Smoky.5348

Whaaaaaat? That's really weird. ANET, why you do this?

Did...the default backstraps not already count as an invisible backpack skin? Or, are they only invisible on charr or something?

Ahhh, the classic "incomplete transformation cancel" buffer. l never really understood why some bundles hide the backpack when they don't transform you in any way. Some bundles show 'em fine, so what's the deal? Reads to me like, "I didn't pay attention to which transformation I used as a parent".

Buffing core Tyria HP will not help. More health means you need to do more damage to get your minimum credit. Dealt 10k damage? Nope, no credit if that didn't pass the percentage threshold. This literally wouldn't be an issue if the game would just give you pity credit if you at least scratch the enemy. Easy band-aid fix. AFK leachers are gonna AFK leech no matter what, especially now that there's skyscale ""combat"", so no one's getting hurt from such a change. If anything, we need it to compete with the skyscales and DPS freaks. Of course, it'd be nice if events scaled more intelligently. When an event scales well, all it's doing is spamming more mobs or buffing their levels. It'd be better if they spread those spawns across multiple areas so players have to split up and, you know, take actual advantage of their numbers.

You mean the weird zooms that go too far and too close, then suddenly snap back to where it should've gone? It'd be nice if they even made it functional.

I love dumping on ANET, but that's not true. When EoD added a crate-carrying event that slowed you to walking speed, they realized charr had no walking animations for two-handed bundles and finally made new ones. They even took the opportunity to polish up other missing charr movements! It was one of the few times ANET did something right! And, it was for something as miniscule as walking anims. You take what you can get.

Didn't ANET say last year they were gonna work on better communication? Devs, fix it.

Want me to get into the nitty gritty of it? Okay, most of the mechanics suck. Red/Green Light encourages you to stand still in a movement-based game. Ley-Line Buildup doesn't spawn places to discharge your stacks half the time, so you just die after awhile if you get unlucky. The one where all attacks are blocked until you get close will randomly block your melee attacks anyway. And, all the other ones have vague or no audio to signal when the bad thing is gonna come out (love getting knocked down with no warning), or they're complete non-issues that you never notice (do Healing Tendrils do anything?). That's all to say nothing about certain mechanics gelling horribly with certain champs because it randomly assigns them. It's one thing that ANET reuses them so much, but it's another when they do that and the things just suck on their own. But, why improve 'em when they're too busy with SotO, right?

They really do just slap these abilities on whenever they can't come up with anything else. It was cool enough as a Path of Fire bounty standard, but then they just keep showing up. Have they even added new ones?

At the risk of an unwanted interjection, I think you're missing the point. The complaint isn't that they're free, it's that the stream trickles in slowly and they have to be managed like a resource. They are not given out like candy, and the more characters you have, the thinner your reserve of them gets. And, just because it's possible to amass a large amount when you play the game for a long time doesn't mean they're quick to come across when you don't play a lot. Yep, and look at our current alternative: characters standing around, animated with emotes, barely moving their mouth, maybe they walk somewhere. Those complainers might have had a point back then, but we have retrospect now. And, no, the general audiences may never be media literate. Just look at me.

Shield surfing sounds the closest to what OP wants in practice. There's plenty of mountains and hills to facilitate it, but not a lot end in ramps or similar for launching back up. There's also a potential issue of how easy it is to take fall damage normally. The concept is something I thought of before and would love to have, but it definitely would be mostly a fun novelty. Instead, l get my movement tech kicks from jumping up slopes with a raptor. FPS sliding seems to me like it'd clash with dodge rolling, which maybe it could be a replacement for it like how some classes do. If it absolutely had to function like FPS sliding.

ANET continues to communicate poorly. Forumgoers continue to shoot down every bit of criticism. I'd love to engage more fluently if it were worth a kitten.

Remember core Tyria personal story where we had skippable cutscenes and animated characters when they talk? Best of both worlds back then.

Welp, guess we still can't have something as simple as bump mapping without having to deal with that illogical fresnel light. Guess we're never getting that unless they decide to change graphics things again next year.

I hope when ANET splits the Shader option that they also include normal maps and fresnel rim lighting as individual options. Those two are only available on High setting, but I do not care for the way fresnel lighting makes everyone look like shiny ghosts, so Medium I stick with. The news post only mentioned, "bloom, color grading, color tint, distortion, light rays, and selection outline," so I post this for the sake of assuring all shader options become available. If I may be a bit anecdotal, I am also rather confused why those two effects are locked behind High. They have not been historically expensive effects, except maybe when they were first introduced in the gaming space. It's distortion and light rays and outlines that I've seen tank performance in other games. Very peculiar.