Carighan.6758

I love how this works in the US. "Hey welcome back from your holidays! Also: **You're fired!**". :pensive:

Layoffs aren't really something we should joke about.

That being said, ANet [sure was clever about this](https://imgflip.com/i/2uk5eo)!

*Ruin* I tell you! *Ruuuiiiin!*

(what's left to ruin, actually?)

> @"Curunen.8729" said:

> Oh come on, I usually support most of the posts you make but this one isn't helpful.

I mean, given the state the game is in right now I doubt anything **but** a defeatist attitude is a sensible attitude to take.

> @"Klakax.2596" said:

> Listen, people beg for old class design in WoW - they felt better few years ago with more abilities than they do today with less.

Okay maybe I should have clarified: I don't know how WoW evolved after Cataclysm. Stopped playing at the end of it. That being said, folding excessive cruft and deadweight abilities and talents was a thing *in TBC, WotLK and Cataclyms already*, and worked very well.

> @"Klakax.2596" said:

> I hope this is a joke. World of Warcraft went to sh... because they started removing abilities and class gameplay feels terrible.

It's not a joke and if you think that was the core of WoW's class design worries then you ought to play it first. There's a good reason that minimalist design is usually seen as rather important, at least to a degree. GW2's utter clutter makes it quite easy to understand why, too.

First of all, I'd like to see an expansion to begin with. There's no indication that we're getting one.

Then:

* I want them to stop design-by-accretion. Like World of Warcraft, start folding/removing abilities as new are added in an expansion. There's *so much cruft* in each spec and class. Cut all the excessive stuff!

* Seriously rework the trait/traitline system from the ground up. Leave no stone unturned.

* While we're at it, cut&replace item stats with something entirely focused on style, remove item stats whole, do all balancing directly in the skills and traits. The new system isn't expansion-exclusive of course, but the expansion brings a significant focus on it.

* Mobile app integration for chat and auction house.

Without meaning ill... that doesn't look good as a set IMO. It looks as if someone made a disco-version of the Power Rangers 2017 movie outfits. :joy:

> @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> We dont need a shiro copycat power dps legend, but something more unique to make a new way of playing the class as Especs is intended for.

You know what I'd want? Or rather accept, as far as a Greatsword goes?

An *active* pet class. Make it an... Animancer. Someone who can, Guardian-style-but-more, animate a weapon to fight for them. New weapon can then be Greatsword, whatever.

Point is, they don't have weapon skills anyhow. Instead 1-5 become the pet control skills, and that pet has the autoattack and all, separate from me. But it has to be babysitted and controlled, because it's 90% of what I can do, only it is vulnerable and won't do anything on its own.

List of weapons which would be utterly boring to get because everyone and their mother already has them:

1. Greatsword.

That being said, now that autologin is no longer a thing, can we have the **old login screen back**? :heart: Pwetty pwease? :heart:

For those who don't know it, this was the old screen:

Importantly, it had a chroma hash for your password, a really neat thing to double-check whether you typed it correctly before hitting enter.

That sounds like other than challenging yourself, there's no real reason to ever play Power, tbh. It sounds like a straight-up downgrade.

> @"whoknocks.4935" said:

> After playing both variants for the first time I must say power needs way more skill to play, you usually run full zerk with some mara and zero toughness and even a noob dh with traps can oneshot you if you fail one evades.

Question: Assuming you *got* the skill, would Power actually be stronger than as if the same (high-skilled) person played Condi?

> @"Nephalem.8921" said:

> why you can cc kalla's spirits to be completely useless while you can't affect scourge shades at all.

There's an important hint in the names. _Kalla's *Spirits*_. _Scourge *Shades*_. *Spirits*. *Shades*.

(that is to say, they're not the same type of skill)

I'll be honest: This was pretty disappointing.

It never really connected with me, the episode had so many great moments but never did anything with them:

* For one, this was *the* chance to make us feel like the "Commander", not some lowest-paygrade worker going around doing menial busywork. What did we do though? Lots of busywork.

* Second, the final fight was super confusing, had a lot of technical problems and clipped me into terrain so often I think being not clipping into somewhere should be considered the bugged "non-normal" state at this point :pensive:

* There was a lot of problems with wanting to make me care about certain elements (e.g. Caithe), but due to the briefness of each episode and how they have to be self-contained, everything only ever lasts 5-15 minutes. You can't make *care* in 5-15 minutes!

* The new zone has pretty parts, but feels really hacked together, the sub-zones don't seem to belong with one another really.

