Einlanzer.1627

I don't understand why people insist that we need SW/Istan-style metas on every new map. Not only is that not necessary, it would actually be bad for the game. The world does need to be developed with zones that are there mostly for story/lore and solo exploration and not for repeat zerg farming. Metas like those listed above should only be introduced periodically, not with every new zone. So in that sense I have no problem with either this new map or with the status quo more broadly speaking. What is needed, however, are goals that can be progressed toward in these new maps, like new armor/weapon sets or new traits/skills. I would leave that to Anet to come up with.

Generally speaking, though, I would mostly have liked to see more creativity and thematic variety in the maps these season. Last season was great for this. The Bloodstone Fens is a very unique zone, and every subsequent one had a very different flavor. I also think we should occasionally see new real cities introduced through new zones, places where people can congregate instead of just Lion's Arch or one of the Gem Store instances.

edit - I do think Gandara is the most disappointing part of the new map. It should have been awesome and it was very lackluster.;

> @"Zelanard.5806" said:

> You say that as though "meta events" is the only content in this game xD

> Quite frankly, I think they should stop making meta events to every new map.

> Every map does not Need replayability. a map is perfectly fine as "Story Content + Achievements" > Move on to next map.

> BTW. They have a dedicated LS team, (unless they changed that while I was looking away?) I strongly doubt they have anything to do with fractals and dungeons and raids...

> I must say though, I'd much rather see either 5man raids or dungeons than full raids... I will never get around to do those, because I find them tedious. (tedious, because of the party size).

I agree with this. I think the problem is people expecting every new map to have a rewarding meta and reasons to stay camped there or go back long term. Not only is that not necessary, it would actually be bad for the game. We need to get maps that are there mostly for story and solo exploration and not for zerg farming.

I think the biggest disappointment with this map was how much better Gandara could have been - a new real city acting as a possible hub for players would have made this map a lot better. It didn't need an over-the-top meta for people to farm. We already have numerous of those in the game.

More generally, I would mostly have liked to see more creativity and thematic variety in the maps these season. Last season was great for this. The Bloodstone Fens is a very unique zone, and every subsequent one had a very different flavor.

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> It was a sound idea to keep things in one place since the major criticism of ls3 was the jumping around from one end of the world was a bit strange and the narrative suffered. However, given how poor this episode narrative was, that no longer seems to apply.

>

> You also have to remember that Elona in gw1 wasnt really the most interesting place. Kourna for one had little to make it iconic and was very bland. That has stifled a lot of their creativity. Compare that to say Draconis Mons where they had full freedom and made something very unique and fun (if u like vertical map). As a result, we ended up with possibly the weakest ls map yet with Kourna.

>

> I dont think every map needs sweeping metas though. Sandswept worked perfectly as it was and managed to make stories out of the smaller chains it had. Istan and Kourna were fairly uninteresting though and rather than be well thought like say Silverwastes, they are mindless zergfests which fail to do much beyond slow everyones fps and make everything unviewable anyway. Too many big metas and we end up with HoT problem and long term we will have too many to reasonably be able to complete with a split population.

I think it's actually better that not every map has sweeping metas. We really should only get those occasionally with new maps, otherwise it will become overwhelming, start to divide the player base up too much and lead to a lot of analysis paralysis. I think this was actually a mistake with HoT's map design. There was honestly too much going on among those 4 maps. There was not enough content that could be explored in a relaxed way.

> @"MeTx.6712" said:

> This has been suggested so many times already, and with good reason...

>

> Okay so ANet is refusing us a way to save and load builds (traits+skills), but please can you at least implement trait memory, so that I don't have to re-read and re-apply every trait whenever I accidentally change it...

>

> Sincerely, the community

Yeah, this is really annoying and needs to be fixed.

This is not uncommon. For some reason the game is designed in such a way where model scale varies. Logan goes through very noticeable size changes from instance to instance if you play through the older story.

Something they kind of need to get on lockdown.

> @"Poseidon.3852" said:

> In my opinion, Conditions should be more like what other MMORPGs have... them being "DoTs". In other words, Damage over Time. Not bursty at all, EVER. They should put pressure on the target, slowly downing its hp, while other abilities of the one doing the DoTs should revolve around survivability while the enemies health is being depleted and/or some power damage.

