CrashTestAuto.9108

I agree that the internet (and more specifically, large social media platforms) are better when there is free disagreement. But this isn't a political debate forum, or really a public square. It's a fairly small group of people speaking on a platform which represents a commercial product. Even ignoring the idea of making this a nice place to spend time, there's the larger factor of how this presents the game to new players. With this little traffic, the few people that spam emojis (or tell people to "go play something else" etc.) really do have an impact on the dynamic. It's like having a load of kids fighting and screaming in a hotel reception. Sure, some people might like that (especially the kids), but it isn't brilliant advertisement, and it will put a lot of people off.

I think the major pain on this for me is that the research note system itself is so horrible. If this had been done (even seemingly unnecessarily) to protect an actually popular system, then it might have been fair enough.

I agree with this sentiment on an individual level, but I think there is an issue with the environment this creates. I think it would be a stretch to blame the emojis, but this forum really isn't a nice place when compared to other environments, and certainly not compared to the GW2 population at large (players in game are generally overwhelmingly friendly). There's very little sense of community here, or even really much chat. What the spam does risk is feeding a cycle - nice people join the forum, they immediately get a load of negative reactions, they leave and don't come back. The forum gradually gets less and less friendly because only the argumentative people hang around.

This is a weirdly high bar to set. Why would complete certainty for any given emoji be the requirement here? The threshold would be closer to some confidence that at least one emoji was insulting for someone to be justified in thinking they had been insulted. I'm not saying that person should let themselves be emotionally affected by it, but simply feeling insulted doesn't require omniscience to be justified. On the main topic. Yeah, the emojis are pretty toxic (and really obviously not used universally as a "disagree" button) , and a weirdly large proportion of the forum feel it's on the recipient to not care about the toxicity, rather than to try to address it. The best argument I've seen in their favour is that without some way to vent frustration, the negativity winds up in verbal arguments, which are worse. Personally I don't care much about them, but it's a shame that the current usage means there isn't an actually useful "disagree" function. There isn't a very good way to engage with disagreement here because so many responses are either "Confused emote", "No (just that one word)", or "There is a search function on this forum".

I like the concept of releasing items that pair together, but I hope if they do it again that it'll be a cape/shoulder combo that allows for the cape design to start on the shoulders (at the front) rather than the current "pinned to the back of you" setup we have now.

I'd definitely like new movement skills. The vast majority of the game involves moving from A to B, making it as interesting as possible makes sense, and it'd open up a lot of possibilities for creating your own gameplay (and Guild Hall JPs). With the Glide and Jade Bot booster already, there'd actually be some really interesting opportunities for combos (I'm thinking Mario Odyssey style). Given the terrain wasn't designed for this, I'm not sure a wall run is feasible to implement though. So maybe just a way to jump at a surface, then press jump when you're in contact to bounce off and get a little extra elevation (I wouldn't even add a complex animation, just give an Aurene/Jade Bot Mastery and a glowy effect - saves trying to get Charr to look right). Would still allow for creativity and utility, because you could Jump -> Wall Jump -> Glide -> Glide Boost to get a decent amount of height from a flat surface. One thing I'd add wouldn't be "Do this in combat", but rather a move to enter combat from wall run/jump, similar to the mounts 1 skill. Nothing game breaking, just something to add variety/fluidity.

I agree on the crafting stations, but I think Raid/Fractals/Dungeons is a good idea. There currently isn't a good reason to "gather" in the hall, which really undermines its value. I know this would somewhat devalue Mistlock if Fractals were included, so that one is admittedly a little debatable.

Great list. I don't know why this hasn't had more emphasis. Guilds are such a big potential of the MMO format (and an actual reason to keep people logging in), and there's just been so little attention on this ever since HoT 😞

Yeah, I think it's sad that so much effort has been put into specifically making a class feel less fun. Not even a nerf of an overperforming class, but literally just making it less enjoyable to play. If there was going to be a change made that wasn't a nerf, then just shrinking the Mech to the size of a jade bot (or literally, making it use your Jade Bot, skin and all), would have done much more to keep Mechanists and non-Mechanists happy by reducing the visual clutter.

