[Renaming my Sylvari to be more lore/racially correct]

I would err away from lineage themed naming, as its a very generic elvish approch. As backwards as it sounds, sylvari surnames and titles are more funtional or aspersional in nature; with the historical significance being a side effect of the titles definition. Titles of feats are rare, but when taken are to draw attention to a specific response.

I've noticed this more with nightmare court as an intimidation tactic, though heroic sylvari may adopt a title given to them by others if it conveys an ideal they subscribe to.　incorporating their wyld hunt is more likely for young sylvari.... but they share a cultural parallel with Norn in that title will evolve as their experiences and personalitys grow. Consider Scarlet changed her whole name with a new found purpose.

[Do legendaries die too fast in SW?]

@Game of Bones.8975 said:I've been in trains where champions and legendaries were triggered too soon and were killed before the end of the train even reach combat range.That's part poor planning, slow PCs, and PCs groups that do an amazing amount of damage.It's frustrating when you are farming for specific items and the group is too good.

To be fair, Silverwaste wasn't designed to k-trained. Any map with a lane layout is meant to have everything run concurrently, in direct opposition to how K-trains normally operate. Its the design anti-thesis of the world boss blobbing people complained made the fights too easy back in the day.

But players being players found a way to make K-trains work (in the case of silverwaste, exploiting timers), because K-train makes combat safer, despite how it affects scaling. Theres also a lot of Power creep coming from the E-spec, and we're almost double the average DPS from Pre-HOT due to how much more damage oriented everything is due to Raids/Fractals setting a new design benchmark. Theres an unintended weak band in the Scaling for most fights, where less then a dozen DPS oriented builds (which is basically 99% of Open world builds) can outpace the HP scaling. Players are also keenly aware of this, and exploit it for fights that require split tactics (like Dragon Stand towers phase).

Ultimately you can't forward plan for power creep like this, but you also can't update the change the bar without messing up those can't meet the new requirements. The solution was to never let the disparity get this bad.... but we're at the point where players just burn through content so fast, constantly demand new ways to tickle the power fantasy, and will quickly settle back into a farming routine, that you can't fix this problem on a fundamental level short of power creeping the whole system upward (which players negatively responded to the last 3 times they tried it in small scale testing).

But, ironically, thats all beside the point. WIth player being how they are, this will always be a problem for every map, because GW2 relies on statistics (character stats) to create most of its difficulty. Even in areas of combat that are strategy focused, you can make or break a number performance thesholds by simply changing a hand full of numbers...... coefficients, multipliers, durations. Remember the blanket nerf to Endurance regen? How it disrupted everything, and eventually we just replaced it with more offensive. Considering all the major paradigm shifts made since then..... how to do you back port those changes to Silverwaste, when most of those changes were made as a response to the things it does?

[Sugg: Make Old Lions Arch Pass]

@"Elden Arnaas.4870" said:I'd really like a new, easily repeatable, way to see Old LA - and be able to show it to players who didn't get the chance to see it.

A fractal of the evacuation after LA was attacked would be great. Even destroyed LA is better than concrete, glass, and steel, soulless, "Second Life wannabe LA".

Old LA was literally made of barely held together tinder. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did...... if not from Scarlet, then from simple wood rot.

[Eye On Druid Ideas! Yay!!!]

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:

@"Wondrouswall.7169" said:Here's one: Since CA healing, staff, and CA cooldowns (mostly in PvP/WvW) have been taking nothing but reductions, just do away with building Astral Force crap and have CA on a normal cooldown timer.

It's already bad enough that it's gated by a cooldown, further hindered by resource accumulation, limited through healing allies due to them making heals-over-time apply, and made more complicated with regen competition from other sources (which is better now but still flawed).

It would also be easier to balance without them having a meltdown thinking about all the runes, traits, skills, or whatever that would add to this madness. Then, maybe core Ranger stuff can have some of their effectiveness restored because it won't be empowering Druid anymore.

I would personally be a big fan of this change. I have been giving healing druid more of a chance in WvW, and although CF generation is sometimes not an issue, there are many situations when I feel like the mechanic is too punishing. If they are trying to bring down the bunkering capabilities and bring up its support potential, I think this would be a step in the right direction. Either that or take off the timer for CA and make it be based off of each CA skill cast.

