Substance E.4852

The rewards need to be proportional to the time investment and DRM's need "long fractal" time investment but frankly give near "open world dynamic event" rewards

Simply wandering around a lvl 80 vanilla map and doing events is more materially rewarding and feels less tedious

I'll give any instanced content a fair shake since I get tired of meta zerg blob auto attack fests rather quickly but even I stopped giving a fuck once i got the axe skin

Should have just been a third tier of the Storm caller weapons that used either some mat bought with DRM currency or strike crystals

Locking them behind cosmically low RNG had neither made them achievable for the average player, nor has it done anything to keep people interested in the DRM's themselves

As time goes on and the content becomes yet another example of abandonware, the cost of the skins will only skyrocket

> @"Svarty.8019" said:

> Let's get rid of Unblockables.

>

> What's the point? It's not like people are saying "Oh that person is blocking, I'll use my unblockable". That level of gameplay doesn't exist. Unblockable just helps unskilled players with their random ability spamming.

>

> /tut /rolleyes

>

>

Might as well argue that block skills help unskilled players with their poorly timed dodge spamming

Anet broke something when they added one or both of the Drizzlewood maps and the servers are having massive hangups on a scale I've never seen before

Getting rolling 7:11's is nothing new with this game but now it's a common occurrence to get double digit seconds long total freeze ups and the in game monitor saying I'm hitting 2500+ ping for no discernible reason

Much like every other time I have a problem with GW2 desyncs, it's not on my end because I'm not having any issue playing any other games or streaming content and it seems to happen indiscriminately. Time of day, player count, or activity in my vicinity has no apparent direct correlation

I'll lag to hell and back just as often doing drakkar as I will doing a strike mission and can often get spikes just from milling about in the Eye

> @"Jagblade.4627" said:

> > @"Substance E.4852" said:

> > > @"Jagblade.4627" said:

> > > > @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> > > > > @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> > > > > I am glad they did not add a dedicated swimming mount. We got enough mounts as it is already.

> > > >

> > > > I respect your opinion even if I disagree with you on it.

> > >

> > > What Mewcifer said, personally I would like to see more mount variety even if just for flavor's sake. Moa, Dolyak, Karka etc. There are so many pre-existing creatures that could be utilized for it.

> > >

> >

> > They could but there's a slim chance that people are going to actually use them if they aren't better than the skyscale, especially for navigating ravine and cliff filled maps that Anet seems addicted to these days

> >

> > Trying to even do the north drizzlewood meta and keeping up with the zerg without a dragon is difficult, substantially more so if you don't even have the griffon

> >

> > Anet painted themselves into a corner when they made aerial mounts

> >

> > They'd be far better off simply making parallel mounts that work the same as existing ones but have wholly new rigs, ideally not simply as $30 gemstore unlocks

>

> Fair points all. I suppose I'm in the minority that tends to just use the mount I like the look of or whatever I'm in the mood for most days but I can see why most people would just stick to what performs the best if given the choice.

Oh I mean i'd love more gimmicky mounts but when you just see everyone camping the skyscale 24/7 it does make it look like an uphill battle to design something that people will want to use without just going full WoW flying mount

> @"Virdo.1540" said:

> What exactly is the reason to play between level 500 & 10000 now? For the already terrible rewards? For meeting new toxic friends? Or an title that doesnt to anything (it dont even give Accountpoints)?

> Can i refund my time?

The change forces you to spend less time in a mode you don't even like to get rewards that are the only reason you're there in the first place...

And this is a problem?

I'm going to need you to break this down further because I'm not following the logic

> @"Jagblade.4627" said:

> > @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> > > @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> > > I am glad they did not add a dedicated swimming mount. We got enough mounts as it is already.

> >

> > I respect your opinion even if I disagree with you on it.

>

> What Mewcifer said, personally I would like to see more mount variety even if just for flavor's sake. Moa, Dolyak, Karka etc. There are so many pre-existing creatures that could be utilized for it.

