Hume.2876

This is like that Celestial Build for Guardian that the influencer Nike likes. It's only really good in the hands of a skilled player, IMHO. Most groups are going to want like Harrier for more healing - at least for instanced content.

If we are talking Alac builds both Mirage and Renegade have some low effort builds. For renegade with short bow you can simply switch between legends hit their "do more damage" ability - hit a few bow attacks - and rebuff alac. For mirage its even easier its basically dodge and hit 1 - after you get your clones up. You can even leave the clones up for bosses. Where Mech really shines is the open world - its awesome there. But that should not lead to nerfs for instanced content - where they are not really that strong compared to competition - outside of heal mech. Heal mech is clearly the strongest - don't get me wrong.

Only the support/heal Mech is really strong. And that's probably a good thing as people don't really want to play support anyway. So its good to have some overpowered options in that realm.. Straight DPS condi Mech is not that strong compared to many other classes in instanced fights. Tanking Pet doesn't really help in raids and strikes. And Alac Mech is worse then Renegade - as you rely on a melee attack to keep up your alac. Renegade can keep it up easier and still use shortbow to deal strong ranged damage. You can also run staff/staff mirage for alac with perma range. People are trying to torpedo Mechs because of Golem damage and the heal mech. This is not really a good idea. Each spec need to be compared to its competition.

Not dumb at all. You expand your options to please a larger percentage of the MMO audience. Let me use another real world example - food. In steak houses they will often offer a vegan or gluten free option for people. This is because there is small subset of the population that will not go to that place with their family if it does not offer these options. It's the same deal with raiding, instances, pvp and dungeons. There is segment of the MMO playing population that simply will not play the game if they don't have these options. By providing them they expand the number of possible players and broaden the appeal. With your way of thinking a steak house could serve nothing but steaks. No sides - not fish - no desserts etc. This is because almost all the people going to a steak house eat steaks. But if they don't at least have options - people will just skip that eating place altogether. There is no magic number needed to "sustain" any content. If only 10% of your players raid - that doesn't mean that raids are a failure. Just like if only 5% of your patrons order the fish at a steakhouse - that doesn't mean you should stop serving fish. The question for the steak house is how much better would the steaks be if they stopped serving fish? And how many families would skip the place if they only served steak? For them having salads, desserts, gluten free options and even vegan items is the correct. Likewise adding raids, dungeons, strikes etc was the correct call - you want your game to hit all market segments - check all the boxes so to speak.. Is Arenanet really going to lose players if they have only 50 open world zones to grind in - instead 60? Now imagine instead of those extra collection grind zones you have raids and strikes. Maybe you acquire players who would have moved onto other game which offer these menu choices. Additionally - with harder content you attract the influencers. Influencers are tremendously useful in promoting your game but without challenging content you lose these people. So raiding was a good idea - so are strike missions. FWIW there is not much different between the two in my mind. They are just more challenging content that extend the play time via difficulty rather then grind. The vision of GW2 was to provide full fledged full featured full MMO - instanced PvE content (raids, strikes, dungeons), PvP content (WvW and PvP) and open world PVE are all part of that. Just because one part is more popular in this game doesn't mean GW2 should just focus on that. You want your game to be broadly appealing to the MMO players of the world.

I think fractals are pretty fun when you consider that most people have played them a ton - so they are naturally boring after you have done them all 100x. I'd suggest they make some new fractals - maybe even a tier 5 of all new ones. That would be great.

They need to change the game such that the group finder can "see" the spec/gear of the player. I bet it cannot now - I think there are some technical changes that need to be made. Flags would be okay but it would be better for leaders to have some assurance that the alac guy can really provide alac etc. I would also suggest some kind of opt-in voice chat maybe built on top of discord. That would take group finders into the 21st century.. Before you hate - just imagine with one click and not leaving GW2 you can listen to a commander in the raid. How nice would that be? Or you could shut him off. I'd argue this is more important then roles. My thinking is that players could turn on or off any mics of people in the group. And they could turn on or off their own mic of course. This would mean that in theory you could listen to the commander if you wanted to. This is all you really need. People are so scared of voice chat because they don't want to speak on line. I get it. But would should have options where the leader can speak and people can listen if they want to. If they made these kind of changes instanced content would be far more popular. People think instanced content is not popular but the main issue is that they don't make it that friendly for players. Of course I would strongly suggest that they bring in official tanking to the game as just a general design. Buffs and Healing is about halfway there. Just go all the way and make the game great.. But I digress.

This has happened to Herald and Reaper as well. But yeah they screwed up Scrapper bad. At least remove the -180 vitality for such a crappy shield.

Not everyone has to do all the content. I don't think open world content that is difficult works. But at the same time this argument is not a strong one. If you give people 50 easy zones and 3 hard ones - You are not going to lose all the easy grinders because there are 3 hard zones. Those hard zones are to give the influencers and dedicated players something to do in the game - so as to attract the regular joes who want to play something different then Candy Crush.. The real problem is that good players will get frustrated by the random farmers that appear in their "raid zone" instances.. The grinders are going to be happy if you give them enough grind. And this game has it.