I would rather CA's resource be converted into energy that fuels the skills, rather then the Transform itself. You can even adapt several aspects of Life Force from Necro to make a new system that works with CA so you don't just spam skills in order to avoid wasting the effort it took to build up. Make the Proficiency trait "Celestial Resonance" that applies a buff to nearby allies, which generates CA whenever those allies are healed (from any normal healing source), and repurpose Lingering Light to increase CA's pool size. CA skills now have an Energy cost to use, and the Transform's upkeep cost drastically reduced. Its essentially an inverted Heat mechanic. And just like Photon Forge, the GM traits control how CA is generated and Manged, while the Adept and Master lines trade off between passive bonuses and skill enhancements.

[Still no bikini or "speedo"?]

@"Super Hayes.6890" said:Just no. I hope this request never gains traction with the devs. For every player that actually wants this for cosmetic preferences there will be ten others that use it in an offensive way. There are already outfits and armors that are "seductive" enough. The game absolutely does not need bikinis and speedos.

I'll have you know that the Lord Faren "Worldly Traveler" fashion line is not only stylish, but also profoundly tasteful. Whether it be enjoying a day at the beach, prowling the jungle to protect the innocent from dangerous prey, or celebrating Winter festivities, no one of class or respectable standing would ever be so disrespectful and gutter minded to suggest Lord Faren's collection to be "seductive" or "indecent". After all.... no self respecting hero would stoop to such crass means, when a sparkling personality, boundless confidence, and courageous action is more then enough to earn the admiration of the people, and the adoration of a potential companion.

[High Elves]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:Anyone else find it interesting that there's a whole page full of nothing but people saying "no" to the OP? Apparently it was such a touchy subject that every active forumer needs to voice their shared opinion on it.

Thats typical of any game community that sees a suggestion to copy something else, but not give sufficient justification as to why it actively improves the game. Using WoW as an example rarely works, because WoW set the standard for "generic fantasy MMO". Warcraft itself is kind of funny as an IP, because its an off shoot of the Warhammer IP, which itself took the fantasy tropes popularized by Lord of the Rings to a comical extreme. So its kind of unfortunate that WoW tried to shed some of its parody of a parody roots on its way to becoming what it is now.

Anyway.... Vets were apprehensive about Mounts when they were announced. They were also unsure about gliding when it was first announced. But to their well deserved credit, Anet tried to do something original with each, and make them an integral part of how the map operated. Even when they don't quite work right, they're still miles ahead of other games that just use it as a gimmick, and not do much with it in practice. "Joy of movement" is a philosophy thats worked well for Anet thus far.... so I suspect this is how they plan on doing expansions moving forward, so the Especs can operate independently and be fully compatible in any expansion.

["The Departed" has made me want to depart the game.]

@Vayne.8563 said:Make a friend, go in with someone else,. save time. Not sure why more people don't consider this.

why would anyone join a party to do something in an MMO? Its just crazy talk

[A-Net Please make it easier to the Gift of battle.]

@Celsith.2753 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Solori.6025 said:

@Last Crysis.1934 said:Having to spend 6+ hour in WvW is ruining the game for me, just to get the Gift of Battle. I don't find it fun getting killed ever minute when i am just trying to find away to get my participation up and repairing walls for that whole time is boring. So PLEASE A-net do something for the ppl who don't like WvW or any type of pvp.

NO.They already made it so you no longer have to go into WvW for map completion. Anything more and they may was well revamp the entire game.I don't want to have to go and do map complete in PvE only. They should just give away the gift of exploration because I dont like PvE

I don't want to farm for gold either. Lets just make all materials free. Cause I find farming boring.

Lets just dumb down the game so everyone can just have everything with no effort.

Cause that's basically what you're asking for.Reward with no effort

Actually, they removed map comp from wvw because pvers used to flood the maps and not participate in wvw stuff... That aside, GoB is pretty easy to get, I agree

Actually they moved it because pvers cried and cried and cried about it.

To be fair, individual players had no agency in WvW map comp. What POIs you had access depended entirely on which color/homemap you would have over the course of at least a few months, the performance of your server doing a match up, and what hours you were on. Well defended objectives like the Garrisons could be inaccessible to you for months at a time, and creating a window of opportunity relied on your team being able to successfully take it in the first place. Now repeat that 2 more times for the other BL and EBG Keeps. When I first got into WvW, I spent so much time on Red, I didn't even realize colors were assigned by previous week's ranking.

