Lily.1935

You might be replying to the wrong person. I don't personally care about the Hall of Monuments. And I don't need one for a Guild Wars 3. If nothing I did in Guild Wars 2 matters to Guild Wars 3 that wouldn't bother me at all. I want a fresh start and a fresh game. I don't need a Guild Wars 2 participation trophy to incentivize me.

Just some ideas. Maybe, although it isn't something that's unheard of in other games we have item discovery through crafting and using existing recipes and experimenting with them. Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild does that with some unique results. And it is an element people enjoy. Does that mean It'll translate well to something like an MMO? If A guild wars 3 is actually an MMO? Hard to say. Of course BotW doesn't show you discovered recipes which I don't like so I wouldn't want that. Gearing and stats are a bit more important for me in what I personally want for a Guild Wars 3. Crafting as a means to get there is a good path but I'm not sure it should be the only path there. Also, Hall of Monuments is significantly different from housing. Hall of monuments is a trophy rack. It doesn't have real utility. Final Fantasy 14 has retainers for your home you can have do tasks for you so there is more uses for housing including crafting along with the retainers.

I've engaged with the Guild Wars 2 crafting system long enough that its long lost its charm for me. However when I first played with it I really liked it. So I do think its a decent system. And yeah, there is some enjoyment from salvaging stacks of loot with your infinite salvaging kits. What I think might be really cool is tying Crafting to a player's Home. Like I think i'd be kinda cool to craft and upgrade your crafting stations with Player housing. But that might be asking too much it also might not be the most player friendly. At the very least I'd like salvaging loot unlocks new recipes. Maybe an experimental crafting where adding more materials to existing recipes has the chance to craft something new so we can have a sense of discovery early in the game's life?

Crafting can be an enjoyable experience and honestly, Guild Wars 2's crafting system is far more enjoyable than Guild Wars 1's lack of one. This isn't to say its perfect, far from it. If anything I think it could be replaced by something better for a 3rd game. I do think fewer drops in a future title would be better. Other than during the early leveling process you'd never find a drop you actually wanted to use. And if you spent that time crafting your gear you'd just always have the best in slot for the level. I do think the material sink will always be needed but I do however think it could be more engaging.

