voltaicbore.8012

I had no idea they were supposed to be there. But yes, that would be awesome. Get em back in there!

So you bought something without even knowing what it does, probably because it had "maguuma" and "portal" in the name? If this is the level of interaction you have with the game, I think I get why you're struggling to enjoy expansion content. The good news is, that device will at least help you get to different places in the jungle. The bad news is, its ability to portal you around is tied to various events going on, so it's not like you can just take a new character and use that device to zoom to places you choose. Can only port to the vicinity of whatever event is going on (or about to start).

I once saw two people with Down's Syndrome arguing VERY loudly in a parking lot. They were swearing at each other, screaming.... after listening for a minute it was apparent they weren't really even in the same conversation, but for some reason were just furious with each other. That's exactly the feeling I get when reading @Ragnar.4257 and @JusticeRetroHunter.7684's back-and-forth here. It's pretty clear to me that Justice is operating from a standpoint that assumes that no number tweak would ever be made without some accompanying counter-tweak lurking just over the horizon. Over time, it's reasonable for someone with Justice's position to believe that a series of tweaks and counter-tweaks almost invariably spirals the meta right back to the same mess it started in. Given that for lower tier gameplay it appears as though the bunker meta has come back, it's hard to say that this position has no merit, at least when it comes to GW2. From what I can see, Ragnar starts from a different position: devs can (and do!) tweak numbers to leave them unbalanced, in pursuit of certain changes. Therefore number tweaks are capable of lasting impact on gameplay. I personally believe this is the more reasonable position to take, as number tweaking is an active choice on the devs' part, not some natural counter-balancing process. If you want to make people harder to kill in pvp, you tweak the sustain numbers a bit higher than you counter-tweak the damage numbers, it's that simple. There is no guarantee whatsoever that it will always spiral back to exactly how things started out. Given that people can get exploded on point even at high gold and low plat matches, I think it's very incorrect to assume that the old bunker meta is back, which supports the idea that we haven't just circled back to the same old meta thanks to the endless tweaking process. Ultimately, I think it's impossible for people with these positions to have the same discussion about the impact of number tweaks. One position presumes a guaranteed set of counter-tweaks that inevitably lead back to the start, while the other presumes that devs will can keep the tweaks tilted in a certain direction. Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting both of you, and wanted an excuse to mention the one time in my life I witnessed something akin to the 'cripple fight' from South Park many years go.

I think that's one that inside a DRM instance, not reachable from the regular map.

This is a fundamental feature of GW2, and it's also why I forgive the game consistently for getting a lot of things wrong simply because there is still a lot of meaningful choice where other games have simply chosen to largely remove choice altogether. This is not to say that some contexts like spvp significantly narrow the viable range of choices available to certain classes, but as a whole, GW2 retains a pretty broad range of viable builds and playstyles. I am against anything that overtly dilutes the meaning of these choices, and I see the elite spec weapon sharing as one of these things. As for the hard-coded to class myth, I feel dumb for having forgotten about the new "equip but not use" aspect we got following weapon loadouts. It's obviously possible to have the game recognize a weapon as being equipped, but the associated abilities simply remain unusable. So I'll update my position: it's clearly feasible at least from a "can we have core characters equip elite spec weapons, at least in the UI" standpoint. I still think it's a dumb idea, but not for coding reasons.

I'm totally with you on this one. I have zero game dev knowledge, but I'm still mystified as to how something that already exists elsewhere in the game at higher functioning levels can be so difficult to adapt here. Unfortunately we've heard that UI functions - particularly those that have been with the game from an early stage - apparently are a huge hassle to fix, so that's all we have to go on. A large part of me does suspect, however, that it arguably comes down to a lack of will to do it rather than a true lack of ability to get it done within reasonable time/effort/budget.

I'm a big Mercer fan, and I think he did a good enough job trying to fit the original voice. I agree, however, that the Mercer version is still missing something of the pure richness of cynicism and wit of the DiMaggio version. It feels like a somewhat lower cholesterol version, if that makes sense lol. Overall though, Balance has finally convinced me that there at least was potential for DRMs and Champions as a whole to be much better than they've turned out so far. That is a huge achievement, given how I absolutely loathed Champions from the beginning. It also gives me hope that ANet can pleasantly surprise me with EoD as well.

