HotDelirium.7984

Why are we left wondering in the wind about what the goal is for champions? Why are we left guessing what that global goal is, its not not explained to us in game mechanics-wise? We are all confused about if more content is coming soon...or not....

Overall I enjoyed the instances and the banter, the loot is meh, will be catching up on the episodes since we have VO but the story is confusing, the global goal is confusing I'm just CONFUSED and it spoils the fun some.

> @"TheBravery.9615" said:

> I mean they have 5+counting months to work on this, surely they can't screw this up right?

You will be waiting awhile since it was confirmed (and I heard the DEV himself in chat) say the balance team is working on elite specs right now so some good and bad news for ya.

> @"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:

> So the allies we got in this release are

> * Crystal Bloom: Primary

> * Seraph and Watchknights in Brisban

> * Asura and Golems in Metrica

> * Norn shamans in Gendarran

>

> Other notes

> * Jhavi is still leading the Vigil, since Laranthir hasn't returned from the Grove.

> * We got confirmation that the Pale Tree is better, but still healing from the attack by Mordremoth.

> * The Asuran Counsel has accepted Jormag/Ryland's help.

> * Braham has gained some ability to feel where the larger destroyers are going.

> * Braham and Taimi have a fight over allying with Jormag.

> * Aurene isn't taking an active role in the fighting, and The Commander wishes she would.

> * Jormag says the "balance" is made up, and not real.

> * The group leading the war effort consists of Logan, Crecia, Phlunt, Sigast, and a sylvari whose name i forgot right now

It would not surprise me if literally and thematically we are actually being persuaded by Jormag to some degree and that the Primordus threat is just a red herring.

Why are people freaking out. The bar is most likely a visual aid of how much we have progressed that week in our allied/global goal for what I assume is extra loot. Similiar to the Strike Mission chest once per week...this is our once a week global effort.

People do what they love and what rewards they want so this certainly has a low correlation to anything substantial in regards to completion. Having the end reward be an emote that could easily be added in-game as an update is a lazy reward.

Should we mention the Bladed trousers? my goodness....

> @"Aaralyna.3104" said:

> To avoid spoilers

>

> >! The last thing Bangar mentioned for his achievement was that Primordus is waking and he does mention the earthquakes. I am not sure if you need to have this part completed to notice them or if it is for everyone. I haven't experienced it myself yet but I always have camera shakes disabled. I haven't heard the sound of it either while I have the sound on. Maybe dailies isn't long enough to notice any. In short: It has to do with the upcoming Living World episode.

When we open the mail for the next ep we should at least get one mandatory earthquake for all the people unlucky not to have experienced it. xD

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said:

> > @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > I think many of us would be thrilled with any Forums Liaison/Community Manager that would actually engage with us.

>

> ^ This.

>

> And to a small extent, I think that was what the OP wanted, though, historically Gaile was quite a part of the history of the game.

Communication is muy bueno! If you had a liaison taking our concerns directly to the ears of devs instead of hoping to god they read feedback in these forums, that'd be more efficient. Also, they could be the soundboard about how game service works and assuage any fears. Imagine an actual dev coming up in this piece and literally telling us to our face why pvp/wvw is underdeveloped/on standby. That would certainly have an effect on perceptions and nowadays perception is currency.

CC in this game is a mixed bag. Do I really have to carry a CC build in storage for those rare moments? CC skills are all over the place and not everyone remembers all of them at the same time while fighting and staying alive. Maybe have an option to have CC toggled in the top right of every skill on the UI so you have a better a quicker reaction?

>

> God, thank you nailed it, you articulated what I was going for far better than I did.

This is why I advocate for better leadership. Its not the be-all and end-all (title lol) but I think very strong leadership drives the overall vision of a game service very acutely. Things like SAB would have been finished by now because they would have been put on that priority list BY leadership. Raid implementation from the beginning would have been introduced seamlessly WITH better leadership and no need for the weird logic behind Strike Missions. Skins, features, content wouldn't exist solely from the whim of a dev; it would be motivated by and organized around the leadership of possibly a game director.

For example, with this last Halloween festival that barely got any new content, they would be the one in charge of conveying their vision of what would be best for the game service i.e. they would tell the dev every year possibly "I think we should add something new like weapon skins (which they got nailed down), at least one new mini, and in the pipeline lets add to the story between the Blood Prince and Mad King Thorn. Let's also bring back The Reliquary instance since new players have no idea who that is since we don't have content connecting them anymore" said dev would then do their job and come up creatively with the specifics. Bam!

