Kichwas.7152

Open World is so easy that you could dual wield shield and still steam roll through it... Even if that meant 1-2 were copies of 4-5. and 3 was greyed out.

That said, one of my mesmer's (leveld up 2 of them before they let us save multiple specs and gear) uses sword / shield and greatsword. I use the character in dungeons and fractals (still in Tier 1 as I'm only recently bothering to care to grind up infusions), and open world.

- Am I meta? No.

- But I go through things just fine. And since Open World is so easy it's not all that different from my experience on my firebrand or my tempest / weaver.

As for potent uses of it, yeah - it only has value in instanced content. Fractals - where Mesmer is no longer Meta anyway... so the fractals where it would matter, are fractals your Mesmer won't get an invite to... so... we're back to it just being for fun in content where it isn't needed...

I meant to come back to this thread but got off track. Thanks for the thoughts.

Above I started with just the weapons I don't often see touted as DPS choices.

But if we expanded it out to the games full list... Basically thinking:

- "Take weapon A - I want the most DPS I can get, I am open to any profession - which one is it for that weapon?"

- And to try to figure that out for every weapon in the game, even the offhands. Heck... even the water ones for... reasons of completeness...

> @"Shiyo.3578" said:

> You shouldn't play druid outside of raids as a healer in full harrier gear(I 'd argue you don't even want to do that if you have 2 soulbeasts already in your raid) or WvW in full trailblazers. The elite spec is useless in any other situation.

That's about what I expected.

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> It carries newer players easily, they struggle with alot of basic content. I don't have the numbers but the devs once said that experienced players are something like ten times more effective than inexperienced players.

>

> The reason to take Druid specifically is on purpose, to not just destroy everything and ruin the story or learning experience for newer players.

The intention of slowing things down makes some sense. Because my initial thought on your first paragraph was that newbies already do low enough damage as it is, and Druid is exceptionally bad at damage... but since I keep seeing it on both newbies and people with way past 100 mastery (often 200-300+)... I was really wondering if my understanding of the spec was way off somewhere.

> @"Aomine.5012" said:

> Bear is absolutely atrocious, so please avoid bringing it in general.

>

Isn't the sole purpose of Bear to tank for you when soloing in the open world - particularly for players not yet skilled enough to dodge everything.

- That noted, Rock Gazelle and Bristleback both beat it in toughness by a wide margin meaning, I presume, that they will tank for you better (Especially the Gazelle as it has the health to survive the experience - albeit not as much as the bear).

I keep seeing people running druid in dungeons, fractals, and open world content.

My understanding of this elite was that it was solely useful as a healer - and so pretty much a raids only elite spec.

Am I missing something, are there builds that are good in other content, or am I just seeing people who don't know better? Last time I made heavy use of Druid was back in Heart of Thorns when raids first came out (guild raid didn't last long, left the game for a while, and guild was dead when I got back, so never got into raiding again and shelved my druid build).

The fact that you can use mounts all over HoT has already nerfed it to the point of being trivially easy.

Having been in this game since beta...

I've seen this "that is too hard and needs to be nerfed" argument for... basically everything.

I remember when it was being made about Champion mobs in Orr.

I remember when it was being made about the Story Mode Ascalonina dungeon. I remember when Story Mode of Twilight Arbor was "needing a nerf".

I remember when the event to defeat the Giant in the Town of Nagaling in Diessa plains was seen as unfairly difficult...

- these things are all seen as trivial content these days.

When World of Warcraft put out WoW Classic they were accused of having nerfed it to be easier. They ran the numbers to make sure they hadn't made a mistake and found that no - they had done it right. What had occurred was nearly 15 years of player skill.

Everything gets easier once you learn how to use the skills of your character, learning about dodging, learn about so many things...

And with HoT - the one thing that truly made it harder than pre-HoT, the dense maps and hard to reach spots, is a moot point with mounts and gliding...

I'd almost argue it doesn't need a nerf, it needs a buff.

No.

I feel mounts changed the game negatively.

