Guild Wars 2

Sieg.8439:

As for the Quartz, has anyone seen if you can join a friend in a home instance and mine their Quartz if you don’t have one in your own?

That’s actually a very good question, Sieg! Would like to know if this is possible too.

i’m burnt out on the new JP zone already…i just don’t have enough time to get to the Dive achievement location with the short skill timers. tried to get up to the goggle location on a fresh pick up of the jump aspect, and it ran out before i got to the top.

maybe have a group of aspect crystals on the top level? at least then maybe players don’t have to re run the course numerous times, and just work on the top half.

jump puzzles were nice when they were off the beaten paths of specific zones – you had to really try to find them first, and that was okay for me. now that is is part of the content, and will probably be part of future updates, i don’t know if i can enjoy the new stuff as it comes out. at least i tried it with all my might, and i guess 10/16 is all i can muster.

it was a fun 4 hours of content. grats to those who have completed it already. i commend your play skill. thanks for the reworking of the achievement system, and obvious grind of the new quartz material.

rgrwng.4072:

i’m burnt out on the new JP zone already…i just don’t have enough time to get to the Dive achievement location with the short skill timers. tried to get up to the goggle location on a fresh pick up of the jump aspect, and it ran out before i got to the top.

maybe have a group of aspect crystals on the top level? at least then maybe players don’t have to re run the course numerous times, and just work on the top half.

jump puzzles were nice when they were off the beaten paths of specific zones – you had to really try to find them first, and that was okay for me. now that is is part of the content, and will probably be part of future updates, i don’t know if i can enjoy the new stuff as it comes out. at least i tried it with all my might, and i guess 10/16 is all i can muster.

it was a fun 4 hours of content. grats to those who have completed it already. i commend your play skill. thanks for the reworking of the achievement system, and obvious grind of the new quartz material.

The buffs don’t have a timer.
They have charges. A crystal gives you ten charges of that aspect’s skill. And another skill recharges it back to ten.

Why do I have to do stuff I don’t want to do for the personal quartz node? I don’t like the minigames and JPs are just annoying. It’s tedious and boring!

Jaga.2084:

Why do I have to do stuff I don’t want to do for the personal quartz node? I don’t like the minigames and JPs are just annoying. It’s tedious and boring!

Basic quartz is tradable on the TP, so if you really, really can’t stand the Bazaar content (and don’t mind missing out on achievements), you can just skip it, and buy quartz instead with gold you earn from elsewhere in the game.

my only comment… this LS is about a group of people who live in the sky and have learned to dash, jump, and leap about because of it… soo having some things tied to the JPS for this particular event does not seem all that illogical. I have a really difficult time with jumping puzzles, but I did them, and even discovered a new puzzle I didn’t even know existed until today… so yay even more AP.

Achievement – awarded for ACHIEVING something. If you can’t achieve it you don’t deserve it!

Not all kites are in jumping puzzles.
- Colossal kite
- Poor Man’s kite
Both don’t require difficult jumps.

- Kite bombing doesn’t either depending on how you play it.

ZilentNight.5089:

Find a Mesmer for hire, pay for portal and get your achievement…or learn to jump.

This!

marnick.4305:

Not all kites are in jumping puzzles.
- Colossal kite

I guess this one is hard too for ‘casual players’ like him..

Farzo.8410:

If you have no dedication, if you aren’t willing to go through it, if you can’t handle it, you are not worthy of the achievement.

Why do I have to do it this month? I did Obsidian Sanctum just yesterday. Why is it somehow a new achievement today?

JERRY JERRY JERRY JERRY!

SpyderArachnid.5619:

RedStar.4218:

Bloody Knight Jack.2546:

Nope the point your missing is they clearly put that JP would be optional however if most of the living story is going to add them then that means the whole thing is nothing more then optional. So I salute anet for wasting time and money of paying players.

I think we don’t have the same definition of “optional”. You can get the 16 achievements required for the chest without doing the kites in the JP or finding the 40 crystals.
So those 3 kites tied to JP ? Fully optional. Except for achievement points.

There is 18 achievements total. 5 of those achievements do not require you to traverse a jumping puzzle. Meaning you still have to do 11 achievements that require you to traverse a jumping puzzle in order to get the meta done.

