Erasculio.2914

> @"Arden.7480" said:

> I absolutely loved Dragon Bash festival, it was so wonderful to feel this killing a dragon celebration once again! I am looking forward to the Festival of the 4 Winds with its unique atmosphere.

It's great, but it's soured by ArenaNet's silence.

The recent addition of a few automated events (the WvW event, the world boss event and the meta event) feels like ArenaNet is preparing to leave Guild Wars 2 in maintenance mode. This is exactly the kind of thing they would do if they were to stop adding content to the game, and wanted to leave something for players to do once in a while.

Same for the festivals. With Dragon Bash being added and the Festival of the Four Winds being something to happen once a year, we have a solid schedule of recycled content that basically requires only someone to turn it on and off - which would be perfect for a game running just under a maintenance crew.

Sure, we know we will get season 5, but all we know about it is that it will be different from the previous ones. Different how? Will it still have 6 episodes? Will they still have 3 to 4 months between them?

Do we know if ArenaNet isn't just going to release a 3 episodes season 5, as mostly an epilogue for the entire storyline that ended in season 4, and setting up whatever it is they will work on next?

Now, I don't believe in that myself, but parts of the community are restless, and it's easy to understand why. We could use more communication.

So yeah, the week-long events and the festivals are somewhat nice. But they're soured by ArenaNet's lack of communication and our uncertainties about the future of GW2.

> @"KryTiKaL.3125" said:

> Which then leads to said update and content being left unattended to because ANet will then choose to not address any problems with the release unless it is something *explicitly* controversial like the Skyscale collection or something to do with the gem store or an actual *bug* that only appeared due to being released on the live environment.

And even then, they will often leave the bugs there. One example is the Maw of Torment meta event - on release it was bugged (one of the NPCs often gets stuck, blocking the event), and, when ArenaNet revamped the rewards of the PoF meta events, they still didn't bother fixing the bug.

There has been no communication from ArenaNet about this bug, or about any of the other game-breaking bugs in the game. They refuse to address problems like this, including things that have been in the game for a long time now; like you said, they've been left to fester.

Being left in the dark about if old content will ever be fixed, while being also left in the dark about the direction of future content, is understandably worrying part of the community.

Just to give an example, we have on the FF XIV reddit a topic named "Guild Wars 2 Refugees coming to FFXIV":

If you take a look, it's not made by a GW2 hater, or whatever you want to call it; rather, by someone who's frustrated with the current situation of the game, and the lack of any sign that things will get better.

There's a very interesting topic discussing it on the GW2 reddit:

In which, again, the main theme is frustration with ArenaNet's silence about the future of Guild Wars 2.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> However we don't have any idea of whether there are fewer devs or more devs, since devs working on other projects were moved to work on Guild Wars 2. You're simply speculating in a vacuum.

[Actually...](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-04-16-speaking-with-guild-wars-2-developer-arenanet-for-the-first-time-since-the-lay-offs)

EDIT: since the forum links are still broken (...), here's the link: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-04-16-speaking-with-guild-wars-2-developer-arenanet-for-the-first-time-since-the-lay-offs

> @"Eurogamer" said:

> So people _have_ gone from the Guild Wars 2 team?

> "It has impacted but-"

> Linsey Murdock cut in: "We also got a lot of people back. So in terms of quantity of people on the Guild Wars 2 team: not very affected. But some people who had moved onto other projects came back."

So it seems that:

* Shadowmoon is right, people from the Guild Wars 2 team did leave

* They did got people back who had been assigned on other projects

* Despite people getting back, the quantity of people on the GW2 team didn't change much ("not very affected"). Which means, the amount of people they lost was similar to the amount of people they got back. So either they didn't get that many people back, or A LOT of people from the GW2 team left

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> Yes, having a new elite spec that is basically core on steroids, without changes to its gameplay and aestethics would be a good choice as well.

I wish ArenaNet would do something like this. Making the most general trait line exclusive to core (Arcane for Elementalists, Soul Reaping for Necromancer, and so on), and then balancing core so it would work as a kind of elite specialization on its own.

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> Guild Wars 1 wasnt a MMO but more of a 3D Diablo made by Diablo 2 people....

Not really. Guild Wars had less in common with Diablo than with WoW (and it had little in common with WoW).

Diablo is a loot-based game. The point is for a character to kill a lot of monsters to get more loot to get more powerful and then kill a stronger lot of monsters to get even better loot and thus even more powerful.

Guild Wars had nothing in common with that.