Pretty much the most relevant comment possible on this issue. Also, I forget where, but I'm pretty sure an ANet dev noted that weapons are hard-coded to class, and elite specs operate like separate classes in this regard. So in other words, giving a druid's staff (weapon + the associated abilities) to a core ranger would be just as impossible as giving a warrior's greatsword (again, weapon + associated abilities) to revenant. On the note of druid staff, this opening up of weapon types would severely favor certain classes. I can't imagine anything more useless than a druid staff on any sort of damage dealing ranger, but other combos OP already mentioned sound like they could actually work.

While I understand that art can be subjective, how is the aforementioned dialogue written by a 13-year-old in your opinion and what elements in it make you cringe in particular? I've yet to encounter anything in these DRMs that would be the dialogue equivalent of Season 1's infamous (IMHO) "Later, tater!" or "Like a norn fart at a moot." Given the tight VA and line budget per episode, the dialogues in Champions may have been quite concise but they got the job done while staying true to the characters' established personalities and pushing the characters forward in their story arcs. I'm always interested in learning more about people's preferences and what they consider to be good or bad dialogue or storytelling as there tend to be as many opinions as there are players given everyone's respective tastes. :) I have serious issues with the DRM dialogue in the opening stages of the Ebonhawke mission. Initially my distaste for it was based on an audiovisual bug (some of the mitigating things Kasmeer was saying neither appeared in my chat log nor over game audio), but in the beginning it's absolutely idiotic. The Commander takes a ridiculous, hands-on-hips, exasperated-suburban-mom tone about how it's been ten whole years since the treaty was signed, what could possibly be making these stupid Ebonhawke people uncomfortable about accepting armed and organized charr into their city? Ten years is NOT a long time for a city to overcome an identity almost entirely defined by fighting for their lives as a lone outpost amid a hostile species. Even after the formal conclusion of open hostilities, Separatist violence seems like a daily occurrence. Even Crecia herself later acknowledges that the treaty is just a piece of paper and ultimately has no meaning without underlying trust. It just seems utterly stupid that anyone would expect this same meaningless piece of paper to change a collective attitude against a traditional adversary, when people in real life hold grudges for much longer over far lesser issues. To make matters worse, in my ears Kasmeer takes the tone of one apologizing to her friends on behalf of a sweet old racist grandmother. She does speak on behalf of the city, but somewhat apologetically and practically seems to be pleading for understanding from the Commander instead of saying "hey, don't be stupid, actually think about this for a sec." I admit that Kas is ill suited for that role though, and as you mentioned @Kossage.9072, the absence of Wade Samuelsson really stings here. It would have made much more narrative sense to have Wade be quite firm in his defense of the reservations that some residents have, while he himself accepts the treaty and the pragmatism behind it. Kas' softer tone of defense would then fit much better, as it would counterbalance Samuelsson's more (understandably) impassioned defense of his city but ask the Commander to be the bigger person and rise above all the back and forth. But all we get is the Commander talking in the most privileged, uber-Karen tone about how not getting over generations of trauma in a mere 10 years is madness, and Kas just says "of course you're right, but they just came up in a different time, you know?" This result could easily have been written by some 13 year old who buys into today's ultra-woke culture without even realizing how appropriation-ridden, frequently myopic, sometimes nuanced, and often abused said culture is.

