voltaicbore.8012

I guess they should be reporting you for match manipulation instead. I never mind if everyone is at least trying but my team just gets outplayed. But specifically choosing to interact with the match as little as possible so as to lose faster crosses the line for me. I guess I'd make an exception for someone staying in spawn because the team is getting camped, but it sounds to me like you're just staying at home node from the very beginning for this exact purpose.

Dunno man. When I see you say stuff like this it seems pretty clear that (1) you don't think "solo story bosses" work, and (2) you want something that is NOT "solo story bosses", which presumably is "strike mission style" fights done in a group. But I guess now you're saying you never really wanted the group aspect of (2), and what you really want is just more of the strike mission mechanics ? That would be nice, but I'm not sure ANet has ever shown us that they know how to do an interesting solo fight. It's not that I disagree with your desire - I, too, would like to see more interesting boss fights. But I just don't think ANet can pull it off. One of the few times they did with the pre-nerf Caudecus fight, apparently enough people cried that they pulled back. So to answer your question more clearly: yes I would like to see more interesting things in boss fights, but no I do not want ANet to even try to do it. I have no faith that I will like the outcome.

I agree with that. The solo story bosses is a format that doesn't work imo, makes it feel like the BIG END BOSS of the expansion is just a stupid dummy that you can face alone and easy win with little to no effort during the fight. A "strike mission style" last chapter would be great. Imagine creating strike mission for big bosses like mordremoth and balthazar. Not only the end of the story would feel much more epic and significant, we also would have more end game contant that remains and is replayable. Great idea my friend. The end for core story was story mode of the dungeon Arah, players dident like that they all of a sudden had to group to finish story so I doubt Anet will make that mistake again. I remember the last core story boss fight is a single player content, and i can remember the horrible fight with zaithan where u just press one key on the cannon to damage and kill him, and who in the world would prefer this horrible content to a strike mission where u have a real epic fight against zaithan? People didn't like to play arah story mode as "final chapter"(i can't remember that but it was in 2013, so might be my memory -404 memory not found).People don't like a lot of contents in gw2 but yet we have it. Players will never have all the same tastes, but they can focus on what players that play the game a lot of time want (players where they get most of the money from) . And i suppose you are saying that anet wont do this while you would like it, am I right? They changed it at release it was a 5 man dungeon instance.Yes there was alot of complaints that their story ended with a party instance.Mostly because it was a kitten ending. Having multiple "commanders" didnt even make sense in your own story finale. Strike missions for last boss fight in story chapters really hype me a lot, but i guess the problem is real. But i think they could solve the problem if they want! The question is "will they consider a strike mission for the final boss fight in the story"? I hope so :D Hope not!!!!!!!!! So you prefer to spam 1 :confused: LMAO! You really have no idea at all how I play. I do know that forced strike missions are something I don't want. +1 from me - I don't spam 1, but I also do not feel like having forced strikes for story completion. I'm not looking for great gameplay when it comes to story instances, I'd prefer something more engaging than Zhaitan but nothing close to the time-padded nature of DRMs. I actually really liked the pre-nerf Caudecus fight from LWS3, and would welcome more story bosses like that. I kinda agree with cadecous fight. I don't understand one thing tho: do you dislike strikes? I mean you would not like a "strike mission" boss fight even if you could play it solo? Strikes are fine, and DRMs are fine - I just don't want them in story, period. Soloing things is not a problem. I solo all the DRMs, and I solo both dungeons and fractals (the ones that are mechanically soloable, anyways. Still haven't found workarounds for Deepstone). ANet has proven that it doesn't really know how to scale things between solo and 5-man content very well (if at all) - even if a soloable strike mission was added as a story boss, it would be a pointless gigantic HP sponge. It wouldn't be interesting gameplay, and it certainly wouldn't add story value. It would, in fact, be a waste of time for all involved.

