Einlanzer.1627

> @"Taril.8619" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > Everyone acts like new races are impossible

>

> It's not impossible in the sense that it's too technically advanced for the game.

>

> It's impossible because of the sheer amount of work it would require to implement to the same standard as the existing playable races.

>

> Such a massive task is not cost effective for ANet to work on. Just like it's not cost effective for them to work on armour skins because they take too much effort and resources to develop, despite these also being directly monetized.

>

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > It's my favorite when people say "it would be too hard" as if games like GW2 are going to do well by being lazy and not tackling new dev that is wanted by a large % of players, or as if they don't spend months working on a single new small map with content that you play through in a couple of hours.

>

> Actually, games like GW2 are only going to do well by being efficient with their resource allocation.

>

> Putting in the ginormous amount of work to introduce a new playable race, which means making male and female models of every single piece of armour and outfit in the entire game as well as developing a level 10-30 Personal Story for the race at the very least.

>

> This is without even talking about the "Extra" stuff that would make the race seem complete, such as a main city, several zones based off their location (Including various thematic Hearts), additional 40-80 story tie in to make the whole personal story actually make any sense at all (Bearing in mind a lot of the PS revolves around following the guidance of a member of Destiny's Edge)

>

> All this... And exactly how many people would even care about a new race? Especially when the [vast majority](https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics) of people play Human characters.

>

> **THEN** you have to consider which race to actually add. People have asked for Skritt, Quaggan, Kodan, Tengu, Largo, Ogre etc.

So, is the solution to just never add anything new to the game other than flashy skins and charge $20 for them? Winning strategy!

My biggest problem with the staff is that each attunement is over-specialized and fire is the only one that's generally useful with the other 3 all being more niche and all but useless for solo play. I don't really see the point of that. Earth, Water, and to a lesser extent Air all give up too much damage for the support they bring.

Also, why do the #1 skill all have such slow, clunky, and boring animations?

I've been having the same problem every time I log in and try to play my elementalist. With as good a build as I can muster he's significantly worse than every other class with very suboptimal builds even when I haven't played them in 2+ years.

It's truly unbelievable and I honestly don't get why anyone defends them.

This is my friend's log ; her client crashes her computer to the point that the game is virtually unplayable and it's a fairly recent phenomenon on that computer. Any help would be appreciated.

*--> Crash <--*

OOM: Heap, bytes=32864,

App: Gw2-64.exe

Pid: 7064

BaseAddr: 00007FF7FB730000

ProgramId: 101

Build: 98883

When: 2019-08-29T07:15:30Z 2019-08-29T02:15:30-05:00

Uptime: 1 days 6:10:32

Flags: 0

*--> System <--*

Name: b948a3b6

IpAddr: 192.168.1.20

Processors: 8 [GenuineIntel:6:12:3]

OSVersion: Windows 10.0 (64 bit)

*--> System Memory <--*

Physical: 334MB/12221MB 2%

Paged: 0MB/49085MB 0%

Virtual: 134166336MB/134217727MB 3%

Load: 97%

CommitTotal: 49085MB

CommitLimit: 49085MB

CommitPeak: 49085MB

SystemCache: 315MB

HandleCount: 39513

ProcessCount: 114

ThreadCount: 1056

*--> Process Memory <--*

Private: 47006MB

WorkingSet: 9753MB

PeakWorkingSet: 10915MB

PageFaults: 20533493

*--> Memory Category Usage (Inclusive) <--*

[Category] [size(MB)] [Count]

Root 1855.18 6207621

Programmer Data 1691.37 6039619

Engine 1272.57 5873547

Gr 1135.44 5850719

Gr Texture 1087.16 5833746

Game 290.95 156306

Content 214.31 55992

Model-Programmer 118.51 9006

Uncategorized 103.59 165738

Collections 87.00 804

Dictionary 86.79 307

Text 59.14 5820

Art Assets 53.73 1441

VRAM 51.35 8732

Composite Models 50.16 658

Character Models 50.16 658

Composite Tex Pool 42.82 148

Composite Tex 42.82 148

Gr Umbra 41.02 1502

I/O 27.53 481

Archive 26.23 42

VRAM - UI Textures 22.24 444

Audio 17.09 8946

Audio FMOD 12.66 8734

*--> Memory Category Usage (Exclusive) <--*

[Category] [size(MB)] [Count]

