mention the fact that even in gear treadmill games, your character doesn't get stronger. Not in at level content anyway. Since all the enemies get proportionately stronger too, so you're still doing the same effective damage irregardless of the number of zeros tacked onto the end. The only time you'll notice the increase in power, is when you go to older (Thus dead) content and faceroll over it... Which has some appeal, but only temporarily and at the cost of ever being able to partake in that content in a normal state where it is actually enjoyable. In the end, GW2 has a decent model. I feel it could be improved with an endless Mastery of some description that doesn't need any Mastery Points but requires increasingly large amounts of exp so you can get progress onto it and get something from leveling it up (Be you at 313 Mastery and have nothing left to work on, or if you're at 113 Mastery and are blockaded by the need to obtain more Mastery Points before you can open up something new to put experience towards). I don't know what that something should be though... But outside of that, it's just about finding something you find fun to play and playing it. If you stop having fun... Go play something else and come back later when you feel like doing something in GW2 again, thanks to no subscription it's easy to dip in and out (Though, it's worth logging in every so often just to get the LW stories for free). There are worse MMO's out there for having little content that also come with subscription fees (I recently quit FFXIV, since the content that gets drip fed out is so shallow that the game is literally just a Visual Novel that costs $10 a month and gets a handful of new pages every ~3 months... But it's fine if you like running the same content over and over to increase the numbers on your gear like they matter (They don't) or want to go and challenge the harder content in the game to get even better loot (To then get Item Level Sync'd in 95% of content anyway) wew...)

Well, E-Specs weapons in some cases add to the "Drive" of the spec, due to lackluster core weapon sets that make the E-Spec weapons necessary in order to perform well. An example would be Power Necro, before Reaper it only had Axe/Dagger + Focus/Warhorn. Of which, all combinations are suck (With Axe + Focus at least providing some burst damage) and thus it relies heavily on Greatsword from Reaper spec in order to function. This isn't to mention any times where an E-Spec weapon provides a particular type of gameplay. For Soulbeast, their Dagger is literally the only MH melee condition weapon for Ranger, not only that but it is literally the second MH weapon Ranger has that applies conditions (Aside from the single attack from Sword that puts out a whopping 2 Poison stacks) Further to this, some E-Specs only really provide support for a single gameplay type. For example, both of Thief's E-Specs provide only Power/Precision and non-Condition Damage (With exception of the lulworthy Lotus Training at the end of Daredevil which is otherwise full of nothing that will help Condi play at all, especially T2 traits) which pushes their focus towards a particular style. Meanwhile, with Soulbeast, it does actually provide some support for a Condi style play, from the potential to merge with a Deadly pet to get Condi Damage and Primal Cry (For an attack that applies Bleeding stacks), as well as a couple of traits including both damage types (Twice as Vicious and Oppressive Superiority both give Damage and Condi Damage/Duration) Finally, with Soulbeast providing some support for Condi play, you'd expect it to be able to make use of Condi builds. Add to this the fact that Beastmode is melee focused, by the nature of every BM unique attack being melee (Or pulling enemies into melee range) and many pet attacks that become your F1 and F2 also being melee. Then what you get is an expectation of being able to make a viable melee condi build using the spec. Personally, I see Soulbeast as a wierd spec. It has some support for condi but not on all trait tiers (Also passive traits). It is however possible to make a viable condi build with it though, due to being able to just run a normal Trap + Shortbow build and you don't really lose out on much because many of Ranger's core specs are entirely one-dimensional that even without Soulbeast having any condi bonuses it wouldn't be worse than any other 3rd spec option since nothing else really does anything either... (Marksmanship, Beastmastery and Nature Magic don't really do much for a condi build either... At best you can get Hunter's Gaze in MM for some might...) However, this merely highlights how badly Ranger Core Specs could do with some updating to try and open up their options somewhat. Given that really, only Skirmishing has good options for both Power and Condi builds with a sprinkling of defence. Every other spec seems very one dimensional (With Marksmanship being the worst offender given that it's not only Power focused, but specifically with a tilt towards Longbow)

