Your opinion of Whisper of Jormag strike mission?

[TPMN.1483]

We need the ability to post suggested builds in-game: Gear and traits - so people can see what to run. That way they can get closer to it and then hopefully get better.

Currently pinging traits is useless without also pinging suggested gear for people and what / how to play it eg the support, DPS, boon or whatever the role is.

Squad messages would have been perfect to have 10 codes for each person to run that each person could check their build against,

[Shikaru.7618]

@TPMN.1483 said:We need the ability to post suggested builds in-game: Gear and traits - so people can see what to run. That way they can get closer to it and then hopefully get better.

Currently pinging traits is useless without also pinging suggested gear for people and what / how to play it eg the support, DPS, boon or whatever the role is.

Squad messages would have been perfect to have 10 codes for each person to run that each person could check their build against,

To add on to this issue, it is extremely easy for a player to build their character with the wrong stats and end up with a mess that only outputs- 10% of what the class is capable of. When players struggle and gravitate towards vitality and toughness, the game has failed to teach them how to use active defenses.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates to begin with, that's what made it feel bad.Nah, it's just a bad template system, and massively overpriced. It would have been so even if Arc Templates never existed.It's just designed wrong - it's very easy to see that the main design goal was not making a good template system, but making a system you could monetize as kitten.

Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.The gear storage if you look at it separately might be priced well. I wasn't talking about gear storage though - i was talking about

template

system.

By the way, don't count the free things. Count the cost of the full character unlock. And then realize, that for anyone that is seriously in need of working buld templates, that full unlock is not even close to be enough (not even with the 4 additional datamined build and gear tabs).

@Shikaru.7618 said:To add on to this issue, it is extremely easy for a player to build their character with the wrong stats and end up with a mess that only outputs- 10% of what the class is capable of. When players struggle and gravitate towards vitality and toughness, the game has failed to teach them how to use active defenses.It's also true that active defences and twitch combat are more of a province of action games than MMORPGs. Which means, that most players of GW2 are probably not a target group for such mechanics (and most players that would feel fine with it tend to gravitate to other types of games instead of MMORPGs).

[Firebeard.1746]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates to begin with, that's what made it feel bad.Nah, it's just a bad template system, and massively overpriced. It would have been so even if Arc Templates never existed.It's just designed wrong - it's very easy to see that the main design goal was not making a good template system, but making a system you could monetize as kitten.

Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.The gear storage if you look at it separately might be priced well. I wasn't talking about gear storage though - i was talking about

template

system.

By the way, don't count the free things. Count the cost of the full character unlock. And then realize, that for anyone that is seriously in need of working buld templates, that full unlock is not even close to be enough (not even with the 4 additional datamined build and gear tabs).

See this is why I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates for free -> any price point would seem like too much when you had it for free before. You don't have to unlock them all. It's also not like you can't just edit your current build anyway, they're sheerly for convenience. You could even make some "template builds" for a set of core traits and then edit 2-3 traits on the fly. Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish. That's not crazy.

EDIT: And account wide templates are even cheaper 500 gems for 3 slots =~ 2 bucks per template (a little less actually). In fact, that's the best bang for your buck.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Firebeard.1746" said:See this is why I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates for free -> any price point would seem like too much when you had it for free before. You don't have to unlock them all. It's also not like you can't just edit your current build anyway, they're sheerly for convenience. You could even make some "template builds" for a set of core traits and then edit 2-3 traits on the fly. Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish. That's not crazy.

Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish.Per character. Assume at least 1 character per class.

EDIT: And account wide templates are even cheaper 500 gems for 3 slots =~ 2 bucks per template (a little less actually). In fact, that's the best bang for your buck.So what? Even if i bought them all (which would be 3000 gems total at the price of 3 slots per 500 gems), that would be barely enough for a single class. There are 9 classes.

So, basically, we're already talking about a minimal investment of (by your numbers) 144 USD. And that's not for an AAA-tier collection edition title, or even for a big dlc, but for a niche QoL feature that is very basic and primitive, as well as being very far from fully covering the needs of players that might be seriously interested in it.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Firebeard.1746" said:See this is why I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates for free -> any price point would seem like too much when you had it for free before. You don't have to unlock them all. It's also not like you can't just edit your current build anyway, they're sheerly for convenience. You could even make some "template builds" for a set of core traits and then edit 2-3 traits on the fly. Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish. That's not crazy.

Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish.Per character. Assume at least 1 character per class.