[World Restructuring]

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@"LetoII.3782" said:What's in a name?

The server is a community of people.Alliances will be the same, with more imput from the community itself as to who composes that community.

There will still be a BG... The whole ocx community won't fill half an alliance, there will be room for a big sea group too.

I think Lupin is NA, knows NA doesn't matter much, there is always plenty to go around. So the new BG isn't likely to have a spot for his like. :(

I am na and I have a guild to be part of an alliance, but as I said I still don't like the changes, you guys can nitpick and investigate as to why I don't like this all you like, it's as simple as the points I made above,

People who are for this change don't care about pugs or anything they might want at all. This will destroy server identity completely which is like telling someone from wow, there is no horde or alliance anymore, it's gamebreaking.

But by their nature, pugs don't collectively form an identity as "pugs". Thats why everyone esle sees them as an amorphis blob of bodies with no sense of purpose. They attach themselves to other identities, or coalesce into a select group that forms its own identity.... thus are no longer pugs, even when mixed in with pugs. That group doesn't even need to be in a guild for this for this to work.

This happens all the time in less guild heavy servers, as synergy seperates itself from the chaos, and adhoc groups form.

The only people who won't benefit from this are people who refuse to group, or can't funtion in a group setting. A pug player who is half way competent has no problem operating in a zerg.... aka the penultimate of swarm cooperation. But a swarm needs intelligence- either a driver, or pockets of semi-autonimous teams.Bad players will still be bad after this....just as it was before. But unlike now, this change has the potential to address a lack of fights that snow ball into one server getting steamrolled, because they can't maintain ground. Being on 3 different servers over the years, I've seen 2 rise and fall based solely on their guilds offering wvw coverage.

You can also consider this replacing server tiers in its entirety, and being replaced with guild/alliance rankings. If anything, pugs actively benefit from more organized groups to hold ground and can adhoc with as desired.

Alliances will.form the backbone of a matchup, and those are, have always been, and always will be what a servers identity is based on. A bunch of crappy guilds makes a.crappy server. A bunch of guilds that cheese the map makes it.a cheesing server. A lack of organized groups makes it a chaos server..... unless you want to call that a pug server. But if a.bunch of unguilded pugs get thier act together, they deserve the pug server title, lends to it a positive reputation.

I think big aversion to this is that you don't see guilds as valuable unless they carry you. A faction being this monolithic thing you navigate at your own personal accord. A greater good to attach yourself to, that itself is too big to recognize your failings, but lavishes in your accomplishments.

As a mostly freeagent, I choose to adhoc where I wish. This works because I don't blame the nebulous "faction" for its performance, though I may still refer to it as a whole to shorthand a prevalent trait it displays. I recognize the elements that cause the whole to react.... a chain of causality drawn down as granular as possible. Guilds often behave as a result of its politics ... and that can be driven by one or many in its ranks. A server is no different. Just as a server has guilds that interact, a guild has cliches that interact. From largest alliance to individual person, that all plays a role in how this works.

[World Restructuring]

One.major point of concern that needs to be addressed, and should be working in tandem with these changes.......

The internal guild management system, guildhall upgrades/guild research system, and guild wvw inventory need an overhaul, to allow a new guild to focus on wvw upgrades exclusively. This will enable groups to restructure themselves around the new one wvw guild retriction more easily, without the, frankly insane, 10s of thousands of gold needed to unlock staple wvw upgrades like auras and tactics..... A fact thats been grossly ignored since the inception of guild halls.

Because as of right now, mixed pve/wvw guilds rosters will cause problems with the alliance player limits if they're being treated as a single whole in server pop calculations. The wvw, pvp, and pve upgrade branches need to be seperated, and each guild having a dedicated wvw roster for use in the new population control metrics. This directly addresses several major problems in all game modes that stem from the clunky guild management system we have now, and uniformly lays a better system to allow game mode changes that don't mess with or are hindered by the guild number limits.

There also neeeds to be a way forge sup siege via guild assembly line, while in wvw, without leaving the map. Not to mention a way for guilds to leave a cache of blueprints in something that can be shared across the alliance. This one of the bigger concerns for servers where the guild coverage is spotty, and only 2 or 3 guilds are the primary siege suppliers for the matchup. Especially when a zerg commander forgets, gets dc'd, or has no one to hand off to, and takes a lot of siege with them. A better system for pugs to donate materials to guilds to process siege is also something sorely needed for less organized matchups to work with.