I agree with that. The solo story bosses is a format that doesn't work imo, makes it feel like the BIG END BOSS of the expansion is just a stupid dummy that you can face alone and easy win with little to no effort during the fight. A "strike mission style" last chapter would be great. Imagine creating strike mission for big bosses like mordremoth and balthazar. Not only the end of the story would feel much more epic and significant, we also would have more end game contant that remains and is replayable. Great idea my friend. The end for core story was story mode of the dungeon Arah, players dident like that they all of a sudden had to group to finish story so I doubt Anet will make that mistake again. I remember the last core story boss fight is a single player content, and i can remember the horrible fight with zaithan where u just press one key on the cannon to damage and kill him, and who in the world would prefer this horrible content to a strike mission where u have a real epic fight against zaithan? People didn't like to play arah story mode as "final chapter"(i can't remember that but it was in 2013, so might be my memory -404 memory not found).People don't like a lot of contents in gw2 but yet we have it. Players will never have all the same tastes, but they can focus on what players that play the game a lot of time want (players where they get most of the money from) . And i suppose you are saying that anet wont do this while you would like it, am I right? They changed it at release it was a 5 man dungeon instance.Yes there was alot of complaints that their story ended with a party instance.Mostly because it was a kitten ending. Having multiple "commanders" didnt even make sense in your own story finale. Strike missions for last boss fight in story chapters really hype me a lot, but i guess the problem is real. But i think they could solve the problem if they want! The question is "will they consider a strike mission for the final boss fight in the story"? I hope so :D Hope not!!!!!!!!! So you prefer to spam 1 :confused: LMAO! You really have no idea at all how I play. I do know that forced strike missions are something I don't want. +1 from me - I don't spam 1, but I also do not feel like having forced strikes for story completion. I'm not looking for great gameplay when it comes to story instances, I'd prefer something more engaging than Zhaitan but nothing close to the time-padded nature of DRMs. I actually really liked the pre-nerf Caudecus fight from LWS3, and would welcome more story bosses like that.

I'd definitely take housing as the new signature feature introduced in EoD. I'm happy with the mount system as it is, and I'm not sure what new mobility niche could be filled with a totally separate system (the way that mounts were essentially separate from gliding until the midair dismount became a thing). Player housing was one of those things I never understood the appeal of until I tried it in another game. It adds a shockingly high amount of immersiveness, and as others have said, it becomes easier for the devs to add in new rewards to old content without having it touch powercreep in any way whatsoever. I think if ANet should ever implement player housing, they should be very careful to make sure that we are able to choose from among a variety of different locations, and that our choice makes us invest into that region of the world somehow. The simplest thing I can think of is that having an residence unlocks 3 extra dailies every day, and those would be the gathering/vista/events dailies for whatever region your home is located in.

The game folder is almost 50GB. I don't know what your bandwidth limits are, but frankly the decision should be almost entirely down to how well that fits (or doesn't) within your budget. If you can afford to let 50GB get eaten by the gw2 download one month, almost no harm in letting that happen (as others have said, there's really no way to truly know until you get back in-game yourself). If 50GB is beyond what you can allow for this sort of thing, then regardless of how bright the game's future looks, you probably shouldn't do it.

What makes garbage stinky and universally despised? If you've ever taken a look at what goes into your own/your community's garbage, you'll notice that everything in there was either useful and desirable to us, or at least part of something else that was useful and desirable. It becomes garbage when we throw it in a heap with a bunch of other pieces of formerly useful stuff, and we leave it to rot. This is more or less how I feel about how the Saga turned out. I like almost every individual piece of it, and feel that the vast majority of what they introduced has a ton of potential. Charr civil war? Great potential for exploring how a society utterly defined by warfare and military organization handles the evolution of conflict and threat. The Norn (especially Jhavi, descended of both Jora and Svanir) having another crack at Jormag? Also awesome, especially given that ANet was willing to let characters speak directly with the Spirits for the first time we've seen in-game. Ryland? Sure, he's just kind of dumped on us as Bangar's very own Mary Sue, but he allows us to explore the relationship between Charr parents through the lens of our buddy Rytlock and the very interesting new arrival Crecia. All of these, if given the right amount of space to breathe and get properly developed, could come together to make a compelling narrative whole. And that is precisely what did NOT happen. Instead of doing each of the narrative justice, ANet has just breathlessly piled then on, one after another, without really tapping into their potential. The result? Garbage. Things that could have worked well together are instead just smushed into a container way too small for them to fit, and they all just fester and rot in there together. Champions is like the lid of the garbage can- it feels so rushed, as if they are stumbling toward concluding the story just so we can put a lid on it and walk away from it all by the time EoD comes out. I am so very disappointed, but still hopeful that EoD will be nothing like the Saga in terms of the problems I described above.

