Krazzar

"Pay-to-win" is open for such a broad definition that it doesn't really belong in this so-called debate. People's perspectives of other games and how they ran their cash shop has no real bearing on how GW2 is set up. Clearly this cash shop does not provide anything that circumvents gameplay for a reward. In other words, what they sell doesn't allow you to cheat, or give you competitive advantage.

You're welcome to argue this until you're blue in the face but there simply isn't anything that is sold to gives you a competitive advantage. Furthermore anyone arguing about advantages in PvE is misinformed or refuses to acknowledge that PvE is fully cooperative. You don't compete in PvE, everyone is on the same side regardless of your race, profession, Order or guild(s). So an XP boost for PvE player does not provide a disadvantage to those who don't have it. There's no "advantage" gained of having more XP than your fellow players in PvE. The game doesn't deny you for having less XP than your fellow players in PvE. If it does, it certainly isn't as vast as to "need" an XP boost.

XP boost are virtually an inconvenience if used in WvW, because wasting your time killing mobs is not going help your teammates and server. You become a detriment to organizing an army to siege or defend a structure of importance.  If anything I don't think it be wise to advertise that you have a XP boost active, because no teammate want to you running off killing mobs instead of helping the server attack & defend structures.

Iron Legionnaire, on 12 July 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

My answer is, yes there should be new skills, yes the game should evolve. I want expansions on a game to bring new and exciting things, one of the most exciting things about this game are the skills that are available.

Change is exciting, but for those who prefer to stay with an old tried and true skill set, i would just make settable limits. in Spvp(IE GW2 vanilla setting for opponents), and maybe a classic rule (vanilla) WvWvW map. (if there is enough people who want to play classic for it to be viable)  In Pve, it shouldnt really matter much, you dont need to use new skills if you dont want to, and if you really hate the new zones, you can just never play there.

I remember in GW1 I was standing around in one of the high lvl content areas. More specifically the Realm of Torment where Mallyx runs were done.
I remember thinking I felt like doing Mallyx or one of the runs up to him. I was on my monk at the time and was about to join a group until I saw "must be HB monk"

For those not in the know, HB is an Elite skill short for Healers Boon. It's been a while since I last played GW, and they are always changing the way skills work so I don't know if that's still the standard healer monk skill or not but
regardless, at the time it was.

I had HB and could put it on my bar but I wasn't going to conform to the idea of forcing certain skillbars on others. I had done the quest multiple times before and know that there are other bars you can use that can be just as effective if not more so.

If they didn't have that attitude they would have gotten the monk they needed a lot sooner, and I have no doubts we would succeed in the quest.

Another time, I had just finished doing a mission with hero's and henchies, and decided I wanted to do it again and help the people who were struggling with the mission.
we were short one person, and everyone was squishy so we decided a hero warrior was best. I brought mine in and we are about to go, when they ask me to ping the bar.
I do so, and they kick me from the group based on that hero.
I had just done that quest with that hero in my team, and on top of that his particular bar was great for that mission it just wasn't one they were used to seeing.
So unless they played worse than my other heroes and henchies it's just silly...

So yeah Elitism can actually harm people's progress when they don't keep an open mind to the possiblilty that something different might actually work better.

N0rdicNinja, on 07 June 2012 - 01:40 PM, said:

He is just being dramatic.

The new tier system will make you choose between flexibility or power. In the old system, picking more flexibility wouldn't sacrifice your power at all, so 10/10/10/10 builds were the best. Especially because after you picked the best trait for your build in a line after speccing 10 points, speccing 20 would mean you would only pick the second best, and 30 points would mean you would only pick the third best. Specialization was leading to diminishing returns before.

Games that usually give you a lot of freedom always have a system where flexibility comes at a cost. Or else, your character becomes a god, with extreme flexible means to deal with its problems, and only very slightly weaker than a specialized character at a specific goal.

In GW1, you had skills with no attribute points. Those were weaker than normal, because they required little to no investment and gave a lot of flexibility. In Magic: The Gathering, you have artifact cards, which can be placed in any colored deck to give it options that it wouldn't otherwise have, but artifact cards are generally weaker or have higher costs than colored cards for that reason.

You want more flexibility? You sacrifice power. Want more power? You sacrifice flexibility. That's how it should be.

In the old system, you would have BOTH power and flexibility, and even if all traits were equally balanced, that wouldn't change.