* The hearts are - as always - uninspired and really should not be repeatable because they ask you to do some of the most boring tasks in the game, daily. Granted this is not a problem unique to this episode but again an episode goes by without either abolishing repeatable hearts or at least improving them substantially.

* The events are slightly better than in past season-4 zones, but still pretty meh. No comparison to the huge map-swinging chains older zones had. No comparison to temple event chains before multiserver mergers.

* Nevermind the two metas, they seem really lazy, and having two dailies rely on the same thing is just... :frown:

* It's super-sad that after the old way of doing living story was dropped, everything is now always frozen in time. Zoning out of the final story into the open zone *which doesn't acknowledge what just happened* completely kills any and all emotional impact of it. :scream:

However, there are some positive elements to it, too. For one, the new mount skill is super-fun and allows some really cool combinations. Also, that Dredge in the SW corner!

Honestly I'd go back a step further: **How many maps does a game where we don't outgrow maps actually need?**

The more maps you add, the less possible it becomes to keep them all relevant. It's similar to how the slew of skills, traits, item stats and all the billions of combinations cause balance issues: there's just too much, you could cut 95%++ and lose nothing of relevance because all these combinations would be factually sub-par.

With maps, it's that the sheer volume means you **cannot** find a sensible reason for each map to be around. Even if each were needed for a farm material which can only be obtained there, you can't freely repeat this, plus it leads to plenty fan-ire as it is quite obvious how forced this is.

A smarter solution, IMO, would be:

* Use new maps as sparingly as possible. Adapt the story and progression to either remove zones for story/lore reasons as new get added or transform existing zones into what you need them to be, effectively being replaced by a new map which just shares a few similarities and the name.

* Given the reduced pool of maps, categorize them into "farm maps" (you'd only need a handful of endgame materials since you don't have so many maps), "dangerous maps" (hold big metas, don't enter alone, like old Orr - higher money pay-off in a group in certain farm spots however!), "money maps" (efficient farm solo, less total income than dangerous maps of course). Each of the latter two types can exist once per common currency as farm maps are for materials.

* Re-align maps to the new balance, effectively giving **one** optimal spot for each context and desire.

> @"Okami Amaterasu.9237" said:

> "The big thing" that just happened was Aurene's Death. There's no epilogue because it's meant to be a moment of confusion, hopelessness, etc. Braham even asks aloud "What do we do now?" and we say "I don't know . . ." because it's a confusing, heartbreaking moment.

Uh, actually... what we do is go right back to farming events and doing dailies, including the ones in the very zone. Plus right after we zone out, everything is unchanged and back to normal, so it's trivial to forget about any emotional impact there might have been.

> @"Okami Amaterasu.9237" said:

> Everything else? You mean the other two instances? I think the first instance could've gone a little faster and/or added music, sure. I think the second instance was well-done and had a nice cutscene with Caithe and Aurene. Both of those instances developed the story/plot further so they're not "pointless" or anything. What would you want changed? The open-world stuff is meant to help extend the episode's playtime just a little. It also gives us a reason to explore parts of the new map and participate in the open world instead of just going from instance-instance-instance, done. How would you do it differently?

No I meant, the fact that Aurene dies for naught because well, we got told if we just attack Kralky then that'd happen, and we did, and it happened (another part why I didn't feel there was much emotional impact, we clearly got told this would happen, it even was a big thing at the time).

But hrm, how would I do it different... it's not easy to think about because I dislike the basic structure of how GW2 releases the story. But I would focus on the part where the Commander is forced to take action they don't want to (since we know it'll kill Aurene), and then on the gravity of it. More logistics, diplomacy, no fetch quests, no constant handholding individual NPCs. Show how big a thing this is.

Ideally play with how difficult this is, too. Make us miss important parts of the fight because we're busy getting a huge multi-facetted army into gear. Make us in fact lose parts of the preparation due to that. Force the Commander to do the risky thing. This'd drive the part where we are too cocky home much better because the player feels like they **want** to go smash things, since the game actively kept them away from the action now. I didn't **ever** feel "Oh yay, go smash Kralky!" in this episode, it just felt... boring? Samey? The visuals are different but I just keep hammering on whatever has a red name? The final fight versus Balthazar felt a lot better, and that one was already... meh.

And most importantly: Change the last ending, the part where you walk. What a way to toss out the potential grievance from the Commander willingly sacrificing Aurene when they know it'll kill her. It should show our allies abandoning us. We should have seen them trying to stop us, other than Canach's usual and by-now-ignored "this is a shitty plan"-comments. And in the end they should be - rightfully - angry. Bonus points if due to the instance overlapping we no longer see our allies around the zone afterwards.