I second (third?) the suggestion of trying Hizen's build if you're trying to solo stuff. Basically any build that uses a few Command skills + the Beastmastery trait Resounding Timbre gives you infinite regen and swiftness uptime, which might better approximate what you were doing on guardian. The Hizen build linked above of course includes this. Hizen in general has a thing for traits that convert Toughness into more damage, which results in his builds being great on both the survival and damage aspects if played right. Also, since that Toughness-into-damage is always a passive trait, that makes his builds that much easier to manage. I personally run a more defensively oriented Trailblazer build that I first made for WvW roaming. Shortbow offers a lot of disruption/CC utility, and I don't really enjoy not running shortbow on condi ranger. I didn't fill in infusion slots and such, but you get the idea. Between the all-Trailblazer stats and merging with the spider pet (which gives you extra HP), you're going to survive the vast majority of what comes your way in terms of incoming power and condition damage. This allows for the selection of slightly more offensively oriented traits and utilities. Like the Hizen build, this leans very heavily into high and constant application of poison damage to trigger the life-siphon-on-poison trait in the soulbeast line. Unlike the Hizen build, this doesn't have Commands + Resounding Timbre, so you lose the perma regen. However, it retains the Rugged Growth passive regen from the Wilderness Survival line, and the Bear Stance heal (when traited) is a very handy condition cleanse. I'm constantly making small changes depending on what I run into. For most PvE solo purposes, I actually drop Leader of the Pack in favor of Oppressive Superiority, and sometimes I even drop Live Fast (and thereby losing a nice source of quickness + fury) in favor of Unstoppable Union if I feel the need to get more protection and mobility-preservation. You can also switch the Trapper Runes for Scavenger Runes. While the stealth from Trapper detargets you and the superspeed allows for great repositioning, Scavenger synergizes well with the extra HP you'll be running and boosts your poison damage - always a welcome element of this build. I prefer Trapper because I used to almost exclusively play tanks in trinity MMOs, and am obsessed with the ability to reposition effectively, and also because I run 2 traps along with the trap trait in this build. Defensively speaking though, the primary way I get sustain out of this build is actually with chaining dodges on the sword/dagger set. It sucks that the old sword 3 dodge-on-demand is now hidden behind the first stage of sword 2, but it's easy enough to learn how to pre-emptively use sword 2's first ability to queue up the dodge hidden behind it. Also, if you mess that up and your dodge goes on cd before you can use it, you can use sword 3 when enemies are in melee to disengage backwards and refresh sword 2 for another try. Dagger 4 has always been a nice, relatively short cd dodge-on-demand, so I reserve that for when sword 2 and 3 fall through and I just want to avoid a big hit. All of this can be done without burning a single normal dodge, and Wilderness Survival gives you +25% perma endurance regen anyways. Also note that the sword 2 dodge and dagger 4 dodge both apply poison on strike, which of course procs the life siphon from Predator's Cunning. The Flame Trap slot is flexible for me. I tend to run Flame Trap simply because it's hard to outperform the burning condition, but it only really works if you're confident you can root your target into eating all or most of the trap's pulses. That's where the spider's merged F3 pull ability shines, as I can yank most escape attempts right back into the center of the trap, while also giving myself quickness and fury. I run the Spike Trap or Frost Trap in WvW if I run into an enemy roamer more often who I really need to lock down in order to kill, and in PvE if I need yet another margin of safety I run the Protect Me command for an extra stunbreak, protection, and barrier. It's defensive overkill, really. As for the elite, I run Entangle in WvW or xPvP situations, again because of the importance of rooting targets into my traps and spider-merge-F2 poison field. In PvE I'm often going with Strength of the Pack for more stability and might, or with One Wolf Pack if I'm confident I can keep enough quickness uptime and multi-hits to make it worth it. Entangle also works in PvE as well, if you want to root a number of targets to either keep them off you for a bit, or if you want to make sure they stay in your traps and die. In PvE though I would recommend using spider merge F3 (Prelude Lash) to gather up mobs into a trap. Finally, I generally don't run this build in group content. When i do, it's only for when I am carrying someone and we're duo-ing what should be done normally by a group of 4 or 5. It has enough area damage to steadily wear down packs of mobs, and of course is loaded with enough defense to make almost any PvE activity extremely safe. Sorry for the rambling wall of text - it's late, and I kinda lost track of what I was saying lol. Hope this gives you some ideas to solve your survivability problem. Consider it a starting point to draw some survival ideas from; as-is, this build probably doesn't do nearly as much damage as you'd like. To get anywhere near the right arcdps numbers for damage output, you'll likely have to run torch and the Quick Draw trait to get more access to burning.

