Keneth.6490

If they can move faster, then you can move faster as well. If skills are the issue, they can just be made to strike faster and farther to offset the movement speed. I don't know of any other games that slow down movement in combat and they seem to have no issues with gameplay. Honestly, all of it just feels like an excuse for some technical issues that couldn't be dealt with originally and then remained as a technical debt over the years. Also, on the topic of speed, I absolutely hate the fact that larger creatures (e.g. norns) animate more slowly. While it makes sense from a technical perspective since all of the races need to move at the same speed to put them on even ground, it also makes them feel annoyingly sluggish when they're being played or makes them look silly when it's some larger NPCs. And don't even get me started on NPC walking/running speed and animations. Ugh! Anyway, these are all just pet peeves. A lot of it has improved in the last 10 years and I suspect we might see some more improvements as the years continue to pass. I only really notice it when I'm bored. It's not like I have time to care about animation speed when I'm in the middle of raid.

Thinking about it some more, I've thought of a few more things I'd like to see. Ranger Pets & Beastmaster Since rangers are terminally bound with their pets, I'd really love to see some customization options for them. Maybe some dye channels or barding or something. Mechanically, I think they're fine now, but visually, they're just not very fun. I would also really like to see a ranger spec that can finally have a grown-up pet. We're out there fighting dragons with poor, little, juvenile animals that have barely learned how to walk. It's especially annoying because there are NPC rangers that clearly have adult pets, but not the world-saving commander. Engineer's Turrets, Drones, Mechs To the same note as ranger pets, I think engineer turrets, drones, and mechs are some of the lamest looking things possible. I expected to see at least some gem store skins by now. Social Events in Hubs People spend a lot of time in hubs, just fiddling their thumbs, chatting. Having some simple social encounters/activities in every hub would help alleviate some of the boredom. There are some events, like races and escorts during holidays, but there should be some things to do in hubs year round. Hero-like System Unlike in Guild Wars 1, we don't really invest ourselves much in what the other heroes do or what they look like. We see them a couple times a year and they may or may not be using a new specialization. They're also completely useless, other than the times they're using some broken skill that the commander doesn't have access to. They're worse than henchmen from GW1. It would be nice if they were, at least in some part, customizable, like the heroes in GW1 were, even if we can't control them directly.