Okay, I disagree (on all points), but as usual it feels like engaging was a mistake here, and we've derailed the thread with a pointless argument. To return to the OP, I fully agree that Infusion Effects should be added to the wardrobe or armoury, as the increased utility would make them significantly more appealing and useful.

Okay, this is a separate argument. A price increase is not the same as the entire supply drying up. Obviously no one who wants these infusions wants them to be entirely unavailable. It's definitely possible, but it's a new topic. I mean what I said. The TP limit prevents it. Mystic infusions, for example, currently sit at the 2.5k - 5k mark. The price can only increase proportionally up to two to three times the value, at which point it caps. So if you want four copies or more, you will always be better off with an account bound infusion (assuming bought on TP).

Okay, I'll skip over the idea that making a generalised accusation, which also applies to the individual you're speaking to, is somehow better. Let's just go back to the point I made, which is that - no - your position is not logical. It can only be logical if you ignore the utility argument entirely, and also assume a linear increase in price - which is literally impossible.

Again, I'd politely ask you to stop telling me what I would be doing if I thought what I said. You do not know me, and the repeated accusations of lying are neither justified nor appreciated. It is particularly annoying when you're projecting an illogical argument onto me. If I wanted multiple copies of an infusion (and every single time I've raised utility as a major selling point was a lie), then it would only be rational for me to do what you suggest if I expect the price to increase linearly, which in many cases is literally impossible because of the TP price limit.

Even if we buy into your "This thread is full of people lying to manipulate the market" narrative, this is still false. In order for this to be true, you have to assume that either (1) no one wants multiple infusion effects across characters or (2) the infusion price is expected to increase linearly. People who want say, Mystic Infusion effect (a fairly generic and popular look) on all characters, even on a base account, would need to expect its cost to go up five times (taking it above the TP max) for your argument to make any sense. Maybe just drop the attempts to read people's "true intentions", and just engage with the words they are saying?

I think this is the right approach, but I think it misses an important aspect of the way people approach this. It isn't a question of "I want to have 5 fire characters", it's a question of "I want the ability for any of my characters to have fire theming, whenever I want". Think of the legendary Runes/Sigils. From a rational perspective, they're very difficult to justify, especially with e.g. the legendary armour allowing you to swap runes freely. But the convenience factor, and the feeling of never having to worry about runes/sigils again, is enough to justify the cost for a lot of people. People change their characters looks a lot, they experiment with looks a lot, and that extra utility will be a lot of the selling point. You could at any time decide you don't want any fire toons, or decide that you want all fire toons (maybe it's Halloween).

Except in your own words, I called it a "risk", and in my earlier posts I made it clear I wasn't sure which way it would go. No assumptions made, and it could easily go either way, I just suspect it will go up (which is reasonable, because the utility is massively increased). However, your declaration that supply drain requires hitting max price just isn't true. Some infusions have dropped in incredibly low volumes. See e.g. the below thread on Confetti Infusion drops. At that rate, all it takes for the supply to drain is for a few dozen people to bind the infusion, and maybe some high roll people buying up the rest.

This assumes that the number of people with multiple infusions is greater than the number of people with a single infusion plus the number of people who have zero infusions because they aren't interested in them if they aren't account wide*. I don't see how you could know that to be the case. *Actually the number of assumptions here is probably much higher, but it isn't useful to go through all the possible edge cases and also figure out how investors fit in here, or try to pre-empt what would happen to infusion stacking.

I politely request that you stop following me around the forums and guessing motivations for what I said (usually the opposite of what I actually said). You don't know me, and are incredibly bad at it. There are a limited number of infusions in the game (very limited in some cases). The idea that reducing their availability and increasing their utility would somehow make them cheaper needs a LOT of justification. The idea that I know that it would make them cheaper, but am for some reason lying about that, is ridiculous.

Yes, but you'd be account binding them, so the supply wouldn't actually go up. Also, because the items are now more useful, demand would actually go up. If anything this could risk them becoming really expensive because the supply would be permanently drained, and the items themselves would be much more sought after.

Is that true? Yes you'd no longer need multiple for different characters, but they'd also no longer be resellable after equipping. Not sure how that would balance out, but I'd personally expect the price to go up, at least at first, due to the increased utility.