No one claimed they have to support all modes equally but some more support would be nice for 5 and 10 man instanced content. It's a balancing act. Did they get the balance right? I don't think they did.. They seem to be kinda out of ideas with regards to the open world stuff. A few nice fractals and a continued supply of strike missions would be great additions. But overall yeah they are in a hard place right now. They did a nice job on the open zones which was a big step away from their design in GW1. But it was never meant to be the sole mode of play. it's clearly hard to innovate with the game engine and game design they have in GW2. My point wasn't about that though - just that trying to add raiding made a ton of sense - even if it didn't work out. They didn't want the game to become just an open world EZ mode "idle" game. I do agree there is little they can really do about things now. Here is to hoping for GW3 - maybe bring some of the best elements of GW1 back while keeping the fun combat and other innovates from GW2.

I am grateful to have new content - but I think Arenanet is out of ideas with this engine/game setup. I can see why they were working on new projects. I hope they make enough money for GW3 and they get some great new talent. I think SilverWastes and Auric Basic were basically as good as it gets. Though I think Verdant Brink is pretty fantastic too.. So they have done a lot of cool stuff with their open world zones. But they just don't know how to improve on that. I think the engine limits them. I think the lack of roles limits them. And I think the lack of community in the game (probably because of some of their design choices) limits what they can do. They try one hardish meta and never hear the end of it. Poor Arenanet.. its tough being an MMO developer for sure. Maybe the living story zones will be amazing. I think HoT was the best - but PoF mounts were pretty amazing. EoD has some really pretty zones but like I said - they are just out of ways to innovate in terms of gameplay.

You can't please everyone. Hard open world content is not going to make everyone happy. It's designed to make the people that like MMOs happy though. It absolutely works for some people. Go with a good guild - Hardstruck does it all the time for example. Should we just have no challenging open world content? Or no challenging content at all? Should grind replace all challenge in GW2?

They need to pump up the rewards and make it easier to start fresh maps. Squad leaders should have the option of starting in a clean map. This would be a huge improvement for organized guilds and such.

That's because challenging open world content DOES NOT WORK. The challenge really becomes defeating the "open" system and getting a clean map with a full zone size squad. If you think about it all content is in fact instanced. The only difference is with "raid" content the map caps are lower and its easier to select who you will bring with you. All this fighting comes down the very basic mechanics of the zone/instance system. Forget about challenging open world content - it doesn't work. It never has. It never will. You will always get a bunch of face roll players who wear nothing but soldier gear or some defensive set and just hit auto attack 90% of the time. Now this isn't a problem but it IS a problem if you want to make challenging content for SOME of the players to "progress". Even the guilds that run this will get bored of it like triple trouble.

Arenanet is building their game from the subset of ALL MMO players - not just ones who currently play. You just can't wrap your head around that for whatever reason. I am sure they have tons of info that show players who have played for several hundreds of hours and no longer play. There are also billions of other potential players who never played because it didn't have the features they wanted. The problem with building your game around the players that currently play is that it's a shrinking market. If you offer more activities you can grow your base. Raiding is an activity. Makes total sense that they would try to broaden their game. Now we can agree they failed to broaden their base. But the idea behind doing this is sound. If they continue down the path they are on - with only grindy open world content with face roll style players dominating running Minion Master or Mechanist or other Low Intensity builds the game will just slide into maintence mode. Many modern gamers want some challenge.. not just grind. And they vote with their pocket book. When the game is idle style -they play something else.. You want people buying stuff from the gem store - you want to keep people engaged. Again the shipped has mostly sailed for Arenanet. They listened to the wrong people and catered to the wrong crowd. And now they are in a big hole. I don't know how they can climb out. 4 strike missions isn't going to exactly pull players from New World or Lost Ark or FFXIV. It makes me a bit sad..

That's not it at all. There were at least two good reasons to build a raiding community. 1. There are a subset of players who want to raid. If they don't get at least some raids or some hard instanced content they will leave. It's like a car company broadening its base. Not everyone needs a Ford Bronco with the most hard core off road package. Few people take their SUVs off road. But by offering it - they keep these customers in the Ford family. If they do not - these customers will just go buy a Jeep. 2. You should not restrict your game design decisions to only please fans of your current game - but consider the overall gaming world. It's like Porsche saying because they don't have SUVs - and the fans of their sports cars are not clamoring for one - you shouldn't build SUVs. On the contrary since SUVS are so popular - you should build them even if the tiny niche of current fans hates SUVs. It's the same thing here. Instanced content is standard in the VASTLY MORE POPULAR other MMOs - so why not bring it to your game? Makes a ton of sense really.. The issue for Arenanet is that is was too little - and too late. The ill fated decision to eliminate roles (at the start of the game) had already made raiding quite difficult for them and alienated most of the players that liked teamwork. Basically they have dug themselves into a hole - and don't know how to dig out. GW2 is slowly sliding into one of those "idle" games - and there seems to be nothing they can do about it.. It is really the weirdest thing. I can see why they started working on another project. This is the only way out for them - a new IP without the tragic mistakes that hurt the initial game.