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 for well over a decade now and many more years if we go back to Guild Wars 1. I have spent more time in Guild Wars than I have working any job or doing any other hobby. I have interacted with tens of thousands of people from all over the world. I've made some lifelong friends, seen my guild grow and shrink over the years, and went through various stages of my own life as well. It's been quite a ride, to say the least. I want to reflect upon my experience playing the game and highlight some of my hopes for the future and some things I think were done poorly or well. I've done something similar at the end of BWE3, way back in July of 2012, just prior to the game's release, and I'm happy to see today that most of my concerns have been addressed, at least in part, since that day. This is my love letter to Guild Wars 2. It'll be a long one. I don't expect anyone to actually read it or comment on it. It's not a suggestion thread, though I'm sure there might be a few kernels of wisdom in it. I'm making this thread for myself, so that maybe in another 10 years, if I'm still around, I might look at it and say, "Nice! We've come a long way since then." THINGS I HOPE TO SEE IN THE FUTURE Tengu playable race & Dominion of Winds This is probably the least likely content update that's going to happen in the game, but I've always hoped that we'd get tengu as a playable race, hailing from the Dominion of Winds. Unfortunately, due to the sheer amount of art assets currently in the game that would need to be adjusted to introduce a non-human-like race this far down the line, I understand that we'll likely never get to play a tengu. Still, a man can dream. I would at least like to visit the Dominion of Winds at some point. Spears on Land, Greataxes, Polearms, etc. Historically, spears are one of the most widely used and effective weapons used on land. The fact that we can only use a spear underwater has been a thorn in my side from the beginning. I got excited back when Heart of Thorns was announced and we got a video of some spear-wielding characters, only to be let down when I found out it was just a staff with a spear-like appearance. With the addition of specializations, enabling the use of spears on land for a class or two shouldn't be that daunting. To that note, the recent addition of the Devil-Rending Greataxe hammer skin also made me wish we had actual greataxes and other polearms in the game. Alas, I think that while some of the classes still aren't able to use certain weapons, we won't be getting any new ones, but maybe someday... New Guild Content Guild missions and other guild-centric features haven't seen much love in years. They were fun for the first year or so, but without seeing any fresh content or having a good reason for doing them, people got bored and stopped coming after a while. While there are plenty of things for the dev teams to work on, I really do wish they'd focus a bit more on the Guild part of Guild Wars. We could use things like event scheduling and a notification system, besides more missions and content. Bartering This is a feature that I'm sure we'll never see again, but I do so dearly miss the bartering system from GW1. I think natural trading that does not need to rely on a single currency (coin) is healthy for the economy, but I do understand that free markets are harder to monitor and regulate. Plus, the endless chat spamming with sales and third-party auction houses just made the whole experience less satisfying for the casual player. More Super Adventure Box I think SAB is some of the most fun content in the game. Some people love it, some people hate it, but it's unique and challenging, and I firmly believe it deserves more attention. I am aware the devs are slowly working on W3 and W4, so this is just my affirmation that I hope to see that content soon. New Mailing System To put it simply, the mailing system is functional, but just barely so. It is extremely limited: there is no formatting, you can't see the account name of the sender, the inbox is minuscule, and the throttling is ridiculous. There are technical reasons for much of that, I know, but the fact that I can't mail a reminder to a large group of my guildmates or even figure out who I got a mail from because they've deleted that character the next day makes the mailing system all but worthless aside from getting stuff from the store or events. It needs a serious overhaul. In-Game and Out-of-Game Chat Integration This has been on the docket for the API team for years and is another on the list of features that could bridge the divide between in-game and out-of-game communities. Currently, we all have our own discord servers and forums, but it would be nice if there was some integration between the two aspects of each community. Hell, at this point, with the prevalence of Discord, it might even be a good idea to integrate with Discord from the game, rather than trying to find a way to do it the other way around. More Underwater Content I know this topic is taboo, but I really love exploring underwater environments and I had hoped that with the water dragon expansion, we'd see more of that. Since there isn't really a good way to handle underwater combat, there's only really been a sprinkling of underwater stuff in recent years, but I do still think that a few masteries and skill updates could go a long way toward making the underwater world a fun place to explore for everyone. Weapon Skill Order This is something I had hoped to see since the beta events. Over the years, I've come to terms with the fact that weapon skills are fixed and all the regular updates and new specializations have ensured that things don't get too monotonous. However, one thing I still want to see at some point, is the ability to change the skill order for each weapon set/build. It would help a lot with improving skill rotations and just general comfort. Name Generator Another feature I've been hoping to see for many years is a name generator. Being able to generate race-appropriate (and maybe even class/warband/whatever-appropriate) names when creating a character would be really nice. I waste so much time on finding a decent name for each of my characters and finding third-party name generators is a pain in the foot. Settings Presets I would really like to see an option to save a preset of all my settings locally. Being able to switch my keybinds, audio, and graphics changes to a preset with a single click would improve my overall experience by a lot. I know I'm not the only one who wants this feature since I've been debating it with players for years. THINGS I THINK COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER Combat Speed I've never liked the "combat speed" mechanic. Ten years down the line, I still don't like it. I'm not sure if it's a technical issue or something else, but I see no good reason why characters would need to slow down when entering combat. The addition of mounts and the many movement skills, both on player and enemy side, have done a lot to improve the dynamic nature of combat (and out-of-combat exploration), but I still think this was a flawed design from the start. Crafting Material Accessibility Although efforts have been made to improve the accessibility of certain materials, I think more could have been done by now. Messing with the economy is a daunting process, but low-level materials shouldn't be worth more than high-end materials and there's no reason for leather to be that much rarer than wood or ore. Legendary Collections Originally, precursors were only rare drops. If you were lucky enough to get one, you could craft a legendary weapon for a small fortune. If not, you had to amass another small fortune to first buy a precursor on the trading post. This was an unpleasant experience for a lot of people and the ability to craft legendary weapons was supposed to be a remedy for that issue. Rather than throwing away a massive sum of gold on the trading post, you were supposed to invest time and effort into completing different collections for intermediate stages. Unfortunately, the cure ended up being worse than the disease. In an effort not to tank the value of precursors and legendary weapons, the crafting process was made in a way that requires an absolutely ungodly amount of materials that ends up costing you more than the item you could just buy on the trading post. And no, the real treasure isn't the friends you make along the way. I think what was done for Prismatic Champion's Regalia was a much better way to go about it; It was rewarding and pushed people back toward older content that may have lost its popularity. Gem Store Prices This too has been a long-standing gripe of mine, but when a single mount skin costs more than an expansion's worth of game content, you're blissfully missing the point of what micro-transactions are supposed to be. And don't give me the "we have to pay our artists" schtick because the prices don't even remotely justify the effort of creating the cosmetics and you know it. Chalk this one up to either corporate greed or the inability to balance gold-gems exchange rates. Either way, I tend to stay as far away from the gem store as I can, which is unfortunate. THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN DONE EXCELLENTLY Fractals, Strikes, Raids, World Bosses End game content has come a long way since the original dungeons. From stacking in a corner and spamming skills to challenging encounters that require coordinated efforts. It's been a long road, but I believe we now have something for everyone to enjoy (at least in PvE) and I absolutely can't wait to see more content in any of these areas. Masteries I've always been more of a fan of lateral progression, rather than vertical. I think masteries were a great addition to the game and a good way for people to feel like they're still advancing, even after reaching max-level. It also allows for content-focused advancement without affecting the overall balance of the game. Specializations I think specializations are a great way of introducing new class mechanics without introducing new classes. Getting the use of new weapons and skills to change the role of a class is a very natural way of adding build variety to different classes and reducing the need to run very specific class/build combos in every group. Regular Rebalancing Efforts I might not always agree with the changes, but I think the team does a great job of balancing the skills and traits and making sure the meta doesn't get too stale. For a game to have a long shelf life, this is absolutely vital and I'm happy to see that the process is ongoing.

Lately, I've been taking some time off from the game, only checking back to once or twice a month to do some administrative work for my guild and play the festivals. Unfailingly, whenever I log in, there's an in-game mail or two waiting for me, which tend to be anywhere from a week to a month old. This puts me in an awkward position of having to apologize for my delay every time, so I figured I'd check back to see how the API development is progressing, as being able to access my in-game mail through the API would allow me to send out notifications and instantly check my received mail without having to log in. As a guild master, that would be a big QoL improvement. Unfortunately, there still don't appear to be any endpoints that would allow that (unless it's hidden somewhere and I missed it). Is there any chance we'll see one in the future? The in-game mail system is clunky as it is, so it would be nice if we could at least supplement it a bit out-of-game.