Bast.7253

> @"Greyjoy.5167" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > Why holo damage hasn't been nerfed yet?

> >

> > And why they need a knockback, knockdown, invuln, stealth, constant regen, condi to boon conversion, constant quickness, constant barrier, and attacks that don't require los?

> >

> > On top of this we have multiple instant cast high damaging abilities, high mobility, a shield that blocks attacks, and passive traits that reward you for spamming buttons via damage and granting quickness?

> >

> > The damage is out of control, the cc is out of control, the constant 5 or more boons with no effort is out of control.

> >

> > Please fix this class to be inline with all of the others. Or at least buff the other classes. It's obvious you have it out for mirage and people's chosen class to complain about is the one that gets all of the balance tweaks, but it's gone on long enough.

>

> You cant have everything you listed, because Utility skills are limited to 3. So pick the most op 3 ones and cry at these.

The standard meta build has literally every one of these things. With the exception of the passive invuln, but that's why you have the elixir, which is also tied to stealth...

I mean literally every one of these things listed.

Why holo damage hasn't been nerfed yet?

And why they need a knockback, knockdown, invuln, stealth, constant regen, condi to boon conversion, constant quickness, constant barrier, and attacks that don't require los?

On top of this we have multiple instant cast high damaging abilities, high mobility, a shield that blocks attacks, and passive traits that reward you for spamming buttons via damage and granting quickness?

The damage is out of control, the cc is out of control, the constant 5 or more boons with no effort is out of control.

Please fix this class to be inline with all of the others. Or at least buff the other classes. It's obvious you have it out for mirage and people's chosen class to complain about is the one that gets all of the balance tweaks, but it's gone on long enough.

Yeah, but we just got an awesome 2v2 custom arena map nobody will see. And we're about to get a champion rush event so we can get some more rng boxes that will contain nothing but junk.

So exciting.

Whatever happened to the updates we used to get where they would revamp world bosses and revamp fractals?

I guess now we're just leaving all of the events the same and enticing people to do them over and over again for 0.0000005% chance at infusions? Or donate a ton of mats for some recipe unlocks in the mystic forge?

I don't know. I hope they have something big in the works to announce on the 30th, because it feels like every decision lately is just how to keep the game on auto-pilot.

It's especially odd that the Festival wasn't updated given what happened with Aurene, and there haven't been any current events to even elude to what's coming next season.

Well, apparently some dialogue eluding to Jormag was added. So, not really a current event, but I guess it settles it that Jormag is going to take focus. And presumably Primordus given the red and blue logo.

I'm not big on getting a ton of snowy zones, but perhaps we can get some more lore on Jotun and some of the more ancient races that don't have a whole lot of stuff fleshed out, like presumably the Hall of Monuments that I believe was built by the Seers?

I guess a Charr/Norn focused season with flame legion and such.

> @"VoxShatterfall.5470" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > Okay, well despite saying I wasn't going to, I bought some keys to give it a shot. Needless to say, 40+ keys and I got a bunch of junk soaring weapon skins, used statuettes to get a golden key and got the mount. So, great, I got the mount. But still no outfit.

> >

>

> Whelp I saw the drop table and thought to myself same category means relatively same level of drop rate. 97 keys later no outfit.

> At least i used keys I stocked up on.

>

> Seems that the drop rate is really low compared to that of the uncommon, heck I even got 3-4 rare drops.

>

> Edit:

> And after I traded in extra statues for gold keys I finally got the outfit.

That's insane. If you spend that much money on keys, you should be able to pick out whatever item you want that isn't some insanely rare harvesting node. Or mount skin. But honestly, the outfit shouldn't be a random drop to begin with. There's no reason it shouldn't be like the mount where you have the option of buying it straight up, or getting it as a freebie for buying keys.

Make the black lion chests have something other than garbage in them, and maybe people will buy keys so you don't have to force this bullshit onto people. But no, swindling for that extra $$ is the way this company works now apparently.

