GW2 Spring Quarterly Update Reddit AMA

[iRedisko]

Спойлер: Оригинал

Summary


Update Schedule

• Next quarterly update will be focused on new content. There will be more Living World, less rework of existing features. Maybe we’ll bundle Living World and the quarterly update. To be determined.
• As to legendaries, we can’t sustainably develop them in the form we had been, so they remain a question mark. Let’s get some Living World under our belt, then see what makes sense.

WvW

• Will not release world pairings in advance to reduce gaming the system.
• Language/National worlds will only be paired with other worlds of the same language.
• World Linking is not a complete fix for population imbalances but we felt it was a necessary step.
• We can link many worlds together, though in this Beta worlds will only have a single partner (if they are linked at all). Many high ranking worlds in EU will not be linked with another world.
• Worlds that are paired will have lower population caps.
• At most we’d re-link worlds every 3 months.
• World Linking decisions were primarily based on a combination of both Glicko rating and time-sliced activity levels.
• We plan to continue balancing for WvW, splitting skill damage between modes if necessary. This will likely be gradual though, tackling a few outlier skills at a time.
• EotM earns reward track points at a somewhat slower rate
• Superior Siege on Portable Provisioner- we will add this.
• Will discuss reenabling boon-striping in WvW again. Dev team raised concerns that boon strips become too weak relative to boon application, if you can easily cover your important boons with less important boons.
• We’ll likely rotate worlds periodically, maybe once per quarter. In the short term this is a manual process, so we’d prefer to do this as few times as necessary, but in the long-term we’ll likely want this to be an automated process.
• There will be a partial reset of Glicko (Deviation & Volatility) on Friday. We’ll put a forum post explaining our reasoning, and listing world pairings on Friday as well.
• The process to update DBL was relatively quick (1-2 weeks), since we’d already been receiving feedback on the map for months. We focused on quick, low-risk, high-impact changes to the map.
• We were attempting to achieve rough parity with the rate that players can earn Reward Track progress in PvP. Once we are happy with WvW Reward Tracks and the feature leaves ‘beta’, we’ll make a couple other changes like adding WvW Reward potions to the WvW daily chests.
• For now we plan to rotate the borderlands once each quarter.
• WvW Polling: We plan to poll about a variety of topics, but most importantly, we’ll be asking what players would like us to work on next.
• WvW Participation points begin decaying after 10minutes of no participation gain.
• Cheap/free world transfers always end up upsetting population balance.
• Triumphant Hero’s armor is not currently obtainable, but of course we’ll want to add an acquisition method in the future.
• We decided not to do an ability point reset, since the new ability line is relatively cheap to acquire and reseting ability lines tends to annoy at least as many people as it helps
• We are aware that Fire keep is very difficult to siege with Trebuchets. A change that we were considering/still are considering would be to remove the entire sand dunes upper level above the keep, and move the shrine down. We opted not to, because it would be noticeably more work, and we weren’t sure how players were going to react to the changes we had already made.

PvP

• With this balance patch we will continue to monitor the health of PvP balance. We will also keep making changes in the PvP build panel to add more build diversity through runes, sigils, and amulets. Including making changes to existing items to make them more competitve/viable options.
• We don’t wish to touch the balance meta much, if at all, once a season has officially started unless there is a really glaring balance issue with a particular profession.
• Today’s balance patch will make up the vast majority of balance changes prior to Season 3’s start.

Fractals

• We actually want to make it easier to get Ascended gear from Fractals. There was a bug with HoT release that caused ascended drops to be lower than intended, which we have fixed and we buffed the drop rate again this patch.
• Ascended drops were actually increased significantly in the 26-50 range, and while they’re slightly lower in the 51-75 range, the addition of the 76-100 tier means the overall chance of getting Ascended from your dailies is a lot better!
• We are looking into moving further away from pure RNG as a reward system, and it’s possible that fractal tonics could play a part in that.
• We wanted the rewards for doing the highest tier fractals to feel great, that way players have incentive to actually push those scales! We do drop a lot of ascended mats in the master tier now, which should help with crafting ascended for alts
• More fractal instability revamps in the future
• No more plans for fractal leaderboards
• New fractal scheduled to be released this year. Fractal rotation will change once new fractals are added.
• By requiring a certain amount of AR, players have a tangible, quantifiable goal they can work towards when looking to ascend to higher scales.We don’t have any plans to remove it, but we do want to streamline the acquisition of Ascended and Infusions to make gearing up more straightforward and palatable.
• Daily recommended fractals should still encourage expert players to run with new players.
• It is pseudo-intended pieces with less stats(gloves/boots/shoulders) to be more common than the ones with the most stats(coats/leggings) but the rates were skewed further than they should be. As a result we brought them closer together this patch.

Raids/DPS Testing

• Too many options for food/utility in the DPS testing area so we moved it to the backlog and will review it.
• Can’t comment on next raid wing yet.
• The DPS golem was more a matter of opportunity and timing than it was design-philosophy shift.
• Ranger pets not getting buffs inside the DPS testing area is a bug. No eta yet on fix.
• We focused primarily on offense this time around, so we’ll be sure to evaluate the test lab for defense in the future.
• We are actively discussing an alternative mode for raids (easy / hard), but we have not finished our investigations or finalized any decisions.