Other games do it without content suffering, not sure why GW2 wouldn't be able to accomplish it when it sounds like it'd help resolve so many issues ¯_(ツ)_/¯ It seems to be a common theme on threads here - people making up reasons why things can't get better or making up excuses for as to why things have not already improved. No one is making up excuses. The devs have specifically stated this issue of code being a significant problem. And GW2 is not like "other games". Even the business model is different. Yes but at what point does it actually become making excuses though? And i'm not saying you're wrong, the devs did state that, but we have no way of knowing if it's actually that bad, or how long it would take to fix it.More so - i do believe the code is a mess, i mean, i play the game almost every day now and it definitely shows, but as the code is something that every other aspect is built upon, isn't it kind of "unwise" to be adding layers upon layers of additional code on top of the broken one, instead of taking a break and fixing what needs to be fixed? Cause eventually, it will all collapse if they don't fix the foundation. Now, would it really take 5 years to fix the code? Would it take so long to even write the code from scratch?I don't think so...I mean, it's not like they would be developing a game from scratch, the assets are there, the logic is there, the "everyting" is there so that's not something that needs changing. If they only worked on the engine and the foundation, i don't believe it would take that long. Plus, it's possible to add minor stuff in the game to keep it interesting, but i don't think even that would be required. You said, "no content" for X years. To me, and i think a lot of people that are concerned about the game's longetivity, a new engine itself would be content, even if nothing was changed gameplay wise. A new improved engine would draw in new players, bring back old ones, and future proof the game. To me that's content, and it's more substantial content thatn adding a new raid wing or a map or an event that people will get bored with in a week. Because people get bored with new content easily, there's people that finish a map within days, then complain almost immediately that they're bored and Anet isn't providing content... Those are only a vocal minority though. The game is huge when you look at it. The only players that are bored are the ones that have done everything and don't know what else to do. So content wise, there's enough to keep people entertained for a long time, especially after the Xpac (after which i think they should start working on the engine). There's also a case where, a lot of the times, people on the forums are making excuses for Anet, claiming X thing would be impossible, and that kinda encourages passivity.But the truth is that none of us know how bad it is, so understand, this is just my opinion of course. I just fear that, if the code is such a mess, that the game will soon die, and i've seen it happen to other MMOs and games. I don't want this to happen to GW2. I'd like to see them try and future proof the game. In fact, there are many games, and not only games, that are built exactly like this. Because the thing about coding is that you will never achieve perfection. Something always breaks and fixing something broken can often lead to more destruction.And rewriting something does take a long time, whether there is a construct or not. Especially when it comes to the construct being exactly the flaw in everything. Nevertheless, this should not be rested on, of course. You can't sell things with obvious flaws (well, they can, otherwise they would have done something long ago).All this is not easy. But in the first place this does not interest us the customer. No Customer asks me on work either if it is too hard for me. If something goes wrong and the customer has problems, I have to resolve it, easy.However, as I said, as long as people buy and use the store, nothing will change anyway. The store is obviously usable, so why make the effort. That would be the same for me at work. Well it's ultimately up to Anet to decide if they want to keep the game in this state or try to improve it. And i'm not just talking about the gem store.It definitely wouldn't be easy, that's for sure, but the result might be very well worth the effort. The thing is, they probably don't think the result would be worthwile otherwise they would have done it long ago. Or maybe something else is stopping them. Maybe the code is so far gone that even a rewrite wouldn't help. If that's so, the game is already dead, it's just a matter of time before it breaks irreversably.I think the 'worthwhile' bit is where the discussion can end, really. Clearly ANet thus far hasn't considered the TP preview window fix-worthy. As for the whether or not such a fix would be worthwhile considering the future of the game, my money is on a solid nope. I don't think the flaws (as awful and ridiculous as they are) on previews ever really stopped anyone who really did want to purchase something (people have already talked about wiki codes, previews on asura, etc). I think the same can be said of impulse purchases as well - I'm not sure having the top of a staff head cut off was ever a deciding factor when someone just wanted to splurge a bit. I also happen to think GW2 is nearing the end of active development. I don't foresee us getting another full xpac after EoD, unless EoD is utterly amazing and revitalizes the game in ways most of us didn't expect. I'm certain we'll continue to see 'balance' patches and living world for years to come, but ultimately the game has soldiered on for a very long time under burdens that could have easily undone far lesser products. None of this is to say that (1) it's not a good idea to fix something as simple and essential as the TP preview function, or (2) that in general fixing fundamental coding problems isn't smart for the longevity of a game. All I'm saying is that NCSoft can probably get what it wants out of GW2 (in the time GW2 has remaining) without making those fixes, so ANet won't get the resources it needs to properly pursue those fixes.

