Zephire.8049

I prefer HoT-levels of map difficulty (perhaps a bit more) with PoF-like HPs. My issue with PoF was that there were so many mobs with large aggro ranges that could forcefully engage you via immobalization, stun, or pulling you to it that it was a nightmare to explore even with mounts. I don't mind difficult enemies, I just don't like not being able to move 50 feet without aggroing another group of them. Especially when they still bug out and go invuln while leaving you in combat. Also the hearts on PoF maps are terribly scaled so those should either be core/LW3 (minus Doric)/LW4 or not exist. I love map completion but I refuse to touch PoF more than I have because between the mobs and hearts, it's not fun and takes longer than most core maps for lesser rewards.

You also raise a good point by bringing up racial armour. Either they'd have a 1:1 conversion of skins when a race change happens or they wouldn't and you'd have to re-buy racial skins to replace the ones you "lost". Either way, people will complain about Anet's decision and bother support over it. Race changes can't be enabled just flipping a switch since so much is tied to them that it would be a huge undertaking to add into the game. Even account name changes are possible (even though it can cause database issues) so it should tell people just how difficult-to-impossible race changes are when you can't even message support and have them do it if you agree to the potential risks that would happen.

As the others have said, race changes are one of the things Anet has said won't happen (as opposed to not a focus or otherwise leaving it open ended). Which makes sense given how the personal story's code has been implied to be extremely unstable and would be easy to break, which is one of the reasons why bugs in it have existed for years as the risk to breaking something else isn't deemed worth the risk to fix something that doesn't prevent progress. For all the time, effort, and risk associated with implementing a race change, they could update or add a system that benefits far more people. Especially as, while it sucks making a new character, you can make a new character with the same or similar name and only lose out on soulbound gear.

1) Dragons talked in GW1 so of course they can talk in GW2.2) Foreshadowing is a perfectly fine narrative device and writers opting for shock with no foreshadowing in recent years is objectively bad and has trained people to think knowing the route a story will go (even if you don't know the details) because of foreshadowing means it's bad writing instead of a choice the writer made to use a tool that's been around for centuries.3) The story is already set and odds are voice lines are nearly fully recorded or fully recorded with a decent chunk of cutscenes having been roughly or fully animated.4) Cantha was Generic Asian™ with a mashup of multiple cultures, something that was a huge issue in GW1 and EoD will hopefully have had more effort to research things put into it.5) Dragons are a fantasy staple and been around in Guild Wars since GW1 so expecting there to be no dragons (in an expansion titled End of Dragons based on a GW1 expansion that heavily featured a dragon where the teaser trailer featured a dragon) is setting yourself up to be disappointed.6) Fewer buttcapes would be nice but that's been asked for for the past 5 years so getting invested in the idea that suddenly they'll stop is also setting yourself up for disappointment.

It really isn't (it especially isn't to all of those hit with the layoffs).The layoffs that happened nearly 2 years ago under different leadership? I can't remember who the current CEO is but the mass layoff happened under Mike O'Brian, who was then replaced by Mike Z, who was then replaced by whoever it is now. Anet's management has always been lacking (and still is given how half of IBS was scrapped with little warning to the devs), but the game did rebound after O'Brian left and the pipelines were cleared out. And NCSoft's quarterly reports are readily available and show GW2 as doing just fine with it being their most profitable title in the West and only behind Lineage and Lineage 2 in the PC market now and about tied with Blade & Soul, so financially Arenanet is doing fine, especially with the one title bringing in enough money that not one but two projects were being fully funded by it. And that's with next to no marketing of GW2, though that's a whole other topic.

Usually 24 hours to a couple weeks in my experience. It depends on the weapon (not just the look but also if it's meta or not) and what the current supply is at, though someone undercutting you by 1g is always a risk. The worst is when a chain of undercutting happens since legendary weapons don't move the fastest to begin with, so I usually have a look at a TP website (usually both GW2TP and GW2Spidy) to see what the activity has been like for a legendary I'm thinking of selling so I can list it at a time when it's most likely to sell fast so I'm not out the listing fee for an extended period of time. I'd rather wake up the next day to ~2k waiting for me than randomly while I'm in the middle of something a couple weeks later.

/wiki [item name] (or manually checking the wiki) will tell you whether you'll need an item for current content. They can't tell you about future uses an item has (minus chained unlocks such as the Boreal weapons since those were planned, if extremely poorly implemented with no warnings) because future recipes are still up in the air if they're being worked on at all. Not to mention future uses tend to be closely guarded after some instances of people using their insider knowledge to make bank. When in doubt, hang onto things unless you're prepared to work on getting more of them.