As much as I've enjoyed guild wars 1 and guild wars 2 I've been ready for something new for half a decade now. Guild Wars 2 hit its peek during season 4 and since then its had its ups and downs for me, but its never quite got there. Even during that time its never quite scratched the itch I've been looking for in an MMO. Its gotten close and no other MMO has ever come as close as guild wars 2 has. But all things eventually come to an end and Guild Wars 2 has some major flaws with its design, engine, classes and general bloat that makes it harder to get into for newer players. I started the series when I was 15. I'm 35 now. And much of the community is pushing into the 30s and 40s like myself. Its hard to pull a younger audience into an old game like Guild Wars 2 and the older gamers are pretty set in their ways and are unlikely to switch to guild wars 2 let along stick with it. Considering that the audience for GW2 can't maintain its numbers indefinitely the next logical step is to release a new game. Whether that game be an MMO or not depends, but Guild Wars 2 being the only active game means that Arena net lives or dies on the title. This isn't a lasting position to be in for a gaming company. Considering Guild Wars 2 is relatively healthy its honestly the best time to work on and release another project. With all that said, lets say they are working on a Guild Wars 3. Would Arena net learn from the mistakes of Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2? Maybe. System bloat is something Arena net needs to address in the next title for sure and certain elements need to be more recognizable for a general audience. While experimentation and new ideas are great for the genre, and Arena net should absolutely continue to push boundaries there needs to be enough familiarity to make the transition between games smoother. Personally, I want a Guild Wars 3. And I'll list a few things I'd like to see for the game. Your list might be different but here's what I'd like based on what I loved about Guild Wars 1&2 as well as some ideas I think should be adopted from other games or new ideas entirely. Energy and Adrenaline return Energy and Adrenaline are interesting mechanics and should return as universal mechanics. This makes it easier to design armor, weapons and upgrades. that can function for any class as well as being used to balance certain skills. With energy and Adrenaline we can also more easily balance support builds and healers around it without them just spamming their best things off cooldown making the gameplay more thoughtful. Anyone can wear Any Armor Tier In Guild Wars 1 the difference between a warrior armor and a mesmer armor was significant. Warriors was around 30-50% damage reduction over the mesmers while in Guild Wars 2 the difference between light and heavy in terms of damage reduction is something like 5%? I don't remember the exact value but it isn't noticeable. For the next game I'd like to see the tier of armor to really have a major impact on your character. With High energy light armor and low defense while Medium is moderate in energy and defense and heavy is high defenses low energy. That alone doesn't make the system worth including so I have other ideas included in the next part. Each Armor Tier has its own set bonuses Guild Wars 2 decided to take the idea of set items found in games like Diablo or other ARPGs and created the Rune system so didn't have to hunt down specific armor pieces. But the rune system really didn't live up to what set items did and their impact although pretty important in guild wars 2 doesn't compare. So my idea was to make it so each armor tier has a small selection of sets in that tier that offer unique bonuses anyone can benefit from and wearing a full set offers more incentive to pick a specific armor tier beyond just its armor or energy levels. My thought is there would be 3 sets per tier at launch which capture the identity of that tier. So I'll use heavy as the example. Sentinel: Increase adrenaline gain when taking damage. Knights: Taking damage increases outgoing damage(stacking). Crusader: Taking damage gives a small bit of energy back. Each of them might have a bonus like that and later bonuses that relate to its overall theme. While not all armor sets are about taking damage heavy would be more prepared to take a hit. Medium might have bonuses which increase endurance regeneration and grant bonuses on dodge or could extend the duration of boons you apply to yourself or allies. These are all just baseline ideas, nothing solid. But it could create situations were a class who normally wouldn't want to wear light armor suddenly does for its unique properties or take medium to be more nimble or give better party buffs to themselves or allies. Skills and Traits Care about what weapon or armor tier you're using. Guild wars 1 and 2 both do this for weapons but not for armor as it was never really a thing. But this is a thing in a more traditional game like Dungeons and Dragons and I think its something worth bringing into this sort of system. Although I think weapons shouldn't have skills on them innately, I think you should be able to equip skills to weapons that could use them. Like a Staff or scepter could have spells on them but you should be able to customize that load out more. Giving you a selection of Auto attacks and follow up skills based on your weapon choice. Shared skills would be nice as well. So say you're wielding a Dagger or a sword you might have access to a thrust attack you couldn't do with an axe. Or maybe there's common skills like Whirlwind strike which is just your spin to win skill that works on any blade weapon on your warrior. With skills that care about armor this could get interesting. One skill I think would be a really cool build around would be one inspired by Barbarian Rage from D&D. A character buff that doesn't work in heavy armor but boosts offense and defense. This could be really fun to use with a Medium or light armor warrior, taking advantage of the rage on a high energy set of armor. Other skills like this could also care about your armor. Like perhaps you're an elementalist in heavy armor and getting struck while causes you to build up kinetic charges to release some form of static discharge. Even more stuff I'm going to stop here because I have so much I'd like to see but I don't want to break this down into multiple parts. A few more, Climbing, more dungeons, an actual threat and agro system, proper raiding, Energy burn, housing, improved crafting system, a bestiary, in game information as opposed to tabbing out to the wiki, reworked boon and condition system, improved hybrid action tab targeting system, better party finder, alliances, player run tournaments(PvP, racing, mini games), better pet AI and more pets, so on and so on.... Anyway not an exhaustive list but some ideas that have been floating around in my head. I've mostly been focused on how Armor and energy could be changed and improved since I find both GW1 and GW2's systems seriously lacking with positives and negatives for each.

If there's something I've learned from following other game companies like Larian Studios and Fromsoft its that its that a real passion for the game the company is working on and maintaining a consistent staff creates quality above and beyond anything on the market. Arena net has a revolving door of developers and it really shows in the product with the identity of Guild Wars 2 being subtly reworked every few years. Worse still, the new devs, as talented as they might be, don't seem to understand what the original intention of previous design was or why, they don't seem to understand what was good about it or what was bad about it. Scourge for example had some bad design. Its bad design was the fact that it had such strong area control with no drawbacks. A persistent AoE zone that lasted a long time. What was the solution to that? Well, they first stripped away its ability to cripple foes. Something that strips part of its identity. Then, many ears later they strip that duration, further stripping its identity. What solution to this problem would have worked far more elegantly? Making the shades Objects which could be destroyed but otherwise function the exact same way and keep the power it once had. Suddenly its still quite powerful in WvW but now Scourges spamming shades more cancel each other out and the counter play can be more interesting rather than just allowing scourge to control large sections of the battlefield uncontested. But instead of looking at that, arena net doesn't want to do that they hyper buff the scourge's damage output without recognizing why the scourge community loved the build inspite of its previous low damage. I can't with this company. I've been sitting on this for a while because I played GW1&2 since 2006... Of course its upsetting to quit a game series I've played for 17 years..