EDIT: And account wide templates are even cheaper 500 gems for 3 slots =~ 2 bucks per template (a little less actually). In fact, that's the best bang for your buck.So what? Even if i bought them all (which would be 3000 gems total at the price of 3 slots per 500 gems), that would be barely enough for a single class. There are 9 classes.

So, basically, we're already talking about a minimal investment of (by your numbers) 144 USD. And that's not for an AAA-tier collection edition title, or even for a big dlc, but for a niche QoL feature that is very basic and primitive, as well as being very far from fully covering the needs of players that might be seriously interested in it.

Well I only do 1-2 builds on my alts. I've dipped in a little bit to set up different raid builds for my main. But literally just plan on having an open world build + niche raid filler build for all of my alt characters (which means I don't need to do anything for them, 3 templates and 2 gear sets is plenty). I've spent 20 bucks on templates. Probably won't again for a long time. If ever. Most people, probably won't need to buy templates, and tbh, any altoholic now basically gets a free open world equipment set + a free PVE setm with up to 3 different builds. That's plenty.

Lemme get this straight, using your numbers: you and your friends have 8.7ish builds per character (using account + individual)? 78? Really? That's a crap ton. And you use them so much that you need to spend money instead of jostling a few traits around every now and then? Most classes orbit around the same specializations variants. You're right, it's a ton of money,. If you're getting 9 classes worth of content, with 6 builds for each, plus another, what 24 account builds? That means you're playing the game a heck of alot & in a heck of a lot different ways. if you don't think 144 dollars is worth that sheer quantity of content you're playing every day for that to be worth it, I don't know what a good sell is. Guess you should just go play BDO where you can literally pay for power gain you still have to grind for (I think start-up cost if you're serious is 200ish + 15 a month for sub benes). Or wow, where you can buy 200 dollars worth of tokens for the 2 million gold you need for that guaranteed Jaina mount from that paid for with gold raid from that high end community (or SPEND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of gold farming). If you don't want to take the 4% drop chance risk every week until shadowlands patch hits (only one drops in a raid of 25 people, and it's still hard to find groups that can do it regularly), at which point the drop goes down to 1% (for everyone, and the raid won't be soloable until another 2 years). Or even worse, the AH mount that's going to go "extinct" that costs 500-1000 dollars in Gold. GW2 players get half its functionality for free in this game, being able to sell from anywhere (and free up inventory space). This is on top of sub fees. FFXIV would be your amount in a year, easy with the sub fees. And has an MTX shop to boot.

Also can you and your friends list all 78 builds you're using and for what? I'm really curious. I want to know how much of a scrub I am.

Seriously, that's why I buy gems every now and then. Anet is so nice to its players. I don't want them going out of business. I don't even have an intended use. I'm just sick of abuse and Anet is worth it.

[MajinSoul.4512]

I've attempted and cleared it yesterday for the first time with a group advertised as "no experience required". We beat it second try. I think the fight is actually not that hard and the only time you run the risk of dying is when you get caught by a teammate's chain. As was already said, the gold timer seems a bit too tight and the boss bugged out during the final 10 % or so.

[Xca.9721]

The random launch ups are pissing me of, also the bug after 25 % is really annoying. The chains can be ignored most of the time, just don´t stand inside the hitbox. Got gold multiple times with random pugs, the timer is fine in my opinion.

[lare.5129]

Currently I am not ask any kp li for WOJ.I if woj dayli I ask only completed achievement from WOJ, So if player join and no have near boon achievement mark - welcome.I think it is great idea, don't ask fractal kp or li for woj.

[Ourasa.7306]

I honestly think it is a well designed boss. Unlike the other strike missions, this one requires you to not mindlessly clump up.

The first phase is your typical, go full ham at his face, but the second one forces players to pay attention to their positioning to not kill get killed by the chains, and to save a friend targeted by the green circle. The third phase is harder by a level, as you have to be ready to retreat when he does his spin+orb attack; and to retaliate after he stops.

Boneskinner, while having a much greater fail rate, doesn’t require much thought: Simply grab a ton of heals, and roll left when he starts wiggling his fingers. Only times people fail is when they screw up dodging and rotating left.

[Craine.8162]

I think the overall fight is pretty good. Not too hard but some nice mechanics that teach the players to not just 111111 on the boss but also do some other stuff. Good introduction on what raids are about. (better than boneskinner where its just "ignore mechanics and outheal". while that does work on some raid bosses, it shouldnt be teached like that in a strike mission that's supposed to be a stepping stone into raids)

BUT it needs some fine tuning.

