[The amount of filler content in story is out of hand]

On 5/4/2024 at 11:17 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Well, like you said yourself - it's an unpopular opinion.

Is it though? If you (or rather a version of you who hadn't already made 10.8k forum posts) were happily playing GW2 including SOTO then would you come to the forums and post that you like SOTO?

Particularly if you hadn't posted on the forums ever before because you were happily playing GW2 with your time instead?

Selection Bias in the forums is strongly biased towards people who are unhappy and want to find an outlet to express that unhappiness. Those that are happy with the game are more likely to be just playing and enjoying the game.

[The amount of filler content in story is out of hand]

On 4/22/2024 at 6:24 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

No, they weren't upfront about it. They tried to present it as if it was just a repackaging - giving the same overall quality and quantity of content, just spread over a bit differently than before. Of course, anyone able to read between the lines saw immediately that some content drops were unavoidable, but that does not mean it was ever clear how big the content drop in quantity - and, even more, in quality - would be. And so it turns out it was bigger than even some of those called "doomers" then expected.

Oh yes, that was really bad. And their reaction to just shrug it off (instead taking that mistake on themselves and going along with what was actually announced) was even worse.

Quality is subjective so I won't debate you there, and I haven't played all the way through it myself so can't really give my own opinion (which would be subjective too).

But I question whether SOTO is quantitatively less then the average. If you go back to the peak production period then it appears LWS3 and PoF released significantly more content per year than SOTO does. You could perhaps also argue that LWS4 was more per year too, but its pretty close.

I would say SOTO has quantitatively more content per year than LWS1/LWS2, Icebrood and EOD.

So the period 2015-2018 probably exceeded SOTO for content produced per year but SOTO generally matches or exceeds the yearly content produced in the other 7 years outside of that time period.

I think your real problem is that you don't like SOTO, for whatever reason - note that this isn't unusual, it appears there were vocal people who didn't like all GW2 releases at the time of their release, regardless of how popular they are now.

[Odd that gw2 hasnt added new races.]

6 hours ago, Manpag.6421 said:

It's not just a technical limitation though, it's narrative too. Imo, ANet really painted themselves into a corner with the personal story, with individual racial storylines converging into the main Zhaitan one, and then all releases following the same characters in one continuous timeline.

A new race isn't just a new race; they still have to be the Pact Commander, so have to fit into the personal story somehow. A personal story that now has to either include more races, or explain why this lone tengu or whatever is so far from home. NPCs would realistically react with surprise and awe at seeing a dwarf, wherever you went. Although racial dialogue options aren't that numerous in the story, they are there and they'd need to be stepped up a notch because people wouldn't be blasé about working alongside exotic races, let alone being led by one.

A hill I'm willing to die on is that the GW1 model was a much more versatile way of storytelling, because each game was a standalone campaign that you either played through from the very beginning with characters that were native, or joined the story part way through with an existing character. Each expansion's story would need to be much more self-contained to be able to just slot in new races.

I think this particular problem is quite solvable. Just make it impossible for the new race to play through the personal/core story. If necessary to ensure continuity then have a cutscene which appears when the character is level 80 and first starts LWS1, 2 or HoT with the cutscene showing the character defeating Zhaitan. I don't think there are any critical rewards from the core story but if they are they could either be gifted automatically or purchased cheaply from a vendor. I'm sure there are other solutions too so the core story itself isn't an issue. This also means a new race could have quite a different leveling experience if they wanted (or could just start at level 80 and be pitched at experienced players only).

As I see it the big problems are with the voice acting and armour skins. Voice acting for existing content is a huge obstacle so I think it would be best bypassed by saying that the new race sounds exactly like an existing race for all content prior to the new expansion (they could voice the new race from there). Armour skins are trickier unless the body and animations are a good match for another race already, which is conceivable (as pointed out dwarves are essentially small Norn, in fact my son made a fat Norn with the miniature tonic to make a dwarf...).

 

[We really need a discussion with the devs on these changes.]

The debate about whether the siege should have been killed before the gate was repaired is all well and good but it is also a complete side show.

The key point is that the wall/gate repair changes as they stand are terrible (and as a sub point you shouldn't be able to damage destroyed walls/gates while they are being repaired).