I predict a 40 minute presentation about living story and its evolution throughout the course of the game, with probably 15 minutes of where we've been and old trailer footage. Then a 2 minute trailer, which might be pushing it, for the upcoming episode. Then maybe a 3 minute q&a. And the episode will be coming with game changing expansion level content unlike any we've ever seen before: A new map, a 2 hour story chapter, and if they're feeling really ambitious new armor or weapon skins that will stretch the longevity of the map to last 4 or 5 months until the next episode.

I’m in favor of this simply to reveal more of the world map! And I like large maps. I think it’s a technical limit or something though. From my understanding crystal oasis and pof maps are as large as they can get. Though I feel like desert borderlands is larger for some reason.

? mount. Or that multi seater rhino. I feel like elite specs or secondary professions are in the works but I don’t know if they’ll be coming with living world. We might get some suns refuge area again. Other than that not a lot of expectations.

While it's likely that's snow, especially the new snowy skyboxes in the game, the announcement "snowy" pic also looks like someone standing in a cave of a cliffside with a storm and waves crashing against the cliffs spraying water.

> @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > > @"Tarlonniel.6534" said:

> > > > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > > > even if it's something like the garden plots in the home instance... that I mistakenly bought not realizing how tedious they would be and produce things that can't even be deposited into the material storage...……………

> > >

> > > Aw, man. I was looking forward to getting the plot when it cycled through the store again - is it really that useless?

> >

> > I don’t think you can grow flax with it but I could be mistaken. That was my main hope. But I guess you can use the seeds for dye unlocks. They just can’t be deposited so they take up bank or bag space and it takes quite a few to even make one of the recipes for the unlocks. It’s a neat little thing to have in your home instance, but I wouldn’t advise someone to get one. Unless they’re just a completionist with home nodes.

>

> What are you talking about...you harvest the plants like normal and place the harvested material in material storage, just like all others...with the EXCEPTION of the rare plants that you can only plant after doing certain things...the plots allow you to plant things you can't plant as nodes, that's what they're for in essence.

The fact that there is an exception is why I expressed my annoyance. It’s a small inconvenience but would be a lot better if they had a spot.

Or the charr in the ascalon zone upgraded his treb.

> @"Tarlonniel.6534" said:

> > @"cptaylor.2670" said:

> > even if it's something like the garden plots in the home instance... that I mistakenly bought not realizing how tedious they would be and produce things that can't even be deposited into the material storage...……………

>

> Aw, man. I was looking forward to getting the plot when it cycled through the store again - is it really that useless?

I don’t think you can grow flax with it but I could be mistaken. That was my main hope. But I guess you can use the seeds for dye unlocks. They just can’t be deposited so they take up bank or bag space and it takes quite a few to even make one of the recipes for the unlocks. It’s a neat little thing to have in your home instance, but I wouldn’t advise someone to get one. Unless they’re just a completionist with home nodes.

Also, I hope for more events in the cliffs though. I love the map but there just isn’t much to do there outside of buying things. And the trade in for the bundles of loot needs better rewards at the very least. More than some mini and a few kites.

> @"Bloodstealer.5978" said:

> > @"Calvsie.3675" said:

> > Maybe the secret of the brown cow will finally be revealed!

>

> Yeah that cow.... had me pretty confused as to what and why as well.

Wasn’t the cow eluding to Kralk and the fact that he was displacing things and creating rifts?

Seeing as the gemstore funds content development, I'm actually disappointed there aren't more interesting items or bulks of items with a higher cost. I'm not saying funnel all development into the gemstore, but it seems like the gemstore team is very small as they only manage to release a unique mount skin/outfit like monthly at the most. And I really don't see the point in chairs and gliders. You may see one person every now and then with a gemstore chair, but if you think about all the work that went into making them it feels like a lot of wasted effort for how little interest there is in them. Gliders, sure, but chairs. The inquest glider/chair is amazing, but I and a lot of other people just can't see the point in spending money on a virtual chair.... no matter how cool it is. That's not even counting how cumbersome and rather unintuitive the current novely item setup is. They really need to add somekind of hotkey for a radial menu for novelties and mounts, to select which one you want to use at the very least even if they don't make the novelty selection on the hero panel anymore friendly.