I personally wish they were not available to be used outside of Path of Fire and content that comes after it.

The lack of mounts was a feature for Guild Wars. So many things that took time and practice to do or reach can now be skipped in seconds with a mount. Heart of Thorns in particular - once extremely challenging locales that forced you to learn to get better, are now trivial.

Before mounts, there was more of a sense of moving around the game.

The layout of PoF zones is just different - things where done to accentuate the use of mounts. The layout of prior zones was more crammed in because of their lack. Mounts made everything before PoF too small...

> @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > @"Kichwas.7152" said:

> > Just log out anyone AFK more than X mins.

> How do you prove this? How would Anet know if someone is truly AFK?

>

That would actually be trivially easy. Time between last inputs sent through the server. Almost every online thing you do knows this and most of them will time you out after a while.

If GW2 already has this configured, as another reply claimed; then the AFK bots discussed in this thread do not exist and you're all just miscasting blame to an imaginary target rather that whatever is really going on.

Just log out anyone AFK more than X mins.

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:

> > @"Kalythsu.8350" said:

> > > @"angelica.7406" said:

> > > When do you think EoD will come out?

> > >

> > > I would like it to come out for the Chinese New Year which is February 11, 2021, it would be great to celebrate it with the Lunar New Year in the Monastery as well as in Linde.

> > >

> > > Or what are your speculations?

> >

> > End 2021 around. Why? Because :

> >

> > Episode 5 october 2020

> > Episode 6 december 2020

> > Episode 7 february 2020

> > Episode 8 : April 2020

> > Expansion : September 2021

> >

> > But I didn't include any Vision Past or delay... it's very optimized^^

>

> If Episode 7 and Episode 8 are released in February and April of _2020_, will they be including a time travel machine? :wink:

I was wondering about that... :bleep_bloop:

I hope we can find out relatively soon some of the extremely basic things like:

Will it have a new profession? (presume no)

Will it have a new race? (almost 100% chance of no, but worth pondering anyway since people have been asking for Tengu as far back as Factions of GW1)

Will it have new elite specs (presume yes)

Will it have new mount types (solid maybe on my guess)

Will it have new weapons (presume no as they've not added any since launch)

If it has a new profession or race, would it give another character slot as well? (since I don't think we'll get either, this question is likely moot)

I'm also itching to see enough of a trailer preview to be able to guess as to whether or not they will resort to cheap ethnic stereotypes like Eye of the North did (GW2 base game has it too, but only because it was stuck with what EotN did with Norn and Asura) or whether it will avoid that like Factions, Nightfall and Path of Fire all managed to do. This has been becoming important to me as I see some of the things people are asking for being racist ethnic stereotypes... ArenaNet has usually managed to avoid that, but it's still a concern as the dev team has been in flux a lot over the years and I get worried each time the reigns of control get passed around that somebody with a D&D past might creep in...

I didn't even know we had DPS meters...

Explains why somebody in a recent story mode dungeon I was in suddenly yelled out "28k DPS, woot!"... I was sitting there wondering if he just say a 28k crit... or had found someway to actually see his DPS...

Anything needed for basic main story progression should be doable by casual players in easy to get 'obvious' gear like soldiers.

Anything outside of that should be open season for varying levels of difficulty.

What this means is that I favor any part of open world that is 'off the main roads' being made harder... but anything that you must pass through to get to the next part of the 'story' being kept easy.

One of the great features of GW1 was the ability to turn on a hard mode - this only works for instanced content though - but it could be added to GW2 in exactly that way... the ability to replay any completed personal story, living story, story or explorable dungeon - on hard mode. Fractals already have a difficulty scale system so no need for it there.

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> > @"Taril.8619" said:

> > > @"hugo.4705" said:

> > > your choice to be addict or not

> >

> > That's literally not how addiction works.

>

> Your choice, ofc I can have a predisposition to be addict to casino or drug BUT if I never go there for my entire life, I will never be addict.

