voltaicbore.8012

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.

I'm sure I'd be quite upset if I were in your shoes, but I don't blame ANet one bit for this decision. For all I know, choosing to support the mac client might be tantamount to essentially developing a second version of their aging product. I believe they cared enough to talk about it seriously amongst themselves, but the math just didn't turn out anywhere close enough to a spot where they could green light that project. As much as I generally despise mac products, I hate to see any member of the community lose access like this. I hope in the meantime the various emulation solutions are good enough (or keep improving) to keep you in the game.

Yes, these are good recommendations, @OrangeWaffle.4287 . In particular, I highly recommend any open world Lord Hizen build. He's got a thing for turning the defensive stats into damage boosters, which should suit your all-rounder needs a bit better than the typical buildcrafter. You've already met @AliamRationem.5172 in this thread, whose Weaver build is incredibly effective for solo play as well. As for picking mains, my analysis of your opening post and follow ups is that actually you should consider aesthetics first and foremost. This is because there is a way to build just about every class into an effective solo character, with the caveat that you're going to have to carry extra builds/gear to efficiently pug the highest tiers of group content. But frankly if you care about looks as much as you do, you're not going to want to pug stuff anyways - leave that to the folks who are interested in situationally-optimal builds on a variety of characters.

It pains me greatly to admit this, but I agree - lately I just can't shake the feeling that the game is in a death spiral, and anything cool we have to look forward to in EoD can't really reverse that. It hurts to watch, because GW2 has so much to give, but I'm not sure we players have the patience left to wait for the devs to draw that out between bungled releases and abandoned game features. More than the underlying technology of the game, I think it takes a special kind of vision and management to keep an old product relevant for a decade+. That being said, I'm sure there are things about how GW2 is built (high end machines still struggling to keep FPS steady, for one thing) that make it even less likely that someone with that special vision/management could have pulled it off.

Uh, you do realize that the reason we have a giant sinkhole in DR instead of the Canthan District is because the pan-Asian aesthetic ANet was going for in GW2 Canthan art didn't go over well with Asian audiences? I don't think this is a smart China-pandering move, I think it's a less smart nostalgia-pandering move. If anything, I think they're just continuing what happened in PoF - the devs took us back to an area we've been to in GW1, and with the excuse that it's been ravaged by mismanagement and calamity, don't have to actually make things look all that shiny and cool. I expect Cantha to be much the same, albeit with less wide open spaces, and at least some attempt at a proper urban/metropolitan map. As for anyone excited about revisiting storied areas of the past... just remember the side hallway we got when it came to Gandara. I advise you to temper your expectations.

The bolded part is one of the few things GW2 does way, way better than any comparable title. Like others have said, if you like engineer, keep the one you have - there are more than enough skill points out there to max out both holo and scrapper.

I'd say the MVP concept is (rightfully) the prevailing theme of Champions. I hope ANet understands just how far off the mark the entire Saga turned out to be for many players, and is just looking to wrap it up with the minimum amount of effort for a barely acceptable end product. For me (and I suspect, many other long time players who are still set on buying EoD) DRMs don't need any improvement - not because they're not terrible, but because we just want it to be over and have no interest in them . However, I am slightly concerned that those less committed to GW2 will end up disengaging for good if Champions drops the ball too hard. I personally don't think EoD will be anywhere near as poorly executed as the Saga or Champions, so while disappointing, Champions doesn't really change my desire to get EoD and continue with GW2. I can see how someone with far less experience with the game wouldn't share that position, and that's worrying.

Yeah, you see... the last time we had a massive 'overhaul' patch, we got I've decided to play other thing to scratch the pvp itch, and I only come back to GW2 to chip away at some long term pve goals. I'm not saying that it's impossible that ANet can really turn things around on the balance front, but it seems shamefully illogical to hope that they ever will.

