[Are Rangers really "Naturalists"?]

The closest conceptual phenomena to "super natural" are pretty much anything associated with the Mists. Supernatural is normally used to describe something that does not (or don't appear to) follow the rules of the natural world. For us Real world people, thats Physics. But keep in mind that this word was coined when "Magic" was the word used in place of accepting ignorance..... and anything magic was inherently evil, but miracles were good, despite both being more or less identical.

Different races have different levels of philosophical understanding of the natural world. But what they all have in common is the knowledge that Magic and Magical Energy exist, and that they can be manipulated in a wide variety of ways. Ley Energy is just cohesive light, and has a spectrum. Various types of magical energy are compatible with certain materials, and thus tend to be imbued with them. The Difference between Healing Magic and Death Magic is what happens when the vessel is still alive. Energy can be captured and converted to one form or another under the right conditions.

What makes the Mists different is its a proto-reality (practically pure energy) with an inherent state of Chaos. Pockets of Stability are what form cohesive entities.... and some of those can grow to become a material plane. But despite being separated by a barrier, they are still part of, and interacts, with the same overall system. In the story, the Elder Dragons were acting as a Regulator to the energy flowing around Tyria's system. But when it got released, the high energy state is basically destabilizing reality and breaking the rules. Pockets of other Realities and even Unrealities appear and disappear; some created this way, others coming from other systems.

Getting back to Rangers (and to a greater extent Ritualists), what differentiates their magic from other schools is their approach is more inline with Evocation. Spirits and Magics are summoned and manifested into the physical world, and that Manifestation acts upon the world. Revs, Eles and Necros are Invokers, which channel energies through themselves (or other objects) to manipulate it. Druid is odd because it does a bit of both. But the naturalist angle implies that they are mainly directing specific types of energies without changing them; and is kind of unique as being the only magic type which can be expressly considered "Life Magic". Even in Tyrian Lore, the Druids are keepers of places where natural order thrives without disruption.

Another line of distinction is if the school of magic acts as a dominating force. As best I can tell, all schools of magic EXCEPT those used by Rangers falls under this. Ritualists derive their power from another plane of existence, by force of will if necessary. Ranger seem to draw that power from things which occur naturally, such as plants, animals, weather, and the natural products of classical elements; which "appear" to lend assistance. Eles are different in that they actively shape the elements, and imbue them with greater energy, to manipulate what forms they take. These forms are also incredibly destructive, and outright disruptive to their surroundings. Meteors called from the sky, stone erupting from the ground, Lighting arcing between specific targets, Ice formed out of air, blasts of pure energy exploding outward. They don't just use the elements, they "control" it.

[female asura/charr keep getting male outfits]

@DietPepsi.4371 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:That moment when an 10 month dead thread suddenly becomes talkative.

Been happening a lot lately.

"Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people and now you're gonna hear about it. " - Frank

[After some advice]

Depends on what game mode you want to operate in. Open world doesn't value conditions highly due to the ramp up time, the high upkeep effort, and condi damage itself being janky when it comes to tagging for drop credit. Most condi builds have to run super glass to lower their opening TTKs, and even then its still not fast enough to avoid return attacks. If you're not running a build that can kite, its a rough time.

However, condition builds shine most against high HP targets, where the damage ramp off can actually pay off. Thats why you see pure condition builds more often in Fractals and Raids, since most of what they fight takes more then 10 seconds.

Hybrid builds have something of an inversion to the other 2. They work really good on the low end, and most classes with good support for hybrids tend to gear skills toward multi-target or AOE. However, they plateau quickly, making fights against champs much, much longer, and significantly more dangerous. Because of this, PvE hybrids tend to model after PvP/Roaming builds to bake in more self-sustain. But this low damage output potential locks you out of raids, and are a pain in fractals because TTK is the strongest defense there.

Supports are also undervalued in open world. At the moment, only Ele and Guardian can dip into it effectively without having to devote a huge chunk of their build and stat block toward it. In Raids and Fractals, most support builds have to spec mostly or entirely into it, unless its counter balanced by someone's build. Support/Damage hybrids are possible in other classes, but they have lower overall effectiveness, and will have to give something major up (like self-sustain) to be adequately effective in the areas it wants to be.