Gr Texture 1087.16 5833746

Content 214.31 55992

Model-Programmer 118.07 6800

Uncategorized 103.59 165738

Dictionary 86.79 307

Text 59.14 5820

Composite Tex Pool 42.82 148

Gr Umbra 41.02 1502

Archive 26.23 42

VRAM - UI Textures 22.24 444

Audio FMOD 12.66 8734

VRAM - DDI Shader 11.69 8234

Composite 11.52 1747

VRAM - Model Tex Uncat 10.33 17

Composite Packfile 7.29 117

Collide Havok 6.49 823

Frame 6.25 97

Game 4.99 31851

Audio 4.44 212

Debugging 4.00 2

Gr 3.03 123

VRAM - Composite Tex 2.75 7

VRAM - World Map Tex 2.19 16

Model Packfile Uncat 2.18 30

*--> DllList <--*

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C:\WINDOWS\System32\OLEAUT32.dll

C:\WINDOWS\System32\SHELL32.dll

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C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AVRT.dll

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[DbgHelp.dll is C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\dbghelp.dll]

[DbgHelp.dll version 10.0.17134.1 (64/32-bit compatible)]

*--> ClientContextThreadProc Thread 0x1724 <--*

*--> Trace <--*

Pc Rt : Args

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*--> Thread registers <--*

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r11=0000000000000000 r12=0000000000000010 r13=0000000000000060

r14=0000000000000000 r15=000000000000000c

cs=0033 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00000206

*--> Code <--*

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*--> Stack <--*

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*--> Error Logs <--*

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m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

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Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

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m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

Couldn't find missile launch point for gadget '0xed79'.

m_dims.x:512 m_dims.y:512 highResDims.x:512 highResDims.y512

*--> DirectX Device Info <--*

VendorId = 0x10de

DeviceId = 0x1402

Version = 23.21.0013.8813

Description = NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950

Compat = 0x00100000

VidMem = 2048 MB

One of the issues I have is that the different affinities are a little too specialized when they should all be a little bit hybridized in different ways. For example, water way overemphasizes healing when it should be split between water and air giving water a little more space for solo play and offensive builds, and some of air's control effects could be redistributed as well with Earth taking some. All four should be capable of doing respectable damage with various supplementary effects.

The second issue is that they really just don't have good enough damage mitigation or avoidance. Offensively, they aren't really substantially better than other classes and yet they are extremely gimpy defensively. They need stronger defensive traits and/or skills.

So I'm trying out this build and I still find it significantly worse than even mediocre builds on literally every other class. I die constantly to small packs of regular mobs, two veterans, random adds, etc. And this doesn't happen to me even on on random classes I rarely play with crap gear and builds that i haven't looked at in two years.

Their attrition is absolutely atrocious. Elementalists are built like glass cannons when only the tempest is somewhat effective as a cannon.

Eles in general have the worst health, the worst armor, bad mitigation, average mobility, and roughly the same damage output as other classes distributed among far too many skills. I mean wtf is that? To make matters worse, you're expected to dance between affinities when each affinity has a particular specialization and 3/4 of them you won't be specc'd into, making them terrible. I.e. water over-emphasizing healing and therefore being useless for regular play.

To add insult to injury, the Weaver is designed as if it's supposed to function as a front line fighter without any notable method of doing so effectively unless they're being protected by other classes in a group. Which means it's the single most ineffective and frustrating class to play in solo PvE, which is a shame because it's one of the most thematically interesting.

Honestly I don't think any is worth using. HP only scales well for people who have a full healer role, it's not good enough to use for solo healing skills.

On most classes I think defensive gear holds more value than people believe it does, but on Thief you really are best served by ignoring defensive stats, going full offense, and relying on SoM + Invigorating Precision or Channeled Vigor for healing. If you're going for a condi heavy build with limited precision, Channeled Vigor is likely better than SoM + IP, but the latter is really good on a high crit build.

