joneirikb.7506

Don't particularly are one way or another, probably use it if it was made, wouldn't miss it if it wasn't. Also, All the clipping complaints... and different armor weights not fitting each others and you getting weird seams etc. Yup I can imagine the kitten storm that would cause. Town Clothes +1 though, miss that stuff so much. The outfit versions are nice, but sure miss some combinations.

Well for Mechanics: Do you have an idea of what kind of build you want? Because that is largely going to decide the stats you want. Same goes with the rest of the gear. I'm no expert on Herald/Renegade, so not the best help for that. For Fashion: Go to any bank (in all the cities, or any crafting station etc), there is a tab there that allows you to see all the skins in the game. You can click on them and try them on your character, including mixing/matching pieces etc. Look through and find something you like. Warning though, some skins are super cheap, others are very expensive, and some can't even be bought. So be prepared that what you like might not be possible (for now, perhaps later, perhaps a long term goal).

Unclear: Are you asking about "Fashion" or "Mechanics" ?

I'm really mixed on HOT. One one side I think it's the best PVE content in the game.One the other, it's where WvW and fights went to kitten, as they started all the power creep and told the balancing crew to stop caring about PvP and only focus on Raid/Fractal balance.

It's a Design decision. The developers didn't want players to have a mount that "just flies". (For several reasons we can guess at, but only they can confirm, and it doesn't really matter since it's their choice anyways).Realism in a video game is whatever the developers says it is.How many birds have you seen carry a fully grown man on its back, and for how long ?Realism: We have a game where we kill dragons with circus-toy-weapons, run around in costumes so dumb looking even a Disney princess wouldn't be seen in it, where npc's hail the biggest murder-hobo in the world that goes around seeing ghosts, talking to the air, murdering random critters out of random, sits by and watch as centaurs slaughter them, as the great savior commander of the world. I'm fairly confident that the Player Character acting the way they do would have gotten hung at any part of history prior to 1900, and put in an asylum at any period after, if we where going to be realistic. And lets not get into the topic of hover-crafting lazer great-swords with purple glows and rainbows! Oh, and we can walk on illusions projected by light from Asura machines. Go physics! I mean if we're going to get realistic then start adding: Stamina bars that deplete constantly while mounted and more if rushing, the need to buy new saddles, horse-shoes (or similar), constantly feed, train, deal with bad days as the mount refuses to out in rain or snow, panicking at all the monsters around in the world, running away while you're mining a node, and refusing to jump out that cliffs edge throwing you off instead. So much fun. TLDR: Don't mix realism with game mechanics/design, the game is supposed to be fun and "gamey". Making each mount have different but limited movement abilities is a way to give gamers some new gamey ways to deal with situations in new ways.