Blocking whole guilds probably wouldn't be an option just because you have to figure out and code it and also decide if it's constantly checking guild membership or if it takes a snapshot when you choose to block. There's also the very real possibility that people will troll guilds by joining and then spamming map chat so everyone in the guild gets blocked rather than just the one person. The block system does need an overhaul and AgentMoore points out some good changes, but blocking a whole guild isn't likely to happen because of all the logistical problems with making such a system even without ways to mitigate trolling. If on-going harassment is an issue, you can always submit a ticket via the support website detailing what's going on. Action may or may not be taken, but it leaves a paper trail and support may realize that a guild is particularly toxic. But in the meantime your best bet is to keep a document of the guild(s) name and tag and manually block people on the map with said tag. Not because "you should have a thicker skin" or anything like that but because the odds of a mass-blocking system being added any time soon—if at all—are slim to none and at least manually blocking people lets you do something here and now instead of doing nothing.

There being a toggle for auto-grab or not wouldn't be terrible, but changing it at this point would mess a lot of people up and possibly introduce new issues. I definitely had that issue at first but using (and sometimes just tapping) the descend button all but eliminated it since you can't latch while descending. As someone else said, older content seems to be the worst since there are so many things where you assume there's collision when there isn't and other times that tiny leaf that shouldn't have a hitbox does. LW3 and onward tends to be way better about consistency with those things, though.

It's simply a personal preference. Human males don't bother me but some of the others (such as male norn) come across as too hammy for my tastes, and the noises added to male charr bother me. Having seen and played things with genuinely bad voice acting, there's a huge difference in how it feels to not like something because you don't like it while it's still objectively good and not liking something because it's bad. Also I laugh at the idea that video game VAs are expensive and I wish that was the case. Some of the bigger names definitely command a higher price but there's a reason why VAs either work as much as possible or work a day job unless they're one of the industry darlings. If you want overpaid VAs that give mediocre performances, just look at any big-name animated movie over the past two decades and how few of them cast people trained in voice acting.

They don't make them interchangeable because if they did that, they would have to check clipping issues/how each piece interacts with every single other piece of armour across all three weights across all 5 races, 2.5 of which (asura, charr, and male norn) are drastically different. Outfits mean they just have to make sure the whole thing works on each model. Sometimes individual pieces get pulled off to make their own skin (e.g. shrine guardian ears, Wolfblood shoulders) because they can be separated and clipping issues from them are a minor issue, but those are the minority and it's far easier to pull the helm of an outfit out and make it its own skin than pull the chest or legs out, and gloves and boots also have a lot of potential clipping issues. It would definitely be nice if we could transpose bits and pieces from outfits onto non-outfit skins, but there's a lot of technical issues in the way and to do so would require a shift in resources and focus. If it were to change, it would likely be like what happened with dyable backpacks and how there's zero intention to go back and change every backpack skin from before that update just because a lot of work would be required to essentially chop up and QA test every outfit currently in-game.

Especially when all the other DRMs with 3/3 CMs can be solo'd with time to spare. Snowden doesn't need to be easy but it shouldn't be impossible when literally every other DRM lets you solo them if you so wish. That's not how difficulty increases should work, especially since the things people had the most difficulty in the other DRMs were bugs, not features. Also requiring raid composition + swiftness boonbot for the escort for a story mission that is less forgiving than the actual raid escort is bad and should never have made it to live. Especially without communicating that that's what they're doing. Adding 1-3 minutes to the timer, making sure Ryland is scaling properly (also reducing visual noise during that fight), and adjusting the speed of the escort NPC wouldn't make the encounter "too easy", it would just make it so people could enjoy the difficulty (and yes, risk of failure) without failure being completely out of their control. Especially as you'd need to go through the entire escort phase to see how much time is left for Ryland, so you can't even restart within 60 seconds. And again, this is a story mission, not raid or strike. Difficulty is fine but it shouldn't require as much or more time and planning to setting up a group than an actual raid.

"Learn to like" only works under the assumption people haven't tried gamemodes and decided they dislike them. As soon as you introduce incentives/rewards to play certain gamemodes where it's required/near required, you end up with the issue of the GoB and GoE where players feel punished and forced to play modes they do not like. Sure some people discover they actually like WvW/PvP/PvE but others refuse to do that content and when they're expected to do it, that just turns them off, possibly of GW2 as a whole. That GW2 has 3 distinct modes was always a risky decision, both for how much (or how little) they overlap and where to put development resources. The bonus XP/MF weeks are a good way to encourage players to try different modes if they're on the fence while not forcing the issue, imo (though they need to happen more often). Because a lot of players, myself included, know what we like and what we don't like so no amount of incentivizing things will make us suddenly like something we hate because some virtual gold or shiny is added to it. You may as well be asking people to eat something they dislike to outright hate for $5. Sure some people will take the money but a lot of people won't because it's not worth the discomfort (especially if it lingers afterward) for something like that. The issue isn't with rewards or incentives, it's that different people are different thus not everyone enjoys the same things.