Class Balance

• Development of build templates will occur in WvW first and if it goes well sPvP will get it too.
• The fact multiple necromancers using deathly chill stomped on each others damage was something we wanted to fix.This change allows the reaper to apply attrition damage to enemies through chill. The reason it’s bleed and not something like poison is that this trait is intended to be a DPS add instead of another debilitating effect.
• Slick Shoes was causing issues in both PvE and PvP in cirumventing breakbars and stability.
• Aware of Revenant sword scaling issues and sword #2 skill hitting random targets. On radar to fix. Would also like to make more legends useable underwater in the future.

Misc

• No plan to sell Level 80 boost in the gemstore
• No raiding is required to make the new legendary shortbow
• Didn’t increase crystalline ore drop rate in DS but we added more Nox Pods and increase the drop rate of Machetes.
• Allowing the option of moving shared inventory slots around is a lot of work. We can look at keep shared inventory slots separate even in hide bags mode which can be done in a shorter timeframe.
• Talked about having a guild tab in the LFG system using squads for guild recruitment but the system doesn’t lend itself well to that case.
• No way to add clothing/leather nodes like wood/ore but we are looking at adding direct methods to acquire them like the map reward changes we did a while back.
• These days we have teams that "own" various areas of the game and have a lot of autonomy over developing those areas, so we’re addressing QoL issues with the teams.
• Fixing the Mac Client for GW2 is a big project.
• The level-80 boost item can’t be moved out of the shared inventory slot until it’s been used
• Ad Infinitum is more of a prestige item and that is why it costs similar to a legendary weapon. All legendaries are supposed to be in the same price range. The intent was that a weapon, a backpiece, or a set of armor would all cost a similar amount. You can’t get just a single piece of legendary armor, so saying it’s cheaper is a bit of a misnomer.
• Decorations are very different from normal items and don’t support being purchased in bulk at this time.
• Elite specs are post-level 80 content, so they are something you’re going to need to unlock after consuming the boost
• Inventory resizing bug has been a notoriously difficult to fix bug. It’s inconsistent. If anyone is able to find a series of actions that can cause it relatively consistently that could help a lot if posted to the forums or Reddit.
• Daily completion now giving 2g – We felt we had some room for increasing player income without risking major problems but we will continue to monitor the situation. Most wealth in the game is generated by people who are very proficient at generating wealth. They can bid a lot for what they want, because they have a lot of gold, and that process drives inflation. Meanwhile the broader player base is just getting by. So we keep a close eye on how much gold can be generated from extreme farming, but at the same time try to provide a decent income to normal players.
• in Dragon Stand, both the encounter in the open world and the battle inside the dream are supposed to be taking place at roughly the same time.The main battle is a distraction so a smaller force can slip in and try to kill the beast from the inside. It is generally believed that just killing the Mouth of Mordremoth won’t be enough as it keeps growing new mouths to replace the lost one.
• Unlikely to add black lion chest skins to dungeons/fractal rewards. Want keep rewards unique to each aspect of the game.
• They are not sure where the Revenant beta weapon skins went.

Update Schedule

Thanks for the update today; it was actually well and above what I expected. I’m just curious, is the plan to deliver more content in the next quarterly update (outside of another raid wing, if that’s where it falls) or will that all be left for Living World Season 3?​

For this update, as I wrote in my blog post, we paused all new development for a while so we could rework all these parts of the existing game.
For next quarter, our focus will be on new content. There will be more Living World, less rework of existing features. Maybe we’ll bundle Living World and the quarterly update. To be determined.

Are there any plans on adding additional legendaries in the future/next expansion? I think is more reasonable to add 4/5/6 legendaries per expansion than 16 for each one.​

Thanks Manumotate! As to legendaries, we can’t sustainably develop them in the form we had been, so they remain a question mark. Let’s get some Living World under our belt, then see what makes sense.
WvW

Hello,
I wanted to ask if you’re gonna release the wvw server pairings before the reset hits. I guess most server would prefer to be able to communicate and set something up for reset.
I also want to ask if you’re going to keep national server (I’m playing on the lowest german server) at the moment. I do enjoy the community, but we’re facing the problem of not being able to get a real nightshift.​

We will not be releasing the world pairings in advance. This is to reduce the amount of ‘gaming the system’ and transferring worlds before the worlds are even linked. As to your other question, Language/National worlds will only be paired with other worlds of the same language.

1. Do you think that world linking will be enough to fix population in WvW? Players will still be able to transfer now to the "server alliances" and stack these alliances. Will be there any new system for transfer to prevent stacking and manipulating matchups like it was especially on NA side.
2. How many servers can be linked to the one alliance? How will you link EU servers, where you have 1 spanish server,5 french, 7 german?
3. How often will you change links between worlds?
4. Stability changes are good step to fix "pirate ship meta", but i still think it wont be enough, power creep in wvw is still ridiculous. Are you planning to make further changes to dmg in wvw if needed?
5. Reward track progression can be earned in eotm also, i am pretty sure people will prefer to go eotm for easy reward track rewards, than go try normal WvW and help your world. Any changes to eotm?
More changes coming soon tm?