>

> I am cunscious that there are cases that can't live without their cannabis or smoking. But it is due to the addictive substances. I am in no way defending lootboxes, but if the player IS aware that the droprates are trapped, and that the player will lose, why playing the game? Sure companies are culprits but players doing gambling or opening lootboxes too.

>

>

> I know precisely how addiction works, my brother can't stop smoking. But what I think about it? If he never had touched a cigarette, he wouldn't had an addiction. It's that simple, avoid things that can cause addiction.

>

> Need money to have a chance to earn something permit many things? Say NO.

>

Just say no? That didn't exactly work all that well when it was the mantra in the 1980s...

Given manipulative tactics used, it's not that simple.

That noted I can think to some extremes. My mother and all of her siblings were force fed LSD in the 60s by their stepfather. Of them, my mother is the only one that did not become an addict, thus sparing me and my siblings the horrific experiences my cousins went through. Now... that's a bizarre extreme and I know it.

But we have had plenty of people in minority communities who were experimented on with those same said psychedelics through to Crack in the 50s through 90s, and after that many people were prescribed opiates after medical procedures not because they needed them, but to increase sales... leading to drug addiction now also hitting white communities (which thankfully means it's rightly and finally seen as a medical issue and not a criminal one)...

Gambling addiction has been known about for centuries, if not longer. Pretty sure I've heard of it being discussed in Roman era writings...

You trick someone in with the promise of an outsided reward, and then convince them to try again a few times, and it only takes a shockingly few attempts to get an addict.

If you visit a modern Casino (easy to do if you simply even land in Nevada for a fly over, as slot machines are in the airports right as you exit the plane - you can also see them in Tahoe in one town that exits halfway in Cali and halfway in Nevada, on the Nevada side of the street the casinos have open doors facing Cali with slot machines in view)... anyway if you visit such a locale you will notice the machines now resemble video games more than slot machines. They use something very similar to a loot box system to get people to play a game on repeat until the money drains out...

Because it works... some flashy graphics and a simple reward designed to trigger the 'id' and you can bilk people of their life savings in a matter of minutes.

Also... willpower... no. Not for most people. Very few people have the ability to turn off parts of their brains. My mother actually did manage to quit cigarettes on a one time just 'now I will quit' moment, but that is an extremely rare trait and something even the person in question can rarely repeat.

That all noted... I'm going with the experts. If professionals who study the psychology of addiction are saying this stuff is a problem, I'm going to trust them. Especially given how the recent mass distrust of experts over the last decade has essentially led to 2020 being such a global mess - I think it's high time we started believing people who are more trained in subjects than ourselves, to actually know their specific subject matter...

There's really no logical reason not to do global scaling at this point.

Like ESO does.

Guild Wars 2 scales people down to the level of a zone. But ESO scales everyone everwhere to the ability of what this game would call a level 80 in exotic gear. Unless you enter a raid or their version of fractal like content, at which point your champion points take over and achieve an effect similar to using Ascended gear here.

The result is that players do content in any order they desire, and the challenge is the same regardless of the zone.

Imagine if Queensdale, Cursed Shore, Dragon's Stand, and Drizzlewood Coast were all EXACTLY THE SAME difficulty and scale - and a character from level 1 through 80 would experience them the same way. In fact a brand new level 1 could choose to go to Drizzlewood first.

- That's ESO. And... oddly enough, it works. Extremely well. Every last zone in the game has a lot of people, often stacks of them. You've got to work it to find a spot to be alone...

It also makes it so people stop caring about level unless they are aiming for high end content. Outsider of veteran dungeon and raid players - level becomes meaningless.

People spend more time with story, because there's no "rush".

Both GW2 and ESO have good story as selling points. Imagine going to Queensdale on a level 80 character and finding it an engaging experience... and then taking your time exploring all the lore there, because it was just as worth doing as Drizzlewood.

Far from causing players to become disengaged with a 'lack of progression', ESO players get very engaged with the world.

