Guild Wars 2

I stopped playing about 6 months ago (yes, largely due to the ascended gear grind), but have been checking in from time to time in the hope that there would be some changes to the game that would entice me back. About 3 months ago, there was an encouraging CDI thread about Vertical progression. Now that all that time has passed, has anyone noticed any substantive in game changes that have been or can be attributed to it?

Yes.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes.

like what?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes.

List three. Refresh my memory.

Yes, there is more grind now.

I believe it is too early to expect to see results from the horizontal/vertical progression CDI
Especially since those types of things affect several in game systems

off the top of my head
this is from the LS/LW CDI:

more player acknowledgement in LS
non zerg based LS content
more lore/story delivered in game
more serious content

Morrigan.2809:

more player acknowledgement in LS

I’ll give you this, there were a whole 10 lines where NPC directly spoke @ the PC but

Morrigan.2809:

non zerg based LS content
more lore/story delivered in game
more serious content

is a joke.

If there were any changes for the better, that resulted from CDI, i don’t really see them. It is possible, that some require so much work that they are not realized yet, of course, but at the moment it’s hard to tell if the CDI’s effects are real, or is it just a publicity stunt. Especially since it would not be the first time that words didn’t get translated into actions.

SephiSlash.6780:

Morrigan.2809:

non zerg based LS content
more lore/story delivered in game
more serious content

is a joke.

Marionette, current objective in LA as case in point

Scarlet’s Lair, LA beach instance, Deadend Bar, the refugee camps

LA is a warzone and the surrounding lands are dealing with the fall out- you have NPC’s talking of mass graves and dead children.
You have droves of dying Lion Guard
the city itself is a hell hole atm

seems pretty serious to me

Not saying that these things were not planned months ago-
I do however think that the writers learning to script and the ambient dialogue, story instances were a result of the CDI

Morrigan.2809:

SephiSlash.6780:

Morrigan.2809:

non zerg based LS content
more lore/story delivered in game
more serious content

is a joke.

Marionette, current objective in LA as case in point

Scarlet’s Lair, LA beach instance, Deadend Bar, the refugee camps

LA is a warzone and the surrounding lands are dealing with the fall out- you have NPC’s talking of mass graves and dead children.
You have droves of dying Lion Guard
the city itself is a hell hole atm

seems pretty serious to me

Not saying that these things were not planned months ago-
I do however think that the writers learning to script and the ambient dialogue, story instances were a result of the CDI

Ignoring the fact that Marionette and LA are zergs in which you follow around a commander for phat lewt, it’s clear that we have different expectations.
Story instances where I’m forced to listen to NPC’s I don’t care about talk is not what I’d consider content.

Molten/Atherblade dungeon on the otherhand were decently challenging content.

NPC’s standing around talking means nothing, nameless NPC’s dying means nothing. Who cares if Nameless Vigil soldier A remarks to Nameless Vigil soldier B about how many people are being killed. If the people actually got massacred in front of the PC I would probably take it more seriously.

SephiSlash.6780:

Ignoring the fact that Marionette and LA are zergs in which you follow around a commander for phat lewt, it’s clear that we have different expectations.

Oh you had to follow a commander in the marionette fight? Guess I never played the original version of this encounter

Not sure what you mean with the LA zerg because that’s clearly not the way to get the “phat lewt” in this case.

kokiman.2364:

SephiSlash.6780:

Ignoring the fact that Marionette and LA are zergs in which you follow around a commander for phat lewt, it’s clear that we have different expectations.

Oh you had to follow a commander in the marionette fight? Guess I never played the original version of this encounter

Not sure what you mean with the LA zerg because that’s clearly not the way to get the “phat lewt” in this case.

Follow the commanders to the lanes, teleport in, clear your wardens, get out. Into the next lane when the anti teleport buff is out.

The odds of getting anything decent from the 1200 chest is miniscule. Meanwhile pushing 1 at the events and collecting bags filled with silk and linen is a guaranteed profit.

SephiSlash.6780:

Follow the commanders to the lanes, teleport in, clear your wardens, get out. Into the next lane when the anti teleport buff is out.

Yup, we played 2 completely different encounters because my version didn’t rely on commanders.

SephiSlash.6780:

The odds of getting anything decent from the 1200 chest is miniscule. Meanwhile pushing 1 at the events and collecting bags filled with silk and linen is a guaranteed profit.

I don’t consider silk and linen to be “phat lewt”

I’ve only just started playing again recently:

Marrionette was not a zerg, had to use map communication to split the passages and describe strategy for the non-enlightened. I only had that event succeed about 5 out of the 20 or so times I tried it – Zerging would definitely not work.

The Wurms – All people did on my realm was Zerg, and we never completed the event to my knowledge. Heck I gave up after 10+ tries because it just seemed impossible with a random mishmash of people, half of which had no idea what to do.