1. World Linking is not a complete fix for population imbalances. That said, we felt it was still a necessary measure in lieu of a more in-depth population management system.
2. We can link many worlds together, though in this Beta worlds will only have a single partner (if they are linked at all). Many high ranking worlds in EU will not be linked with another world.
3. At most we’d re-link worlds every 3 months. Though the exact timing hasn’t been officially defined, in part because we wanted to get community feedback on World Linking first.
4. Yes, we plan to continue balancing for WvW, splitting skill damage between modes if necessary. This will likely be gradual though, tackling a few outlier skills at a time.
5. This is something we’ve already accounted for, as a result EotM earns reward track points at a somewhat slower rate.

How will you reduce the amount of gaming system after link of the server?​

Worlds that are paired will have lower population caps.

Can boon strip priority at least be partially re-enabled for WvW causing Stability to be stripped last OR can boon stripping stability in WvW only strip 3 stacks?
Either one of those changes would make Front Line seem more rewarding, because in the current state boon strips have no counter and make it feel completely unrewarding when you pop a skill ("Stand Your Ground!") that is entirely based around the boons it outputs and have them instantly removed from your bar. /u/impieyay has a video of this happening if I remember correctly. That is what is currently making front line feel completely unrewarding with no counterplay – and causing great frustration in the gamemode that never used to be there.​

Boon Stripping: Maybe. I’ll bring it up with the balance team again. Last time I spoke with them about this, they raised concerns that boon strips become too weak relative to boon application, if you can easily cover your important boons with less important boons.

Can the new WvW Rank and Ability line gain an additional upgrade granting the ability to buy Superior Siege (much like you can at spawn)? It seems like an oversight that this is missing?​

Superior Siege on Portable Provisioner: Yeah, we should probably add this.

In the future if this beta is successful and sticks around will the linked servers continuously rotate to accommodate shifts in populations and to discourage groups from stacking servers?​

Yes, we’ll likely rotate worlds periodically, maybe once per quarter. In the short term this is a manual process, so we’d prefer to do this as few times as necessary, but in the long-term we’ll likely want this to be an automated process.

Are you really (for real this time!) resetting glicko? This makes me happy, as it will unsettle some worrisome stuck servers, and resettle things the way they should be.​

There will be a partial reset of Glicko (Deviation & Volatility) on Friday. We’ll put a forum post explaining our reasoning, and listing world pairings on Friday as well.

How much inspiration was taken from the wvw interviews, also how long/intense was the process to update the desert BL?​

It’s hard to quantify how much inspiration we got from the commander interviews. They were useful, though in a lot of cases they were echoing sentiments of players that we’d seen from the WvW player base at large.
The process to update DBL was relatively quick (1-2 weeks), since we’d already been receiving feedback on the map for months. We focused on quick, low-risk, high-impact changes to the map.

Hello. Do you think the max 550 participation "points" you get in wvw every tick is reasonable or will you increase it.​

We were attempting to achieve rough parity with the rate that players can earn Reward Track progress in PvP. Once we are happy with WvW Reward Tracks and the feature leaves ‘beta’, we’ll make a couple other changes like adding WvW Reward potions to the WvW daily chests.

I suppose I also just want to express my disappointment that the new borderlands will be replaced soon. Despite what a lot of people have said, I’ve always enjoyed them. I hope we see them again someday.​

Desert Borderlands: For now we plan to rotate the borderlands once each quarter.

Could you give us any hints or tentative plans on the feedback you’d be interested in?​

WvW Polling: We plan to poll about a variety of topics, but most importantly, we’ll be asking what players would like us to work on next.

There’s a lot of speculation on how worlds will be linked together. Will world-linking be based on the end-of-match Glicko rating or time-sliced activity levels?​

World Linking decisions were primarily based on a combination of both Glicko rating and time-sliced activity levels.

My Question for you is about the World V World Participation points. I don’t believe I saw anything about the points decaying over time. Do the points decay with inactivity over time? If they don’t what is stopping people from capping their participation and AFK running/hiding so they can keep earning the rewards from the ticks every 15 minutes taking up valuable server slots on a map during prime time.​

Participation points begin decaying after 10minutes of no participation gain.

Given the WvW changes, any chance of server transfers being available for a reduced fee for a short time? I know I’m excited to WvW with my guild, but we’re all over the place since we’ve just been PvE for so long.​

Unlikely. The World Linking feature is a step towards achieving more balanced world populations, whereas cheap/free world transfers always end up upsetting population balance.

Hi there, thanks for doing this AMA. I just wanted to ask about the acquisition of the new Triumphant Hero’s armour, as it looks amazing! Is available to get right now (through the WvW rewards beta), or will it become available in the future? Thanks!​

Triumphant Hero’s armor is not currently obtainable, but of course we’ll want to add an acquisition method in the future.