> @"Fueki.4753" said:

> Kalla shouldn't have that interaction either.

> Revenants should just channel the memories of the Mists, **not** conscious personalities.

>

This is actually what they dropped the ball on.

I honestly think this is a symptom of the fact that the core revenant is the most sloppily designed of all the game's classes. This sucks even worse because of how great the theme/flavor are.

1. Utility skill swapping doesn't make a lot of sense when each set serves a highly specialized purpose and the game's overall design doesn't handle versatility well. This is why they had to retroactively add weapon swapping when they originally weren't going to, and that didn't even really fix the problem as the weapons are also pretty specialized.

2. The overall # of skills they have access to feels low and their gameplay feels railroaded by this in conjunction with #1

3. They don't even have a profession attribute, which makes them feel incomplete (I actually think the profession attributes are underused across the game and should be emphasized a little more as viable strategic options.)

There are about 10 different ways to give them a much better design. IMO, they should have a core set of elites that should be selectable (something like 10-15) and channeling a legend would overwrite their existing slot skills with more powerful versions of the existing legend skills, and using them would drain the channeling meter. They would then have to stop channeling to recharge and re-enter their legend stance.

I would probably give them the core elite skills and access to two sets of legend skills ( as they have today) and remove their weapon swap.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > > New weapons might have backwards compatibility issues with the not-expansion. Lots of work for little gain. I'm going to bet we don't get new weapons, though I think it would be great to have some more.

> >

> > No, it's actually relatively little work for a ton of gain if they don't try to retrofit them everywhere in the game with dozens upon dozens of skins starting out, which wouldn't be needed and I highly doubt they would try to do.

>

> Right ... so why would anyone get excited about new weapons if they didn't have a whole load of skins for those weapons? What's the difference between giving a class an existing weapon they don't have vs. a completely new weapon? The answer is none ... except for the fact that one weapon has a TON of skins and game support and the other doesn't. There is actually LESS gain to create whole new weapons that have relatively few skins than giving an existing weapon that has many skins because it's just another weapon they need to create skins for everytime they make a weapon skin series.

>

Yes, they will, because they will come with new animations, new skills, and a handful of skins that will be built upon with time. The difference is that a.) the're running short of options on the original weapons, and b.) new weapons bring entirely new flavor to the game to a greater extent than giving existing weapons to new classes can.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> New weapons might have backwards compatibility issues with the not-expansion. Lots of work for little gain. I'm going to bet we don't get new weapons, though I think it would be great to have some more.

No, it's actually relatively little work for a ton of gain if they don't try to retrofit them everywhere in the game with dozens upon dozens of skins starting out, which wouldn't be needed and I highly doubt they would try to do.

IMO this is one of the best examples of the game's mismanagement over the last 8 years as new weapons should have been added all the way back to HoT.

> @"DeanBB.4268" said:

> People say "give me polarms" but don't say how they are different than what we already have. Thus, people respond with "I'd rather anet not waste their time" typically.

It doesn't need to be mechanically justified - polearms are an iconic fantasy weapon type that is altogether missing in GW2 for no good reason when the game focuses heavily on horizontal progression, gameplay experimentation, and cosmetics. It was ridiculous that they weren't added for PoF. Now is the time.

> @"Konrad Curze.5130" said:

> ANet wont make new weapons. zero chance. just thinking of retroactively adding a single new type weapon, let alone several, to every set in the game would be mindboggling.

>

> neither previous expac had new weapons, and they got more time in the oven, had larger teams, and less backlog of sets to add it to.

>

> I know dreaming is free, and people get a kick out of discussing cool whatifs, but this is pretty much as unrealistic as it gets

No it wouldn't. It would be perfectly feasible. They wouldn't even have to add them retroactively or give them the same # of skins as older weapons to get a ton of benefit from it. Neither former xpac had them, which was a screw up and it would have been the first thing I included.

