Einlanzer.1627

I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but what if they introduced a hero gacha system? That'd pretty much guarantee they'd bankroll the players and be able to funnel that money into more content.

I think it's absolutely necessary we continue to get profession "expansions" of some kind, but I'm not convinced that especs are the best format for it. I like the OP's post because it's what anet needs to do - take a step back and figure out the best way to continue expanding professions, and it may very well be that especs are not the best answer for that.

IMO, we need new weapon types for core professions and we need a gradual increase in skill and trait options regardless of especs.

Warrior rifle has been gimped since they replaced Bleeding Shot with Fierce Shot. They did not buff it enough with that change. When the auto attack underperforms, the weapon in general underperforms. I actually think this is a problem with several sets including Warrior LB and Ele Staff.

I think Toughness/Vitality are probably a bit underrated in open world. Everybody loves to say "get gud dodge moar", but this is sort of a meme - no matter how good you are at the game you'll still eat plenty of hits, especially while playing solo and fighting multiple enemies. Mixing in a modest amount of toughness/vitality (though not too much), especially for some builds, is a good way of gaining a bit more battlefield control and sustainability.

It's never worth giving up Power for toughness/vitality, because Power is the king stat for open world (this is why Celestial kind of sucks), but it is sometimes worth giving up a bit of Precision/Ferocity for toughness/vitality.

For this reason, I like to mix in a few soldier pieces with berserker/assassin. There are several builds where I prefer doing this over using Marauder's. A lot of builds also benefit from running stats like concentration for boon sharing. In a small group of 2 or 3, having a boon-share/heal build can be really beneficial as long as it doesn't give up too much damage (power) to do it.

> @"Tulki.1458" said:

> In my mind, a new set of elite specs is the healthiest thing they could do to the game.

> No game has perfect balance. This game will never have perfect balance, and it wouldn't have perfect balance even if elite specs were never invented.

> Gameplay variety is well worth the expense of balance. See: Path of Exile. Players like choice and theory-crafting. Many players even like using sub-par meme builds.

>

> GW2's combat system is excellent, to the extent that a new wave of elite specs can refresh every type of content in the game. Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire completely busted WvW and SPvP, which is exactly what this game needs right now.

> New elite specs bring new raid and fractal-viable builds, refreshing both of those types of content.

>

>

> While new elite specs do require new art and audio, I think people are vastly overestimating that cost compared to the rest of the game. Take a look at every living world release in season 3 and 4, and even in Bound by Blood, and it's clear that ArenaNet have never skimped on art and audio. Their releases are almost fully voice-acted, with new sound effects (many foleyed) and tons of new texture work. Compare the new art and effects that elite specs have gotten, and it's totally dwarfed by what we've seen in the story content. There's probably more voice work involved in recording a single episode of living world than there is in recording player character VO for all nine elite specs for five races and two sexes.

>

> The barrier to more elite specs is probably mechanical rather than artistic. I think it's the most-needed feature in the game right now though.

Yeah, people who are like "balance what we have now first" should not be listened to. To echo your point - it is not possible to achieve anything close to perfect balance, so iteration and continuous development are paramount to keeping a game feeling fresh, and it is definitely worth regularly adding new options for characters even if it temporarily makes balance take two steps back.

While of course I'd rather get new elite specs than nothing, I'm not even really convinced that elite specs are the best way to continue giving classes new options. It might be better to reconcept the whole trait/skill system to make it easier to develop on for Anet and more open-ended for players. I honestly think, in most respects, the launch system was better than the one we have now.

For example, combining skill points & trait points into hero points was goofy - they should be two separate but complementary progression systems instead of being in competition with each other as you level a toon. I also preferred the ability to put points in all 5 traitlines if i wanted to instead of having to choose 3 specializations.

If they do a good enough job with LW, I'm okay with it replacing expansions and it might actually work better for this game.

But they have to do a really good job with it, and they never really have so far. This game would be mostly dead by now if we had not gotten HoT and PoF.

That means putting a bit less effort into story and a bit more effort into expansion level features and repeatable, immersive group content - **we have to be able to look forward to expansion-level features** like new weapon types, system overhauls, new classes/races, new dungeons, etc. Not just new story with a new map every few months.

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> There are three schools, Soldier, Adventurer and Scholar.

>

> That's why armor is the way it is. Because of Lore reasons.

The lore was invented to fit the mechanics, not the other way around.

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> > @"Zaklex.6308" said:

> > > @"SeikeNz.3526" said:

> > > if the DE want 1500 range they need to knee, while rangers can hit from 20000k range with superspeed, how is that balanced?

> >

> > First off, I'd love to hit a target from 20000k range, I'd never have to move....secondly, bows have been perfected in the Guild Wars universe, rifles are still rudimentary so lack the polish and construction needed to shoot long distances.