>

They could but there's a slim chance that people are going to actually use them if they aren't better than the skyscale, especially for navigating ravine and cliff filled maps that Anet seems addicted to these days

Trying to even do the north drizzlewood meta and keeping up with the zerg without a dragon is difficult, substantially more so if you don't even have the griffon

Anet painted themselves into a corner when they made aerial mounts

They'd be far better off simply making parallel mounts that work the same as existing ones but have wholly new rigs, ideally not simply as $30 gemstore unlocks

Realistically, probably never

The game doesn't seem to have a problem keeping mats stable as is and I have no doubt that Anet has long since learned that hyper rare infusions generate comparable player engagement with a tiny, tiny fraction of the effort

We're also starting to see gem store and BLC rare drop weapons with effects very nearly the same as legendarys just minus the footfalls or auras

That phoenix feather could easily have been a legendary with one of the two added to it and even back items are already more elaborate than the armor ever was

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> Not everything should be viable everywhere

Okay great but we're talking about Druid, not "everything" and WvW specifically, not "everywhere"

The wackiest thing is that it took them 7 years to remove a mechanical death penalty from a pvp mode

Remember when you had to actually pay for armor repairs in WvW?

> @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> Wanting the warclaw to be a little better in PvE is not a *need* it is purely a *personal desire*. If you wanna ask anet to buff it because you want to ride around on a big cat in PvE without feeling like you are wasting too much time, sure, ask for that. But don't also ask them to code in a bunch of PvE unique abilities for it as well.

>

> And do not present it as if it is something the game *needs*.

They just spent magnitudes more time to make the skimmer work underwater, a feature that nearly no one asked for, will probably use, or was meant for the mount in the first place yet "Make the warclaw leap value 2-3 times longer in pve" is a bridge too far for reasons

> @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > @"Substance E.4852" said:

> > > @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > > > @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > > > > @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > > > > > @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > > > > > > @"Pifil.5193" said:

> > > > > > > I fail to see why the Visage of the Khan-ur is OK because it's a drop but this is not OK because it's crafted. Just the OP's dislike of crafting showing?

> > > > > > >

> > > > > > > Regardless, it seems to be moot as the Frost Legion Infusion also drops from the final chest after the Frost Citadel meta according to the wiki. So this seems to be another example of ArenaNet providing multiple paths to an item which is great to see!

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Well, when you make something a rare drop, its because you want it to be a rare drop. Why bother making it craftable if you are going to make it so expensive to craft that it may as well just be a rare drop and you can just buy it from the TP.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Don't get me wrong, that it is craftable is great, but also I have probably put millions of clicks into the Mystic Forge because its setup so you need to do 10 clicks for every recipe, every time. When you have done that thousands and thousands of times, it gets tedious. Particularly when they could just add a "repeat recipe" button. Which I have made suggestion for many times. But if you read my remarks above about it being a legendary infusion etc, you'll see I do not have a dislike of crafting, the opposite actually. I would prefer _more_ crafting steps for it, rather than just clicking 500 times in the forge with 5000g worth of materials.

> > > > >

> > > > > Well for one there has been plenty of posts asking for non-rng way to get some of the other infusions. This is a case of giving what people have asked for.

> > > > >

> > > > > If those people also meant "and it should available for as cheap as possible while remaining a rare prestige item" then they should have made that explicit as well.

> > > >

> > > > Why does it need to be a rare prestige item?

> > >

> > > because the other items are and unfortunately as with many other cases of "be careful what you ask for ...", people weren't specific enough

> > >

> > > also because ANet decided it should be and ANet is the one making the game

> >

> > It's not a hard thing to make a scaling series of infusions that become more difficult to obtain the more elaborate they are and I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy with such a system

> >

> > It doesn't need to be a binary choice of _"everyone has this because it's cheaper than many BLC weapons"_ vs_ "almost no one who plays this game 'casually' has this because it's traded on third party platforms for well over 10k gold"_

>

> Perfect example.

>

> It's a collection, content and a material/gold sink in one.

