Sunchaser.9854

Runescape is 21 years old, enough to drink and drive and still has 100k players active playing it anytime. It was celebrating it's ability to get to legally drive like 5 years ago.

Considering the more 'suggestive' side is like a snargle goldclaw writing fanfic in a strike zone of all things who looks more in tune with a Winnie the pooh monocle meme, I'm not sure how much I'd even want a 18+ gw2. What would supposed to be there? L4d2 or doom style gore upon every skritt kill via explosion or gore or some like goldclaw fanfic stuff like witcher or mass effect? It's been quite a couple years since a dungeon or raid update if they're even supported anymore. I'm not sure the limited development time available as is being used to uh... Create whatever people are thinking of would be a best use of any resources.

I mean are we looking at a darker tone vs run of the mill, you are the super good guy, you beat up every problem (including political) with good violence. Does the ambassador not trust you? Just kill them in a 1v1, yay. Because you are the good guy and now he is dead or in jail. Or are we looking at like witcher3 or red dead redemption 2 styled scenes or mass effect romantisible npcs? Or bdo chest sliders? I typically play mmorpgs to have the fun progressive loot grind having items and unlocks that dramatically can change gameplay. From even fan modded rpg servers where Phoenix armor could offer you self revive chances on cd, special weapons could have special attack effects creating shockwaves or rings of earth etc. I loved that. But I think a witcher content endorsed snargle in the strike zones would feel a bit off to me. Plus I don't think I want to think about a charr having to watch the lord Karen and Queen jennah and kasmeer mead storyline.

It's 10 years of content silly, and the 6 months without content is still 6 months of content silly. If a game has no dungeons for 9 years, you're still getting 10 years worth of updates! Just use your imagination. Gee there's just so much content! 😛 , You can even collect outfits as a endgame, gee. Didn't you know? They just made one of the most fluid combat systems of all time so everyone could be on a laggy megaserver so we could all enjoy the content made at launch. The content Is logging in to do nothing in arborstone for 4 hours, and logging out with +25% rested xp so after you log back in you can log out. But to be fair, eod came out only 4 7 months ago, and expansions are no easy feat for most mmorpgs. Still, i feel ya. Even fractals kinda lose their luster when you realize some of the maps seem to be repeatably re used with just boss changes for a focus on quantity on limited resources. I guess you can't blame em but like when they design a gear system where strikes reward 1-3 pieces of 300 strike prophet shards for a piece of gear and going to a meta and farming for a hour is 1-2 pieces worth, there's really not much point to do the content over flower picking other than boredom. I don't know why they don't do the 4 difficulty tier system but gw2 likes doing stuff only it thought of. I always thought the LFR Tourist mode / Normal / Heroic / Mythic or whatever ff14 does with normal, savage, and ultimate wasn't a bad idea. You have a tourist / entry level mode for people who accessible content / Justify raid content development to masses for funding. Then a middling mode for guilds or lfg to try towards that might revolve around, 50% optimized build use. Then a hard mode for people in their teens or who want a grinding session, and it helps a lot where it makes the content accessible but also can make it last 2-3x longer. Gw2 tries to do this but when you achieve ascended gear, most people just play 1 main so there's not as much of a treadmill or point to, so the thing just kinda breaks. Even if they add new raid content, why will anyone play it when it doesn't drop any new gear, doesn't offer accessibility for new players to learn the mechanics, depth for the talented players or rewards to strive for. Instead. Exchanging gold for gems and buying outfits and sitting afk in arborstone for 7 months is.. Kinda the endgame. i guess(?), But maybe we'll get a living season soon.

Hoarded mystic coins? Why not sell them? They already have a use, people making login bots and hoarding or prices rising or falling as they're used in masse for legendaries is already a pretty good dump. Sure, it might give login people more gold but also at the same time the reason a tp tax even exists is to prevent inflation and yet you wouldn't see anyone shed many tears if it went away until inflation came with it. Mythic coin hoarders don't need tailor made updates because if you're rich enough to hoard more than you can use, one probably chose to buy more than they could use in terms of wanting a easy profit. They already have a great dump for most people. Selling on the ah and letting supply and demand and the economy with gold from other activities fund demand. Now. 6879 Excess essences of luck past the 300 cap with a exchange rate only available less than once a year and extremely tedious to exchange on the other hand. You can't even do anything with luck 11/12 months of the year while you can sell coins on the tp anytime or make a legendary anytime. And people will properly point out that's a 1% problem having more luck than you can use, but how often does someone float past 250 mythic coins where a tp post is locked in all months but december? Pretty much never. 😛 , Coins are so much finer as is. It's literally the only people this would majority benefit are people trying to hoard who already have dumps lol.

To quote samurai jack "When does the sale begin?" " . . . . . . . . . . . .. . ..... . . . " "There is no sale. . . Is there?"