1. the cc phase is too punishing for unexperienced squads. Once the cc phase has started, there is basically no way of rezzing downed players because of the DoT. You either get downed trying to rezz or you do the cc while the downed player dies to DoT. A little less DoT or a window of ~2seconds before it starts would be better imo.
2. the knockup attack. Imo there should be a better indicator for when WoJ does this attack, AND IT SHOULD BE DODGEABLE! I managed to somehow dodge it once with a perfectly timed guard gs3 leap, but i'm pretty sure it's not intended to work that way.
3. the AoE ice attack (the one where every player get a red circle around him, no idea what its called) is kinda weird to dodge. The moment when the circle fills and the moment the actual animation follows are too delayed. It feels kinda weird dodging out of the circle, getting the "evaded" notifcation, and then getting hit with a huge pile of ice without anything happening.
4. the bug where WoJ just disappears for a couple seconds. Pretty sure it happens when it goes into cc phase while also hitting 25%. after killing all clones it takes several seconds for WoJ to reappear.

regarding LI/kp/titles:yesterday i was in a 300LI squad when a necro joined without pinging anything. when the comm asked, he said "what do you mean, there are no LI for strikes" :smiley:we decided to keep him because we didnt want to wait any longer for the squad to fill. though it didnt surprise anyone when the necro immediatly died because he obviously had no idea about the fight.so yea, any kind of "killproof" (be it LI or a specific title or whatever) are fine for an experienced squad that just wants a quick kill without any leechers. sure its frustrating for newbies to see the lfg filled with 300LI squads. but its also frustrating for experienced players to have someone in their squad that doesnt even carry his own weight! Youre not entitled to be carried, nor are you entitled to strangers taking their time to explain everything to you. Its the same with any kind of group content: the best way to get into it and learn it is either with friends/guild/etc. or an open training squad.

[ParadoX.3124]

He's fine, but sometimes instance bugs, you 've got to CC while being KD for 2 secs : wipe

[Firebeard.1746]

Hate it. Too mechanic heavy, can't really boon share or heal towards the end and enthusiasm for it is dying. Like it's no good if i rez someone and someone else instantly dies.

[Firebeard.1746]

@"Hyrai.8720" said:I think the overall fight is pretty good. Not too hard but some nice mechanics that teach the players to not just 111111 on the boss but also do some other stuff. Good introduction on what raids are about. (better than boneskinner where its just "ignore mechanics and outheal". while that does work on some raid bosses, it shouldnt be teached like that in a strike mission that's supposed to be a stepping stone into raids)

BUT it needs some fine tuning.

1. the cc phase is too punishing for unexperienced squads. Once the cc phase has started, there is basically no way of rezzing downed players because of the DoT. You either get downed trying to rezz or you do the cc while the downed player dies to DoT. A little less DoT or a window of ~2seconds before it starts would be better imo.
2. the knockup attack. Imo there should be a better indicator for when WoJ does this attack, AND IT SHOULD BE DODGEABLE! I managed to somehow dodge it once with a perfectly timed guard gs3 leap, but i'm pretty sure it's not intended to work that way.
3. the AoE ice attack (the one where every player get a red circle around him, no idea what its called) is kinda weird to dodge. The moment when the circle fills and the moment the actual animation follows are too delayed. It feels kinda weird dodging out of the circle, getting the "evaded" notifcation, and then getting hit with a huge pile of ice without anything happening.
4. the bug where WoJ just disappears for a couple seconds. Pretty sure it happens when it goes into cc phase while also hitting 25%. after killing all clones it takes several seconds for WoJ to reappear.

regarding LI/kp/titles:yesterday i was in a 300LI squad when a necro joined without pinging anything. when the comm asked, he said "what do you mean, there are no LI for strikes" :smiley:we decided to keep him because we didnt want to wait any longer for the squad to fill. though it didnt surprise anyone when the necro immediatly died because he obviously had no idea about the fight.so yea, any kind of "killproof" (be it LI or a specific title or whatever) are fine for an experienced squad that just wants a quick kill without any leechers. sure its frustrating for newbies to see the lfg filled with 300LI squads. but its also frustrating for experienced players to have someone in their squad that doesnt even carry his own weight! Youre not entitled to be carried, nor are you entitled to strangers taking their time to explain everything to you. Its the same with any kind of group content: the best way to get into it and learn it is either with friends/guild/etc. or an open training squad.