Can we have a wvw point reset? There has not been one in a long time and a new trait line has been added. My guildmates are salivating over the line, but have been rushing putting points into supply capacity.​

We decided not to do an ability point reset, since the new ability line is relatively cheap to acquire and reseting ability lines tends to annoy at least as many people as it helps (They have to re-spend all of their points on all of their characters.)

Intial assessment of the new desert borderland is positive. It looks GREAT from a visual and tactical standpoint. Some things to consider, however. Fire keep: There is almost no way to attack the keep with Trebuches. This siege is at a disadvantage when attacking it as there are few places where use is possible, fewer that are tactically sound. A good keep has options to attack with all pieces of siege.​

We are aware that Fire keep is very difficult to siege with Trebuchets. A change that we were considering/still are considering would be to remove the entire sand dunes upper level above the keep, and move the shrine down. We opted not to, because it would be noticeably more work, and we weren’t sure how players were going to react to the changes we had already made.
PvP

What I do want to address though is the lack of changes for PvP. There still is a lot of issues that arise in PvP with the reliance of elite specs for a lot of players and the lack of build diversity seen in higher rankings.
Many of the trait paths have been overshadowed in the current meta as they do not contribute enough to be worth a slot. It would be nice to see some of the other build see some love like burn guardian, condi thief , power necro, etc.
While some of the predominate build have been address with the current patch notes, the overall status of PvP has not been affected.
Many Runes and Sigils just do not get used as there are better options for a lot of them.
I was just wondering if there will be other significant changes that will be address in PvP in the coming months before ranked starts up again or are you currently satisfied with the state of PvP at this point of time?​

With this balance patch we will continue to monitor the health of PvP balance. We will also keep making changes in the PvP build panel to add more build diversity through runes, sigils, and amulets. Including making changes to existing items to make them more competitve/viable options.

I have one concern however as a PvP main players.
There hasn’t been much clarity as to how the balance patches will be handled during and before ranked seasons. From what I gather there wil be no balance changes in season unless they need drastic adjusment, all changes will be before season.
Correct?
If so does this mean that today’s balance patch is what we can expect till season end?
TLDR. What exactly is the planned and expected balance change frequency?​

That’s essentially correct, yes. We don’t wish to touch the balance meta much, if at all, once a season has officially started unless there is a really glaring balance issue with a particular profession. So today’s balance patch will make up the vast majority of balance changes prior to Season 3’s start. But again, this doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to make any additional changes between now and the start of Season 3 (or even during the season, again, in the case of any major lingering problems), but this balance update will make up the majority of balance changes prior to Season 3.

My question is how open are you to changing rhe class meta during pre-season due to player response? And another one: have you figured something out for PvPers to ease their pain of not having Ranked between seasons?​

So this Off-Season we’d love for players to check out all of the various map changes that we released with today’s update and give us their feedback (and for the changes we made to Spirit Watch and Skyhammer in particular, which are available in a "beta" state in Unranked Arena right now). We also want to use this time period to allow the PvP meta to settle as a result of today’s balance changes, so that by the time that Season 3 does begin, players will be ready to jump right in and feel confident/comfortable with their skills and the Ranked map roster.
Fractals

Hi! I am a big fan of the fractal changes that were added into the game. The question I wanted to ask was regarding the drops of ascended chests from fractal dailies. In the old version, fractal champion chests dropped ascended armor chests at around 1/8 (or so some people concluded). I was wondering if the new chests for tier 3 or 4 were generally a higher or lower drop rate of ascended chests than the old champion fractal chests. Thanks!​

Ascended drops were actually increased significantly in the 26-50 range, and while they’re slightly lower in the 51-75 range, the addition of the 76-100 tier means the overall chance of getting Ascended from your dailies is a lot better!

Fractals that are not swamp swamp swamp. I never thought this day would come, and it’s much appreciated :)I hope you didn’t sneakily slash the ascended boxes droprate at the same time, though !​

Nope, we actually want to make it easier to get Ascended gear from Fractals

With fractals getting some love recently, do you guys ever plan on making the tonic easier to obtain? I recently saw a guild get it and while I’m really happy for them I can’t help but feel slightly jealous because I want to turn into a kitty golem at all times too.​

We are looking into moving further away from pure RNG as a reward system, and it’s possible that tonics could play a part in that.

Really liking the fractal changes so far, maybe even a bit too rewarding for now in the material department.
But, the way the dailies are now is really nice, and definitely feels good to be rewarded for doing higher levels.​

Glad you like it, more to come! We wanted the rewards for doing the highest tier fractals to feel great, that way players have incentive to actually push those scales! We do drop a lot of ascended mats in the master tier now, which should help with crafting ascended for alts The chests only award mats for ascended armor (Bolts of damask, deldrimor steel ingots, and elonian leather squares).

Are there any intentions to continue developing Fractal instabilities to be more interesting than the ones that we now have? I realize you edited a number of the most egregiously bad ones, but they’re still not particularly great either.​

There will be more updates to instabilities in the future!