Personal choice question: A: Is class balance one class played to all 5-8 /10 slots or 10/10 slots. B: Or is it each of the 9 classes having something to bring to the table? Because gw2, seems to view class balance as 1 class stacked 8-10 times. Especially from a "class diversity patch: Buffed mechanist +20%, removed warrior banner buffs, nerfed 2% playrate catalyst for being meta defining " It nerfed classes seeing 0.5-2% playrates to.. Make what should be a 3% playrate spec represent 40-80% of the meta(??) Now those pesky 1/10 warriors can't ruin class diversity by bringing themselves to a raid 🤨 . That was a real problem you guys know.. Having one class in a raid. Now we just use 8 mechanists. Gw2 is the best game ever. It solved the class diversity problem in a way no one else thought of unique to gw2. 🤷‍♂️ Who needs class balance. when everyone can balance themselves by pressing delete 10 year old character to all have 8-9 people play the same class, Spec, and weapon. That sure doesn't affect gameplay at all when people just stop talking in raids, autoattack, log out, and then not log in the next week to the thrilling combat of auto attacking simulator 2022. The most exciting mmorpg combat. Combat so thrilling, you'll watch netflix and play a autoplay mobile rpg for that thrilling auto loot action. Geee. It's like... The part of wow classic where paladin's only job was to sit in a 50 man raid casting 5x 10 minute long buffs on 50 different people every few seconds. Such . . . . . ... Engaging . . . Content(???) After all, this is the video game balance we're going to get. We just might as well just admit if all the other posts haven't worked that it's unlikely mech is probably going to get any serious changes. Honestly after about a month of gw2 i did my goal of ascended, i tried raids, it was all mech, i tried strikes, it was all mech, i looked at open world soo won, it was all mech, i went over to echovald wilds. It's all mech. And im not even a ele or a warrior. What do the other 7/9 classes even bring when mech does more than the other 8 classes bring combined? There's not even much raid loot, you play for fun and yet everyone is a afk robot. Or you go to living world and it's more afk robots. I think i've only seen 1 non mech pass past a 25k bench and it was some person doing 32k dps until they literally died from melee or lost the boon ball and had to switch mobs and had their dps crater 32k to 22k. Others classes are just zero reward for more effort. While usually providing less boons. And having less viable healing specs. Sometimes, some specs aren't even considered full or viable. There's few to 0 to any spots for a healer spec that heals less, provides less boons, or heck, Even just provides more healing but no boons or might. So much of the gw2 balance is smashing 5 people in a 5 man group together to get 25 might, 100% alac, 100% quickness, and maybe vulnerability / stability or survive one shots either with dodging or facetanking while double outhealing other classes off passive 400-500 hp/s regeneration vs 5000 hp / 30 sec comes into play. One class does it all, it's the jack of all trades, master of all but ones. While the other classes are masters of nones with 0 anything they bring other than 1-2 firebrands vs 5-8 mechanists. The only boon mechanist can't provide, engineer still can. Quickness, it can still provide with scrapper. The tool is just overly loaded while the other classes aren't as rewarding. Making them feel like they lack oomfph, payoff, or hard not to feel like some severe favorite child class favoritism is going on. (Benny #1 gets a car after he crashed his last one, you get to clean it child #9!), Mech/engi gets great 100% access to all boons / Alac/quickness / Might/ Self quickness in one class while the other 7 classes don't bring anything to a raid. All you have IS realistic risk without realistic reward. Sure, After all, Warrior no longer brings anything to a raid, but at least you can bring it and still do the content fine. It can hit a dps golem very hard where all boons are provided and then provide nothing to a group while losing more dps in practice vs a raid dummy. All risk, no boons, no rewards. So warrior is still viable. Just what does it do better? Does it range dps better? No. Does it practically raid dps better? On paper, not practice. Does it provide boons? No. Does it heal? Lol, no. Does it like.. Provide some group benefit? No. Does it lose dps if the target moves, yes. Does it do less dps overall when movement is added? Sure. Does it have banners do nothing. Sure. Does it heal? Lol no. Does it dps well? Lol no. So what does it do??? With mech, their upsides are they do every boon better than you, dps better in raid mechanics in practice, with less effort and 4 button mashing rotations vs 34 part 75-> 0-5 energy management rotation swaps with aura canceling. And your only reward is... To quote willy wonka. Pretty much Nothing. You can get to work harder because "you want to work harder", and there isn't a reward. That's Class balance rn. I mean i don't even care at this point, it's just a video game. But pretty much, video games are just a luxury. I got my ascended, logged out and stopped caring. So i'm just sitting here i guess. Looking at either deleting a 10 year old character to play a class i might not even like or enjoy or just log off the game or wait for a character slot update. Raids don't even get frequent updates, neither do fractals, neither do dungeons. Rotations are so much of how you interact with a game and if you take the gameplay out. What do you have left to do even? I actually liked the fluid gw2 rotation over ff14, but knowing there's no reward to them, is like knowing there's a worm in the center of a juicy apple. it just kinda eats away at the previous excitement you had towards finishing and wolfing it down when you notice the wiggling tail and hole around the apple you were previously eager to bite into and enjoy. If the top performing spec of skill based content is semi afk button mashing, what's really the point of getting invested and learning 34 part golem rotations, to compete with someone who went afk and autoregenerated 3x more hp/s than you?

You can be at the top of a class with a B- if your peers are C+s and F-s. But that doesn't mean that there aren't higher potential grades out there for self improvement. After all, in the real world past a public school, how many colleges do you go to where you can fire your teacher if you don't agree with the part where you said 2 + 5 = 25? While we might always want people to stroke and coddle us with praise, there's much strength to learn in how to use and focus criticism to become a better person, a harder worker, a more intelligent student, a smarter chess player. But all too often a common pit trap for people is to choose comfort over growth, and choose praise over criticism. It's only natural after all, but if there was never a critic for a airplane's dangers we'd never have the parachute and without the optimist we wouldn't have the plane. But if people just fell out to their deaths on the words of praise i mean. Some people love that in a world coddled only with positive feedback, it might be a easy mistake to never want to work on fixing your potential weaknesses to turn them into strengths. As people have pointed out, it's easy to fear it, but if gw2 had never added mounts, or (some) endgame group content (no fractals, raids or 'hardcore' content at release i heard), it might have had a much stronger holding. The first launch trailer of gw2 got 22x more views than the eod trailer even now, though it still chugs along decently well for a 10 year old mmorpg. Sometimes i feel like it has talent but sometimes it feels like it's sudden rise is just the other mmorpgs also surrounding themselves with yes men who agree that removing flight and mount use is the best gameplay (WoW), and that endgame content should be spending 15$ a month to rp in fancy houses. (FF14). And 'endgame' in gw2 is... Cosmetic outfits.. Yay. But it's still a fair model. It's probably just telling when your competitors are less caring about gw2 but more hoping microsoft will buy them out to change the Activision's management than they are worried about competitors. Most people honestly aren't any more aware that gw2 exists outside of gw2 as much as anyone who's not a Aion player knows it exists. People still pick Lotro sometimes over gw2 just because they're the same age and they like lotr more. Even some semi indie games with literally 0 advertising spending get millions of views like Cave story and Braid, Super meat boy, terraria, Undertale and Five nights at Freddy's (Like the game or not), really do quite well at getting exposure and winning fans over. Selling yourself and welcoming everyone from pacifist to genocide undertale players brought in a good community, and i think even Fnaf has horror games and kiddie collection games i think now. Gw2 has good open world but if content lasts forever, why not make more content for everyone(?)