ANYway, to get back to the original point. There are so many things, at least in my opinion, that I think they could start targeting to make more money. More mount skins, more UNIQUE mount skins that aren't just slight pattern changes and color variations crowding up a little gamble box with actually unique skins that just feels like a dirty way of forcing consumers to spend money they don't want to spend to get what they want. Just sell them directly or make the combo packs more than base model with 4 dye channels and a stripe in a different location.

I do miss armor packs versus outfits because of the potential to mix and match, but I can understand the strain on development with a small team and the fitting that has to go into them. But even outfits aren't released that frequently, and aside from a few that are rather lackluster they're usually pretty decent even if many of them kind of share the same theme.

I think they could sell combat tonics pretty well on the gemstore, and they could certainly sell infusions. It's just that with infusions they wouldn't have any incentive for players to do these community events or gamble during festivals or do meta events. Not doing an infusion with a 0.000000000002% drop rate means they have to create some other carrot, and that would probably wind up being somekind of other cosmetic-oriented item like a weapon skin. Which would probably take significantly more work than some particle effects or a new texture and is why they're so liberal with adding them. It's great that they do, but the drop rate is so low on them usually that you're better off straight up farming some old material that you don't enjoy than wasting time participating in community events that are only fun for a few runs and only last a week or two. The meta rush I feel was done well though, because it at least came with an update to the metas to add Amalgamated Gemstones.

They could have done something similar with these boss rush events, so that the carrot wasn't a generic champ bag with a few silver worth of mats and a dismally small chance of an infusion.

They could add more home node items, they could add decoration bundles for guild halls, even if it's just existing assets made into decorations. They may not see that many buyers, but how much work would have to go into making them decorations? Would it really be that strenuous if they already have collision? Especially if they don't need recipes. With this comes the idea of player housing, but that's another rabbit hole not fit for this thread.

I think they could do more with the gemstore than they are doing, but everything they do from what they release and how few items they release in the gemstore, to how they structure rewards for festivals, these community events, mount packs, and outfits versus armor packs, it's all done very strategically to keep things as minimal as possible. It's all about efficiency because they seem to be extremely strapped for resources in all areas of the game, and it's felt like that's been increasingly more prevalent since right before POF. I understand, because with this business model they have to be tight with resources, but it honestly feels like it's been bare minimum on a lot of these fronts for so long that it really doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they shifted so much focus to other projects during a lot of this time.

In terms of the aesthetics of items on the gemstore, if it makes enough money to fund content development, then start pumping them out. The problem is when they start pumping them out and it feels like those funds are being diverted to projects that you aren't supporting, which is what peeved me to learn about those canceled projects. People will always complain that the gemstore has more content than the game most of the time, and while it's technically true, I don't think it's anywhere near as much as it COULD be, or maybe even SHOULD be... and what items they do release I feel are often not worth the very small percentage of interest they receive.

Stop making unique gathering tools that a select few will make, or if you do sell them as a bundle instead of one gathering tool weekly while people wait on a complete set.

Stop making boring skins clutter up a mount pack or somekind of license that people HAVE to get just to get the skin they actually want, it feels unnecessarily manipulative and counter-productive to me. (Obviously this is all subjective, but I'm certainly not the only one that feels this way about some of the skins in these packs.)

Stop making chairs that a fraction of the playerbase actually cares enough about to spend their real cash on, that obviously took a lot of work and effort.. and while well done.. could have been spent on something that a larger portion of players would want like outfits, weapons, or mount skins.

Put that effort into making things that are PRACTICAL and pretty, even if it's something like the garden plots in the home instance... that I mistakenly bought not realizing how tedious they would be and produce things that can't even be deposited into the material storage...…………… But it still has more use than a chair and is better than waiting an entire month to get a complete set of themed gathering tools.

