Zephire.8049

So.... context?

Because 7838 damage over 3 seconds is not much unless you run 'zerker stats, are a glass cannon, and don't run a cleanse in PvP/WvW. Just by going by that screen, it looks like one person tagged you with some condis 3+ seconds earlier and nothing else happened, which is pretty dang tame considering what all is out there.

Geez, no. Already there's a huge number of people who think you should never report anyone for chat -- that you should block and move on. This would just make things worse as the assumption would be the cave was a free space where you can't be reported for anything, and there would be so many people complaining about "snowflakes", "SJWs", "PC Police" and such entering a space to be "deliberately triggered" after they get banned for saying hateful and toxic things.

There are plenty of places on the internet where you could meet people this way and connect with others who play GW2 and would want to be in a troll cave guild. You could also do something like make a Discord server. You say it's a hassle to use Discord or TS, but if that's the kind of environment you want, *you* are the one who is going to have to find/make it. Neither Guild Wars nor Arenanet has ever been for the 4chan crowd, thus there is zero reason why they should put in development and support resources to create and maintain such a place that would only be a toxic dumpster fire.

The PvP lobby is bad enough, no point spreading it to the rest of the game with a supposed "Get out of being banned free" card.

It's fine the way it is now, imo. If you want it ASAP, you can stack boosters and follow a zerg and be done in ~6 hours, which is way faster than GoE is. There is no cost to you outside of time, unlike many steps that require hundreds of gold to complete (using Silverwastes as a measurement of gold-per-hour, a step that requires 100g of mats equals ~5 hours of farming). It's not timegated like some parts of collections (see: anything requiring Orr temples), or relies on luck/camping a spot waiting for an event (again, see: Orr temples). And it doesn't require relying on other people to get it done -- you can get it by solo roaming in WvW, but you can't casually solo all the fractal collection items.

Or, if you know you're going to work on a legendary/start working on a legendary, start doing the easy dailies to stock up on potions. 1-3 WvW dailies every day are easy and can be solo'd even during high activity times. 80 potions will net you the GoB, so if you average 2 per day you can get it in 40 days for minimal work. The Badge of Tribute you buy from the guild vendor gets you Big Spender, so even if you get that every time it comes up until you actually need GoB you're still making a big dent in the reward track. You can also sell the badge on the TP and earn silver to put towards the legendary.

Or you can combine the two and go at your own pace without burning out on a full run from 0 to GoB.

Making a legendary is rarely a snap decision that gets done in a day and the GoE requires, much, much more time than buying an item, killing a yak, standing in one spot for a minute, slaying a veteran mob, or killing a sentry. In short, if you're working on a legendary it makes sense to start working on the end parts in addition to your immediate step. It's why so many people start hording mats/coins/gemstones when they start a legendary even when they're several steps away from actually needing them.

> @"Leo G.4501" said:

> It's not the lack of creativity, but the lack of drive and the abundance of complacency. I'm sure if the desire and drive were there and they set their goal to implement a centaur race were set, the creative designers in their studio could figure out a way to implement mounts and mount abilities for it.

>

> But none of that matters. You deem it too difficult so that's all you need to say here. Just keep your argument in perspective.

Again, you're ignoring the main issue: resources. It doesn't matter if you have many great ideas and _want_ to pursue them if you don't have the resources to do so.

Fact is, Anet is stretched thin. Putting keys in the wallet? That was one dev's pet project on their off hours. Aurene's cute animations? An animator did that at home after work. There's more that I'm forgetting but plenty of things were done by 1-2 devs on their off hours simply because there's no time to do them at work where they have to follow the set priorities.

Could they come up with something about centaurs if they wanted? Sure. Do they have the resources to do so? Nope. Are they going to funnel their time and energy into something that will never happen instead of what's on the release schedule? Definitely not.

It's very easy to say "why don't people do X?" when you have no idea of what is going on with them and all the barriers they face. And Anet has been very open about how they simply aren't a giant company and have to strictly prioritize things otherwise everything falls apart. If they had to put legendaries are hiatus because they didn't have the people in recent times, why do you think they have the resources to make a whole new race and everything that entails?