Exposure is exposure, gw2 isn't a game you're expected to play 24/7. Even as a skeptical at some moments, it's probably fair to assume that even if not every player is a instant hit, people might be logging in for 10 minutes and logging off to do dailies or what might look like 3000-8000 players at any given time might really be like 30,000-50,000 players who spent like 1/10th of a day on a game maybe playing it for a few hours and logging off. For better or worse, gw2 isn't a game you log in and do like 18 hours like a wow might be after your leveling finishes. You get ascended, you don't do gear ever again. You don't get 5-8 pieces of epic loot over and over again with every month having a new upgrade to have the mmorpg experience being replacing new gears with massive loot drops. You grind gold for a hour and craft ascended or roll the rng lottery on fractals or strikes/raids where i think most people just sound like they end up crafting the chest/helm/legs at least anyways. 3-8k or not, those are new players and exposure for a game that people aren't playing 24/7. It might be a lot more than we expect and i mean even if instant success or not. there's finally a page on one of the most publically used mass reaching game store fronts where even indie games with 0 advertising like Braid get millions of sales just off the advertising a steam page and "friend is playing/friend recommends X on steam" can be.

I remember buying the 50-100$ collection and it came with both 2 inventory slots and 2 lvl 80 boosters, and I think only +1 char slot from eod, but I think buying those separately is cheaper. So you should be fine on sale but technically you can get it 5$ cheaper by buying pof on sale for 15$ + 30$ vs 50$ collection and 20% off gems on a 20% off sale for like 1300-1500 more worth. But I think the deluxe still comes with a.. Kinda meh raptor(0-400/1200) character slot (500-800), And a makeover kit (0-300). It's up to you but as mentioned you only need like one lvl 80 boost for a main and you get 14-20 tomes of levels a month of logins.

Mechanist takes 4-9 slots as alac dps, ranged dps, healing alac dps, as well as barrier, self healing, survives one shots with 20% hp remaining while auto healing through it in raid encounter fight videos that mash the eles to smush, and I can't recall the last time I saw a bladesworn pubically pass 25-30k in a strike, but I'd need 85+ fingers to count the times I've seen a afk mechanist or someone get the top 5-10 dpses with a 28-35k mech gap to the first non mech dps in a squad of 50 being 17-26k and then dropping off a cliff to 1-10k. Mechanist fights for all roles, firebrand is A group support that does one job and from what I hear can have a fairly revolved rotation. If 4-8 mechanists are used a fight but only 1-2 firebrands, I don't see them as much a population problem as take that role away, will they alac dps like mechanist? Will they afk or outdps 98% of non 25k+ benchers or 0.1% of over 30k benchers. Idk. But their role is about as oppressive as a 9 class game having a 1/10 slot for a 1/9 class banner warrior. I don't think a class that takes 1/10 of the spots that aren't 8-10 mechanists is bad. One spec that should be 3-11% of the population is 7-20x more represented than it should be which means other classes are just given all risk, no reward, no boons or range identical or lower dps gameplay. Can you name one thing that Thief provides that engineer cannot? Actually, lets go one step further. Can anyone even name me a single trait that thief or warrior can even provide that engineer can't? At all I guess, even? They even removed the shiro's presence from rev. They literally removed near every 'unique' buff except the buffs firebrand and mech provided, which made it all a stacking fest with less point to bring warriors, revs, thiefs and eles and mesmers and rangers. Pretty much every class in the game that's not mechanist brings nothing to the table they can't do better. And if they did, had it deleted war banner/rev shiro's presence style.

I remember something like this came out when people who bought the original 60$ launch boxes of gw2 and the original sc2 wings of liberty campaigns when they went f2p. "What do we get for our investment?" And they answered the last 7 years of being able to fund it and play the game before anyone else. And new players to play with and a wider community. Personally I'm glad that they've added these, its nice to have at least one skin for a mount you use and while I rolled some rng boxes and got two roller beetle skins, a skimmer skin that's near identical to the base, and a near identical bunny skin, and stopped rolling. I can now finally have a Griffon skin without rng box rolling. Though I'd still have liked a living world sale and I'm barely logging in past 2-10 minutes a day after ascended and dailies/weeklys just since I have nothing to do. Might as well make gw2 a mount driving game tbh and at this point without a gear grind I'd be happy to mount grind just fun mounts to use like Wow if there's not epic gear shooting out the 3-8 drops a boss per 5-10 minutes like a raid boss or dungeon chest. It's nice they're giving a once per 10 year freebie and I don't want this ruined. The gift was having it for several years before other people and getting to pick one more skin of your choice.

Just for brainstorming/meme/novelty purposes. I think as discussed all bases seem pretty full, but thinking of some mount ideas for novelty all I could come up were novelty mounts, zone specific interactions, or personal preference mounts. But just for fun and brainstorming here's a couple novelty/meme ideas. Living world 6 Jade Beyblade: A highly fast spinning beyblade style combat top akin to the Top of Zelda: Twilight princess. It could feature fast momentum and the ability to ride leylines by hopping on top, tony hawk style, richochet off walls and have a living world twilight princess style 'wall riding mechanic' where the outer edges of the rims could be a gear to solve puzzles, spin gates open, wallride crannies in the walls of a living world designed for it. As well as having potential utility like a bounce ricochet ability where crashing it into a wall fires it off at 110% SPEED the other direction while being able to spit out shiro style poisoned combat blades to either attack enemies or being used as mock propellers for semi hover flight/fall damage negation. It'd likely have to be a living season locked mount in a area that disabled other mounts and could also probably power jadebot charges just via use as well. It's purpose mostly novelty but it could have a niche as a fast moving blade spinning combat mount for tunnels and also wallriding and puzzle solving within a open world, like jackal vs raptor. Norn wolf sled?: Featuring a pack of 4 siccable wolves, This could be just a more qol preference novelty in between mount between raptor and roller beetle. It could travel at 80% of the speed of a roller beetle but MUCH faster than raptor while having much better acceleration, handling, and turning with the energy bar used for a 60% distance raptor like wolf jump as well as having it's engage be siccing 4 combat wolves, inflicting bleeding, crippling, vulnerability and damage for the first 10 seconds of combat. It could be mostly a novelty mount as a hybrid between raptor ANF roller beetle. Master of none, but often more rounded than a master of one with fast speed, good turning, and 60-120% the best of both worlds of turbo speed, jumps, and rapid acceleration. Meme ice cream/food truck: Moneymaking mount for the excuse of novelty. A mount that could sell food items to npc as well as provide stats for the player and act as a cooking station. It could be hard coded to have some joke asuran/jade food delivery service with rocket thrusters in the middle of new cantha, selling packets of ice cream to npcs as well as periodically generating expirable food (vanish 60 minutes after logout) ice cream buff foods and utilities. Perhaps not dps buffs but karma, magic find, health regeneration and selling 5-10s+ ice cream for some 30-50g a hr joke mission. Not a greatly wanted mount just a meme mount searching for a reason to exist. Could also probably rocket thruster to run people over, carcrash dominos style, and explode Michael bay style when crashed for massive air damage + burning as the car explodes in the distance. Why exist? Why not is the only answer...