>

> Conditions being bursty with no immunity post-cleanse, and relatively easy ways to apply it is just bad design in PvP. As for PvE, full stacks should desirable, but only be possible to achieve with at least 2 people applying the DoT, and they should support the overall dmg with power moves. DoTs (condition dmg) should either be a slow burn while the "DoTter" tries to survive until its enemy is dead or a support to medium power damage, where it is medium because the player chose to do a trade-off for survivability.

>

> I do understand that this is more "classical" than what GW2 tries to be as an MMORPG, but in my opinion, it is a much better solution to having DoTs (conditions) in a game than what GW2 chose to do. Just because GW2 tries to be different and you have to approach it as such, doesn't mean that everything is remotely good in whichever way you try to look at it.

I disagree with this, for the simple fact that you can't model a more action/reaction fast-paced based combat system like GW2 after a traditional MMO combat system like EQ. That's exactly what I think the devs are trying to do and it doesn't work that well.

Conditions bypass armor, so that should be how they are balanced - relatively low base damage over a quick duration (3 or 4 seconds), but stackable and able to ignore armor. If conditions did less damage baseline than direct damage, armor ratings could be used to tune encounters and players toward direct or condition damage. Instead, condition does more damage than direct damage, and so we have immunity and resistance effects pop up everywhere to reset condi and supplement power builds. Meanwhile, condi is largely useless for open world because of how fast everything dies and, consequently, how much condi damage is wasted when you have 8 second timers on them.

I think this is just unstable and a bad way to balance the game. It also just leads to too much damage being dealt in the game in general. From all sources.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"infrequentia.3465" said:

> > > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > > > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > > > Is this what has been born out?

> > > > > No. It's not.

> > > > >

> > > > > So, still the same, as it was the previous several times you brought it up. Nothing has changed in that regard in the last few months.

> > > >

> > > > You'll have to elaborate. Nothing has changed in regard to what?

> > > >

> > > >

> > >

> > > nothing has changed since the last time you asked. its still the same

> >

> > I don't even know when the last time I asked was. I believe it was before the big condi patch, so things have certainly changed.

> Last big condi patch was the condi rework that happened before HoT launch. The changes few months ago weren't really all that major, and definitely didn't change how condis work (and how they don't). If anything, with their chnges they went in the opposite direction of what you ask for - most changes (beyond confusion rework that was just... weird) were in the direction of less stacks but longer duration per application, which lessened slightly burst capability, but left sustained damage unchanged.

> Still, it didn't really change anything since the last time you asked (and the previous time, and the time before that...). All that was achieved was a little bit reshuffling between different condi builds.

>

> Tl/dr; no, things _haven't_ changed.

I've actually never asked before. I've made posts about my thoughts on condi (which I still believe are correct), but I've never presented any query about it following any changes that were made. So, maybe your apparent irritation is a little misplaced.

> @"infrequentia.3465" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > Is this what has been born out?

> > > No. It's not.

> > >

> > > So, still the same, as it was the previous several times you brought it up. Nothing has changed in that regard in the last few months.

> >

> > You'll have to elaborate. Nothing has changed in regard to what?

> >

> >

>

> nothing has changed since the last time you asked. its still the same

I don't even know when the last time I asked was. I believe it was before the big condi patch, so things have certainly changed.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > Is this what has been born out?

> No. It's not.

>

> So, still the same, as it was the previous several times you brought it up. Nothing has changed in that regard in the last few months.

You'll have to elaborate. Nothing has changed in regard to what?

When they released the big condi update a while back, my instinct was that it was a misguide way to rebalance condition damage relative to direct damage. My opinion is that the durations should have remained short, and the damage instead just needed to be nerfed (in most cases, not all). In my estimation, it makes a lot more sense to balance condition damage around armor value rather than fight duration - condi needs to be effective in short fights as well as in long fights, otherwise the meta will always swing one way or the other in any particular game mode (i.e. general PvE and PvP will always favor power, while high-end PvE will always favor condi.)

Is this what has been born out? What are peoples' thoughts now that we're a few months past that big patch in terms of how it compares to direct damage across classes and game modes?