With charr neglected as they are, bringing in new races -- especially races that aren't human clones -- is pointless and would stretch thin resources even thinner. It's nice to think about because GW2 has so many cool and interesting races, but fact is 1/5 of our current races has severe clipping issues and often have odd looking bits because their model is so different from humans, norn, and sylvari. Charr cultural armour clips on charr, horns clip through helms, hair clips through the back, etc. Even asura have issues, though to a lesser extent.

Plus now there's mounts and gliding to consider, not to mention a giant backlog of armour that would need to be redone. That's a whooooole lot of work that never goes away (they'll forever have to design, model, and skin new armour and outfits), which means that much general content that does not happen.

(When comparing games, it's also good to consider the companies' positions :) Blizzard is huge, has multiple popular games that bring in a pile of money each day, and WoW hit the market at the perfect time to be extremely popular and to this day gets away with having a subscription. Anet is small, has one IP, and relies on expansions to boost revenue enough to keep going. They simply don't have the resources to spare for such a massive undertaking.)

Nope. I prefer the (for the most part) separation of SAB and the rest of the game. Minis, mail carriers, and weapons are small and don't look terrible, but that art style (super blocky and bright) clashes too much with the rest of the game for anything larger or more common.

It's also not just about just getting enough money to hire someone. Coding and art design is unique among companies. There's the general basics, sure, but a new hire would need to spend time just learning how to work with the game engine and not have it explode, which means an experienced person spending time to teach instead of working on content. And when/who would create the SAB outfits to fund the development of world 3? Either it would be an artist who gets pulled away from more widespread appealing items/content in the hope that it would somehow pay enough to fully employ someone for a year+, or they'd hire someone in the hopes that they can create world 3 and some outfits that are popular enough to pay for their own salary.

And that's assuming they just hire one person (a person who is skilled enough who would willing to take a temporary job instead of a permanent one, no less).

In short, it's a gamble and no matter what would pull resources away from the rest of the game to appeal to a very small group of players.

I can understand and sympathize with the frustration of being left hanging because something got cancelled, but that's life. Media isn't permanent and there's no guarantee it will finish where it was intended, especially when it comes from small companies with finite resources.

Keep in mind the price of unid dye spiked to 45s+ when the raptor and jackal minis hit the BLC because of people mass-buying them to unlock all the minis right away. It's reasonable expect a griffon, skimmer, and springer mini to come out (probably one soon), and while ~20s isn't too interested, ~40s per chest is more enticing if you want straight up gold.

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> Update: depends on the outfit. Works on Riding Clothes, Executioner's, Cook's, and Hexed.

> Doesn't work on Common, Royal Guard, Ancestral, Mad Scientist, Awakened Zealout.

>

> (I don't have any others I can check easily.)

Also works with Pirate Captain's Outfit and Mad King's Outfit, which is utterly hilarious on charr. (I don't own the latter, the preview is just VERY obvious).

Keep in mind that with how aggro (generally) works in GW2, the more toughness you have the more likely mobs will focus on you. If you're doing PvE content, you generally want to avoid toughness unless you're a tanky character.

But it really comes down to what content you're playing and what item/gear/trait you're debating between. There's no one size fits all approach for stats and gearing.

Considering GW2 doesn't lock you out of areas beyond your level, you can still go to zones that are 10, 20, 30, 40+ levels beyond you. Just expect to dodge constantly, have prolonged fights, and get insta-killed.

There is a degree of upscaling in WvW, but it's really not enough. If you're below 80, you are still extremely squishy and hit as hard as a wet sponge because you don't have all traits unlocked and are still running around in greens and blues. Unless PvE upscaling made you on par with an 80, thereby negating the point of leveling, it would be the exact same. People would run into areas and fight mobs that are far beyond them, get frustrated at how "hard" GW2 is, and quit.

There's already plenty of people who have quit because HoT had a learning curve and PoF is said to have really annoying enemies because mobs actually pose a threat if you stand still, no point making core the same. Lack of upleveling makes sense for the personal story, gives people something to work on, introduces people to various things at a gradual pace instead of tossing them in a lake and expecting them to swim or die, and prevents them from frustrating themselves to the point of quitting because they refused to learn the basics.