This is one of the only things you've claimed in this thread that I actually agree with. I think the greatest visible offender is the hydra, which is a huge creature just lumbering around for absolutely no reason. At least the sand lion packs (prides?) are usually around rocks or trees, so there's some sense of "okay, that's kind of their shelter amid the sand, they're getting territorial." Sand sharks are a bit worse than the lions in terms of randomness, but given that the sand is their habitat I guess that can't be helped. I think it feels better and looks "more alive" if the creature is actually roaming around instead of just camping its spawn point waiting for who-knows-what tbh. 100% agree. This was something they highlighted back at game launch and has been mixed in delivery. I like seeing mobs wandering wide and sometimes even suddenly engaging with other mobs Hydra is a perfect example of getting it rightI'd agree that the results are mixed, and that in general moving and "alive" mobs are much better than static ones that are just waiting in stationary spots. It's why I appreciate that the forged have patrols outside of of their bases in the desert, and whenever you do find them just kind of standing around in the open, they're actually trying to hold a strategic point in force. The hydra... is just kind of there. Sure, it moves, and I agree it's better than having it stand still. However, they just seem placed for pure inconvenience, rather than any respect for building an environment. Doesn't matter if it's in the branded zone of the riverlands, or 3 randomly walking around a sandy dune outside Amnoon. As I said, sand sharks cover a wide space but 'swim' in sand, and such occupy sandy areas. Sand lions almost always mill about at least some rocks and foliage. Scarabs also have a thing for vegetation, harpies stick to elevated areas, jacaranda are either burrowed or blend in with foliage. Non-branded hydras are just plopped anywhere it seems, and we never see them hunting wildlife or doing anything other than waiting to hop in on the nearest HP fight. I'm not saying that they're hard to kill, but they feel bolted-on relative to everything else. "Getting it right" is the last thing I'd say about them.

This is one of the only things you've claimed in this thread that I actually agree with. I think the greatest visible offender is the hydra, which is a huge creature just lumbering around for absolutely no reason. At least the sand lion packs (prides?) are usually around rocks or trees, so there's some sense of "okay, that's kind of their shelter amid the sand, they're getting territorial." Sand sharks are a bit worse than the lions in terms of randomness, but given that the sand is their habitat I guess that can't be helped.

I don't even WvW, and I still have around 400 (if not more) spare HPs on my world-completed characters that each have both elite specs unlocked. Not sure what this 'savings' bit is all about.

Korean mmos invest a lot in their graphics, they are built to attract audiences that are after highly detailed characters and environments. So for them it makes sense to upgrade their engines, plus they go from one version of unreal engine to another, there is a "porting" process available. Although I wouldn't call Guild Wars 2 graphics bad, graphics is not any kind of reason high on the priority list to start playing it. I think this is an important point that isn't mentioned enough. Many other games (in particular the Korean ones) that successfully undergo remastering have an audience that generally places much higher importance on appearances, and do not often combine massive zergs with a huge diversity of eye-stabbing effects. And guess what? Even in titles that are hugely defined just by how nice they look, the devs often don't even try to address performance issues with zergs. Case in point: BDO is sometimes held up as an example of a game that benefited hugely from a remastering. It certainly does look very nice, and arguably that nice look makes up a huge portion of what defines the game itself. However, even in a game so strongly defined by its sexy appearance and smooth performance, there is absolutely no effort to optimize zerg performance. The accepted answer is: "want to play large scale? accept potato." BDO literally has a potato setting for large scale pvp. In fact, it has at 3 separate developer-coded potato presets for that express purpose. GW2 not only has zergs in WvW, but also all over PvE as well. Frankly the fact that some of us (myself included) can keep massive events at ~25 FPS with max graphics and relatively minimal stuttering is something of a miracle in my eyes. I don't play a huge variety of games right now, so I'm not sure if I'm missing any examples of a game that looks at least as good as GW2 and performs consistently and markedly better than GW2 does in the FPS-killing events. I'd be happy to hear about some, but I suspect that those titles would still have significant differences from GW2 in terms of baseline graphical quality and the centrality of zerg events.