The only similarity was the use of a lobby system (and vaguely the use of a fantasy setting).

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> Since those players have what they need already, maybe the _significant number_ of us who enjoy running more than one build should get a little developer love as well.

Is it a "significant number"?

You could argue that ArenaNet knows it is, but then again, ArenaNet doesn't know how many people would use a feature that doesn't exist yet. And reading the theory above - that people don't change their builds often today because there is no simple way of doing so -, it looks like using the number of people who change their builds today wouldn't really be a good indicator of how many people would use this feature in the future.

I think the fact ArenaNet is taking their time to implement build templates (soon to be seven years) is a sign that it wasn't exactly their main priority, and so not exactly something they believe will be used by almost everyone in the game.

I wonder how many people will use it. Nice to see so many posters saying it's a feature they, too, want. I just wonder if a _significant number_ of players (of which the forum community is only a small minority) share our opinion.

> @"KryTiKaL.3125" said:

> I'm not holding my breath.

Heh, I think I.c. meant something different from what you understood.

It's a shame that ArenaNet is failing to communicate properly now, when we have so many players feeling restless about the game's future. There are too many uncertainties about Season 5; between that and the layoffs, it's easy to understand why people are afraid for the future of the game.

Just like they previously admitted a [communication failure](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/81314/anet-back-in-silent-mode/p6) in the past, they should realize they really could tell us more about the future now. Even if only to reassure the community.

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> Your "wasted effort" is my "six months of guaranteed gem purchases".

I would use them ALL the time too.

It just sounds like you and me are the infinitely small minority.

In the original Guild Wars, we had build templates: they allowed us to save a build (skills on the skill bar, attribute point distribution and secondary profession), and load it with just a few clicks. Notice how it didn't save the build's items.

Some players have been asking for a similar feature in GW2 for quite some time now.

The thing is, are people really going to use something like that in GW2?

Considering that:

* The original Guild Wars used to incentive people to change their builds, even within a game mode. In GW2, there really isn't such kind of incentive.

* I often see people talking about their characters as defined by their elite specialization, not their profession. For example, "I have a Reaper", not "I have a Necromancer". I have also often seen people in game who never change from their elite specialization - someone who only plays a Dragonhunter (and never switches back to Guardian or to Firebrand), someone who only plays a Reaper, and so on.

* It also doesn't look like most people change their builds all the time. [For example, when sampling the forum population](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/48318/do-you-prefer-to-play-a-single-build-or-to-change-builds-all-the-time#latest), not many people changed their builds that often.

* The original Guild Wars had a very small focus on items. Notice how the build templates didn't change the characters' equipment; gear had so little importance that it was ignored by the templates. Meanwhile, GW2 has a very strong focus on itemization...

* ...And getting ascended gear is easy enough that most players can easily have a few items, but time consuming enough that I doubt most players have one full set, much less more than one. Considering how, between using an ascended weapon or an exotic weapon, often players would prefer the ascended one, I wonder how much this influences people into not changing their builds (for example, someone who has an ascended sword and an exotic mace could most of the time choose to play with the sword, and thus not change his build often).

* Not to mention how huge changes - going from Power to Condition Damage, for example - would ideally be followed by a complete change in almost all equipment. I can't help but wonder how many players actually bother to have multiple sets of armor and accessories to deal with this.

IMO, build templates aren't something for the majority of players. I know ArenaNet is working on them, but it feels a bit like wasted effort - if a significant number of players just run around using basically the same build all the time, while having only gear for a single build, and see their specialization as their "real" profession, what's the point of build templates?

The thing is, Guild Wars 2 is _old_. ArenaNet is not going to make massive changes or overhaul major systems now. Which means, we'll continue to have:

* A failed structured PvP system, that didn't come even close to ArenaNet's e-sport dreams.

* A very imbalanced WvW, in which success is determined by population, and many matches are incredibly one-sided. Alliances won't solve this - people will just transfer from their world once they have been assigned somewhere. The only way to have balanced populations would be by removing the transfer between worlds, but considering how this is a source of income for ArenaNet, they'll never do it.

* A combat system that fails in open world PvE. GW2's combat doesn't work when you have a lot of characters attacking a single enemy - you cannot see anything and the fight becomes little more than "the floor is lava" with red circles. World bosses are basically just mindless zergs spamming auto-attack.

* Little to no combat variation in open world and single player instances. There are just a few mechanics repeated over and over, nothing new.

* Abandoned content, such as Living World season 1 or dungeons. Ascalon Catacombs are STILL bugged, even all these years later (often the charr NPC will get stuck at the very end and stop the dungeon from progressing).