The frequency of ambushes is a bug. A dev said they're figuring out what is exactly going on and hope to have it fixed in time for the next patch, since it was never intended to happen so often.

I actually quite like it. I'm not one for gaudy particle effects, nor effects/colours that limit wardrobe options. That it's a charr weapon makes it all the better.

Some legendaries are very obvious (hello Bifrost, Dreamer, Dawn, Dusk, and so many more), so it's nice for us folks who prefer otherwise to have an option.

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

>

> They are meant to expose you to a wide variety of activities in this game, not to give you a reason to farm your favorite mode over and over.

> The fact you don't understand this is surprising.

Plus most (all?) legendaries up to Chuka & Champawat _do_ require you to do some fractals. As someone who doesn't do many fractals, they're actually the worst part for me, but one of the points of legendaries is to get people to try things outside their comfort bubble.

You can also mostly AFK rewards tracks in WvW. Doing it during peak times/when there's a queue is rude as heck, but it's not hard to get up to T6 participation then watch Netflix or something and go kill a yak or sentry when your participation starts to decay in 10-15 minutes. Rinse and repeat until you're done. Also embrace ticking down when you have time. A lot of WvW'ers will AFK in spawn or Obsidian Sanctum to eek out every last bit of reward track points and pips.

Also, if you do the easy WvW dailies every day, it's quite easy to amass a large enough amount of potions to complete a reward track. I actually recommend doing this regardless because you never know when it'll come in handy, and you can always use them on the halloween or wintersday reward track and sell over a stack of presents when they're at their most expensive for some nice pocket money.

- Mounts have existed for less than 6 months and you're demanding more.

- You say you don't want to be one-shot but want more power creep at the same time

- You want to completely destroy the gem and gold market.

- You want elite status but don't want to work for anything.

- IP bans aren't effective and would inadvertently ban innocent people.

- You can't get rid of all gear other than exotic without completely destroying the materials market.

- You can increase rare drops via Magic Find.

- If all "nonessential" NPC's were removed, the game would look dead.

- Stack toughness if you want mobs to aggro onto you, avoid it if you don't.

- WvW is large-scale PvP. They took out most PvE elements (such as gathering nodes outside of objectives) because it interfered with and slowed down fights. There's already a problem with people taking up slots to duel or AFK pip farm, there is no need to add a system that encourages people to not participate in WvW.

- You don't know what exploit means.

These aren't QoL fixes, these are things you want for yourself, many of which would fundamentally change the game and destroy its stability in multiple places. The only QoL thing you list is the option to auto-ignore guild invites. The rest is selfish or comes from not understanding what you want changed.

We need an easy (or at least easier) mode in addition to what we have now.

I would love to see the raiding content and story, but I've done my share of raiding in the past in other games, and I can safely say GW2 raiding in its current form is not for me. I have no desire to sit around for over an hour just for a raid to start, and then waiting 5-15 minutes between wipes as people talk or AFK or rage. Throw in the elitism and how if you aren't already experienced and running a meta build, you have to rely on out-of-game methods to try to even find a group, and it's too much of a pain for too small a reward. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt.

Raids take so much dev time to create and feature stories that very few people get to actually experience. Even if you get in, there's so much focus on not dying or wiping the group, there's not much time to be able to focus on or appreciate the lore.

Arenanet advertised GW2 as not your standard MMO, yet raids in their current form is what raids were like in MMOs 10 years ago. And the thing is, since that time 10 years ago, many companies have changed raiding to be more accessible as sinking a large amount of resources into content less than ~15% of plays have the ability to see isn't an ideal situation and ends up feeding into toxicity. By all means have a hard mode with good loot and exclusive skins, but there's no reason not to have a simpler mode so people can actually see and experience raids and the lore locked behind them.

> @"Eidolonemesis.5640" said:

> Then Anet should not code it like Tonics are coded. How hard is that? Just have the character model replaced immediately during 'The Departed' and 'My Enemy of My Enemy' parts of PoF's Storyline (and other parts) until the disguise no longer necessary.

>

> What is the difference between our original character model being able to Mount, mind you, each character wearing different outfits **VS.** a temporary model used for disguise during a Storyline?

