Mungrul.9358

I haven't played since they announced Relics, and if they don't give me back the functionality I had before Relics, I doubt I'll ever play again. This is a serious breach of trust, and moves the goalposts on EVERYTHING. Oh, so you think you've got a full set of Legendary trinkets? Wait until they release new genital rings! Full set of Legendary armour? Just wait until they add socks!

Yeah, I've just seen the skinner box surrounding me and walked out the door. I have, for the time-being, realised that this genre and GaaS in general just aren't worth my time and money, because any one of them they wants all of it. There's a lot of talk around BG3 at the moment, and how it's shaken up the industry, and it's right. I want to play games to have fun, not as a second job. The whole mentality of having to work for rewards in games has been blown so far out of proportion, it's gotten ridiculously toxic. It's not helped by Stockholm Syndrome communities that jealously gate-keep access to this stuff and mewl like spoiled children at the slightest mention of reducing the grind to make things more enjoyable and flexible for everyone.

So I poked my head back in here to see if it's worth coming back yet (I've still not played SotO despite pre-ordering it), only to find that ANet have made the new "Open World" legendary armour a nightmarish grind to acquire, Relics are everything I feared they would be and the legendary versions are probably also going to require a hellish grind, even if you already had 7 legendary runes. Lol, yeah, not coming back to play this game, not while so many others are keeping me entertained without feeling like they're exploiting me. Maybe if ANet finally get around to respecting their players instead of treating them like addicts, maybe then I'll come back and play. There's a lot to like in GW2. Shame it's increasingly obscured by sleazy gameplay design.

I paid for it. I still haven't played it though. I'm still playing a better game that respects my time more.

Yeah, like-for-like functionality is the only acceptable "compensation".

I feel that. I look at GW2 in my list of games, and while I love the combat, I feel that at the moment, there are other things I can play which will respect my time more and which offer a more worthwhile experience.

See, I think you've hit the nail on the head with this. I think they've lost the person who knew how to add new rune effects and then add them to legendary runes. Look at EoD... where are the elite spec runes? No Rune of the Bladesworn, no Rune of the Virtuoso, etc. So instead of learning how to add new runes and then add their effects to legendaries, they're instead stripping the 6th rune effect completely and making a whole new slot item, which from their perspective means less complicated work figuring out a system no-one has any expertise in any more and also drives the economy forwards, resulting in more people buying gems to convert to gold.

With recent feature revelations, there has been a lot of kick-back from the community. Are you among the disaffected?

I'm curious to see what's going to happen to Black Lion Chests now that the UK industry has agreed to ban lootbox use for those under 18.

Just to throw another cat among the many pigeons, remember that the final quarter of a year for some companies can be the first three months of the next year...

The only thing that I'm looking forward to now is open world legendary armour, and seeing the mess they've made of the relic system, I'm sure they'll find a way to screw this up too.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire expansion consisted of glorified Dragon Response Missions.

By the way, a little game called Baldur's Gate 3 launches on August the 3rd and can be played co-op... For any disappointed with this announcement that haven't bought SotO yet (unlike my dumb keister), maybe you're money's best spent elsewhere. After all, ANet have announced in plain sight that SotO won't be feature complete until some time next year. Its effectively Early Access. Plenty of time to play other games or partake in other activities.

May I suggest that if you're unhappy with it and have enabled the ability to play GW2 through Steam, you leave a "Thumbs Down" on the newest update article?

You've just broken the covenant you had with your customers regarding Legendary being top tier, so I can't wait to see what you do next. 🙄

I have 7 runes. I don't want that to be "Partial" progress towards a feature I currently have. Anything less than the functionality I have now is unacceptable. I'm beginning to wish this game had shards so we could play older, better versions. Oh, and while the team may think they're opening the system up, I think they have misunderstood why rune special effects were combined with fixed attributes in the first place: A six-rune bonus may be desirable, but it may come with an attribute combination that isn't optimal for your build. Therefore, if you really want the effect, you have to compromise your build (welcome to the real Warrior profession mechanic). That compromise was the point.

Oh, I know. I did it that way to get the actual weapons instead of just the skins. It was also quite fun playing the final Mordremoth battle with multiple professions and discovering which ones handled it best. At the time, my Weaver had a surprisingly easy run!

The disconnects are the reason I try to limit playing the story to one time and one time only. That they're still present now when they were in the game after launch is just staggering. I am absolutely positive it's down to some bug with the idle disconnect code. I suspect that when you run a story instance solo, it runs locally on your PC and therefore after a long enough time, the main servers think you're idling and so disconnect you.

I dearly love the Caladbolg skins you can get from repeating the Knight of the Thorn questline, and they look fantastic when combined with Sylvari cultural armour or Nightmare Court armour from Twilight Arbor. The only downside is that there isn't a complete set! To that end, I would love to see the remaining weapons done in the same style: Axe, Mace, Pistol, Focus, Torch, Warhorn, Hammer, Longbow, Rifle, Shortbow, Staff, Harpoon Gun, Spear & Trident. Preferably earnable in game, but I would also be prepared to buy them from the trading post as skins. At the moment, I often pair Verdant or Dreamthistle weapons with the Caladbolg variants (and Kudzu for longbow), but they're not quite right.

@ZeftheWicked.3076, as suspected, this build also works really well with trailblazer. You get less strike damage, sure, but the chunking from DoTs (Bleeding & Burning) is a LOT more dramatic and can result in surprising "deletions" of mobs, where one second they'll have about a third of their health left, then the DoTs tick and *POOF!* No more mob. Torch really does work well with the build too, as you can activate Flames of War, then Savage Leap to activate the combo field effect and self-generate a Fire Aura which generates might when you're hit and burns the attacker. Headbutt is also a fantastic way to start a fight, for as well as dazing the enemy, it fills your adrenaline, allowing you to immediately activate Berserk. One of the only things I don't like is the cooldown on Flaming Flurry. It feels a little underpowered, and you can only get off three activations during a rage, and that's only if you're paying attention. Reducing the cooldown so you could get off 4 activations per rage would make it feel a LOT better. The other thing I'm not fond of is the feedback from sword attacks. Coming from hammer which has wonderful chonky feedback, with every attack and hit feeling weighty, sword can feel a bit like waving around a wiffle bat. It could do with some better, chunkier sound effects for attacks and impacts. Make it sound a bit slicier ANet. Oh, and swapping out Fear Me! for Shattering Blow really was the right call for my playstyle. Lower cooldown, multiple effects including block, stability, reflect and bleeding, and it extends rage. What's not to like?

Or, you know, mainhand pistol? I'm still miffed we only got offhand pistol with Bladesworn, and that its reduced range effectively makes it a melee weapon.

The irony here is that I think you're really referring to sarcasm.

Hmm, I think I've just twigged why Warrior's Elite skills are so naff. ANet see burst skills as being a Warrior's real "Super" (a la DOTA / Destiny 2 / Overwatch / Etc.), and they can't have Warrior having TWO SUPERS!

I was implying that it's P2W because it's only available to owners of EoD. Don't own EoD? Lose out on power.

The same would probably happen if an ANet post got confuse-bombed.