Rasimir.6239

Does that mean I need to level one necromancer to max to be able to use the full subclass on all my characters? Or would I have to grind each subclass on each of my characters separately? If the second, then a flat out "no" from me. More busywork to max out each character's skills/traits/combat abilities is something this game really does NOT need.

We've got legendary armor with unique skins (perfected envoy) as well as without (triumphant and glorious). Offering legendary weapons with a skin theme rather than unique skins per wepon type first and foremost offers more ways to get a legendary weapon for those who care for the functionality rather than the skin. Personally I see nothing wrong with that, especially considering how many postings we've seen in the last couple of weeks asking for exactly this.

Have you tried playing ESO without sub for an extended period of time? You basically have to ignore crafting, since a maxed-out bank can't even hold half of the crafting materials the game throws at you continually. You need to spend a lot of time checking which loot to pick up to avoid your (maxed-out) bags overflow with crafting materials every couple of minutes, especially since many of those materials are useless to you without craft bag access. Ignore housing, since the furniture limit is pretty stingy on a non-subbed account, plus you likely have to find your furniture among the "storage houses" and "storage characters" because there's not enough room to store it in the bank. Storing equipment for later use/alts is also a lot less convenient due to the lower limit on bank space, which means you'll have to reconstruct more equipment whenever you want to change builds, while at the same time being much more limited on the amount of transmute stones you can store if you don't sub. The 10% reduction on trait research adds up to several days if you want to seriously research traits, another drawback if you like crafting. I've been playing ESO since beta, and without sub for a large part of it, and I can guarantee that it does in fact take a lot away from the game. The restrictions on non-subbed accounts may be subtle at first glance, but if you try to play the game you quickly find that you are stuck spending a lot of time on manual busiwork because they decided to make the qol updates sub-exclusive to get people to sub. I really really REALLY don't want GW2 to go the way of "optional" sub, since every game I've seen so far that has that ends up making things inconvenient for the non-subs to give incentives for subbing. I vastly prefer the GW2 way where I can choose where and when to buy what for my account (crafting tools, bank storage, character slots, whatever) rather than renting access to qol features that only stay available if I keep paying.

ANet adressed this already. Short version: they want to change it, but due to unfortunate coding in the past, it's more complicated than they'd like and they don't have the resources to do it right now. They will however tackle this problem once they're able to allocate the resources for the fix. Long version:

But they've told us they want to do that, and I at least am positive they will do it. They just didn't have the resources available to do it in time for the release of the legendary armory.

So you have access to the code? Interesting ... You know, it's really irrelevant what you think when they have flat-out told us what the problem is:

We don't have a tech in game yet that is able to do that, so you'd need new tech for it, including quality assurance, ui artists (so the players understand why they can't use both), database space (two different spots for vision in the armory instead of one), and probably a lot more. Why spend those resources on a temporary fix if you can just wait and use it on a real fix down the line?

Seriously, I've yet to meet any large codebase that's been worked on for several years that isn't a nightmare to maintain and expand, and I've seen quite a few in my time (no games though unfortunately 😉 ). Developers are just human after all, and expressing concepts in code has just as many variations as expressing them in spoken words.

From the way they explained the problem, that's actually what I expect them to do. I have no insight into their internal workflows though, and no idea how many people would be involved in this (tech, db, qa, release, whatever), nor how easy it would be to set the required people free from whatever EoD tasks they might be on right now. Basically that's what I took away from the explanation they gave: they don't have the needed resources available right now without throwing a wrench into other projects that have a higher priority right now. I fully expect them to tackle this problem as soon as the necessary people are available.

It doesn't matter if you or I think that it should be easy. They have said they've tried to do it, but the current code base just doesn't allow so without an extensive rewrite. I've seen enough legacy code in 30 years of software development to easily believe them. It takes just one developer that gets carried away with a project without a clear view of modularity and future-proof code, to turn what should've been an easy adjustment into a huge rewriting nightmare. The key point I took from their explanation is that it's really not a single effect, but the way the effects of the legendary pve trinkets build on each other that is posing the problem and isn't easy to isolate and change. Check out the dev tracker from shortly before the introduction to the armory if you're intersted in the full explanation. Aside from that your "simple" solution isn't as easy nor as robust as you might think at first glance. The game does not have a system that allows one object to block the usage of an object with a different item blueprint in another open slot. We do have the unique tag, but that works only for objects of the same item blueprint. For example, while you can't use two uninfused unique rings of the same name, once one of the rings is infused, the game no longer recognises them as the same ring (since they have different blueprints) and allows you to use both. There seems to be no tech that allows to change an item unlocked in the armory to another. That's why for example slumbering conflux didn't get a slot in the armory, so people could exchange it for the full version as soon as the vendor was in place. If you put in a vendor to exchange the accessory with effect into one without, then you need to keep the version with effect out of the armory, which would certainly annoy a lot of people. Plus you would need to update the no-effect version to toggle-effect later on when that is implemented, and those that exchanged their trinket have no way to get the effect back until the real solution is implemented. No matter the workaround, it would still take considerable resources to implement and test it that would be better used in a real fix for the problem. If that fix is complex enough to have to be delayed, then that's unfortunate (and yes, I'm in the same boat, not using either Aurora or Vision because I'm waiting for the no-effect version), but it's still better use of resources than to waste them on a temporary workaround.

