Gilosean.3805

It's a little bit too bad that the home instances are being abandoned instead of reworked for the new system. I can understand not having the dev time to spend on upgrading or integrating the older work, but the game really needs fewer odd legacy systems hanging around. But my most important question - can we add pets to the homestead like we can to the home instance? Display areas for minis, maybe?

Yes, you can explore the map without leylines and updrafts. You usually can't get to other islands fast enough to catch an event without the leylines and updrafts. A huge part of GW2 is heading over to an event when you see one, and maps which make that difficult are going to be irritating maps. Core maps handle this with wayponts. PoF maps handle this by being flat enough that players can easily to determine paths and zoom over. HoT maps don't do either of those and are constant source of lowkey complaints. IMO Soto maps make the same mistake.

Skywatch is a lot of fun, after you memorize the locations and directions of leylines, updrafts, and generally know how to get around. That's my main problem with it. It's a similar problem to some HoT maps, which require players to memorize unmarked or barely marked height changes to know which paths lead where. However, HoT maps do at least try to mark roads or tier transitions, which is slightly better. Like many players, I hop around to lots of different maps and activities. A map that requires me to remember features that aren't on the map to get around is mostly just irritating. I can't memorize all of these unmarked locations on all these maps! I basically need BlishHud to get around Soto maps in a reasonable time. Now that updrafts and ley lines are navigational features, they really should be marked on the map and minimap in some way. That would really make playing on Soto maps a lot more fun, IMO.

Skyscale and griffon mastery upgrades and weaponsmaster were unqualified wins, after the toggle was added to allow controlling when we'd get caught by a leyline. The new weapons were a heavily mixed bag, because of the UI and UX design. I really appreciate that we're still getting updates and new skills, but the UI has become so cluttered and confusing that it is impacting gameplay and preventing players from actually understanding how to use the new weapons. I basically gave up on elementalist pistol because of this. This is a big problem I'm hoping is fixed in the next expansion. The Wizard Vault dailies...the system is great, but the rewards need to be tweaked or we are going to see ongoing inflation. GW2's money supply control and economic stability is one of the things that really helps it, especially since so many players dip in and out for long periods. In particular, and speaking as someone who is profiting from it, I think the infinite gold is a mistake. Open world legendary armor is an unqualified win, I was finally able to make a piece of legendary armor! Super excited to keep making progress on that. QoL and bugfix updates were amazing. They're what convinced me to buy the next expansion, which I had decided not to purchase about halfway through the Soto story. The story writing was so incoherent, contradictory, full of dropped threads, and just plain bad that I actually decided not to purchase the next expansion. The other updates, particularly the ongoing fixes and QoL updates, won me back, but guys, the Soto story was a net negative. I would honestly rather not have a main story than have another story as bad as this one. The environmental storytelling, the event chains, all of that was fine. The dialogue and plot of the main story instances were just...no. If this and Gyala Delve, which was similarly incoherent and immature, are the best that huge narrative team can come up with, then maybe it's time to play to your strengths and just focus on setting, environmental storytelling, and event chains as ways to convey the plot. Those things were fine, even good, in Soto, but ultimately couldn't overcome the story instances.

Wonderful, thank you so much! I appreciate the explanation and the time taken to sort this out ASAP, it's a huge relief to know that you guys have my back and are willing to acknowledge missteps.

Yeah, old age can do that to eyes. You can try turning the monitor brightness way down - it takes some getting used to, but helps me. Shorter play sessions and more breaks helps to. But, of course, the game not forcing us to have post-processing would help the most.

Yes, the tooltip isn't quite accurate.

That fits with some reports from players on Reddit that sometimes bloom or effects seem to be tied to location, regardless of graphics settings. Makes me wonder what is going on with the engine.

If this is a permanent change, then I am permanently unable to play the game. Over 10 years here and it's all just gone because Anet couldn't be bothered to think through how removing options would impact players.

I can see why it was added. If it worked better, it would be a fun little mini game. But something about the layout of the space + registering ingredient impacts + the timing of the bar not quite matching expectations means that it's actually hair-tearing instead of entertaining. They got it right in Grothmar, IMO. I wish they'd go back and update this one.

