eyestrain.3056

So. I think it's kind of unhealthy/mildly impossible to gatekeep fashion- people can figure things out, there's no ownership of an aesthetic combination. But removing the social interaction or time investment in accomplishing it is a net negative. Instead of showing your interest to someone or knowing other real people have noticed your choices, radio silence. Instead of having to more closely observe and put in some effort, you can just copy paste and your fashion is basically done. Fashion is a creative exercise- you don't get rewarded points (outside of fashion contests, which this will also likely complicate when actual prizes are involved), but like creating artwork, you do see when you've grown and developed and made something good. In addition to looking at cool character, the challenge of learning and improving is the reward. I get the desire for convenience- just give me a pleasing look without the effort. Outfits have been a good answer for this. For customizing a look, fiddling around, developing an eye for skins, and fine tuning dyes has always been itself a game mode and I think allowing people to skip it all effortlessly disincentivizes systems of play that have kept people engaged for a decade. I didn't even think about how this is going to complicate fashion contests until just now. Considering anet is using the term Fashion Wars, I wonder how they've thought about how this affects competitive fashion? It's not as though there's a singular Look That Wins Them All, but someone taking a big prize off of a copied look feels quite unfair to the person who spent the time putting it together. What tools are fashion contest organizers going to have to reward the actual creator and weed out copies? It's not really an issue right now because people with the skillset to replicate a look are more likely to be invested in making one of their own, but with the tools becoming very simple, I forsee it as a new problem.

I'm against this solely because asking another player what skins they're using is a useful and positive prompt for interaction with other people in the world. Even as a shy and solitary person, there is never a time it's been awkward or unpleasant. It's always a compliment to the person being asked. Everyone loves having their taste acknowledged and the reward of being noticed. Thinking about all the times people will miss out on knowing their fashion choices stood out or were interesting to their fellow players bums me out. When fashion wars is such a fundamental end game goal in a multiplayer game, it just seems like bad design to skip players past social interaction via the interface. That's the opposite of what you want. Conceivably you could have the inspection request bring up a prompt requesting permission for the inspected and that would address concerns about consent as well as notification that you're being appreciated, but a popup saying "someone wants to see your gear" would just scare the kitten out of anyone who didn't understand what it means, and a disclaimer explaining the details would be terribly obtrusive and annoying in active gameplay situations. It's all just worse than the current simplicity of someone asking "what's that helm?" In whisper.

During the supply defense event at the well of anguish in inner nayos, the avatars of gluttony enemies that spawn sometimes spawn without the krytpis skin and they're just Veteran Xocotl Flopper frogs o_o screenshot

Sound effects are important for me in combat to keep track of what's happening and I generally enjoy them for immersion/feedback as well, so I don't mute the volume during play. There are a few sfx in SotO that are disproportionately and unpleasantly louder than everything else. The heart of the obscure blasting noise is loud in general, but it's so annoying in quick succession when opening Lesser and Greater Arcane Chests I find myself not even bothering to interact with them. The new ranger pet, Juvenile Sky-Chak Striker, is also very noisy. I feel like simply turning the volume down on these effects would be pretty easy to do. It would be much appreciated with how many times these noises occur in normal play.

I was expecting (if any) response to be 'how could you possibly care about something like this' so I really appreciate you guys. Thanks for posting.

I like to keep a chat tab with everything but whispers turned off so I can keep track of longer conversations. After a certain number of messages, you also just can't scroll up anymore and older messages are lost. I have game messages, npc chatter and so on turned off, but there's no way to disable the message Your jade bot found something! It breaks up screenshots of conversations and takes up limited message space. This should count as a Game Message, right? I'd really prefer if it would behave like other game messages and be optional instead of impossible to mute.

Some necro notes: -Well of Power. If the goal is to make this skill more viable, the reason it isn't worth taking isn't because of the cd, it's because it's a stunbreak that can be, and often is, interrupted leaving you still stunned. Until it's either instant cast or the stab applies instantly protecting the cast, it's neither an effective stunbreak nor the best option in slot for pure condi clear (spectral walk, plague signet, suffer, and elixir of bliss are all better for personal clear, and scourge has the best options for ally clear with barrier application). -Deadly Strength. Additional power is one of the only ways to justify a power build running death magic over blood due to the sheer amount of damage/utility sacrificed to take the traitline. Condition builds however already benefit from DM due to purely passive toughness synergizing with a damage over time playstyle. This seems like an unnecessary boost to tanky condi necro, which can already viably run death magic. Condi reaper which is already rather overtuned, can stack/clear so many condis at once that near-instant/constantly having an additional 250 toughness and condition damage on a carrion amulet is going to make it dreadful to kill in spvp without losing much offensive pressure. Please reconsider this buff.