Exactly. I never said she was wrong about the need to move on, and as many have stated, it's not at all unusual or unexpected for a Charr to give the utmost priority to strategic needs. After all, the fahrar system places military indoctrination into the Legions over basic family ties, so I get that Crecia would see things the way she does. This was a piece of dialogue I was missing from both the chat box and audio on my first playthrough. I finally got to hear it on my third run through on a different character, and I agree it very much softened the divide. I had to repair my client afterwards, and it appeared in all subsequent run-throughs without issue. I just think it was a poor choice to have the Commander unquestioningly wag a finger at Ebonhawke in that tone of shallow exasperation, as if there was absolutely no reasonable justification for people to feel that way. The Commander doesn't have to be a master diplomat and orator, but they also don't have to be crassly naive either - I think that line was exactly the latter. As this thread shows though, it seems so far most of you guys didn't really have a reaction to that line from the Commander, so I'll consider myself the outlier here. Thanks for the responses!

You completely missed the point. I wasn't taking issue with the fact that there are differences. I had a problem with what I thought was the writing very clearly judging (quite negatively, I might add) the Ebonhawke skeptics for being different from Crecia. Several subsequent playthroughs showed I was missing a lot of dialogue on my first playthrough, and it turns out ANet wasn't being quite as judgmental as I thought. That being said, there's still a remarkable lack of sympathy for a people who live as a minority far from their home civilization, as refugees suffering generations of physical attack from people who don't want them there. I find that to be a poor narrative choice.

We are not talking about the humans' reactions though, we're talking about Ebonhawke. Ebonhawke is comparatively tiny and stands alone in charr territory. It still had renegade charr attacking at the games for the last 10 years. Crecia belonged to the imperator who actually backed the renegades. Of course Ebonhawke is careful and stubborn.If Crecia were sitting in some hicktown between human and centaur territory, with human separatists attacking regularly because it's an easy target, she probably wouldn't welcome a human delegation with open arms, either. That's something I forgot to consider as well - Ebonhawke is an outlier, and has weathered renegade assaults before, during, and after the treaty process. That being said, on my third playthrough, I finally got significantly more text/audio that showed me I wasn't getting the whole picture. Specifically, Kas asks for understanding of the Charr-uncomfortable folks, and there's a significant amount from Cre at the end noting that the treaty is, in fact, just a piece of paper, and that trust is what matters. None of that played in audio or the chat box on my first playthrough, and I stayed in the instance to make sure I didn't miss it/get the MP. I still find it annoying that every single person you rally to fight is a Separatist, thereby indicating that only an extremist/sympathizer would not be totally fine with Charr military presence, and frankly I still cannot stomach the Commander's "ugh guys you're so gross, it's been TEN whole years since we signed a piece of paper so forget your history and ongoing struggles" tone. I'd sooner see my city burn than grovel for help from such people. But credit where credit is due: the missing dialogue that I finally heard convinced me that ANet was attempting a less judgmental position than I initially thought. Now I have to go repair my client. NPCs are cutting their own story dialogue off with chatter, and I'm getting a weird mix of audio dialogue with nothing in the chat box, and chat box without audio (although the latter happens all the time in other places as well). Pretty clear something might be up with my client.