A very high percentage of people in the WvW forum and this thread seem to agree on this.

[How are the Casual players doing with their Legendary PVE Armor?]

2 hours ago, Gwynnion.7364 said:

The thing about legendary armor is ascended armor is cheap in comparison, sometimes free from the Wizard's Vault, has the same stats and is relatively inexpensive to stat swap if you need to, and transmutation charges are trivial to get, especially if you do WvW.  So unless you really stat swap a lot or would go through transmutation charges all the time, it just feels unnecessary?  The quality of life benefits just aren't there.

Nothing against anyone who's gotten theirs.  Except maybe the "I'm so casual I have multiple accounts and thousands of gold" guy.  I've got a couple of pieces done myself.  And there's always "the prestige" and the sense of accomplishment.  But the cost / benefit ratio just isn't there for a lot of players.  So if you're going to do it, you might as well take your sweet time.  You're not missing out on much in the meantime.  And I'll support you by selling all my Drizzlewood trophies. 💜

I would say the quality of life benefits of Legendary armor definitely are there if you play at least a few different characters and builds - avoiding having to buy/arrange new armor or stat swap existing every time you want to try a new build is a significant QoL benefit. Even doing split builds (eg unless I'm doing serious content I quite often run a hybrid combo of power or condi damage stats with some celestial, Legendary armor makes it very easy to dial in as much celestial as you want). Even being able to freely change skins is a QoL benefit which allows you to change you look on a whim without a second thought (long term WvW players etc who have hundreds of transmutation charges wouldn't care but not everyone has that many). So players getting their first legendary armour (particularly a complete set) will enjoy some nice QoL benefits (I certainly enjoyed it when I finished my legendary heavy armour set, my first, earlier this year - I play all three of the heavy armour class professions with multiple builds on each so it's been nice).

However, I definitely agree that the cost / benefit ratio is bad. So saving money is a poor (or non-existent) reason to build legendary armor. Unless you have an awful lot of characters and builds, ascended armor is going to be more cost effective.

[What makes GW2 combat in WvW fun? (and how I feel recent changes go in the wrong direction)]

I am not convinced that allowing a 5 or 10 person group to blow up a stacked Zerg will have the effect OP thinks. That’s because I don’t think it is dead for most Zergs to split into 5 man groups working autonomously”. They don’t have the necessary number of party decision makers, skills or desire to run this way and I suspect if they tried then clouding players who have been training for years in this type of spread out play will likely own them. 

Instead of adapting and learning to play in parallel 5 player parties as OP argues I think most zergs would fail and then disband.

Maybe that is OPs goal here but for the reasons Cael and others gave Zergs are important for new and less skilled players. If you force most to disband then you damage WvW badly.

I thinks Zergs are too strong currently and am not impressed with recent changes as per other posts I have made but as presented this is the nuclear option. Maybe a lesser version could help tho.

[What makes GW2 combat in WvW fun? (and how I feel recent changes go in the wrong direction)]

Interesting thread and I agree with both OP and Cael in places.

I think it is very hard for new players to compete with roamers. I have been playing WvW steadily for over a year now and I win some roaming encounters now but I lose more. Cloud fights are a bit easier than 1v1 because you can do things to avoid being focused but they have the same problems that players who have been doing WvW (or pvp) for years know most/all the specs, abilities and tricks for combining and countering them while new players don’t. 

Joining a not too elitist Zerg is a very good way for a newish player to feel  like they are contributing and even “winning”, vs usually “losing” when solo. And it is easier to learn a Zerg support build to the point where you are actually contributing than getting competitive at roaming and clouding.

[Thoughts on defence changes as they relate to Keeps]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:58 AM, hugeboss.5432 said:

I'm beginning to wonder if the entire issue could actually be based on misinterpreted telemetry data.

1. When they unlocked more dominator title achievements, lots of ppl started fighting in wvw again.
2. Alot of teams gathered their zerg and piled into enemy borderlands & attacked garrison (but not to cap, as capping "BREAKS THE TOY").
3. The telemetry gathered would indicate there was a big increase of long fights inside garrisons, with very few actually capturing (fight zergs often avoid cap).