Honestly I think they've kinda done a good job covering all the niches, it'd be hard to release anything that didn't encroach on other mounts or be semi redundant (skimmer vs skiff without fishing), or another gemshop item like qol mounts such as akin to a how's traveler mammoth or longboy with tp houses (bl merch), repair vendors (endless repair canisters) , Crafting stations (city hubs), etc. Perhaps a souped up griffin that could gain flight and fly from standing height with a prerequisite to own both previous mounts (griff + skyscale) could work, such as osrs resolving the torva powercreeping handle re release problem by making the bis gear require it's predecessors to craft a best of both world's item. You could have like some feathered bird dragon with the flight of skyscale, the dive of Griffon, stronger overall flaps with perhaps lower height loss and flap pulses. Or make a two seater flight mount. But they could just as well just buff Griffon to have a stronger starting jump from flats and sky scale to have greater base speed as a upgrade as well. Other than that could be more mobile combat mounts, perhaps with lances and nests meant for rapid farming, mob clustering and mobility at like a jackal level speed with hooknets. But then again any combat mount has to compete with elite specs which might be a balance issue. Too strong and the mount overshadows specs. Too weak, zero point. Equal strength, why bother more actions for same reward? You could make fun to use mounts like the beetle and maybe a go kart just for the fun and turn gw2 into a racing game. Hover jets, motorcycles, go karts, maybe even glider upgrades to make it compete with griff and the wow dracthyr evoker who I think they want to give griffon flight abilities on a base class. But I just can't think of any untouched mounts past qol vendor mounts, two seater flying mounts, or just fun to use mounts. PoF covered everything well. The only thing you could sell is redundancies or upgrades.

It seems like the difference in ability use between two power mechanists, one autocasting their mech abilities, and doing a mostly 4 button rotation with grenade kit, and a snowcrows rotation is a 35k-35.5k vs 36k difference, about a 1.4%-2% dps difference, though it is unclear if the other person is using infusions on their gear. For the condition spec sure, a 37k difference is +2% potential dps but might open itself up to damage clipping or parts where the spec will punish itself if not properly snowcrows performed. If by going to the toilet you mean 98% of your dps vs 0-10% of most other classes, then sure. the mech doing 98% of the potential peak of damage without any risk of 10-40% dps punishments for suboptimal presses is in the gutter. There's always a skill gap but it's a class that can do only 1.4% less dps than the snowcrows bench for very little investment while also autoregenerating hp, surviving ele one shots, being given the option to teleport, wait a few seconds on using cds, has no auto attack chains it needs to manage to do the bench, as well as no weapon swap + stance or attunement swaps. Though yeah the kits are closer to most other classes or engi etc. It's one of the only classes you can go for a bathroom break and get a +20k dps bench for going afk and range and instant power and 28k dps for the autoattacking part and 7k dps from abilities isn't much to sneeze at in a game where suboptimal rotations on other classes may only result in 20-40% dps for 90% of the average population or a red splat on the floor of the eles and bladesworns who focused too much on rotation and went splat to the one shot the engineer didn't even know they afked through and autoregenerated their hp through. It's represented in 40-90% of pug content and 40-80% of challenge mode content for a reason. It's a class that doesn't really punishing inactive play and it has good performance without the punishment while also having great boon coverage, sturdy self healing while afk, and also good ability to take range and do mechanics while ranged. While most other classes just get one, but not the others.

Sure. In a golem scenario where range, uptime, invulnerability phases, boss stability, self healing, teleportation, heavily front loaded damage, and raid vs golem results as well as ability to provide boons to a 5 man group aren't needed sure. Even though they represent like 40-66% of all challenge mode or 40-90% of all pug content or up to 80% of raid groups for challenge modes cleared if you want, the other 20%-60% of the raid is still viable to be non mechanists. That's very true. Just what should be like 3-10% of a class representing like 40-66% of content doesn't mean the other 60-90% can't all be part of the other 33-60% of remaining slots. You can play what you like, but for one class, it's all upside, zero risk, all the rewards and boons, and even when it's nerfed it doesn't lose any damage vs a ele or a warrior nerf or banner removal. Even when mechanist does get nerfed, it goes 35k to 35k dps or nerfs it's self healing by nerfing barrier and then buffing boomer. Just being willing to try content and do it well can often get a spot, but there's often a difference between a raid boss that tries to instakill you if you look at a piano rotation for one second vs a class that can go out to microwave burritos and survive the ele one shotting one shots with 20% hp left and autoheal through all damage passively while also teleporting or moving with +25% movement speed if it wants to. It just doesn't have a drawback except everyone plays one. Closest i've heard to a drawback is the mech 'makes jumping puzzles harder' 😛 So. Yeah. All pluses, no drawbacks, except i think people get bored on the spec sometimes. Since a rotation is how you interact with the game and well if the game plays itself for you, some people get bored, other people love that. I think the 4 button rotation still is about 30-33 presses per minute, so it's not that bad i guess. I've yet to see a soulbeast dominate as much real content in practice like a dps golem on paper though. I think their rotation gets entirely wonked and it's not that unusual to go into raids and seeing the first non mech vs mech being 15-23k dps vs 35-38k dps gaps. It's a mouse clickable rotation so, whatever floats someone's boat i guess.

