Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty sure that whoever is responsible for this kind of thing isn’t bothered with preserving the veracity of the sources they pull from. Otherwise ‘Jormag’ and ‘Jotun’ would be pronounced ‘yormag’ and ‘yotun’, seing as how the Nordic and Icelandic influences on Norn culture and that whole part of Tyria are so apparent (Jotun is just the anglicized form the of name of the Frost Giants from Norse myth). I should say, it bugs me every time I hear someone pronounce a hard ‘J’ in one of those words though, so I sympathise with your frustration. It just doesn’t seem like the people doing that stuff are interested in preserving that level of detail (also, if it is an anagram, I guess you let grammar slide sometimes to make those things work.)

Here’s me as a Ghost, with my little Mini ghost following me about.

PopeUrban.2578:

Axel Slice.4760:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the PvP materials thing. When you say the new ones, you mean the brand new legendaries? That also strikes me as odd (the PvP seems really divorced from the rest of the game, at least to me. I’ve played some of it and enjoy it but it does feel very separate). In either case, if I could just wait it out until the market picks up and buy the paper from a scribe that would be fine. Actually, increasing demand for things made with crafting so that they are a little more profitable in general would be nice. As it stands though the paper is account bound, which means you have to craft it yourself. In fact from what I can see, most scribe items are.

Yeah, the account bound nature was pointed out to me by another poster.

They added the pvp materials, presumably, to help PvP players make a bit more money, but also to provide some clear options. Despite any reasons why it might be appropriate, Anet is pretty hardcore about not forcing people to play a sphere of the game they don’t like in most cases, but they also are trying really hard to give compelling and unique reasons for people to try and play all of those parts.

The fact these are tradable, and that you can’t actually learn or progress scribing without some hefty investment in a guild hall seems to put the paper thing in a weird place. It would be more consistant if the paper were tradable. Seems odd to let people opt out of PvP, but require them to opt in to guild halls.

Yeah, I somehow didn’t see those responses before I responded to you, my bad. I’m pretty much in agreement with you on this one. I’d prefer to be able to craft it myself, but just making the item tradeable solves the problem to a large degree. In any case I’m hoping that by talking about it here we might get some communication on the subject, at the very least what the intent was. I assume it was just ‘the legendary has a book on it, lets make them craft a book’ followed by ‘books are made of paper, lets put paper as one of the materials’ (all of which makes perfect sense) and that this barrier is an odd oversight. ANet have historically been good with listening to player feedback, so while I won’t hold my breath I’m glad people are talking about it.

Oh, and thanks for the comments about PvP materials! That’s useful to know

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the PvP materials thing. When you say the new ones, you mean the brand new legendaries? That also strikes me as odd (the PvP seems really divorced from the rest of the game, at least to me. I’ve played some of it and enjoy it but it does feel very separate). In either case, if I could just wait it out until the market picks up and buy the paper from a scribe that would be fine. Actually, increasing demand for things made with crafting so that they are a little more profitable in general would be nice. As it stands though the paper is account bound, which means you have to craft it yourself. In fact from what I can see, most scribe items are.

Palador.2170:

If you can get invited into someone’s guild hall, can you then train the skill and go from there? Yes, it’s going to be a lot of work in one shot, but if you plan ahead and make sure you have everything you’ll need, it should be doable.

Perhaps, but it’s crafting level 300 which is a lot of materials to prepare. I suppose this is more achievable once there is more info widely available about scribe but then there is a good chance that the cost of leveling scribe and crafting the paper would be more than just buying The Chosen on the Trading Post, so this isn’t exactly ideal :/

Except that none of the other precursors have that requirement. And no other part of the Legendary crafting journey requires being part of a guild. And as far as I know none of them need you to play PvP? And also at no point have Arena Net talked about Legendary crafting requiring you to be involved in every part of the game? I suppose I might be mistaken, but this one item seems very out of place as compared to all the others. I’m not asking for legendary crafting to be easy, I’m asking for it to be consistent, and not to restrict a crafting challenge based on the kind of communities a player decides to play in. That does not seem onerous to me.

When HoT was announced, the ability to craft the Legendary pre-cursors was one of the more exciting updates that was mentioned. I’d loved the idea of Legendary weapons but having to hunt for a random drop or just buy the pre-cursor felt like it wasn’t in the spirit of the rest of the journey. I have yet to get started on a Legendary, partly for this reason but was excited to go hunting for one of the pre-cursors once I got around to unlocking masteries.

As it turns out, one of the ones that was most interesting to me, The Flame-Seeker Prophecies, has it’s pre-cursor gated behind guild-hall advancement. For those who don’t know, to make the first tier of the Chosen pre-cursor you need to craft an item called ‘Anthology of Villains’. It’s a weapon-crafting recipe (because it’s for a shield) and it’s also a book, which means one of the materials it needs are a new item called ‘Sheets of Quality Paper’. You need thirteen of them. As it happens, Quality Paper can only be crafted by Scribes, and Scribe can only be unlocked or trained at an appropriately levelled up Guild Hall. Also the paper is account bound.