This is somewhat off-topic, and I think deserves its own thread as this one relates to the Wintersday JP specifically. The problem here is the exclusive in-game-achievement skin. Now, coming to the wording, I don't mean exclusive as in "only the top 1% of players will get this" (definition A). I mean exclusive in that "these achievements, most of which must be completed within the Wintersday festival [the drinking 10,000 drinks doesn't have timing, it only has type], must be completed" (definition B ). The game has exclusive (definition A) titles. An example is Fractal God/Fractal Goddess. Another example is God and Goddess of the Arena, or God of WvW. Heck, even Yakslapper (again, WvW). To suggest (as some people, not you, have done in this thread) that getting the Wintersday shoulders is exclusive (definition B ), is almost breathtaking in its audacity. To break my argument down. At this point I am restricting my argument to the easiest of the three titles I mentioned earlier: Yakslapper. I don't realistically see that any player is going to get a friend/partner/family member do the very long set of activities required for these titles. Although, if they have a friend/partner/family member who wants to kill 2500 yaks for them, have at it. Assuming a yak spawns every 2 minutes (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Resource_camp), and the same enemy camp can be "camped" over the entire time, that is a minimum of 83 hours that the player's friend has to sit there to kill a yak at once side. If they can kill two yaks then that is about 42 hours. Even only taking into account that camps flip, these times are very optimistic. These titles are very likely obtained by the player themselves doing the activities that contribute to the title. Thus, Yakslapper is an exclusive (definition A) title. Now, back to the Wintersday JP, many of us had other people do the JP for us. So we got the skin with effort on our part (repeated failure) but someone else was able to tick off that requirement. Somebody else who is good at JPs can knock three out in quick succession. Worst case scenario: assume the JP takes 30 minutes to complete (the maximum time the JP instance is open: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter_Wonderland). That player would take 1.5 hours to complete three jumps. Now, compare that time to how long it takes to get Yakslapper - and I have created unrealistically short times in which to obtain Yakslapper. Thus, the holiday-related skins are a fashion-wars item that shows either:the player did the JP three times, orsomebody else did the JP for the player. Which then comes back to the point: the skin is not exclusive (definition A) content. It is exclusive only in the sense of definition B. A lucky player can get a friend/partner/family member to do the JP for them. Thus, the skin is not an indicator of ability/mastery for this JP. Thus, locking the skin behind a JP penalises players who can't get others to do the JP for them. So, finally, who is penalised by having skins locked behind JPs? Answer: players who can't get someone else to do the JP for them during the time of the festival (definition B ). Which then leads to the question: why have a JP as required content for the skin? If there needs to be X number of activities rather than X-1 (achieved through the removal of the JP from the list of requirements) then some other option could be substituted which will more likely be done by the player themselves. An example: build n snowmen, with n as whatever number. Thanks for the elaboration. I wholeheartedly agree that the skin in question is definitely a Definition B type of exclusive, which in turn means I agree that there is no value in refusing to offer alternative routes. Also, I happen to think this discussion is supremely relevant to the thread. After all, you've been operating under the framework that there are different forms of exclusivity, and one form deserves to remain exclusive while the other can reasonably be argued to deserve alternative completions. Much of the pushback against you and OP in this thread immediately resorts to just mashing both forms of exclusivity together, resulting in the same old slippery slope argument where the person asking for a Definition B exclusive to be made more accessible gets accused of wanting Definition A exclusives watered down. Those two definitions really are quite distinct, but that distinction is usually lost on people until made explicit.

@Hesione.9412 in particular, on the one hand you make it sound like you're okay with the game not catering to everyone who can't clear content as designed (whether it's due to disability or otherwise), but on the other hand that this particular achievement should include precisely that sort of catering. Can you elaborate on what should qualify an achievement for the latter sort of treatment? For instance, is it the fact that it includes one of the few exclusive in-game-achieveable skins? Is it the fact that it's a holiday achievement? Or simply that it includes a JP? For me, anything with a JP in it deserves to offer an alternative completion option. I have no physical disabilities relating to performing any gameplay tasks, and successfully completed the Wintersday JP and most others with what I'd consider a reasonable amount of effort. I still absolutely loathe JPs with a passion. As such, I would welcome an alternative achievement option anytime a JP is in the list of things needed to do. I don't care what the reward is, I just hate JPs that much.

I also like to see how much aggro from dangerous mobs I can pull, as well as soloing champions whenever I have a chance. The issue is not justt about "easy and difficult", however. Many of us in this thread don't find the open world fights difficult, but rather just far more annoying than they need to be.