This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an a-hole asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

[Craine.8162]

@"Firebeard.1746" said:This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an kitten asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

no, THIS is the problem: if the leechers keep leeching, the experienced players will get tired and either stop doing the content or join a static or put up ridiculous kp walls. (that's what we saw in the past with raids)

and where does that leave the leechers?will they stop playing the content? then its them who are killing the content, and everyone else is happy to play "dead" content without any leechers.or will they suddenly start joining or creating training groups because there is noone to leech of? then why didnt they do so in the first place? - i'll tell you why: because they are not really interested in doing the content. they just want easy loot.

those who are interested will always find a way to do it. be it by learning it themselves or by joining a group of experienced players who are openly willing to teach them. (usually marked with something like "training" in the lfg description...)if you are one of those willing to teach: nice, i respect that. you are an enrichment to the community.but the same way you will have to respect that i am not willing to spend my limited playtime teaching or carrying others.

[Asum.4960]

@Firebeard.1746 said:Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.

All this makes me believe is that letting people have something for free and then monetizing it later is a bad idea. Even build templates at 4 dollars a pop i would say is not that exorbitant, and then it's even better when you realize they gave everyone 6 for free with account wide ones. Usually when a company does something dirty they just add the item and expect you to buy it. Anet did a lot to soften the blow and even gave everyone more storage space to boot. And even allowed you to repurpose previous, invisible templates.

Unless you worked on things like Legendary Armor's/Backpacks or even Trinkets for exactly that reason, to already have saved those inventory slots.With close to 20 builds on both my Guardian and Necro back in Arc DPS, how much inventory space did that take? One (invisible) bag slot, aka 5€ for 20 builds each.

All I needed was 3 sets of Trinkets (Power, Condi, Support), the rest of adjustments for all builds was easily made by saving different Armor Stat and rune combinations.

Now in Anet's system, not only can you not actually save and load builds, those 20 builds per character also would now cost 200€ per character, if it even was possible to save for than 6 Builds for 60€ per character (and those previously bought Bag slots for spare Gear for all my characters are now useless).

That's both a massive price jump together with a drastic functionality and QoL drop, which surprisingly upset players who relied upon Templates to enjoy the game.Which is also why Anet allowed Arc Templates and why it wasn't a bad idea to do so for all these years. Arc provided a valuable service to GW2 and Anet which they couldn't provide, keeping people who needed that service engaged with the game and as spending customers for years, until Anet got greedy and wanted all the money, grossly misstepping with their feature and causing a hardcore player exodus and massive revenue drop.

People probably would have been fine with unlocking unlimited native Templates for even the price of a whole expansion like PoF, paying 30€ for it. But asking for nearly 60€ per character for a measly 6 character Loadouts which you can't even safe and load was and is a kick in the teeth for people who relied on such a system.Arc previously existing or not. Many of those players tired of swapping their gear more in for example Raids than actually playing the game just would have quit already earlier if it wasn't for Arc.

@Firebeard.1746 said:Well I only do 1-2 builds on my alts. I've dipped in a little bit to set up different raid builds for my main. But literally just plan on having an open world build + niche raid filler build for all of my alt characters (which means I don't need to do anything for them, 3 templates and 2 gear sets is plenty). I've spent 20 bucks on templates. Probably won't again for a long time. If ever. Most people, probably won't need to buy templates, and tbh, any altoholic now basically gets a free open world equipment set + a free PVE setm with up to 3 different builds. That's plenty.

Lemme get this straight, using your numbers: you and your friends have 8.7ish builds per character (using account + individual)? 78? Really? That's a kitten ton. And you use them so much that you need to spend money instead of jostling a few traits around every now and then? Most classes orbit around the same specializations variants. You're right, it's a ton of money,. If you're getting 9 classes worth of content, with 6 builds for each, plus another, what 24 account builds? That means you're playing the game a heck of alot & in a heck of a lot different ways. if you don't think 144 dollars is worth that sheer quantity of content you're playing every day for that to be worth it, I don't know what a good sell is. Guess you should just go play BDO where you can literally pay for power gain you still have to grind for (I think start-up cost if you're serious is 200ish + 15 a month for sub benes). Or wow, where you can buy 200 dollars worth of tokens for the 2 million gold you need for that guaranteed Jaina mount from that paid for with gold raid from that high end community (or SPEND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of gold farming). If you don't want to take the 4% drop chance risk every week until shadowlands patch hits (only one drops in a raid of 25 people, and it's still hard to find groups that can do it regularly), at which point the drop goes down to 1% (for everyone, and the raid won't be soloable until another 2 years). Or even worse, the AH mount that's going to go "extinct" that costs 500-1000 dollars in Gold. GW2 players get half its functionality for free in this game, being able to sell from anywhere (and free up inventory space). This is on top of sub fees. FFXIV would be your amount in a year, easy with the sub fees. And has an MTX shop to boot.