I think the stark class balance difference is so warped for mechanist vs everything else, engineer players sometimes complain loudly about scrapper, which allows them to do all roles (alac mechanist, healing alac mechanist, dps mechanist, barrier + might + 50% quickness uptime + teleporting + range mechanist + 25% movement speed mechanist, as well as Quickness scrapper to have the role versatility to provide pretty much every role if needed. (Though usually a quickBrand takes a spot). Engineers going from mechanist to scrapper will then complain about "hypocrisy of non mechanist players not asking for scrapper buffs", but.. Scrapper is closer to a normal non mechanist spec than most specs are to mechanist, and even then, i think last time i checked, scrapper still had a 10%-20% higher benchmark on dps than my class's quickness option at 24k solo dps, 27k 'group dps', vs scrapper's 30k bench. So really it makes you wonder. If going a mechanist to scrapper, a class that can still deal 10-20% more quickness dps at 30k than other's 24k-27k quickness classes is so bad, how can they not see the irony of like, overly convoluted rotations? But regardless if you want a easy time, play mechanist. Most famous mmorpg rotations have a reputation for 1 button, pressed 40 times in a row to be as silly as possible such as a wotlk arcane mage before evocation as it had a spell that doubled in damage (but tripled in mana cost), in a expansion where mana didn't matter. (Infinite ramping damage for 1 button, 40 apm). It was seen as a joke, but it was only like 30% ahead most average joe specs and still a glass cannon that would run out of mana after 2 minutes and need to evocate to regen 60% of mana. Mechanist can do 28k dps afk or pretty much press 4 lit buttons off cd to 35k, and some people have figured out ways to do 35k-38k with it. The average joe players are usually hitting 1.5k-20k dps, (some.. interesting players somehow do 0.2k-0.5k, probably random affix gear / core spec/ healers hopefully(???) ) It's considered good in a strike if someone is doing 15k-26k dps. So pretty much mechanist engineer can almost bring every role in the game (and switch to scrapper to do quick if it wanted. Though most mechs can't always play scrapper since it's closer to a non mech piano class with potentially punishing higher apm switches to keep track of to hit it's bench). But if you want easy rewards for easy effort, it's a 5-9 dominant class by far, taking up both 4-9 slots of every 10 in pugs and 5-8 slots of every challenge mode run to the point a spec that should be 3-11% of population represents something like 40-66% of all successfully completed challenge mode content. There also be minor hints that it also might be facetanking abilities that one shot eles with 20% hp reviving and also might have like +50-100% more passive healing and barrier regeneration WITHOUT using healing abilities than other classes(??), but that's just speculation, but it supposedly self heals 500 hp a second while one of my specs 4.5k hp heal over 30 seconds (150 hps) is considered a good ability. So not only does it do dps well with minimal effort, it also does it from 1200 range and might also literally be able to afk through one shots, still continue dpsing while dead (pet is like, 40-60% of dps and the other 40-60% is autoattacks/ability use). it also might be possibly(??) autohealing itself 1.5x-3x better than other classes just off passive regeneration and surviving ele one shots with 20% hp (and then autohealing to full(?)), and i'm not sure what's going on. But it's a all reward, no investment class that's mained by a balance dev. The last 'nerf' nerfed it from 35k dps to 35k dps and nerfed the barrier while buffing another self healing abilty so.. Yeah, unless you're a apmjesus it'll dominate and even for challenge mode raid content, because melee specs typically might lose 10-40% uptime in a moving fight and torment condi specs do 40% less damage to moving targets, it does well too and there might be some hints it's heavily front loaded in cd damage too as during the first few seconds of a video it spikes 60k-160k first second damage during the first 2 button presses(0:08->0:10), while condi usually slowly ramps up 5-10k -> 15k -> 20k -> 23k -> 25k -> 27k -> 30k over 20 seconds.. the engi will probably frontload it 100k first second dps during the first second and kill it before the condi ramps up, or ignores dps loss from a invulnerability phase or torment movement, (small as it may be), eating away potential 10% dps edges with -40% torment dps to movements or melee dps running. It also self generates 50% quickness and might if your group isn't the best at 100% uptime boons either as well, apparently. There's a reason it dominates like 40-70% content for a reason, it's easy to play, generates shields, runs faster, has massive range, also might literally survive one shots that kill eles with 20% remaining, and might also have 1.5x-3x higher self healing just off passives alone. Also has 100% alac builds (high demand) as well as healing alac builds (uber high demand). The only catch is it does this all while pretty much afk and autoattacking or pressing 4 buttons. Not that people who play it feel like it's a problem. Just, the other 8/9 classes don't feel that rewarding and mechanist is kinda tuned to the point people abandon 10 year old toons just to be 'relevant' in content i guess. But play what you find fun.