It doesn't need to be an alliance bank. In fact, it would be subtantially better as a squad/guild UI for commanders and lieutenants to be able to call up siege, and have it draw from the group's posted inventory via permissions. Each player can then choose to post siege in thier personal inventory to squad use, guilds to post select amounts of siege to the alliance for commander use, and alliance members to post a shopping list for guilds to coordinate production efforts. Each can retract the offer if needed, and owner ship of the items are never in disput as they are never moved, only consumed. Permissions can also control which guilds in an alliance is allowed to use your guild's posted supplies to manage abuse.The mail system can cover the rest if guilds need to move stuff between each other.

[No Land-Spear or Scythe as new ''weapon'', will never be available to us]

@Rukia.9860 said:Derv, Paragon, Monk, and Rit. I'm honestly not even sure why they gave us the revenant instead of an existing class that is already desired from the original GW. My fear is if they look at data and see rev is not a popular class will they just assume adding a new one is a waste of resources? The worth of adding a new weapon type for just 1 single class? The safest bet is to hope that ANet make an elite spec using these weapon types in a similar way to their respective GW1 classes. There's proof they can do it visually with the reaper in shroud form who uses a 'scythe'.

The same reason 5 classes were rolled up into the guardian....... they can't follow the GW1 archetypes close enough to recreate them with the way GW2's combat works. Thats why many of the classes that carried over in name had major changes in functions. Ranger has several melee options, Warrior gets a Rifle and absorbed half the Paragon Support kit, Mesmer needed something more flexible then hexes, Ritualist mechanics was rethemed under the Engineer (which people rejected) and now the theme was brought back with the Revanent (which people also rejected). And as previously stated, Monks can't serve their role competently with the new combat paradigm.... Even when the role is forced into the system, like it was with the Druid.

Revanent is a functional fusion of the Dervish and Ritualist, with the Renegade pushing that theme as hard as they can. The problem with Fan service is what happens when 2 mechanical designs start to clash, because the fans demand something, and not realize it can't work out of its element. GW1 and GW2 are fundamentally different games; and the reshuffling and renaming of classes was done to make sure ties were broken with their roots, so they wouldn't be enslaved to the previous, and very rigid archetypes. Consider the Dervish eats its own Buffs to fuel its skills.... something the Spell breaker does, and is considered one of the worst decisions by players due to how we utilize and value Boons. That is a fundamental mechanic of the Dervish that is immediately rejected by players as a bad design choice with how GW2 works. If we bring back the Dervish without the Buff eating paradigm, its essentially just self stacking boons, which is what Ranger and Warrior does with a lot of its traits. This forum already spends too much time theory crafting the redundancy of entire classes.... do we really need more classes, just so we have more things to shun in the meta?

[Twice-told Legend, Need Clarification]

Since we're on the subject...... 2x Moots are the cheapest way to do it if you're after the title. Fortunately Maces made a minor come back between Condi Renegade and WvW Firebrand. Most practical choice is 2x Incinerator; as double dagger has a hand full of compatible builds.

Actually..... is it possible to make extra copies of the Gen 2.5 Legendaries? Then make an Espec that dual wields shields, so I can go Twin Shooshadoo while I solo Dragon Stand

[Underwater Content in GW 2's Future - (A new and necessary experience)]

@PopeUrban.2578 said:Anet can't even properly balance the one combat system they put all their effort in to very well. I don't think we need them to divide that effort to overhaul an even more complex set of content that we have to interact with to get anything important done.

Let UW content be what it is already, an occasional distraction that isn't necessary to do anything important. At least that way all their guns are firing on the combat mechanics that actually mostly work well.

But that mind set is hypocritical in light of what you weigh against it........ "its serviceable" would never fly as being acceptable for any other content currently in the game. This problem has same solution to pretty much everything else Anet has done to make this game stand out; we need an innovation to change up the problem. At its most fundamental level, under water combat in this game is 6DOF; this is neither a new concept to gamers, and there has been games with 6DOF that are fun to play. The big issue here is that the baseline combat system is only designed for 2D movement, and UWC has no mechanical extensions to address that. Gliding solve a traversal problem, yet in Bloodstone Fen, Siren's Landing, Draconis Mons and several special events added a very rudimentary aerial combat setup. With LS4 coming out soon, we may see their attempts to expand on the mounts.