Not all would agree, but I also think this poll actually offers enough options to cast a meaningful vote. That said, I don't believe it will yield anything of value for the devs. I don't think players' general satisfaction about seeing other players in open world should impact any design decisions, as player behavior is probably much more impacted by combat design, environmental design, and rewards. I'd further argue that how we feel about meeting other players in the open world is a result of these other factors, and shouldn't drive how ANet approaches these other factors in open world design. For me personally, I do just about everything I can in the open world alone. Aside from when new players show up and start pestering me with questions that show they clearly don't even read tooltips or have a rush-rush-rush mindset towards the game, I like seeing players in the open world because it gives me the sense of the game being populated and healthy. I still picked the "sometimes in group, sometimes alone" choice because I do run a lot of instanced group content, even if I do open world stuff without a party 99.9% of the time.

I'd prioritize re-learning the game, and learning ranger from the ground up. This is another one of those "if you have to ask, it's probably not a good idea" sort of things. I've never once seen a new or returning player use an 80 boost and have it work out well.

In the case of Charr at least, it would give them an actual house. I think the closest the Hero’s Canton has to a house is a tent like barrack And you don't really know which one is 'yours'. Which is kind of the point in a military encampment anyways, you might have a certain spot for a while but it belongs to the Legion and you can be easily replaced. I'm generally indifferent to most RP considerations in games, but I always found it surprising how disconnected our player characters are from Tyroa. We really are murder hobos, floating about around the world without really being able to choose a specific place to be rooted in as a home. Sure, we pick our race (and with it, our home city) and some markers of identity, but that gets washed out very quickly as the story gets homogenized for everyone. Like most other games, the story has our character trudging from one place to the next, bouncing from crisis to crisis. Mechanically, I think the hub cities, premium areas (e.g. Mistlock Sanctuary, Armistice Bastion, etc). and guild halls do cover just about all the itches that player housing could scratch. Moreover, things like no gear treadmill, poor pvp balance, and many areas of stagnation are what fundamentally ease the decision to stop playing GW2, and housing won't fix those underlying issues. That said, I think a well done housing system could help reduce the sting of each of those other more fundamental issues. I've lost hope for a lot of things in this game, but through mounts ANet proved to me that they can take a normally unexciting system common to the genre and make a really awesome version of it for Tyria. I would hope that something analogous could be done for housing, and also hope that the effort-payoff balance would make it worth it.

Indeed. For all the complaints we might have about how things are going at the moment, I think it's fair to say that GW2's mount system is the absolute best in MMO gaming thus far. I was actually really skeptical about how mounts would work (they're really one dimensional in every other game I've played), but ANet really knocked it out of the park. I guess this depends on what you'd consider QoL. In general, I think GW2 is quite generous with most mundane aspects of QoL like inventory space (reasonably easy to get 100+ inventory slots, gear loadouts reduce the strain on inventory even further, and affordable infinite salvage kits and one-click mat banking/selling directly from inventory to market make bag management pretty smooth). Permanent dye unlocks, easily accessible transmutation charges, and account wide wallet and masteries are all things that other games either don't have at all, have in a limited form, or force you to re-grind on each character. Also having the option of fast travel is great for when you're doing group stuff and don't want to hold people back, but at the same time the world is nice enough that normal travel is still fun enough to be worth doing. IMO GW2 is dropping the ball on issues that I'd call far larger than just QoL. Granted, leaning into grindy and unrewarding achievements does reduce my quality of life, but I'd consider that more like "fundamental gameplay" more than "quality of life."

So? You can already hit those invisible walls without mounts. Just let the people fly up as high as they want and explore. I agree with pretty much everything else you said, and I even agree with this last bit too. However, I think you being correct about this also indicates why a true-flight mount would be a waste - they wouldn't really add anything. People can already hit the map walls, and even scale most of them with a springer. As you said, other mounts are already invalidated, and they could easily design a flying mount that can still be outperformed by griffon laterally and perhaps the skyscale vertically (if the grip-recharge mastery still allows skyscale to get greater total height). So if it neither adds or removes anything really of note, why bother at all? As others have already said, skyscale already has ways to refill flight, and some of us learned how to really fly with the griffon on maps that allow for it. just seems like another wasted effort.