You're far better off investing into multiple build types to be effective in each mode, even if those are off-meta builds. The game modes are simply too divergent in what they value, and every class now requiring too much focus into single areas, to make something that effectively spans all of them. Except for thief... because all their builds are damage builds, and their power builds work pretty much anywhere.

[Let people use all profession available weapons...]

Cyn get its. :P

Even without the Malice stacks, Death's Judgement's baseline damage sits around backstab damage. And Staff has both high sustain damage and burst damage that are independent from DD's trait lines. Combine Deadly Arts, Critstrikes and Trickery, and they get access to extra initiative, AND all the damage bonuses that the Espec normally has to replace. But in exchange, they get the full ranged Steal and frees up a utility slot for whatever.

[New hardcover Guild Wars 2 book coming in March 2020. Secret teaser or not?]

---

This is just another stab at trying to break into the collectable items market, just like every other game is doing right now. I'd be surprised if it covered anything after Path of Fire's release date.

[[Suggestion] Heart Of Thorns Inspired Map Idea: Lion's Strait]

You mean like Claw Island?

[LFG Improvements - Discussion / Ideas]

@knite.1542 said:Some sort of party leader system. If you create a party, I don't think people should be able to kick you from the party that you created.

It used to be like this, but it gave rise to a problem of Party leaders PUGing the majority of Dungeons, then kicking one or all of the party to let their friends in to claim the reward near the end. The vote system also allowed a party to oust their leader if he was misbehaving. It offers a solid power balance on the assumption that there is no collusion among the party. It also makes collusion a requirement to abuse party mechanics, which makes it way more obvious if they're frequently seen together. It also forces them to be present during the hard work in order to hold that majority; there by reducing the efficiency of the scheme.

Compare that to a system where 1 guy can make 4 people do all the work, and kick them so 4 of his friends can claim the rewards. Or 1 guy holding an instance hostage unless the rest of the party submits to their demands. This was even worse back when instances were tied to the party leader.

[In a slower development MMO like this player made content should be a thing]

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's not just the GW2 community. In my experience it seems to depend on the type of games the person in question is most used to playing, and is particularly common among MMO players because so many MMOs rely on their reward system to motivate players, in some cases including motivating them to do things they explictly do not find fun like grinding the same area over and over to artifically increase the amount of time they have to spend playing and therefore pay a subscription for. I find it strange as well, because my mentality is pretty much the opposite - I play games because they're fun and I do things in those games just because it's there to do, I almost never worry about what the rewards will be until afterwards, except in rare cases where I go looking for a specific item I want. I don't think I've ever wanted to check before accepting a quest or whatever to see if it's a good source of XP or gold, or if the rewards are useful, I just do it and decide what to do with whatever I get afterwards. But I've learned that there are people who will worry about that even in single-player games where it doesn't really have any impact.

I have a bit of insight into that. Fun can be considered an element of a reward system just as much as any intangibly tangible item. "Fun" games without rewards are better described as the catharsis experienced by the outcome of the activity, which itself is actually a purely psychological reward. Physics games tend to get the most mileage out of this, because its limitations are inverted by nature. IE: physics game play have to explicitly define limitations, where every other type of interaction has to explicitly define whats allowed.

MMORPG and RPG-lites are most heavily defined through white listing actions (literally programming them in), and directly prevents outside solutions. So to get anywhere, players have to exploit loop holes in how the rules are defined to break/beat the design intent. Since this inherently limits their freedoms, players will naturally turn toward Power and Economics to solve their problems. These 2 things are easily held hostage by the Devs, but struggle with a common problem associated with that kind of Oppression...... How to keep the villagers down, but not so much that they revolt?

With GW2 specifically, our power is capped quickly, and heavily across the game.... so that shifts nearly all of our attention toward the "Wealth-based" Reward system. Cosmetics are just an extension of that, since status and expression are a form of social currency. Solo players don't realize it, but they are also enslaved to same system, because they are their own social circle. However, there is a second and third element that puts a lot of overt emphasis on the TP and Liquid gold. Element 2 is the amount of things integrated into the game's Crafting system. Crafting was clearly tacked on later half way through development, since the game's drop system runs almost in direct odds with it. In fact, its obvious they had started with GW1's trophy system to create the gear upgrade path, which was later consolidated to Karma, and the Drop system expanded to include armor. Element 3 is the TP creating a ubiquitous value for liquid gold as a major trade medium, where other games tend to put more trade value on items and barter more as a result. Gold may still act as a frame of reference..... But the main reason MMO inflation happens is rooted in how very few items have real value to the playerbase (often being drop only), leaving little reason to spend gold on anything else. If you look at how nearly all micro-transaction models have a separate currency that is normally there to bypass the economy, its an immediate admission that the Devs don't want you to actually value it. In a lot of models, they're trying to be their own gold sellers.

