[That's the most pointless PvE-Update ever]

It is not useless. It is the best in-game marketing tool ever to convince free-2-players to buy the latest expansion.

[Wishing for animated armor to come back as a reward]

17 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Considering the Devs stated it took 2 years to create the animated Legendary Armor (if that's what you are referring to), and that they would never visit such an ordeal again, it may not be something forthcoming. 

Still, good luck. 

Well I am not really asking for a second legendary armor. It won’t be tied to the progression of raids and its multiple paths which they had to plan ahead, hence the long delay. It doesn’t need to have a theme around it nor does it need to create 3 different skins based on your profession. The idea is just to create one skin that have some animated parts once a CM gets released.
 

Just thinking it would be cool to have a unique reward that you can’t get anywhere else for in the game apart from HoT raids. And for the people that have a legendary armor it would be very great to have some choice when it comes a single piece of animated armor.

[Wishing for animated armor to come back as a reward]

It might be kind of late for the next updates but it would be cool if new animated skins were designed as a reward for completing a strike CM.

 

For the next PvE updates following the next expansion, I would really like to have system in place that allows players to earn a piece of exotic in open world and upgrade it through NM strike and then CM strike. 
Here is how it would work:

-similar to all LS update, you complete a series of objective that gives a piece of exotic and that you can later on purchase with open world map currency once the objective is completed.

-After that, you beat the strike mission and it gives a recipe (with ascended tier materials) that allows you to upgrade the armor in the mystic forge from exotic to ascended. Once the piece of armor is crafted, you can purchase with currency as many ascended piece from a vendor as you want.

-Then, you beat the encounter in CM. It gives a recipe to upgrade the skin of the item to an animated piece of armor.

 

As for the initial rewards of infusions through CM strikes, I would rather locked behind open-world and new fractal CM.

[What would be the next mount?]

You know what they should add ? A guild airship that you unlock by participating in guild activities.

Edit:

for underwater content, they should also add a guild submarine

[[Suggestion] Dragon's End Meta Should Ramp Up in Difficulty]

Personally I wished there was additional chests to obtain based on how much health is left on Soo-Won, that reward mats just like drizzlewood. 
 

You could get 4 chests for every 20% health taken away from Soo-Won, for an additional 16 chests to open at best even if you actually fail to kill Soo-Won. To open these chests you would need keys that you obtain playing the events on the map, getting some currency and exchanging it with the vendor. 

Other than that, I wished that rewards for killing it were a bit better. I know there is a rare infusion to get, but it would have appropriate for me if you could get any infusion ever released in gw2 for open-world, minus the festival infusions.
 

I mean the difficulty is already ramping up as it is. Personal anecdote, things always seem to go south when health is down to 70% for me.

[Why are infusion with extra stats restricted to Fractal]

I wish strikes would give rewards in order to guide me into the process of crafting legendary runes and/or legendary sigils. That way they can justify the low amount of gold you will ever get from farming strikes.

 

Infusion is meh. There is just too much other incentive to get them outside of strikes while legendary sigils and runes are a nebulous endgame goal that could potentially incentive players to invest into strikes.

 

Furthermore it is perfectly in line with the goal of strikes in the first place when it comes to the legendary journey: start out with the acquisition of runes and sigils and then get to raids for the armor.

[What are your thoughts on the possibility of Strike CMs being another way to get a Legendary Armor set someday?]

Nah that is a poor idea. In the end, it would only benefit the players who already own the legendary armor. 
 

For the legendary armor itself, it would be better to just release a new tier of gear that allows stat-swapping (like behind an expansion 😉 😉) but can’t be shared across all the character you own. And forget that they ever going to release a legendary armor that is full open world PvE.

Let’s call it empowered armor (red gear) and you can craft it by playing normal mode strike missions and farm/buy other components that are found in open world. There is 2 recipes to get it: you can craft it by upgrading an exotic piece of armor or an ascended piece of armor through 600 crafting.

It has stat-swap but you don’t instantly unlock all the different stats combination that exist in the game. It is more about which stats you want to unlock for your armor (whether 2 or 5 or more stat combination to add) armor but of course the armor would be equal to legendary/ascended in terms of power with an infusion slot.