>

> Imagine a precursor type crafting experience where you do;

> Frost Legion Recruit I - Collection and some mats. You get the v1.0 infusion.

> Frost Legion Recruit II - Collection and some mats inc the 1st infusion. You get the v2.0 infusion.

> Frost Legion Recruit III - Collection and some mats inc the 2nd infusion. You get the v3.0 infusion.

> Frost Legion Recruit IV - Collection and some mats inc the 3rd infusion. You get the v4.0 and final infusion.

>

> Total cost somewhere around 500g. Koda's Warmth is around 400g to craft.

>

>

Honestly, even the cost of this one has cratered pretty hard and it does give a nice value to the shards that can be sold by those like me who don't want the infusion

It will climb back up after the map gets replaced by a new farm but it will also lose a lot of it's novelty appeal soon enough as well since it's pretty much the winter's heart infusion combined with the blue space infusion visually

My beef is more with things like the khan infusion that doesn't fuel content like the bee or egg sack but is also so cosmically rare that I will never be able to get it making it a null element of the game

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > > @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > > > @"Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582" said:

> > > > > @"Pifil.5193" said:

> > > > > I fail to see why the Visage of the Khan-ur is OK because it's a drop but this is not OK because it's crafted. Just the OP's dislike of crafting showing?

> > > > >

> > > > > Regardless, it seems to be moot as the Frost Legion Infusion also drops from the final chest after the Frost Citadel meta according to the wiki. So this seems to be another example of ArenaNet providing multiple paths to an item which is great to see!

> > > >

> > > > Well, when you make something a rare drop, its because you want it to be a rare drop. Why bother making it craftable if you are going to make it so expensive to craft that it may as well just be a rare drop and you can just buy it from the TP.

> > > >

> > > > Don't get me wrong, that it is craftable is great, but also I have probably put millions of clicks into the Mystic Forge because its setup so you need to do 10 clicks for every recipe, every time. When you have done that thousands and thousands of times, it gets tedious. Particularly when they could just add a "repeat recipe" button. Which I have made suggestion for many times. But if you read my remarks above about it being a legendary infusion etc, you'll see I do not have a dislike of crafting, the opposite actually. I would prefer _more_ crafting steps for it, rather than just clicking 500 times in the forge with 5000g worth of materials.

> > >

> > > Well for one there has been plenty of posts asking for non-rng way to get some of the other infusions. This is a case of giving what people have asked for.

> > >

> > > If those people also meant "and it should available for as cheap as possible while remaining a rare prestige item" then they should have made that explicit as well.

> >

> > Why does it need to be a rare prestige item?

>

> because the other items are and unfortunately as with many other cases of "be careful what you ask for ...", people weren't specific enough

>

> also because ANet decided it should be and ANet is the one making the game

It's not a hard thing to make a scaling series of infusions that become more difficult to obtain the more elaborate they are and I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy with such a system

It doesn't need to be a binary choice of _"everyone has this because it's cheaper than many BLC weapons"_ vs_ "almost no one who plays this game 'casually' has this because it's traded on third party platforms for well over 10k gold"_

> @"Hypnowulf.7403" said:

> > @"Shikaru.7618" said:

> > It's not up to the game to teach basic finance management.

> Are you Bobby Kotick? I mean, I'm sorry, but it's not the place of a game to _require_ finance management. It's a game. It's up to ArenaNet to know basic finance management though. I mean, like I said, it's up to them whether they want to alienate all of their cashcow casuals or not. I'll spend over $1,000 a month on the cash shop easily, but I am _not_ spending $300~ on gold.

>

> I expect better quid pro quo on my spending than that. I have some self-respect.

>

So you'll spend ludicrous amounts of money on items that can only be gotten in the cash shop but not ones that can be bought off the TP?

I can pretty much guarantee you that no one outside of the sphere of online gaming would even consider the two distinct things, they would just see you spending a lot of cash on pixels

> @"Aapheus.5780" said:

> Apparently, you get this infusion as a reward for an achievement that involves your drinking 500 TOnics of Icebrood Corruption, which requires 25000 Shards of Crystallized Blood of Jormag, plus other materials, to craft. You get no achievement points for it and not title. Just the infusion, which gives you +5 Power and +9 Agony Resistance and apparently turns your character into a block of ice. I cannot possibly fathom why anyone would waste their time with this nonsense.