Are Fractal leaderboards gone for good now that Ad Infinitum is out, or are they still something that is receiving development effort?​

We currently do not have plans for leaderboards.

How’s progress on the new Fractal? Everyone’s very excited about new content, and is curious if it’s still on track to be released this year.​

Progress is great, and it is currently on track to be released this year!

What’s the next Fractal that will be getting a sweet revamp like Cliffside? Even if you don’t know for sure, what are your current candidates?​

I don’t want to spoil the surprises, but we are confident you will love them

Out of curiosity, what is the planned approach for incorporating new Fractals into the rotation of scales 1-100? Will old Fractal levels get replaced with the new one, or will we go above 100?
Also, based on progress so far do you think it’s more likely at this time that the new Fractal will hit in the Summer patch or the Fall patch? No promises, just curious how quickly it’s moving!​

When new fractals are added, the rotation will have to completely change. It’s a bit kludgy, but it gets the job done.
Can’t give any specifics on when the fractal will be released, just that it is coming along smoothly

and it’s super fun…

Also, sorry to be blunt, but what’s been happening with ascended drops in fractals? Seems like from patch to patch they’re either really nice or completely missing.​

As for Ascended, there was a bug released with HoT which caused the drop rate to plummet. We fixed that and brought it back to pre-HoT levels, but felt that still wasn’t good enough, so we updated them again with this patch.

Why does AR exist? Are there any plans on removing it so FotM appeal to a wider audience?​

Ben, Sean and Myself just had a discussion about this. I think the best way we can describe AR is that it acts as a personal progression system for players as they journey through the fractal scales. By requiring a certain amount of AR, players have a tangible, quantifiable goal they can work towards when looking to ascend to higher scales.
Sean: We don’t have any plans to remove it, but we do want to streamline the acquisition of Ascended and Infusions to make gearing up more straightforward and palatable.

Now, however, there is a huge incentive to almost exclusively run the higher levels, and thereby an incentive to leave new (fractal) players behind. Do you think this could be an issue and if so, could there be a way to incentivize helping newer players to progress?​

This is a concern that we had, luckily the existence of the "daily recommended" fractals should provide a feedback loop of expert players running those fractals with new players, so they won’t be completely left behind.

i wanted to ask why there seems to be different drop rates for different armor pieces chests. in my bank, i have 9 or 10 shoulder chests, while i haven’t seen a single helmet or coat chest drop. is that intended ? makes kinda hard to gear up alts without crafting.​

It’s… pseudo-intended? We do want the pieces with less stats(gloves/boots/shoulders) to be more common than the ones with the most stats(coats/leggings), but when I was updating the drop rates for this patch I noticed the rates were skewed further than they should be. As a result I brought them closer together.
I also added Damask/Elonian L./Deldrimor S. to the daily chests, so even if you don’t get exactly the piece you need that should make it easier to craft the missing pieces.
Raids/DPS Testing

Is there any way we can get food buffs and wrench buffs added to the list of customizations in the DPS testing area? They could go away when leaving the area.​

The issue here was one of scope and the hundreds of food items in the game currently. We wanted to focus on giving you the best experience we could in the time available and so food / utilities was moved to the backlog. We will continue to review the backlog to see where this would best fit and ensure we have bandwidth to accommodate it properly.

If possible to share, what is the intention for raids beyond wing 3? Should we expect more things this year or will the next raid wing only come with expansion #2?​

Sorry – at this time I cannot comment on the next raid wings. Spoilers!

Are any changes planned to make Bandit Trio less random and more exciting?​

Have you tried it without using the environmental buffs? (oil, bees, Wargs). We even gave it an achievement!

More directed towards the raid team, what finally changed design wise to give us a DPS golem? After so long of obscurity, why now?​

With the introduction of raiding, we re-approached the topic in an effort to provide tools that individuals and groups can use to become more deeply engaged in our PvE. The Aerodrome provided us the moment to build that tool. It was more a matter of opportunity and timing than it was design-philosophy shift.

Ranger focused critical questions: Why didn’t you consider pets for boons applied on the dps testing room? Why is it not a good idea to have the boons on us affect our pets? They are considered a part of our dps, but we have this downside of taking up two of the limited slots of most blast radius skills that give boons, unless we trait into a very inconvenient trait path.​

Grimenishi, thanks for bringing up that ranger pets don’t receive buffs and boons inside the dps instance. This is a bug and we’re going to look into fixing this, but can’t provide an ETA at this time.

DPS Test Lab is better than I could imagine! Do you plan to invest more time to it? How about adjusting toughness of boss to simulate comparison of power, hybrid and condi builds like "VG vs Gorse"? And as mentioned before buffs for pets, someone hitting you to proc traits?​

We’ve got a lot of things we’ve identified as potential updates for the Test Lab.
There are some high toughness/condi immune mobs available for testing in the Lab, though. Give it a look!
As for on hit procs, that’s a good idea. I’m curious though… If you have a commander book, there are some additional options available to you in the instance. One of those options is the ability to toggle pulsing AoE damage. Do those proc on hit traits and things?
We focused primarily on offense this time around, so we’ll be sure to evaluate the test lab for defense in the future.