Zerker thief can work just fine through all current story content. While marauder stats are indeed a good deal safer without losing a ton of damage output, I find that thief has great sustain options from the Critical Strikes line - Critical strikes offer ways for you to boost how often you crit, how hard you crit, and let those same crits heal you for a portion of the damage you put out. A lot of solid synergy there. This is a fairly safe daredevil build I use to hit hard while keeping up sustain. Honestly it doesn't fully play into some of thief's strengths (most notably, stealth attacks), but it hits pretty hard and daredevil in general offers a lot of defensive options. Staff 4 is a blind, your staff autoattack chain ends in a projectile reflect, and staff 5 infamously allows you to hit an area pretty hard while evading. The heal signet allows you to spam a never-ending stream of healing to yourself as you rapidly strike enemies, the daredevil block is a block+stunbreak+cc counterattack, the precision sigil also provides you and your friend decent condition cleanse, the power sigil is always a solid choice just to hit harder, and the spinner elite is a great offense+defense mix and synergizes extremely well with the heal signet if you are under pressure. On top of this, going with the Trickster line gives you more initiative, so you can spam longer sequences of attacks. Overall, this is far from an optimal build, but it hits hard enough, has all the important defensive utility (cleanse, block, stunbreak, blind, and of course evades), and above all else is just easy to play. If I need to carry someone in a fight as a thief, this is my go-to build. Last note: I never really pvp as a thief, but I imagine this would be an awful pvp build. Check out metabattle or godsofpvp for pvp builds.

I'll take another look at the area... someday. I don't mind the harpies around the MP by the springer heart, as it's clearly a nesting zone for them and managing that co-existence seems to be a well-established thing for people of the area. Same with the harpy-infested area around the Choya part of the Highlands map. I just don't recall seeing much indication of harpies being there for a reason other than "we need some mobs to hassle players... this is a higher elevation... so harpies! Yeah! Game design is my passion." It wouldn't have taken much to satisfy me in this regard, either. Even if the HP text merely made some mention of "this once-blahblah-nice thing is now just a harpy nest", that would have been enough. But again, I'm working off of very shaky knowledge. I don't even remember what the HP says when you channel it, and I'm not aware of the lore you mentioned. I guess I should take a second look at it (as well as GW1, which I'm still playing through) to be sure.

That's a good one. Like on other topics towards difficulty/annoyance in the OW there should be a middle way. I would say yes. But not generally. A good compromise for me would be tune down some of the aggro range for some types of mobs but others should stay like how they are. I would take the route of having a wider aggro range on guarded places like fortresses of the the forged or heartland/main structures of jokos awakend forces. Maybe an other workround would be that different types of mobs are capped on the ability to call for help. Something like a normal food soldier can bring max 3 other mobs into battle by calling out for help or for every mob which is joining the radius for get other mobs into battle will decrase for a ceratin amount of range. Other mobs like commanders/leaders/vets should have a long aggro range and should be able to draw more mobs into battle by calling out for help. I like this idea (different types of mobs having different aggro ranges and effects). I would further extend the idea so that specific mobs, such as that one forged type that marks targets for other forged sharpshooters, would have long aggro range and could bring in specific allies. I don't actually agree with OP (who describes PoF mobs as less 'easy' than other areas), but I agree with the general sentiment that the design is a bit annoying, and overall detracts from the experience of being inside a PoF map. So answers: The fallen statue HP in Elon Riverlands is a good example of what I don't like. There's always a bunch of harpies hanging around there, and they're quite easy to deal with. They're just a pointless annoyance though, and IMO they add nothing (lore, immersion, combat challenge, etc.). They seem to be there purely to disrupt your ability to channel an HP or just take a look around at the environment. At least in core maps most of the time harpies are hanging around their nesting sites, outside of dynamic events. See, this isn't just about aggro range on the Forged/Awakened. It's about spamming useless fights that don't even have an ambience or storytelling value to them. Just complete wastes of time. No. I can kill them all, on every class. But again, ability to kill these with ease was never my beef with PoF. Veteran. Not like OG GW1 players or anything, but I've played GW2 for 5 years, 24K achieves, capped mastery, 7 or so legendaries, etc. Not the absolute greatest, but I know how to handle combat and the game in general.