1. Strangers From the Sky
2. Voyage to the Bazaar
3. Diverse Trader
4. Ascend to Zephyr Sanctum (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPCs)
5. Kookoochoo the Incredulous (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
6. Lessons from the Sky (requires jumping puzzle)
7. Best Dive Ever (requires jumping puzzle)
8. Grandmaster of Om (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
9. Like Clockwork (Unsure on this one, as I haven’t seen Air on lower levels)
10. Parachute Pliferer
11. Learn to Kite (requires jumping puzzle)
12. Sanctum Sprint (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
13. Crystal Obsessed (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
14. Crowd Favorite (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
15. Pickup Completionist (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
16. Speedy Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
17. Sanctum Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
18. Frequent Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)

Uh… what?

Forgive me if I am wrong, but you get some of those achievments if you climb to the top.

I had only a little time yesterday to play the content, but I counted a total of THREE jumps you need to do to get to the top. The rest is: press #3 for an autojump (that is requried 2 times I think?). Unless you are counting everything where you go up a slope a JP I have no idea what you are talking about.

And to the people that the THREE jumps are just too much for all I can say is: well actually I can’t say anything, I’m just amazed and bumfuzzled.

The “jumping puzzle” can be finished without jumping even once…
(lol, calling that a jp, there are harder vistas/POIs – e.g. [The Vizier’s Tower])

on the way to the top is a 10x-charge for skill 3 (teleport)
—> get it, port yourself to the top (step by step)

the sanctum run can be finished without jumping once (neither skill 1 nor SPACE) – maybe you need several tries…
be slow, grab the items for the elite skill and use skill 3 to teleport…
port yourself to the next checkpoint until you reach the “end”…
walk the the last “few” steps

only place 1-3 and 1st place cannot be achieved by doing so… (except you are fast/there are not many players/they wait for you to finish)

the belching needs no jumps (as shown before)
—> 16/18 achievement without one jump!
= enough

(BTW: clock tower of the mad king was harder since you could not stop and other players were blocking your view and you had no skills (pure jumping)…)

so what are the problems you might have?
instead of doing as much as possible while getting ressurection and portals for free you started to complain…
and now you have to chose 3 out of 5 hard tasks (norn in b.b., 40 of 52 crystals, googles, 1st and/or 3rd place in the race…)

—>but that is your fault!<—

Ok, I am really bad in jp’s, but I managed to get most of the kites. I have not done the griffon one yet, I heard that JP is a pita. And also I do not do pvp so the wvw jp is probably not for me unless I join a guild.
But if I can make the jp almost anyone can do it. And it gives some satisfaction to finish one, even if during the puzzle itself I am swearing like an Irishman.

I think it is far to say that after saying that jumping puzzles are optional content, having this release require jumping so much is kind of unfair. I think having JP focused content is alright but only if it allows others who dont like said content to still participate in another way.

In this regard its fair to argue that the Sanctum Sprint, all the Kite hunting acheives (except the one in Beggar’s Burrow that requires no jumping), Best. Dive. Ever. and the Lessons of the sky acheivement are JP required and therefore not really sticking with their early comments on trying to avoid making JPing required.

However Id also argue with the people saying that getting to the sanctum requires going through a JP are going a bit too far. Its three jumps that afterward once you get the WP at the top you never have to do again. Thats hardly a JP. Its a small short obsticle that once crossed allows you to do all the other acheivements except the JP ones without any jumping.

Having the meta require 8 and maybe having another acheivement as a ‘completionist’ achivement for those who what to go further would have been better. The resource node is a tough reward to ignore particularly since it may soon be the only source of Quartz.

Secret Areas, JPs and mini-dungeons.

Seriously, who else thinks they are by far the BEST feature of the game?

To get the Meta-Achievement, without doing Jumping Puzzles, you can get:

Strangers from the Sky
Voyage to the Bazaar
Diverse Trader
Ascend to Zephyr Sanctum
Kookoo the Incredulous
Grandmasters of Om
Like Clockwork
Parachute Pilferer
Kites of the Night (easily accessible in the event)
Poor Man’s Kite (not a single spacebar press needed)
Colossal Kite (same as the night kite)
7 Sanctum Sprint minigame achievements

More than enough to get the meta without going into Jumping Puzzles.

Personally, I don’t really like minigames at all so I avoid them, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be used for achievements.

Ahem…yes, you are correct in that jumping puzzles should be optional, and they are. I must also point out one fact you forgot…those kite achievements you’re ranting about having to get are also OPTIONAL.

I did not read all the posts, I apologize. However, JP are optional content but so are achievement points. While the rewards are nice to have it isn’t necessary. If you don’t want to do some of the content (JP) in the game then you shouldn’t be rewarded for other parts of it. You don’t need to get the kites at the end just like you don’t need to do the JP.