>

> While this isn't actually the real reason mechanically it is a very viable reason in terms of lore lol

>

> Guns are indeed fairly new to the universe although Asura tech might be giving the illusion they are not, they've got some pretty fancy future tech like guns.

>

> In all honesty though I wouldn't mind rifle getting the same auto range as longbow.

This is actually kinda true. Early firearms were much less accurate than modern ones. An expert archer likely had better precision than an arquebusier. Of course, that flies in the face of the theme of a rifle-sniper so it sort of falls apart as an explanation for GW2. In reality, I think the Ranger Longbow is a little OP. It spent years being really undertuned and they over-buffed it a couple of years back.

In case you haven't heard, the balance team in this game isn't very good.

At this point, especially since cosmetic options are king in this game, I don't understand the importance of locking professions to a particular armor class. What exactly is the problem, conceptually, with a Mesmer wearing heavy armor, a guardian wearing light armor, or a Warrior wearing leather armor? All of these concepts make plenty of logical and thematic sense and _can already be achieved cosmetically in a limited fashion through outfits_. The current armor system is needlessly limiting, and it doesn't even really matter because the armor values don't even differ significantly enough to be that noticeable in combat.

It would be far more interesting to untie them from profession choice and make them more of a build/customization option with light armor moderately favoring active defense and heavy armor moderately favoring passive defense **which is exactly how it should work.** Players who are really adept and enjoy the active style of dodge-focused combat would favor light armor while players who don't trust their reflexes or enjoy a slightly more relaxed combat style would favor heavy armor.

First - open up all armor types to all professions

Second - modestly spread the defense ratings for each class to make the difference between them a little more significant. For example, instead of 916, 1118, and 1271, have it be more like 800, 1100, 1400 respectively for a full set of light/medium/heavy armor at level 80/ascended.

Third - add an endurance duration modifier to each armor piece by slot using Light/no armor as the current baseline. So, light or no armor would give you normal endurance regeneration. Each piece of medium armor would decrease your endurance regeneration by around 2-6% depending on slot, and each piece of heavy armor from 4-10% depending on slot.

I'm sure it would need some gradual tuning, but I think this is something that needs to happen. I do not believe it would tamper much with class balance, either. In fact, it's more likely to improve class balance than it is to harm it since it would set a more solid baseline between them. An added bonus is that you could pass ascended or legendary armor around a bit more freely.

I have long thought that too much focus on zerg-style open world content has hurt GW2's development and retention of players mostly because there's no real way to have adequate design control around it and any sense of true strategy or immersion just falls flat. This is why nixing dungeons years ago was a bad idea that the game suffered from.

They might need to iterate on the execution, but I think strike missions can provide an experience that is still pretty casual friendly but holds a degree of design and challenge control - making you feel like you're accomplishing something as a group (immersive) instead of just being in a totally anonymous spam fest with hordes of players at random with particle effects covering the screen (not immersive at all.)

So, keep 'em coming. If they can hammer it out well, I'd actually love to see them retroactively transform some DE encounters into strike missions.

I think it'd be pretty cool if as an elementalist we could have the "swap weapon" icon that actually hides your weapon instead of swapping your weapon.

Why? Because I think it would be really fun to play as an elementalist that appeared to be using only spells and not real weapons - it has always felt that the use of weapons for elementalist was more to align them with the overall gameplay system than it was for any sort of serious thematic reason.

Staff has always had serious problems. It can work effectively in certain types of specialized builds for organized group play but is and always has been pretty terrible for general use. That is pretty sad considering it's their only long-range weapon and staffs are so iconic for wizards in fantasy.

Of the four attunements, only Fire does respectable damage. This forces you to pretty much always camp Fire while using a staff with the other three attunements only offering situational utility. I severely dislike this because I don't want to be forced to play what is basically a Fire mage just because I'm using staff. There's no reason that Earth and Water should have such crippled damage because of the utility they offer. Less than Fire, sure, but not that much less. And Air needs buffs also, with several of its skills being both clunky with targeting and undertuned in damage.

The #1 skills are slow and use very dull and uninspired animations, and they all need significant buffs (with the possible exception Fireball.)

> @"Dragon Priestess.9760" said:

> I'm not heterosexual either but I don't really see why this is a big deal. They have tonnes of more important things in the game to fix than the gay/straight ratio of characters.

>

> It feels really... shallow, to me, to care so much about something so unimportant.

>

> For example: as a Lesbian I'd LOVE to see more sexy lady armour, but it's not really that important, either.

>

> I'd rather they fix the quest and gameplay bugs the have that actually effect the game performance.

So, my thing is that if they had all been that way to begin with it wouldn't have been an issue, but to change it seems really strange. There could be any number of explanations, though.