For Underwater combat, there are a wealth of Air combat, space combat and (holyshit) Underwater combat games to use as reference, case studies, and examples for both good and bad implementations for game systems built around a 6DOF environment. And I'm pretty sure most people would be surprised to find that 6DOF is actually much easier to implement a large number of combat mechanics; but that in reality the biggest hurdle is player spatial awareness. For a game that makes extensive use of Jumping puzzles, you'd think its playerbase would put 2 and 2 together on their own.

[[Suggestions]QoL (Quality of Life) Ideas [Merged]]

But where are you going to find enough key binds for them all?

[Balthazar fight]

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:I hated this fight. It was boring and I couldn't figure out what all the dialogue was about. They kept talking about Kralkatorrik and I didn't have a clue what that had to do with anything. Turns out, there was a huge dragon head up in the sky doing stuff for most of the fight. What the kitten kind of nonsense is that?

Why put something in the sky if you can't afford taking your eyes off the floor for even a split-second? I actually played through the whole fight without realizing some of the ridiculous amount of effects were caused by an elder dragon instead of a god, only realizing what had been going on when Balthazar finally croaked and I finally had the opportunity to raise my camera angle. Ridiculous design.

Situational Awareness is a lost art...... I used to laugh at all the shooters and brawlers where people get tunnel vision, and get killed by a dinkly ranged enemy (Halo Grunts being the most hilarious by far). Now I just weep, because its become the norm.

[Precursor crafting, more like gold sink simulator.]

@Rikkagin.9472 said:In Everquest, circa 2000, they had Epic weapons. They were a massive time sink, and for many simply impossible to attain due the amount of time needed in a single block to camp the named mob's, required to kill, for the drop you required. I think you had to be a little masochistic to attempt it, but of course a lot of people did. To me there was nothing remotely epic about them, they were just a huge waste of time.

12 years later Anet releases GW2 and it's version of epic weapons. The attaining of them is a little better, even a "casual" could eventually obtain one, but they are still a massive time sink. Grinding is now called "farming" but it amounts to the same thing. If you are masochistic enough to try to make one, well done!

As for me, 17 years on, I feel the same about way about legendary's as I did about epics, got better things to do with my time.

But whats the point of doing other things if I'm not Stylin' while I'm doing it? Without ever increasing gear stats, how else am I supposed to inform other players of my greatness? /ego

[Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]]

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:

@Asum.4960 said:

@Sodeni.6041 said:

@Rawr.9467 said:Unfortunately you only need a few people to buy them. Boycotts don't work very well when you have whales that give in and purchase everything, further solidifying the benefits of this marketing model.

I strongly believe that if there are enough people that also

don't

buy those skins, Anet will have to change it since everyone counts as a source of money and they make less money if people don't buy those skins because of RNG aspects.

Considering gambling cash shop games get up to 90% of their revenue from around 0.2% of their player base, so called "whales", if ArenaNet want's to transition to that business model, loosing some "Dolphins" and "Minnows" or especially "non-monetizers" won't matter to them.

That doesn't mean outcry's or boycotts don't matter though, especially before it's to late, at this phase they might still turn around if public perception of Anet gets bad enough.Shame though, since I rather would have just bought the one or two mount skins I really like for a reasonable price and recommend the game to everybody thinking about getting into a new MMO instead.

But what does this small fish know?

Not sure if 100 a month makes me a whale or not but I refuse to spend any of it on RNG.

See this article from 2011, which considered $20 a month as whale territory.....

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-beating-heart-of-a-free-to-play-game/http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/09/whales-true-fans-and-the-ethics-of-free-to-play-games/

Reading it now, in today's market, that whole bit about the difference between whales and true fans has been largely, if not entirely blurred, when you consider how polarizing people's opinions have become whenever the subject gets brought up. The fact I even feel the need to clarify this is why it bothers me..... its become increasingly difficult to have a proper discussion on a subject, when the most extreme opposing groups are trying to be as loud as possible to decry or affirm view points as irrefutable facts. There is also a problem where there is an increasing lack of empathy, or even the statement of false empathy, to dismiss issues that may had been minor before, but are now front and center. The phrases "it doesn't affect X" or "only affects Y" are no longer valid once you realize that EVERYTHING is becoming intertwined. The process may be slow, but it is happening.

