Jokubas.4265

With this whole secret society that has been keeping all this from us... Speaking of being teased, could be Mr. E?

I consider myself a story player, but you know what? I wouldn't mind some updates without story, at least story in the sense of a new story chapter. In some ways it almost feels like we've lost the idea that the game has things like events and a dynamic world instead of quests since every update comes with a new questline. I wouldn't mind getting some new areas added to the game because they're "part of the world", and not because "that's where the story is currently taking place". For instance, I originally expected this release to be "now that the story is over for now, go explore more of Cantha" and I would have been fine with that.

The context-lite nature of Fractals makes them good for grinding, but they don't offer the fully-realized locations with stories behind them that Dungeons do. Side plots like Saul D'Alessio can't really be done through Fractals, but work just fine for a Dungeon and wouldn't be too inaccessible that way.

The only thing I can really think of at this point is a dedicated passenger mount. Faster and more maneuverable than the Turtle, and maybe with more seats, but not necessarily truly fast. Just a convenient group experience, especially for helping out new players. Tunneling is one of the only traversal methods we don't have, but I can't imagine it offering anything significant outside areas built with it in mind. When it comes to animals, that's mostly down to skins anyway. This is a really good point. I don't know when the last time I used the Springer was (outside of a challenge that required it), but this would give me a reason again.

In theory I'd love a Brawler class. It's a popular archetype that paradoxically seems to get skipped over in many games. Gear systems in games often don't help, because it would either have to be gearless or dilute the brawler concept with mandatory and potentially contrived weapon types. Ironically enough, despite Guild Wars 2 being a rare MMO that's not gear based, it's almost worse here because of how important weapon skills are to the very foundation of the combat system. I would still be open to it happening somehow though. I mean, the Revenants completely alter the Utility Skill system. Perhaps Brawlers could do the opposite.

One of the reasons I got into this game was because of the strength of the open world content and not having to have a full group for everything. ...but I still like dungeons. There's something they offer that even Fractals still don't. I think we have really been missing out by not getting dungeons in the Heart of Maguuma and Elona and Cantha. The old dungeons have so many neat elements to them that don't exist elsewhere... they're also seriously broken. If old code makes it hard to update them, I still think it would be worth remaking them from the ground up. Doing some dungeons for the first time in forever recently, I am surprised at how weird the dungeons can be. There are so many situations where projectiles can't be reflected or attacks inexplicably hit during dodge, debuffs that don't follow the rules of Conditions and Boons, etc. It's like dungeons tried to break every rule that made the game consistent and learnable, but they don't have to. At this point it might be best to tie them into the Fractal system somehow, but I think there's room for something a little more long form and with a little more narrative coherence (even if I don't think they have to have stories).

Elite Specializations aren't just about power though. A major gimmick of the Elite Specializations are offering new playstyles for the Profession. In general I've learned to be excited about the new Elite Specs for Professions I don't play rather than the ones I do, because I tend to already be happy with the ones I do and don't want a major shake up.