The one that drives me bonkers is the popup that shows up every time for the kryptis blaster/sentinels, those hovering turrets with shields. The popup is distracting to have to manually close, especially in hectic battles, and being told the same information dozens of times is unnecessary- I get it, dash through! If there's so much concern players won't understand how to clear these enemies, a more obvious visual tell for which ones are shielded would help a lot- the visible orb/shield around them often doesnt appear for me, or will appear on enemies that aren't shielded. The most reliable way to tell is just waste a fireball first which brings up the kitten popup every time 👹 fake ps- I had to pull up the wiki for the enemies' name and apparently its just one type of enemy that goes from closed in its shell to open, toggling the shield on and off. I've just never been able to see this from normal camera zoom. Perhaps a certain tooltip can be altered to be more helpful and explain this part of the mechanic! real ps- I wasn't just confused about that animation, there are inf act 2 differently named versions of what appears to be the same enemy with the same appearance and behavior- one is called the Blaster and one the Sentinel which implies one is always vulnerable while the other would be shielded, adding to the confusion of how this mechanic works. Come on!!

The Amnytas fishing is definitely the most egregious example of simply a bad play experience, but there is a game wide, fundamental problem with the design of fishing stacks/power. Rather than fishing being a way to pass the time between events, it becomes this marathon of being stuck in your little boat, ignoring all interesting things going on around you. The jerky puts a bandaid on this problem, but feeling like i'm wasting time and money if i leave my boat for literally 1 minute is not fun. Finally getting to 99 stacks and the map inevitably prompts you that it's closing is equally bad. Giving the fishing stacks at least 5-10 minutes of grace period (removed on actual map/character change, but perhaps somehow preserved when volunterring to a new instance) would radically improve my desire to actually pursue some fishing collections.

I was excited about this mastery initially but now I regret training it. It's great for skyscale but for griffon it has overwhelmingly been the opposite of helpful. I get a really good zoom going and then am snagged out of the air in a direction I didn't want to go by a leyline that is awfully hard to see when moving at high speed. Even if it's one taking me about where I want to go, the momentum becomes all wonky and its more likely I lose my height inertia. Has there been any discussion of a way to toggle this mastery on/off? It would be great if you could simply opt in/out by mount but failing that I'd just like a way to turn it off completely.

Definitely didn't know that affects lfg, good to know! The language isn't very clear. I'll try to tell this to commanders going forward, I dont really tag up for things so this is almost always happening in squads i'm just a member of.

It's lab farm season again so this common problem has been on my mind. Why is it that even when squads have tagged up commanders, any random player can merge them via the lfg menu? What is the benefit of this, and why shouldn't it just be restricted so that this power is only available to commander/lieutenant until the squad has no leader? Even in the case of a leaderless squad, some kind of ready check requiring majority acceptance would probably result in way less of this mistaken/troll merging. If there's something i'm missing I'd be happy to learn. It just seems like an obvious problem that ignorant/malicious players can merge two squads doing totally different content together and leave commanders with a mess to sort out person by person, or be forced to dissolve/remake the squad. Even leaving a squad at 50/50 to avoid that work means suddenly people who want to join each group no longer can. Why does this system still work this way?

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, the first explanation as to why they would do this arbitrary clicking thing. In my mind a popup that says "You have rewards that will be lost if you don't spend some acclaim before next reset" when you complete a daily objective while at 1300 cap seems way more elegant than asking everyone to do the tedious chore of opening and accepting each every time.

Ahh, ok so it's just an extra level of confusing and being a waste of time. Certainly better to not miss the rewards if they aren't lost, but doesn't change my mind at all about the design choice.

People responding "DUH its so obvious and easy to click it why dont you just click it you fool" : Ok, so there's indications and after initially not understanding the change, people will figure it out one way or another (unhappily in cases like this). But what benefit is there in this design? What about stopping to do this extra little chore in order to actually be rewarded for things you already did improves your gameplay experience? To me it's just an obvious, unnecessary punishment for anyone who gets distracted, glosses over it, or forgets to do this arbitrary little chore. Even if this change isn't a problem for you, what about the design of manually claiming dailies is good?