Hey everyone, with the feature pack dev posts coming to an end, I thought I would do a summary/list of all the changes announced so far incase you missed any of the dev posts.
Alternative link:
http://dulfy.net/2014/09/05/gw2-sept-feature-pack-summary/
Balance Changes
Warrior & Thief
Engineer & Ranger
Elementalist & Mesmer
Guardian & Necro
sPvP Changes
Standard enemy models option A standard Human model with a weapon set and a set of armor per profession and gender
Can be turned on by using the settings in the general options tab of your F11 menu
This option will only affect enemy models and wont affect teammates.
Option only allowed in Team Arenas and Custom Arenas that allow Tournament Commands
PvP Exclusive armor
Two new sets of armor released for PvP exclusively: Glorious Armor and Glorious Heros armor
Glorious Hero is an exclusive reward to certain competitive tournaments hosted by Arenanet while Glorious Armor can be obtained by everyone from a repeatable Glorious Armor Reward track arriving with the Feature Pack.
Each time you complete the Glorious Armor Reward Track, youll be able to select a piece of Glorious armor to add to your wardrobe
WvW Changes
Siege Golem Mastery is joining the list of WvW ability lines.
Abilities include gain super speed after destroying a wall or gate, increase your golems offensive and defensive stats, adding AoE healing effect to your Shield Bubble skill, and gain access to the ejection seat.
If your golem takes lethal damage, ejection seat will cause the golem to explode, damage and knockdown nearby enemies while launching you to safety with invis and invulnerable buffs for a few seconds.
Siege Disabler added to Traps and Tricks Outfitter.
Thrown like a grenade and consume supply on use. Up on landing, it will temporarily disable all siege equipment within a radius of 450 for 45 seconds.
Disabled weapons cannot be used for the duration and all players manning the siege weapons will be forced off them. Siege golems are disabled for 20 seconds.
Traps and Tricks will now cost badges and coin instead of badges and karma
Commander tags are now account wide and have access to four colors (red, yellow, purple, blue). Costs increased to 300 gold but existing commanders will be grandfathered in.
New WvW Tournament starting on Sept 12, lasting only four weeks and unique matchups every week.
No world transfer lockout
Weekly achievement based on completing a small number of events in WvW.
Complete all four weekly achievement to unlock the meta achievement and earn the Mist Treader title.
Majority of the rewards will be dispersed at end of each weekly matchup based on your worlds performance. Weekly Matchup 1st place get 200 tickets, 2nd place get 150 tickets, and 3rd place get 100 tickets.
To be eligible for the weekly reward, you need to earn that matchs weekly World Contributor achievement and then talk to the Battle Historian NPC during the next weeks matchup. You must claim your rewards in the week following the matchup as rewards that are not claimed during the following week are forfeited.
Mistforged Heros weapon costs 300 tickets, Ascended accessory costs 200 tickets, Mini Dolyak costs 200 tickets etc.
On October 12 (5:15 pm PST), a dolyak statue will be appear and grant visitors a one time buff granting them increased WXP and XP gain for a short time. The duration of the buff will be determined by a worlds overall placement in the tournament with first place getting 5 hrs and those in 9-12 place getting 1 hr only.
Improvements/Crafting
Dungeon Instance Owner
Dungeon instance owner no longer exists and the dungeon will close when everyone leaves the instance.
Crafting UI
You can now open recipes and subcomponent recipes at the same time, allowing you to crafts the parts required for a recipe and faster navigation around the crafting interface.
Performance updates, most notable in large combat situations like WvW and PvE world boss events. Should result in an increase in frame rates as well.
New backpacks added to each crafting profession that have looks unique to that crafting profession. The backpacks look progress as you advance and builds on top of what youve already made.
Combat Log overhaul
Can now be configured to filter incoming buff, heals, dmg, interrupt, and outgoing buff, heals, damage, interrupts etc
Different colors for different damage/heals (green for heals, red for crit dmg, and purple for condition dmg)
Summon pets dmg now appear as damage
Player skills are displayed as chat links
Guilds/Megaserver
Global guild system
Everything in your guildyour bank, merits, influence, and upgradesis now global and shared across all worlds
The influence and the merits that your guild earned in each world will now be combined into your global guild (can go over the limit of 250 but you cannot earn anymore merits until the count gets back under that threshold)
Any upgrade youve unlocked on any world will be available in your global guild.If youve unlocked the same upgrade on multiple worlds, the influence and merit cost will be refunded.
All guild consumables unlocked on any world will be available in your global guild
The guild vault from the world that had the highest number of slots will become your global guild vault. Items from other worlds vault will be transferred to extra slots to withdraw from
Guild missions reservation system
Megaserver now prioritize guild members who are doing guild missions and reserve space for them but it is limited in scope so it will work best with small and medium sized guilds.
Ability to exit out of closing maps
When a certain map need to be closed down due to low population, players on that map will be given the option to move to a different map copy right away.
If you choose to volunteer to move to a new map, you will get Volunteers Blessing, which increases movement speed by 15%, karma gain by 5%, and experience from kills by 10% for 10 minutes
Better sort players by language in European megaservers but will not create megaservers unique to a specific language at this time
Leveling
New leveling gear added that extends to exotic level of rarity. Available as recipes for crafters and as mob drops. Also players are more likely to get loot drops that they can use.
New content direction system at the top right side of the screen, providing one clear location and arrow to guide players to exciting content.
Veteran players can disable this content direction system or select world complete mode to use it to direct you into areas for world completion
Content direction system wont direct you to jumping puzzles, mini dungeons, legendary llamas etc.
Now every time you level up, there is a shiny badge that pops up where bouncy chests exists. Clicking on it will present a reward screen that will show you any new game systems you have unlocked by reaching that level.