EDIT: subsequent playthroughs changed my mind from when I posted this. Hard disagree with you there. I actually missed that comment from Crecia, which I admit does increase the narrative value of her judgmental comments. However, if it really was merely a "highlighting" of cultural differences, I think I should have noticed a more "try to understand" set of responses. Instead, we get a lot of snide dismissal (Crecia sarcastically says something to the effect of "just look at how far we've come",) or apologetic sweeping aside (instead of telling Cre to actually, you know, think about how others feel, Kas/Commander just promise to try to get those silly backward Ebonhawke folks ready for her arrival). To me, the balance is clearly, clearly tilted towards labeling any human discomfort in Ebonhawke regarding Charr as backwards and straight-up wrong. I'll give it another playthrough on several other characters, but as of yet I'm completely unconvinced by "oh it's just highlighting different cultures."

Not being well-versed in game development, I personally would not be so quick to judge. I don't know how long you've been playing SWTOR, but the way that game and GW2 handle accounts has been radically different over the years. An enormous proportion of upgrades/features/conveniences are account-wide in GW2 by default, whereas it took a decade for SWTOR to start letting some simple things get shared on a legacy-wide basis. Yes, certain buffs were already legacy-wide, but they were far more limited in scope than what we've long enjoyed in GW2.

In the Ebonhawk DRM, both the female human player character and Crecia speak as if a mere ten years since the signing of the treaty is enough time to expect Ebonhawke human residents to be okay with seeing armed Charr walking about the city in force. Sure, they were there to help, but the characters act like it's totally backward and utterly unbelievable that folks in the city might feel a sense of alarm and distrust. I feel it would be similarly wrong to expect a survivor of gun violence not to feel somewhat startled and uncomfortable seeing a firearm strapped very openly on an (American) police officer's belt. Sure, the officer might be there to help and has nothing to do with that person's trauma, but the effect is there all the same and I think it would be dumb to say "it's been 10 years since you got shot, get over it." In my opinion, this was a terribly disappointing and narratively inferior dialogue choice. I think it would have been much better to have the characters express an understanding disappointment regarding the situation, without the judgment. Anyone else feel the same? Different?

This isn't BDO - grinding mobs really isn't the way to make cash or get drops. Most of the worthwhile items are crafted or collected through the achievement system. I would personally recommend getting into fractals, as that is a great source of ascended gear and gold, and will also be a good primer on what high level group combat in this game looks like (at least when you reach t4 fractals). The gold should help you get what you want out of the trading post for the most part.