Most pets should get a 50% recharge reduction on their Beast abilities and some should also get a 50% cast time reduction too. 40+ second recharges for mediocre skills with 1-3 (Yes, 3) second cast times is insane. (Meanwhile, on a Tools Engine, spamming out 6-10s CD instant cast additional skills hitting for tons of damage and applying additional effects...) this should be baseline for Core Ranger. Most pets just outright suck because of how trash most abilities are. I could see 1 pet Soulbeast being more comfortable, if merged F1 and F2 skills where "Beast" skills, meaning they could proc Beast Ability traits (Live Fast, Go for the Eyes, Wilting Strike, Beastly Warden, Invigorating Bond and Poison Master) - You'd need to add a CD to Live Fast though. Also, Live Fast should proc when you use F2 while unmerged. Definitely remove the stupid extra stats from merging that artificially limits you to 1/5th of the pet pool because you want a pet that has useful stats when merged... Fix "Protect Me". Literally it states "Gain protection and barrier" as the first 4 words in its description. Yet when merged, no Barrier.

Mesmer illusions now have the same amount of health and armour as the Mesmer themselves. However, Mesmers are now hard capped at 1 Vitality and 1 Armour. :^)

Trader from Anarchy Online. It's fun because you get to steal a ton of stats from your enemies to make them weak and make you strong. It could fit into GW2 as an Elite spec for Necromancer. Give them Rifle to work similarly to Trader's signature Shotgun (Or P/P as Traders often dual wielded one handed shotguns) and then give them Manipulation utilities that allow them to siphon stats from their enemies. Potentially, also providing the stats to nearby allies too (Since Traders were often wanted to give stat boosts to allow twinking gear on), I'm imagining something similar to how Warrior Banners work only instead of the constantly buffing AoE it's a one shot siphon with a duration with of course the same stat modifier applied to enemies as stat down (I.e. Enemy gets -100 Power and Condi Damage, Necro and allies get 100 Power and Condi damage) Druid from WoW. It's fun because you can switch forms to access new skills which can fulfil different roles (Bear form = Tank, Cat form = melee DPS, Moonkin form = ranged DPS, Tree form = Healing) It could fit into GW2 as an Elite spec for Revenant. Whereby it causes their Legend F2's to become transformation skills, providing them with a new set of weapon skills and enhanced stats based off the particular Legend. Throw in a new Legend that would let them fill a ranged DPS role as the spec's unique one and that'd work just fine. Dirge from EQ2. It's fun, because it's your traditional "Bard" support class. But with the twist of not being useless when it comes to fighting because you can stab things, shoot things or use your voice to send high power sound waves to hurt and debilitate your foes. It could fit into GW2 as an Elite spec for Thief. Give them Facets which work as Songs providing Boons to allies at the cost of max Init. Also give them Warhorn to allow for further buffing. Mastermind from City of Villains. It's fun, because you had an army of goons doing your dirty work for you. It could fit into GW2 as an Elite spec for Mesmer. It would forgo its shatters and instead gain the ability to permenantly keep 3 clones that are much stronger. Its F skills would become abilities for the clones to use (Similar to Ranger's Beast skills) and Phantasms would simply be destroyed instead of becoming clones, while clone generating skills would simply heal the clones.

Cats and Wolves are pretty cool. But so very useless (Also, lmao at Jungle Stalker's 3 second cast time for a Might buff equal to a blast finisher in a fire field...) At least Fanged Iboga is pretty decent now I've swapped to a Condi SB build. Fairly long range pull and being able to vomit out some Confusion stacks is nifty. With it also being a Deadly pet so not useless when merged (I still find it dumb that you're artificially limited to 1/5th of the pet pool by being SB because of the stats gained from merging, even before you start to add in looking for pets that have F2's that don't suck which already has been limiting Core Ranger's pet selection forever...)

Sword 5 (Phantasmal Swordsman) doesn't spawn a Phantom if blinded. Which seems like a bug, given landing the attack is only necessary for the Might stacks and you otherwise are fine to whiff the attack and it'll spawn the Phantasm.

Arcane Thievery reworked to transfer your boons to the enemy and transfer the enemies condi's to you. So Mesmer can hard counter Condi Necro because they can't transfer their condi's if they don't have condi's! Mesmer has a lot of boon strip. But it's not fun when the enemy doesn't have boons. So now Mesmer has a passive that provides boons to all enemies within 1900 range on a 1/4 interval. Chronophantasma now also applies the 1.5s daze to the Mesmer whenever a Phantasm is created. Whenever an Illusion dies or is shattered, it deals damage equal to its health to the Mesmer. Gravity Well now has a 33% chance to create a black hole, which pulls in all nearby allies and crashes their game.