Also can you and your friends list all 78 builds you're using and for what? I'm really curious. I want to know how much of a scrub I am.

Seriously, that's why I buy gems every now and then. Anet is so nice to its players. I don't want them going out of business. I don't even have an intended use. I'm just sick of abuse and Anet is worth it.

There is a reason why I picked GW2 to play over those games. Whataboutism doesn't really help there. Are there games with similar or worse monetization schemes? Ofc. But I'm not playing those games for that very reason, and GW2 used to provide a more sensible and player friendly approach rather than just trying to provide a platform to milk people on.

I gladly pay for new content, but not having gotten much or in many cases any new content which I enjoy most (Fractal CM's, Raids etc.) and then being charged hundreds of euros to keep playing the same old content with at least the same variety in builds to keep it somewhat interesting feels pretty terrible.

Having invested into Legendary Armors for multiple characters heavily disincentivizes same profession alts for those. The very purpose of that investment was that I can adjust the character on the fly (without using up much inventory space) no matter what Raid Boss I'm on, if I want to play easy open world, solo some harder group content, jump into WvW, etc.Now having to buy a character slot, make, boost and gear a new character to the exact same setup I could previously just swap to on a character with Legendary gear with Arc because I'm out of Build Slots to buy, or the build and content isn't worthwhile paying 10€ for Loadout slots for just makes me not want to play that content anymore instead.

And yes, it's easy to say it's just a few Traits swapped around, runes clicked into every piece of legendary gear, a change of Stats, swapping some Utility skills, etc. No big deal, right? Well it is if you have to do that almost every Raid boss, every time you go into Fractals, every time you want to hop into WvW for just a few minutes, run around in OW for a bit etc., let alone remembering and double checking all those hundreds of combinations.A template system is supposed to fix exactly that issue, not make it worse and charge you for it.

If you play all 9 professions, or even just a few of them, in all 3 Game Modes (and their sub modes), ~80 builds are incredibly quickly reached for hardcore players.All the setups for different PvP comps, WvW Zerg play and roaming, Open World Builds, Solo/fun builds and especially different setups for a variety of Raid bosses and roles on them as well as different Fractal setups on 4-9 professions don't exactly make that outlandish.

Now it's great that the system caters to you with 1-2 builds, being someone who probably didn't care much for such a feature. But one would think a "Template" system should cater to people who wanted/needed a Template system.This does not. At all. The ridiculous monetization (for which the system clearly was primarily designed, over or rather instead of functionality) is just the insult to injury.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Asum.4960 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.

All this makes me believe is that letting people have something for free and then monetizing it later is a bad idea. Even build templates at 4 dollars a pop i would say is not that exorbitant, and then it's even better when you realize they gave everyone 6 for free with account wide ones. Usually when a company does something dirty they just add the item and expect you to buy it. Anet did a lot to soften the blow and even gave everyone more storage space to boot. And even allowed you to repurpose previous, invisible templates.

Unless you worked on things like Legendary Armor's/Backpacks or even Trinkets for exactly that reason, to already have saved those inventory slots.With close to 20 builds on both my Guardian and Necro back in Arc DPS, how much inventory space did that take? One (invisible) bag slot, aka 5€ for 20 builds each.

All I needed was 3 sets of Trinkets (Power, Condi, Support), the rest of adjustments for all builds was easily made by saving different Armor Stat and rune combinations.

Now in Anet's system, not only can you not actually save and load builds, those 20 builds per character also would now cost 200€ per character, if it even was possible to save for than 6 Builds for 60€ per character (and those previously bought Bag slots for spare Gear for all my characters are now useless).

That's both a massive price jump together with a drastic functionality and QoL drop, which surprisingly upset players who relied upon Templates to enjoy the game.Which is also why Anet allowed Arc Templates and why it wasn't a bad idea to do so for all these years. Arc provided a valuable service to GW2 and Anet which they couldn't provide, keeping people who needed that service engaged with the game and as spending customers for years, until Anet got greedy and wanted all the money, grossly misstepping with their feature and causing a hardcore player exodus and massive revenue drop.