I've gotten back into the game recently and realized I had left a new character from the beginning of the year that I never settled on. With a fresh perspective, I realized they didn't engage me after all, so I deleted them and finally committed to my alternative idea instead. This also made me realize part of the reason why I hadn't much played half my other alts despite investing a lot of time into getting them "just right." I've realized there's a difference between something I think is neat or artistic, and something that actually engages me while playing. I don't know if anyone gets what I mean, but my exact reasons for feeling it aren't the important part. The important part is that I sat down to try to redesign my old alts into something I felt more like playing and... just ran into so many dead ends I had never considered before. 1) The first thing I realized is how few skins I have for any given slot. Despite playing the game on and off since launch, I really don't have that many options because of a particular fluke of the reward system in this game. I don't want to sound negative here because I overall love the horizontal progression and all that, but there's an issue where you honestly don't get a lot for just playing the game. Most rewards require you to specifically hunt just that thing, and they can get pretty in-depth. I've basically never been excited enough for any reward to bother going out of my way to put that effort it, but since that's the primary way to earn options, I have limited options even after a decade. 2) What I realized next is how little point 1 mattered. The armor skin galleries on the wiki made me realize that the Armor Types stick so strongly to a certain overall silhouette that there is barely any actual variety. I remember people complaining about the trenchcoat thing for medium armor years ago, but I hadn't realized how true it mostly still is. I found this made it largely pointless to even seek out the earnable skins I've missed, because they didn't really change the feel of my character anyway. I've criticized the Transmutation Charge system in the past and how it encourages the use of Outfits over skins, but now I realize there may have been another reason I've been prioritizing Outfits without even realizing it. There is an amazing amount of variety in the Outfits and there are a lot of them at this point, and all of that variety is equally available to every Profession. The fact that you can't mix and match pieces of Outfits and have no control outside of Hide Helm on them is strongly outweighed by the sheer variety they give you that you can't get anywhere else. 3) The final obstacle I encountered were with my weapons. I actually have a decent variety of skins for some weapon types. The problem is I effectively have no control over what weapons I use. Again, this is a case where I don't want to sound like I'm just being negative because I think the weapon skill system in this game is pretty cool and gives weapons a distinct character and realistic variety of combat roles that you don't see too often in games. The issue is that it comes at the cost of customization. It doesn't matter how cool that Hammer skin I just got is if Hammer on my Profession just isn't fun to me, or otherwise clashes with my build/playstyle (assuming it's even an option). Even with two weapon sets on each character, I don't actually have a reason to use at least half the weapon types in this game, and that's worse when you consider the times when it's the same weapons that just happen to be best for me on different Professions. I have some really cool weapon skins I really want to use, but every time I decide to finally stop worrying about Transmutation Charges or whatever and go to try it out, I realize it's the weapon skills themselves that mean I'm never going to see that skin on that character. In the end, I mostly ended up where I started and have decided to continue leaving those alts on the bench. A big reason I came to that conclusion had to do with gameplay itself and not cosmetics (I realized there's a way I'm most comfortable playing this game that not every Profession has a good option for), but the gameplay one was just a matter of playstyle, while I think the cosmetic question is something I think can be addressed. So for the sake of being thorough, I'll try to make a quick list of ways I think the obstacles I ran into above can be removed. 1) This one is complicated and can be solved in a variety of ways. The first step I'd like to see is just a design philosophy one: Just to acknowledge that the current design can easily lead to this collection dead end where you can actively play the game for years but not actually have anything to show for it. The other suggestion I'd give is to introduce a couple of extra armor sets every expansion or season that can be earned more casually without having to specifically seek them out. Perhaps a vendor that uses something like Pieces of Unidentified Gear as a currency. I know Dungeons have been dead since basically forever, but the relatively recent update to put have all dungeon skins use a single currency is the sort of thing I'd like to see more of. Everyone can work together on the same content and choose their rewards individually, instead of having to do specific collections for each thing. 2) Straight up remove armor type restrictions for Transmutation. Outfits made this mostly meaningless forever ago anyway, and many special armor sets given out recently are identical across armor type and just grant all three variants at the same time as well (I don't know how PvP handles this, but exceptions can easily be made where needed). Sure, this might encourage a little bit of laziness going forward where we are only given one armor set for everyone in places where we would have traditionally gotten three, but in most cases that single armor set will probably still give more variety to 2 out of the 3 armor sets than they would have gotten if all three got their own that conformed to the same limited silhouette (for instance, a single armor set without a trenchcoat will be more unique to medium armor users than medium armor getting their own set that's just another trenchcoat). 3) This one's the toughest. Because of how unique weapons are and how tied they are to their animations, there's not a lot that can be done here. It may also be super hard-coded. However, I would still be super curious if it could at least be experimented with that weapons be able to be transmuted into other weapon types, even if it's still restricted in some way (like bows and guns together, Mesmer Greatsword have special limitations, etc.). It's just super frustrating to realize that a good build or super fun abilities are tied to a weapon type that just doesn't match the gel with the rest of your customization. Is there anywhere else you have run into surprising obstacles when trying to customize your character. This game has some great customization, but I'd love if we could make it even better.