The Gem store is an oddity, and actually rather cleaver, in how they use the "own gold seller" model to promote the gem store itself. Normally the Secondary Currency is sold as the solution to "the problem" of the game, where the Gem exchange is sold as the solution to the inaccessibility to the Gem store exclusives. What bit them in the ass is that the Gem store is loaded with too much exclusive value, so almost no one want to sell their gems, but nearly everyone is willing to buy them off the exchange. That gap increases the more the devs try to leverage crafting as a gold sink, because gems can't be sold for enough gold to be worth it. The cheapest legendary weapons are $50 based on the exchange rate, while the Gen 2s (being 2500g) is around $120. We make so much gold (even outside of festivals) that any project under 150g is considered Accessible, while anything under 30g is Trivial.

To us..... most item rewards are worthless, because our gear system plateaus so quickly. And the crafting requirements are so well distributed, and demanding increasing volumes of raw materials, that we'd take ages trying to gather them ourselves. The TP's ability to deal with both of those problems, the ability to sell off items we don't need for a useful amount of gold, and gold being the only medium it uses, we end up with a huge emphasis on having substantial amounts of liquid gold for its flexibility within our economy. The usefulness of Items/Materials constantly ebb and flow.... but Gold is always useful. This is how Economies are supposed to work.

[Old character customization]

Tyria is not ready for Betty White

[In a slower development MMO like this player made content should be a thing]

@"Danikat.8537" said:I've put my thoughts on this idea below, but I'm also curious about the reasons behind it. Does this game really have a slower release schedule than most MMOs?

It depends on how you define the metrics. Players regularly misinterpret their own metrics when doing statistical analysis, either out bias or simple ignorance.

When you aggregate everything, players measure/"feel" the existence of content as the "inverse of drive absence". Its a fancy way of saying "how much time they spend hooked into the dopamine stream".... But I've found the need to emphasize the explicitness of the double negative, because whats actually there has a non-linear relationship to what they perceive.

WoW had an expansion roughly every 6-12 months for its first 4 years. Thats insanely fast, and is what set the bar for our unrealistic expectations across every single game. But if you look at the interest curve (if you can still find those statistics now), the pattern of the engagement rates (ie people actively playing) is a sawtooth pattern. If you graph that as a trend, you'll notice the rate of decay over an expansion can vary significantly. That statistic is whats important to this conversation.

People only really care how fast new content is being released, based on how fast they are running out of stuff in the existing content block. Blizzard has this down to a Science- which is why the release schedules for content within an expansion are carefully metered out over time. The Xpac drops, and the first raid wing doesn't get released until 2-3 weeks into it. Then its another 2-3 week gap for every wing after that (usually breaking for Festivals). They based this on well documented trends in its player base over the years, and is represented as their average "burn rate" for content.

The Psychology here is that players have a rough idea of how much "content" is in an expansion, and the anticipation of an upcoming scheduled update increases their tolerance for downtime. This is partly why roadmaps exploded in popularity over the last year or so, because players are more willing to put up with something, if there is the promise of a reward at the end. Sound familiar? They found a way to present content releases the same way they present reward systems. Its also why the season pass was so popular in the previous paradigm, despite practically being the same thing. And the promise of DLC (at all) a selling point for the main title in the one before that.

The reason this falling off in effectiveness is largely attributed to the last 8 years of constantly being burned for displaying any ounce of trust. All these things I've mentioned above is essentially taking advantage of how player "forward thinking" operates in their cost/reward analysis. Since the "rewards" of looking far forward have been unsatisfying (to put it nicely), this has directly shrunk the span in which value assessments are being made. This is why terms like "incomplete game", "at least it released", and "I'll wait till its finished" became the part and parcel vernacular for everything In-Dev, be it AAA or Indie in nature. We're now less concerned about what a game "could be", and even more intently focused on "what is" when making long term extrapolation, and sweeping conclusions about everything. This narrowing of our perception of a game has had a direct effect on how we view burn rates for content.