At first glance it could look like garrison is almost impossible to cap and needs to be tweaked (if one was unaware of the "fight club" strategy #2). North camp is also a common place used as a camping spot to draw in fights. Remember, the main "fight club" agenda is "to fight", and not actually capture the objective (it promotes more defenders). Nobody needed anything to be made easier to capture (it's already super easy compared to how it was 5+ years back).

- The problem with capturing an enemy garrison (or eb keep), is that it basically "kills" that team on the map (for roughly 1 hour, depending on camps/yaks). [Obviously, this is why fight teams will often avoid capping such structures]. These days, there's only 1 NA server that actually will run around ktraining everything (The 1up1down system made PPT less important).

[IMO] All EB Keeps & BL Garrisons should be (for good healthy living of wvw team content), *quite hard to capture* + *only require a decent effort to successfully defend* (Preferebly, the defenders should be the "favorites" to win the battle & successfully defend their keep.... after hours of fighting ofcourse lol). This way would actually promote large scale fights & help keep the battlefield alive and blistering with content alot longer!

It's a bit surprising but I'm thinking you might be on the right track.

Telemetry data will be telling Anet that there are a lot of very long drawn out fights in tiered keeps because a significant portion (around 50% I think) of the big attacking zergs I've seen in recent months are primarily there to get kills rather than to cap the keep (another 25% are there for both and only maybe 25% will try to cap as fast as they can). This makes sense - most good organised zergs are around fight guilds and by definition they primarily want to fight with capping objectives usually being secondary.

I must admit I've been on both sides, I play in organised zergs when they are available and I've been in plenty of keep attacks which were solely to get a response so the zerg had people to fight and kill with no real intention to capture the keep. The best way to get others to fight you is to attack a tier 3 keep. So they will regularly roll all around the keep for 30+ minutes killing the clouding defenders (who as mentioned in my original post have minimal chance of organising a strong enough zerg to fight back unless one happens to already be online) without even bothering to kill the lord. I've been in zergs before where the commander got really annoyed because someone killed the lord and the keep got capped thereby spoiling the fun.

Prior to this latest patch sometimes those zergs would eventually leave or die after 30 minutes of farming defenders because walls were repaired and they slowly got whittled down. This latest patch will make this much harder and make it easier for the zerg to keep farming defenders indefinitely by making it harder to repair walls and making it harder to down the attackers (by slashing the guild objective buffs).

So if Anet made this change to reduce the length of these long drawn out keep fights (many of which are just zergs farming pugs) then they've gone completely the wrong way by making it easier for the zerg to farm forever...

[Thoughts on defence changes as they relate to Keeps]

I'm not a fan. I decided to post a new thread as there are a few existing threads but they either are not particularly serious discussions or aren't addressing this particular issue.

The recent changes seem to be trying to make it so your only realistic chance of defending your tiered up keep against an organised zerg is to have your own organised zerg. This comes partly from the reduction in defender bonuses but I think a slightly bigger factor is the change to wall repairing. Often the only viable way for an unorganised defending group to defeat an attacking zerg (even if they outnumber it significantly) is to pick off the tail when they can, usually at a bad K/D exchange rate (ie the zerg is killing far more of you than you are getting of them). But this only works if you can destroy their siege and then tap the walls shut so those you kill can't just easily rejoin their zerg. It was hard work but pre the latest changes it was possible for a sizeable group of unorganised defenders to pull off an unlikely, you could say heroic, defence against an organised zerg. Now it's much less likely.

So, it seems Anet only want you to be able to defend against an organised zerg with another organised zerg. But most links won't have organised zergs on 24/7 - in fact I suspect no links ever achieve this?

And if you don't have an organised zerg then you can't just create one out of nothing. We have people who will try to tag up but without the numbers, party composition, teamwork and ideally discord communication (not essential but useful) it's a doomed attempt. A quickly assembled ragtag zerg loses to to a pre-organised zerg virtually every time and quickly - maybe they could wear them down but the new reduction in defence bonuses and difficulty in sealing the walls makes this much more unlikely. People know that (from experience) so they generally don't join the squad or don't stack tight with the commander - and those that do die to the enemy zerg for the aforementioned reasons. Which is a vicious circle. People without an organised zerg don't cloud for no reason, they do it because it's the best way of surviving and maybe winning if you don't have the luxury of an organised zerg.