And so on and so on.

By this time in the original Guild Wars, ArenaNet knew they had reached the limits of what they could do, and had began working on GW2. Now... There won't be a Guild Wars 3. GW2 will be the last game in the Guild Wars franchise, and ArenaNet's last game. They will continue to release content and updates, but the systems we have right now are basically all we will ever get.

> @"Skotlex.7580" said:

> these balance patches mostly nerf off meta builds and buff things nobody uses

Yeah, that's what a balance patch is expected to do.

To nerf the things that are overpowered and so used by everyone (thus, "meta builds") and to buff the things that are underpowered and so underused (thus, "things nobody uses").

I would be very much surprised if ArenaNet were to buff meta builds or nerf things nobody uses.

Again, it's the "Hey, scissors here, please nerf rock, paper is fine" mentality.

> @"Lonami.2987" said:

> Most of them are just hating for the sake of it, and have never played WoW; and if they have, they don't understand how it actually works.

Isn't that a good sign? Having so many Guild Wars players that have never played WoW or who "don't understand how it actually works", and thus wouldn't abandon GW2 for WoW?

> @"IndigoSundown.5419" said:

> > @"Tarlonniel.6534" said:

> > Are they? Hmm. I've been eyeing FFXIV, especially since they added the Trust system, but I'm still having too much fun here to jump ship for something I might not like.

>

> I did the free trial up to L30. I found the story to be overly "cute," unoriginal and trite. It also involved (as someone else said earlier) a ludicrous amount of backtracking (go to A, then to be, then C, then back to A, then to D, then back to B....). Whenever a game that requires a sub for full access makes me spend a significant portion of a play session wasting time, I uninstall, and that's what happened to 14 for me.

A friend recommended FF XIV to me, saying it was like the single player Final Fantasy games. So I decided to give it a try.

First quest: talk to persons A and B and C. Boring, but ok.

Second quest: kill 3 insects, 3 squirrels and 3 pigs. Third quest: kill 6 insects.

Those enemies were sitting there just outside of town, just waiting for people to kill them, one by one.

I then uninstalled the game as fast as possible.

Do people really still play games like this? With all the "kill 10 rats" quests and with very boring 1 vs 1 combat?

I wonder if WoW Classic will kill WoW.

WoW Classic's target audience are old players who are nostalgic for the "good old times", and newer players who want to see what the old timers keep rambling about. It's very unlikely that WoW Classic will get completely new players - those who could be interested in WoW are either playing it already, or would likely be driven off by all the anachronisms in WoW Classic.

I can't help but wonder if this will work. Back at the time of the original Guild Wars, we would often get a new guy who would say, "I have played WoW, and then Age of Conan and Warhammer Online and LoTRO and Aion and Chronicles of Spellborn trying to find a game just like WoW, why doesn't Guild Wars have tanks or raids or mounts?". But that was then. Now, with the MMORPG genre slowly fading, we don't have nearly as many people who played WoW and are still jumping from game to game looking for something like it. Either they are playing one of the few remaining MMORPGs, and thus are invested there, or they have given up on MMORPGs. Considering how those have been designed as an addiction, I wonder how many of the players who have quit MMOs would return for WoW Classic.

Meanwhile, the newer WoW players probably won't last long in WoW Classic - they will miss the characters they have already invested a lot in, and all the quality of life changes in the current WoW.

Which leaves basically the current WoW players who have been playing it for a long time and are nostalgic for how things were. These are likely to play WoW Classic and stay there for a while.

So Blizzard would be basically cannibalizing itself, splitting the current WoW playerbase between two games, with very few new players. Which would only speed up WoW's very slow and agonizing death.

I would suggest playing ranger. When you feel like playing support, you can just change to a druid, the ranger's specialization (those are like sub-professions you can change back and forth freely, whenever you want). Druids are one of the closest things Guild Wars 2 has to pure healers. Plus, rangers have medium armor, like you said.

Very nice ideas, and very well written.

While I disagree with a few suggestions (IMO, too many resources dedicated to raids and fractals, and I would like to see at most one new mount, an agile feline-like one), the entire thing is very creative and very polished. I'm really fond of a more episodic season dealing with smaller issues as a "calm before the storm", after all the end of the world scenarios we have just been through.

So far, we know next to nothing about Season 5. There were vague plans before the layoffs to have "expansion-like" content on the living world, but we have no idea if that will remain, or if the Season 5 will follow the idea of not adding a new map per release, or anything else really.

