Fix it already! or Just nice to have?

[Gorani]

Guild Wars is over six years old and there are still things the Live Team or other programmers haven't bothered to fix or set straight. This list, which you can expand, I am sure, could be a small reminder of things that could help the aging game.

• The price of crafting items:
  => There is Linen, which costs 200 gold to craft + 5 Plant Fibers. Since you can buy Linen at half the price at the rare materials trader, why bother crafting? Solution: reduce the gold cost to 20, so you could make a small profit for selling.
  => There is a Lump of Charcoal, which costs 200 gold to craft + 10 Wood Planks. Again, why craft those, when you can buy them at a lower price from the trader. Solution: Same as with Linen
  => Bolt of Silk, which costs 200 gold to craft + 10 Cloth + 10 Dust. The most costly craft, but the cheapest item of the three with the trader. Solution: 20 gold + 5 Dust + 5 Dust would be a start.
  
• Chest running:
  => If you want to get the Treasure Hunter title, you have to chest run a few locations, because the number of chests is so limited in explorable areas (IIRC 5 is the max of chest spawns). If the number of chests are doubled, you could have the opportunity to open chests during "normal game play", e.g. questing or during a vanquish. The number is still limited by the number of keys or lock picks you can afford
  => Nightfall's hidden treasures; Reveal the secret already. How do the chests recharge? The quality of drops from those does degrade, but how? Knowing more about that could help checking the chests for drops.
  
• Upgrade items
  => Weapon upgrades selling for 25 gold is not worth salvaging, because the risk of breaking is too high if it is not a max item. Perhaps increasing the value to 50 or 75 would make it worth again.
  
• Skills & mechanics
  => Smiter's Boon; Yes! The nerf which turned into a GW proverb, was some sort of bankruptcy declaration of the balancers. Give that skill a PvP use again.
  => Exhaustion; This game mechanic for the Elementalists could have been used to buff the class (e.g. you gain 20% armor penetration while exhausted), but it has never been touched.
  => Offensive Ritualist's spirits are still too strong
  => Mesmer's received too much love, but nobody bothers to fix the damage done
  => Pet AI is still troublesome

[raspberry jam]

Hmm. Yeah I agree with all of the above. Except exhaustion and pet AI, pets are fine as they are, if they get better they'll be overpowered. As for exhaustion, the point of it is not to buff eles but to prevent them from spamming certain spells. I think it works as intended.

The rest would be nice if they looked at IMO.

[Fluffball]

The price of crafting items
That's weird. I don't craft so I never noticed. I figured both would be market dependent; I think they should be.

Chest running
I like chests being rare surprises. I don't think they should be balanced around the title.

Nightfall's hidden treasures
Has than been any serious research to find a pattern? Especially considering the number of people with alt accounts, I think this should be doable.(?) Common knowledge/common myth is that they refresh once a month.

Exhaustion
I think the general consensus is rangers and NM eles are balanced classes. It's a shame they got left behind. Exhaustion on Dragon's Stomp was to prevent KD spam, and then mesmers got PI.

Offensive Ritualist's spirits are still too strong
Their damage is very weak for 8 man parties because there is no AoE, and they are super slow farmers in HM. The strength of spirits comes from their defense, which I am ok with.

Mesmer's received too much love
They need to pick one paradigm or the other. Mesmers are weak compared to buffed physicals in terms of damage, but they have some very nice support. Most of the classes fit in to that paradigm. Then you have rangers and eles.

[Gorani]

Hmm. Yeah I agree with all of the above. Except exhaustion and pet AI, pets are fine as they are, if they get better they'll be overpowered. As for exhaustion, the point of it is not to buff eles but to prevent them from spamming certain spells. I think it works as intended.

The rest would be nice if they looked at IMO.

I'd rather have a responding pet than a charged one, like we have today. But if you take a look at people playing the GW2 demos, programmers do not have to be able to fix the issue there, too.

Exhaustion is a game mechanic that only punishes one class, the Elementalist with a few exceptions that are negligible at least in PvE gameplay. Like Fluffball said, Psychic Instability (5e 1/4sec CT R12) compared to Dragon Stomp (25e 3sec R15 + Exhaustion) just illustrates the problem, even with PI as an elite skill. I can see the "do not spam" problem with the "Mind" skills, which have 5 sec recharges. In the end, exhaustion is a mechanic that needs some fixing IMO and it could be used to buff the Ele to be at least competitive to other classes again.

[Guildoholic]

I wsouldn't mind some graphics fixes for the clipping issues in armor.

[Tru Reptile]

That exhaustion idea doesn't make sense. Why would your spells be more powerful when you are dead tired?

And this...

pets are fine as they are, if they get better they'll be overpowered.

...is probably the most funny and completely wrong statement about GW I've seen in a long time. Pets suck bawlz. Yeah, they have some nice skills like Enraged Lunge, Brutal Strike etc. but none of that matters because their absolutely horrible AI is what prevents them from being good enough to use.

[raspberry jam]

^ It's not completely wrong. If they get better, they will be overpowered.

Exhaustion is a game mechanic that only punishes one class, the Elementalist with a few exceptions that are negligible at least in PvE gameplay. Like Fluffball said, Psychic Instability (5e 1/4sec CT R12) compared to Dragon Stomp (25e 3sec R15 + Exhaustion) just illustrates the problem, even with PI as an elite skill. I can see the "do not spam" problem with the "Mind" skills, which have 5 sec recharges. In the end, exhaustion is a mechanic that needs some fixing IMO and it could be used to buff the Ele to be at least competitive to other classes again.

Are you serious? PI requires interrupt to have an effect, and Earthquake does damage. And it's not just Mind X spells, it's also Obsidian Flame, EProd, Gale, and RTL. Exhaustion is a very clever mechanic and should not be touched in itself. If you on the other hand say that it could be added or removed from certain skills... yes, that could be a good idea. What about adding it to RoJ?

[Tru Reptile]

Mind telling me how they would be overpowered if their AI was improved?

[cosyfiep]

I would still appriciate a better hero ai....even on avoid some tend to 'run amok'...which is why vekk always stays home.....if they are on attack, yeah argo everything, if they are on defend, uhm no dont run off and attack things --only attack when you are attacked (or when the party is being attacked).

and the stupid npc who get stuck....togo, you KNOW I am looking at you! they should be able to move thru chests etc...not have to be led around them, etc.

[Gorani]

and the stupid npc who get stuck....togo, you KNOW I am looking at you! they should be able to move thru chests etc...not have to be led around them, etc.

Mhenlo, Togo & pets getting stuck behind shrine NPCs?

@Rasberry
Don't get me wrong here, I don't want exhaustion removed. The limitations to not being able to spam skills like ObsiFlame are fine, but I think the punishment of exhaustion is too much right now for a class that is sub par anyway.
Ideas to cope with exhaustion:
1) The damage buff already mentioned. The downside of keeping some part of your energy reserves blocked could be balanced by the penetration buff (which also closes the gap between completely armor ignoring damage of other classes vs. the high numbers of AL in HM the Ele is facing)
2) Make exhaustion go away a little bit faster. Just reduce the time from 3 to 2 seconds. This way it does not take 30 but 20 seconds to remove the effect of a single exhaustion.
3) Add the ability to remove a single exhaustion to a few Elementalist skills, like Glyph of Lesser Energy, Aura of Restoration and the four Attunements. This way the Ele has another way to nullify the effect of a single exhaustion every 20 to 30 seconds, which is hardly breaking the balance.