As much as I hate the Saga, I agree with you here. In general, I appreciate GW2's willingness to strive for something other than generic fantasy formulae. However, the problems I have with GW2's writing at times is when it begins to mirror ANet's bad habit of chasing new things without sufficiently developing what they've already put on the board. The story as of late reflexively defaults to "omg we can only win with the power of Togetherness and Friendship and Diversity yay" and seems utterly allergic to exploring how deeply tied particular threats are to particular races. They started an incredibly interesting dark horror mystery motif in Bjora that went absolutely nowhere, and turned the Spirits of the Wild into sideshows. There was yet again another botched chance to have a compelling "rally the Norn" moment that could have seen Braham more directly confronted by (and seek redemption from) his people, rather than have two random Svanir and Jhavi mention (but fail to discuss at any depth) the perception that Braham abandoned his people. The story is immediately swamped by the Charr Civil War and its miniature twin, the Cre/Ryt/Ryland story... which in turn is giving way to Primordus, Primordus (potential) new champion Braham, and the mess that is Dragon Response Missions. I get that chaos can be effective storytelling at times, especially with a manipulative power like Jormag at play. Having us yo-yo from one thing to another might be what Jormag wanted all along, to direct (or misdirect) us. I just don't credit ANet for doing this on a narrative chaos basis. Instead, I can't help but see this as a narrative version of their gameplay ADHD. So many promising systems are introduced, then abandoned, never to be touched or iterated ever again. I see the current story, lurching from one thing to the next without really addressing the stuff it puts out, as much the same thing.

Eh. I was speaking about probability. It is far more likely that someone at cap knows certain basic elements of group play and fundamental combat. Yes, you can get carried through a number of achievements. That being said, I doubt that anyone cared enough to ping every single mastery without learning basic things about how fighting and this entire game generally works. So yeah, a hard disagree with you on this one. It is a marker. It's just not a maximally precise or guaranteed one, and I never pretended it was. You can't talk to probability, you have no evidence either way. I do, though I haven't documented it. Read the rest of the post.

Eh. I was speaking about probability. It is far more likely that someone at cap knows certain basic elements of group play and fundamental combat. Yes, you can get carried through a number of achievements. That being said, I doubt that anyone cared enough to ping every single mastery without learning basic things about how fighting and this entire game generally works. So yeah, a hard disagree with you on this one. It is a marker. It's just not a maximally precise or guaranteed one, and I never pretended it was. Another eh. I guess your reaction was somewhat my fault because I thought further discussion of how I list things in LFG was tangential at best. I solo a lot of dungeons faster than working groups, but sometimes post in LFG anyways just to change things up. I rarely list any requirements on either end of the "all welcome" and "experienced only" spectrum, and therefore l treat every single one of my postings as an "all welcome" run. What this really means is that I never actually get to preemptively take advantage of my own mastery heuristics, but instead am always checking with everyone all the time anyways. It's precisely this check-with-everyone procedure that confirmed, for me, many of the details I mentioned my earlier post. And yes, I have run into 349s who are not into speeding through things. But guess what? Without exception, they have all known how to handle combat and working with the group. In fact, many run interesting builds to compensate for their preference (and in some cases, their disabilities) that perform admirably.

This is true, and that's also why I don't even pay attention to it outside of people at the very high or very low end of mastery. When I play, I still run dungeons a lot, and it helps to have a quick way to assess where people are to avoid unnecessary pug drama. So if I see low AP and single digit mastery points, it's safe to assume they're newer to the game and don't know any of the expected speed/convenience strategies. That gives me a chance to ask if they want to learn the big-boy methods, or if they'd like to take it slower. If I have a group of 349s with a 341 mixed in there, I know the 341 has done every mastery point except for raids, and there's actually a good chance they would absolutely bristle at the group if we just wordlessly did all the speed clear tactics. Again, seeing that specific 341 number gives me the chance to check with that player to see what they want out of the run. Of course, the easiest is with a full team of 349s. Chances are they know the game, and know the dungeon. Even if they're clearly running some meme build, that won't matter to me, because it's very likely that they know basic things about not breaking stealth, stacking with the group, cc, and all the other little things that go into making a smooth run regardless of builds. I don't even have to bother to ask anyone anything, we all just know what to do and expect. But outside of either end, I agree that especially in the 100-250 range it's a real mixed bag and tells me nothing at a glance. I don't think that's reason enough to encourage getting rid of the display entirely, it's just the nature of having a wide range of numbers.

In my personal experience, dualbooting with Linux was always fairly smooth on Macs. I would highly recommend doing so, then running GW2 through Wine - as others have already mentioned, it performs with relatively minimal losses in performance. IMO it wouldn't hurt to try, given that you always have your other, older machine that still runs the client as a backup.