I am concerned about the DPS meter. Groups may use that to exclude people creating a toxic elitist mindset for raids and possibly other content.​

I’m not for elitism. I don’t think that attitude helps build a positive community around raiding.
Having said that, I also don’t believe in withholding a tool as valuable and powerful as this one under the pretense that it could be abused by players who hold attitudes I don’t agree with. I would hope that because the meter is personal and instanced it will first and foremost be used for improvement as a player.
Be kind to each other.

Is there any plan for this "hard mode" to give enhanced rewards in the future​

We are actively discussing an alternative mode for raids (easy / hard), but we have not finished our investigations or finalized any decisions.
Class Balance

Why was it necessary to completely destroy the Condition Necromancer in the PVE setting for the PvP people to be happy? This patch was almost good for me, but the change to Deathly Chill was a major turn off. Seeing as I will now be running Dhuumfire a previously, thought dead trait and dropping the Elite Reaper Specialization completely.
This so called ‘balance’ has managed to practically kill all passion I have for this profession and replaced it with the spite I felt for it before Heart of Thorns.​

Some of this change wasn’t just PvP the fact multiple necromancers using deathly chill stomped on each others damage was something we wanted to fix, but I do understand it was a large power change to that trait and like all of the balance changes we’ll keep an eye on how everything pans out.

I am also interested in knowing if you are planning to add build templates​

Starting with this release, the WvW team is switching over to live development, shipping frequently, beta-testing on the live servers, and asking the community to prioritize development. The WvW team will be at the forefront of this. If it goes well for WvW, we’ll consider it for PvP too. I bring this up because development of build templates would happen on one of those two teams. So I expect that you, collectively, will be in control of when that becomes a priority.

Just a question about PvE/PvP skill balance. Given today you gutted the engineer’s slick shoes skill, was this a purely PvP decision that has had the unintended consequence of removing a large part of the engineer’s functionality, or is the PvE nerf also fully intended/required for balance?
I guess this then turns into a larger question about the way the skills are balanced between the various game modes. How do you do this? Are you willing to keep skills that can only be used in one of the game modes? Do you ever discuss splitting them internally?​

Hey Dedryk! The decision re: Slick Shoes was one that stemmed from PvP and PvE (raids and breakbars in particular).
With breakbars present this skill was capable of doing 10 other players worth of CC damage and circumventing challenging (and rewarding) boss mechanics.
In PvP the skill was bypassing the intended CC counter of stability. We want stability to matter and it’s judicious and intelligent use should be rewarded. One skill stripping unlimited amounts of stability AND CCing you afterwards feels bad, man.
We do discus splitting skills on occasion; this wasn’t one of those occasions.

Thanks for answering! Your reasons make sense, just sad to have lost our little niche in raids.
Is there plans to balance out the niches other classes have? (I’m thinking druids/chronos/revs/PS Warr). I love my engineer and am sad I don’t get to play it as much as I would like.
Also, as I have got you here, is the complexity of the rotation in comparison to alternative classes an active design choice since the inception of engineer, or has it developed this way organically.​

Niches are often good things which create variety and help define professions from one another; we like niches that create interplay. When a mechanic actually removes interplay (and counterplay) then they’re less awesome. Engineer has some fun interplay already with the sheer versatility and the ability to access every combo field type in the game; this is not to say it can’t have more.
With regards to complexity, a good chunk was deliberate and a lot was organic that was consciously kept in because it was awesome.

Robert Gee (or anyone else on the Necro team)! Can we get Deathly Chill changed to either of the following: 2 Bleeds 6 seconds (Fixes the over-nerf of burst potential and overall weakness of the trait.) 2 Torment 8 seconds (More fun, still fixes all the issues and gives Reaper some well deserved Torment) Or Some form of confusion instead?
This new Deathly Chill is very close to my suggested "Brainfreeze" replacement trait from a long time ago, but the new iteration falls VERY short.​

Deathly Chill previously caused every necro that was running this trait to fight with one-another, being that the damage would only apply when your own chill stack was active. This change allows the reaper to apply attrition damage to enemies through chill. The reason it’s bleed and not something like poison is that this trait is intended to be a DPS add instead of another debilitating effect.

So why not burning then? A short duration burn would still be only damage but it could be closer in damage to what it was before, while spreading the conditions so that all the damage cant just be cleansed off as easy.​

Burning was something we talked about, for sure (running as was ‘freezerburn’, hehe). However, since each application of chill applies the condition, burning was just a gigantic spike when it came to frost fields + whirl combos, regardless of the condition duration. We opted for the more spread out and attrition-based condition that could have longer durations and increasingly stacked up as you apply chill.

Is revenant going to get the polish it deserves?