It will happen in February and was included in their Q1 2021 roadmap.

It can definitely be frustrating (flax farming on alts was one of my ways to passively make gold, and that took a hit) but in the end this is likely for the best. It makes a lot of stats/items more accessible and increasing infusion drop rates is something people have been asking for for years. One of the risks you take when playing an MMO is knowing that the economy can change without warning. Runes/sigils, exotic gear, silk and hardened leather, mystic coins, mystic clovers, and far more have had drastic increases and decreases in value over the years and birthday dye kits have had a huge impact on the exclusive dye market. Such changes are great when you benefit from it and suck when you don't (or lose theoretical gold), but it makes things accessible to newer players as they no longer cost as much and they don't need to grind as much to get items that were formally BoA. The market would have dropped for a lot of today's items at an announcement before the patch anyway (historically people sell off items when they're told ahead of time they'll lose value, and people also start buying up things when they expect the value to increase (though that's not always what happens—just ask the cabbage guy)) so unless absolutely nothing changed, what happened today would have happened regardless.

I'd like to be excited since I was excited about other episodes (I love we're finally getting more charr lore) but the last episode felt like it was 1/3-1/4 an episode in terms of content and whatever rush they had going on internally was evident in how there was no conclusion to the story and the story progress notification stayed on people's HUDs even though there was no way to progress. Maybe the new episode will make up for it, but I can't get excited about it until it's out and players can see what's really in it instead of getting hyped by a trailer. Speaking of trailers, the one for the new episode didn't mention anything new so that's another reason why I'm not excited. New skins, a new ally faction, a new emote, and some more DRMs? That's what the trailer for the previous episode had and what players knew would be in this episode as well.

The Gen 1 precursors originally only came from RNG drops so you had to either be extremely lucky or buy the pre off the TP and this was kept for Gen 1 legendaries both then and moving forward. Anet decided against making Gen 1 legendaries BoA, likely to avoid pissing players off and because they had already established that (Gen 1) legendaries could be bought and sold. That Gen 2 is BoA shows that they also thought legendaries going forward should be tied to account, not who has enough gold, but for Gen 1 their hands were effectively tied.

Hard no. You can already buy Gen 1 legendaries with money if you really want by converting gems to gold, albeit over twice the 3k you mention. Throwing the GoE up in the store spits on the face of everyone who made a legendary over the past 8+ years and makes Gen 2 legendaries that much closer to being something you buy with a credit card. There is no stat bonus to legendaries so there's zero reason to use them unless you want either the QoL aspects or the skin, and if you want those you can work on it just like everybody else. You're buying the GoE with time (much like the GoB unless you have 80 potions to get it instantly) and that should not be changed, especially as every legendary means that someone spent several hours to over 25 hours doing map completion and you want to bypass that with money. Put in your time like everybody else.

"I know your face from my dream!""Seek and you shall find!""Sieze the moment!""More violets i say, less violence!" I started using the WvW banker just to stop hearing that hahhahahah! But, @"JesterX.6730" , if you want a "lounge" like experience but without the crafting stuff and the like, just go to WvW, any map. Every spawn has merchants, bank and trading post access. Plus, when you exit, you get back to exactly where you were. You don't have to teleport anywhere like you would if you're in a town. Just make sure you exit through the interface, not through the Lion's Arch portal in game. Fair! The sylvari NPC VA is easier ignore than the asura one in my opinion so those bug me far less, but it definitely comes down to what you can deal with. But all the NPCs (minus crafting stations) being added to Obsidian Sanctum was such a good move and I definitely use OS only a bit less often than Mistlock, though OS > Mistlock for toons that are in farm spots.

The only combo I do nowadays is fire ones (either putting the field down or using one) or combos I can do myself. There's just way too many effects to see what all is there now and people drop multiple fields in the same spot so you don't know if you'll end up giving everyone might, cleansing people, or blinding the mob when it comes to doing things in groups. It doesn't make a huge difference with or without them (minus AoE might from fire fields) so I'm not going to reduce my own DPS or healing for a chance at one (1) good combo. (This being non-raid PvE—combos can be very useful in other content and coordinated groups.)