 

In the future, it would be better for people who own a legendary armor to have the possibility of earning more animated skins that you can acquire in strike mission CM. Kind of like locking a single piece of an animated skin behind unlocking a legendary armor piece of gear of any kind (either WvW, SPvP or PvE) and of any tier (light, medium or heavy) or the proposed empowered armor that share some legendary armor feature without the full benefit of the legendary armor.

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

On 3/25/2022 at 6:10 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

And? They are designed for a completely different gameplay style - one that a majority of PvE players have already seen and rejected. Those are not the first strikes in this game, remember? We already know that they are not a content for many players - and these new strikes aren't any different.

Like you noticed, not having beetle, griffon or skyscale does not lock you out of any story. Not even races, since Anet started putting mount vendors near them. Not that it actually matters - turtle is still designed for open world, but locked behind a content it is not designed for, and a content which most OW players do not play.

And so ? Many of the mechanics that you see in these strike missions are the same mechanics that you have seen in open world. Like since season 3. Many of the mechanics that you have seen in story particularly also come fractals, even at tier 1. You really believe that in ten years of content, no casual ever went to that content, even though it is the best way and easy to farm the gold since like forever ? From the content that has barely been updated in the last five years and has seen its difficulty reduced time after time ?

Yeah the mounts like the beetle, skyscale and the griffon won’t you lock out of story but you still got content locked up if you don’t own it. Getting these achievement points by flying through Tyria with a skyscale won’t be possible. Participating in the griffon races in PoF won’t be possible without it. 
Your point is only relevant for the beetle as it has races in core Tyria. But here is the deal : have you tried getting gold without the mastery achievement tied to the purchase of season 4 ? I don’t think many will and have actually done it.

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I always understood that point. I just never uderstood your interpretation of it. Because what you think is not about incentivizing players. It's about strongarming.them.

The moment players start to feel the game tries to ignore their desires, and force them into a content they dislike, the fun stops.

Also, while i do see worth in incentivizing players to feel like trying out different types of content, i see no worth in trying to forcefully save types of content not enough players are interested in at the cost of greater player dissatisfaction. Nor do i see any worth in continuing to push players in some types of unpopular content long after devs realized those types are (and will remain) unpopular.

And i see no practical differences here, so we're not going to agree with each other.

As i see it, turtle is a mount that's designed for open world, and open world alone. As such, it should be obtainable through open world alone. Not through endgame instanced content designed for small minority of players. Not even if said content is being disguised as open world map meta.

But these strikes aren’t designed for a minority of people. They are called normal strike. They are the bosses that you encounter in the story.

 

Yes it is designed for open world but unlike the other mounts you can access it even if you don’t own it and unlike the other mounts, no you are not locked out of story it content such as the beetle and the griffon that provide races.

 

 

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

On 3/22/2022 at 8:36 PM, Zok.4956 said:

It is actually the other way around. The game exists for players to have fun (and then Anet gets paid by these happy customers).

Anet should understand what their customers like/dislike and should make the content its customers have fun playing. If Anet is doing a good job, there is no need to push players into content they do not like.

And if Anet is making content that it knows is only for a small part of the player population - that is Ok, too. As long as players who do not like that type of content can keep ignoring it.

 

 

But you have no proof that people are not actually enjoying the strikes overall. Or that the amount of people that own the mount is actually increasing.

 

What kind of metric are you using here  ? The few same people over here that have been spamming the forums for quite some time and that straight up refuse to engage in any kind of endgame instanced group content ? Where were these people when they locked skins like the a cape and a complete armor set behind the strikes from the icebrood saga? You do realize we are in some sort of a echo chamber here. 

Personally, the more I play EoD the more I see turtles in open world. And you know what is even more amazing: the fact that you can interact with it even if if you don’t own one. 

 

 

 

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

18 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Are these the same people?

I thought it was cool that they were trying to on-ramp players into harder endgame content by creating more stepping stones to get there. But I was never interested in it, and wasn't planning on using their stepping stones. I just thought it was a great idea for people who wanted to make that transition but might be having difficulty.