TLDR; Even if it makes logical 'sense' for PoF mobs to just be everywhere all the time, it's still a terrible design decision, and one that is inferior to how they designed mob interactions in core maps. I feel exactly the same on this issue. There's a lot of value to being able to just look around and take in the map environments, and that's getting increasingly less worth it to try. I also play GW2 because it's not about grinding 2000x mobs everywhere you go, and I'm sure many others feel the same as we do. I'd have to go back and check more places to be 100% sure, but I feel like core maps were designed with much more logic to mob locations and patterns. For instance, you can get around Queensdale along many paved roads that don't randomly have enemies sitting on them for no reason. You run into centaurs by their encampments, and bandits by their hideouts. The only time you see mobs actively coming towards guarded (or at least, usually quiet) areas is during dynamic events. This, to me, is the feature that most distinguishes GW2 from the standard mmo. Said standard mmos often have mobs standing out in the field. Literally standing still. There is no reason for them to be where they are and do nothing all day until a player comes along. The fact that there was some logic and movement to mob patterns is what made the core GW2 experience so attractive and different for me, and they're losing touch with that. I get that both awakened and forged are not really standard living enemies, like the ones often encountered in a lot of core maps. They're closer to branded, which admittedly in core maps you find standing around in open spaces not really doing anything other than... existing. Neither awakened nor forged really seem to need to protect themselves from weather or hunger (or any of the typical hazards that life-forms have to deal with), so it's not totally illogical that you could encounter them in random places very far from any base or facility. That still doesn't change how I feel though. Logical or not, I don't like how their design is leaning harder into "let's use mobs that we can just drop anywhere, anytime, for any reason, and not have to actually design a good map 'feeling' around them."

OK, but how would you construct such a gear score (SWTOR calls it "Item Rating", for reference) in GW2? Would it have to show bias toward certain stats? If so, why? (I have a Reaper build that's based on Valkyrie gear, kitten. With all that Vitality, a stat-biased gear score would probably mark it down, but it's almost indestructible and still delivers substantial damage.) Then again, in most games, the gear score (whatever it's called) is some way short of the full answer, since it almost never identifies gearsets that are weak because of an improper stat mix. And in general, this thread reminds me of something I said in another thread ... There is a very wide range of player-skill in any MMORPG, but while general content must take into account the less-skilled players, the players who will not learn how to play (not talking learning disabilities here, but wilful obtuseness) should not be part of that analysis. if i have to go to another website to find a build, then the game has failed. if they let me get to max level with "wrong "build, then the game has failedif they dont let me play my own build, then there is no point in playing an RPG at all I would say that if you can throw darts at the skill tree with a blindfold on and still succeed, then the game has failed. GW2's system provides players the freedom to build however they like. This as opposed to a game like WoW, where you simply pick a class and a role and every choice you make falls within those parameters and only the latest content presents a challenge if you keep your gear current. GW2 lets you choose stats and traits with anti-synergy and your item level can't save you if you play like a potato. Pick your poison. I think both systems have their pros and cons. so its like a buffet, but you are only supposed to mix it like they intended? yea, that went well, didnt it? they either need to revamp the whole system,or at least make some tutorials on buildcrafting. the steam crowd is gonna rip it apart in reviews, if they dont. oddly enough, EVE was about the same age before they made a proper tutorial too. You can quite literally build however you like. The system has no hard limits to prevent you from, for example, designing a hybrid DPS/healer that deals low damage while providing more healing than is necessary in solo play but also not enough healing/support to be useful in group play. You'll probably find yourself complaining about "HP sponges", failing DPS check mechanics, and getting into arguments with other players in groups if you use such a build, though. I'm not opposed to having better information, but I think the system is too complex for an effective tutorial. Resources like the forums, the wiki, and various fan sites do the deep diving required to really refine your understanding of buildcraft. If that's too much for some players to handle, perhaps an MMO where players typically play for years is not the best format for them? lol, 10 years of STO, 8 years dcuo, wow, FF ARR, CoH, SWTOR, wildstar, EVE, BDO, LOTRO, RIFT, AION, warframe, TERA, and the list goes on and onif its a big mmo, theres a good chance, that i have played it at some point. still subbed to dcuo, but not playing as much anymore, due to burnout and, have you been good in any of those? God, even EVE, man, I would love to see how you fared there, especially in that particular forum environment (for people unfamiliar with EVE: In their forums, actual admins tell you basically to kitten off when you whine about difficulty)Given the posts of his I've seen thus far, I'd put money on a hard "no" as the correct answer to your question. Furthermore, SWTOR and BDO have absolutely no place in any discussion when it comes to builds, build effectiveness, and game difficulties related to build effectiveness. SWTOR adopted what I'm told is a WoW-like system (don't know for sure, since I never played WoW), where you pick a class and a specialization, and you have maybe 2-3 meaningful choices along the way while the rest your build is preset. BDO's "build" system is literally "get all the skill XP you can and get every single passive and active ability for your class. There's zero variety and choice at truly endgame levels of character progression. You can build different gear sets though to achieve different things, but that's a discussion for another time. So yeah, even if battledrone was any good at SWTOR or BDO, it would say very little about his ability to navigate GW2. There are a few other things on that list that obviously share similar irrelevance (EVE and LOTRO are probably the worst offenders), but eh, not worth the effort at this point to discuss.