> @"Sir Alymer.3406" said:

> See, this idea that strike missions are the stepping stone for raids has this imaginary idea that GW2 players pay attention during a fight or can even see the mechanics and animations for said mechanics through the cloud of particle effects (Even with minimum settings; and to add, people in the raid static I'm part of don't even know a lot of mechanics). That's how strike missions failed at becoming or even being a stepping stone for raids. They lack key elements to help players pay attention and understand mechanics. They don't engage the player and stay engaging throughout, they don't really give feedback as to why you downed here and now. It's just a sea of AoE markers that are sometimes green and sometimes orange or sometimes just a mechanic (like chains on WoJ) that has an icon above the head that lasts all of a few seconds and is easily lost in the cloud of effects.

>

> Meanwhile, Dhuum of all things has almost all of the mechanics built up to in bite-sized pieces. You stand in greens at the broken king, you stay near the spirits at the devourer, etc. This translates out to 'going up' at the Dhuum greens. The few mechanics not explained, the 7 reapers help you with by calling them out for you. When chained at Dhuum, they call "Your souls are linked, separate!" and when Dhuum tries to kill them they yell "Dhuum's gaze falls on me!". Yes, you'll fail but that's kind of the point. You'll have something of an audio cue to figure out what's going on in the fight and have a better understanding on how to deal with it.

>

> This is not an LFG problem as it doesn't take much to make your own LFG with your own rules. This is both entitlement and anger that there are no easy groups to just join.

I agree with you on the lackluster implementation of the strikemissions themselves and of the assumption that they will automatically create a pipeline to raids. If they truly were this ramp to raids you could have constructed them in two ways-

1) Have the focus on "mechanics" not DPSing like a bounty (Shiverpeak Pass ignoring the jumping-off iceblock moment) or healing through the mechanics (Boneskinner dodge and heal through tactic while ignoring the lights). Allowing those to be like that completely negates the point of having to do mechanics.

2)have the fight literally in an arena with a preexisting raid boss and dumb down a few of the mechanics ( the easy mode) that way by the time they do the real mode its maybe only 1 or 2 extra mechanics to learn.

>

> Well, the baseline traits should be the ones that more clearly define a whole traitline, or an elite spec. The traits you can choose should offer variations in regards to the playstyle/s intended for that build, either by doubling down on its strengths or by giving some utility for situations in which that spec can't work at its full potential. All in a fluffy way, possibly.

I do wish Meditations (from spellbreaker) had a trait that enhanced them to some degree.

> @"Al Masone.1274" said:

> > @"Opopanax.1803" said:

> > As a player who is on and off due to life being busy (not another game), my biggest lack of draw is old and uninspired traits and weapon skills being updated to be relevant.

> >

> > I so wish just a little time and care was done to tweak older and underutilized skills and traits were updated. It makes the new content more enjoyable when you have more build variety!

>

> This

>

> There are so many traits and skills in the game that aren't just "undertuned", but either old, dull, useless and all combinations of those words. There is just to much stuff that could be done about them.

To me TRUE balance is having all traits that you can't select be the ones that can be used in the majority of situations and then the selectable ones are the ones more specific to a build.

> @"Opopanax.1803" said:

> As a player who is on and off due to life being busy (not another game), my biggest lack of draw is old and uninspired traits and weapon skills being updated to be relevant.

>

> I so wish just a little time and care was done to tweak older and underutilized skills and traits were updated. It makes the new content more enjoyable when you have more build variety!

I'm with you on that- why in 2020 is the guardian's sceptor auto attack STILL a ball of drunk cotton and the ground skill an area where a few fists fly around surrounded by an itching noise......

> @"Renzo.8361" said:

> > @"HotDelirium.7984" said:

> > > @"Renzo.8361" said:

> > > > @"HotDelirium.7984" said:

> > > > As much as people complain about PVP and WVW **I don't see a lot of longevity in just killing your fellow Tyrian. Just meh. Stand on a location and kill fellow Tyrian again....weeeeeee**..... I have no doubt we got a WvW pve map and we will probly get a openish pvp-pve map.

> > >

> > > So you play like a bot?

> > >

> > > Or maybe you aren't aware that daily farm servers don't really count?

> >

> > the floor is open for your ground breaking inspirational ideas for PVP gameplay....

