Guild Wars 2

Liking the gliding in Archage and Blade & Soul very much, I was looking forward to the gliding in GW2 very much.

After the Beta Weekend my enthusiasm was quite dampened by:
- learning gliding by doing unrelated events and killing the local fauna
- having a set of sail-ish extensions popping out of my back from nowhere
- falling into the dark abyss because of my glider just folding/dissapearing (did not notice the bar).

What would brighten my mood:
- Quest to get/make a glider: There is enough debris to salvage and enough pact ship engineers stranded. Why not do a questline around “We are stranded here and have no means to get around if we don’t have any means to get airborne. Let’s salvage the wracks and see what we can come up with.” which leads to strapping some wings to your back. (mechanical jetpacks like Scarlet’s bladed jetpack from Charrtech to force field wings from Asuratech)
- Make the glider a backpack for mechanical gliders. Wood and fabric just popping out of nowhere feels wrong to me. Or do magical wings.
- I can understand the reasoning for the exhaustion bar while gliding, but I find it to be seriously unfun (and illogical if a wood-and-fabric-glider folds in mid-air because it’s
“energy” runs out…)

Oh, and the jetpacks we used to fly up to the giant drill in Lion’s Arch: Make them fly in HoT

….please….

Aug. 11 – Things from the Thread:
- The endurance bar disappears when landing, leaving one to guess when it is fully recharged. My suggestion is to leave it on until fully recharged, then let it disppear.

dazydee.1509:

- I can understand the reasoning for the exhaustion bar while gliding, but I find it to be seriously unfun (and illogical if a wood-and-fabric-glider folds in mid-air because it’s
“energy” runs out…)

Level up the mastery.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Advanced_Gliding

Yes it is just phase of unfun gliding until mastered.

How about having a fast rate of descend when learning it, which is changed to a slow rate of descend when learning advanced gliding. (So instead of time capping gliding you actually are getting better at it?)

I had fun the moment I unlocked it.

I found it fun and even more so with being able to control the glide speed. It’ll get better when there more updraft a (they instantly replenish endurance) and passive gliding doesn’t use up endurance. Depending on the locations of updrafts, you could potentially stay in the air indefinitely.

I’m also pretty sure there will be an adventure centered around that as well. Perhaps an obstacle course or something where you’d have to go through checkpoints to progress.

The only downside I can see with gliding is that I’ll likely be accidentally falling to my death when playing in the rest of Tyria as I would have gotten used to being able to glide.

It’s one of many mastery lines, which means they aren’t going to make it start off differently than any other mastery, which is select it then do stuff in the relevant area of the world.

You were used to the flying mechanics in another game. This game has progressive mastery of gliding. The longer you train it, the better it gets. For all anyone, including the OP knows, once the mastery lines are fully trained it will be far better than the other game’s.

The other game isn’t using it so much as a character progression so they can “afford” to give you an advanced version at the beginning.

OK, you convinced me on that point.

It is lackluster at start on purpose, but with advanced gliding, updraft and what not it will get better than what other games have to offer (and the proper environment to use it in!).

And I am convinced that with time there will be ample glider skins of which some will surely suit me (give me animated ethereal wings or make the purely cosmetic wings from the cash shop functional )

Keeping my fingers crossed for some gliding quests….

dazydee.1509:

Oh, and the jetpacks we used to fly up to the giant drill in Lion’s Arch: Make them fly in HoT

I thought we just took a portal up to the Breachmaker.

I would very much like to be able to deploy my glider before I jump. There’s been a few times I’ve missed a simple high-to-low glide because lag has delayed the opening of my glider. Although the problem is almost certainly with either my connection or machine, allowing us to deploy the glider before falling would largely remove the issue.

binidj.5734:

I would very much like to be able to deploy my glider before I jump. There’s been a few times I’ve missed a simple high-to-low glide because lag has delayed the opening of my glider. Although the problem is almost certainly with either my connection or machine, allowing us to deploy the glider before falling would largely remove the issue.

hold the spacebar when you jump and it comes out at the peak of your jump

Rylen.2147:

binidj.5734:

I would very much like to be able to deploy my glider before I jump. There’s been a few times I’ve missed a simple high-to-low glide because lag has delayed the opening of my glider. Although the problem is almost certainly with either my connection or machine, allowing us to deploy the glider before falling would largely remove the issue.

hold the spacebar when you jump and it comes out at the peak of your jump

If if there is lag, then it will come out just as you go SPLAT!

Tyloric.7520:

I had fun the moment I unlocked it.