One kind of popular content that could be classified as "expansion-like" would be new specializatons. I have seen a few people wondering if the recent changes to skill types would be a sign of ArenaNet playing with ideas for new specializations (like the command skills for rangers and the preparation skills for thieves).

Do you think we will get new elite specializations in the next season of the Living World?

It's funny how these topics are always the epitome of:

"Dear ArenaNet,

Please nerf rock.

Paper is fine.

Signed,

Scissors"

You can easily see what profession people play based on what nerf they complain about, and what professions they don't play based on what nerfs they ask for (or what buffs they complain about).

The patch notes have some interesting ideas, I'll wait to see how they work in game before judging them.

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> I am disappointed that

> a) they are repeating the bonus event so shortly after it had finished, and

Same.

In the original post about the events, ArenaNet talked about all the events we have seen so far (world boss event, meta events, making a mining node appear after killing a boss, the WvW core event).

Are they really out of ideas already?

I hope they won't just recyle those same events over and over for the next months.

I wish we had a pack including skins for all the older mount packs (such as the Exosuit one, the Mad Realm one, the Awakened one, and so on). We got a Branded one on the last pack, but I wish we could customize all our mounts under the same theme.

> @"DeadlyDohnut.7052" said:

> --Math: 4 skils x 4 slots x 19 weapons x 9 classes=2736 skills at minimum as some of the weapons can be in either hand and that changes skills.

Too much. And adding new "legendary skills" feels too much like Pay to Win.

I do agree with your main point, though - we have very little build variety, and some weapons are simply too bad to be useful in PvE.

Instead of adding hundreds of new skills, though, I wish ArenaNet would just add more traits that rework skills. Like the Guardian trait that changes Hammer skill 2 into a cold attack, or the Scourge trait that changes how Scepter 3 skill works. This is a nice way to add a few new skills to existing weapons without demanding huge balance changes.

It's no wonder this topic is being talked about right after ArenaNet told us that the [World Boss Rush event will return](https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-boss-rush-returns-july-16/). They have exhausted everything they told us about when talking about new events (the boss rush, the meta events rush, the WvW core event, making a mining node appear after a meta event is done) and looks like they haven't had any new idea since then. Just repeating those few events over and over becomes only background noise.

Meanwhile, we haven't been told much about Season 5, other than that it will be different from the previous ones - which is by itself enough to inspire dread. How will it work? Any hint of what will it be about? Is the plan still to have "expansion-like features" added with Season 5? What are those features, exactly? New specializations? Something new like player housing? Or does that mean just new masteries? Will the idea of adding to old maps instead of adding new ones mean just more of the "press F to hammer signs" events like we got in Season 1? Does it mean another map being added little by little like Dry Top? Or what?

We are at a period of huge uncertainty around GW2 (and that's not to mention the layoffs, that have led a significant number of players to feel insecure about the future of the game). It would be expected that players are eager to get some hint about the future from the developers. The excuse of "but if they tell their plans to players and change them later, there is going to be an uproar" is not only patronizing, it's incoherent - they have already told us about small features that may or not actually see the light of the day.

It's time ArenaNet begins treating their fanbase as adults, and just talk to us about their plans for the future of the game's content.

> @"Linken.6345" said:

> Becouse its less likely a person that hack you phone is after your gw2 account then for example a person who hack/keylog your computer or email.

Players who can take care of themselves don't get their computer and/or e-mail hacked, and therefore don't need ArenaNet's intrusive "account protection" option.

> @"Sazukikrah.5036" said:

> Title says it all. It could be under Novelty. I'd pay 2000 gems for a novelty item that allowed you to change utilities to a certain class in PvE maps only (not raids / dungeons / Fractals)

It would be interesting as a way to add the GW1's secondary professions to the game.

We would be able to pick a core profession and, from that core profession, have access to:

* Healing skills

* Utility skills

* Elite skills

NO ACCESS to traits or weapon skills or profession mechanics, or specialization skills

So, for example, a necromancer would be able to choose guardian as it secondary profession, and so access core guardian's healing, utility and elite skills. No access to Virtues, to guardian's weapon skills or to guardian's trait lines (and no access to anything related to the dragonhunter or the firebrand).

Without access to the secondary professions' traits, the skills would be weaker than they can be for the main profession (our necromancer would have no access to the guardian trait that make meditations heal on cast, for example), which would work to keep this system balanced.

It would be a nice way to increase build options in the game. Of course, this would have to be released as part of an expansion or feature pack, not something sold on the Gem Store.