I'm obviously just a consumer and not a game dev, and it's all just my opinion, but I think there are a lot of rather strange, uninspired, and frankly poor decisions made across the board. Whether it be gemstore content or game content and communication or event design that makes me feel like there isn't a lot of thought put into it outside of having something to post in the news section on the main page or create the illusion of development. Perhaps there's much larger stuff behind the scenes but with that lack of communication and these design decisions it leaves a lot of room for speculation, especially coupled with the increasing influx of these grindy or gambling-centric approaches.

Lastly, I'm obviously going based off of my observation alone, but I assume they have some kind of analytics person that reviews gemstore sales to see what's most profitable? Perhaps the items are designed solely based on how fun they are to create and not necessarily consumer or sales focused? Maybe there's just a ton of people floating around on Inquest chairs or using expensive gathering tools that I'm just not seeing during the time that I play and these items? Or maybe it's just that creating items like these are much easier/more efficient than creating something that might sell better like outfits/mount skins? Is creating a bunch of these items and populating the gemstore with them a better approach than not putting that effort into something that might take a little more time but sell better? Are they afraid to put more outfits on the gemstore because they don't want people to complain about the gemstore getting all of these new items while in-game rewards for community events and even a majority of meta events continue to be Random Champion Bag #23 with what essentially just winds up being crafting materials? Then unique skins being reserved as a big shiny feature of a new episode release?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting older and just not as enamored with the game as I used to be, but I feel like on a lot of fronts it just isn't really getting the focus it deserves or somewhere there's some decisions being made that may not be in the best interest of the game, and has nothing specifically to do with whether some outfit on the gemstore is as shiny as "legendary armor" that only gets one unique skin set for raiding that only a fraction of the playerbase sees anyway. So yes, I think, whether they're welfare legendaries or not, if I spend a fortune on legendary armor, if we're comparing it to gemstore outfits, that legendary armor should have a unique skin. But that's probably my only reasoning against shiny items on the gemstore. Because, while some people may farm for hours and hours for that same armor and obtain it in game, I don't think I've ever made a legendary without buying GEMS and converting to gold. It's the only sane thing to do and thus basically Gemstore armor.

Despite the rant above, I can tell when they have obviously listened to player feedback, and it's appreciated though it may not seem like it. It just might be nice to have more insight occasionally on certain decisions and why they don't make it in, if they're being considered or some of the complications that might arise from trying to implement them, or just general communication. We get great communication from the balance team and WvW though pretty regularly, so kudos to them for being so forthcoming. Perhaps the other teams are just drowning in too much work to have the same presence. Or perhaps they just don't like feeling micromanaged by consumers. I mean, I get it, I wouldn't want to either, I just hope that they're still passionate about what they do and the life they bring to the game during releases.

I apologize for the long post, and most likely nobody will read it. But as usual, I got carried away!

Really though, I am curious about some of these gemstore decisions. It's not even a long-winded rant about forced gambling with mount packs, I mean it partially is, but why? Is that really more profitable than just outright selling individual skins? And I assume the trading post only holds a certain number of items/collections/etc at a time?

Is there not a way to have a larger selection of items, even older items, ALWAYS available, accessed via the account page even if they aren't available directly in game? I probably would have bought the warclaw mount pack at some point during one of the WvW event weekends, but with a limited time to purchase them and more chaotic than usual income I haven't been able to get them. And feeling rushed to get them when they are available just seems odd. You'd think of all things, mount skins would take a bit more priority in general over some of the other items. Is it less a database issue and more a UI issue with the in-game trading post?

Okay, I'm really done this time. Sorry!

I noticed that when I leave WvW it switches my preferred mount to Warclaw despite having it set to Skyscale. May have always worked like this but I don't remember having to switch between them before the Skyscale release.

I'm assuming the final collection will look like the eternal alchemy. Or that will be the 4th step, and the fifth will be the magnificent King Joko himself. His head will just appear above yours and deliver a punchline mocking you or taking credit for your victory.

Come to think of it, that would have been a great backback gemstore item, like the little robot that talks when you jump or mine nodes or whatever.