Guild War 2's engine is approximately 15 years old. It's build off GW1's engine, which was NOT built with mounts in mind, and at this point is a giant pile of spaghetti code. The engine cannot even handle water anywhere above the Z-axis, to give you an idea of how old it is. GW2's engine was not modified with mounts in mind up until fairly recently, all things considered. If it takes the better part of a year for them to figure out how to add a keyring without breaking things, hacking together a fix to let you mount while transformed isn't going to be as easy as you seem to think it would be. It could be done, most likely, but with a ton of resources that would be better off spent on content or QoL issues that will benefit the majority.

Even the size potions don't work with mounting because, as a dev stated (I believe in an AMA), it would require a heck of a lot of work to get transformations to work with mounts, plus having to go through and whitelisting some transformations (likely only the battle ones) and blacklisting the rest. Then there's also the consideration for the animations. Even with copy-pasting them from what they have now, there would still need to be tweaks to fit the model. The latter doesn't matter so much if only one transformation is allowed to mount, I'll grant you that, but all the other work still needs to be done.

People have given you lore reasons why your character model doesn't change. People have given you tech reasons why your model doesn't change. People have given you resource reasons why your model doesn't change. Yet you continue to reject every single one of them.

BTW: [This is the aura everyone is talking about.](https://i.imgur.com/gRdGOrz.jpg)

I remember way back people were wondering why GW2 didn't have a "proper" trailer, and I'm pretty sure in either a dev video or on the forums a dev said that they wanted the game to speak for itself. What you saw is what you got. And that's something I personally appreciate.

CGI trailers can be nice and they can make you want to play the game, but also no small amount of games have made really great trailers for a game that had a fraction of the graphics. They're useful for telling a story but not so much for showing people the game. The density of models and animations and water/hair/particles will always be way beyond what the game engine is capable of, and like what happened in GW1, people will wonder why certain classes can't do or use something that was shown in the trailer. And after a point, it gets tiring seeing CGI trailers for games and having to look around for what in-game graphics are like. At this point even cell phone games tend to have good (or at least decent) ads and trailers but the actual game graphics are worse than a mid-90s RTS.

Plus there's the issue of cost. Anet is not a big studio and they would need to spend a lot of time and money working on all the parts that go into a CGI trailer. And since they would have to start so far in advance, it's quite possible that some of the stuff in the trailer gets cut but there's no time to fix it all before release date. Even Blizzard has fallen victim to this (Dance Studio, anyone? Granted that was box art and not a trailer), and they get millions a month just from WoW subs alone. I'd rather we get content we can play instead of funneling resources into a trailer that will be relevant for a few months at most.

Braham annoys me to no end. First he yells at you for not caring that Eir died when you knew her longer and were closer to her than he ever was (he also ignores that you kind of have a huge war to fight and cannot stop to mourn one person when so many people are relying on you), then he ends up actively working against you. Perhaps not with the intention to undermine what all you're working on, but when you ask him to stop doing things that could get himself killed or risk what passes as balance, he tells you to mind your own business. He's just so annoying and frustrating to deal with, and I hope the writers have something to either redeem him or make him interesting.

I'm also really annoyed that thanks to Braham going out and doing super dangerous things, Rox has been pushed to the side. I really want to see her as a character and have her grow, but all through LW3 and PoF she's been relegated to Braham's furry babysitter.

(also Braham being so upset over one death (of someone he only just met) is kind of laughable when, as the commander, you have had multiple close people die and seen more deaths than you can count. He's very naive, which is fair enough, but he's so callous and self-absorbed he never even considers the commander's feelings or what the commander has gone through)

> @Mackowidz.4629 said:

> Even if it wouldn't be possible to use both mounts and these tonics at same time, I would like an option to automatically cancel tonic effect when mounting. Currently we can't use mounts during tonic transformation effect, and we need to cancel that effect manually.

>

> In case other players wouldn't like that (so they accidentally don't waste their not-reusable tonics), we could have an option to choose if we want mounts to auto dispel tonic effects or not.