As for the situation with the Mount skins....... this was an unnecessary move, as the player base was more then ready, even eager to buy mount skins that they liked, so long as the gem cost fell into similar price ranges as gliders and outfits. 700 Gems (or ~$8) is the upper limit people I believe people are willing to go for a single item like that. As pricey as that is, Mounts were popular enough to get away with it with little push back. There is pretty much no way to spin this situation with the RNG Unlock, as there was no reason to implement a system like that; other then ensuring as many people would put in the maximum possible investment, with no other incentive then to remove uncertainty that didn't need to exist.

[[Poll] Weapon for the next Revenant Elite Specialization]

@otto.5684 said:It is very unlikely that the next weapon will be a melee weapon. The most probably is mid ranged power weapon

This is Revanent.... Melee weapons are ranged weapons. The Animations they used for Balthazar's weapon is exactly what I imagined a Rev wielding a Greatsword would be like..... is both a melee and med range weapon, but moves on its own, commanded by the Rev's will. I've seen this done before in a couple of action platformers, and works to good effect; visually and mechanically.

[Griffon - Legendary Corrupted Facet - any ideas ...?]

The answer is bounty trains. Obviously with the insane gold farm that is the Mad Lab, theres gonna a lot less people on the normal maps...... however, if you're in your server's prime time (or have enough guildies on to start the squad), you can start a train and build up people before heading to Facet.

The problem is you're trying to address only "your" problem, but expecting everyone else to drop what they're doing to come help. As helpful as people are in this game, too much waiting around for more people is no fun for anyone involved. You're also facing player psychology, where they see a Bounty group with only 4 people, and assume you're either a crappy commander, no one else is interested in a bounty train, or its a stale LFG that no one closed after the commander left. But if they see 12+ people in a bounty train LFG, join it and see people actively moving around, they know its active and are likely to stay for a few runs.
I once took over a Bounty train Vabbi after the commander left; and the remaining 12 of us were selectively going after achievement targets a person in the group needed. Thats a shared effort, where everyone felt it was worth contributing, because the others were willing to help in turn.

[All Hail Steve, Labyrinthine Horror]

@"Omar Aschi Popp.7496" said:Here is my question. Why are we arbitrarily picking named enemies to nickname?

Why not call Tequatl "John"?Why not Call Logan "Abernathy"?Why not call The Viscount "Chimmichanga"?

For what non attention-seeking purpose are we naming a skeketon "Steve/Dave/(lol)Fred"?!!!!!

Just call him Horror like a normal person.

OrbitalButt was spot on.

You're killing fictional monsters, that look like Holloween toys, in an extra dimensional realm, governed by a Murderous Mad King, with a terrible sense of humor, arguing with his estranged Son, who is also murderous but with less humor, opening disemboded doors, mining big candy corns for little candy corns, and collecting trick or treat bags........ There is nothing NORMAL about anyone who would willingly visit this place.

[All Hail Steve, Labyrinthine Horror]

@"Endless Soul.5178" said:I really don't understand giving the nickname "Steve" to everything.

Its not a new tradition for players to nickname certain unique (or even non-unique) mobs, or invent backstories for them for entertainment purposes. It can be varied in style, as most fan fiction is.... but occasionally sticks, and spreads to become a game wide meme within the community.

On a semi-related noted, Minecraft was popular by the time GW2 came out.... so it wouldn't surprise me if that had some influence.

[Is Renegade the most poorly designed elite spec in this game?]

@DiogoSilva.7089 said:I play with renegade because it's new, and purchasing a new expansion with new specs and not touching them would be unexciting. We've had base revenant + herald for 2 years. It always feels good to play with shiny new toys while they are new.

Even so, I spend more time on mace/ axe + mallyx than on shortbow + kalla, simply because the old skills are so much more enjoyable than the new ones.

I've found that the skills can't be used fast enough in the situations where it would have the most impact. I don't get that slow clunky feeling on hammer... and thats a weapon that is intentionally slow and clunky by design. The major difference is that Hammer has a big pay off if those skills hit, but huge risk to execute (rewards calculated attacks); while SB feels like it should be a kiting weapon, but relies on a specific, high cost rotation to get those attacks to land reliably. Ranger SB is also a Kitting weapon. And while its damage and utility is unimpressive, its usability is extremely high due to short cast times. That synergizes perfectly with Mid-range builds that are vulnerable to gap closers, and need the ability to disengage and reengage without breaking rhythm. In fact, thats basically the concept behind "Light On Your Feet", and would had been a good PvP trait if Shortbow had a better skill to set up for, and had synergy with a Melee Dive comp.