Now, neither I nor my friends who I play with particularly care for large guild communities, preferring to play with just the small group of us, so our guild is not planning or expecting to have access to a guild hall at all, at least for the foreseeable future. Nor do we particularly care to join a larger guild that will purely to have access to this crafting discipline, so for us and players like us the Chosen is un-craftable and we have to go back to the old methods. This is deeply frustrating, especially since none of the others seem to have this kind of restriction.

I’m all for having the pre-cursors being a challenge to craft that requires time and dedication. This is how it should be! But locking one specific one away behind the guild-hall specific crafting discipline is a huge leap away from what I’d expect, not least because while anyone can peruse most of the crafting alone, becoming a 300 scribe is a huge investment even with the support of a guild all working to upgrade the hall.

This doesn’t seem like a difficult problem to solve; Provide weaponsmiths with a way to craft the paper for themselves. Less useful, but also functional would be making the paper tradeable, so at least those who can scribe are able to provide the resource to those who can’t but need it. At this stage, even in a guild with access to scribing, most guilds will not have lots of them, and anyone wanting to get the paper will need to train the discipline themselves.

Honestly, it’s deeply disappointing to find that the one precursors that needs scribing is one I’m interested in, and it seems odd that one precursor would be so much harder and more expensive to craft than the others because of that. I’d love to see it patched so that weaponsmiths are able to make the pages for themselves and that this won’t be locked off from people who prefer to play in smaller groups and not larger guilds like myself and my group.

Hopefully this reads as useful feedback and not aimless complaining. If anyone else feels frustrated the way I do by this, please chime in! And if I’m wrong and there is another way to get the pages please let me know! It’s still early days so maybe I’m missing something.

I’m not sure if this is the correct forum for this topic, so I apologise if it should be somewhere else! So, myself and one of my brothers both got Guild Wars 2 at launch. We got 8 character slots each, which made sense as there are 8 different classes to play. Which is great, right? However, my other brother brought the game much more recently (last few months or so) and I learn today that he only has 5 character slots available. I guess this might well be old news, but I was doing some searching around and I can’t find any information about when this number was changed or, more importantly why it was changed. He got the digital deluxe edition of the game too, (this was prior to Heart of Thorns going on pre-purchase) so it seems really odd that he’d have less slots than us.

This seems kind of disingenuous to me, especially since it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned or announced anywhere, but rather the purchase of the game simply included less stuff one day. How long ago did this even happen? Was it announced and I just missed it? Was a reason given? I don’t recall reading anywhere that people who pre-purchased the original game got more so it must have changed at some point no? At this stage I’m just trying to get some more information about this, because it looks more than a little strange and anti-consumer to quietly remove features (even ones as small as individual character slots) from a product already released. Again, I know this might be old news, but I couldn’t find any information on this anywhere.

If anyone can fill me on what’s up here I’d really appreciate it.

I’m having the same issue. It updated when I did Caledon Forest and Timberline Falls but not when I got the last one in Kessex Hills. Frustrating since it;s the only achievement i’ve got left to do for Toxic Alliance stuff.

4) The Dragons! Where are they? Seriously? I was super excited for this when the game launched and over a year on they have done precisely nothing and we the players have done precisely nothing to fight any of them (Zhaitan being the on exception due to the nature of the personal story). I assumed with Flame and Frost, way back at the start that the Molten Alliance were going to be Primordious’ minions and the Flame and Frost thing was referring to heading north into the mountains to deal with him and/or Jormag in some way. That was exciting, conceptually. Instead we got Scarlet and Aetherblades and… Just… I don’t care about any of it. The dragons were the plot hook we were all sold on (or at least I was). Where are they? All of that said, I find myself somewhat glad they haven’t been done yet, because if the dragon stories were treated in the way the story has been treated so far I would be gutted. Game play etc. aside, the writing and storytelling here (which based on the name, I would assume was the point) has, for me, been pretty appalling. Bad, boring, characters, a lack of focus, and often bad dialogue (seriously, NPCs referring to Divinities Reach as ‘DR’ was just horrible. That’s how players speak, sure, but I wouldn’t expect a game character to do it. it pulled me right out of the experience.) has all plagued the experience and lessened the game for me.