At the same time I think it's a bad idea to gate open world features behind instanced content where you can't even use those features. Especially since the game has such a long track record of mostly just putting cosmetics behind instanced content, and making the expansion features easy to get and useful throughout.

I'm only one person. Maybe there is someone out there who desperately wanted easier instanced content to play but is now complaining that features are locked behind it. But most of the people who I've seen saying they don't like this choice are people who aren't interested in instanced content at all.

Well the problem with locking only skins behind instanced content is that most players will just ignore the content. 
 

If they took the time to develop instanced endgame content for a major release then they have to make sure that at least a majority of players try it at least once. And earning a mount like this is the best way to do it. 
 

But even then ? Is this really that bad ? I don’t have the turtle and yet I was still able to join a random squad and play with the turtle. That is where the friendly community aspect of the game that most people praise in general should play in. 
 

It is also really isn’t like the griffon or the beetle or the core mount from PoF. You are not locked out of content because you don’t own one, there is no races that can reward you with skins or rare expensive minis, that specifically ask you to summon a turtle. 
 

From a casual standpoint, I personally see no issue because mounts were praised for their movement abilities, and in that department everything has been covered. Nobody in their right mind would want to traverse all EoD maps with a turtle.

 It really is an endgame feature and Anet wants to develop the endgame that has been severely lacking for many years.  Personally I have always thought that it was damaging the game to have too many stuff too easily accessible in open world and the lack of bridges between instanced endgame and open world even more so.

 

So once again, for a highly optional mount, I see no issue.
 

 

 

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

14 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

I'm not toxic for wanting the new Ritualist stat trinkets for my World vs World build without having to bang my head against the wall organizing and dealing with actual toxic people. I'd still play the rest of the expansion and probably even jump in a Strike or two some day but gating new stats in a game that used to flex about horizontal progression behind a pve instance is a big kitten you to a lot of players and a prime example of promoting toxicity.

Anet can keep their "siege" turtle that's not even available in the game mode that's about siege warfare and I'll put in the time for skins and collections, but gating the stats is wrong and your toxic for giving other players kitten for not wanting to deal with that noise. 

Yeah I agree with you. Having stat combos locked behind PvE is bad and I didn’t know about that. They should fix that.

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

17 hours ago, castlemanic.3198 said:

calling players toxic for asking to not do a strike mission for what is open world content is really very weird of you. you literally could have just left it at 'we'll agree to disagree' but you decided to call people toxic for not wanting to do a strike mission to earn an open world reward that has nothing to do with strike missions. very strange.

 

your point about dps being barely relevant in this game is absolutely false when it comes to 10 man content like strike missions or raids. top tier players can do 10x the damage of casual solo oriented players which is a HUGE difference that can absolutely affect the success or failure of something like a strike mission.

 

honestly it's arenanets fault for having so many different stat combinations that can easily vary the dps by such a significant margin. solutions to this could be discussed in another thread, i won't go into it here.

 

to your final point, there is no dissonance between those stances.

Toxic might not have been the right word for it, I’ll give you that. English is not my first language. More like irrelevantly obnoxious, still not sure about the appropriate word. But of course, it is only an opinion, not saying they are actually are.

 

I stand with what I said about DPS. High amount of DPS will matter only if you are speed running the instances, which majority of players are not interested in doing in like any game whatsoever. And the fact is that in the case of this particular strike, you have also no timer. Unlike DE meta.
Your point about all the different stat combos doesn’t make sense to me. Like everything else in the game, unless you are trying to solo something ou you are a really invested player who tests all the different stats for fun, it won’t matter. It is really all about the boons imo because the boons will carry a person which has no interest in practicing a DPS rotation. Apart from that, yeah there is mechanics. Like open world content. And many of these mechanics that you have seen in open world content recently and in the past come from instanced content like raids and fractals, since like the start of season 3.
 

Is it too much to ask for ?

 

I have said my piece, I just hope Anet won’t nerf the requirement further.

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

18 hours ago, castlemanic.3198 said:

strikes DO have a higher amount of organization and tactics than are typically used by casual players, making it a problem from the get go.

 

i expected the turtle to not be hidden behind raid like content and it was hidden behind TWO raid like pieces of content, the meta and the strike.