Silently sits in background watching gta 5 making a estimated 15x annual revenue of gw2 in terms of Billions of dollars to a 265$ million dollar investment with 20x return to date and 7.99$ sales to 59.99$ box prices. Silently looks at gta's 5's 1.2m+ million reviews, vs 34 gw1 reviews and Gw2's current launch day 1.37k reviews. I'm sure it'll grow someday, but by all metrics, the people on steam with decades of marketing experience making trilogies before gw2 was even a game must surely not know as much as Anet. I mean. The game has already been on sale and had gas station cups to spread it to the masses. I know we all want to think it's because Gw2's is the superior game and has a superior marketing department and has some good ideas of using 130-200 ms ping megaserver over 90-150x 30-70 ms ping empty servers left over from when other games had more players actively subbing in a single month than almost gw2's entire list of registered accounts in existence. But i mean, some of the games it's being compared to are like Literally literal multi billion dollar earning triple AAA mainsteam household every console gaming companies with 80% sales and billions made per year. I think gw2 is a game with more like, post purchase content than most tbh. I mean sure, the stuff that gw2 listens to most is gw2.. But.. Just so you guys know. There are multi billion dollar companies hosting 80% off sales. It's pretty much a running joke of steam that steam runs assaults on people's wallets will assault people with 75-90% off sales that you might likely never even play but still spend 100-300$ having. Like 2.5$ dishonored, 7.5$ dishonored 2$, 0-20$ gta 5, 10-20$ Red dead redemption, etc. It's less common for mmorpgs but the competition of open world single players are like 8$ witcher 3 (75% off 40$) and like 7-12$ skyrim Remastered (66-75% off 50$). Again not to critque, just to point out that many games are literally making 100 millions to multi billions of dollars and still have sales but often like other ways of monetizing past sales or just lots of people buying it to shelve it in a library. It's like a planet fitness model where you sell tons even knowing 50-70% of people might never show up when they buy a product 50-90%, but somehow it works. Gw2 would probably just be fine at 50% off pof, i think 75-90% off all of gw2 would lead to potential botting problems though. But the cash shop still offers monetization post purchase as well easily to the 50-300$++ range or even a few 1000-2000$ cosmetic/legendary spenders. So even someone who say, got the pof or game for 15-50$ could still have like 50-300++$ spending potential vs.. I have no idea how gta5 makes billions of dollars on shark cards.. Because you can just earn money fine without them.

Geforce now just gave a gw2 chair. Epic games only takes a 12% cut but yeah I imagine the only people it'd bring would be the fortnite kiddies, but hey I mean free marketing is free marketing. Fortnite dancing over a enemy's tombstone though and 12 year old kids on mics who play fps and building games like Minecraft might not have the most compatibility. But if they do a future gw unreal engine project in the future I think fees are waived somewhat for epic games.

I mean gw2 has a historic record of going old expacs on sale 4-6 x a year for like the last 5 years. We're trying to get new lifeblood into the game and like intentional or not, im ..... Not sure if comparing them to the starving poor is like the best option? Everyone was hyped up for the steam release being free advertising for the game and maybe it'll work out. But I'm not kidding when I say steam is literally a platform notorious for mass 50-85% sales in the non mmorpg field, and one thing I hadn't considered is when you sell people to the idea of a mostly solo single player mmorpg you're having a market literally compare itself to 4-11x steam userbases (2-4k steam gw2 players launch 1.6k reviews to 22k Skyrim players no events but a sale for a like 12 year old game.) I think even sc2 coop and wings of liberty is free and coop have people who have played it for literally thousands of hours past prestiege 900 which is like 7x 15-25 minute brutals per level for over 6000 games and despite all the Diablo immortal stuff, sc2 coop is legitimately a online hosted game with rts ability leveling and quite diverse prestiges you could play f2p forever off p0 or p1 raynor with mass marines, medics and marauders with about a infinite ceiling on how long you could spend improving your micro and strats. Then if you want a premium commander you spend 5$. And one forgotten flipside of Wow when I logged in to 90$ of wow token credit is that on the flipside, although wow can be hit or miss on moneymaking, if you make excess profits in the game, those excess profits can often easily be used to purchase other blizzard properties such as sc2 campaigns. Commanders, and if you play for over 3-5 hours a month, you could gold farm to pay a sub or even profit with 90-100$+ wow token credit to buy hearthstone packs, sc2 commanders. I won't lie I like the pressure of not having to pay a sub but after finishing ascended, completing all not on sale stories, waiti 3 months for living story sales, after 100-150$ spend justifying it as a 3 month wow sub wow made itself free and I noticed I still had 90$ of wow token credits in a pocket (and had spent 60-75$ wow token credit). Imo gw2 is good to get a sub fix when you play a mmorpg for less than 5 hours a week. But I forgot that I had like +90$ + 75$ = 165$ of spare wow token credit that I had used to purchase 4x buy for life sc2 commanders for 5$ each (Nova, stukov, Tychus and zeratul, bought lotv on sale (+ zagara, swann, and vorazun) so like yeah. Wow can certainly be more expensive but I ended up with +165$ what I was spending on it, only paying for months I played more than 5 hours a week. But I didn't mind spending 100$ on a developed game. There's wow privates that can literally be 0$ for as long as you want classic, tbc and wotlk wow fully functional (and panda wow if you want to speak Hungarian). I didnt mind spending more for the confidence of a game I was going to play for 1000s of hours getting updates. But taking new player perspectives into count, most of what we're playing is content from 1-9 years ago... But sometimes the content to a newcomer is refered to as "9 years of monthly gem store content updates and 1 year of dungeon content isn't content." Or comments like "it doesn't matter if it's 10 years of gw2 content. If the amount of dungeon and raid updates is lower than the bad year of competitor W/F/E or the open world I get from 75-80% on sale 800k+ review 7-22k+ single player games like witcher 3:Wild hunt/Skyrim" Right or wrong, we're getting player feedback and pof goes on sale 4-6x a year. Isn't a 10 year anniversary maybe one of those 4-6x a year events worth having at least a pof 50% off on for a potentially more successful steam launch(??) We just had one a month ago even for prime day.

Yeah that's a good take on it. The almost reverse of the thread's title. "Do you really want harder builds to be stronger", could just be as easily pov flipped do. "Do you really want there to be no reward for a harder and punishing build? What's even the point of the other 8 classes existing while mechanist outperforms for free while also often afk?", etc. It's not that mechanist is like some heavily skilled build, it just makes it really discouraging to know with a dps tracker installed to know that so many players are working hard to compete in a raid group with 10 players, 3 elementalist and warriors trying to improve their build, going "Did i get 40k dps? i tried really hard for that fight! I bet i did great! My fingers hurt, i thought i did really well", and the answer is. "Uh.. Actually you were only 3-15k dps. You were outdpsed 4-5x by the mechanist who did 28k dps" "Oh, well, mechanist, do you have any tips to improve my rotation? " "Aww nah man, i was only doing 5k dps as a ele, so i switched over to a mechanist. I was actually afk, it feels really bad leaving my main but it almost feels like a joke, it's so much easier, it's sad. I don't know why the other classes are so neglected" "HEY, don't insult mechanist, it's my main! i love how easy the dps is". Etc. It just seems a paradox of design. Anet clearly designed their systems to have a higher skillcap in mind with auto attack chains clearing, not saving, and even engineer had multiple sets to switch between. It's a game that locks you to 5 base character slots that's never enough to unlock all 9 without paying 10$ a slot, and has birthday presents so you'd be encouraged to fill up the roster. I can't switch to a mechanist unless i deleted a 10 year old character, but it feels a major bum down since what made me join 0.5 sec gcd gw2 over the sluggish 2.5 sec gcd ff14 was the fast and fluid combat. Which seems to be underperforming next to afk specs, and while people will call 35k as a mechanist as skill, it seems discouraging to know post nerf it still seems like most classes are in the same boat as before and haven't changed as much as we hoped.