> @"Chyanne Waters.8719" said:

> The mounts are only RNG to a point. Yes each single skin is random, but you can only receive one skin of that type. Now of course its a bit more expensive that way because its not bundled like the others

I actually think the RNG is more fair than the direct buy in this case. Since you can't get duplicate skins, it's not quite like "gacha" RNG systems in other games. In contrast, buying skins directly is dramatically overpriced. It should be 800 gems _at most_, and even that's a bit dubious.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> >

> > Just because the majority is not playing instanced content is not an argument against having more (and better) instanced content, though. People tend to take the path of least resistance, but that doesn't mean the extreme focus on open world PvE is the healthiest long-term status quo for the game.

> >

> > I'm not necessarily claiming to have all the answers, but I think things like "why are world dungeons dead" and "is it really in the game's best interest to keep so much focus on open world PvE long term" are good questions to ask.

> It's always good to keep asking questions instead of taking everything on faith. So, i have one for you: why it's that the time with the best raid release schedule so far (but no LS/OW ones) is still considered to be the worst in GW2 career, and something they had to recover from? And why that recovering was done by the way of new LS season, not by more instanced content?

>

>

You'll have to give me more details, but I'd suspect it's because at the time there was more of a dearth of lucrative metas that were enjoyable to farm than there are now. I think balance is a good thing.

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> Although I'm totally for more instanced content and almost only play raids & fractals (+ dungeon tours in the past) when it comes to GW2 the overall majority in this game is **not** playing any instanced content at all. Over the years I've been in several so called casual guilds and the fewest people in all of those were running dungeons. The standard answer from players when I was trying to run Arah with them was like: "Oh no, I'll never set a foot into it again. We spent xx hours in it and it wasn't fun."

> Even some more dedicated players I know who are already over 2-4k hours didn't and still don't like to run a short AC path or CoF p1. Heck, they also refuse to join for a leech at final bosses for some good gold because they were doing other funny stuff that appealed more to them.

> So, personally I think Anet is in the right direction with their development priorities at the moment. LS is disposable stuff, yes but people like it and I respect it. That's why I'm not disappointed that there won't be a new raid next week. I can wait (and I think the hardcore raiders too :p).

> What I mentioned above is also the reason why I'm predominantly against easy mode raids. People won't play them or just once and we have more disposable content hurting the actual development cycles.

Just because the majority is not playing instanced content is not an argument against having more (and better) instanced content, though. People tend to take the path of least resistance, but that doesn't mean the extreme focus on open world PvE is the healthiest long-term status quo for the game.

I'm not necessarily claiming to have all the answers, but I think things like "why are world dungeons dead" and "is it really in the game's best interest to keep so much focus on open world PvE long term" are good questions to ask.

Lots of discussion over lack of a new raid and I just wanted to chime in. I have a couple of points of view on this:

a.) I think we should be getting regular dungeons over raids for the most part. 10 man content is more niche than 5 man content and they're over-relying on FotM for the latter (another one of Colin's bad calls years ago that inappropriately persists as an unchallenged status quo). **The game is really starved for full-sized, immersive world dungeons for 5 players without entry barriers.** Think of how awesome a "cave of wonders" style dungeon hidden in the Crystal Desert somewhere with its own armor/weapon set would have been. Huge missed opportunity for PoF (just like not getting land spears.)

b.) **BUT** People do like raids, and there's room for them too, which brings me to my follow up point. I'm starting to think they focus too much on open world PvE and they need to divert more of those resources into instanced content in general. The problem with too much emphasis on open world PvE is that a.) it doesn't offer the same depth of strategy or coordination, and b.) competing metas will eventually spread the player base too thin. It already is a small problem and is very likely to grow into a bigger one over time. New zones should mostly be exploration focused, with map-wide metas being a minority of new zone content (IMO, it was a mistake to have every new map in HoT have large-scale meta events. PoF zones were done much better). Perhaps the primary focus of the LW should shift away from new zones with map-wide metas in favor if exploration areas combined with instanced content.

So, in short, I say we're at a point where some resources need to be diverted away from open world stuff and toward instanced content including Fractal mini-dungeons, full scale world dungeons, and the occasional raid.

I still think we should be getting regular dungeons over raids for the most part. 10 man content is more niche than 5 man content and they're over-relying on FotM for the latter (another one of Colin's bad calls years ago that just persists as an unchallenged status quo).