Guild Wars 2 is halfway there, with scaling down - though we all know a level 80 in Queensdale is scaled down to be even more powerful than the actual level it says they were scaled to... resulting in a 'cheapened experience' that doesn't get you engaged... so again... GW2 is only partway there.

These days, even WoW has scaling that outshines Guild Wars 2's - because here the scaling mechanic is still stuck in 2012... but it's now 2020...

The solution here is not the delay boosts... but to make the game engaging regardless of what level character you bring to what zone... and do the scaling ESO did when it rewrote it's game after launch to fix things...

Next on my list:

GvG pvp. I don't PvP in general, but I do remember this from GW1, and it was a format that made that game stand out. It's a PvP mode that I would welcome for what it could bring to the community.

Super Adventure as available year round. Won't ever happen, doesn't meant I don't want to ask for it anyway...

Some armor for light and heavy that has a normal top that ends at or above the belt line and a normal pants or shorts bottom - ie... not a buttflap or skirt or robe.

New base faces for humans that look Canthan - just like we got the new faces that look Elonan.

The one I know will never happen: a new level 1 starting spot in Cantha, as an option... and the ability to have NPCs refer to my character as a Canthan instead of the 'Champion of Tyria'. I'd like that for Elona too... won't ever get it, doesn't mean I won't ask for it anyway...

Number 1 on my list, the return of the Dervish, Assassin, Ritualist, Paragon, and Monk - as elite specs if not full classes. The Monk should be a class. The others I'd welcome as elite specs.

I won't get it.

But I still want it.

Given that this is guild wars, you'd only ever see it if the devs could figure out a logical way to hide our ability to see the butts of our characters when wearing a swimsuit outfit to protect the eyes of delicate people that are scared of what it might say about them if they look at a male butt for more than 1 second...

Since that's not really all that logical, outside of a few silly looking swinsuits from the early 1900s - it probably won't happen.

That annoyance out of the way...

I'd love it if we could get swim suit armor skins... It won't happen, but I can wish.

I'd even settle for the ability to wear pants that were not hidden by a top with light or heavy armor...

> @"Widmo.3186" said:

> Cool move, but still...

> > @"Butterfly Kingdom.8349" said:

> >However, please note that you cannot convert an existing Guild Wars 2 account to a Steam account or convert a Steam account to a non-Steam account.

> Is there a limit of foolishness from ANet side? Cant you act like a normal company, like kakao games which moved to steam with BDO and allowed ppl to log-in through steam? No? I ask for too much?

Why would you want to hand over 30% of the money from all future transactions between you and your already existing customers to a third party?

All Steam is, is a middle man that stand in the doorway of your store and reads every receipt then charges you 30% of the total for the privilege of them blocking the doorway. Now if you think they're adding a new door and letting in more people than got in before then maybe you can justify it... but if you put them on your existing doorway - that's just plain foolish.

Steam has value if you're a small company and setting up the game platform is beyond your reach... but for an existing company it's a risky move that could destroy your ability to be profitable.

There's a reason Epic and Apple are going after each other right now... and a reason lots of cities in California have put laws in place limiting the cut companies like Uber Eats and Doordash take... these middle men are ruining industry ability to grow by overcharging for a service that, had it been priced right; would instead be a growth engine...

I'm dubious as to how many new customers there are to grab off of steam... I don't see this as a wise move... but at least it's not an insane one, like handing over us existing customers would have been.

We all often see builds for a given profession that suggest 'use this weapon and that build' for the best DPS, or best Support, or best something.

But what about going in the other direction. For favorite weapons - if you've got every profession leveled out, as most of us do 8 years into this game - you can pick any weapon and spin up a build for it on any one of those characters.

Having come back to actively playing GW2 again after a bit of time away, I've been going through characters and re-doing old builds...

So starting with what seem to be the least seen weapons in builds, when I go looking, maybe just because I'm looking wrong... but then letting this also be hopefully a more general 'challenge topic'.