Escape from LA – This was thought to be a zerg initially (first few days) until the word slowly started to spread you need to rescue 1500 citizens, not just train events. Now that it’s been nerfed to 1200 and people are knowledgable about “rescue 1200 = reward” there is little to no zergs involved. It’s actually really fun just doing a search and rescue on your own and teaming up with small groups of 2-3 people you find to take down bronze/silver enemies to allow citizens safe passage.

Every world boss I’ve played has just been a massive, uncoordinated mass of players swarming and rez spamming though. Not impressed at all with world boss content.

kokiman.2364:

SephiSlash.6780:

Follow the commanders to the lanes, teleport in, clear your wardens, get out. Into the next lane when the anti teleport buff is out.

Yup, we played 2 completely different encounters because my version didn’t rely on commanders.

SephiSlash.6780:

The odds of getting anything decent from the 1200 chest is miniscule. Meanwhile pushing 1 at the events and collecting bags filled with silk and linen is a guaranteed profit.

I don’t consider silk and linen to be “phat lewt”

I hope you consider 1 to be greater than 0. Lots of guaranteed loot vs a chance at a chance of rare loot. I know which one I’ll pick if I have to rely on other players. That said this whole discussion is offtopic.

Only one person listed 3 things which were purely subjective(and one objective thing, thank you Morrigan). Hopefully someone can list two objective changes that were implemented from a CDI.

SephiSlash.6780:

Ignoring the fact that Marionette and LA are zergs in which you follow around a commander for phat lewt, it’s clear that we have different expectations.
Story instances where I’m forced to listen to NPC’s I don’t care about talk is not what I’d consider content.

Molten/Atherblade dungeon on the otherhand were decently challenging content.

NPC’s standing around talking means nothing, nameless NPC’s dying means nothing. Who cares if Nameless Vigil soldier A remarks to Nameless Vigil soldier B about how many people are being killed. If the people actually got massacred in front of the PC I would probably take it more seriously.

You have to make a distinction between how content is designed to be played and how people actually end up playing it.

Marionette really gave you no choice, sure you could zerg in the lanes but the lanes themselves were essentially inconsequential. the actual marionette fight was all about the champions encounters you faced after teleporting in. You simply couldnt zerg those even if you wanted to. It is important to note those fights are the core of the marionette encounter. Dealing with those champions on a timely manner was the meat of that content. The corridors were merely waiting rooms with mobs to kill rather then magazines to read.

LA on the hand much like invasions is content designed to fail if people zerg. Miasma events scale to unbeatable levels after certain group sizes. The main aim of the event is also to save villagers and it will be nearly impossible to achieve that if people dont spread out. That people rather zerg then win is not something Arenanet can really do about. As long as the game doesnt introduce mob tagging (and lets hope really really hard it never comes to that) people will continue to zerg cause in their mind large numbers means easier I guess even though the little pop up says event failed. In anycase content is definitely designed in an anti-zerg way its just unsuccessful at that because really no matter how many times people say to hate the zerg if there is just any way in which they can zerg they will no matter how much Arenanet may try to make the alternative seem better.

Well you may not care about about NPC dialog, you may not care about which NPC lives or dies and thats fine but plenty of other people cared to the point of critizising Arenanet for putting such lore outside of the game in their short stories and how these should really be presented ingame. Like Morrigan pointed out this is an example of how feedback to Arenanet resulted into a change. I am sorry its a change thats not meaningful to you, ofcourse no change can ever be meaningful to everyone but it is meaningful to players who appreciate lore in their game.

SephiSlash.6780:

kokiman.2364:

SephiSlash.6780:

Follow the commanders to the lanes, teleport in, clear your wardens, get out. Into the next lane when the anti teleport buff is out.

Yup, we played 2 completely different encounters because my version didn’t rely on commanders.

SephiSlash.6780:

The odds of getting anything decent from the 1200 chest is miniscule. Meanwhile pushing 1 at the events and collecting bags filled with silk and linen is a guaranteed profit.

I don’t consider silk and linen to be “phat lewt”

I hope you consider 1 to be greater than 0. Lots of guaranteed loot vs a chance at a chance of rare loot. I know which one I’ll pick if I have to rely on other players. That said this whole discussion is offtopic.

Only one person listed 3 things which were purely subjective(and one objective thing, thank you Morrigan). Hopefully someone can list two objective changes that were implemented from a CDI.

Also keep in mind the CDI initiative hasnt been around long enough to effect the level of change you want to see. Never mind that most of the even events closing of this season of LW have been planed for god knows how long but every release takes 4 months to develop and the CDI hasnt even been going on for that long. Thats not counting in filtering the feedback and discussions necessary to choose direction (since some CDI feedback was contradictory as well)

In anycase things have been changing based on feedback from day 1 not just since the CDI started. Want 3 examples ? how about

Crafting using materials right from the bank on the 1st month of release as well as making dungeons tokens account bound, then also enabling recipe discovery from mats in the bank a month after that. They changed a lot of things based on player feedback month after month.

Considering their normal development time for releases is 4 months I wouldn’t expect to see any big changes until at least next month (so for the LS stuff not until the next storyline begins).