Around 8 years ago, the average burn rate of a big release (be a game, an Xpac, or even a balance pass) had a half life of around 4-5 weeks. That means you need something every 6 weeks to keep the majority on-track, even if that big thing is spaced out over multiple weeks. The End cap and New start point is needed to ensure a degree of satisfaction. By my current observations, most games now have a half life of 10 days. And that is absolutely fucking terrifying when you realize its happening in brand new game releases just as much as new content blocks for existing games. Players are also a lot more sensitive to content recycling, partly due to stuff not being satisfying enough the first time around. So if your content is too similar, or is repeated too many times over the course of play, that accelerates the burn rate by almost double.

This phenomenon is but one factor contributing to the rapid player fall off of content blocks in both GW2 and WoW, despite similar amounts lasting significantly longer in previous years. Our tolerance for repetition (or even obstacles in some arguments) is the lowest I've EVER seen in all my years of online games.

Which brings me back to the original question. The timing of the releases are actually not the issue. Its the fact that we're getting bored faster then they're putting stuff out thats the problem. This has always had a truth to it.... but its exacerbated by the % of time we're now spending "bored", and how quick the novelty of new content wears off. I spend a lot of time around In-Dev games between Steam and Kickstarter, and you can track similar cycles in their develop releases. There is definitely a correlation between the level of practical repetition in the game, and how fast players get bored with it.

To get some perspective on matters; something Minecraft does that manages its repetitive nature is how its tiers its activities, and how it scales production. The vast majority of the game is about gathering and processing resources. But the issues it would normally face are mitigated by the frame work of Multi-level Project Management. The relationship between tools and productivity creates a dynamic where you are always solving similar problems differently at different phases of a play through. At early stages, you do a lot of things manually at small scale. As you move up the tools ladder, you start industrializing. You're attention span is still the same size, but the way you can break down and compartmentalize tasks is what keeps the repetition from being overbearing.

For a Master class on this concept, play Factorio. I am 110% serious. I've yet to find another game that elegantly creates this natural experience of progressively expanding industrialization. Rough spots and all. And in this perspective of what pitfalls this game avoids, and which ones it has, you quickly start to recognize the problem we're seeing with Modern reward systems, and the framework in which most games have us do things like farm and grind.

[Can we have another Meta Event Rush after Halloween?]

How about a break, so I can unravel my brain before Wintersday without having to FOMO about reward opportunities. The last round of boss rushes really suffered from this, since its piling on the exhaustion until they hit the breaking point. Even before the Rushes were added, I usually took a 3 week break after Halloween from being so farmed out on Mad Lab.

[LFG Improvements - Discussion / Ideas]

By far the biggest issues is how its filtered, followed having no way to advertise "Looking to Join" under multiple categories.

From a Player perspective, we should get 2-3 levels of granularity, so its possible to address a whole content block without having to selectively check each map. This will also greatly help for group leaders and activities that span multiple maps, or the leader is willing to do from a list of maps based on interest. Being able to search them all at once would also be a bonus.

Secondly, we could benefit from a notification system when a group advertisement comes up in a chosen set of categories. On the flip side, a feature to let players express interest in a category, which can help signal to a Commander how many people are waiting around for a group to open.

On its basic premise, this 2-way notification should speed up the organization process for Pug groups, since its no longer relying on players actively searching LFG at specific times to find those openings.

[Crafting to level to 80]

@Ol Nik.2518 said:Yesterday I levelled my key farming character to level 11 with cooking. I started at level 2 with approximately 25% XP toward level 3 (XP from map discovery). I reached level 11 when cooking was level 223. My account has a bonus of 19% XP gain from APs. No boosters, buffs, etc.

It seems that wiki is not accurate when it suggests that 400 levels of crafting translate into 7 levels of character XP.

Thats because the first 15 character levels have a modified Exp requirement. This is meant to accelerate those first few levels by a factor of 2, and gradually decreases to factor of 1 at lvl15.

[female asura/charr keep getting male outfits]

@Rhyse.8179 said:I heard a while back that some of them aren't done for Asura because the outfits are very sexualized and Asura vaguely resemble pre-teens so they don't want to go there. Dunno if true.