I will quit the game if they remove jumping from it! GRRRR

People who are saying “Achievements are also optional, lol” are missing the point. Yes, they are indeed optional, and they should be treated as such…

…unless they are required to be able to farm a rare recource (and don’t give me that you can get 100s each day from literally everywhere, in less than a month you’ll only be able to have 3 swings of Quartz a day and that’s it – and you need the meta achievement or you’ll have to pray that the gods of the market favour you). When you link those 2 then you also need to make sure you can get those achievements by (at least for the most part) playing the mode of game that corresponds to farming recources, ie pve, dungeons etc. Not JPs of all things!. And no, you can’t get the meta achievement without jumping puzzles – unless you don’t consider winning Sanctum sprint, or getting 40 crystals, googles etc jumping puzzles.

PS. To the person that said that GW2 is an “Action MMO”… are you serious?

PMilkos.9103:

PS. To the person that said that GW2 is an “Action MMO”… are you serious?

I’d say they very much are and I agree to the extent that there are MMOs that require only targeting and button mashing to complete. If you want to get uber-picky about the term “action”, you can argue the semantics of the word all day.

Ok, here’s what actual action combat is in an RPG:

Dark Souls is an action RPG. Raiderz is an Action MMORPG. Vindictus is an action Dungeon Crawler.

GW2 is your standard tab-targeting MMORPG, except with an emphasis on targeted AoEs and a dodge move that gives you a quick burst of speed and limited invinsibility.

And that’s awesome – not every game has to have action combat, in fact I like traditional combat system better than a full-out action one – but it’s not action combat. But yeah, that’s semantics – the actual thing that matters is, GW2 was not properly designed for precise movement and/or platforming, and as a result JPs are always severely clunky.

Some comments on it. Yes, it does require jumping puzzles to complete the meta achievement but IMHO it’s not that bad. For example:

Kites of the Night: The parachute is in the second room, basically starting from scratch you need to do an escort event from a nearby tabern, then get into the forsaken halls, escort inside (which doesn’t even need a fight, you keep enemies at bay with a torch you pick up), then pick up some items to open a door, and a room where you have to do one jump to get to the parachute.

Poor man’s kite… the parachute is very close to the entrance, you don’t even need to do a single jump. There are some mobs there but you could even run in, grab it, and run out.

That’s 2 of them done, then you can do strangers from the sky (see a cutscene), voyage to the bazaar (just take a ship), Ascent to Zephyr Traders (get to the top, I’d say the wind jumps might be tricky, but if you grab the lightning aspect under a nearby stair they become trivial), diverse trader (talk to some merchants near the boat you arrive on) and Kokoochoo the Incredible (just be there when he does his hourly show) and Sanctum Sprint (talk to the sanctum sprint guy) will put you with 8 achievements done.

Like Clockwork can also be done easily, it’s just harvesting quartz from the nodes all over the cliffs, and go to an achievement point in queensdale in 8 different days, parachute pilferer you can do it just by exploring around, so that’s 10 achievements done with barely any jumping at all.

From there you have 3 you can easily do at sanctum sprint (complete 25 races, pick up 500 crystals, and use all pickup items, which you can do at the same time).. and yes, there’s a bit of jumping on sanctum sprint, but for those three achievements it doesn’t matter whether you finish first or last so you can take your time, and most jumps there aren’t really hard in the first place.

So that leaves you only 3 APs where you might actually have to do some jumping (assuming you don’t get lucky at least once on sanctum sprint and finish top 3, in which case only 2 will be left), out of which one is in fractals so you might do it if you do fractals in the first place, another is from the drinking minigame if you prefer that to jumping puzzles… and IMHO, some things, like getting to the googles, are rather easy to do.

That said, I undestand some people will have problem because of latency that they can’t do anything about, and while it is very unfortunate, it’s the inavoidable nature of online games, you’re subject to how good your connection is… and that comes from someone that used to play WoW regularly on the euro servers from the americas (Venezuela) with a less than optimal connection so the minimun latency I had was 400 ms, with 1000+ not that rare in the first place.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

RedStar.4218:

Bloody Knight Jack.2546:

Nope the point your missing is they clearly put that JP would be optional however if most of the living story is going to add them then that means the whole thing is nothing more then optional. So I salute anet for wasting time and money of paying players.

I think we don’t have the same definition of “optional”. You can get the 16 achievements required for the chest without doing the kites in the JP or finding the 40 crystals.
So those 3 kites tied to JP ? Fully optional. Except for achievement points.

There is 18 achievements total. 5 of those achievements do not require you to traverse a jumping puzzle. Meaning you still have to do 11 achievements that require you to traverse a jumping puzzle in order to get the meta done.

