[2020] We are the GW2 dev team, here to chat with you about the Spring Quarterly Update

Original Post — Direct link

Happy release day everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying the Spring Quarterly Update.

Today at ArenaNet, we’re bug-hunting of course, and we’re spending as much time as we can in the live game with you. We always enjoy playing and talking with you in the game. This afternoon let’s get everyone together here for a larger group chat. You’ve only had a few hours to play this huge update, but tell us how you’re liking things so far, or just come hang out with the dev team.

With us today, representing each of the parts of the GW2 dev team, we have Alina Chadwick, Ben Arnold, Branden Gee, Byron Miller, Cameron Rich, Erik Waananen, Ester Sauter, Evan Zynda, Hugh Norfolk, Karl McLain, Lance Hitchc*ck, Link Hughes, Mike Zadorojny, Paul Ella, Roy Cronacher, Ryan Diederich, Sean Hughes, Steven Waller, and Tyler Bearce. As always I’m sure we’ll pull in other devs as the chat continues. Also today we have Gaile Gray with us, and ProbablyJohnSmith still trying to convince you that he’s John Smith.

We’re here for about two hours this afternoon. Come join us!

Edit: We're going to have to wrap up now. Thank you all for coming today! It was great talking with you. I'm glad you're enjoying the release, and you left us with some good food for thought and some things to investigate. Until next time!

External link →

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

In Colin's absence we seem to be lacking dank memes. Is there any way the dev team can help us make up for our lost ground?

I'm sure new dank memes will arise in the future. It's inevitable.

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by CLC-

This is what the game really needed, it seems like you are listening to the community and making it fun to play again!

Thanks for all your time fixing what was broken <3

Glad to hear that you are enjoying the patch!

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by P3RrYCH

obligatory rip bot comment

It never stood a chance.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by jmdbcool

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. For example: http://i.imgur.com/xxmbi84.jpg

We can arrange the rest of our bags in any order, but when it comes to shared slots, we're stuck. =( This issue was discussed when shared slots first came out; hopefully it gets more traction now that it affects all HoT players.

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by Azzarii

Did you really base the ledgendary shortbow off the tiger massacre in Chuka and Champawat Tiger Masacaares

I'm super glad that you caught on to this! I drew a lot of insperation for the journey from the life of Jim Corbett.

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_Hugh - Direct link

Originally posted by Educatedcollins

First off, Good Job on the patch notes. Look promising.

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?

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions from the community.

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by lundjames

Do you guys have a CI team and are unit tests part of your definition of Done?

(Curious, not being sarcastic.)

We do have dedicated engineers working on build/CI. We also have some developer regression suites. Most of the traditional CI concepts are not DoD for our development teams due to workflow/legacy reasons

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Erik - Direct link

Originally posted by melin-skyland

After this update, what should reddit be salty about now?

Yes...

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by matzimazing

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.

The level boost can't be moved from the shared slot, so only consuming can let you access the slot.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by indigo121

Can each dev here just say what their personal favorite bit of this update is, and why?

WvW auto-loot, obvious reasons.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Erik - Direct link

Originally posted by lucker123

Hey! Thanks for the patch. 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.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by felucci

Can you tell us even the smallest bit about the chaos gloves? <3!

they go on your hands

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by Presac

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by tsochicken

Oftentimes my household sponges accumulate an awful amount of buildup. What can I do to prevent this?

I have this problem also. Solidarity.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by Silverbleed

My Mac version does not load at all. Not sure if it's already known but obviously I hope there's a fix for that soon c: Haven't been able to get on my pc.

The team is currently working on a fix for this. In the meantime, you can try the workaround posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fik42/mac_guild_wars_2_wont_start_up_after_new_patch/d294nwj

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by onthethornhill

Im being blamed constantly for my lack of "skill" can you assist me with this?

Practice makes perfect. :) ...or at least pretty good. Also http://metabattle.com/ is your friend.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Erik - Direct link

Originally posted by tsochicken

Oftentimes my household sponges accumulate an awful amount of buildup. What can I do to prevent this?

That's an excellent question.

It's very important to thoroughly wring out your sponges after every usage. This will prevent the accumulation of grime and bacteria. A dry sponge is a happy sponge.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Erik - Direct link

Originally posted by Novuake

Hi MO. Decent patch today.
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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by evenstarauror

As AWESOME as it is that we get a free shared slot (I don't want to complain about free stuff) the fact that we can't move this out of it is REALLY frustrating. Why not? Definitely discourages me from holding onto it to test out multiple classes.

Moving it was prevented for a few reasons.

We wanted to encourage players to use it, so that it doesn't end up as another "too awesome to use" item that sits around in your bank forever.

We also found that a common scenario of using it was to create multiple characters and delete them when deciding to try a different class instead. This created a very likely scenario that many people would also accidentally delete the level boost item that was in their character's inventory.

The restriction of keeping it in a shared slot accomplished both these goals that we had, and was simple to implement.

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_KarlMcLain - Direct link

Originally posted by Anet-TylerB

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.

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

-100% Damage Reduction Meta: PM me details and we'll address it, if it's not already something that's been fixed internally.

In terms of the "damage reduction" meta: we're identified some issues and are looking into them. There's some delicate nature there and we're identifying the correct action to take. Please do pm Tyler though!

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by Eirh

It's inevitable.

It sure is.