>

> If to you, the experience of simply fighting other players is just a sarcastic "weee..."and not an intrinsically engaging and fun activity no extra game modes or novel types of pvp will make pvp fun for you. Not to mention you saying "stand on a location and kill fellow tyrian again" as if thats some kind of bad pvp gameplay? What exactly do you think pvp is? You engage with a "fellow tyrian" and hopefully one of you dies. That's kind of the idea. Everything else is window dressing.

Clearly, Anet feels the same or you would be getting more substantial updates. You wanna come back to PVE? We'll take you back :3

This was THE coolest experience! Nick H and the twitch chat picked MY event: the community created event where jade eggs spawn stuff. Thankyou so much and I look forward to playing it!!!

> @"theoneparttwo.9561" said:

> No. Non. Nope. Nein. Nyet. Never. Nuh-uh.

>

> There are a million and a half reasons why it won't happen, and continuing to beat that dead horse is likely what led us to having that malformed Pegasus skin for the Griffon. The devs used a group of necromancers to reanimate the desecrated corpse of said dead horse and sold it in the gem shop. Please, for the sake of the malformed Pegasus, just stop already with these posts! ( :tongue: )

WE do not speak of the abomination chimera of the void of many-faces!!!

> @"Renzo.8361" said:

> > @"HotDelirium.7984" said:

> > As much as people complain about PVP and WVW **I don't see a lot of longevity in just killing your fellow Tyrian. Just meh. Stand on a location and kill fellow Tyrian again....weeeeeee**..... I have no doubt we got a WvW pve map and we will probly get a openish pvp-pve map.

>

> So you play like a bot?

>

> Or maybe you aren't aware that daily farm servers don't really count?

the floor is open for your ground breaking inspirational ideas for PVP gameplay....

> @"Vavume.8065" said:

> This game has at least another 5 years in the tank, and there is nothing better on the horizon, so yeah there is a future.

"If they build it... they will come."

Gw2 did always have this niche experimental energy to it so while it's fun I don't think they bring in that much revenue. The leadership and devs always kinda seem like they're doing content on their own schedules and in their own way and its not a tightly ran ship. That can be a good and bad thing; good because the moral is chill and they are creatively experimenting under less pressure and bad because pressure makes diamonds and we could have had 5 expansions out by now and many more things probably. We also need more QOL updates so maybe with the steam release we will get more people.

> @"Animism.7530" said:

> I'm surprised Balthazar didn't blow up more, to be honest.

> All talk, no explosions!

*Cries in Elona*

I don't think "abandoning" is the right term since it has such a negative connotation- like their actively fleeing it. They are able to see all the metrics behind what everyone is doing and what we are participating in. I have to assume they jump from content bundle to content bundle to try new things and keep the game fresh while weighing the pros and cons of not very popular content. I suspect we are done with raids. We might be done with Strike Missions too. I suspect we will get up to 25 fractals to fit in the 25 tierd levels (so 4 more) and that will be that at least in this iteration. As a game studio I think they have to constantly try to innovate within the bounds of their budget, time and technology.

> @"Thereon.3495" said:

> Hi! With the 2020 bundle does a donation go to charity if you're converting gold to gems to buy it? I would like to donate but obviously saving a little real life money would be preferable in these times!

They did say the proceeds go to Extra Life so i think its irrelevant where the gems or gold came from as long as you buy the items with gems ;)

> I had many groups that completed Siren's Reef or Twilight Oasis without many problems on T3,

> yet these very same groups failed and Sunqua Peak on T1.

> When a T1 fractal **is** harder than some of the harder T3 fractals, then that's a problem.

> And the boss bugging out regularly doesn't help the fractal either.

>

37 days later and its still not fixed. That's unfortunate. Also, locking the new abyssal fractal skins and the true story behind a CM (the only fractal to do that) is just as bad.

I think they like the factions less analogous. That way they can have them appear bigger then what justified content would allow. If you just take what we see; the crystal bloom in EOTN and dragon fall you might think um thats it? No base? No leader? You gota factor in that their faction isn't over or dead they are just OUT there doing their jobs and when story permits they will return. Its not always wise to have huge epic arcs and stories with factions unless you intend to possibly end them and then you lose any future potential with that faction. Its less commitment and more potential for future uses.

36 days later and still no fix? Kind of undermines efforts to have new content if you don't prioritize fixing it so WE the consumer can enjoy it.