Smaller changes might be possible to work in later on in the release (and therefore add to the game sooner), but when it’s only a month or two out they’ve probably got most of the content worked out and passed over to the QA team for bug testing, at which point it’s difficult to make any big changes.

The way the Spinal Blades are implemented is an example of progression taken from the CDI.

SephiSlash.6780:

Morrigan.2809:

SephiSlash.6780:

Morrigan.2809:

non zerg based LS content
more lore/story delivered in game
more serious content

is a joke.

Marionette, current objective in LA as case in point

Scarlet’s Lair, LA beach instance, Deadend Bar, the refugee camps

LA is a warzone and the surrounding lands are dealing with the fall out- you have NPC’s talking of mass graves and dead children.
You have droves of dying Lion Guard
the city itself is a hell hole atm

seems pretty serious to me

Not saying that these things were not planned months ago-
I do however think that the writers learning to script and the ambient dialogue, story instances were a result of the CDI

Ignoring the fact that Marionette and LA are zergs in which you follow around a commander for phat lewt, it’s clear that we have different expectations.
Story instances where I’m forced to listen to NPC’s I don’t care about talk is not what I’d consider content.

Molten/Atherblade dungeon on the otherhand were decently challenging content.

NPC’s standing around talking means nothing, nameless NPC’s dying means nothing. Who cares if Nameless Vigil soldier A remarks to Nameless Vigil soldier B about how many people are being killed. If the people actually got massacred in front of the PC I would probably take it more seriously.

Yeah since I just recently returned to the game about a month ago, I have no interest whatsoever in these characters or the story. Now, if I were still able to go back and play through the earlier LS content, then it might be a different story. But Anet’s current zergfest LS events kind of make being able to go back and play through these things impossible. So for right now, I basically just skip through all the dialogue so I can get the achievement.

The changes so far have been minimal. The CDI is still ramping up. The first few discussions were very large, and they boiled down to a few good concepts that players wanted implemented. I don’t think we will see those changes until the start of season 2 of the LS.

We really need to see those changes in season 2, and they should be pointed out when they occur. The concept is good, but the execution is still up for debate.

Nat.4029:

Yeah since I just recently returned to the game about a month ago, I have no interest whatsoever in these characters or the story. Now, if I were still able to go back and play through the earlier LS content, then it might be a different story. But Anet’s current zergfest LS events kind of make being able to go back and play through these things impossible. So for right now, I basically just skip through all the dialogue so I can get the achievement.

It wouldnt make a difference because the bulk of the story wasnt even in the game in the past releases you’re speaking about. The bulk of the lore was delivered through short stories they released with each update. Basically if you want to learn the backstory to the character dialog its available right now in the same format it was available back then, playing the actual content related to that story will not give you much in terms of character development.

Galen Grey.4709:

Nat.4029:

Yeah since I just recently returned to the game about a month ago, I have no interest whatsoever in these characters or the story. Now, if I were still able to go back and play through the earlier LS content, then it might be a different story. But Anet’s current zergfest LS events kind of make being able to go back and play through these things impossible. So for right now, I basically just skip through all the dialogue so I can get the achievement.

It wouldnt make a difference because the bulk of the story wasnt even in the game in the past releases you’re speaking about. The bulk of the lore was delivered through short stories they released with each update. Basically if you want to learn the backstory to the character dialog its available right now in the same format it was available back then, playing the actual content related to that story will not give you much in terms of character development.

or he could have done the 10 minute instance in the Deadend bar that was specifically put in the game to give a recap of the LS so far.

he might not have known all the back story but it would have been much more productive than just skipping dialog and saying meh

http://atlas.guildwars2.com/en/#/map
Has the entire backstory.

If this game is going somewhere, it is good in hiding it.

Unless its target destination is south.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

If this game is going somewhere, it is good in hiding it.

Unless its target destination is south.

I think it would be fairer to state its going to many places at once but I am puzzled how anyone can feel the game isnt going anywhere. We got a ton of content since release and it was really varied, from mini games to jumping puzzles to dungeons, to mini dungeons to instances to dynamic events to even a game within the game (SAB).

Story wise I personally feel the Living world was great successful experiment. Now I know here I am definitely in the minority but personally I think Arenanet did a great job with the Living story. Characters have a ton of depth and are extremely varied. Not just that but they even didnt shy or get scared to touch subjects that are generally considered risky to dwell into like same sex relationships, inter-species relationships or even a child with a debilitating degenerative disease. I am also one of the few people who actually thinks scarlet is a great character. I love that her story is not the classic simple power grab. I also like how much the story makes people speculate, we’re literally 1 release away from the end and we still have no certainty of what Scarlet is trying to achieve and if she’s being manipulated and by whom. In fact I cant imagine how they’re going to manage to wrap it all up in one release really so much width the story has.

inclosing yep dont think asking the question if the game is going anywhere is needed, the game is definitely going somewhere and personally I also think its definitely not south.

Thanks for the information all! I think it is time for me to stop checking in and move on.

Again, I wish all of you that are still playing Good Game!