You caught me.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by toffikeks

Is it possible to move the shared inventory slots at the END of the inventory, so they does not mess up with our maybe perfect system :)

My comment about this.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by ridicul0us123

Hello, So about the shared inventory. I bought 4 permanent Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic. Is it possible to return 3 of them into gems or gold :)?

I'm not customer service, so no guarantees, but you can always try submitting a ticket and seeing what they say.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by xarallei

Overall good update, very happy about ranger sword.

But....it looks like all the wonderful new minis coming out are being put in black lion chests. Why? Normally Anet puts cool minis in the shop to buy directly. RNG chests are not fun for many of us. I've been playing Blade & Soul the past few months and I despise the way they handle their cash shop and their plague of RNG bullshit. I really don't want to see Anet go in that direction. It's awful. I'm just waiting on new content, because I really want to go back to GW2. I miss it terribly.

You should check out the new Mini Spirit Tiger then, it is obtained via an achievement.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

There is a thread on the main support forum about the bug that keeps the Mac client from launching. A customer found a temp fix but it seems that this fix will cause a problem down the road as per a dev post on reddit. Since this seems to be causing a problem for many Mac customers, if not all, a red post in that thread would be welcome and would help draw more attention to the issue. Right now there are a few duplicate threads about it.

Other than that I am impressed with the patch from what I have seen so far. Thanks for reading.

this issue is resolved in the first hotfix (released ~15m ago)

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_Steven - Direct link

Originally posted by indigo121

Can each dev here just say what their personal favorite bit of this update is, and why?

Clearly the most important update of all -> Ranger main-hand sword autoattack no longer removes control from players :)

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_KarlMcLain - Direct link

Originally posted by siekron

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.

Thanks for hearing me out! - High Warlord Sikari (Ron Pierce)

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by Presac

It isn't just because of the confirmation message?

Correct

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_Steven - Direct link

Originally posted by tsochicken

Oftentimes my household sponges accumulate an awful amount of buildup. What can I do to prevent this?

Not sure accumulation can be prevented but to keep it clean, soak your sponge overnight in a mixture of 1 cup (250ml) hot water, 1/2 cup (125ml) white vinegar and 3 tablespoons salt. The next day, rinse and squeeze the sponge several times to get rid of all of the accumulated cleaning liquid. Good luck ;)

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by Mexay

This really needs an answer. Revenant is such a fantastic class that clearly had a lot of love and effort put into it, but it's let down by being neglected after HoT-BWE2.

/u/Anet_RoyCronacher, I know you don't work on the class anymore, but is there anything you can discuss about this? Or can any of the other devs for that matter?

I can add a bit of info here but tagging /u/anet_karlmclain in case he has anything to add.

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by Gandlos

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Erik - Direct link

Originally posted by Novuake

Thanks for confirming Erik! Cheers! May I ask what position you hold at ANET? :D Just curious.

I'm currently a Designer on the PvP team.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by EagleDelta1

Do you think the MMO/Gaming world will ever start to apply Continuous Deployment tools and methods to their workflows or is gaming just simply not well suited for CD/Automation?

There were several talks about CI/CD pipelines (from mobile/PC studios) at GDC '16, and Riot gave an excellent talk about their Docker/Kubernetes-esque pipeline for League. It is happening, just very slowly.

over 8 years ago - /u/ANet_Alina - Direct link

Originally posted by Danteblade

Hats off to Anet, it seems like this patch has done a great job of improving moral and getting people interested in the game again.

Since I have not had a chance to login yet and cannot comment on the live game I would like to ask the Anet employees here: Would you rather fight 1 charr-sized asura or 100 asura-sized charr?

Does size correlate to hp? If so I've got to go with the 100 asura sized charr. My thought is if they are like pocket raptors I can lock them down pretty easilly with chronomancer shield 5.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by Clint_Charwood

Dam I thought i could wear them on my feet

Negative, they are not chaos socks

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_KarlMcLain - Direct link

Originally posted by Mexay

Thanks for the response, Roy!

Regarding sword scaling, do you know if this is currently being worked on or if it's still in the backlog? I know you aren't really the right person to be asking, but it's worth a shot :P

I definitely understand UW Legends, it is annoying to not have much choice, but if I'm totally honest I'd rather work going into the land-based components of Revenant. (Also just throwing out there that the underwater varient of Unyielding Anguish currently has no range limit on the torment. Can be cast from like 10,000 units away).

The sword issues are something we've been actively investigating and working on. Please be aware that the base damage will be adjusted (reduced) when this tech comes online. Unyielding Anguish is definitely something we'll look to fix as well! :)

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_KarlMcLain - Direct link

Originally posted by Corbzor

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.

over 8 years ago - /u/ArenaNetRyanD - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

http://imgur.com/a1EA3AL

Best I could do on mobile. Perfectly dank picture, but my meme-ing skills are low.

Original

Looks like I've got a new desktop background.

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by rym1469

Make sure to visit our gw2 meme circlejerk reddit tho -

https://www.reddit.com/r/dankwars2/

Will do! Looks entertaining. ;)

over 8 years ago - /u/Anet_RoyCronacher - Direct link

Originally posted by KodiakmH

Roy's our boy!

Us Revs miss you man :(

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by Anononon

Chaos socks confirmed!

I can neither confirm, nor deny, the existence of chaotic foot-based garments at this time.

over 8 years ago - /u/lancehit_anet - Direct link

Originally posted by Stormdancer

That's because they're so good looking that they make you handsome.

by saying yes I mean

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