This isn't a bad idea. Being tiny is one of my characters' themes and it's disappointing I can no longer use the tonic without going through the hassle of opening up my bag and clicking it again before mounting up. Ideally the mounts would scale with the two size tonics, but if that's not an option at least the mount cancelling said tonic would be preferable to what we have now. Unless I'm in a city -- and especially when I'm in HoT and PoF -- I don't use the tonic anymore because mobs aggro so easily and that few seconds to turn off a tonic can be the difference between doing what I'm doing or getting stuck in a long-ish fight.

> I would give them less than a week before they revert that option if they did that.

> And no, I don't mean I would give them that much time before rage quitting, I'm giving them that much time after people complain and they're going "okay okay we put it back in".

> I would say a day, but let's be reasonable.

It's pretty obvious at this point that Anet is never going to remove gliders or mounts outside of certain jumping puzzles. One of the reasons why both are allowed in central Tyria is that they knew once people got to use them, people would want to use them everywhere. I think it may have been the pre-PoF mount video where they stated that? Anyway, they went ahead and did it knowing that players would want access to both everywhere so they just skipped the players clamouring for it. Like you say, if mounts were removed from entire zones, the blow back from players would force Anet to revert the change. Especially now with the mount skin fiasco going on. People paying 400+ gems for random skins + bad PR already = Anet not wanting to alienate players even more/ give players even less of a reason to buy mount skins.

The cat's out of the bag and while it could use its nails trimmed, it's not going back.

I have multiple world completions and of my toons that aren't there yet, I have yet more toons that have the starting zones 100%. If not for mounts, it would be extremely boring and frustrating to go back to do starting zones. I played a ton during the closed and open betas to find bugs and try to break things. I am so sick of the starting zones that I just skip them through tomes on new characters. Sure the maps are nice enough, but after a few dozen times, you just want to be done with it ASAP. Especially since the drops and mats from them are barely worth anything, so there's no mat/gold compensation to look forward to.

The problem, as others have pointed out, is both mount scaling (in that they really don't scale) and scaled 80's still putting out tons of damage and having all their skills. You're also ignoring that fact that even in level 60+ zones, there's always some people who absolutely destroy event mobs as the mobs spawn. It's less common, but even in 80-only maps you come across people who blow things up before you can tag them. It's just part of the game and people building open-world toons for pure burst damage.

Mounts are here to stay and I'll just put it out there that in all my years of playing, I have not seen starting zones this active since launch. A lot of that is new players (I have yet to see a new player complain about mounts in starting zones, btw, all the complaints I see are from vet players) but no small amount are also players who are happy to go through starting zones again thanks to mounts. So at the very least, mounts aren't hurting.

Sure mounts could maybe do with some damage scaling, but it's no different than going into a zone at 80 and ranging mobs down with good gear and all your skills. The simple fact is that a new player in white/blue gear with only one weapon and no utilites stands no chance against someone with gear and utilities, regardless of whether or not mounts are involved.

> @ProverbsofHell.2307 said:

> So? That means it's a nice time for less financially secure players to get some gems. Why not just be happy for the less rich players, and actually play the game and earn gems the old fashioned way. It's EASY to make gold in this game, I made 800g in this past month. Wasting your money anyway if you buy gold in this game.

Yep. Plenty of people forget that when the gem<->gold conversion drops like it has, it gives players who can't (or don't) but gems with money access to premium skins and upgrades that normally they don't have access to or have to work all the harder to get. That's not a bad thing. If you can buy gems with real money, great, thank you for supporting Anet! But that's a luxury not everyone can afford, and while the current exchange rate might suck if you're immediately converting to gold, it's a Jokosend for us who were looking at ~110g/400 gems pre-PoF, with it spiking to 135g/400 gems two months ago.

That fluctuation is actually party of a healthy economy and keeps there from being a solid divide between players who can pay real money for items and players who have to spend hours in-game to get enough gold. We have years of history that show it'll bounce back up, and all it would take is a mediocre mount skin or a cool new item or a decent sale for that to happen.

Just got to wait it out like players who buy gems with gold wait until a favourable conversion rate unless they absolutely _need/want_ something.