I think there's a lot to be said for game design and the culture it creates. BDO has mandatory PVP that you cannot opt out of, whereas in GW2 it's strictly opt-in. WoW has the unholy tank-healer-dps trinity baked into the dungeon finder, whereas GW2 encourages self-sufficiency in character builds and skills that interact. The rewards in GW2 are non-competitive and there is a small experience bonus for reviving other players, so it's rewarded early on and that cultivates good player interaction. The core game philosophy was really good and this has been maintained and built upon really well. First regarding BDO, dunno, personally never seen anyone talk in that game at all, so can't say I agree. I mean by definition BDO would be the least offensive MMO game I've ever seen, simply because I can't remember having seen anyone say anything at all! ;) Regarding the GW2 comment there: Where GW2 encourages self sufficient builds, and basically to rely on yourself, while never forcing you to have to group up for anything. This also leads to the game feeling very anti-social, because most players doesn't group up unless they're forced to (lazy, too much hassle, path of least resistance etc). So I have several friends that tried GW2 and liked parts of it, but just get bored and wander off because it feels like a single player game, rather than an MMO game. Because there is very little reason or motivation to group up. This is one of the reasons why the Trinity design (for all its faults) still is popular, it gives players a reason/motivation to play together. If you play a Tank, you don't do enough damage to kill most big things, and you can't heal yourself, so you need others to help you. GW2 tried adding some mechanics to encourage players to play together (combo system for example, which has been completely ignored afterwards) but it just doesn't feel intuitive enough for most players to learn/use, and in an awkward way it doesn't feel forced enough that players bother to deal with it. So in the end, GW2 feels like taking the subway in London, full of people around you, but none of which tries to socially interact with each others. You're all there for a common purpose, to get from A to B, not to socialize. GW2 does a lot of good things with its design, but this is probably the one point where I think GW2's design ended up working poorly. /rant Possibly, but I think it has actually been gw2s strength. Sure there will be some who prefer a classic set up, but the subway analogy, whilst fairly apt, actually seems to work in the games favour. It attracts all those who want that style of multiplayer experience. Personally I prefer this vastly more flexible approach which allows for a quicker and more informal/casual team up process, than the rigid more excluding feel that other mmos used to or still use It’s not without a downside, but it’s retained and attracted a very large and sustaining population, so it has been a successful approachI do know several people that really enjoy the way GW2 is setup as well, and I myself did initially (because, I'll be honest, I was looking for a single-player game more than an MMO!). Which really seems to be the nail, most of the people I know that does like the game, indeed treat it as a single-player game with some optional coop functions (which largely doesn't require effort, which seemingly is a big bonus for most of them). So in effect, most of them tend to be the kind of people that wants to be social, but doesn't want to take the effort or initiative into being social. And I see a lot of other players with a similar mindset in the game, obviously not all and I've met a lot of different types of players here, but the game seems to appeal to that type. This creates a very different social dynamic in-game, than I've seen in most other games, including that a lot of the social aspect feels "shallow" because people aren't invested into it. Ironically the mode I've played where I've seen the most socializing on a stronger level is WvW, go figure. That said, I've lately been thinking that GW1 might have had the right of it. The way they setup the world with only the cities being MMO shared, and all the land zones being instances (with bots), allowed players to play how they liked in the zones, while going to the cities to chat, and show off their armors and minipets etc, and let people bring along people if they wanted to, or bots if they didn't. Because often times it feels as if that is the direction MMO's are taking anyways. So GW1 might have been before its time, and the MMO/Instance system there might have worked even better in a modern MMO nowadays. /rant2

I think there's a lot to be said for game design and the culture it creates. BDO has mandatory PVP that you cannot opt out of, whereas in GW2 it's strictly opt-in. WoW has the unholy tank-healer-dps trinity baked into the dungeon finder, whereas GW2 encourages self-sufficiency in character builds and skills that interact. The rewards in GW2 are non-competitive and there is a small experience bonus for reviving other players, so it's rewarded early on and that cultivates good player interaction. The core game philosophy was really good and this has been maintained and built upon really well. First regarding BDO, dunno, personally never seen anyone talk in that game at all, so can't say I agree. I mean by definition BDO would be the least offensive MMO game I've ever seen, simply because I can't remember having seen anyone say anything at all! ;) Regarding the GW2 comment there: Where GW2 encourages self sufficient builds, and basically to rely on yourself, while never forcing you to have to group up for anything. This also leads to the game feeling very anti-social, because most players doesn't group up unless they're forced to (lazy, too much hassle, path of least resistance etc). So I have several friends that tried GW2 and liked parts of it, but just get bored and wander off because it feels like a single player game, rather than an MMO game. Because there is very little reason or motivation to group up. This is one of the reasons why the Trinity design (for all its faults) still is popular, it gives players a reason/motivation to play together. If you play a Tank, you don't do enough damage to kill most big things, and you can't heal yourself, so you need others to help you. GW2 tried adding some mechanics to encourage players to play together (combo system for example, which has been completely ignored afterwards) but it just doesn't feel intuitive enough for most players to learn/use, and in an awkward way it doesn't feel forced enough that players bother to deal with it. So in the end, GW2 feels like taking the subway in London, full of people around you, but none of which tries to socially interact with each others. You're all there for a common purpose, to get from A to B, not to socialize. GW2 does a lot of good things with its design, but this is probably the one point where I think GW2's design ended up working poorly. /rant

You can test out the elite specs in PvP if you just want to try them, or just to see the skills/traits etc, and try them against some npc dummies.