• Bugged sword scaling which was addressed in the bugs you are looking at but is still untouched.
• Sword skill 2 hitting random, non-selectable targets (blue orbs at VG)
• Jalis hammers turning off on inclines.
• Only 2 underwater legends

sword scaling – known issue on our radar. it’s a tech issue of firing skills in different ways in the back end. The damage will have to be looked at and adjusted once this is fixed.
sword 2 targets – this is a known issue that needs some new tech to resolve but we know about it and it’s on our radar to fix.
jalis hammers – on just inclines? it shouldn’t end unless you run out of energy, turn it off or the projectiles hit walls. The projectiles should be hovering above the ground so they should follow the terrain of inclines.
uw legends – we know right now there aren’t many options. The work has to be weighed against other things we are working on but we’d like to eventually make more legends useable underwater.
Misc

Will making the new legendary shortbow or its precursors require any raiding?​

Nope – no raiding is required for any part of the new legendary shortbow journey.

As an altoholic, I’m loving the insta-80 boost! Are there plans to make something like this available in the gemstone in the future? My future alts would thank you!​

Glad you’re enjoying the level-80 boost, zakmandoo! We don’t currently have plans to sell the boost in the store, but I appreciate you sharing this feedback. I’ll pass it on to the rest of the level-80 boost team. Cheers!

I didn’t notice any changes to the acquisition of crystalline ore in the patch. Is Anet currently happy with the status of crystalline ore as a currency in Dragon Stand and especially the Guild Hall vendors (minis, weapons and armor)? I was surprised that the patch didn’t include ways to earn crystalline ore and outside dragon stand and the HoT story rewards (though I haven’t seen the new dailies yet).​

While we didn’t directly change the drop rate of crystalline ore in Dragon’s Stand, we did greatly increase the number of Noxious Pods that spawn, and increased the rate at which players can get access to the Machetes that open them. As with everything related to the economy it is something that we will continue to monitor and make adjustments if necessary.

Thank you for this amazing patch! The free shared inventory slot is a wonderful surprise!
Can we get some options for how shared slots appear in inventory? I always have bags hidden, and shared slots break the nice 10-column / 20-slot layout.​

Allowing for moving the shared slots around like a bag is a decent amount of work. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, and something we should look at especially if we increase the cap on shared slots much more in the future.
The suggestion in that thread for keeping the shared slots and main inventory separate, even in "Hide Bags" mode is something that may be a reasonable compromise that can be done on a shorter timeframe. No guarantees on if or when, but I’ll take a look when I have some down time.

Good work on the LFG changes, can you add a tab for guild recruitment? I’d love to see a reduction in map spam.​

Thanks! We are happy to have it out. We had talked about adding a guild tab using squads at one point, however the interface really doesn’t lend itself well for that use case.

will we ever see cloth and leather be farmable in a way similar to wood and ore?​

We don’t have any plans to add cloth or leather gathering nodes like wood and ore have. However, we have been looking at ways to provide a direct method of acquiring these materials, like the changes we made to map reward tracks a while back. We’re watching the markets for these materials and are working to make sure they don’t get too out of whack.

Guild wars 2 has a lot of minor complaints from the community. Things that really shouldn’t eat up a ton of dev time to fix.
Runescape has a similar problem, but they’ve found a solution. Theirs was the "Ninja team." The goal of the ninja team is to hot-fix minor things in the game that bother people. This can range from broken animations to clipping in outfits to an NPC not functioning. Usually the fixes they make are behind the scenes, like ninjas.
Anyways, it’s great PR because they comment on the official forums and reddit when there is minor complaints like that. It’s usually handled within a week, if not less, yielding less complaining about things like the compact button being in the wrong spot.
Has this idea ever crossed the ArenaNet developement teams table? Dedicating a small team of 3 people to QoL fixes for audio/graphics/UI and earning a larger media presence for those three? Would certainly step out a lot of community complaints. Then again, the latest patch did a lot of this too..​

Xdeadzx, thanks for the suggestion. We had an equivalent team for a while after the launch of the base game. It worked, but there’s no substitute for teams addressing their own QoL issues. These days we have teams that "own" various areas of the game and have a lot of autonomy over developing those areas, so we’re addressing QoL issues with the teams.

Due to the small work around most of us mac players had to use earlier to get in the game after the patch, could you give us any news on the progress of the mac client you mentioned briefly in the previous AMA?
I understand it’s not top priority but any news on it is appreciated.​

Just so you know, I’m primarily a Mac user too. I’m going to celebrate with you on the day that playing GW2 on my Mac is as enjoyable as playing it on my PC. But it’s a big project.

If I don’t want to use the lv80 booster now, can I put it in my bank and have access to the free shared slot? I have a set of 80s already, but I’d love to be able to reroll in the future if a new race is added.​

Hi matzimazing! The level-80 boost item can’t be moved out of the shared inventory slot until it’s been used. One of the things we were looking at when we designed the boost was making sure that it was easy to find and wasn’t possible to accidentally lose; that’s where the idea for delivering it in a shared inventory slot came from. The good news is that you can consume the boost with a character that’s already max level and receive the package of rewards that it grants to free up the shared inventory slot. While they’re not as convenient to use, Tomes of Knowledge can always be used to level up any further alts.