Agreed! I love the gliding. Though a few times I died because I jumped right after I landed and my glider wasn’t fully ready to be used again. I wish there was some indication xD

dazydee.1509:

- Quest to get/make a glider: There is enough debris to salvage and enough pact ship engineers stranded. Why not do a questline around “We are stranded here and have no means to get around if we don’t have any means to get airborne. Let’s salvage the wracks and see what we can come up with.”…

I fully agree. I know this was just a beta, and we can’t expect everything to be in its finished state, but on release I would very much like a real quest to earn a glider. It’ll make acquiring a glider so much more interesting than ‘suddenly, wings.’

The biggest issue I had with glider is that the bar doesn’t immediately refresh when you land and there is no indicator at to when it is filled again.

Suggest a UI change to have a secondary (smaller) bar on the inner endurance bar circle or something. At least in the meantime, maybe an in-game character message that it is refreshed would help.

I love the gliding and I feel it’s so fun, The points your mentioned are not a problem for me. Some of them can just be solved by level up mastery.

Rylen.2147:

binidj.5734:

I would very much like to be able to deploy my glider before I jump. There’s been a few times I’ve missed a simple high-to-low glide because lag has delayed the opening of my glider. Although the problem is almost certainly with either my connection or machine, allowing us to deploy the glider before falling would largely remove the issue.

hold the spacebar when you jump and it comes out at the peak of your jump

That’s really helpful, thanks … I look forward to testing that next beta.

Only thing here I agree with is. The endurance bar for the glider needs to stay when I land to know when I can use it again.
Problem is though, what if I land and go into combat straight away?
Easy fix, make it dissapear or only be slightly visible.

Personal feeling about the glider.
I like how it feels. Easy to use even before you get tire 2, and for there on, it gets better, and you are able to do more stuff, like lean back to almost stop in the air and slowly fall down, and lean forward to get more spead at the cost of endurance. Can’t wait to unlock the rest of it and find places where the later Gliding tires matter more. Because right now we have one updraft and one place its required to get a Mastery Point.

Also, the Mastery Point on the rock, really close to where the story instance takes place, you can “exploit” it and get it without haveing tire 3 Glider. Just get the right angle and spam “f”.
It needs to be raised, or the area below the Mastery Point needs to be lowered.

Thats all for me about Glider! Love it!

EDIT!: Btw. The lean forward. I would like it to if I am already pressing w (Forward) to instantly do the lean forward thing, I don’t like to have to release w and then press it again, to get the lean forward effect.

I found gliding itself really fun. Only thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that it could only be used in Heart of Thorns areas. Kind of a waste to implement such a great feature, and only have it available to use in certain maps.

Other games have it so that certain features, once unlocked, can be used anywhere – like flying or whatever. So in that regard, that’s the only thing that I found really disappointing. I want to glide from the heights of Malchors Leap!

I am pretty sure, there will be more maps in the future that support gliding.

I don’t know if it was a glitch but I used it in the Silverwastes during the part where you are defending.

It’s to bad a map has to be ‘built’ for gliding as I am sure people would love to glide all over Tyria. I am also sure sooner or later I will fall to my death expecting a glider to pop out once I have played a lot of HoT. Maybe they could just add a mini parachute or something for the rest of Tyria that would let you land safely. Sure would make some jumping puzzles less annoying.

I had the same thought that wasn’t much connection between getting mastery experience and what you are doing.

I thought that there should be a little paragraph of text that you could see if you moused over the mastery you were working on. It could be a little story that immerses you in the zone.

Such as:

Your first night in Verdant Brink you discover a crumpled device in the wreckage. It appears to be a glider of some sort. Its frame is bent, the leather is torn and the harness broken at the straps. At first it seems too damaged to be used but on second glance you see that it might be repaired. Around the jungle you begin to find pieces of other gliding devices even more damaged than the first but you realise you can salvage them for the spare pieces you need for repairs. Each morning in the quiet hours after the Mordrem have ceased their attacks you work on your glider. It should be useful, you think, in this place of high perches and deep hollows. Soon it will be ready!

On the second bar you can mouse over and find the next chapter in the story. Something like: You have been flying your glider now for days…. etc etc.

I think something like this could really immerse the player in the mastery process and at the same time is super cheap to add to the game. It’s just text after all. But text can be pretty powerful all the same.

I really enjoyed gliding, but as others have mentioned, I want a flight-time indicator.

When I landed, the flight-time indicator vanished and I didn’t know if it was safe to glide again right away. Turns out you can glide again right away, but your flight-time won’t be recharged and you can fall to your death right away.

Kumion.7580:

I really enjoyed gliding, but as others have mentioned, I want a flight-time indicator.

When I landed, the flight-time indicator vanished and I didn’t know if it was safe to glide again right away. Turns out you can glide again right away, but your flight-time won’t be recharged and you can fall to your death right away.

After awhile you’ll figure it out yourself by practice and failing loool

it recharges really quick though imo

Kumion.7580:

I really enjoyed gliding, but as others have mentioned, I want a flight-time indicator.

