Hevoskuuri.3891

The devs said they have been working on it for a long time (probably started planning as PoF was getting ready to release), and showing almost nothing is kind of what teasers are all about. I agree with your guess though. I'd say mid-2021 is the absolute earliest possibility, and only if covid doesn't plunge the world into absolute chaos. Well, more than it is, anyway.

Well, it would be cool, but I honestly don't care either way. If Steam's 'play' button just fires up GW2's native launcher, automatic updates won't be possible. I guess access to the overlay is the only bonus side here, and you can probably use an app that allows that anyway. Nice to see a swarm of new players coming in though.

I honestly don't even know what is the point of allowing chat/comments on livestreams. Unless the streamer specifically wants to interact and have discussions with the audience, that is. If it's a popular stream, the comments will just be flooded with emoji, toxicity, memes, spam etc. and if there are few actually good questions or comments, no one will see them anyway.

I use Jackal and Beetle on land, and Skyscale for vertical/mixed navigation. Griffon sometimes when the terrain is not ideal for beetle. The rest are mostly situational. I do feel that Skyscale, as amazing as it is, really made most of the other mounts obsolete. The dodge dashes basically replaced the Raptor's leap, and my Springer rarely sees use anymore since the Skyscale is such a powerful and more manageable climber. Ah well, I guess Skyscale is the 'legendary' mount and thus deserves to be as powerful as it is. And of course the rest of the mounts are still there if more navigational challenge is desired.

HoT was and is better content-wise, and the maps are great and very well done IMO, but considering only the maps I like PoF's aesthetics better. I prefer slower, more relaxed exploration, and HoT maps are too crowded with mobs to make that possible.

Compensating players for potential losses and/or inconvenience is a really nice gesture, and very much worth the trouble. All you need to do is be smart about it. If you're giving out freebies, you give them to everyone. Any other solution is bound to cause backlash and outcry.

I've gotten a few friends to download and try out the game, and one even bought an expansion. Sadly, none of them stuck around long-term.

This, but my axe to grind is specifically with Branded Humans, who keep one-shotting me off my mount time and time again with their BS ranged beam attack. Ugh.

I feel like your opinion is a little one-sided. What exactly does 'just give us more sustain' mean? There are already specializations and builds that are nearly impossible to kill, when played correctly of course. Every class can be played defensively and be built to sustain. On top of slotting defensive skills and traits, we also have a lot of defensive attribute combinations to gear our characters with. So on top of that, what? More vitality for each profession? That hardly sounds like a solution to anything. I think the downstate brings a very strategic edge to the combat system. Yes, sometimes allies are able to revive a fallen teammate and 'steal' the kill from you, but in return, you are also given a chance to be revived or rally from getting a downstate kill. It also gives some leniency (not much IMO, but some) for mistakes, as you still have a small chance to get up and keep on fighting. A skilled player with experience will know to cleave on the downed player and their allies who are reviving them, or interrupt the revive, or get a stealth stomp, or simply suck up the 'loss' and run away from the situation. I'd welcome more no-downstate events in WvW every now and then, but otherwise I'd say the system is fine. It's not perfect for sure, but fine. Also, I highly doubt ANet makes that much money from the cosmetic finishers anyway. They are cheap enough to buy with gold, you get different ones from PvP ranks amd birthday gifts, and judging by how rarely I see paid finishers used in WvW/PvP, I don't think many people even care about them.

This common bug was fixed shortly after PoF was released, and I haven't seen literally anyone complaining about it since. I personally haven't had that bug since the fix, either. Strange. I recommend contacting support directly. They'll instruct you in flushing your caches and whatever there is you can do if the game isn't working properly.

Use the miniature combat tonic, purchasable from Lake Doric. It's a lifesaver whenever trying to navigate narrow areas on a big character.

I took a couple month break at the time of the Chrono rework and came back to an awful surprise. I think the shatter rework is fine in fractals/raids, but picking Chrono for WvW or PvP is a no-go with the way it is now. Mirage is fine, but I'd love to run around with a shield and wells every now and then. However, the lack of the important mesmer tools such as instant F3 interrupt and panic distortion evade has really handicapped the class to the point where it's basically always the underdog in every 1vX.

Even after thousands of hours I still have a ton of long-term goals to work towards to, and ton of stuff that keeps distracting me from those goals. Every time new content drops I'll play that until it gets boring, and sometimes I might get obsessed with WvW for a few weeks until something on the PvE side gets my attention again. I might play only fractals or raids for a time, and then jump into the open world to hunt for an achievement or two. Or craft new gear for a new build and have fun with that. Or obsessively play roller beetle races for a while to beat all my guildies' best times. Or suddenly remember HoT maps exist and spend a week there doing the metas and completing the old collections. Or a festival pops up and I'll farm that for as long as it lasts. It just feels like the game has an infinite amount of interesting content for me to tackle. I haven't let the overall negative forum/reddit atmosphere affect my enjoyment of the game, and I honestly don't believe it's dying or going into maintenance mode anytime soon. I'm hopeful there will be a third expansion in the next couple years, and the steady returns quarter after quarter seem to suggest this game still has a very solid playerbase, which is impressive for a 7+ year old free-to-play MMO. Of course it's slowly declining, like with any other older game, but it's not anywhere near as bad as the online communities seem to suggest. I'm not saying Anet is the perfect developer or that Guild Wars 2 is a perfect game. Actually far from it; this game has had and still has tons of untapped potential that will most likely never put to use, and if certain things would've been handled differently in the past, I honestly think GW2 would be a serious rival for WoW today. But it's still good enough for me as it is, and I'll keep enjoying it for as long as it lasts.