To add on to what Danikat said, lounges (usually) load faster than LA does, either because the map is smaller or because the lounge is in a less populated part of the game. I think the only exception to this is the Lily of Elon which falls victim to PoF load times. (Though it also lets you bypass the story to get characters into PoF maps if you're not in a guild that has the PoF guild hall) Really, lounges are just QoL and flavour items at their core and you can survive just fine by using LA and Obsidian Sanctum. But once you're used to every crafting station being <1 second away from each other and 1 second away from the TP, it's really hard to go back. So I guess you could say that lounge passes end up letting you spend more time playing the game because you don't have to wait for loading screens or deal with running back and forth in LA at the bare minimum. (Also at least in Mistlock, less repetitive NPC chatter. It's been years but an asura talking about how ideas are like cream still drives me into a rage because of the one NPC that was stationed too close to the bank in old LA so was constantly saying her line as people used the bank.)

The only time any amount of rep requirement makes sense is for WvW guilds, in my opinion. Though at least then there's a benefit to rep'ing them as well. Plus guild missions like you said. If a guild advertises it requires members to rep it, that's a hard no from me even if I'm otherwise interested in it. I'd rather not have people police what box I have checked in the game and provide them my current location at all times. Especially if they're monitoring it so frequently that even making a new character leads to angry messages.

The issue isn't money—they make enough to make content and fund an expansion—it's the engine and management. Crowdfunding won't fix the engine (which is why weapons aren't dyable, not lack of staff) and it won't improve management. Anet even employs more people than would be expected for a studio that has one game in maintenance mode and one that is bringing in more money than it costs to make content for so it's not even due to the lack of staff. Maybe they have a third unannounced game in the works that requires so many people to work on it, but the money isn't the issue and has never been the issue. Even GW1 brought in more than enough money that they could start making GW2 and not update GW1 for years (outside some minor patches and short quests). And honestly a lot of issues there are today could have been fixed if there were different people in charge. Instead of spending years and diverting the vast majority of money GW2 made into a project that ended up cancelled because NCsoft considered it a money pit that needed to stop, we could have gotten a new engine by now, better performance, more updates, larger updates, WvW updates, and/or PvP updates. That was years in terms of time, tens of millions of dollars in terms of money, and a hundred or more people that could have been working on the game that was already out with an established playerbase instead of something that we still know nothing about other than it existed and is the reason why so much of PoF and LW4 is lackluster and didn't get support after release. I love GW2 but more money won't help when it's not money that's the problem and it's not up to players to fund a AAA game studio that's a subsidy of a different larger game developer that brought in 1.5 billion dollars in 2018.

Dyes coming in birthday presents have helped rein in prices. Also at some point dyes became salvageable for pigments used in guild hall decorations -- brown pigment seems the most valuable -- so if someone could sell a dye for under a silver, or get pigments to store for later use or sale, they might find it easier to salvage and deposit mats than to go through the TP interface for such a small listing. So many better stats have become available that while berserker is still decent for the right power build (and condi builds became quite viable after a rework, lessening the demand for only berserker), it is extremely easy to do better. And again, with more room to store mats and more uses for those mats, players are probably salvaging rather than listing. Like I said, flipping means knowing the ins and outs of the market. Paying heed to game changes that may affect fotm builds. Predicting what common material might become hot thanks to a new achieve or special item to make. It's way more work than I've ever cared to put in :) Dyes also became account-wide instead of having to unlock them on each character, so that combined with the birthday dye packs means it's mostly new players buying the non-exclusive dyes and that's a slow market with very little, if any, profit. Even with exclusive dyes, between the birthday gifts and the BLC rotation of the kits, the demand for the most expensive ones has dropped and there's a certain volatility there. I ended up dropping dyes as something to flip just because there's a lot more research to turn a profit on those than I was willing to put into it. Though to tack something on, pay attention to festivals for flipping things. Buy when they're cheapest in the year and sell when they're most in demand. For example, ToT bags and Wintersday presents spike right at the start of Halloween and Wintersday respectively but demand drops off after the first ~24 hours, and raw mats spike during the same timeframe of Four Winds. But it really does require more research and effort now to make a quick profit than it used to. There's been years of not just the market maturing and stabilizing but years of people learning how the GW2 economy works, how to make money off it, and how to manipulate it to make money. Between TP flippers being secretive about what's profitable at the moment and flippers/TP barons periodically trying to create for a demand for something they bought up, it's actual work instead of buying unidentified dye and having a good chance to break even or make a profit on it.