Err... No? Unless there's some game mode that jankifies the damage numbers. If I take my numbers from in game (PvE): Skirmisher's Shot: 837 damage, 0.5s cast, 3 initiative (1674 DPS, 279 DPI)Spotter's Shot: 1203 damage, 0.75s cast, 3 initiative (1604 DPS, 401 DPI)Double Tap: 1360 damage, 0.75s cast, 4 initative (2232 DPS, 340 DPI)Three Round Burst: 2355 damage, 1s cast, 4 initative (2355 DPS, 588.75 DPI) Three Round Burst, is both the highest DPS (Damage per cast time) and DPI (Damage per initative) skill on DE Rifle. Followed by Double Tap. The only damage loss from Kneel, is the damage per cast time of skill 2 where Spotter's Shot provides slightly less DPS than Skirmisher's Shot (But provides more DPI) Not only this, but your AA's hit harder too. My Brutal Aim was showing 628 damage, 0.75s cast time (837 DPS) while Deadly Aim was showing 1046 damage, 0.75s cast time (1434 DPS)

First off: It's possible to balance numbers and cast times so that ranged weapons continue having the same DPS even with an AA chain, with the only addition being maybe some minor utility from a condi on part of a chain. Secondly: Melee AA chain is actively detrimental to melee strength. Since it backloads their AA damage towards the 3rd (Or 4th) combo strike, punishing lower uptime (As well as combo cancelling from dodges and skill usages) as opposed to having AA's that deal a flat amount of damage every hit. Thirdly: Many melee weapons don't rely on their AA's as a main damage source, often having shorter CD other skills that they use frequently instead. It's more so ranged weapons that end up actually heavily relying on AA's for damage (Which leads to lackluster results for ranged weapons that have bad AA's, such as Necro Staff, Engie Pistol, Guardian Scepter and Guardian Staff (Which currently already has a chain AA))

That aside, just because somebody plays one piece of content because they enjoy it doesn't mean they don't enjoy everything else. It's not math, where A=B means B=A. There is so much content in this game that I enjoy that I don't have enough time to play even a fraction of it, and I doubt I'm the only one. People will only play what they deem suitably rewarding. This doesn't mean they will only play the MOST rewarding content, just that the content they play will provide a sufficient amount of reward. This can include enjoyment as a reward. Meaning people can play content just because it's fun, even if it won't give them any tangible returns (I.e. Gear, skins, gold etc) As far as not playing other content, this is the other aspect of analytics that often gets overlooked, since due to factors such as non-enjoyment related rewards pulling players towards a specific piece of content, it can mean that other content that is enjoyable is left unplayed because it is not rewarding enough to compete with the content with more tangible benefits. It is this set of circumstances that leads to analytics of player time usage that requires active thought and in depth analysis in order to full understand how to develop content. As you need to know exactly why people are playing the content they are, as opposed to taking the data at face value and assuming something like "People play this, therefore they enjoy it and people don't play that therefore they don't enjoy it" As a result, it's really key to look at reward structures to ensure that certain pieces of content aren't too rewarding in terms of tangible returns to try and maximize players picking content based on enjoyment, whilst also trying to gather player feedback so they can literally tell you what content they find enjoyable. Then you can use these pieces of data together to see what people like and what people don't. Which can THEN lead to you producing more content that is equally enjoyable if you fully understand the reasons behind why the content is liked and can apply that to new content that also offers something new (As people can find it less interesting if you merely copy/paste the same content again)

It would be nice. Adds some more flash to auto-attacking as well as some skill improvements when you try and time your abilities to not interrupt AA chains. Though, I'd prefer a fix to the issue of various ranged weapons being so lacking in their non-AA based damage, so that sitting around and auto attacking is a less prominent part of gameplay. Heck, one of the reasons I don't play my Ranger much is because I really want to use a Longbow and shoot from far away while my pet gets up close and harasses people. But for the most part, Ranger LB is just auto attacks with a skill 2/5 mixed in every so often... (It's not helped by the fact that Ranger doesn't have a second Power based Ranged weapon to use alongside LB to switch between at similar ranges as Axe is short range and SB is also short range and is condi) Outside of that, I think it could be cool to see what they could come up with for certain weapons. Such as Mesmer GS, Necro Staff and basically all Tridents. On a somewhat related note, I wonder if it'd be possible to get auto attacks to be Dual Wield skills? So that when using 2 weapons, you'll use both while AAing (As opposed to standing there holding 2 swords and only swinging one while your off hand just sits there doing nothing...) of course, that's a ton of work to add in for every weapon combination, but it'd be pretty cool.