I say it's the result of the devs trying to have their cake and eat it too. Racial skills seem meant to offer a way to play each race differently in combat, but not that differently to actually matter. So the result is a bunch of useless abilities. Allowing all races to access them would strip them of their one reason to exist (differentiate the races), but eh. I'm not saying that they couldn't be revamped or reworked to be relevant. However, reworking things is not what ANet does. The studio seems to have an allergy when it comes to iteration, or at least revisiting currently bad systems that nonetheless have potential. They'd much rather just let it rot in a corner and give us the next shiny new thing. While I'd personally prefer it if they stopped doing this and reworked some older stuff, I can't say that their choice is the wrong one - I'm still here, as are many others.

Eh. ANet made 9 classes (arguably 18 if we're counting elite specs) for us to play, nobody is making you run bannerslave and nothing else. What you've said here is "I am choosing to run this one specific spec on this one specific class, and all game content in the future must cater to my particular choice." I think that's pretty dumb.

I think OPs problems are more fundamental than barriers to raid entry. More so than most, GW2's endgame is a bit of a slow burn - because it's so easy to cap out on level/gear/mastery, the long-term goals are either player-generated or achievement hunting. OP does not seem like the kind of player who appreciates as slow of a burn as the one GW2 offers. TLDR; you're probably going to quit soon anyways, why bother with raiding?

This is my opinion as well. I agree that MP feel like a form of progess that shouldn't be sold on the gem store, for reasons already mentioned in the thread. However, I do feel that the impulse that OP expressed (and I'm sure many others share) needs to be addressed. IBS has combined the absolutely tightest MP margins I can remember with the absolutely grindiest MP achieves I can remember. Just another one of the many elements that make me hate IBS with a passion. Weak narrative, largely uninteresting combat, AND poor reward/progression structure? Can't wait until EoD comes out and I can move on past this debacle.

I very rarely agree with anything you say, but I do very much agree with you on this. PoF open world is certainly not difficult, but it's a chore. To me, "casual" isn't just about how difficult the mobs are, but how free you are to wander around a game environment without being maximally efficient at combat. You can still get around PoF without being that great at GW2 combat, but your ability to enjoy the spectacle and scale of the maps essentially drops to 0.

I agree 200000% with this. I think I overall had much more fun in the pre-Feb balance, but I still appreciate that lower damage across the board gives more builds the opportunity to compete. That being said, ANet has again just abandoned this project. Abandonment is a huge problem for this studio, and I have no clue why they so consistently do this. I guess we should have seen this coming with what they did with the Canthan district in DR. Instead of reworking it or sticking to their guns... they literally replaced it with a giant hole in the ground. Just kind of letting projects slide out of their hands onto the ground, to lay there untouched forever, seems to be standard fare.