1. Strangers From the Sky
2. Voyage to the Bazaar
3. Diverse Trader
4. Ascend to Zephyr Sanctum (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPCs)
5. Kookoochoo the Incredulous (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
6. Lessons from the Sky (requires jumping puzzle)
7. Best Dive Ever (requires jumping puzzle)
8. Grandmaster of Om (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
9. Like Clockwork (Unsure on this one, as I haven’t seen Air on lower levels)
10. Parachute Pliferer
11. Learn to Kite (requires jumping puzzle)
12. Sanctum Sprint (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
13. Crystal Obsessed (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
14. Crowd Favorite (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
15. Pickup Completionist (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
16. Speedy Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
17. Sanctum Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)
18. Frequent Sprinter (requires jumping puzzle to get to the NPC)

This is probably the most ridiculous thing I have read this month. Just because you have to tap your spacebar or use one of the new skills several times does not make it a jumping puzzle. Only 6, 7, and 11 would be considered to be based around jumping puzzles.

Jaga.2084:

Why do I have to do stuff I don’t want to do for the personal quartz node? I don’t like the minigames and JPs are just annoying. It’s tedious and boring!

Why should you have to do stuff you don’t want to do at all! Ever! I mean seriously, I’m with you, buddy! I want to be able to get all of the same stuff as everyone else is getting, but be able to do it the way I want to. If I don’t like JPs, I shouldn’t have to do them in order to get a certain reward. If I don’t like minigames or events, I shouldn’t have to do them to get a certain reward. If I don’t like killing monsters or crafting, I shouldn’t have to do them to get a certain reward. I really should be able to do literally anything that I want to do and still get the same things everyone else is getting. I mean, after all, the devs should know the stuff I personally do and don’t want to do and then create content around that, which of course would match up to everyone else’s, because what I want to do is always going to be the same thing that everyone else wants to do.

Also, is there any way I can link my WoW/other MMO account(s) so that when I play WoW/other MMO I can still get Living Story achievements in GW2?

I mean, I want the achievements and all, but I don’t want to have to do the things that the dictator Anet is telling me I have to do. I’m so angry!!!

…..I’m going to guess the above is sarcasm laced, but if you were serious with that, it proves why sarcasm is a bad idea on a forum….or maybe that’s reversed….(or maybe I’m just being sarcastic….see what I did there?).

Being old and coming from 2D isometric games (diablo and such)… 3D games and crappy way to control them (keyboard, camera placement, visual obstacles, etc) can be very annoying.
I find 3D nice looking but a pain to use… so I am sure you will guess what I think about the jumping idea or the battles in ridiculously tiny rooms where you have to constantly change perspective.
The main reason I gave up on the nice looking big characters like chars and norns: I do not see anything! And oops, I was 1 pixel out of the plateform due to the big sprite!
I already pass on PvP and WvW achievements since I do not like PvP.
Now, if I have to also pass on the living achievements…
And achivements pts = items and more now.
“sure they can be a bit frustrating though it’s not bad at all”
Frustration is not what I consider fun.
And a game is supposed to be fun…
Guess maybe I am too old for this…

^^ I think I am older than you. And while they(the JP) can be frustrating you do get better at them. At the point I can do them with my Mesmer and portal others to the end.

PMilkos.9103:

People who are saying “Achievements are also optional, lol” are missing the point. Yes, they are indeed optional, and they should be treated as such…

…unless they are required to be able to farm a rare recource (and don’t give me that you can get 100s each day from literally everywhere, in less than a month you’ll only be able to have 3 swings of Quartz a day and that’s it – and you need the meta achievement or you’ll have to pray that the gods of the market favour you). When you link those 2 then you also need to make sure you can get those achievements by (at least for the most part) playing the mode of game that corresponds to farming recources, ie pve, dungeons etc. Not JPs of all things!. And no, you can’t get the meta achievement without jumping puzzles – unless you don’t consider winning Sanctum sprint, or getting 40 crystals, googles etc jumping puzzles.

PS. To the person that said that GW2 is an “Action MMO”… are you serious?

Farming the resource is optional too. There is nothing about Bazaar of the Four Winds that is required, absolutely nothing. The game does not become unplayable to any extent should you not manage to get the home-instance quartz node prior to the end of this living story

Jump puzzles are part of the game. Very few require any sort of speed run so you can take your time. A pocket Mesmer will let you negate the hard parts. There are many ways to cheat, skip, ans bypass jump puzzles. So if you do not want to actually do them ask for a little help and you will likely get it.