 

you're acting like i'm surprised that there were strikes to begin with, which is not what i was saying. i'm specifically saying that arenanets methodology surrounding the acquisition of the siege turtle (from the point of view of someone who has it aka got the egg from the meta and managed to complete the strike mission) is absurd and shouldn't have been done that way and that asking for an alternate method of acquisition to a strike isn't unfair because it's too hard for casual players.

 

never said there was anything disingenuous about the acquisition of the siege turtle, there is something disingenuous about saying that getting through an alternate method to the strike mission is a 'freebie'.

Thanks for you are additional imput, god kinda lost will the answers that the topic brought.

 

Suffice to say that here we are going to agree to disagree. Personally, I never had any expectation of earning the turtle the same way we earned the previous mount. I knew they would push for the strike missions and so I was not surprised to have strike mission as a requirement for earning an endgame mount. You could complain that Anet didn’t tell about the mount locked behind a strike mission but frankly, I don’t think it would have changed anything because the people that complain now, would have complained before. And all it would have done is generate some bad publicity around the launch of EoD, which would have caused more harm than good.

I will agree with you that locking the acquisition of the egg behind a 2 hour long meta that has high chance of failure was a bad idea, especially when the first step of the collection requires you to beat the meta. However, I will hard disagree about what is a casual player and how actually hard are strike missions in general.

 

To me, the players that are constantly complaining about anything locked behind group endgame content are not casual, they are just being toxic for no reason.

I find it casual that you can dip in and out of group endgame content even if endgame group content is not your main focus (trust me on that, I personally never reached T4 fractals, never killed any raid boss and only crafted 2 ascended armor in almost 10 years) but I did play the previous strikes long enough to at least unlock the light armor.
And all you to do that imo is to fill up the basic role of bringing DPS: get yourself some berserker or viper gear (you don’t even ascended armor), do your best (I mean no one here is asking you to pull up some snowcrow amazing DPS rotations), listen/read to what the squad leader says (I mean it is no different that what listening to a commander in open world does). Apart from that, the gear needed here basically the same gear that has been in the game for like forever. Is it really unfair to ask that from a player ? And at some point care enough to the basic mechanics of the game to complete a single strike mission that you can forever ignore if you wish to ?

The hard truth as well is that DPS is barely relevant in this game. The few people that are able to do it are such a minority and whether we are talking about open world content or endgame group content makes no difference because all you really need in this game is a good amount of alacrity and a good amount quickness. Players complaining here have always been carried because if the success of an open world even was solely based on how much DPS players could bring, then pretty much all meta events would fail.

 

You can’t have it both way. On one hand complain about the lack of accessibility of endgame 10 man content for years and then say « how dare they make me complete a single strike mission » to earn and endgame non esssential mount.

 

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

32 minutes ago, castlemanic.3198 said:

a lot of the arguments i'm seeing from the 'pro turtle strike' group are so extremely disingenuous it would actively be toxic to engage with them.

adding a different requirement that doesn't involve the objectively hard for casuals strike mission doesn't make it a freebie.

and this is as someone who did the strike mission and got the siege turtle. I've done it, i've completed it, i have all the masteries for the turtle completed. I'm telling you from experience that content was too hard for the majority of casual players. why is arenanet hiding the siege turtle behind strike missions when the siege turtle isn't even useful for strike missions? it doesn't make sense. it was a weird decision they made to try and herd players into strike missions and they didn't even bother tying it to the (apparently) easiest strike mission, you know the one that casual players would actually have a chance of beating.

 

arenanet heard us about the DE meta, they need to listen to us once more and add another method of getting the strike mission reward.

 

that doesn't make it a freebie and it is extremely disingenuous to suggest it is.

The only reason why they listened to DE meta is because many players, even those who liked the difficulty of the meta, said that it wasn’t fair to lock a start of the collection behind an event that were on a 2h timer meta that required a higher amount of organization than a single raid or strike mission. Strikes have none.

 

I mean, what did you expect ? They started developing strike missions with the icebrood saga, we knew from the beginning of the presse release that they would be a major component of EoD, with all the mystic coins rebalance. The strike doesn’t even have a timer, how much more casual can it be ? They are literally easier than T4 fractal and more accessible, because, guess what, you are not even locked behind agony resistance. 
 