Charr I think they don't do because it would look ridiculous. ALthough I don't know why that would stop. coughThe Dreamercough

@PlagueParade.7942 said:If I wanted the male outfit i'd have made a male asura/charr. come on anet stop giving female asura/charr the male counterpart outfits. Pretty please with w/e you want on top.

P.S. Completely forgot that the new outfit is a datamined one and will probably be out next week. My apologies for any type of spoiler this may be.

Its because the races have low sexual dimorphism, and its directly reflected in their culture. The situation with the outfits comes down to their body frames. Skirts on Charr are a pain because of the tail, and generally has to be designed around that. And no... letting clip is not the problem. The way the tail is part of the skeleton, and how it directly affects morphs when animated, requires certain metrics. Historically, Bell Skirts are most compatible due to how they flair out and animate a bit more rigidly.

With Female Asura, their height and body proportions work with some sexualized elements, but not others. Most of the contention seems to center around neck/shoulder, chest and waist line (and to a lesser extent feet). That might sound obvious at first..... but if you look closely at which outfits got that switch off, I'm willing to bet alignment was a factor. However..... I'm also more inclined to believe cost savings factored in as well early on, since many of the newer outfits seem to be built with more metrics in mind. I've noticed for a while the older outfits leaned toward not using dresses for Females, while the newer ones do. And I'm pretty sure thats because older dresses were designed around the Human Female exclusively, and the decision based on if they wanted to fix it up or not for the other skeletons.

[Armory]

@Bogoris.4035 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Not as official website, but there is an often used build editor here:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Recreate your build there, make a thread in either the looking for help or your class forum and ask other players for help/ideas in optimizing your build.

As alternative you can also check on

https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

in the appropriate section for content/class which builds are up (often with descriptions). Maybe give open world builds a try first if asking about general pve things.

While this is helpful I find it quite strange that the developers won't add this feature to the game's own website but rather allow a third party website to do that!

One thing you'll learn quickly is that game communities will typically do a better job then Publisher/Developer when it comes to external tools. The community will make what it needs..... an officially web site will only make what its willing to pay for, and fits its agenda. Plus theres been an ever growing trend in letting the community manage resources itself, since it costs the company nothing. If anything, I'm more paranoid when a company does provide something, because theres always a catch now. Like how BF3 had Battlestats.com be its launcher, not because it was better... but because EA wanted to insert itself like Facebook.

Same thing here. Anything they're not trying to make money on, they just let community do for them. But then they started making official build templets, after 8 years of people asking for it, because ArcDPS paved the way for them, and now they can capitalize on people's dependence on it. I'm hard pressed to find another big title game right now where this isn't the case in some form or another.

[help Crafting Ascended :)]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"noiwk.2760" said:was thinking about celestial for open world tempest and wvw weaver. for the sustain some healing health and such..

Terrible idea. Trust me. Celestial is

useless

, especially in open world PvE and story missions - there are other,

better

ways to achieve what you need.

i tried to run tempest on full zeker and when i reached HoT i just died instantly over and over

There you go:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGhAwilJwuYUMFGJOqO7vNA-zRhYBRBniVQgbRSIGUVp0UBEYCkYgURQY7FJM2MvlImBA-e

(attuning to Earth will make you immune to critical damage)

But most importantly, make sure you learn the combat mechanics properly to avoid damage: do not stand in AoE, dodge when necessary, and trigger protective skills at the right time. :)

You say useless..... yet its still being used for various builds in WvW. The game doesn't start and end at Alterac vall... I mean Open world.

[Rework collections that include dead content]

@"Teratus.2859" said:This is a big problem with the living world maps and the idea of adding new content to them in newer releases.

We can't have story taking us back to Mons because some players might not have that map unlocked in season 3 etc..

This is something that has personally annoyed me for many many years and why I will never accept the living world as a 'replacement' for expansions.Once a living world map gets stale it's going to have issues like this all the time because once you've done everything on said maps there is almost never a reason to go back to them.. and that is a big problem.

Yet by that same behavior, populations in expansions drain out over time as well. Everyone has to get it through their heads that we're dealing with a basic finite resource problem. The same problem exists with all entertainment media, because theres only so much attention that can be grabbed.