People probably would have been fine with unlocking unlimited native Templates for even the price of a whole expansion like PoF, paying 30€ for it. But asking for nearly 60€ per character for a measly 6 character Loadouts which you can't even safe and load was and is a kick in the teeth for people who relied on such a system.Arc previously existing or not. Many of those players tired of swapping their gear more in for example Raids than actually playing the game just would have quit already earlier if it wasn't for Arc.

@Firebeard.1746 said:Well I only do 1-2 builds on my alts. I've dipped in a little bit to set up different raid builds for my main. But literally just plan on having an open world build + niche raid filler build for all of my alt characters (which means I don't need to do anything for them, 3 templates and 2 gear sets is plenty). I've spent 20 bucks on templates. Probably won't again for a long time. If ever. Most people, probably won't need to buy templates, and tbh, any altoholic now basically gets a free open world equipment set + a free PVE setm with up to 3 different builds. That's plenty.

Lemme get this straight, using your numbers: you and your friends have 8.7ish builds per character (using account + individual)? 78? Really? That's a kitten ton. And you use them so much that you need to spend money instead of jostling a few traits around every now and then? Most classes orbit around the same specializations variants. You're right, it's a ton of money,. If you're getting 9 classes worth of content, with 6 builds for each, plus another, what 24 account builds? That means you're playing the game a heck of alot & in a heck of a lot different ways. if you don't think 144 dollars is worth that sheer quantity of content you're playing every day for that to be worth it, I don't know what a good sell is. Guess you should just go play BDO where you can literally pay for power gain you still have to grind for (I think start-up cost if you're serious is 200ish + 15 a month for sub benes). Or wow, where you can buy 200 dollars worth of tokens for the 2 million gold you need for that guaranteed Jaina mount from that paid for with gold raid from that high end community (or SPEND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of gold farming). If you don't want to take the 4% drop chance risk every week until shadowlands patch hits (only one drops in a raid of 25 people, and it's still hard to find groups that can do it regularly), at which point the drop goes down to 1% (for everyone, and the raid won't be soloable until another 2 years). Or even worse, the AH mount that's going to go "extinct" that costs 500-1000 dollars in Gold. GW2 players get half its functionality for free in this game, being able to sell from anywhere (and free up inventory space). This is on top of sub fees. FFXIV would be your amount in a year, easy with the sub fees. And has an MTX shop to boot.

Also can you and your friends list all 78 builds you're using and for what? I'm really curious. I want to know how much of a scrub I am.

Seriously, that's why I buy gems every now and then. Anet is so nice to its players. I don't want them going out of business. I don't even have an intended use. I'm just sick of abuse and Anet is worth it.

There is a reason why I picked GW2 to play over those games. Whataboutism doesn't really help there. Are there games with similar or worse monetization schemes? Ofc. But I'm not playing those games for that very reason, and GW2 used to provide a more sensible and player friendly approach rather than just trying to provide a platform to milk people on.

I gladly pay for new content, but not having gotten much or in many cases any new content which I enjoy most (Fractal CM's, Raids etc.) and then being charged hundreds of euros to keep playing the same old content with at least the same variety in builds to keep it somewhat interesting feels pretty terrible.

Having invested into Legendary Armors for multiple characters heavily disincentivizes same profession alts for those. The very purpose of that investment was that I can adjust the character on the fly (without using up much inventory space) no matter what Raid Boss I'm on, if I want to play easy open world, solo some harder group content, jump into WvW, etc.Now having to buy a character slot, make, boost and gear a new character to the exact same setup I could previously just swap to on a character with Legendary gear with Arc because I'm out of Build Slots to buy, or the build and content isn't worthwhile paying 10€ for Loadout slots for just makes me not want to play that content anymore instead.

And yes, it's easy to say it's just a few Traits swapped around, runes clicked into every piece of legendary gear, a change of Stats, swapping some Utility skills, etc. No big deal, right? Well it is if you have to do that almost every Raid boss, every time you go into Fractals, every time you want to hop into WvW for just a few minutes, run around in OW for a bit etc., let alone remembering and double checking all those hundreds of combinations.A template system is supposed to fix exactly that issue, not make it worse and charge you for it.

If you play all 9 professions, or even just a few of them, in all 3 Game Modes (and their sub modes), ~80 builds are incredibly quickly reached for hardcore players.All the setups for different PvP comps, WvW Zerg play and roaming, Open World Builds, Solo/fun builds and especially different setups for a variety of Raid bosses and roles on them as well as different Fractal setups on 4-9 professions don't exactly make that outlandish.