The game is really starved for full-sized, immersive world dungeons for 5 players without huge entry barriers. Think of how awesome a "cave of wonders" style dungeon hidden in the Crystal Desert somewhere would have been. Huge missed opportunity (just like not getting land spears.)

Really, though, I'm starting to think they focus too much on open world PvE and they need to divert more of those resources into instanced content in general. The problem with too much emphasis on open world PvE is that competing metas will eventually spread the player base too thin. It already is a small problem and is very likely to grow into a bigger one over time. New zones should mostly be exploration focused, with map-wide metas being a minority of new zone content.

So, in short, I say we're at a point where some resources need to be diverted away from open world stuff and toward instanced content including Fractal mini-dungeons, full scale world dungeons, and the occasional raid.

My PC struggles more than it should, honestly. It seems to be more CPU heavy than it should be.

I'll have to assume your title was an intentional pun.

Tangled Depths is actually my favorite map of HoT, and I'm someone who is normally annoyed by mazeyness (Verdant Brink annoys me in comparison.)

Overall, I think my favorite map is the Desert Highlands because it has such a unique theme and atmosphere. I was also always a big fan of Malchor's Leap. My least favorite is probably Gendarren fields or Lornar's Pass because of how generic they feel.

I do think they are reaching a point with the whole attribute combo system that they need to overhaul the actual system instead of just continuing to add new 2nd tier combos that are harder to get than 1st tier combos.

Also, power is still too over-emphasized. They need to solve that problem.

> @"Vavume.8065" said:

> > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > As in, either

> > 3 stat: condi primary, healing power secondary, or

>

> I hope not, as I have no intention of ever using healing power in any builds. Arenanet already wasted my time adding new healing power stats in PoF, which for me was basically a useless expansion from the point of new stats, I don't want to see that repeated again, because being rewarded with stat gear that I do not want, need, or use, is not rewarding.

>

> In fact yesterday I earned a PoF ascended amulet with healing stats from an achievement which I could not even salvage with an ascended tool, so I just deleted it.

>

So, you think that stat combinations you are not personally interested in using shouldn't be added to the game for those that are?

Wow, okay then.

Yeah, I remember noticing this way back in the day. It isn't recent. He would appear smaller than my toon in some instances and much larger in others.

The norn suffer almost completely from bad model design compared to the other races.

They look too much like humans with very awkward proportions when they should be a giant race with only semi-human features, and the male frame in particular needs a redo - the proportions are just way off.

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> Averages out with what the other classes had at launch.

No, it actually doesn't. Revs have fewer weapon options because they were designed without weapon swap, and then weapon swap was added due to player complaints with no new weapons. They also have far, far fewer utility skills than other professions.

What makes things worse is that each weapon AND each legend has a highly specific role, so weapon swapping and legend swapping both feel tacked with minimal benefits (legend swapping is more useful for replenishing energy than it is for actually changing your loadout). All in all, it results in a class that feels unfinished and severely lacking in both customization and gameplay fluidity. You can't have that, particularly in a game that's ostensibly built around horizontal progression instead of vertical progression. It's actually kind of a hare-brained design and it's not surprising that Rev is pretty consistently the least played class despite having probably the coolest concept behind it.

Maybe the fact that they got a new underwater weapon last major patch is an indicator that Anet is acknowledging the problem and will be doing other things to improve the situation. Here's how I would have designed the class:

a.) no weapon swap

b.) add a non-legend mode with 15 or so generalized skills that can be swapped around in your skill bar

c.) keep having two legends equipped as "focus modes" - you can swap between no-channel or either equipped legend as desired, but only swapping back to no-legend mode will replenish your energy

d.) legends would add various effects to your weapon skills

> @"Leo G.4501" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Leo G.4501" said:

> > > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > > @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> > > > > I don't mind gay and trans people as individuals.

> > > > > I do despise the LGBT movement though.

> > > > >

> > > > > I'm pretty sure people who used to like or at least tolerate gay people started disliking them because of the LGBT movement. So sick if this propaganda. As if the whole "help refugees" thing in PoF wasn't enough.

> > > >

> > > > I'm curious, what is it about the movement that you despise?

> > >

> > > Likely that people with tolerance are constantly tested and pressured because LGBT(and all its additional letters and symbols) is constantly lumped in with any and all other groups of "marginalized" peoples to form a collective of cognative dissonant outcry over what mostly amounts to nothing. We don't need a pride month in western civilized countries just like we don't need a black history month in the US.