It's interesting, I had nearly the opposite reaction. To me this is a *really* bad episode. Not in idea, the ending idea is neat. The execution however:

* The ending also lacks emotional impact. The key death we were foretold. That we lost... umm... we do that a lot? HoT beginning? Fleet entirely wasted? Important character deaths happen frequently? Defense of Lion's Arch and it getting destroyed? It's nothing truly special, pretty as it was.

* Most of the instances are terribly confusing due to the characters chatting in-realtime during the instance. While combat is ongoing. And colors flashing everywhere. I had to turn off most sounds just so I could actually follow what was happening.

* There's no epilogue at all once you come out of the final instance. Nothing changed. Where's the big thing which just happened?

* Ogden is an even worse Deus Ex Machina than Taimi is. And "the time wasn't right"? Oh yeah until Joko is dead, I forgot that's part of the "tell Heroes about Ultimate Weapon"-checklist, how silly of me, kill that which has no life is of course on there! :joy:

* Way too much is automated. Combat feels weird, it should be oppressive, but everything just dies randomly because nothing is ever clearly shown due to the amount of purple flashing.

* We have big K sitting there and yet we... get asked to look away from him. Most of the time.

* Typical yak-shaving story, to do X we have to get Y done for which we need Z but we only get Z by helping A do B, bla bla. We're the *Commander*! Order minions to do it! Oversee minions doing it! Get stuff done!

* The whole Caithe thing? Leftover art assets or what was that about? Lasted about 7 minutes I think though I didn't check the clock, granted.

I would say if the very ending was the same but everything else changed, I think it'd be really good. But the way it is, it files in the typical "good idea, bad execution" I see so often in this game's story :pensive:

Given how the past two seasons, PoF and balance/system changes went... actually, nothing.

Sounds super-negative, but it's more about curbing expectations so everything is a positive surprise.

No there is in fact no counter.

It was purposely designed this way. ANet tried long and hard to shut sPvP down to save resources, but it never worked. So with PoF they added Mirage, a factually **unkillable** spec. As this results in all matches being mirage vs mirage and no one ever dies so the matches stall, sPvP falls apart and can be shut down.

It has been this way since PoF release in fact, but you're actually the very first person to realize that :+1:

Meh, DoK is **so** unfinished I just gave up on everything related to it and left it. It's clearly rushed with a significant portion of the content undone.

> @"Curunen.8729" said:

> I don't think that an elite skill such as Jaunt can be compared to the usage of elite skills on other classes, because while it may take an elite slot it's not seen as an "addition" to a build, rather its effect is more foundational to the entire mirage gameplay - enabling mobility due to static dodge, interacting with other mechanics such as Mirrors and so on. It could be seen as a supplementary elite spec mechanic that happens to be an elite skill.

I sometimes feel maybe the class-design could be done a **lot** more elegantly if most elites worked like that. If they had some permanent or frequent effect, and as a result were an important cornerstone of the gameplay instead of a rare but powerful ability.

But honestly?

**None** of the elites in this game feel all that impressive. They're all either too weak or on too long CDs to be what I think an Elite should be, that is, the cornerstone of your spec and loadout. It should drive who the character is, in a way.

Yeah exactly, I just want a "buff manager" addon like I had in WoW, which would tell me when to refresh things and whether I am currently in the green or not, and whether it'd be worth recasting or no one is in range anyhow.

Such a shame they don't have a public API for addon development :pensive:

> @"jqjazz.4097" said:

> so nothing new actually changing in wvw yet again :( Raymond Lukes.6305 said "we have made some really good and exciting progress, we are still a ways out from the launch of World Restructuring and Alliances." meaning if we wait as long as we have since the very 1st announcement wvw will be pretty much a dead zone and gw3 maybe on the horizon! oh happy days for us wvw'ers, wrap it in a xmas box and put it under the tree for 2020

Yeah but did you expect anything else?

Guild Wars 2 is, by and large, **old** by now. Yeah there are juggernauts of near-endless life such as WoW, but in the grand scheme of MMOs it's nearing the EOL where the playerbase shrinks considerably and the game is put on minimal-team life support to keep the remaining players happy with small tidbits.

Meaning, the fact ANet has someone working on this **at all** probably means this is as much explorative work for whatever comes next - say, a Guild Wars 3 - as it is an actual update to GW2.