Ehh... If there were tangible benefits for completing achievements, I'd rather they have more gameplay depth than "X% passive increase in stats" I.e. Like how as you get HoT Masteries, you attain more map mobility because you can use more stuff (Mushrooms, Glider, tunnels etc) Examples would be stuff like; Zone completion = You can see active events on the map.World completion = You can see world event timers and/or get notified of an event spawn irregardless of your current zone.Weapon Mastery = You get an item redeemable for a Legendary precursor collectionEnemy Slayer = Increases Kill Streak exp rewards for that enemy type

That's a misnomer. Analytics will not show what people enjoy. It will only show what people deem suitably rewarding. This doesn't only include things that people enjoy, but also happens to include things that people don't enjoy but which gives a reward that outweighs the lack of enjoyment. A good example is Daily Quest grinds in WoW. Lots of people did Daily Quests for Reputations in WoW because Rep vendors gave considerably good rewards (It used to be things like enchants for shoulder armour and the like, with this being the only source for such an enhancement). But it did not mean that the same people enjoyed doing this. In fact, the majority of people HATED it. Eventually Bli$$ard listened and removed such items from Rep vendors so people weren't enticed into grinding out Daily Quests to get them (But at the same time, they implemented other reasons to force people to do them because Bli$$ard is dumb and makes dumb decisions...) It however, highlights something that developers need to keep in mind, that high activity =/= high enjoyment. You need to listen to feedback to determine enjoyment, otherwise the high activity can be simply be due to the rewards being high enough to draw people in despite the lack of enjoyment.

I dunno. Back before its damage was nerfed? Sure. But as it stands right now, it's not that much better than AA's even with its 0 CD. (It's only around 50% more raw DPS. Without factoring in how AA's provide Life Force to get into the very high damage perma-Quickness+300 Ferocity+33% crit chance+10% more damage Shroud as well as AA's providing Chill for more Cold Shoulder uptime, which can also include Vulnerability from Bitter Chill as well as damage procs from Chilling Nova) With this being in the ideal scenario of PvE where enemies can't simply evade the highly telegraphed attack which would cause it to go on its full CD. Even with a shorter cast point on it, Gravedigger wouldn't be to obscene, it would essentially be similar to Thieves and their Heartseeker which has its damage go up by 50% and 100% on targets below 50% and 25% life respectively (Which has a cast point of 0.75s and has no CD inherently). Just bumping it down by 0.25s down to a flat 1s cast point would do a lot to make it feel better, it'd also put it on a similar cast point to Death Spiral and Chilling Scythe which are both 1s (Though, it would also be nice to see Chilling Scythe go down to 0.75s as it too can feel a bit slow) For raw numbers, a 1s cast point Gravedigger would do approximately 87% more raw DPS than AA's (Again, not factoring in the utility from AA's chill and Life Force gain) with its 0 cooldown spam. A 0.75s cast point Gravedigger would do approximately 140% more raw DPS than AA's, which would probably be an issue, making 1s cast point the more ideal number. (For further thought, 0.75s cast point Chilling Scythe would make AA's do approximately 11% more DPS. Making a 1s cast point Gravedigger only deal 68% more raw DPS and a 0.75s cast point Gravedigger only doing approx 124% more raw DPS)