I mean, we've been complaining about all of that for years,, and still are. We just finally have an admission in the dev's own words that this is how the department operates. ETA: And the thing that gets me is, balance impacts everything single fight a player is in. Do you know how many level 80 player I've had to walk through things like 'what do weapon prefixes mean' and 'am I doing enough damage to get event credit'? People think casual players don't care about builds or balance, but they do, they care about getting event credit and having fun in combat. The game just doesn't explain anything, so they just don't know. They don't have a reference point. So we players end up having to walk them through it and deal with their anger and upset when it turns out they've screwed themselves over, because the game provides no build feedback whatsoever, because balance isn't a priority like encounter or map design. Player knowledge of and experience in combat is really important to the game, and it's upsetting that Anet feels fine just outsourcing this as unpaid work to veteran players because they care so little about this whole area that 1 dev can just buff his favorites endlessly. People have been saying this is happening for years, it's upsetting new players I try to help in game because it makes their experience unfun and veteran players because it's a lot of work for us, and it genuinely feels like Anet is alright with that.

The reason people are mad is that chat logs with a dev leaked, where the dev admits that their favorite classes are Guardian and Mechanist, and that the dev buffs things based on whether they like them instead of trying to aim for a good balance. People have always been irritated by that, and now that it's confirmed dev favoritism by someone who ignored feedback saying this wasn't OK...well, that's a ton of goodwill lost and a lot of players reconsidering if they want to stick around. Including me, frankly.

Part of why this blew up is that there is a Discord that was supposed to be, and instead at least one of the developers treated it like a social clique instead of a job duty. They ignored feedback on classes they didn't like, bragged about how they buffed weapons and classes they liked so that no one would have a reason to play things they didn't like, were very unprofessional, etc. Many players for a long time have felt that the balance team played favorites. They've pointed at Guardian for ages, or Mechanist also now, vs how other classes are treated. Lo and behold, this dev's favorite classes are Firebrand and Mechanist. So, everyone's suspicions are confirmed, and the dev was pretty insulting, and there was a ton of feedback they ignored about how messed up other non-favored classes were going to get. ArenaNet has burned up a ton of goodwill from many veteran players, and new players are picking up on the vibe and reconsidering playing the game. Frankly, unless they really like Firebrand or Mechanist, at this point I think they ought to. This is not the first time a balance dev has played favorites and ANet backed them up to the hilt. If anything is actually done to address the root causes (company culture allowing a shallow approach to balance and devs to play favorites, basically) I'll be pleasantly surprised, but in the meantime I took a break after HoT released and I may be taking one again. I'm going to give it a couple weeks to see how things shake out.

Yeah, it's blindingly obvious how this dev's biases have been allowed to dictate the meta. I was suggesting a few pages back that ANet needs some rules or guidance about how to make balance decisions, because that's the only way to consistently steer clear of letting personal opinions guide decisions. I've played the game since its first year, and they've always had really obvious signs that no one understands or cares how to actually make all classes viable in all modes and endgame content. They need a cultural change because frankly I'm pretty sick of it and they've burned up all the benefit of the doubt. Leaving aside the unprofessional behavior in a job-related Discord, i.e. a professional setting, which would absolutely get at least a reprimand in any developer position I've worked in for terrible judgement if nothing else, the total and determined lack of comprehension about how classes play and allowing class choice to be functionally dictated by having an easy class also bring the most to the table is astonishing. ETA: Reddit has a post linking to a name-sanitized version of the logs, you can read the whole thing and see that the quotes aren't taken out of context that badly. Some people are getting very invested and should calm down, but the developer openly admits to balancing classes without playing them, not caring about player experience just benchmarks (ex: the emergency Catalyst nerf earlier), buffing favorite weapons or classes to try and make other options non-viable, and is pretty contemptuous of average players overall. The Steam sale is going on, I've got some games on my GOG wishlist I haven't played yet...I was looking forward to getting into raiding and making a legendary, but if this is how endgame balance is going to be treated I've got a lot of other games to play.

Quoting Alderez for emphasis:, because this really is the central problem that has been enraging people for 2 years, and which ArenaNet said this balance patch would solve and then doubled down on the class favoritism: I think the biggest issue with the patch notes is that every other class is compared to Firebrand and Mechanist, which ArenaNet seem to have made clear that they're fine with where they're at - but other classes are not allowed role compression with boons and healing, with the option to be boon support or heal support depending on group needs. If FB and Mechanist had been nerfed, or traits reworked so that they had to choose between boons and healing - and ArenaNet decided that they wanted group roles in the game to consist of: Healer Alacrity sub-DPS Quickness sub-DPS DPS DPS Then they should have removed the ability for any class to choose both dedicated healing alongside boon support. I'm fine with things like the Catalyst damage trade-off, but other classes need similar trade-offs. The imbalance in role compression is the real reason behind the dissatisfaction with the patch. People want to play support, but when another class can perform 2 roles at once, you're forced into that class. https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vl1krq/a_long_time_semi_casuals_perspective_about_the/idt9q61/