There's people who've wasted years of their lives to turn their characters into swirling balls of laser beams so they could afk in mistlock sanctuary in style

Spending a few thousand gold on one infusion you'll barely even see on a heavy class is nothing new

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > @"Substance E.4852" said:

> > > People will do mini dungeons like the raven puzzles in Bjora or Grothmar events if you make them fun and give them decent rewards for completion. ESPECIALLY if you tune said rewards to the difficulty of doing content that requires personal effort instead of being carried by a map zerg

> > >

> >

> > Which is what I had said in a previous post. You can make something fun but players won't generally do it enough times compared to if it were rewarding. The moment you make something rewarding to be worth doing, players farm the kitten out of it until it's no longer worth doing.

> One also has to consider what rewards are "decent". This is highly subjective. Not everyone will agree on what makes a reward decent.

Depends on how it's presented. Stuff that can be TP'd will always have a standard gold value that can be measured. Stuff that can't is harder to gauge and also shouldn't be the main focus of content you want people repeating long term.

Fractals and their loot is a good format to follow. It's content specific loot but also done in such a way that there's always a demand for it and can be sold for gold if the player doesn't need to use it.

Even dungeon tokens could be turned into forge fodder weapons if you had no other use for them.

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> Meta maps are maps with a series of events. Kind of like how the Orr metas are as well as those on some of the other core maps. You also do not know how much the events scale down. You're not the only one as I'm fairly sure the majority of the playerbase is like this too because all they're used to is zerging content. They don't know any different so believe that they must have the same numbers.

Many of those events are scaled to assume a certain amount of people playing and are thus nearly impossible to complete within the timer, or take so long that people simply don't bother

The only time Ive ever consistently seen group content that was measurably easier/faster to do with fewer people was back when WvW tower/keep lord HP scaling was totally off the rails and 5 people could kill SMC lord faster than 50 which was eventually patched out

> @"anduriell.6280" said:

> > @"Substance E.4852" said:

> > -Get rid of the CA form resource entirely

> > -Make it a toggle

> > -Change druid skills so that they only heal others, not the Druid himself

> > -Change CA 1 to a melee radius aoe rather than the ranged, time lag impact skill it is now

> > -Adjust the rest of CA form skills power accordingly

> >

> > Problem solved

> >

> > Pet is still useless in a zerg but at least druid becomes a reliable sustainable heal bot that's needed in WvW

> I don't know why i think the staff to target allies (other players or the pet) instead enemies would be a fun change of pace. While roaming the Druid would target the pet with Staff#2 to burn the enemies around the pet and Staff#1 to burn them playing cross the line with them.

> Staff would need to have returned some buffs lost, like a reduced CD in Staff#3 and the return of the evade plus it would need to apply long duration burning in Staff#1 and a short but bursting burning with staff#2. Staff#4 to apply the ancient roots effect (and delete that trait from the game) .

>

> And druid could be fun to play, different than any other class in game but fun.

>

> Also the CA skills would need to become PbAoE (Aoe around the druid) like you suggested but it should also heal the Druid.

> Maybe reduce the healing but give the druid a very strong Outgoing healing minor trait instead ( Lingering Light should be returned to the Beta trait and the actual effect should replace Natural Mender )

>

> All the Glyphs to work like the Glyph of Unity (Tethers to enemies/allies) and provide pulsing effects. It can even have the first pulse to trigger with 1s delay to give some counterplay and also have better effects ( as that 1s should give enough time to the target to move away and break the tether) .

>

> Thus a pulsing Daze could be implemented. The spec would be fun and unique still having very strong connection to the pets in a different way, which is what the ranger was all about (pet mechanics, throwable traps, mobile spirits with unique buffs...) .