Honestly, Scepter should have Devouring Darkness and the 50% condi duration increase from Lingering Curse as baseline.Lingering Curse should follow more with standard weapon traits. Something like Scepter skills have 20% less recharge, increase condition duration by 10% increased to 20% while wielding a Sceptre. For Greatsword, Gravedigger needs a faster cast. It's really bad. Especially since it doesn't even generate Life Force meaning that since so much damage is pushed into Shroud (Especially for Reaper) AA's can often be more meaningful to get some LF to use Shroud. Dagger MH needs to decide what it wants to be. Power or Condi. Then be tuned for that, with a boosted AA with either more raw damage or conditions. Then adjust Life Siphon for whatever option is decided (Such as stacking Torment for Condi with bonus application against foes meeting a bleeding threshold. Or for Power having a different threshold for its bonus damage, such as enemy life total) Staff... Needs some damage. Or needs more utility if it wants to be a supportive weapon that you swap to for non-damage skills. Meaning either; 1) Up the damage of skills 1, 2, 3 and 5. Increase the Bleed stacks from skill 2 up to 3-4. Add a bleed stack to skill 1. Or 2) Add Swiftness and/or Vigor to self when Chillblains procs. Add Protection to self when Reaper's Mark procs. Maybe add a Boon steal (Or at least strip if you don't want to give Necro access to boon steal) component to Putrid Mark Also, add in 20% skill recharge reduction to Soul Marks trait. Dagger OH should apply Torment stack(s) with Deathly Swarm in addition to its other effects. Focus and Warhorn both can be improved with the same change. Turn the Life Siphon skills (Soul Grasp and Locust Swarm respectively) into regular damage skills that have an additional effect of healing for 10% of the damage dealt by the skill (Or change them to similar functionality to Life Siphon/Life Transfer where they have a secondary independent heal effect). This means, they can then crit, vastly improving their damage capabilities.

I guess it's due to how Confusion is more about the proc damage from using skills. Heck, it used to be that Confusion didn't have per second damage and was only the proc damage.

My favourite is Thief. I like the speed at which it can play, what with being able to burst out attacks with initiative rather than waiting on CD's. Also, I like stealth and landing high damage stealth skills. Big numbers are pog. I dislike how most of its utility skills are the suck for PvE though. Best things are basically just run 3x Signets that you barely ever activate... Second favourite is Necromancer. I love dark magic and necromancy. I also like a lot of their skills which focus around stripping or corrupting boons which is a cool effect that is always satisfying to do. I dislike how their weapon options are Greatsword and... ... ... ... Sadness :cry: Third favourite is Elementalist. I like how many skills they have access to via attunement shifting allowing them to have a fairly diverse skill set. I dislike how it often feels like only 2 attunements are worth using due to how much you buff them with specializations (As well as how inherently good certain attunements are baseline. I.e. Water and Earth feel sucky baseline). Also, I dislike how instead of switching based on what skills you want to access at that time, a lot of the gameplay just revolves around constantly swapping attunements because using skills on CD is ideal as each attunement is not designed to be self contained (I.e. Skill CD's are made with the intent of you swapping attunements a few times before coming back)

I dunno, with exception of skill 4, which I think the shadowstep backwards that removes a condition is way better than the wall, I kind of like doing ~50% more damage per shot. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a rework of Kneel. Such as, if they really wanted to go all in on the "Sniper" fantasy that the weapon type and spec is going for, Kneel could be a "Stealth-like" mechanic, where it changes your next shot into a single, more powerful shot. I.e. Skill 1 becomes Death's Judgment, skill 2 becomes a powerful CC round, Double Tap becomes a powerful single shot that provides boons (Might, Fury, Quickness? Swiftness?) - All of these shots have Piercing too. Also, probably buff Sniper's cover too (Make it a ring? Let it give you stealth on cast? Damage boost while in/near it? idk) So, you run around like normal ratatataing with your 3 but then when you are safe enough you can duck down onto your knee and fire off a poweful single shot and then you get back up again. Slap a more substantial Init cost on Kneel, make the obligatory stealth skill adjustments to skill 1 (Basically, make Death's Judgment accessible while Kneeling and while Stealthed. Give it bonus damage while both kneeling and stealthed) and voila, you have a more thematic and overall fluid Rifle package. Where you're not choosing to become annoyingly immobile or forgoing that entire mechanic (And thus being left with a 4 skill weapon set...) while getting a bit more nuance in skill usage beyond 3333333333333