> >

> > I actually can't say that I wholly disagree with this assessment, and, being gay, I very frequently get annoyed by the degree to which other gay people operate from an assumption of victimhood all the time, which is also true of pretty much every other minority group, because it's the version of reality they're constantly bombarded with from left-wing media and not because it's actual objective reality in most case.

> >

> > That said, I would not discount that marginalization is still a thing in the US, though - many gays grow up in families and social environments where they have their psychology warped and scarred through internalization of homophobia by religious nutjobs and outdated ideas of masculinity and femininity. This is why it became an identity and organically transformed into a social movement in the mid 20th century. It's just that it's starting to become oudated for where we are now.

> >

> > As someone who is liberal, I still think there's a strong argument to be made that identity politics is corrosive and causing more problems than it's solving. This is especially noteworthy since most of the problems that actually need solving at this point are economic in nature and not social, so it can start acting as a barrier to actual progress.

>

> As a centrist, I wouldn't discount marginalized groups either, but in the perspective of society as a whole, any marginalization that takes place can be overcome by the individual. And any marginalization that occurs that an individual cannot overcome, the majority sees as an infringement of freedom and oppressive and will collectively quash it. As a black man, it was more destructive to me overall to consume that my "group" was being marginalized or oppressed or attacked and until I took in more perspectives understood that it's the individual who must take responsibility for their lives and how they react to those around them. I'm sure it's tough for homosexuals growing up in strict religious or homophobic communities but everyone has their individual hardships that they must overcome. I suppose it depends on individual ego to judge whose hardship is harder to overcome which is likely the root of my distaste for most identity politics.

I very much agree with most of this. At some point, you're making a personal choice to revel in a state of victimhood, which in many cases is delusional, but, even when it's not, it won't do you _or the group you're associated_ with any favors. I remember reading an article by a black author a while back discussing this in the context of the black community, and he described it as a widespread cult of victimology leading to a cult of separatism, which is ironic because it's the opposite of what progressives in the mid 20th century were fighting for.

This conservative movement that's happened on the left is why I can very comfortably consider myself liberal/progressive while agreeing with everything you wrote here.

> @"Leo G.4501" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Aodlop.1907" said:

> > > I don't mind gay and trans people as individuals.

> > > I do despise the LGBT movement though.

> > >

> > > I'm pretty sure people who used to like or at least tolerate gay people started disliking them because of the LGBT movement. So sick if this propaganda. As if the whole "help refugees" thing in PoF wasn't enough.

> >

> > I'm curious, what is it about the movement that you despise?

>

> Likely that people with tolerance are constantly tested and pressured because LGBT(and all its additional letters and symbols) is constantly lumped in with any and all other groups of "marginalized" peoples to form a collective of cognative dissonant outcry over what mostly amounts to nothing. We don't need a pride month in western civilized countries just like we don't need a black history month in the US.

I actually can't say that I wholly disagree with this assessment, and, being gay, I very frequently get annoyed by the degree to which other gay people become narcissistically obsessed with their gay identity and then operate from an assumption of victimhood all the time and, which is also true of pretty much every other minority group, because it's the version of reality they're constantly bombarded with from left-wing media and not because it's actual objective reality in most case.

That said, I would not discount that marginalization is still a thing in the US, though - many gays grow up in families and social environments where they have their psychology warped and scarred through internalization of homophobia by religious nutjobs and outdated ideas of masculinity and femininity (which can affect straight people to). This is why it became an identity and organically transformed into a social movement in the mid 20th century. It's just that it's starting to become oudated for where we are now, but I think the movement is also slowly organically transforming to recognize this. The gay identity is slowly normalizing and being assimilated back into the mainstream, which is something that's very noticeable when you attend a pride event now vs. even 10 or 15 years ago - particularly in areas where it's very accepted, and the concept of pride has swelled to encompass a lot more than it once did.

As someone who is liberal, I still think there's a strong argument to be made that identity politics is corrosive and causing more problems than it's solving. This is especially noteworthy since most of the problems that actually need solving at this point are economic in nature and not social, so it can start acting as a barrier to actual progress by dividing people that would otherwise be united.