I think the problem is too fundamental to fully address, although I'm a huge fan of ideas like what @"Jekkt.6045" mentioned in terms of baked-in tradeoffs. I'd like to suggest that what we really want is every class to be more viable, which is different than "build diversity" in my opinion. The best example of the difference between "wider viability" vs "build diversity" I can think of is BDO. In that game, you don't have to choose which parts of your kit to take with you into battle - every single passive (the equivalent of GW2's traits) and every single active (the equivalent of weapon skills and heal/utility/elite skills) is available to you at all times in every single fight. All you need to do is get the skill points to train those skills, and it's both possible and fairly commonplace to farm up enough skill points to fully train up everything in your class. In this regard, BDO has absolutely zero build diversity. Ironically, this seems to make it easier for more classes to be viable in small scale pvp. Since the devs know anything they put into a class will be available to every single player running that class, all they need to do is make sure that each class' skill tree gets access to its own flavor of combat essentials (like stability, blocks, protection, cc, and a few big nuke moves). To differentiate classes, the devs do throw in a few tradeoffs; some classes have excellent aoe and stability and high HP, but move slowly, can't close gaps all that well, and are totally unable to touch targets at midrange and beyond. Some classic assassin specs have incredibly high single target burst damage, but depend on landing that burst from stealth, and can be severely punished for messing up due to very low HP and weak active defenses. So while there are differences (and many times these differences need to be tuned to buff garbage classes and nerf OP classes), as a general rule every single class has some way to achieve important combat goals. The BDO devs can (and have!) even gone so far as individually adjusting how much damage each class does against every other class, when re-tuning the tradeoffs isn't enough to balance small scale combat. So the sense of variety in BDO comes not from having a wide range of builds at your disposal, but from the fact that your class (when learned properly) stands a fighting chance in most small-scale pvp situations, and you can use any of your moves in a variety of different ways depending on the situation. So while I do not have any real build options when playing a class, I can be reasonably assured that whatever class I play can participate effectively in most of the game. In other words, no build diversity, but pretty wide class viability. GW2 is much harder to balance, in this regard. Since every class has skills and traits locked to various weapons and specializations, the devs do not have any assurance that every tweak or addition they make to a trait or skill will be reflected in players' builds. Instead they have to distribute enough desirable qualities across enough of the specializations, if they want to make sure each specialization can have some sort of role in pvp. However, achieving true equality of usefulness across every specialization would be kind of stupid, since there's only 12 things they can put into each specialization; if you always make sure to put roughly the same mount of offense, defense, utility, and cc/stability into each one, that's not a lot of space for differentiation. Each specialization would end up looking like just differently named versions of the same thing. They'd have to come up with a unique way to represent those combat essentials (so for instance one trait line might have resistance utilities on shorter cd, while another would give you access to a longer-cd pulsing resistance), and there's only so many ways to do that. What ends up happening is the stale metas we have now. Players figure out, through theory as well as trial and error, which single combination of traits and skills allows each class to fulfill a useful role while also being well-rounded enough to deal with the widest variety of threats. So we essentially end up with one build for each class much like BDO does, but while BDO's single-build system gives your class everything at once, your single-build in GW2 only brings a fraction of all the cool things available to your class. That fraction-ing is a long-term problem, because some classes have trait lines that are packed with useful things for pvp, while other classes have a more scattered distribution and therefore struggle to patch together 3 traitlines and 15-ish abilities to cover their bases and specialize enough at a particular role. Furthermore, once you've settled on a build and loadout, there's really not too many ways to play it. The apex of combat variety in GW2 is maybe baiting out cleanses and dodges with cover condi and weapon swap skill cancels, or finding stupid kiting spots or no port spots that are less about your class and more about having practiced enough to land non-obvious jumps. So while adding greater complexity as @JusticeRetroHunter.7684 suggests is indeed the goal, I really don't see it happening due to GW2's fundamental design in forcing player choice. Unless they completely homogenize those choices (making them stupid and meaningless), it appears nearly impossible to me to make sure every trait line across every class has an equivalent share of essential pvp tools. I think the best we can hope for is what we've been getting all along, which is short-term changes to address short-term issues.

Exactly. Remember the huge deal they made out of the IBS launch, making it sound like we were really going to see expansion-like content in a LW release schedule. We all know that was absolute kitten at this point, but they had a nonsensically big announcement about it. Turns out the Champions marketing fanfare is more of the same nonsense. I find it hard to blame ANet at this point for how utterly stupid marketing turns out to be. The truth seems to be that their standards for the finale of Champions is the lowest for any GW2 content we've seen thus far, but that's not really something they can come out and say. There'd be just as large an outcry (and many people would likely stop playing) if they straight up told us, "so guys, we don't have the juice to make this any better, it's just one lackluster chapter trickled out over 6 months. Sorry." On the other hand, the result of hyping up something that's clearly not that good is what we're seeing now. The middle ground of a smaller announcement is also nonexistent in this case, I think. If they had told us very little about it, and we got content of this quality, I think we'd be just as pissed that they were hiding the thin-ness of the content from us. The entire marketing problem starts with the fact that the underlying product being marketed, Champions, is just plain awful. There's just no way to win the marketing battle there.

No. After what they did to the Spirits, the norn aspect of the Saga in general, and to my boy Smodur - zero faith in ANet's narrative capabilities. I'd prefer they not ruin Laranthir somehow as well.