HOT got around this problem by having a well scheduled Meta across a limited number of maps. This makes the routine extremely easy to flow from one map to the next, gaining or losing people at each transition. The Worldboss train works the same way, and both actively compete with each other for bodies. But people cried and cried about having to deal with large meta events, so LS3, POFm and LS4 maps scaled back their use to boss fights; seeing as bosses are one of the things often complained about and needed "avoiding" by solo players. And frankly, it worked. Casual players didn't need to do it, and could trudge around at their leisure.

The issue being raised is by Achievement Hunters. These are not casual players..... They want something specific, and are putting in the express effort to chase it. Which is why I don't buy into the excuse that them wanting to be Solo players is a compelling reason to try and "design out" the group requirement for GROUP EVENTS. All it takes is minor organization, a bit of knowledge, and many of these events are actually easier with 5-10 people due to scaling. But what truly irks me to no end is how these things are made to be enablers of social interaction, and that Solo players require major accommodation because they refuse to participate in a social space...... which is made astoundingly baffling by the incredibly low barrier for getting this player base to lend assistance. I've never seen a game this easy to PUG effectively; and a significant number of players will go out of their way to help without being asked. This means the key to all of this is Awareness. If awareness is low (like in a low pop map), building awareness is not that difficult by reaching out to the map chat, to city hubs like LA, and especially to one's guild. But that awareness has to be considered in both directions. If you're not contributing back to this system, then you're perpetuating the very problem you're complaining about.

With all that said, players have an internal conflict of interest when it comes to content. They always demand New and More at ever growing rates.... but they also refuse to let go of previous content, because they haven't milked out the maximum rewards from it yet. This demand is whats creating this paradox. Unsurprisingly, the original Living World format solves ALL of these problems, because only the current content matters at given time. Complaints about wanting to experience all past content is whats lead to their preservation-- while also demanding new content be bigger and exciting and act as sprawling epics, with new rewards that are objectively better then previous because otherwise its a waste of time, and those rewards should build on previous rewards, so we can feel Progress, and involve all the things so everything can feel rewarding and....... you can see the pattern here.

Once players get tired of places, the move on. Trying to make them come back just for the rewards has created this perpetual loop of swarming, exhaustion, and migration. Having less people around you is the price for not being part of that bandwagon at its current "hotness". The fact that a person is upset that they want the rewards, outside the popular cycle, and then citing Rewards as the solution to getting people to come back, poetically reinforces why using these comprehensive achievement/rewards as a motivator was a bad idea in the first place. ..... For us... not for Anet. This is giving Anet an easy solution to a complex problem, because we'll do anything for a shiny-- except make friends, apparently.

Above I pointed out how HOT got around this problem... but thats kind of a misrepresentation. All it really did was manage to be at the top of the stack for farming "Hotness". Istan replaced it for awhile, and then largely abandoned after the rewards were nerfed. That really does say a lot about the internal mindset of this player base, despite what they constantly state outward about the need for new content. Everyone LOVED the POF maps, with how open they are, and no filthy map metas getting in the way of things, and how they're not stuck to a scheduled, and the rewards feel great..... and now they are mostly empty outside of a Bounty, Achievement, or HP trains, done by people explicitly out to help players needing to get things done faster. Its almost as if participating and contributing to the social space is productive! But you Solo players stay classly, and do you.

If it isn't clear yet...... there is NO SOLUTION to this problem, because we're gonna just keep going in circles until Gamers at large get over themselves about reward systems. Until that happens, we're stuck just juggling 5 issues and choosing which 4 we're willing to deal with at any given time. That or stick to single player games that make you the center of the universe, and never have to socially interact with anything else.

[An alternative to the flying mount discussion]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:what is it trying to solve?Probably the oh-so urgent need of being able to fly freely and everywhere.Apparently Griffon and Skyscale aren't enough for some people, even though they can reach everywhere already.

When the novelty of "effort" wears off..... all thats left is the cries for ever growing convenience.

I'm all for it!!! Hoping one day that my Job will do itself, and my pay increased regularly to keep me "excited" about the ritual of not doing it myself. :P

[Huesos de Santo]

What? (15char)

[Huesos de Santo]

What? (15char)

[Massively OP- “had been prototyping a possible Guild Wars 3”]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"FrigginPaco.4178" said:However, it's been 7 years since launch and I'm tired of saying to myself every single year "Oh man! Look at all this shiny ~potential~ this game has!" instead of actually achieving that potential. When will it finally go beyond just being "that one game that's supposed to be different," to

actually

being as great as I and others envision it to be?