The company/game is horrifically mismanaged - the vast majority of players can see this, and the devs take their criticism personally when they shouldn't.

In reality, the devs should be sympathetic to the players, working harder internally to improve the status quo, and communicating frequently about it. That doesn't just mean Mike throwing out some yearly formal state-of-the-game letter. It means everyone interacting regularly on the forums across a number of topics - giving specific answers to questions and explaining what's going on on a more-or-less day-to-day basis. We have never had that, and it's led to nothing but more disconnect and toxicity.

100% of this is on Anet - their sad attempts at deflecting blame back to players is going to drive this game into the ground. There's absolutely no doubt that if they were to shift tactics and start over-communicating with players on _an ongoing basis_ it would cause the negativity to gradually subside and be replaced with appreciation and enthusiasm, a healthier relationship between Anet and players, and a better product overall. I honestly have no clue how they could possibly have persisted for 7 years not realizing this. Again, this is not a good sign of their leadership.

They are not victims, they are a company who is failing to deliver a satisfying product after people invested enormously in them. When other MMOs can churn out twice the amount of content in half the time using a smaller staff there's a clear leadership problem, and _I do not believe_ this is an exaggeration. What frustrates everyone is that everyone can clearly see GW2's enormous potential, and the team has been totally incapable of delivering on that potential for years on end. It's gone on long enough, and I sincerely hope the **very justified** backlash from this event sends a shockwave that leads to some significant changes.

Also, they apparently have an open office and it's well-documented at this point those were a terrible fad that basically kill productivity. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325959

> @"jbondo.9817" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > If this event was forced by NCSoft. It would make sense. Anet seemed to be at least a little uncomfortable with it from their stage presence. It's pretty common for large, international parent organizations to impose their will and cause a lot of problems because they're much more out of touch with their markets than the smaller companies they own are. It actually happens in my organization quite a bit.

> >

> > It's almost never worth letting yourself get bought. It's easy for me to imagine that GW2 would be a much healthier game today if Anet had stayed autonomous.

>

> I'm starting to believe that the initial layoffs this year came from lack of production of content and lack of community growth in GW2. They couldn't produce or profit, so NCsoft felt it was okay to cut a large amount of them to merge with another company (can't remember the name). As much as they want to hype up what we've gotten this year, it really hasn't been engaging and certain modes in this game have been left dormant for almost 7 years (I'm talking about dungeons right here), after the layoffs I'm sure NCsoft has been down A-net's throat asking for them to deliver. I don't believe A-net was ready to accommodate to this, and I think the dev's have probably been running around the office for the last couple of months trying to piece together some content to sell to the consumers, so they don't lose their jobs. These funkopops, yoga pants, etc all feel like desperate cash grabs.

>

> In these last 7 years I think they lost dev's that they couldn't afford to lose and we're just now seeing the backlash. One that comes to mind that kept our PvP scene pretty interesting was Grouch, and I'm pretty sure he left after the embarrassing PvP opening of HoT, that was left unfixed for months. I'm not sure if this dev team is lazy, but I don't think they are matching with NCsofts demands. I think NCsoft is at the point and we'll see it after Living Saga Season 5 if they want to revamp the GW2 team entirely, or if they want to put this game on maintenance mode, and start working on a new project. If they go the new project route, I have very little hope that it'll be related to the GW franchise.

yeah, this is a pretty insightful analysis of what may very well be happening. It does seem to me that their team just can't handle it. It's frankly been embarrassing from day one how slow they are to turn out new content. This usually speaks to more of a management problem, though - issues with how the teams are organized and lead.

> @"AlexxxDelta.1806" said:

> I don't see why people feel the need to make the distinction anymore. After the recent merger and the publishing rights reverting to NCwest that is.

This is a fair point. It probably isn't a useful exercise to differentiate at this point.

> @"gateless gate.8406" said:

> Please spare us the "it's the evil publisher, not the developers." So, so sick of hearing that myth.

>

> There are serious personnel/management problems within ANet. Anyone who paid attention during the layoff period, has watched how the company responds to things/makes decisions, has seen statements from ex-employees (on Twitter and elsewhere), or has taken a look at their Glassdoor reviews can see that.

>

> The entire reason the game is in this state is because ANet, not NCSoft, chose to divert funds/personnel away from a future GW2 expansion. As far as I know, the management responsible for that catastrophic decision are still in charge of ANet. If you're wondering why ANet make bad or out-of-touch decisions, it's because the bad decision makers were never fired.

Both things can be true. I fully agree there are problems internal to Anet, but it's hard to imagine that Anet thought this was a good idea.