Even though the Warclaw is a WvW mount, I don't see why it has to be completely useless in PvE. I think it wouldn't hurt to bring it more on par with the Raptor or the Jackal, as some people probably prefer it's aesthetics over the two. It doesn't have to be equal to or better than any other 'PvE mount', but it doesn't have to be handicapped to uselessness either.

Yeah, Guardian excels in every game mode and is also fun in the open world. Warrior and Necro are also solid picks. Thief can work as well, it's more of a selfish DPS class but can be traited to share boons in group content, although this is not as common or versatile as the other traditional support classes.

I seriously don't get the overall impression that raids are somehow impossible to access for casual players. There are dozens of training guilds you can join and training groups in the LFG every day that literally only require exotic gear and a build that makes even some remote sense (correct traits and skills equipped to match your stats). If the commander (or someone in the group) is even half competent, they will explain the mechanics and tell people where they made mistakes after a wipe. I've joined dozens of these groups after checking out a quick raid wing guide and gearing my character accordingly, and eventually we've killed the bosses. All it takes is a bit of patience and preparation on your part. When the experience and the killproofs start piling up, you can join more and more groups (or make your own) and soon enough you'll be a competent, confident raider.

Oh. Well. In any case, masteries beyond the must-have, useful ones aren't exactly important, game-defining content. Personally it's all the same to me, whether they add map-specific masteries or no masteries at all. All it really does is raise your yellow rank number and that's it. A small complaint though; they could have come up with a season-wide mastery that will be relevant throughout each episode. Any mastery at all, no matter how passive, but at least consistent and generally useful. Even though I don't care about the masteries per se, I dislike the overall per-map design that gets irrelevant outside their zones and forgotten in the future. That's no way to build good systems.

Regarding the masteries, I believe Arenanet has already covered most possible 'active' game-wide masteries; we've got movement, utility and QoL. I'm not sure what more they could do rather than infinitely adding more mounts for niche use cases. The new masteries are at least relevant troughout the season, which can't be said of all the LS3 masteries for example. Even if they are mostly passive buffs that allow us to hit harder and open certain chests, it's a nice bonus nonetheless. I didn't see OP suggesting any mastery ideas of their own; feel free to do so. I believe Anet sees and considers most well-constructed suggestions, even if they decide not to act on them.

Yes please. Also, add a Legendary Wardrobe Unlock that unlocks every single skin in the game at once. And All Achievements Unlock as well while you're at it. What about a Kill All Raid Bosses Instantly, usable once per week? Hmm..

Can I have your stuff?

The G600 is my all-time favourite mouse, even though my M1 and M2 buttons started malfunctioning after a few years (double-clicking randomly etc.). Still usable, but admittedly annoying. It's not just great for gaming across all genres, but the thumb buttons are super useful in working, text/image editing, and doing whatever you can possibly imagine. I couldn't live without them anymore, and I swear I will never go back to a mouse without them. I'm sad Logitech stopped the production, as apparently the demand for these kind of mice wasn't that high. Most people seem to laugh at it thinking "who needs that many buttons? Isn't it uncomfortable to use?" It definitely took a while to get used to it, but it's really superior to anything else I've tried. It's gotten impossible to find them new in my country, and I wish Logitech would launch a new model with an up-to-date sensor and possibly with their top-of-the-line wireless technology. Even if it's a very niche market, I bet it would still sell well enough to be worth it. The Razer Trinity comes close and is likely to be my next purchase as my old G600 eventually gives up, but I hate it doesn't have a button in the ring finger rest. Quickly switching between macro layouts is the reason why G600 trumps every other 12-button mouse IMO, as you get 24 quickly-accessible thumb macros instead of "just" 12.

I also play without sound most of the time and all captions turned on, except for new story episodes and competitive modes where hearing possible audial tells can give an advantage. It's much more relaxed to listen to my own music or some stream or whatever, especially when lately in cities I've started hearing constant "uhh! uhh? hmm... mmh! nuh-uh." It's horrible. I guess these sounds are being spammed by NPCs and there's probably an option to turn it off from the settings, but eh, whatever.

I think it's fine as it is, even for a casual daily strike mission. The two previous ones that will rotate back in after a few days will offer enough ingots/shards for casual players, and the increased difficulty is IMO a very healthy and positive thing for the game. Actually having to know and do mechanics, think about group composition, and even a basic thing such as dodging and positioning will all teach casual players not to just stand still and auto-attack. For some, this surely will be annoying and they might forget the strike mission entirely, but those players don't really want to learn. And if they don't want to, they never will, so nothing was really lost there. These people don't likely do raids or high-level fractals, and this is just another small boss they "lose access" to. There's still plenty of open world content for them to tackle. As for the people who do want to learn, this is a great stepping stone towards harder content. After multiple wipes, finally getting a strong comp and nailing the mechanics will feel like a huge victory for them, and they might now feel encouraged to try out the harder content the game has to offer. They now basically know what raid bosses are all about; comp, positioning and movement, mechanics and dps. So in a nutshell; people who can't/don't want to learn the fight, don't really lose much. It's just a strike mission with average rewards. But people who are willing to learn, it's a great new experience, it's educative, and it might push them towards harder content they never felt comfortable to try out.

As we continue the Shiverpeaks theme, I'd really like to see an actual, thick fur-trimmed cape/cloak with the next release to protect us from the cold.

It might seem like a lot of EXP, but you just have to be in the right place and do the right things. Killing the yellow mobs with a killstreak booster is fine, but I've found SW RIBA and Orr event chains to be much more profitable, both XP and reward-wise. Also, if you have alt accounts that need the XP next fall, make sure to slap on every possible booster you can find and hit the Labyrinth when halloween is on. That's the one ultimately fastest way.