> @"lokh.2695" said:

> Adding new weapon types wouldn't do much for the game outside of generating new issues with balancing. I'd rather have ANet spend thier resources on something else.

Disagree 100%. New weapons would do a whole lot for the game. In a game like this, nothing is more important than giving players new ways to experiment, new cosmetics and animations, and new ways to play their toons. Balance is irrelevant as it's not like you ever achieve it - it's a continuous process of iteration.

In fact, in my mind, there's actually little that would match the bang for buck of adding new weapons and they severely dropped the ball by not adding new ones with HoT and PoF.

The maps are basically empty because mobs are excessive and rewards are mediocre.

I see no reason for PoF to be languishing this way as the zones are some of the most beautiful ever created in the game. I still need to get my griffon and literally never see anyone in the Crystal Oasis doing bounties so I've been stuck for a while with the legendary facet.

The skins are overpriced, and anyone who says otherwise simply isn't thinking all the way through it.

Yes, other MMOs occasionally charge $25 for skins that are intended to be exclusive. They do not charge $25 for skins they're releasing at a rapid rate with no comparable rewards in-game as that is clearly excessive by any sound reasoning.

Anet made a mistake when they first introduced this IMO and hurt their own revenue streams. Yes, GW2 is ftp, but overloading the gem store has the opposite of the desired effect. The buy rate for this would almost certainly be far higher if a.) some were obtainable in-game, and b.) most were introduced at 1200 or fewer gems, with only the occasional super-deluxe one being 1500 or more.

I'm not sure why it hasn't been changed, or at least reverted to the original one as it's more appropriate for the content we are playing now. If we aren't getting one until Cantha, can we at least select which one we want to use?

> @"Fueki.4753" said:

> > @"Westenev.5289" said:

> > I mean, a Revenant is kind of a shaman. They can talk to dead people (spirits) through the mists, and can deal damage and heal and enhance allies (typically a shamans role in a rpg).

>

> Originally, the concept was that we channel the memories of the Mists about certain individuals and events surrounding them, not actual spirits.

> That's why I think the small talk with the characters was a bad addition.

>

> But the original, interesting concept was completely ruined with the additions of Renegade, which suddenly turns us into budget Ritualists and summon actual Charr spirits, rather than memories of the Mists.

>

> > That said, they're more of a melee class than a caster...

> Shamans in WoW also have a Melee specialization. Ritualists in GW1 could also successfully be played as melee characters.

> I don't think melee fighting is much of a problem when designing a Shaman for a game.

I'm glad someone else articulated this. I always thought the Revenant was thematically supposed to manifest legendary figures, not summon and interact with them.

It was a very bad call made by Colin years ago to nix the dugeon team and I fear the game has suffered for it. The game really needs the immersion created by world dungeons and it's pretty unreal that they've doubled down on that decision for 7 years running while focusing way too heavily on LW meta spam content that can be fun but is ultimately much shallower in comparison - especially the more of it they add to the game creating more internal competition.

They need to bring it back in in some form even if it is just a condensed version that hits the highlights. It's rather mindblowing that they haven't done this already.

But the truth is this is just one of many areas where getting content into the game seems to be a much bigger challenge than it should be as the game has not been evolved nearly as much as you'd expect it to after 8 years.

Just off the cuff this doesn't make any sense - why should Toughness be the only net-neutral stat in the game? Toughness should absolutely not make you weaker against condi. It should only make you stronger against direct damage. It's arguably already an underpowered stat _if only_ because of how much damage is dealt through conditions and therefore bypasses it. But I don't think Toughness needs to change, I think conditions need to.

More broadly, Anet has borked conditions and I don't know why they seem to have so much trouble seeing what the problem is. It penetrates armor, so it should deal lower damage and there should be fewer sources of cleanse and resistance. Condi should represent steady pressure that is especially useful against high armor targets, not quick kills irrespective of target build. They tried to address this by extending condition duration a few years back like EQ dots and that was absolutely the wrong approach with GW2's quick paced combat - they need to just revert and do the above.

The game's balance is never going to feel right until they address this properly.