Now it's great that the system caters to you with 1-2 builds, being someone who probably didn't care much for such a feature. But one would think a "Template" system should cater to people who wanted/needed a Template system.This does not. At all. The ridiculous monetization (for which the system clearly was primarily designed, over or rather instead of functionality) is just the insult to injury.

You can actually get really close to the 20 builds for 2 characters and it doesn't cost 200 euros. 6 builds per character plus 24 account wide. That puts you at 36ish for 2 chars. You may have to do some cleverness on your swapping and use one slot as temporary storage on the account wide one. The account wide slots are cheaper. Way cheaper. In usd to max out account wide, it's 3500 gems which is about 40 dollars (a little more, but if you got the free extra 3 slots it's less, i believe the first 3 are free). Then the character ones are 900 gems. Times 2. 1800. The total comes to about 5300 gems or about 65 dollars.

And are you really using 80 different builds? Can you list them?

[Firebeard.1746]

@Hyrai.8720 said:

@"Firebeard.1746" said:This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an kitten asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

no, THIS is the problem: if the leechers keep leeching, the experienced players will get tired and either stop doing the content or join a static or put up ridiculous kp walls. (that's what we saw in the past with raids)

and where does that leave the leechers?will they stop playing the content? then its them who are killing the content, and everyone else is happy to play "dead" content without any leechers.or will they suddenly start joining or creating training groups because there is noone to leech of? then why didnt they do so in the first place? - i'll tell you why: because they are not really interested in doing the content. they just want easy loot.

those who

are

interested will always find a way to do it. be it by learning it themselves or by joining a group of experienced players who are openly willing to teach them. (usually marked with something like "training" in the lfg description...)if you are one of those willing to teach: nice, i respect that. you are an enrichment to the community.but the same way you will have to respect that i am not willing to spend my limited playtime teaching or carrying others.

What if these "leechers" are all different people that haven't learned it yet? A strike should be teachable and winnable by the average player if taught, with maybe one wipe (at 2-3 your group keeps falling apart and no one is learning anything, unless it's super new content). Separating the community into leechers and non leechers is the wrong mentality for intro raid content: we're supposed to be getting people comfortable with trying an learning mechanics.

[Asum.4960]

@"Firebeard.1746" said:You can actually get really close to the 20 builds for 2 characters and it doesn't cost 200 euros. 6 builds per character plus 24 account wide. That puts you at 36ish for 2 chars. You may have to do some cleverness on your swapping and use one slot as temporary storage on the account wide one. The account wide slots are cheaper. Way cheaper. In usd to max out account wide, it's 3500 gems which is about 40 dollars (a little more, but if you got the free extra 3 slots it's less, i believe the first 3 are free). Then the character ones are 900 gems. Times 2. 1800. The total comes to about 5300 gems or about 65 dollars.

And are you really using 80 different builds? Can you list them?

What about the other 7 professions? Also the account wide slots don't cover gear, which is equally if not more annoying to swap around than Traits and Utilities.Paying 40€/$ to save one half of what makes up a build, for just 2 characters, and still having to "be clever" aka having to fiddle around with temporary/empty slots to swap stuff out doesn't exactly sound like a good value proposition.

Yes, I could list 80 builds for 9 professions across PvP, WvW (Zerg, Roaming), Raids, Fractals, general Open World and fun/solo challenges.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Asum.4960 said:

@"Firebeard.1746" said:You can actually get really close to the 20 builds for 2 characters and it doesn't cost 200 euros. 6 builds per character plus 24 account wide. That puts you at 36ish for 2 chars. You may have to do some cleverness on your swapping and use one slot as temporary storage on the account wide one. The account wide slots are cheaper. Way cheaper. In usd to max out account wide, it's 3500 gems which is about 40 dollars (a little more, but if you got the free extra 3 slots it's less, i believe the first 3 are free). Then the character ones are 900 gems. Times 2. 1800. The total comes to about 5300 gems or about 65 dollars.

And are you really using 80 different builds? Can you list them?

What about the other 7 professions? Also the account wide slots don't cover gear, which is equally if not more annoying to swap around than Traits and Utilities.Paying 40€/$ to save one half of what makes up a build, for just 2 characters, and still having to "be clever" aka having to fiddle around with temporary/empty slots to swap stuff out doesn't exactly sound like a good value proposition.