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product.

I would state its the other around. Legacy code and Regression are the 2 biggest, continuous issues any long long running piece of software has to face. Why do you do think WinXP was such a breath of fresh air after 4 generations of OS on their 9X architecture? The reason it doesn't happen often is the time (and money) it takes to build up from scratch, or at least barebones. Starting over lets you cut loose all the mistakes and all the limitations of the previous engine, and get to make all new mistakes, and slam face first into new limitations.

Projects started prior to 2010 were mostly built out of DX9/DX11 mind set... and the last few stuck with it came out around 2014. Moving forward, it became obvious that top to bottom multi-threading was the future. The bug push to move servers into Cloud computing only helped double down on this further. So a lot of games after that time period were designed to support it.... but too few of them actually implement it properly.

As much as I rag on the Devs for a lot of things...... engine development usually comes down to around a dozen or so Engineers, while its the job of the Designers to set the right requirements. If those 2 groups are properly managed, and communicate well, every other Dev team is a separate issue. FrostBite makes a perfect example of all of this; good and bad. Early version of the engine were incredibly sturdy, and benefited from being incredibly focused on FPS games. But over time EA kept piling on new requirements that the engine was never designed to consider, because they wanted a propitiatory engine for all their games, and Frostbite was already there. The tipping point was switching to it for Mass Effect Andromeda, and had next to no architecture to support massive branching narratives, large open world maps, nor the procedural systems that were going to drive them. But all these new requirements are having an impact on FPS games, the one thing its usually good at, because it has a lot of irrelevant code to support unused bespoke systems in the mix.

If they do ever get the funding and approval to do a complete rebuild of Frostbite, you can bet the Engineers are going to go even more modular so it can swap out entire code base elements as needed. That way they don't have to kludge support into an existing frame work, and the instability that comes with it. More importantly- if a module breaks, it only breaks modules that depend on it, and not everything around it.

Another thing to not overlook is "Sticky note Attrition". Its a phenomena in software development where a developer doesn't have time and/or the will power to design their code properly, and properly document it. The result is That Developer being the only one that fully understands that section of code, and if lost for any reason, that level of understanding is lost forever. Others can try to reverse engineer it, but its always a gamble at best. So that comment about "bad management will cause the old problems into the new engine" is essentially false. Bad management might lead to a similar issue.... but its patently a new issue that does not have, nor could have been the result of the previous issue. Taken in the context of what I said above, its entirely possible that the issue can be avoided in the new engine (by knowing what situation to avoid). But trying to fix the old engine is more or less impossible when its code base reaches Black Box status among the remaining developers.

The Engine team is currently trying to piece meal overhaul every section of the engine. But the legacy content, which was made to run on legacy code, and doesn't work right on new code, thats been making the entire exercise an uphill battle, with extra gravity, covered in itching powder, while being followed by a kid asking inane questions every few seconds. When they hit the wall, thats it....

But most of that can be avoided by starting over with a new engine, and building a new game on top of it. The Entropy can never be stopped... but those steps and restarts is how we avoid them becoming overbearing. But until then, we're sitting at the performance cap of DX9 architecture; and there aren't many directions left to go.

[for ascended cooks; places for finding Varietal herbs- based on anecdata*]

The Varietal comes from hits on the same type of Herb gathered. So if you're looking for a specific type, you can simply look up the herb and see which level range of herb nodes it comes from. Most of the time its one for one.... but for some odd reason I see a lot of multiple clove seeds from single clove hits.

[Help me choose a class for fractals, dungeons and raids, please!!!]

None of those classes get interesting until they're post 80...... Guardian however is easiest to manage due to its high level of self-sustain through utilities.

However, you're going into this with the mind set. The game does NOT conduct itself to having a Main that you player over everything else. Group comps in raid are also very picky, so being able to switch to a needed role is extremely helpful in finding groups. Snowcrows has a matrix of Raid bosses along with each Build, to tell you what fights they're good for.

The issues with picking each class.....