I'd also like anonymity removed on the emotes. I take the point that it's better to just let the negativity be confined to an ignorable emoji than having more toxic back and forth arguments, but in the current state the system is pretty much just that - ignorable negativity. Because the forum user base is so small, the few dedicated Confused spammers basically make that emote meaningless because there's no way to differentiate between "This post was bad" and "This post was spammed". Removing the anonymity would at least allow this to be vaguely informative ("Hey, someone other than the usual 3-4 spammers gave this a Confused response, maybe something should be adjusted").

I think there are two ways to go with this, either of which I'd support: 1) Account bind the physical infusion, which then unlocks an infusion effect in the wardrobe, with X number of "Effect" slots added to the Wardrobe panel. 2) Unlock the infusion itself in the Legendary Armoury, and then you can equip that infusion on any character as normal. I definitely prefer (2) because Agony is an awful system for experimenting with new builds/classes, but it would be pretty huge in terms of impact. In both cases, I'd probably make this a "Right click to account bind" addition to the current system, rather than replace it. Basically give people the option to permanently unlock the infusion across characters, or keep it sellable but only available on one character at a time.

This is the stereotype I hear a lot, but not what people who actually play the class I've spoken to tend to say. Yes, Mechanist is easier in terms of inputs (which is also good, because for many people complex rotations simply aren't fun, difficult or otherwise). However, pretty much everyone I've spoken to (and myself included) likes the feel of the class. There have been people expressing concerns about the change to auto-attack animation for this reason, even though mechanically it is exactly the same. Sure some people will play the easiest thing, but there are plenty of LI builds across classes. Mechanist is the one that took off, and for a reason. Regardless. It doesn't matter whether people like Mech because it is easy, or because it's fun. The risk of a big nerf to it is all that is required to make the point related to this thread. Rifle is incredibly popular right now, but only on a specific elite spec of a specific class (and there are very few alternative options for it). The risk of a nerf to rifle Mech therefore makes going for a legendary rifle a risky proposition, which is not fun. Note that my solution here was to distribute the ranged weapons more, not to protect Mechanist at all costs (though I think they should do both).

Yeah, massive +1 to this. With an additional point that this is particularly brutal on ranged weapons because they aren't well distributed (Rifle, Shortbow and Longbow have the three lowest classes per weapon in the game). Mechanist is a perfect example of this at the moment. I love playing Mech because of the mobility that it brings with it, but I am really hesitant to invest in it because the possibility of a nerf totally wrecking it is constantly overhead. I do want regular balance patches, because the game does need them. But the fact that they can render a legendary weapon basically useless is a genuine issue that does put me off going for ones of that type. My solution is for the devs to go back in time and give Catalyst a bow rather than a hammer 🙂 Actually on a more serious note, while I do realise it is a lot of work, doing a sweep of handing a bow or rifle to every class would be nice - ideally as a Core update. The rifle Mechanist popularity isn't just because it's LI, but also because ranged play is a lot more fun for a lot of people than the usual "Stand in particle cloud on the boss" gameplay (and yes, I know there are some ranged options for e.g. axe and dagger).

So we can get some idea using GW2 Effciency: https://gw2efficiency.com/account/unlock-statistics?filter.key=skins&filter.type=Back&filter.rarity=7 Obviously the users there aren't an unbiased sample, but nearly 12% of players there have Ad Infinitum, and then a further 11% have one of the others. So assuming that most players have only one backpiece (minimal overlap in those stats), that's nearly a quarter of players (who care enough to register on Efficiency) with at least one Legendary backpiece. To me, that feels like a reasonable number of invested players to be thinking about designing for. Especially if the goal of legendaries is to encourage trying different content types. For example, obviously this is impacted heavily by time of play, but look at the drop off in Greatswords by generation: https://gw2efficiency.com/account/unlock-statistics?filter.key=skins&filter.type=Greatsword&filter.rarity=7 Even accounting for time of availability and older players leaving, nearly ten times more players spent an additional legendary's worth of gold for the shiny bauble on the hilt than have gone out and got the most recent Greatsword (with all it's new effects and variants). If ANet want players engaging with their latest content (which I assume they do), then finding easy ways to incentivise veterans to do so seems like a sensible move to me.