> @"ScyeRynn.4218" said:

> > @"Trise.2865" said:

> > This will come as a shock to a LOT of people, but they do listen. What they don't do is tell you they're listening... or always give you exactly what you're asking for.

>

> Nobody expects exactly what they are asking for. They only expect/hope that bad decisions aren't made, and the majority of the decisions have been just that, bad. Many fans have urged beforehand and pointed out afterward the error of those choices, and yet they are still done. That's called not listening, not caring, not giving a fudge. This has been going on for years now. It started between the time Colin left, Mike O took over temporarily, and then Mike Z took over. There is just no clear or strong vision for the game or care for a connection with the fans. It's also a lot about personal indulgences and benefits for them.

>

> They let the responses go in one ear and out the other.

>

It really does seem to be this way. It's actually pretty common for these large organizations. A lot of legacy leadership that just no longer cuts it.

If this event was forced by NCSoft. It would make sense. Anet seemed to be at least a little uncomfortable with it from their stage presence. It's pretty common for large, international parent organizations to impose their will and cause a lot of problems because they're much more out of touch with their markets than the smaller companies they own are. It actually happens in my organization quite a bit.

It's almost never worth letting yourself get bought. It's easy for me to imagine that GW2 would be a much healthier game today if Anet had stayed autonomous.

I don't understand how they've persisted for years in thinking that people care more about the story than they do about gameplay changes/enhancements. The game would probably be in better shape if they paused the story for a while and focused entirely on the gameplay.

> @"DonArkanio.6419" said:

> Honestly. Gliders and mount should be zone-restricted.

>

> I get it. People like them, because _reasons_. But Mounts allow ot ignore a huge chunk of content that was released in the past - HoT, Core, etc.

>

> Mounts are fun, but they are also a major problem.

This doesn't make any sense. The design of the map itself discourages participation in VB's meta. Mounts & Gliders have very little if anything to do with this.

If there's a problem, it's simply that the game has too many competing metas, so some are inevitably going to fall off in popularity. I'm not sure why they didn't really seem to think about this years ago. The truth is VB should have never even really been a meta map. It should have been an exploration map alongside TD. Even though it's kind of a fun idea for a meta, it would make a lot more sense for them to just remove it than it would for them to mount-restrict the entire game outside of PoF, which a.) would really piss everyone off, and b.) wouldn't make much logical sense and would do nothing to address what you're complaining about.

> @"DonArkanio.6419" said:

> Well. I don't think so. E-Specs system is unsustainable for a long run and proved to cause a lot of Balance issues - most of them exist today since HoT.

>

> I think Devs might go with a different approach. They experimented with Core Class Swap. We could get new weapon skill variations. Refreshinf the class design with getting rid of E-Spec idea.

> For me, this isn't relevant whether E-Specs come with the expansion or not - we are not having any expansions in the nearest future. ANet Has to, IMO, do something with the current xlass Balance as it really suffers.

I think they're pretty likely to do something, and I hope it's something like this stuff. The elite spec idea was okay, but it probably wasn't the best way to expand characters and it's time for them to refresh the mechanics around character customization. They basically took the idea from Nike, and, while Nike is definitely smart in some ways, I don't think he's the infinite guru of wisdom Anet seems to think he is.

I think new weapon skills/weapons along with potentially the ability to swap out weapon skills could realllllllyyyyyy help refresh the game. I'd actually love to be able to fully cross-class, but it's probably a far-fetched thing to expect at this point.

I also think overhauling attributes is really overdue. They never even gave Revenants their own class attribute.

What I really wish they would do is fix the HoT specs to unlock like the PoF specs do so that you can effectively use the spec sooner.

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > Now, with that said - I do see your point. That, while Power is easily the most effective of all the stats, Power + Precision is balanced with Vitality vs Toughness, and that's because offensive stats are weighted disproportionately toward Power while defensive stats are more equal. I'm still trying to make sure I'm in agreement with that.

>

> The reason Power is so much better is to make support/tank builds offer some damage to the team. If the three offensive stats were perfectly balanced, the gap between support/tank builds and pure offensive builds would be even higher. By making Power so much better it allows stat sets like Marauder to stay competitive with Berserker. Do note that meta builds use Harrier and back then Cleric as gear stats. Even condi builds use Power, Viper, Sinister, Griever. Rabid and Dire sets are dead. The one common stat everywhere, regardless of build, is Power. Make Power worse (and compensate increasing Ferocity and Precision) and the gaps will widen, build variety will suffer instead of getting better.

>

> Meme Minstrel and Nomad builds are the only exceptions.

I don't disagree with this and it has helped expand my thoughts. Thanks for that. But I still think there's a problem, just maybe not one best served by my original proposal of reducing Power's effect in the damage formula. See my edited posts above and let me know your thoughts on the last paragraph.