Yes, I could list 80 builds for 9 professions across PvP, WvW (Zerg, Roaming), Raids, Fractals, general Open World and fun/solo challenges.

And you use all 80, every day? And they're so dissimilar a few adjustments aren't enough? And so frequently that build storage is necessary? The point i made earlier is if you need specific storage for them you must be playing a hell of a lot and that's a good value proposition.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Hyrai.8720 said:

@"Firebeard.1746" said:This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an kitten asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

no, THIS is the problem: if the leechers keep leeching, the experienced players will get tired and either stop doing the content or join a static or put up ridiculous kp walls. (that's what we saw in the past with raids)

and where does that leave the leechers?will they stop playing the content? then its them who are killing the content, and everyone else is happy to play "dead" content without any leechers.or will they suddenly start joining or creating training groups because there is noone to leech of? then why didnt they do so in the first place? - i'll tell you why: because they are not really interested in doing the content. they just want easy loot.

those who

are

interested will always find a way to do it. be it by learning it themselves or by joining a group of experienced players who are openly willing to teach them. (usually marked with something like "training" in the lfg description...)if you are one of those willing to teach: nice, i respect that. you are an enrichment to the community.but the same way you will have to respect that i am not willing to spend my limited playtime teaching or carrying others.

No one is making you do anything. But i'd argue that the moment you don't feel like working with other players to climb that mountain, and you just do it rote for rewards, then it's awful mmo content.

I also want to take some time to address anet's mechanics design: it's above and beyond anything in any other mmo in terms of difficulty. There are times in jormag for example when it's difficult to see your chains because of other mechanics/explosions going on like orbs. Basically anet has no problem throwing a visual flare in your face and telling you to manage more than one mechanic at once.

Also, this is in boneskinner and largos twins: the reaction times are awful. You don't have a ton of time to even notice they're happening. I think someone said on largos the pulsing aoe is like .8 seconds to notice, human reaction time is like .2. You have .6 seconds to not get distracted by your action bar, rotation or even another mechanic. I can't remember being asked to do this in any other mmo. Beating mechanics like these feel like an accomplishment, but doing it in the wrong environment (a non dedicated community) feels like wasted time and lots of aggravation. I also wonder if older people or disabled ones are incapable of beating these mechanics, especially when they overlap.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Hyrai.8720" said:

no, THIS is the problem: if the leechers keep leeching, the experienced players will get tired and either stop doing the content or join a static or put up ridiculous kp walls. (that's what we saw in the past with raids)

and where does that leave the leechers?will they stop playing the content? then its them who are killing the content, and everyone else is happy to play "dead" content without any leechers.or will they suddenly start joining or creating training groups because there is noone to leech of? then why didnt they do so in the first place? - i'll tell you why: because they are not really interested in doing the content. they just want easy loot.

those who are interested will always find a way to do it. be it by learning it themselves or by joining a group of experienced players who are openly willing to teach them. (usually marked with something like "training" in the lfg description...)if you are one of those willing to teach: nice, i respect that. you are an enrichment to the community.but the same way you will have to respect that i am not willing to spend my limited playtime teaching or carrying others.The same arguments were told over and over again for raids. The end result? Anet is now saying raids are not popular enough to justify dedicating any resources to them.

I'm sure, though, that all people that were completely sure everything could be solved with saying "L2P of GTFO" are going to have a lot of fun in all the future raids that won't be made.

I'm also sure, that if strikes end up as a dropped content as well, all those people will still think (again) it wasn't the content's problem at all.

[Tails.9372]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:if strikes end up as a dropped content as wellThey most likely will be, player participation is probably going to be even worse than raids because the "target audience" is even more niche and they also don't offer any worthwhile long term goals for the players to work towards. Sadly A-Net still doesn't seem to understand what the actual issue is.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Tails.9372 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:if strikes end up as a dropped content as wellThey most likely will be, player participation is probably going to be even worse than raids because the "target audience" is even more niche and they also don't offer any worthwhile long term goals for the players to work towards. Sadly A-Net still doesn't seem to understand what the actual issue is.

No long term goals? A ton of precursors can drop from the weekly chests (not all), also there's a chance for ascended drops, in additon to the fact that spamming forging steel is probably one of the most efficient ways to get enough currency for outright buying them (not sure if shards are capped per day, but still, do it daily). I would say they're more efficient than fractals and easier to get into.

[Safandula.8723]

annoying fight, to many knockbacks, dmg timing after filling circles is weird af, bugs happens a bit to often. its good to have some harder strikes, but some stuff there could be fixed