Why is the Ad Infinitum legendary back piece SO EXPENSIVE?
It has stats euqal to 1/2 a 1-handed weapon, or 1/4 the stats of a 2-handed… Also, we already know that the entire 6-piece legendary armor set is supposed to be the cost of one weapon.
So why is a single accessory slot around the cost of a legendary weapon?​

Legendaries aren’t priced for their stats, since they’re really more of a prestige item than anything else. That’s why it’s cost is akin to the cost of a legendary weapon.

I get that. But again, considering the expected price of Legendary armor, why would non-weapon cost so much?
I worked hard for the precursor, and was fully intending to work harder for the Legendary back. Now it’s out of reach and I’m disheartened and likely won’t pursue any further fractal content.
To be clear, this is not an "I’m quitting!" post. I just can’t justify the effort to work toward the back piece now and so I doubt I’ll bother with fractals at this point.​

All legendaries are supposed to be in the same price range. The intent was that a weapon, a backpiece, or a set of armor would all cost a similar amount. You can’t get just a single piece of legendary armor, so saying it’s cheaper is a bit of a misnomer.
I think the big mistake here was that we let players start working on the precursor before the final legendary recipe was revealed, and for that I apologize. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is much we can do about that other than try to be better in the future.

Is it intentional we can’t by more than one decoration for tokens in the guild hall? For example, if I have 100 Fancy Furniture Coins in my inventory, I can still only choose to by one at a time. It just won’t let me raise the number. Says 1 is max.​

The real answer to this would be very long and tech heavy. Short answer is that decorations are very different from normal items and don’t support being purchased in bulk at this time.

Do we still get the gear, HPs, and other items if we use the lvl 80 boost?​

I’m not entirely sure I understand your question, but I think you’re asking whether you get the normal level-up rewards if you use the level-80 boost? If so, the answer is that you don’t get those rewards when using the boost. You’ll have all the same stat boosts, hero points, etc., but you won’t get the equipment and consumables. That said, the gear, money, and other rewards you get from the boost were designed to be much more valuable than what you would have gotten from leveling up as normal.

Is there any plan to allow players to test out their class elite specialization during the level-80 boost trial, or will players have to unlock that on their own after they’ve decided to permanently apply the boost to a character?​

Elite specs are post-level 80 content, so they are something you’re going to need to unlock after consuming the boost

Will the everlasting bug with the resizing inventory get fixed. I know something was in the patch notes about it but it still happens to me

It’s been a notoriously difficult to fix bug. It’s inconsistent, which makes it much harder to debug and find the cause.
I made the most recent fix to it, but that clearly didn’t catch all the cases causing the issue. If anyone is able to find a series of actions that can cause it relatively consistently that could help a lot if posted to the forums or Reddit.

I don’t want to be a downer after such a huge quality of life patch, but there’s one thing that stood out for me and i can’t understand the reasoning behind it:
daily completionist now awards 2 gold. that’s 10 minutes worth of effort for 2g. isn’t that going to cause a massive inflation that will make it impossible for newer players or people on breaks to catch up with those that play regularly?​

We felt we had some room for increasing player income without risking major problems. That said, we’ll keep a close eye on the progression over time, there are lots of options for fixing imbalances if they’re needed.

I like the patch overall but isnt 2g per daily much worse for inflation then previous liquid rewards from dungeons?​

Hi Sceletonx. Of course we’re also adding gold back to dungeons today, with the new repeatable achievement. But I’ll directly tackle your question. Most wealth in the game is generated by people who are very proficient at generating wealth. They can bid a lot for what they want, because they have a lot of gold, and that process drives inflation. Meanwhile the broader player base is just getting by. So we keep a close eye on how much gold can be generated from extreme farming, but at the same time try to provide a decent income to normal players.

Exact timeline of Dragon Stand and Hearts and Minds story mission. Is it true that mind of Mordremoth died during the cutscene after defeat of Mouth of Mordremoth? Were there any time perception anomaly because it was a dream​

Both the encounter in the open world and the battle inside the dream are supposed to be taking place at roughly the same time.
I added allied NPCs near the entrance to the Mouth of Mordremoth in one of the first patches after launch that talk about how the main battle there is a distraction so a smaller force can slip in and try to kill the beast from the inside. It is generally believed that just killing the Mouth of Mordremoth won’t be enough as it keeps growing new mouths to replace the lost one.

Is there any chance of adding black lion chest skins as rewards in raids or fractals? Cheers!​

Unlikely. In general we like to keep rewards unique to their specific part of the game.

What happened to revenant beta weapon skins? Any plans to release them?​

I posted in a separate thread asking about this question, but those of us here at the AMA do not know where they went! I am currently on the case though. Will let you know what I discover.

Перевод

 

[Anthy]

• 
  They are not sure where the Revenant beta weapon skins went.

:24:

 

[Дамаск]

Потеряли, ага xD

 

[Rydik]

Мне интересно, что было той пылающей монстро штукой, которую показывали в тизере, иль тоже потеряли)