What would be the best DPS builds possible for someone using these:

Hammer

Mace in mainhand

Shield in Offhand

Rifle

- I don't see these often, so I'm wondering if there are some builds with them that you'd want to take into dungeons and fractals where it's usually about maximizing DPS.

I think in the next tier down, I haven't been seeing Scepter much of late - but for some professions it still shows up in weapon-swap as 'ranged just in case'.

After that... I'd flip things and wonder if there's a strong greatsword support build out there... since it seems like greatsword is the 'go-to' weapon of dungeon builds for DPS...

> @"bOTEB.1573" said:

> > @"Kichwas.7152" said:

> > Steam takes a cut of your earnings.

> >

> > Look at what's going on right now with a certain other game developer and an exclusive platform store for mobile games...

> >

> > No one wants to suffer those cuts if they can avoid it.

> >

> > If GW2 went to steam, you can expect the game to make about 30% LESS money... which means laying off more devs, delaying more expacs, cancelling more voice actors, slowing up more of the Living Story... etc...

> >

> > If they can at all make enough to keep the game alive WITHOUT Steam, they should.

> >

>

> Normally, Valve takes around 30 percent of all game sales on Steam, with some exceptions for games from smaller developers in its Steam Direct program. That will remain the case for the first $10 million in sales a game maker or publisher earns. For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut. On what exactly will steam take the cut? Is it the expansions, is it INGAME gem purchases, or will it be only steam gem purchases?

>

> However, Steam may double the player base of GW2. In this case, this 20-30 % will be well worth it.

That's almost never actually happened though for MMOs. Some portion of the base migrates over, a few people join, but not many. When MMOs grow it's due to new content, not which icon people click on their desktop to launch it.

Steam takes a cut of your earnings.

Look at what's going on right now with a certain other game developer and an exclusive platform store for mobile games...

No one wants to suffer those cuts if they can avoid it.

If GW2 went to steam, you can expect the game to make about 30% LESS money... which means laying off more devs, delaying more expacs, cancelling more voice actors, slowing up more of the Living Story... etc...

If they can at all make enough to keep the game alive WITHOUT Steam, they should.

For a request:

More 'pants' and 'shorts' that are tight to the body for heavy and light armor. Not 'buttflaps' and skirts - it's 2020, the need to protect male players from seeing the behinds of male characters is long past, the rest of don't need to keep enduring due to their fragility.

This sale that's been going for the past week - extend it one more week because the Gem store has been offline so much this last week.

- Also make that a policy anytime the store has major network issues. Put sales and limited time offers onto extension.

Kind of annoying to have so many issues during a timed sale. They should consider extending that anniversary sale.

I did manage to get it to work and buy the items I wanted - but then I was unable to get the last thing I was considering as the gem trading and buying both just went completely out for me last night. And it sounds like I was not alone in that.

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> Considering Cantha has been on a "Humans Only!" racism tear for the last 200+ years, I wouldn't get my hopes too high...

Possibly.

Then again if you look at real world genocides even the ones that last several centuries have usually failed to be 100% 'final solutions'. They can reduce by factors like 99%, such as the Native American population of the USA, or by massive amounts like the Aboriginal population of Australia. But 100% wipeouts - those are very rare and usually only work when short in duration, like Columbus' landing on what is now Hispaniola (and there are still people there who claim to have some native blood - but that kind of hiding by mixing in would not happen with non-humans in Cantha). Quite often even in rapid intentional wipeouts it doesn't get everyone - like the Toltec & Mayan attacks on Aztec survivors after Cortez took Tenochtitlan (most people today who claim to be Aztec are actually descendants of the Indigenous people that defeated the Aztecs alongside Cortez, but a few actual Aztec people did survive the postwar purge).

I suspect we'll find pockets of people, and if the purges have ended - pockets that are slowly growing back. At the end of the 'Indian Wars' there were a little less than 200,000 Native Americans left in the USA, but we're over 6.79 million now. Still a LOT less than the estimated 10-200 million (estimates vary dramatically to an absurd degree) they used to have, but slowly growing.