Mace/Axe fills all of those functions, with 2 gap closers, and a strong CC as an opener. And while it can't kite, it can control your half of the engagement so you can capitalize on openings. Renegade short bow is poor at kiting (which hurts in PvP), can't control a mobile target (hurts in pvp and wvw), and lacks the range to keep out of range of the front lines in WvW. Its great in open world PvP because most mobs aren't that mobile, or will sit around (which is why people hate Rolling Devils more then any other mob in HOT).

Given the nature of condi, and design of the skills...... Renegade SB attacks wouldn't be so bad if it either got its ranged extended (to 1000 or 1050), or fired off faster so you flip between offensive and defensive positioning. The Bombardment definitely needs more cast range or a wider strike area, and the Warband summons definitely need more resilience against interrupts (to compensate for their short duration). For the latter I would suggest native 50% duration reduction against hard CCs, and one of the traits offer retaliation on summon (like Mesmer phantasms) to help dish payback for bombing them in WvW.

[I'm getting bored fast...]

@Sylent.3165 said:Well the biggest issue isn't there is nothing to do, but there is no point in doing anything. Rewards in this game are bad and I don't want a gear treadmill ever those are horrible but a system like d3 paragon levels or eso champion points helps always give you a motive to play. (Of course these aren't in pvp)

To Quote Captain Jack Sparrow.... "the problem isn't the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Savvy?"

What you've described is the mental default setting that now plagues the entertainment industry as a whole....... a proverbial content locust. I'm not antagonizing your specifically; as this has effectively become the normal state of a mainstream audience, through a combination of apathy, addiction, and demand for comfort, on the part of the consumers. When you look at it as a whole, its basically a addiction cycle.... including the mechanisms that drive the behavior, and the diminishing returns from given stimulation.

Coupled with the lack of direction in what you actually want (ie an actual goal), you're indirectly advocating something to consume for the sake of consumption. Its not a choice or a goal..... you're calling for the affirmation of endless "milestones" and continual reward cycles to feed the addiction. An idea usually pitched under the guise of "Progression". It even more troubling when you consider you're not even asking for the elements that you do find rewarding, like more story content, but are mostly fixated on furthering "accumulation" with no higher goal in mind. THAT is really what I think is the problem..... "the means are the means to the means. but where does it end?" You've done a bunch of stuff, but you want more stuff to do for the sake of having something to do.

Theres no real solution to this, because its unsustainable by nature. The Breadth of content in this expansion is at least equal to, if not greater, then that of HOT. But what lands up happening is people complaining about content which requires too much effort, or doesn't return on effort, or gets burned up too fast. Theres only 3 ways to give game content replay value..... challenge, rewards, or be a hobbyist-like experience. The first is usually artificially weighted, since legitimate mechanical challenge is incredibly hard to do in game design; and even more difficult to modify upwards without losing that authenticity. Which is why the second is usually what developers resort to, because its easier to manipulate, and can be done for much less effort. The third is basically the Holy Grail of game design...... an activity that is indefinitely enjoyable to do, in of itself. Its something you can only really find in extremely niche games, as you usually have to fine tune around a very specific set of interests. These games also tend to genre defining, as it sets a number of expectations for future games that are even remotely similar in mechanics or presentation.

For GW2 specifically, its strongest elements (the story and setting) are by far the hardest types of content to produce in a timely manner, but are consumed the quickest. The difference is like that of $10 meal and $80 meal..... both take a lot of work and preparation to make, both are consumed in 10-30 minutes, and both satiate hunger. So why buy 1 expensive meal, when you could buy 8 cheaper meals that will last you longer? The difference is eating to have a valuable experience, verses eating because you have a need to eat. I used the term "Content locust" earlier for reason... it describes an activity where people consume game content for the sake of consuming, but put little to no value outside of that. As a side effect of that, rewards are used as an incentive to continue the cycle, because eventually the brain gets bored from the repetition, and needs a new element introduced to give it another endorphin hit. So like giving a rare weapon skin as a reward for repeating something enough times. Eventually that loses value, because you'll inevitably get duplicate skins, and need to replace it with something else. But that "something else" has to be better, otherwise we won't value it enough to pursue. But given the kind of time spans MMOs are meant to be played, any form of pre-defined reward cycle will either run its course, or be recognized as not being valuable enough for the cost of effort..... so to get around that, games started doing RNG.