I came up with an analogy to explain why I think the "reliability" aspect is important. I started this game as a Mesmer. By the time I realized I might like other Professions more... I would say I had invested too much time into Mesmer, but it wasn't just that. I was way better at doing damage and cleaving enemies as basically any other profession, but if the enemies were even reasonably tough, the difficulty would shoot up a wall. It doesn't matter how much damage you're doing if the enemy is glued to you and hurts you faster than your healing skill recharges. As Mesmer, well, my Illusions take the hits. The only reason why I was even able to stick with the game long enough to understand things is because I could usually at least outlast most things when push came to shove just by keeping a constant stream of illusions to distract my foes. The problem was, it usually wasn't fun. It felt like my options were die a lot without succeeding, or succeed slowly without having fun*. Mechanist frees you up to actually have fun. That's not to say I don't think it should be adjusted. For instance, while I've found content that melts the golem (largely in Heart of Thorns), in most open world content it seems effectively invincible, which is just plain unnecessary. I just think the game could use to have more builds where you don't have to choose between fun and consistently effective. * I have a variant of this dilemma confined to Mesmer alone despite my build being just fine nowadays. If I want to have fun, I switch to Virtuoso. If I want to actually survive the encounter, I switch back to Chronomancer.

I like this idea. If Virtuosos are the no-illusion spec, then Gemini can be the super-illusion spec. It feels like a natural alternative to the other ways the profession plays with illusions.

Fishing always feels like a waste of time in any game I've played, and most attempts to make it more interesting only make that worse, because they don't make it feel less like a grind to me, they just make it feel more mandatory. I don't mind the fishing in this game. I don't mind the minigame. I kinda like it. I just don't really see a point in doing it, and the rewards I'm vaguely aware of demand way too much investment for me to care.

When I tried Mechanist in beta I thought "oh wow, this is far and above anything I've ever played, this is hilariously overpowered." I only recently finally made a Mechanist in live, but it's given me a new perspective on it. I think "reliability" is a good way to put it. One of the best things about this game, to this day, is the open co-op experience. How even if you play "solo", when you run into other players they will probably help you, and you can help them, without having to stop and coordinate groups and content. In that context, being self-sufficient is not as important as it is in most other games. On the other hand, after spending most of the last decade in this game trying really hard and still struggling, the Mechanist is a breath of fresh air. I was gathering up some Hero Points on a non-Mechanist alt, and barely managed to solo a nasty Heart of Thorns Champion. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but I took a deep breath, realized the enemy had a predictable pattern, and tried my best to keep up with it. I was proud of myself for pulling it off, but it didn't feel good. It was so much work for what's a fairly low tier enemy in the grand scheme of things. As Mechanist I still do my job. I still stay out of red circles and use CC at the right time, but I don't have to worry that even just sneezing during a fight is going to get me killed. I absolutely would prefer that other Professions get brought up to the level of "reliability" of the Mechanist, rather than Mechanist be nerfed. I like that this game has a lot of strategy even in non-boss encounters and don't want to see that just disappear forever, but Mechanist has seriously been what I needed right now in the game.

I was surprised at how much longer he takes to kill now. I think his health needs to be brought down by quite a bit, just not to the paper level it was before. The event could be spiced up in another way. It shouldn't be overly complicated for a starter zone boss, but maybe even just something as basic as: "at 75%, 50%, and 25% you have to attack the Ice Elemental instead" or something.

The Dragon's End meta is one of the reasons I decided to take a break from the game. After several months I just decided to try it again. I had a similar problem. No one was in the map and no one was using LFG. I popped in again today and there was actually a group going. Unfortunately, It turned out exactly the same way they always did for me when the expansion was new. We even had the full minute or two where the boss was doing nothing but switching sides with her tail so neither of them could be reliably hit. 😞

When the credits rolled, yeah, I felt like it was over. I got this hard-to-describe feeling that was part relief and part nostalgia, like I really had just finished a quest with my friends after a decade of hardship. Part of me almost hopes this is the end, because it's a good place to stop and I have a rare sense of closure about the whole thing. However, I was sick of the Elder Dragons only a couple of years in when it became apparent they would dominate the plot for longer than all of Guild Wars 1's campaigns combined. Now that the dragon plot is finally over, I also felt something else. I felt this rush of excitement that now anything is possible. We can go anywhere and do anything and it can be large or small. The future almost feels brighter than ever before to me, because a weight has finally been lifted.