I have the game installed for the sliver of hope you'll fix the absolute mess you made of scourge's shades. But I'm fooling myself. I haven't touched the game since you completely destroyed the totem them of scourge gameplay. For those who think "You quit the game because of that little thing?", no its a culmination of a lot of little things. That was the final straw. I might come back when there's a main build I love again, but there just isn't any. All of them have long since been butchered and had the fun removed out of them for the sake of balance..

Different strokes for different folks. I preferred having more shades because it better fit the fantasy I enjoy. The single shade didn't quite work for me as someone who enjoys that sort of totem style of gameplay. Its a preference thing And I'm not a big fan of Sand savant for offense. For support and defense I like its design more. One such change I'd like is the return of Crippling on manifest sand shade actually, but that's coupled with another change I'd like that would be extremely unpopular. So the Target cap for the shades is that difficult. If it wasn't arena net would have already implemented it. Its likely the spaghetti code has the sand shades tied up with some other system and the only way to do that would be to completely remake the shades. And if we do that it could break something else unrelated. I sorta saw the 8 second duration as a bandaid solution to a complex issue and something they'd fix later. I believe my optimism was misplaced and they don't want to mess with these old systems much of the devs didn't have a part in programing. As for my solution. its not clunky. I've played Scourge during that time. It wasn't as bad as the 8 second duration to play, but it wasn't great since you were quite defenseless if they got close to you. Its a pretty elegant solution to the issue. I personally don't have an issue with 10 person alacrity or quickness on a build but that's not the direction Arena net wants to go. So there needs to be a solution. Sand Savant is much easier to control than 3 shades are. You only have to worry about the target cap of the necromancer and the shade and not 3 shades and a necromancer. Arena net have shown they can change it in this way so why not have it as a unique function of that trait? If You're wondering about the umpopular change I'd make to scourge, Well. I'd makes the shades An actual object in the world. Something that can be attacked, destroyed, healed or benefit from different traits. Treating them like minions with 100% scaling from the necromancer. Mechanically they'd function the exact same, but they could be interacted with for better counter play. I'd also open up that 3rd grandmaster trait to bolster their defensive utility by giving them a projectile block either on manifest for a second or on Desert shroud activation. Would the community like this change? Even with the benefit were it now combos with death magic? its play pattern remains the same but has more counter play and a bit more power? My suspicion is no... no the community would rage against it. But it would be far healthier for the scourge, WvW, PvP and offer a lot more build diversity, but I've suggested this before with outright rejection. Shades should have always been objects... it was a core design mistake since their inception. But I've kinda given up on suggesting stuff to arena net. They stopped listening a long time ago and seem to intentionally go in opposite direction from what the community suggests even if it means it will cause long term problems.

I don't like how Sand Savant plays for offense. Even when Scourge first came out and we didn't know any better in PvE, it never felt great to use when I was trying to deal damage. I don't want it to be baseline. Sand Savant should be fused with Desert empowerment and the target cap should be 5, adjusted so the pulse that occurs functions like the October 2019 Update did. Either around the necromancer if no shades are out or around the shade if it is out. Return the duration to its previous incarnation and we've got a far better functioning scourge overall. But this isn't the only issue I'm seeing. Barrier application on allies needs to be reduced at baseline but given a stronger scaling with healing power. This is something that needs to happen. I actually have a whole list of changes I'd like to see for scourge that I don't want to suggest because even though I know it would be good for the balance of the game and health of the scourge everyone would HATE the suggestion so much I know no constructive conversation could be had around it.

Scourge was my main build since PoF's release. I've since stopped playing necromancer entirely and barely touch GW2 as of late because it doesn't feel as good to play, it doesn't support the style of play I enjoy anymore. its so... Spreadsheet now. Its just "Does it look good on a spreadsheet" rather than "Does it feel good to play". I've thought about swapping classes to Revenant or Engineer. I enjoy Herald but I don't enjoy the other elite specs on revenant specifically because of their legends so its a hard sell. I enjoy Engineer, mainly holosmith, condi and power both but they kinda ruined the play feel of my quickness scrapper and my mechanist too... So I feel pretty heavily burned by arena net right now.

You're not a realist, you're a contrarian. That's not the same thing. Scourge has always fit into team content but now its less about fun and more about numbers. But its not like this damage is going to last either. There's no way Anet doesn't scale this back hard. So if you want to actually be a realist, like me, you'd see this change as a massive red flag for the future health of the elite spec.