>

The main reason I suggested getting rid of self heals is that Druid's problem has always seemed to stem from the fact that it gave much more sustain to a class that already had solid survival which lead to obvious problems in pvp, causing anet to end up shaving off so much of it that it's no longer really any good

Pretty much the same way "sic em" on SB has caused LB burst to go to the moon and bring back nerfs to everything else

There might be a way to make self sustaining druids balanced in a functional way but it's gonna require more theory crafting on skill and trait reworks than I'm willing to put in tbh

Also, in the format I'm picturing, it's not something you bring to a solo fight anyway so you're going to be relying on team members to support you most of the time as you heal spam

I'm gonna say no and only because I had unironically forgotten about it until reading this thread's title

> @"ledernierrempart.6871" said:

> ■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.

There's maybe a couple builds (not even whole classes) in the entire game that can escape a thief once engaged, that's why it's so utterly irritating to fight them

-Get rid of the CA form resource entirely

-Make it a toggle

-Change druid skills so that they only heal others, not the Druid himself

-Change CA 1 to a melee radius aoe rather than the ranged, time lag impact skill it is now

-Adjust the rest of CA form skills power accordingly

Problem solved

Pet is still useless in a zerg but at least druid becomes a reliable sustainable heal bot that's needed in WvW

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"Game of Bones.8975" said:

> > I don't want a whole map that depends on a meta to remain relevant.

> > Why do people go to Dragon's Stand? For the meta, not much else.

> > Will people abandon Drizzlewood with the new chapter or when a new expansion is released?

>

> How else would you make a map remain relevant and not be mostly abandoned like all of the other maps without metas?

If Anet stopped designing Overworld content that required large groups to complete then it wouldn't be an issue. All these meta maps have their own currencies and yet Anet put them either in harvest nodes or behind group content.

People will do mini dungeons like the raven puzzles in Bjora or Grothmar events if you make them fun and give them decent rewards for completion. ESPECIALLY if you tune said rewards to the difficulty of doing content that requires personal effort instead of being carried by a map zerg

You only even think of "abandoned map" a framing because meta maps are unplayable without a certain number of people while vanilla launch maps have events, JP's, mini dungeons, and the occasional instant spawn world boss to kill and they're still enjoyable for what they are years later

While I did find they did a great job with the prologue, Bjora, and EOTN, this still isn't really expanding the game in the way people expect

All we've really gotten is new areas to go and do the same stuff we've always done

Hell, by some standards, the previous season was more of an "expansion" because at least it gave us a new mount that was so overpowered it renders all others obsolete in any area that isn't completely flat terrain (IE almost none of them) and changes the way you get around the entire game as a result similar to what gliding did

Sticking by strikes is a step in the right direction but knowing Anet, I can't realistically say they will continue with them as a format after IBS is over, thus leaving them to be yet another isolated nugget of content that isn't integrated into the game as a whole exerience

> @"Yggranya.5201" said:

> > @"Excursion.9752" said:

> > Not only is the meta to long your chances on getting in on a map that is not "Fresh" is slim to none. I've already noticed people afking until near the final fight. Can't wait until we have half a map afking waiting on others to do the work.

>

> Ahh, The joys of MMO "team work".

>

>

It;s really the only MMO where I've ever seen this much leaching and it almost entirely has to do with the game leaning heavily on overworld content where it's much less impactful to the actual completion of the content

Games that revolve around party content can just rely on teams kicking leachers or people pulling their weight because slacking off means no one succeeds

Compare that to GW2 where people either afk out of harm's way (floating on skyscales during Drakar before patch) or just laying dead expecting everyone to res them so they don't have to run back because the other 50 people will carry you to your loot regardless of whether they want to

Visual diarrhea is already a massive problem in this game to the point where boss fights are still just unintelligible disco raves even after several attempts to cull clutter

Any attempt to give people the ability to customize skill effects will just lead to everyone equipping the most garish and noticeable effects they can, much how they already do with auras and glowing armor

All it would do is make the game look substantially worse and lead to even worse FPS in zerg fights