I mean when i talk about population, i talk about objectively. Exit gw2, talk to a player who doesn't play gw2. do they know about it, most people won't. The mega server is a good example, and lvl 80 hub zones and lvl 1-10 zones are good, but before the launch, the lvl 10-80 zones would quite literally often be just 1-2 people there. Maybe someone on their way to walk to a dungeon or living season event. I mean i'm not saying ingame, ingame it feels full vs some dead, and i think the 100-200 ms ping megaservers solve the population problem of having 1 server with 50 people over 90-150 servers with 5-10, but 90-150 x 5-10 would still be a 450-1500 vs 50 gap. It's just that wotlk WoW doesn't have it's 10m monthly subscribers anymore which is about the number of monthly subs as gw2's entire account creation with people making login accounts to farm login rewards. Though it's a good game, it seems like some people are highly fixated on making sure no negative feedback comes through, (even if it's from the NEW players themselves?). . We can't keep saying "we need new players". then when the new players come and go "100$ is a lot, i don't get all the hype, the game isn't really as good as how those people say it is, im gonna play something else.", It's not that sustainable to just go "Go quit and play another game then!, we don't want you. Here are 6 jester awards. come back when you learn how to appreciate gw2!" etc. For a outsider, it doesn't sell the game to them unless they're already in the gw2 circle. Which while it seems strong when you're inside, seems almost on life support when you exit it and ask people their thoughts on gw2 and hear.. "That game.. It's been 10 years ago, it's still alive? Hey, want to go play some Fortnite/League/L4d2/Sc2 with me?" I know it's easy to see feedback as attack to something one might love, but i mean for new player retention, ignoring new player feedback on why they weren't sold on the game or quit right after their raptor expired and there weren't any sales, or regional pricing while they were paying and supporting their families, or that only 2-4k players were playing it at any given time vs some 10k player pops on 7 year old single player games. I mean it's all good and all to want positive feedback only.. But if we ignore all negative feedback, including the new player feedback who say they Want to join, but can't afford the 100$ game without a sale, or feel cautious spending 100$ on a game they're not sure if they want to invest in yet. Couldn't ignoring negative new player feedback be shooting ourselves in the foot, ignoring looking into why players stay or leave, and trying to make sure it's the best possible launch possible? We might only get one chance at the steam launch and im not sure if there's any other population growths other than expansions. I'm not saying this to criticize gw2 at all, it's a fair game but kinda runs out of things to do after a month after you complete all the story, run each strike once, do all the raids once, and notice fractals are starting to repeat and do all the dungeons once. Players on steam are comparing it to other single player games they have even like, 22k player counts and 800,000+ reviews to our 2-4k player count and 1.6k reviews over even like 12 year old games like skyrim.. And there's not even any reason to be specifically playing skyrim 12 years after release right now. It just has 11x more players randomly playing it than steam gw2 players on a launch weekend. It isn't about like hiding it or not, just it seems like a very ripe time to maybe re evaluate the living world structure maybe to be new player friendly, find ways to retain new players, get future players playing gw2, and doing everything they can to ensure a successful launch. Steam might be the last bastion of advertising gw2 might have for a major population growth chance. If WoW copies flight and Riot games release a new friendly to players mmorpg with a big budget, gw2 might just become a game for people who already play gw2 and might struggle harder to attract new players. Just like how not many people are drawn to gw1 except the people who've been playing it the whole time from 15 years ago. But if it was successful, wouldn't it be a great thing for gw2 to succeed on steam, welcoming to new players with a fresh bundle, have a great launch weekend, have record great sales, welcome players in, and make more money over the long term and gain a launcher + 10th year anniversary juggernaut foothold on one of the most major gaming platforms of all time, etc?

I mean, it's literally new player feedback. "I tried the game, there was no regional pricing, the raptor expired. it was 100$ to get in. I didn't buy the game, i quit, please offer regional pricing of launch with a sale", etc. That's all new player feedback. So are 6 players then proceding to launch clown emojis on the new player and then saying that they thought their review was funny to a player who could have potentially joined, but seemed to likely quit. I hope people kinda realize.. that for advertising. You don't have to sell a game to someone who's already sold on it, but to sell the game to a player who hasn't tried it. While the game feels very much alive even on a low pop with a mega server, any time you talk to someone in the open field. You have to realize gw2 comes up much less in discussions over all those games. Gw2 players play gw2, nobody else does. Most people are barely aware it exists. There are some games with 50x more views than eod's 100k view launch just advertising their new 5m view fortnight skin dance show or 50M = 500x 100k views Ff14 launch menus. I mean, positive feedback is great and all. but if 8/10 of the pages on steam's discussion are people just asking "what's all the hype around this game?" and then only 2k steam players playing it on a launch vs 9.8k players for a witcher 3 still being 7 years old and having 5x more steam numbers play it, i'd argue it's fair for new players to want access to the sales or a least some of the default 50$ eod + pof + pay to complete offers for living world to try a 15$ bite vs a 100$ blind jump. Even tf2 is 15 years old and has 100k steam players and 900k reviews. Gw2 is just launched and at 1.6k reviews. Of course it'll build up over time.. but maybe the launch reviews and experience might possibly be good for setting up and converting up new players into the future, possibly? Or, do we want players to just like, quit and not try the game after their raptor expires and put like 6 clown emojis over them, saying it didn't feel like a good experience and they hated having it taken away and they had no sales so they didn't buy the game, etc? Gw2 by all rights and metrics, is actually pretty low population by numbers. it's just it has 1 mega server vs 100s. So you have everyone in one 100-200 ping 50 man server in a meta vs 80-100+ servers with 5-15 people in each, etc. It does fill up the game well. But i remember pre launch after i left the starting zone, it'd be like 30 hours between seeing another player in the 10-80 zones after launch. The megaservers are all the reason why the game feels as populated as it is. It's a great system but like.. I think it's fair to reason the population is likely lower than we think and only hidden by the megaserver, and having new players join in and welcome gw2 might set up positive relationships for the future and future development of gw2.