I don't think it's slow development as much as just less carrots on sticks than most other MMOs currently produce. You spend a day to "finish" a living world episode? I can usually spend days and weeks on each one, exploring the map, doing the story on different characters (and usually noticing new and interesting things each playthrough), putting together things I find on the map and things I hear in story instances, and just thoroughly enjoying myself in getting to know this new part of the world. You could say I'm more interested in the immersive experience, less in the "checklist - story, map completion, achievements" aspect of the game. That to me is where GW2 is brilliant, as you can fully loose yourself in the world without hampering your ability to experience other parts of the game. I don't need to grind for specific equipment or achievements to be able to unlock content, I can just go where I want. I can see how that is a problem for players more interested in the checklist part of the game, but for me, this game is in a pretty good spot. Comparing it to the other MMO I play (ESO), I personally get a lot more entertainment out of a year of GW2 updates than I do get out of a year of ESO updates (including being able to play the bellchoire at Wintersday each year 😍).

I'm sorry to say this, but you come across as incredibly spoiled right now. They announced several new maps to explore new storyline new masteries new instanced group content 9 new ways to play your character, including a full traitline, 5 new heal/utility/ultimate skills, 2-5 new weapon skills and likely a new class mechanic for each of these 9 wvw alliances introduced alongside the expansion If that is "not even the bare minimum", then you either haven't played any MMO expansions in the last decade or so (comparing both variety of content and price) or you are just trying to paint things black on technicalities (like naming specific kinds of instanced group content so you don't have to admit that they did announce several group instances as part of the expansion).

Map exploration has a big impact on experience gain during leveling. Having the whole map unlocked would significantly reduce the amount of experience gained while leveling another character, and drag the leveling process unnecessarily. Not everyone has a stack of tomes of knowledge for every character they level. You can have several dozend characters in this game. Once you have map-explored all the low-level maps, where do you take your next character to level? Grind events and mobs in low-level areas? Move to areas way above your level, where you can hardly damage the mobs, to leech off others doing events? You can't just go to "any area of the map" with your new lvl 5 character, since there are systems in place that actively disadvantage players significantly below the area level. Plus, as was mentioned above, low-level characters in high-level areas are actually a liability for other players since they increase the chance of failing events that are scaled to the number of players but not each player's level.

When they added the legendary armory, they explained that turning off these effects is technically difficult due to the somewhat convoluted way these effects were originally implemented. The way I understand the explanation, this is still something they want to do, they just don't have the capacity to do it right now, as it would pretty much need a total rework of these objects.

I've read this again and again, but I honestly don't get it. This is your entertainment time, not your job that you do for a living. Why this fixation on rewards, rather than on content that entertains you??? Do you choose which movie to watch by which gives the best reward? TV shows? Music you listen to? Do you choose what sports to do or what books to read based on which one gives the best rewards? Why do you even play a game if all you do is repeat activities that apparently give the biggest amount of imaginary play money? Unless you are selling in-game currencies and goods for real world currency (which I'm not saying you are), I see zero reason to reduce a game to the virtual goodies you can "gain" by playing it.

ANet announces living world with expansion-like features. Players: not enough features, give us an expansion. ANet announces expansion. Players: this isn't an expansion, we got these features in living world patches 🙄

Sorry, but I can't follow you here. What does the economy have to do with lfg, and what do you mean by "better" economy? In what way would it be better?

I enjoy creating new characters occasionally, so I will likely use it on a (possibly) temporary character to replay some story instances I haven't played in a while, maybe grab some of the black lion keys from the story along the way, without having to worry about leveling between story parts. This way I'll be able to jump right into living world/expansion storylines, too.

In the case of ESO, the $40 is just the expansion price. If you don't have the base game, then you have to pay $80 for a version of the expansion that includes base game and former expansions (minus map and dungeon dlcs that easily cost way more to unlock than GW2 living world episodes), in which case GW2 is cheaper by an even larger margin.

No. Those that have pre-ordered the next expansion have an additional button below the weapon swap button now that doesn't seem to do anything yet.

They'd have to rebuild the whole decoration system, since decorations currently don't exist as objects. Instead they go directly into the guild stash, and I don't think we want guild members fighting over who is allowed to take the potted plant out of the guild stash and put it into their home instance 😉. Personally I don't care for housing. If I want to be creative, then I'll go play minecraft, especially since that one doesn't put me into a personal instance but rather lets me shape the full world and cooperate with the rest of our (private) server to really build our own space. Visiting other people's houses in MMOs doesn't really captivate me either. I used to be a big Sims fan, but not even ESO has enticed me into doing more with housing than using it as an extra storage area. I'm not big on fishing either, although the sticker book approach most games have to it (as in: achievements to "catch them all") does motivate me to spend some time on it occasionally 😉 . Same could be said for mounts before PoF though, so I'll keep my verdict until EoD is out and I get a first-hand view of what they've made of it.

Or different fishing rods/nets/spears/whatever?

Whatever it is, I hope you can assign hotkeys to it just like mounts and novelties. I'm not used to mouse-clicking my controls. I tend to mis-click as often as not 🤣.

I see, you're talking semantics here, instead of looking at what will actually be added. 9 elite specs are not a new class if you look at it that way, but I'd go out on a limb and say that for the majority of players that enjoy playing new classes, 9 new ways to play and the sheer number of new traits and skills to play around with actually outshine a single new class by a pretty far margin.

Unlike US prices, EU prices always include value-added taxes, which is between 17% and 27% depending on the country, with the majority being 20+%. With the conversion price you mentioned the Euro prices seem to be pretty in line for EU countries. For countries outside of EU and US things might be different, depending on currency conversion and local tax laws, but that is another topic entirely.