To go off on what Ohoni brought up, think about horses. There's your standard domesticated ones that have been bred for thousands of years to cater to human wants/needs, to have the right personality, and to be able to bond with humans. One specific example is draft horses were bred to be extremely chill because you don't want an animal that big and strong to be flighty, especially as horses are prey animals and will freak out over nothing. Literally. So domesticated horses, you can ride.

You can also ride mustangs. It takes work to get them human friendly and not freak out with a saddle (and some individuals won't allow a rider period), but mustangs are just feral domesticated horses. They still have all that breeding to make them ideal for human riding and use, and several generations of being feral can't erase that.

But zebras? They're wild animals, and though they look like a horse, they aren't a horse. Some can be tamed, some can even be taught to carry a rider, but most can't. At most they'll tolerate human presence because they're tame, not domesticated. Zebras can and will go to injure or kill people it sees as a threat because there's not thousands of years to breed away from that, and in fact being aggressive is strengthened because it helps with survival.

So think about the griffons that way. The griffon that's a mount would have been bred specifically to allow humans (and other races) to be able to safely ride it, as well as be strong and sound enough to be able to run and fly with a rider on its back. All the other griffons we've come across are wild, with no selective breeding. Some ogres and rangers may be able to tame them, but taming =/= domestication. And you sure as heck wouldn't want to sit on -- let alone ride -- something that may decide it wants to remove you for any little reason. Or no reason in particular.

And with griffons being predators, you also want to breed well away from them seeing riders and handlers as food. Think about dogs and wolves. We've spent tens of thousands of years breeding dogs to not see people as food, even though many are more than capable of killing us. But wolves? Even tame wolves you've raised since they were pups can't be fully trusted, since the instinct to kill is still there. Our griffon mounts are way bigger than dogs, so it wouldn't be a stretch at all to suggest they're really dang chill, sort of like a predatory version of draft horses I mentioned earlier.

There's also stuff about the specifics of breeding and how long it takes them to reproduce, but I've probably rambled on way too much already.

> @Jaken.6801 said:

> I think a simple report that profile option would do the trick.

> Sure some might use it to troll, but then they get their own punishment.

> Otherwise I see it as something that could be regulated with the help of the community

That still requires Anet spending time to moderate user reports which in itself can be used to troll/waste time for something that really doesn't add anything. Plus there's the whole risk of having people upload porn, child porn, nazi images, etc. to official Anet servers. You would either need to approve avatars before they're accepted (which would be a fulltime job for someone) or pre-approve everything and deal with it as it comes up. Having spent most of my teens and all of my twenties on the internet and internet forums, I cannot tell you how much inappropriate, disgusting, or hateful avatars I've seen even on sites where you wouldn't expect it. All it really takes is one person or one group and dozens/hundreds/thousands get exposed to content they didn't want any part in.

I really can't blame a game developer not wanting anything to do with that, since it just causes more work and there's always the risk of legal action. Random forums aren't much of a target, but an MMO dev? High profile and the "think of the children" angle. More avatars would be nice (or being able to take selfies of our characters and using that), but I see no good coming from letting people upload their own avatars.

Charr also need some help with their ability to magnetically hover back pieces and stowed weapons. There are so many pieces I would use on my charr, but I don't because they hover a foot off my back and it just looks strange. I get that charr use a modified human skeleton/mesh, which complicates things, but it's rather ironic that the charr birthday backpack can't really be used on charr (though at least that one looks like a drone or something that would actually hover).

More customization features are also needed. With femcharr, the choice in faces is either smooth and delicate, cute, or really out there/damaged. Males aren't much better. With the facial sliders you can tweak things a bit, but at this point there's 2-3 faces you usually see because people rarely ever pick anything else. And given that charr start training as young cubs and spend their lives fighting, there's a surprising lack of faces that are scarred or otherwise injured.

More manes that aren't super extreme is something else I'd say we need. The makeover kit ones are nice, but they're very in-your-face (with some being intentionally over the top). Some short, neatly clipped ones to balance out the saiyan ones, please? And I'm surprised no new horns have been added yet. They seem like they would be very simple to make yet we're stuck with the ones from launch even with the advent of makeover kits. And like faces, there's only ~3 that people typically choose.

I absolutely love charr but they really haven't been given much TLC compared to the other races even though they're the unique race Anet has pushed the most.