5) Probably my biggest issue with the Living story is also my biggest issue with the Personal Story too: as the player I want to feel as if I am the hero in whatever situation I am playing in. It is, for the record, impossible to feel heroic in a game when you are just one of dozens, scores or even hundreds of people fighting the same fight as you are. Events like Tequatl or Claw of Jormag or the Scarlet Invasions don’t make a player feel heroic, they feel like a soldier. Playing Second fiddle to Trahearne in the Personal story was not great but even that felt better than events like the jubilee where I literally stood there and watched Logan (a character I personally like at least a little) be the protagonist of the scene while I did nothing. I wanted to be in the arena fighting those Clock knights. I wanted to be focus of the action. The same is true of the TA Aetherpath, where the players are essentially just running around causing distractions for Caithe. We are bit-players, background characters, extras to the story. if we weren’t here the other chracters would get by just fine. Destinies Edge, Braham, Rhox, Queen Jennah et al more or less seem to have it covered. It’s frustrating and boring to be ‘along for the ride’.

A lot of my feelings about the living world have been repeated many times already in this thread so far, and perfectly eloquently at that, but I’ll sum up my own thoughts as simply as I can.

1) The updates are too frequent. It’s a startlingly oppressive feeling. My personal preference with MMO’s is to glut on them for a few months and then take a few month break to play other games. This allows me to get the most enjoyment out of my play time, while not ever feeling spread out or without anything to do. If I do that with Guild Wars 2 however, I would miss huge amounts of content that I will never be able to Come back to. I don’t want to miss anything but I feel I am much more likely to burn out on the game and give it up for good if I don’t feel able to take breaks without missing large amounts of content than if the schedule was less intense. Frankly, I resent feeling like I’m being trained to log into the game habitually just to keep up, rather than go at my own pace. The solution here is to both slow down the content updates (one a month, or once every two months) but make the updates bigger, but then also make them primarily permanent.

2) On the note of permanence, the transient nature of the content is frustrating not only because it makes it hard to keep up, but also because elements that are enjoyable are often quickly lost again. Permanent content in general has more value to the development of the game than temporary content ever could. Festivals and Dramatic moments in the vein of the earthquakes that led up to the release of Eye of the North for Guild Wars 1 work, but sustained story content, or even whole zones (Zephyr Sanctum) being temporary seems like a wasted opportunity to have a world that is growing as opposed to merely changing.

3) As far as the actual story itself goes, it is disjointed, incoherent and nigh-impossible to follow month-on-month. Scarlet Briar, seems like a character invented to tie together the Aetherblade, Molten Alliance and other plot threads which did not feel like they were part of the same story at all. It occurs to me that this is probably a result of having four different living world teams. The plot should be managed by one single team of people in order to keep it coherent. Too many cooks spoiling the broth and all that, but also because it reduces issues of communication.

3b) Scarlet herself is an awful character. She strikes me as someone’s attempt to do a Joker-style lunatic-genius but written with much less depth. Instead of finding her to be an antagonist I want to fight against, I dread the next time she turns up, because I’ll have to listen to her awful dialogue. even more infuriating is how frequently she seems to be able to escape not because of her skill or preparedness or intelligence but because of a cheap Deus Ex Machina. Specifically during the jubilee fight where the player had beaten her and then can continue (as I did) to shoot at her ineffectively while she monologues was one of the most infuriating moments in the game. It felt like I’d won and it should have ended there but then she got away because… well, there was no good reason for it. She got away because the team decided she needed to come back again. The only thing I want from scarlet at this point is to kill her so we can just move on from that plot line and get back to what Guild Wars 2 was, I thought, supposed to be about…

(hit the character limit? will continue in next post)

I don’t spend much time with the forums, so I’d missed the notice about the changing dates and as such I’d missed the bonfires too. I had come here to add my voice to the chorus of people who were upset by this, but since they’re being put back in I’m going add my voice to the chorus of ‘Thank yous’ instead. I’m glad I’ll be able to tick off that achievement and that the team working on the game are responding to the community in a swift and positive way! Cheers A-net!

I have to agree with the general concensus that the story quests are just overbearing. The last one i (just barely) managed to complete was Kellach’s Attach (Level 30 Human Warrior) and the sheer damage output of the foes i was fighting made it nigh impossible.

Theoreticaly, you’d expect it to be possible to make it through any particular fight or instance without dying and the personal story should, in theory, be some of the easier intanced content, no?

With that particular quest, i wouldn’t have thought the (relatively) large numbers of enemies would be an issue, since there were four vigil soldiers, the Vigil representative (who’s name i forget) and Logan all present to even out the numbers in the fight, but none of the NPC’s were even halfway helpfull. i understand the desire to not have them just kill off all the enemies by themselves (that would be boring, obviously) but they clearly need to be far more surviveable than they currently are because they barely slow the enemies down before they are all dead and there is no way that one player could hope to handle that many mobs alone.

For that, (and all the personal story quests in a similar vein) I’d suggest that the NPCs you’re fighting with need to be both more surviveable and equal targets for the enemies. After all, if the NPC’s survive but you die because all the mobs are ignoring them to just go after you (something else that seemed like a problem here) the problem persists.