Strongly dislike stealth, mostly because it's just annoying to play against. I think it would be much less annoying to play against if it was less frequent, so people doesn't blink in and out of existence, and also less stacking. Essentially, a 3 seconds stealth infrequently in combat, ok. Not the current: 4 seconds here, 4 seconds poof, 4 seconds here, 4 seconds poof. I don't mind a single skill like Shadow Refuge, that can give a single longer stealth for a long cooldown, with counter play. But the current stealth stacking should go away. I'd rather see the classes that depends on it (Thief mainly) be reworked to benefit from other things instead (Like triggering backstab off Blind or imob etc). There are ways to play against stealth, and it is definitively a L2P issue in general, but stealth is just one of the least fun aspects of the combat. Most of the time, if I find a thief or something in WvW I tend to just turn around and run away, because it's just too boring to even try to fight against them, all the way thinking "Well, stealth was one thing WoW got better than GW2...."

Lacks option: None.

Regarding long and short cooldown elites, I think it would be a good change to have both. If each class had 1 strong effect long cooldown, and another medium effect short cooldown (slightly beefed up utility), that could create more variety in each class.

I mean, you're dead set on the MISTFORGED version ? You can't do with just the normal Triumphant armor for now, and consider the other a long term goal ? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triumphant_Hero%27s_armor https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistforged_Triumphant_Hero%27s_armor

The solution is in your own words. "If they greatly reduced the cooldowns", "if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage"... It's not a matter of a racial skill being useless for all builds or it suddently becoming a requirement for raids. ArenaNet could simply make them slightly less useless - so they have slightly reduced cooldowns or do slightly more damage - and they would still be worse than profession skills. Just not as bad as they are right now. The problem is that it's not always the damage, or durations, or cooldowns, and often a mix of many things. It would be just as hard to balance them properly as it would be to balance them to be "weak enough in everything to be useful but just NOT hit meta!". Norn transformations are already weak as all heck, but reduce cooldown to 60sec, and suddenly they're good for something, since you can trigger it rush 2x, and fire it up again and rush x2 to rush past just about anything (like dungeon mobs). Even if the actual transformation and all other skills are a direct heavy nerf to your build and play. Players are very creative when it comes to finding and abusing stuff, I mean the Bear transformation was considered utterly back then, until someone found you could use it just to run away in WvW with, and then it got nerfed hard again ! (I had finally found an elite skill I wanted to use on Guardian !) It's very difficult to say what "little boost" is going to make one of those skills actually too good. And I'm guessing ANet is just going to say no to that, and since nothing is META right now, just leave it at that until for some reason someone finds a new use for one.

Mhem. So, people don't care that much about a certain profession dealing 5-10% more DPS than another one when selecting which one they'll play, choosing mostly by which has way to play suiting them most, and partly based on bundled aesthetics - and they suddenly will start to choose race (which affects aesthetics a great deal) just because its elite skill is 5% better than profession's elite skill? Doesn't make much sense. Some will do, ok, but it will be meager percentage, especially taking into account that balance changes over time (the skill can be nerfed later on), but you can't change your race.While I do agree, there are also other considerations. For example if they greatly reduced the cooldowns on bear/snow-leopard forms, then you could use their rush attack skills to run past and bypass more mobs in dungeons, so speedrunner "meta" becomes norn. There are unfortunately a lot of people that would polarize on this, until we start having people auto kicking non-norn from dungeons/fractals whatever. And if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage, suddenly it will be required in some raid groups etc. People are pretty darn nutty about min/max. And there are too many "sheep" that just flat out follow whatever it says on Snowcrows or something. It's not really a design problem it's a human problem :p I guess the only way I can imagine this to work is to disable all racial skills outside of open-world. Including blocking them from all isntances (dungeons, fractals, raids), and WvW as well. Heck I still remember when Bear form was excellent for running away from zergs with in WvW sigh Glory days! My guardian could escape stuff in wvw!

Yeah, however much I'd love to see the Norn racial elites (wow that sounded both racist and elitist!) actually become useful or have their cooldowns reduced to 60 secs or something, since they're largely a nerf on a decent build to activate anyways, not going to happen. ANet said they specifically don't want racial skills to be good enough to compete with class skills in any ways, because there should never be a reason to pick one race over another for a specific class. So I've given up ever getting any use of the cool Norn Elites.

To the OP: Make a own chat window, disable whispers, and use that whenever you're in WvW.