> @"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > Their insistence on pushing samey-same LW maps every release with a skin store and excessive and mediocre story instead of focusing on exploration, dungeons, mechanical expansions, and PvP enhancements has already killed this game. Unless Cantha is somehow truly spectacular, I don't expect it to recover.

> >

> > It's as if they new the story was the worst part of the game from launch and spent years and years trying to fix/overcompensate for it and killed the game in the process.

> IMO, the worst parts of the original game was PVP, dungeons, and underwater combat. And the better parts were the story and exploration, something they have kept the focus on since then.

That may be your opinion, but it wasn't the general consensus. Most aspects of the game were initially well reviewed with the story being routinely cited as the weakest link.

Their insistence on pushing samey-same LW maps every release with an excessive focus on gem store sales, mediocre story, and an over-abundance of chaotic map metas instead of focusing on exploration, small group content, mechanical expansions, and PvP enhancements has already killed this game. Unless Cantha is somehow truly spectacular, I don't expect it to recover.

It's as if they knew the story was the worst part of the game from launch and spent years and years trying to fix/overcompensate without the talent to do it effectively and killed the game in the process.

In an MMO, immersion is important, but immersion needs a combination of deep mechanics, player camaraderie, and an interesting story. Even if the story was really good it would be insufficient to hold players on its own, and that's the fallacy with the way the game has developed.

> @"Daniel.5428" said:

> Anet lost a lot of good people. As a veteran I can assure you that the old days are not coming back. Secondly, GW2 is an outdated game from a technical point of view. But most important, the current way of doing things is just toxic. What do I mean by that? Well:

> 1. Trying to make story look longer by adding all those open world tasks.

>

> 2. Achievements being very blunt since Icebrood Saga. Nothing special except collect these and do this event 100 times. For example, during the previous episode they added a ton of strike mission achievements as LS episode achievement. Strike is its own game mode, it should have its own achievements. They somehow forced you to do strikes for the meta achievement chest. In this episode, there is nothing special than "collect 20.000 badges"

>

> 3. World map is ruined. Half of the game world map are lvl 80 zones and a big percentage of them are not populated at all. The new maps that come with the new episodes are abandoned very fast (that's why they decided to go back to adding pieces of a map). There is no point going back there except achievements (which cannot be done without more people and this is the vicious cycle)

>

> 4. The announcement of expansion 3 was a sign of desperation. Remember how the other 2 expansions were announced? Nicely done, with a short trailer, at the end of the last LS episode. Now they threw a picture at us and said "Look, we do content, please stay".

>

> 5. As you said, Anet fired or lost a lot of good people, people that made GW1 great and that made GW2 what it is today. The truth is that NcSoft will keep the game running as long as people still buy those nice skins from the market. The truth is the numbers (profit) are not great at all. Mobile games bring more money in the company that GW2. The MMORPG market was influenced by the other business models and now a game is alive as long as it brings profit. As subscription is not really accepted (people seems to run away from it), they either turn the game pay to win or move it to mobile where they flood you with ads. If there will ever be a GW3, it will be mobile only.

Your item 3 is something I've been saying for years would be a problem. What they should have been doing the whole time is alternating types of content for Living World episodes between PVP/WVW maps/mods, dungeons, raids, casual exploration zones, and meta driven open world maps instead of MASSIVELY over-focusing on only the last category listed there at the expense of everything else for virtually all LW episodes AND expansion content alike.

Anet has always seemed to think their open world content is the best thing since sliced bread when in reality, while sometimes being really fun, it ultimately fails to capture the essence of what makes MMOs desirable to play _as MMOs_ - intimate "adventure" systems built around small-group camaraderie and build strategy. Not anonymous spam fests with dozens of players and a screen full of particle effects. Most MMOs achieve this primarily through dungeons. It was utterly stupid for Anet to abandon them years ago instead of investing more heavily in making them better, richer experiences.

I've long thought the living world stories are too punishing for solo players. I've long thought they need to pick an approach and make them either totally unsoloable or solo friendly instead of trying to have them sitting in an awkward middle space.