Except I literally stated that both players spend on gems. The difference was IF one group of players spends MORE than the other and specifically, if they spend on things directly related to the content (Since I'm sure Raiders play other areas of the game too in which they spend gems on) It's especially relevant when it has been mentioned that it's possible to earn a lot of gold from doing raids and crafting stuff to sell, given that gold can be turned into gems without ANET receiving a single cent. Which can lower the amount of profit made by developing raids. That's a gigantic "if" with no conclusive answer. There is very little correlation between content type and revenue/profit, but if you want to make one, take a look at the beginning of the Icebrood Saga and the few episodes before it, when the game had -exclusively- open world content. No Raids, no fractals, no PVP, no WVW, no other types of instanced content, no big world bosses. It was by far the weakest quarter in the game's history financially. If content type (the release of Raids) negatively affected profits, then surely having exclusively open world content would cause revenue to go up, but it went deep down instead. I'm sure there is a correlation between content type and profit. Given that different content types attract different numbers of players. Also, different content types utilize different Gem store items. I.e. A person doing mainly PvP won't be buying your gem store exclusive Gathering Tools, World Boss teleporters etc. Also, just because -exclusively- open world content was not the most profitable period in the games history, it doesn't mean that all content is necessarily profitable. We can't know for sure exactly how much money is used to develop specific content such as Raids, nor can we know exactly how much profit they generate. Only ANET can know that and they can make decisions based on such data where if they feel a particular type of content is not profitable enough, for whatever reason, maybe it costs too much to develop, maybe not enough people that play it spend on Gems, maybe the average player of said content spends less Gems on average etc. Then they can decide that it is no longer financially worthwhile to continue making that specific type of content and instead shift resources to develop other content instead, this can be more content of another type that IS profitable, or it could be a new type of content entirely. If we take the fact that ANET have seemingly stopped releasing Raids and instead release Strikes, it's an indication that Raids were not profitable to continue making and Strikes are less resource intensive to create. However we can't know for sure unless we work there and can see the data they have.

It could allow them to spend more resources on developing more stuff for the Gem store as well as more content for whatever audience is spending the most money on average on Gem store content. I.e. If your average non-raider spends more money on average in the Gem store than a raider, then producing content for non-raiders, to keep them playing and wanting to spend more money, is more profitable than producing content for raiders, to keep them playing and wanting to spend more money. It's not an ideal scenario to have to cut an area of content and thus lose a particular demographic. But there are points where if said demographic is not producing enough money to cover the costs of development (While making a profit, as that's important rather than just breaking even) then losing that demographic is financially the best call.

I assume that's a dig at me. In part because you think that my usage of the term "Lazy casuals" is implying that all casuals are "Lazy", rather than me specifying a subsection of the "Casual" playerbase whom are lazy. Not all casuals are bad players. Not all casuals don't bother to learn how to play. Not all casuals disregard looking up boss tactics to be able to be prepared for a raid. However, some are lazy and don't bother putting literally any effort into the game at all and then cry when things are "Too hard" for them until developers gut the content so they can complete it.

The main misconception that MMO devs typically have, is that they think making things more accessible (Which typically means "Make them braindead easy"...) garners a healthier playerbase. However, it tends to only seek to alienate people who like to have engaging content, while it simultaneously causes the players who don't want to put in any effort at all to figure out how to play the game just put in even less effort because nothing they're doing actually promotes them to do more. It has been a core problem with WoW since WotLK added in the LFD tool and started the slope of enabling lazy casuals, starting with dungeons being nerfed because "They're too hard" until every new dungeon is released as a faceroll. This then lead into the LFR tool at the end of Cataclysm, but again, "Too hard nerf plx" until LFR content was so easy you had to actively have the entire raid TRY and fail... Then we started getting easier Normal modes, Heroic modes and eventually by WoD, Normal mode was about as difficult as Cataclysm's LFR and it's been the same since... If anything, MMO's need to start going the other way with things and making general content more challenging to try and illicit a response from players to actually bother to play the game. Gamers aren't allergic to difficult games. The popularity of Dark Souls and thus the rise of the "Souls-like" genre says much about how people (Even disabled people, as noted with Sekiro when Journalists tried to be woke and talk about how the game was too hard for disabled people which miffed off tons of disabled people who loved the game) Of course, things don't have to be too challenging, since a common argument is that people play video games to relax after work. But the constant diminishing of need to actually engage with the game is not healthy for population. Meanwhile, when focusing on making things "More accessible", it should be just that. More tools to find groups, more places to practice content to get relevant experience before jumping into your first ever raid (Which would be possible by making raid-esk difficulty content in other areas of the game, so that it's not such a leap from non-raiding into raiding), more ways to check personal performance etc.

I dunno... A Thief having Lifesteal seems thematic enough for me. Even more so when you consider how Thief has been pushed closer to "Shadow Magic" with the rebranded Traps into Preparations as well as the new Deadeye Elite which uses shadow magic for Cantrips. Not to mention, life stealing poison is a fairly staple RPG trope The main issue with Leeching Venom is how trash Venoms are, with very few hits, poor status application (4 whole Vulnerability and Torment? wew) and no other effects...