About Casual: This part always makes me wonder. After all GW2 was never made or designed to be a casual MMO game, it was always a MMO game made to have a lot of different options available for a lot of different types of players. For example the entire combat system, and thus PvP (and to some extent WvW) thus automatically appeals to the more "hardcore" players, Dungeons especially with exploration paths did the same. At launch even maps like Orr would fall more into that group, than casual. But for some reason, because this game doesn't increase levels and gear/ilvl per expansion people call it casual? Which was clearly made the way it was, as ANet themselves said, to encourage this game to be easy for people to get back to, from playing other main MMO's and thus use gw2 as a 2nd main mmo. Not to become casual, if anything the entire combat system should have dissuaded anyone from thinking this game to be casual. Granted, they have since nerfed and dumbed down entire open world tyria until it certainly feels so weak that you don't even have a proper chance to learn your actual combat mechanics until you get to Orr (which nowadays feels about as difficult as Queensdale did at launch...). So the only way I can see GW2 really described as casual, is by some hardcore wow elite veterans saying "Game doesn't have gear/level grind? How casual!". Then again the way people fling the word "casual" around on this forums, I don't think people really understand what it means any-longer. About Raids: Anyways, to get somewhat back on topic. I think it is completely natural and expected that GW2 being a game focused around giving a little bit of something to everyone, has raids, and keeps them as they are, the end game for those interested in doing hardcore content. To make a solo version of that would cheapen/lessen the experience for those that are currently interested in raids, just as much as making Story missions and open world tyria into hardcore content difficulty would piss off all the players that enjoyed that type of content. Humans are naturally inclined toward the feeling of success, and different people will find what kind of success they feel themselves best able to get, and latch onto that. It's just how human nature works, no matter how much most tries to deny it. And thus humans enjoys feeling exclusive because it is another feeling of success, which brings us to rewards, humans actually react positively to exclusive rewards and will search out rewards that others can't get, because it makes them feel successful. This is pretty much the whole glue that makes games like WOW work and be as popular as it is. Which also means that if everyone could get anything they wanted from anything in gw2, well less people would actually end up playing, because most would lack a goal (get something). So even though I've tried exactly 1 raid, with a bunch of random murderhobo's... I mean guildies, and died a bunch of times, laughed, and went away and never tried it again. I think it is completely ok for raids to be how they are. They serve a purpose, and that is to keep the hardcore content fans interested in at least coming back for a few weeks every time a new one launches. Technically I wouldn't mind an "easy/training mode" with absolutely no rewards at all (no loot, achievements, gold, any kind of tokens/currency etc), but at the same time that would have to be something ANet worked into future raids, not retroactively, because that would likely just be more work than it is worth to them when it already works as intended.

Yup. Unfortunately the HomeBL system restricts it too much. Enforcing the 3 BL maps + EBG. Keep hoping they make some slight changes to Desert and Alpine, to make them into full BG maps instead of BL, so they can start changing the number of maps dynamically to the need at hand.

Interesting idea, but I see a problem with it, it will just mean that a zerg vs zerg becomes stare-wars because no-one wants to push, since they can't use aoe's.

To be fair, I'm not entirely up to date on this, but I thought all JP was made to be possible without swiftness, at least the core ? the 25% or swiftness can help some of them for sure though. and the length of a jump depends on the forward movement key not the jump keyYes I know, I've even said the same thing in this thread. But I believe all the JP's (at least the core original ones) was designed so that you could accomplish all of them without speed boosts, they can still make some jumps easier by giving more leniency though.

To be fair, I'm not entirely up to date on this, but I thought all JP was made to be possible without swiftness, at least the core ? the 25% or swiftness can help some of them for sure though.

Casual or Competitive ? (ANet won't tell us) Fair-weathers Coverage/Population (24/7, teamsize depends on player whim) Core Game-play largely rewards larger numbers Power Creep (AoE/Scourge, Boons/Condi, stats/runes, food)

It was fun the first time back in 2012/2013, I've never ever touched it again.

My Norn Guardian shouting "SHAVE YOURSELF!"

"Thats quality armor!" "Thank you so much, take a look." And every cat that goes "meow!" in places like waypoints, or next to crafting stations etc. Repeatedly right clicked and tried to "block", ANet please make that work!!!