Some game systems are now only fully unlocked when you reach a certain level
Rallying from a downed state only available at level 5 and above.
WvW and sPvP are unlocked at level 18 and 22 but experienced players can access it via Lions Arch or use hotkeys. The buttons will be hidden until you reach these levels but once the buttons are unlocked for one character, they will be visible to all future characters as well.
Some other features like weapon swapping and skill slot unlocks have been moved a bit
Your stats will now come in chunks after reaching a milestone rather than increase after every level.
Skill slots for weapons will be unlocked for all weapons simultaneously as you level up. This means that if you picked up a new weapon for the first time after already unlocking multiple weapon skill slots, you will automatically learn the skills for that weapon.
Personal Story is also now unlocked in chunks as part of a chapter. Personal story chapters also got updated rewards to make them worthwhile for completing. When a story chapter is unlocked as a level-up reward, youll be able to play straight through the entire chapter from start to finish and not have any awkward starts and stops that throw off the storyline.The chapter rewards are not retroactive and only affect future characters.
Wardrobe/Minis/Finishers
Wardrobe Improvements
Search box added to all sections of the wardrobe It will filter available options by name as you type.
Outfits are now moved to their own section, separate from equipment skins.
Corner tabs are added to outfits you dont own so you know when new or limited outfits are available or when something gets discounted for sales.
New tabs are added in the wardrobe for finishers and minis.
Finishers are now moved into the wardrobe and can be searched as well. You can now preview them as well, even the ones you dont own.
Minis
All minis can now be treated as account unlocks in the wardrobe. Unlocking the mini will destroy that mini but it will be available to all characters on your account to equip with no additional cost.
You can still double click to summon and unsummon minis from the inventory but this does not unlock the mini to your account and does not fully equip the mini. it is just an easy way to see something in the world before you choose to unlock it.
Minis collection have been moved from the bank to the Hero panel. After the patch you will need to retrieve each mini from the bank collection tab individually and either chose to unlock it for your account or sell it. Once a mini is removed from the bank, the collection space for that mini in the bank will disappear.
New achievements will also now be available for completing Wardrobe account unlocks for the series 1, 2, and 3 minis.
Account unlocked minis have a show/hide box in the hero panel that summons and hide your currently equipped minis. Once shown, minis will appear in every map without need redeploy them.
Both locked and unlocked minis can now be previewed from the wardrobe, trading post, inventory and from chat links.
Items Collections/Achievements
Item collections is a new set of achievements with unique rewards that are tied to finding items and skins. The achievements can be found in the Collections section of the achievements panel and there are a number of hidden collections.
Every Items Collections achievement has reward items in addition to achievement points. The rewards could be new pieces of equipment, recipes, and functional unlocks.
There are three types of items collections
Automatic Base set of collections visible when you look at the achievements panel
Discoverable Become visible when you collect something that is part of that collection
Unlocked Need to be unlocked by using an item before they can be seen or progressed.
Visit Rednax Youngblood in Lions Arch after the patch to get the coveted Collectible Spoon Box to start your Koutalophile collection which require you to collect spoons from renown vendors and dangerous locations.
There are three ways an item can be collected
Usable items are considered collected once they are used
Bound items are collected the moment they are bound (If you loot an item that is tradeable, you can either bind it to your collection or sell it on the TP)
Collectible skins are counted toward the achievements as soon as they become unlocked in your wardrobe
A collection may be just one type or include all three types of items
Item collections achievements are retroactive but useable items need to be used again and any items you own but got rid of will have to be obtained again.
The terms Collections and Collectible will refer to Item Collections. The old collections panel is now referred to as the Material Storage.
Achievements panel reorganized
All of the WvW, PvP, and Activity achievements are now located in the new Competitive achievement category.
All of the Region, Boss, and Dungeon achievements are now found in the General achievements category.
Trading Post
Trading Post have been reworked so now it loads faster with a new and faster browser engine.
Pick-Up tab has been removed with a new Delivery Box on the trading post UI to retrieve items. You still need to visit a Black Lion Trader NPC to pickup items.
Categories now exist on a persistent panel on the left side so it is easier to browse and jump between categories.
Search is now integrated with the persistent categories on the left, so you can easily narrow down your searches to just specific categories. Searching through the entirety of the Trading Post is still possible.
Expanded filter options
Category, rarity, level, available now, attributes, profession, weight filter for armor (light, medium, heavy), bag size, crafting discipline and level.
Filters are now applied to search results immediately, making it easier to know if youre heading toward a useful result.
Trading Post also shows exactly which filter you applied above the list of results and you can easily remove any one of them by clicking on them.
New unified order dialog for buy/sell to help better understand the results of your actions. Now when buying or selling, you see your proposed listing reflected immediately in the UI alongside the existing listings.
When selling items to the Trading Post, items are now shown in the same order they appear in your inventory. All your equipped bags are shown on the left-hand side for filtering, just like categories when browsing.
Visibility of fees for using the trading post has been improved new selling UI in the Trading Post explicitly calls out both the listing fee and the exchange fee
Combat log
The combat log will receive a major overhaul in its design and functionality.
Instead of being just toggled on/off, the channel can be further configured to show the following action separately:
Incoming Buff Damage
Incoming Healing
Incoming Damage
Incoming Interrupts
Incoming Mitigated Damage
Outgoing Buff Damage
Outgoing Healing
Outgoing Damage
Outgoing Interrupts
Outgoing Mitigated Damage
Critical hits are separately labeled
Damage numbers will be shown in different colors: Green for healing, orange for damage, red for critical damage, purple for condition damage
Player skills are displayed as chat links and provide more information on hover.
Ranger pets, necromancer minions and other summoned allies show up in the log but for now appear as if the player does the damage.