When I landed, the flight-time indicator vanished and I didn’t know if it was safe to glide again right away. Turns out you can glide again right away, but your flight-time won’t be recharged and you can fall to your death right away.

Personally I see no real need for it. Advancing your Mastery track takes care of this consideration and it’s one of the perks for advancing it, that endurance is no longer something you need to consider to stay in the air. People should remember that these are ways to progress your character and that as your character gets stronger, these minor things fall away.

Advanced Gliding
5 Mastery points
Learn to glide with such efficiency that you no longer use endurance to stay up in the air, only to perform lean techniques.

The biggest issue I had with glider is that the bar doesn’t immediately refresh when you land and there is no indicator at to when it is filled again.

I agree it would be nice to have a small “always on” glide time indicator in the corner, so you’ll know when it’s charged, but I got pretty decent at guessing when I was trying to make endurance flights.

As for an “unlock quest,” I wouldn’t mind that at all, and ideally it would be something you do before even entering the HoT map. The map is just painful if you haven’t earned the wings yet, so make it so that tier 1 gliding comes automatically at the end of a mission in the Silverwastes, like Taimi helps you make it or something.

That said, if they weren’t already planning this, I doubt they’d waste time implementing it. Story missions take a lot of time, voice acting, etc. that they are likely going to spend on core content instead.

No, it should not be always on, there is enough clutter on the screen already.

Rather it should stay there until fully recharged and then disappear.

Even though I am fine too with it disappearing when landing, that doens’t mean it could and should not be improved on.

No, it should not be always on, there is enough clutter on the screen already.

Rather it should stay there until fully recharged and then disappear.

Well, agreed on that, although even then, I don’t think it should be taking up the current real-estate, it should shrink to just be a smaller bar, or they could even just have an icon someplace that is darkened when the bar is very low, and brightens when it’s full, or ideally would brighten a little somehow when half-full and then more bright when completely full, just a general sense of where it stands, rather than needing to display a full bar.

Manifibel.8420:

Also, the Mastery Point on the rock, really close to where the story instance takes place, you can “exploit” it and get it without haveing tire 3 Glider. Just get the right angle and spam “f”.
It needs to be raised, or the area below the Mastery Point needs to be lowered.

But that is not a big problem, because a friendly mesmer can people port there up that do not have rank 3 in gliding.

Manifibel.8420:

Btw. The lean forward. I would like it to if I am already pressing w (Forward) to instantly do the lean forward thing, I don’t like to have to release w and then press it again, to get the lean forward effect.

Yes, I absolutely agree.

I really like the gliding so far, but I did get caught a couple of times by the endurance bar dissapearing.
I think just keeping the endurance bar visible while it’s less than full would be a simple fix. If they maybe made it smaller and closer to the skill bar it wouldn’t really be in the way for combat, and it would fill up and dissapear pretty quickly in combat anyway.

Something else I’d like to see with gliding is have it affected by speed boost skills/traits. At the moment it seems to go at a standard running speed all the time, which means if I’m rushing to get somewhere and pop a speed skill then use my glider it makes the speed skill useless while in the air.
And it wouldn’t affect the range of the glider, since the speed multiplier should also be applied to downward speed and endurance cost. So you still take the same flight line and go the same distance as someone without a speed boost, you’d just get there a bit quicker.

Tregarde.6031:

dazydee.1509:

- Quest to get/make a glider: There is enough debris to salvage and enough pact ship engineers stranded. Why not do a questline around “We are stranded here and have no means to get around if we don’t have any means to get airborne. Let’s salvage the wracks and see what we can come up with.”…

I fully agree. I know this was just a beta, and we can’t expect everything to be in its finished state, but on release I would very much like a real quest to earn a glider. It’ll make acquiring a glider so much more interesting than ‘suddenly, wings.’

I think this is one of those “fun once” things. A quest to get the glider would be fun on the first character through, cause a few grumbles on the next couple of characters and make me want to rip my eyes out on the subsequent ones. Unless the quest is once per account instead of once per character I like “suddenly wings” just fine!

Now, earning glider skins, that’s a whole other thing, and I would love to be able to acquire different skins for different characters.

Weird that you mention Archeage, and then complain about the bar, when in archeage the timer on gliders is a small buff icon, that can go easily unnoticed. Sure its longer by a lot, but i can’t tell you how many times i’ve died because i was gliding too high to land safely (higher cool-down between glides) when the timer went down.
Also you should remember that gliding is pretty much a main mechanic on archeage, while on GW2 its only a novelty to traverse the jungle.

I would, however, prefer that masteries were more like what was hinted initially, where we’d earn them by doing related activities, instead of the current system.
But then again, that would be too conducive to grind, and this system is more casual friendly.
About the back item, we already know there will be skins, so who knows what the future will bring?