I mean fair enough.. But just as a joke example, witcher 3 is Literally a 7 year old game with still 9835 people playing it on steam currently right now, with a 97% positive review rate over 552,395 reviews with 1000s of people reviewing the game in the 300-1500+ hours played zone. Vs Gw2's 76% -> 85% review scores with most rating in the 0.1-0.7 hours played zone ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/292030/The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt/ ) Sure, statistics do lie, especially with a steam released game. But you have to at least see the other side. Selling gw2 to a non gw2 and saying basically "it's the best game ever, it's gw2", only to be met with a blank stare and a "uh.. what's a gw2?". People on steam are going to be comparing it to open world games they can play forever on steam or what they're more familiar with. For all we know, that might be a dnd online or Red dead redemption or Witcher 3 or even a semi p2w but singleplayer f2p, p2w genshin impact with Breath of the wild mechanics crossbreed experimentally with single player mechanics in pve. People are gonna compare the games they currently play, so what harm does having a pof sale 50% off for a 10th anniversary do? it could inject lifeblood into the game very easily, fix some negative reviews, get higher positive scores, and it's already a sale that happened last month. or offer the 50$ for eod + pof bundle with a pay to complete model or revamp of the living world to be more appealing to new players at launch. It just might as well be worth a shot. It's not like every anniversary 1-9 hasn't had one.

I mean, what they're asking for isn't that like.. hard or even unknown. The steam launch is the 10th year anniversary. They've ran 50% off sales. The steam launch is of dubious reception with the reviews 76% mostly positive, but 24% negative, ranging from stuff like lack of regional pricing, high 100$ upfront fee (or clarity if they can even buy living seasons later if they buy seperately on steam). as a outsider how or even if gems work on steam might worry a player who doesn't know if they'll like it until a 70 gb install is done. And there's reviews where people are just seeming to laugh and antagonise new players for quitting or not having the drive to play when the 10 hour raptor mount trial expires and they see everyone flying around them and their access revoked without a sale that seems to push them towards quit game, uninstall rather than: Buy + continue. I think a sale or editing the steam page to be more fair, either adding a 50$ Eod + Path of fire/heart of fire edition with a "Complete the collection!" (All parts are buyable, pay to complete living season story) Might be fair. I mean after all, we get it on the main page, but Wow isn't currently a 100$ box right now but a 15$ sub and get shadowlands free + lvl boost. Will it cost more over time? Yeah. But even if the expac is the worst ever, you pay for only the months you play and if you like only play during the summer months and focus on college/study the other 8/12, that's 3-4 months a year, and if you only bother one time per expac you usually at least got like 10-20 dungeons per 2-3 years + 3-4 raid tiers with probably 25-40 worth of raid bosses + 3-4 mythic+ seasons which could keep one busy for like a more tame 0-60$ box fee, 15$ per played month being like 45-60$ for a 3-4 month stint. But most of the time when you play wow you would be playing it from dusk to dawn to a osrs, having stuff to grind, seeing 3-20 loots. One of the comments on the steam page was that gw2 "felt like a vegan meat mmorpg, a product made by people who claimed to hate the original and never meant to please people who liked the original product". Now while i don't necessarily agree or disagree, i think it might be a fair point. if you're trying to market your game to people who don't like wow, but don't want to play a mmorpg. Well, when you try to sell a unlimited play for free game to people who don't play mmorpgs... There are people with 1000 hours in gw2 sold as a 100$ entry + more for bag spaces/banking/ 30$ volatile tools and 5-10$ x 3 scavenger tools + 30-50$ for all 9/9 character slots vs like people with 3000 hours of skyrim for 2.5-10$ or 200-1600+ hours in Witcher 3 wild hunt or Red dead redemption/GTA5 online. You try to sell them on "But gw2 has a open world!", A non mmorpg player will go. "Yeah, but we have Witcher3, Let me go wander around all these big towns with big graphics and rtx On and casually do everything gw2 offers. Oh a world i can visit and play forever with high hd ray tracing graphics? Yeah, i got witcher for 7.99$ on sale for 80% off. Neat huh? And i could buy 12 of these for the same price as one gw2 collection. What do i need gw2 for? Best GAME EVER BTW, in love with it, WITCHER 3 is just awesome, best gift of all time, i CAN'T stop playing it, it's so fun!!!! I'm going to NAME MY FIRSTBORN CHILD AFTER IT. HE WILL BE NAMED GWENT! " You try to go to a wow player and go. "it's not wow!!" And they'll do the same thing, "Wow has no box fee for 4 months and i don't have to spend 50$ on character slots to have one of each character, 30$ to have unbreakable tools, 15$ to collect 1000s of free gameplay earned mount skins, plus we're getting a copy of gw2 griffon flight built into the Dracthyr's evoker's wings the next expac with new races so we get to fly too, and we can run 120 fps without any heat in a raid to." So try ff14? "Nah man i'm spending 15$ a month to jam in houses and go do dungeons with my friends and square's cinematics are GORGEOUS!" So.. When the steam launch, prepared for 10 years only gets like 2-4k players.. Shouldn't we like.. Have at least a 50% off pof sale or something and some 10 year anniversary sales like every single year 1-9? We literally just did last month for the prime sale with the 20% off gem cards. I mean.. We want the launch, successful(????), right or uh.. Do people want gw2 to be only sold to the people already playing it? Game development is pretty much, development has fixed costs, distribution is just dimes on the dollar. Even just providing at least a POF sale could at least get people interested in a starter expac at a stage they seem likely to leave, and you only get one chance to make a first impression. I guess.