This means Anet are making it essentially random whether you can defend your keeps. If you have are lucky enough to have an organised zerg ready to defend at the same time as an enemy guild is doing their run then yeah you could have a good fight (but I argue you could before these changes too). But if you don't then chances are that your attempts to defend will be futile. It's a small step from there to deciding not to try to defending (if you don't have an organised zerg) which I think is pretty clearly bad for the game and for player motivation (players not in organised zergs that is).

This seems like a serious step backwards. And I'm not sure what Anet think the upside is? Those situations where both sides have organised zergs already happened before the latest patch. I don't see this change increasing the frequency. Likely the opposite, by making it much less worthwhile trying to defend any defending team will likely struggle to get the numbers to form even an unorganised zerg to fight back, so it's reducing one of the stepping stones towards getting more organised (since I think getting experience working together on defence is one impetus towards trying to join or band together into more organised groups).

I don't think Anet act without reasons, so my only conclusion is that they are basing these changes on incomplete or flawed data. Perhaps the developers or decision makers only play WvW during peak times when all sides have organised zergs? Maybe they only play WvW with strong guild zergs and hence haven't experienced it from the other side? Maybe they are playing with Anet tags and always get a bunch of people joining them because of who they are? I dunno. But they seem to only have one very limited view of how the gameplay works and it's based on maybe 15-30 hours out of a 168 hour week...

[Hot Take: Boon Strips/Corrupts are not the solution.]

I think OPs suggestion, or some variation of it, is a pretty good idea.

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

It's Rubi, not Rudy. I had it wrong.

I think GW2 is already a great looking game to explore and that's one (of many) reasons I play the game. It's great to hear Anet are working on further improvements such as the texture compression.

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

5 hours ago, QueenKeriti.5176 said:

Making it a no mount zone would probably be a huge start in the right direction. x_x

I would be on board with that, along with buffing the HP slightly - not to Svanir Shaman levels, but a moderate amount more when there are high player counts on the map.

 

[Feedback: I miss my team!]

On 3/12/2024 at 5:49 AM, sewenewes.4176 said:

It's odd because they have done it well enough before without making it black and white. Someone being the bad guy doesn't have to mean they make no good points and are irredeemable monsters who kicks kittens for fun. As much as Joko was a bit of a comedic relief he also correctly pointed out that what our merry band of heroes did was monumentally stupid and we were well on our way to doom the entire world by gunning down elder dragons and an actual god. He also had a portion of the Elonian population loyal to him because he provided not only protection from very real threats but also the possibility of your loved ones being brought back to life.

Were Joko's actions undeniably evil? Yes. Was he self-serving? Yes. It was abundantly clear that he was the enemy and us defeating him was a good thing but his absence left behind a void that needed filling and he also made us think of the fact that we have been recklessly gambling the lives of everyone on the off-chance that things will work themselves out somehow.

Agreed. I think Anet have done a pretty good job of making things morally interesting in the past. Joko is a great example of it, in PoF there were a lot of Elonian people who were loyal to Joko or even adored him because he had (prior to Balthazar's arrival) provided safety and stability for them and their families. And that sort of made good sense for their world view but at the same time Joko was a tyrannical ruler who literally killed his opponents and subjects so he could resurrect them back again as his awakened slaves and gloated while doing so. I found it quite fascinating and was pleasantly surprised that Anet had put in that level of twisting normal tropes about good and evil.

[Can We Improve Jade Bot Modules for Better Quality of Life?]

It would make more sense for them to have one slot which allows you to pick only between different loot bonuses and another slot which allows you to pick only between different utility bonuses. That should improve the variety in what players pick.

[Is Ascended gear extremely hard to get in this game?]

On 4/13/2024 at 3:53 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Well... what else are you spending that gold on?  I just crafted it all back in the days when crafting it was far more expensive.  There's many alternate paths to get the weapons and armor, but crafting is always an option that is available to you.  