No offense but there is nothing disingenuous about it and everything new about the turtle, the ability to shoot lasers out off a mount, doesn’t even require you to own the mount.

[PvE method for Acquisition of Gift of Battle]

13 hours ago, Caliboom.3218 said:

But PvE is "the main game". Why should you be able to skip the main game to get a legendary? Also, GoE should be obtainable in both PvE and PvP as well as WvW. It should be an option to choose. Getting the Gift of Battle isn't hard, it's just extremely boring + requires me to play a gamemode I dislike for 8 hours, so I don't see the problem with giving more options.

Why are WvW players so obsessed with locking the GoB behind their favorite gamemode? As they usually say, it's not hard to get at all, just time-consuming, therefore there's literally no issue with putting it in PvE. Seems like just an excuse to stomp PvE players to me.

I'm fine with raid armor being locked behind raids only because raids are a test of your skill and understanding of mechanics. The Gift of Battle is a test of whether you're patient enough to play a gamemode you dislike, and you don't even have to be good at it.

What are you talking about ? Who is able to skip the “main game” to get a legendary ?

Nobody is. It feels like you misunderstood me. I said that it takes way more time to obtain a gift of exploration than it is to obtain a gift of battle. 

[PvE method for Acquisition of Gift of Battle]

1 hour ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

I've done this numerous times now, and it increasingly ticks me off every time I have to get a Gift of Battle.

Why, for items that are ostensibly PvE ones, do I have to do WvW in the first place?

Why can't I just buy the Gift of Battle like I can the other PvP materials that make up the Gift of the Mists?

 

I think point 1 is the one that annoys me the most, as people who play GW2 for WvW only have been given ways of gaining PvE items without ever having to set foot in the Open World. Yet there's no similar "Track" system for PvE players wanting to get things from WvW.

 

Note, this isn't about the relative ease of getting the Gift of Battle (with the right boosters, it took me less than a day of concentrated WvW), but more about the fact that I'm being forced to play a mode that I simply don't enjoy, no matter how many times I have to.

 

I don't do badly in WvW, but I simply find it boring and tedious with no real sense of progression or accomplishment, and as soon as I got my Gift of Battle yesterday, I was outta there.

 

So ANet, you've given WvWers all the tools they need to completely ignore PvE. Now give PvEers those same tools, so they don't have to play a mode they don't enjoy.

But they will never able to ignore PvE altogether. If they want a gift of exploration, which is similar to the gift of battle, they will still need to go to PvE.
 

It took you a day to get a gift of battle, can you do the same for the gift of exploration ? I don’t think you can stack boosters that allow you to to discover all poi and vistas of one map. 
 

Apart from that, you gotta accept that WvW has always been considered endgame for PvE and will always be, even more with the subsequent alliance rework. 

[More Info on Strike Missions, Balance, and Rewards in End of Dragons]

23 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Did you seriously include a single one-time available reward as a source of MCoins?

Well my point is: if they allowed many players (current players and new players that are potentially going to stick to Gw2 with EoD to the point of getting the precedent living worlds) to suddenly get a lot more of MCs for not so much investment in terms of gameplay, then the need of keeping the status quo makes no sense at all. 
 

By the time players make it to T4 (talking about new players here) and potentially get to CMs, rewards are gonna feel redundant and not just worth playing, outside of T4 of course because most players are never gonna over quit over liquid gold.

I mean fractals never were only profitable just because players could play activate the challenge mote of only 3 fractals .

[More Info on Strike Missions, Balance, and Rewards in End of Dragons]

52 minutes ago, Bleed.7052 said:

 

With all due respect the only person raging here is you, we're just asking from an official response and there's nothing wrong with that, have fun being outraged by everything in the internet.

Honestly it does feel like the official response had already being given out and yes it is pretty crystal clear that they want people to focus on strike. And frankly, why shouldn’t they ?

 

Yes fractal CM rewards with a chance to give you MC. However what is the point of keeping that status quo if:

-so few people participate in the content, making the argument that most challenging content is being discentivized to play completely irrelevant,

-the reward can be bought, obtained with the daily anomaly, the login reward and

-is highly obtainable with the return to achievements. Personally I am sitting on approximatively 50 MCs coins from unopened weapon chests.