.................And now it should be dawning on some just how systemic this problem is on both sides of the market. We are the fat kid chasing the twinkle!

[Gw2 for ps4/xbox]

Not with the kind of pacing and number of high demand keys needed for this game's combat system. They would have to fork the entire game play design, with its own team, and redesign the combat and control system to work under the heavily restricted nature of controllers. To an extent, even Blizzard, with all their resources, are regretting their console development branch, because half of their hero mechanics have almost completely opposite behavior between PC and consoles. And trying to back port a KBM control scheme to Controller is nightmarish compared to designing a Controller based control scheme, and porting it to KBM.

[Griffon Mount Cost]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:The griffon is a vanity mount and not a necessary one like the others. So yes, 250 gold is a perfectly fine price.

I wouldn't consider it a vanity mount, since its practical utility is the highest out of the 5.... with the one exception of Springer High Jump. Its like Gliding in Core Tyria- You don't need it, but it does open up routes to make getting around a lot more efficient. GW2 has a unique problem of non-obsolescence when it comes to daily activities; so players are under increasing pressure to get their daily routes done as quickly as possible, so as to not lose potential rewards stuck behind the time gate. They "could" fix this with redundant options in multiple areas of interest..... but doing so results in major push back from the players, as its seen as a lost opportunity for additional rewards on the daily routes. This is one of the few games where if 6 vendors are offering a daily item each, and then adding 6 clones in the new map for the sake of convenience, the player base would immediately demand they be unlinked so they can get 12 daily items by hitting all of them per day.

This question is going to become extremely relevant when the new Raid wings come up; because its asking if HOT still is a requirement for Legendary armor. If POF raids don't offer contribution to Legendary armor (if not a whole new collection track for players without HOT to get started on), then its going to explode into a debate of the reward viability of POF raid wings. They've already established 2 precedents: 1. That HOT is needed for Wings 1-4 because Gliding is a requirement. And 2. Xpac content can't assume players have access to abilities from previous Xpacs. This means Raid Wings can't operate independently of mastery abilities , unless they're willing to go back and redesign the levels to exclude them (which is unlikely)..... or that Raids mastery tracks will have to contain a redundant track for requisite abilities, and offer enough MPs to unlock them.

The result of this inconsistency means POF raids will either offer currencies (like LIs) for a collection that doesn't exist, which is a problem for players without HOT; or that it doesn't offer currencies, causing HOT/POF players to question the reward value of POF raids. If either of those end up being true, HOT Raids will remain the primary weekly routine given the high value assigned to Legendary armor. In turn, POF raids will need to offer an equally valuable set of rewards to entice people into putting it into rotation.... but thats a hard sell when Legendary armor is such huge QOL bump. This could seriously break raid teams, because those still working on Legendary armor will put most of their energy into rewards that contribute toward them; but those with enough sets of legendary armor (those who no longer need to work on them) will considering going back to HOT raids a waste of time, if POF rewards are mutually exclusive and compete for time on raid schedules. So far ANET is refusing to address this question in detail; and have only stated POF will not have a new legendary armor collection. But that leaves too much open to interpretation, with serious consequences for those those who aren't already maxed out on Raid rewards. What are going to happen to LIs in POF raid wings? In HOT they're used exclusively for Legendary armor production, and nothing else (not even sink rewards or consumables like the other currencies do). It sounds inconsequential to established raiders..... but that raises an issue for people still working on, or are only now starting Legendary armor, if the source of LIs are taken out of the rotation schedule. But if LIs are part of rewards for POF wings.... what are maxed out players going to spend them on? Or are they going to do what they did with WvW, and accrete a new currency to replace LIs (in an attempt to reset the board), and leave a back channel to let the new currency buy Envoy Insignias?

If they keep doing this, how big of a mess will this create after 2 generations of accretion, and the Devs lose interest in legacy upkeep? If this question keeps getting put off, or legacy support purposely dropped without replacements, it runs the risk of another LS Season 1 situation where those rewards are desirable, but have no practical method of obtaining. And after all the effort into getting everything standardized for future production, this seems like a bad time to revert back to piece meal abandonment of items that have long term practical value to the player base.