Also, small note, but everyone else is underselling the difference in performance.  Changing your weapons alone to ascended is a 5% increase in strike damage.  Going full ascended is a 10% increase overall, and getting all of the infusions is about a 12.5% increase overall.  The increase in armor tier alone reduces damage by around 2.5%.  

Agreed. While individually the differences are only 5% per weapon damage/armour defence/character stat (less percentage wise if it's a character stat with a 1000 base) the bonuses compound upon each other. Even just a 2.5% bonus multiplied three times is 7.7%, to the power of 4 it is 10.4%, etc, plus of course there are the infusions. Full ascended with stat infusions is more like 10-15% better than exotic when you factor in everything including increased survivability (possibly better for Celestial if your build can make good use of all the stats).

['Return to Heart of Thorns' Rewards]

Can’t tell if OP is joking or not. Seems like quite good rewards, particularly for just 3 events per day per MC instead of 5 with the LWS2 return (tho events are very easy in Silverwastes).

["There are few players remaining on this map"]

My guess is that there is also a timer for each map and Anet want each map to be closed down once it has been up quite a while, probably because event bugs build upon over time and slowly cycling thru new map copies gives the best experience.

Agreed tho, there have been multiple times that I have clicked to leave the supposedly unpopulated map and then found the new map had similar or fewer players and the meta was further behind or non existent.

It would be great if the logic was improved, ideally if there is a timer it would align itself with the end of the map meta.

[let me "withdraw" a copy of my legendary from the armory]

I think getting the game to remember the most recent setup version of each weapon type for each character (or ideally each character's equipment template) would be a very good QoL improvement. Even if it only remembered within the same gaming session it would still be nice. That way when you swap back to your legendary staff it would automatically apply the same stats, sigils and infusions (assuming they were available still) as when that character last had a legendary staff equiped.

[Please buff The Silverwastes' and Dry Top bosses. All of them.]

There is a middle ground between the Hp scaling on the silverwaste bosses and what they did with the starter zone boss revamps.

In fact it’s a yawning gulf. I would be happy with somewhere in the middle, a 50% buff maybe, particularly with the scaling for lots of people.

[Great Expansion!]

9 hours ago, Dondarrion.2748 said:

They literally said "pretty" too, so your statement is false!😁

And great, love and well done. 

[Legendary Relics Don't Work as they were Announced [Merged]]

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If you suggest that it's no worse than it has been 9 years ago, i'd suggest you reread my post (and @Ashen.2907's comment on it) again, because i clearly explained why it is different (and worse).

Hint: your hooks can be bigger, if they are only a minor part of the whole. If all you can offer is hooks however, it's bad even if those hooks are smaller.

(hint nr 2: a Lamborghini for 100k is extremely cheap. A dented bike for 20k is not. You are trying to persuade me that the 20k bike deal is good, because 20k is lower than 100k)

OK, but you're just proving my point. Your complaint isn't really about the hooks (legendary relic in this case), it's that you don't like SOTO. You think it's a bike instead of a Lamborghini and you aren't interested in bikes.

[Passion has gone my friends [Merged]]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Honestly, you seem to miss the main point beyond the new structure - it's here because thay are no longer able to deliver the content under old one. The new model is all about reduced resource expenditures - less work at less effort. You don't have to think too hard to realize that this is inevitably going to result in less (and poorer quality) content. There's just no way around that. If they could deliver content in the new structure at no loss to neither quality nor quantity, there would have been no reason to change the whole release schedule in the first place.

I think you were completely correct in your first sentence, Anet pretty much said as much that they needed a more stable economic model.

The rest of the paragraph is your interpretation though. Anet have essentially said the new model is so they have the regular revenue to keep up development of the game and their team has actually grown. So you are saying the opposite . Maybe you are right but your comments seem to come from your disinterest in the SOTO content (which some others have said they like) rather than from any objective evidence to back them.

[Legendary Relics Don't Work as they were Announced [Merged]]

8 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

He answered that question in the post you quoted.