 

Maybe that is what going on at the end of the day. The price of MCs didn’t go down fast enough for EoD and so they are taking extra measures to make sure that it will.

 

[EoD looks so bad it's not even funny]

3 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Well, Strikes are not new, but yes, I am also looking forward to new Strikes myself, especially the addition of CMs.

Legendary Weapons are not a new thing, either, but yes, the idea of having several different textures you can unlock is pretty cool.

"The big WvW project" merely consists of reshuffling the population - that's hardly "big" nor does it qualify as "fresh new content."

And the state of the DX11 beta is still so bad (crashes, texture issues) that I doubt it will be ready by February.

Well nobody (as far as I am aware) declared that dx11 will come with the release of EoD, just like alliances will not come in February. Why would like expect that ?

[EoD looks so bad it's not even funny]

On 12/6/2021 at 3:59 PM, Evermore.5649 said:

Yes, this expansion is severely lacking in new features compared to previous expansions.

HoT and PoF introduced new core mechanics to the game (gliding, masteries, mounts, break bars, etc) but I don't see anything significant in EoD.

 

However, I'm also not really disappointed.

1. The game has no subscription fee, so you only have to buy a new expansion every 2-3 years.

2. They keep pumping out new content (maps, stories, achievements) at an impressive rate, especially when compared to a certain other MMO that has a subscription fee and a billion-dollar company funding them.

 

Just my 2c.

You forgot one last point: the fact that, originally, they didn’t plan to create that expansion in the first place. I mean, yeah I am sure everyone out there (as well as me) loves ground breaking features.
However, I fail to see how this is going to be possible if, midway through the development of IBS, some people literally tell the devs to finish off IBS as fast as possible and to go make another expansion.

But hey at least, multiplayer riding features are new, strike mission CM is also new, gen 3 legendaries is quite different as well and let’s not forget about the big WvW project and the dx11 features.

 

 

 

 

 

[Disappointing that EoD Legendary Weapons can be bought and sold on the TP]

Well the good news and the most important thing, is that, unlike gen 1 at launch, you can earn it without feeling like swiping the credit card is the most reliable way of obtaining it.

 

You can complain that gen 3 legendaries are not like gen 2 but let’s be real for a second, many steps of gen 2 and especially gen 2.5 legendaries were achievable with a credit card.

[Se6 is in the works or what?]

Of course they know ahead of what is about come after EoD. You can heavily criticize the HoT era for having season 3 being out 9 months after the launch of HoT, but the thing is they certainly did not put that Balthazar hero challenge in auric basin out of randomness.

[This game isn't very new player friendly.]

Seems to me the big issue is that, as much as GW2 needs to sell these additional packs of story, purchasing a story in order isn’t just possible.

 

The best solution would be then to offer some purchase options that allow one new player to start a story and then finish it without needing to spend additional money, albeit the problem with season 1 obviously. Therefore, why not just offer bundles of 1 expansion + 1 living story as a standard price ?

For example you would get:

-living story 2 + HoT for 40$=The Story of Mordremoth

-living story 3 + PoF for 40$=Magic Going Wild
-small exception here: season 4 + season 5 the Icebrood saga=Aurenes’ Fate

[no one plays raids]

5 hours ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

If you tie legendary armour acquisition to the CM of strikes then you don't alleviate the low-effort forum warrior's concerns at all.

All you have done is changed the name of the content that these people will not do and changed an adjective for their tired arguments.

No need to alleviate their problems.

 

The only real problem is that a feature of the game in PvE is locked behind a content that hasn’t been updated for like 3-4 years. Better scratch the idea for the majority of players that they should participate in some old content that has been released 6-7 years before. 
That way, if they fancy the animated armor, they would have the armor and all they required experience to then go back and complete HoT raids.

 

In the future, if 10 man content gets more support and the number of players earning a legendary armor increases, then it would be interesting for Anet to design more animated armor for legendary gear owners. They could for example award single pieces of animated armor for beating a CM strike mission.