Firebrand has to run in pairs with a Renegade, so that spot tends to get a lot of competition now since groups want them the most. Tempest is spotty depending on the fight in question, but since Weaver is better DPS, that would be far more applicable. If you run tempest, its usually to back up the other supports in some capacity (or used as "weaver training wheels"). I don't know how Scourge fits in the practical meta, so I can't speak for it.

Which leaves Chrono and Druid. Mesmer is in kind of weird spot right now, as its Simultaneously the most flexible class for Raids and Fractals, but its boon build has been muscled heavily by Firebrigade being easier/better in static groups. Druids are notably better off, since the other healing builds only work in very specific team setups. The down shot, like most healers, is that you have to baby sit the DPS... but unlike most other games where you target heal, GW2's Area centric support mechanics makes THEIR positioning a big problem for you. Druid itself is not that hard to play... but the fact that you're more dependent on everyone else's position, makes it a continuous source of frustration.

Chrono and Druid still hold the highest role compression of any other team comp. 2 Chronos and a Druid do all the support roles, which takes 4-5 slots in a Firebrigrade comp due to them being DPS/Support hybrids. This universal applicability and low slot contention makes them popular in PUGs; but since Static groups can afford to tailor more to each encounter, it depends on what the rest of the group is running.

That said..... Chrono as a single pick gives you the most options, since it can effectively place itself anywhere in a primary or secondary support role, Support/Damage role, or Tank, and manages itself. Incidentally, this high flexibility also means you have to adapt your strategies; so theres a lot of small nuances you have to learn with each job (and each fight), despite the overall rotation being the same across the board. This extends into fractals, where a competent Chrono can take care of themselves, and lend a whole arsenal of boons and crowd control for every fight you'll encounter. Chrono Tank is one step higher on difficulty curve, mainly because they're built to be self-supporting while also providing support to a whole sub-group.

[New Skyscale skin?]

@willowstar.4750 said:

@"Randulf.7614" said:The game has lost a lot of its artistic individuality as it is, I think this would be a step too far. Isn't HTTYD a kids thing anyway?

I dunno man I still come on because the game has so much artistic in to it. And you'd be surprised how many animations are more geared towards young adults nowadays

Still a drop in the bucket compared to ones aimed at selling toys to kids. Pop Culture is kind of Derivative enough as is.... but the issue with cross brand promotions is this dilution effect where brands start to mesh together, and eventually get overtaken by the strongest (ie makes the most money) ones. I call it the Minion Parable. Its a thought experiment where you introduce Illumination's "Minions" into your universe, and consider how long it will take for everything else to become irrelevant in their presence.

If we want to talk more recently.... Gears of War and Terminator. While neat as an idea, it rapidly breaks the internal consistency of the universe. A literal aberration. The reason Fortnite could get away with this, where as Gears can't, is largely drawn from Fortnite embodying Pop Culture as a concept. The character designs don't have any real substantial integration or logic to the world they inhabit, or to the flow of the game; thus they make a great canvas for personal expression, and acting as an extension of social media, social interaction, and endless marketing opportunities. Perhaps a better way to put it is the game is designed to not require they fit to specific theme, and creating value from the chaos.

[An alternative to the flying mount discussion]

It would range from pointless to detrimental. Pointless, because mobility is the entire reason for the Flying mount discussion keeps coming up; and its ability to bypass obstacles is why its always gets push back. Detrimental comes into play when you start to realize areas of the POF are meant to be hidden for gameplay reason (not just perspective reasons... although that is strong motivator to limit it). With talk of renewing the Drytop method of unlocking maps piecemeal over time, free flight/god mode runs of the risk of revealing things too early. The Speculation Meta also has a bad habit of drawing conclusions on limited evidence, and not letting it go. Normally this would be just fun trivia.... but with Anet's track record, any hint of cut content quickly whips the community into a critical frenzy.

I'm not defending Anet on this (they do deserve it to a degree).... but the speed at which this stuff has been derailing releases, and discussion surrounding it, is becoming exhausting.

I'm gonna take a shot on this, and presume the line of reasoning you're using is drawn from Single player game sensibilities. Only some of that is ultimately applicable to Multiplayer games, and MMOs have their set of issues when it comes to freedom of movement. This is because all players are always in competition with each other over something. It may not be direct, and may not even be conscious of it..... but that sits at the root of the psychological drive for "Parity" seen in every MMO community. The moment some situation arises where this offers an advantage, all hell will break loose.