He mentioned ANet, "cheaping out," in reference to content. The issue being using gear-grind like mechanics INSTEAD of deep, engaging, expensive to produce, playable content to sell an expansion...as opposed to (for example) HoT and PoF where the elite specs were part of an overall much deeper, engaging, playable content heavy, feature intensive, release. Again, it is the, "instead of," rather than, "in addition to," that is the issue raised.

Ok, but that’s what I have been saying too. Astralporing’s complaint is really about not liking / appreciating the SOTO content. But it’s been put across by them and others as though Anet have recently become greedy and exploitative with hooks to force people to buy expansions when demonstrably it’s no worse than 9 years ago.

Lets stick to what the real complaint is.

[Legendary Relics Don't Work as they were Announced [Merged]]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. I know well aware that what they are doing is a cheap copout they do because they cannot afford anything better. I am pointing out that cheaping out on content while driving up the gear grind-like mechanics is not a good approach. Sure, it may increase necesity of having to buy a newer expansion, but in order to  truly drive that necessity, you need to persuade the people to be interested in playing first. If you do not, you might end up with players not buying the expack (because it's way subpar) and then giving up on playing even the previous content, because they felt they have been left behind.

That old promise of never having to feel the need to catch up was quite important for many people, you know.

Sure, you can say that relic options are not that important and you can easily play without them, but that works both ways. If the pressure is so weak, the effect on buying expansion will also be minimal to the point of not really being visible. And the moment it becomes something that might truly push players into buying an expansion even when nothing else in it would do so, it will also becomes something that might push those that did not catch up from playing.

Gear grind games get away with it due to the whole ecosystem being built around it, and thanks to delivering massive amounts of content with every expansion. They have to, because at the same time all old content becomes practically invalidated. Those games, you generally either play current expac, or you don't play at all.

It's a combination of the two. The whole "you need to buy soto" thing is not an issue to me on its own. It became one for two reasons First, because i feel such cheap tricks show Anet is getting desperate about pushing players towards playing content they themselves know is not worth it. They would not have made such moves if they thought players would be interested otherwise (and no, please, do not speak about WvW/SPvP - we both know that the amount of players playing those two modes exclusively is so tiny it has no real impact on the overall sales). Second, because they happened to say something different in their blogpost, and apparently thought nothing about changing that decision just days later... or communicating the change to the playerbase. That shows a significant lack of consideration for the community. And their decision to double down on it, instead of owning to the mistake and adjusting their decision to the one they announced (instead of the other way around) shows they do not really care how they are perceived by said playerbase either.  And both are a very, very bad signs.

When added to the previous point, it becomes even more worrying. That's because it looks like a behaviour of those game studios that go for short-term increase in revenue without caring about long term impact. That's the exact opposite from how usually the stable MMORPGs operate.

In short, it looks to me as if Anet decided they now just want to get as much out of the game shortterm, for as little investment as possible, without caring about what will happen later

I understand what you are saying but I don't agree with your conclusions. In this post and others you are essentially saying Anet have got greedy and have put too many hooks into SOTO to force people to buy the expansion to compete in combat/gameplay.

But I think it's pretty indisputable that the combat/gameplay "hooks" in SOTO are weaker than they were in HoT, PoF and EoD.  Each of those expansions had elite specialisations which added significant combat options (and also a bit of power creep as demonstrated by the fact that Snowcrows doesn't list any core professions on its DPS charts, only elite specs). You need those HoT, PoF, EoD elite specs much more than you need SOTO's weapon specs and SOTO specific relics.

So why are you losing it so much over SOTO? If anything it demonstrates less greed and less hooks than previous expansions.

[Amount of "useless" currencies in game is too damm high]

12 minutes ago, Braythorn.4328 said:

Grandmaster Hobbs in Lions Arch can sell you the mats.....4 of them at 1000 unbound magic each.  4k unbound and you can get it.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gleam_of_Sentience

Not quite. That's just the price to replace it if you accidentally lost it. Either way you need to have done the achievements which gives you the original copy (and allows you to buy a replacement).

Some of the achievements are quite tricky, specifically Sentient Aberration where you need to do the Chalice of Tears jumping puzzle yet. I have the other three but not that one so I don't have the Gleam of Sentience yet (planning to try it when I get the rewind position device in LWS4).