We didn't force them to do anything, you think we have that kind of power and Actually, we warned them against the buffs. I for one actually said, that what they're doing is too strong, it wont be healthy. You're blaming us for something Arena net did, which is kinda kittened. IF they listen to the scourge community it would be extremely healthy for the game. Scourge would be at 38-39k and Sand Savant would have a target cap of 5 that applies alacrity and the shade duration would be at 20 seconds again.

In the context of a rotation the difference between 16 seconds and 6 is massive. That's potentially 20 skill activation between the two. There are no moments of rest in the current setup. Those moments are vital to prevent fatigue. Its not just "Slightly harder", its more taxing on the person. Most people already had a hard time maintaining shades as it was, now with this change I'd say scourge is actually quite difficult to pull off properly. But difficulty isn't the issue. its fatigue. This new version is just as spammy as condi kits holo even if it has fewer unique skill presses it has a lot more repeated skill presses. I've run both, and I loved condi kits holo, but if I wanted to use it all the time I'd have to put my hand in a brace. It would be extremely painful. I could probably run it for 1 hour, optimistically . Not the 3 hours my raid group does. But play feel also matters because it doesn't feel as good to use either. Creating control points is a lot of fun, something you can't do. You've changed from creating these points of control to points of burst. And in open world you're SOL on shade duration. You're just not going to be able to have it up 100% of a fight unless you have both a quickness and alacrity friend with you when you're fighting those Oni. Considering the very solo nature of a lot of players in open world, and how some people enjoy solo play, that's just not happening. Also, I know YOU'VE mentioned that you don't like the way it plays. So the fact you're playing devil's advocate when NO ONE ASKED YOU TO, just tells me you just want to be a contrarian.

Phantasy Star Online 2. Most frequently they use a couple of skill presses normally with a timed strong hit. Its actually quite engaging. I don't have the experience with most MMOs, but the ones I've played with action combat don't button mashes. But GW2 is hybrid, so not super relevant.

So I'm hearing a small minority of people defending the shade duration changes saying "its just as spammy as it was before" and saying "Its better now because you don't have to summon as many shades" or some other stuff like that which is objectively not true and let me explain why. So, shade duration at 20 seconds with a 8 second recharge. Throw in alacrity and that's about 5 and 3/4ths seconds on that count recharge. So lets go over the opener. You lay down 2 shades and begin the fight with the first shade striking your target. Okay, assuming 1 second between shades you have about 16 seconds before you need to use Manifest sand shade again. You wont want to wait that long, however you have that time to activate your first one. In that time you can cast plaguelands, Blood is power x2, Grasping dead, Devouring darkness, Harrowing wave, Oppressive collapse and get a few auto attack chains in before you need to summon. In-between skill casts or as you cast spells you can activate your shroud skills with that without interruption. During this you can have a strong opening while being able to better space your shades out because by the time you absolutely need to cast them again, you have 3 charges again. I wouldn't suggest waiting that long but it is something you could have done. This is also quite helpful for people who live in areas with higher ping than say the USA. Now compare this to the current version. 8 second duration with a 5 and 3/4ths recharge time. Same recharge but what's available during the window of your skill cast? okay, we have after cast delay to worry about and ping. So plaguelands is 3/4ths a second and with after cast delay that's a second, BiP cast twice I'll be generous and say that's 1 1/2 seconds, then grasping dead and Devouring darkness that's a second and now you need to summon again. You see, you don't have 16 seconds to wait, you need to summon after 6 seconds which you need to factor in the after cast delay. This is assuming perfect quickness up time and perfect alacrity up time. So before you can use all of your other skills and do any auto attacking you have to summon once again. And it doesn't get better from there. You can continue to space out shades with the previous version and you could space them out as far as 14 seconds apart, you can't do that here you can't have any down time of shades. You could try and optimize it to be 7 seconds, but that's rough and any miss click or if the server doesn't register that you've activated a skill(something I've experienced quite a bit especially when playing scourge) you'll have to do this at 6 seconds to be consistent. So, if you're wondering just how much different it is on the required level of shade spam you need to do, its double the amount of spam you need to do from previously. But this is only assuming the raid scene, what about in open world. Well, In open world you're going to be losing shade charges and you wont be able to get off more than 3 skills before you need to summon another shade provided you don't have your jade bot buff up. now this is just rough math, but it adds up to double the spam required. And some people might dislike auto attacking but I disagree with this philosophy. I think that any healthy DPS build should auto attack at least some of the time, not all of it, but it should have moments of rest. I love my Condi Kits holosmith as much as the next girl and grinding out that DPS, but its not exactly something we should expect from most builds, in fact that sort of gameplay should be extremely rare.