Ah, to be new to ranked. It's... yeah. Git gud, and watch your efforts go unrewarded much of the time. If I'm remembering correctly, I was once on a team that won 500-5. The opponents never once fully captured a point, and managed to kill one of my teammates once.

All is not lost. Just like many Mac users who find ways to use Windows programs on their Apple machines for work purposes, the exact same thing can be done with the Windows client for GW2. It might sound daunting if you've never done it, but anyone with even passing experience with IT can assure you that it's not hard. I'm sure Reddit threads on how to get Windows GW2 to run on Mac will be pushed to the forefront, if they're not already.

TLDR; BDO's changes in 2019 solved problems for old and new players alike, and ironically demonstrated ANet's idea of "shouldn't need to prepare to have fun" very well. In contrast, Champions/DRMs don't really do anything useful for anyone, and they're not even fun. For once, I'm actually looking forward to ANet abandoning a form of content for the future. Just to resurrect, then beat the dead horse a bit more: The upticks in BDO's late 2019 revenue probably have a lot to do with the Seasonal system they instituted in summer 2019. Seasonal servers allow players to get much closer to both level and gear cap at extremely low cost. Basically, you can get a character into the entry level of endgame content with great ease now. What used to take players years (and gallons of RNG tears) to achieve can be easily done in the space of two weeks of smart but casual play now. If you're casual but not particularly smart about the game, you have 2-3 months to get it done, which is more than enough time. BDO is currently running its third Season, and those Season servers are always absolutely packed with players, every single day of the week, at almost all hours of the day. Seasons took the primary two pain points for players (needing to no-life the game to reach level and gear cap) and found a way to get players very respectably close to both caps without nearly as much effort. This was also done in a way that didn't invalidate the efforts of veterans who worked to reach hardcap on things - it's still another huge step to reach actual caps, and it takes advanced knowledge of the game (either in terms of grinding out money efficiently or knowing how the gear upgrade system works) to get there. They've also stepped up their attention to narrative in a big, big way - while lore considerations used to be a total joke, the devs clearly got a better writing team, better localization, and decided to make narrative touches for various classes that differentiate how they experience the still-unified 'story' of the game, as it were. All of this came, as you noted, hand in hand with a smart marketing ploy to basically start giving the game away for a time during the pandemic. In short, BDO knew what to give and how to give it, and it appears to have worked out quite well. In contrast, I think DRMs fail on both the "what" and "how" questions. We've covered in the thread already that the "what" is just not there - the rewards are bad, and the gameplay is not interesting. The "how" is just as disappointing. As if the missions themselves being somewhat boring wasn't bad enough, they're just not designed for repeatability. Things we've already covered here - the initial mission not being push-able or offering greater benefits for over-completion, dialogue not being skippable, the whole fiasco with LFG only allowing squads to list, etc. - quite severely reduce the replay value of this "content." Although I'm always complaining that ANet is too quick to abandon content instead of iterating it, I think DRMs are an exception. I really see no potential in them, and will be glad to see them wither away into irrelevance.

So we have this settled then.Anet won't make the change you suggest and you don't want to take the actions necessary to solve the "problem" on your side of the screen. If it's not worth your time, I doubt it's much of a problem. I 100% agree with @lokh.2695 . The discussion essentially ends here. There is a way to achieve the cost-free swapping you desire in the game, it just has a threshold price you are not willing to pay. That's like walking into a store, seeing a bottle of water, but not wanting to pay three bucks for it; instead you walk up to the clerk and say "hey man, access to potable water is a human right. Gimme this bottle for free." You would be right about water being a resource everyone should have. But at that store, if you want a bottle of water from their cooler, you pay the price that store charges for it. You might be right about low-cost re-gearing being an essential part of MMOs (which I would disagree with, but that's another discussion). But in GW2, if you want literally free stat swapping, you have to pay the price of making legendaries.