Anyway. I like the idea of the eternal alchemy model, but I also just kind of like full body auras or armor enhancing auras. They're a lot easier to work with in terms of aesthetics, where as things like Aurora with overhead effects kind of look better as skill uses or effects. Guess we'll have to see what the end result looks like, but having each item give its own additional unique effect would be nice, especially considering the price to make them. Just altering one shared effect amongst all is kind of a bummer.

I'll probably never raid enough to get the ring and whatever else completed, and am in no hurry to finish the Vision.

I would have to assume the amulet will be last, as it's the highest stat item, and I hope it at least has its own unique effect outside of the floating orbs.

Actually, it's been forever since I worked on this collection. I just remembered I have to purchase the token from a vendor first! Ignore this!

I now have crafted and unlocked Axe, Greatsword, Hammer, Mace, Sword, and Shield and have not gained credit for this achievement. Unless I'm overlooking something I think this may be bugged.

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> My money's on Season 5 dealing with the fallout Kralkatorrik created by rampaging through the mists.

>

> I think we'll be getting 3 possibly 4 maps this season instead of 1 per episode, each new map will be in the mists rather than on the open world and they will be based on the 3 damaged god realms Kralkatorrik flew through.

> The Underworld.

> Fissure of Woe.

> And Melandru's Lost Domain.

>

> Main villain for season 5 could maybe be Menzies who might take advantage of Balthazars absense, his drained eternal forces which Balthzar had turned into forged and of all the chaos Kralkatorrik wrought to send his Shadow Army through to Tyria, the Underworld and Melandru's Lost Domain.

If they didn’t do a mists map for this chunk of landmass that just fell out of a portal in the middle of the ocean straight from the mists, I’d bet they probably won’t do a map in the mists for anything else. The whole luring Kralk back to Tyria felt like kind of a clunky way to avoid having a map in the mists to begin with.

I think it could be a little better with a wider range of activities, or at least improvements on the activities that are there.

The stampedes having tougher mobs and a boss at the end with better rewards or more coffers would be nice. Maybe 10 coffers for killing the boss at the end or something.

And the arena is the same. The difficulty isn’t really there, especially if you have a ton of people with you. The order of bosses is always the same and the bosses themselves are the same, where it might be kind of cool to have a variation of potential boss spawns and have them scale higher with more coffers per boss.

Maybe even a Queen’s gauntlet version with a solo arena and random boss spawns that have the survival mechanic where things get tougher. The higher the stacks the more coffers you get.

But I’m one of the dumb people that just tries to get as many coffers as I can in hopes of getting the infusion because I’ve just really wanted the infusion since it came out and know I’ll never get it from shatterer.

I guess I just need to learn that the infusion drop rates are always so low that they’re basically mythical and are just meant to inflate gem to good conversions for people desperate enough to gamble for them. Personally I think there are enough prestige items in the game without forcing infusions into this for-the-rich only or cosmically lucky obtaining method.

I read a long time ago that games like candy crush sometimes implement different algorithms depending on whether a player has spent money or not that affects how the game treats them specifically, and I have to wonder sometimes if there’s something similar with the rng system in here.

But anyway, back to the festival, I think improving existing events would be a great first step, then maybe adding a wider variety of activities in future events would be cool. Maybe some kind of Vahtendi academy style pop quiz activity about elder dragon lore or a lair of the snowman style dungeon craw that teleports you into a random area overrun with a random elder dragon champ and it’s minions could be cool.

> @"Crystal Black.8190" said:

> Subject Alpha which was created by the Inquest by combining different kinds of dragon magic would in my opinion be a good candidate for a villain in the upcoming season. After it escaped the inquest facility it would have had enough time by now to regenerate and consume a lot of the magic the player unleashed on the world. It also has the ability to command dragon minions. Now that zaithan, mordremoth and kralk are dead it could use some of their remaining minions for its own purpose. Considering its creation it could try to take the place of one of the dead elder dragons similar to aurene if it gets enough magic to eat.