An airship (guild airship, anyone?) would be lovely. I'm not thinking of speed or skipping content so much as just cruising above the gameworld and admiring its beauty. The opening HoT cutscene where you ride Captain Kiel's airship to Elona is one of my favorites. The guild airship would indeed be nice, but for mount purposes I always thought it should be more personal to your character. For that, I think a snazzier Charr copter of some kind would be smarter. As for limitations, I think it should require a fuel item of some kind. You should be able to craft it (maybe from artificing, as that skill at least has you making fluids? 10 Extended Potions of Diesel!) at a reasonable but noticeable cost yourself, or buy it at a much higher price from large enough towns or fleet personnel stationed at some war zone bases. They could of course sell different Legion skins, or a more Asura-themed exo-suit kind of skin, etc. As for the exploratory value of true flight mounts... OP have you been high up on the edge of any maps? Frankly one of the most disappointing things you can do in this game is to find a perch high up on the edge of a map and look over to the other side and see nothingness. I think the limitation on map size and the inability to at least simluate being able to view adjacent maps from the edge is the biggest visual limitation of this game.

I've noticed this too, and since I run this dungeon daily, or even several times daily. I remember it happened immediately after a recent patch... I just can't remember which one specifically. It's very likely not on the client end of things. If it ever gets fixed, it will be if ANet fixes the underlying issue elsewhere in the game and it happens to extend back into the dungeon. Don't get your hopes up about ANet fixing content they've officially abandoned.

Uh, just click the unranked button (the one on the left) when you queue up. As always, that's the 5v5 mode you're looking for. The team deathmatch is something they rotate in between ranked seasons.

Necro minions which are utility are far better than non-meta pets..it's that bad, most of them have absurd cast time for abysmal levels of dmg...it's like beta weekend pre-release status levels of dmg and cast time, it would require a truck load of buffs to convince rangers in dropping meta pets (smokescale-gazelle-bristleback-birds-tiger-jacaranda) for the rest and with Anet track record I wouldn't bet on that...it's why people wishing for a pet specialization would end up seeing a garbage tier elite...because the pet mechanic is garbage and only 6-7 pets out of 50 are worth using in any competitive setting This is really the fundamental problem with asking for pet-centered specs, you nailed it perfectly. The underlying pet mechanic is so shoddy and the vast majority of pets are so worthless, a pet-focused elite is almost guaranteed to fail. The only way to not fail is if ANet magically works up the willpower to revamp the entire pet system, something they've refused to do for 8 years. And honestly, I don't blame them. It's probably a mess, and they'd likely have to homogenize all the pets to some degree to make them competitive with each other. Also, even when you can avoid 100% of many pets attacks just by walking in a circle, players STILL complain about getting murdered by pets in spvp. Anything that makes pets more useful will be met with loud cries and swift nerfs. I have zero optimism for a pet-focused elite. Just give all the GW1 weirdos the "bunny thumper" spec so I can stop hearing about it.

I'll be facing this for the first time as well. I do have the 8 raid masteries, and it's not like I'm utterly incapable of grinding out a few more Saga mastery points, but... I don't want to do Cold War 20 times, nor do I want to spend all day loitering in Grothmar for 5 RNG boss spawns. I've actually decided to stop thinking hard or trying to reflect deeply on the game, as doing so tends to rapidly deflate my excitement for EoD. Since I've decided to buy EoD anyways (thanks to the sunk cost fallacy), I want to at least feel better about it in the run-up to release.

I've been on both ends of this phenomenon, and I wish I could more definitively theorize why this happens. The best I can come up with is - even when I fully understand the pointer being given to me and it's presented civilly and I receive it civilly - there must be some form of self-consciousness that inserts itself into my gameplay. Whatever was pointed out is probably one of those things that I don't normally do (or feel confident doing), but now I might be stretching myself a bit too often to attempt it. The reverse could also be true, I could be attempting not to do something that I habitually do, and it just breaks up my natural gameplay. While that 'natural gameplay' might not be optimal overall, it's likely the best I'm capable of in the short term, and attempts to change it mid-match probably end up with terrible results.