I don't know about that much, but it is interesting to think about what the Inquest must know to be able to combine all of those magics into one being. Did the full metal alchemist brothers ever mention anything about all of this research during Season 4?

It's kind of odd that we didn't have more dialogue with Gorrik during the last episode, considering Blish was inside of Kralk, and considering what we discovered about Kralk's torment and combined magic - especially since he is a former inquest member. Maybe they'll add to that in the coming season.

On that note, I'm not particularly fond of Inquest heavy plots, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a smaller sub plot during this season following up on Overseer Kuda, Phlunt, or some other Inquest content. Perhaps they may even tie it into a Charr civil war if they decide to get into it, seeing as Overseer Kuda was introduced in the same patch that the Olmakhan, a foreign warband/tribe was introduced.

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> A big holographic decoration that makes a giant holographic elder dragon fly around your guild hall is expensive?

> Who would have thought :D

>

> Seriously though it's an epic decoration, and yes the whole point of a guild is to work together for stuff like that.

> The afore mentioned Guild effort.

It’s too bad they never update guild missions or guild mission rewards or provide any kind of incentive for actually being in a guild.

I imagine Dragon Bash will end and Bazaar of the Four Winds will start up. So I wouldn't be surprised to see the next episode at least come sometime in August, then perhaps another after Halloween. That still puts quite a big chunk of time in between releases and depending on how many episodes they have could make this season last a year or longer like Season 4. I wouldn't expect an expansion or details of an expansion anytime before next summer at the earliest though.

We may get lucky and get some current events injected with some of the festivals though.

With the epilogue of last episode we really didn't get any hints about a future plot, and Bazaar of the four winds seems like a good opportunity to update it and maybe even involve some actual current event/story content given its connection to the Zephyrites, Glint, and Aurene.

Maybe we'll even get lucky enough to have another current event that's similar to what we had with Traeherne and Caladbog. That was a nice experience and wrapped up some loose ends after Mordy's defeat.

We also had that requiem about Rhytlock leaving Sohothin sitting around, so that could be a possible current event hook.

> @"Psientist.6437" said:

> I wouldn't put any money on the "three and pregnant" plot, but I would put even money on Aurene "dying for real this time" plot. She discovers a way to balance magic by transforming herself into something lifeless or without consciousness. Perhaps transforming herself into shrines across Tyria that act as magic routers/capacitors.

I personally find it more likely that she replaces many of them for a little while, until we realize she can't hold as much or as many different magics as we think and we start having to branch out to find other dragons that she can disperse some of the aspects to. If that's a thing. With no origin lore on Elder Dragons it's kind of hard to predict though.

There's been a recurring theme involving Bioluminescence for some time now.

In Sandswept we had the eerie driftwood that washed up on shore with a bioluminescent growth, the caves that were probably just meant for something else and got cut.

In Jahai we had the rift fungal area - that seemed like something out of Tyria and may have just been reuse of assets that were already in development - but still, more bioluminescence.

Under Istan, we had a large unaccessable cavern system with those same assets, but many of these assets have been partially seen in places like Draconis Mons and other Heart of Thorns areas.

Now we have an upcoming skin, and a weapon set with bioluminescence.

This bioluminescence weapon set also comes during Dragon Bash of all times, which seems odd. Some might attribute bioluminescence to Mordremoth more than the deep sea dragon, but I could easily see this all being a hint that we're working our way towards content involving the deep sea dragon.

It's kind of cool thinking about the possibility of some Aquaman style ancient Largos cities in the middle of the ocean, bioluminescent flora and fauna, and a pair of spooky glowing eyes peering at you from the distance of a black void.

Granted they did say they were taking a break from world-ending stakes for awhile, but it's still odd to me at least that there's such a recurring theme of bioluminescence over the past season. And nothing large enough to really warrant that much alarm or notice, just subtle details here and there.

If we do get a deep sea dragon expansion or living season, I hope we get Largos for a playable race. I feel like they're the one race that could be more easily implemented into the vanilla core story if they choose to start them at level 1 and follow the same pattern.