Guild Wars 2

Can I get an invite to the NA Guild please?

Thanks

Einlanzer.1627:

The model is unquestionably a vast improvement over the current one, and I don’t at all mind paying reasonable costs for good content. My only “wtf?” notion comes along with the idea that new players will be punished more and more as time goes on relative to older players, which seems very strange from a business perspective.

I’d probably just make some content free for all players and some content paid for all players, depending on scope. But, surely they’ll run bundles and specials for content that ages past a year, so it probably isn’t much of an issue.

Well the model is no different than MMOs that require past Expacs to be bought in order to get to the latest content. Hell I’d argue this is a hell of a improvement assuming no past LS Season becomes a mandatory requirement to access any newer LS Season because then a new player or returning player could choose to NOT pay for a season of content they didn’t find interesting.

And as you mention ANet will undoubtedly have numerous specials and bundles down the road. Hell I can already see a new player promotion that includes the base game + the latest LS Season for free. There will almost certainly be catch up pack specials or buy the previous season for a heavily discounted price etc…. They could even just let a season become freely available once it is 2-3 seasons behind.

I had just assumed it was working as intended to give lowbies a smidgen of survivability :P

But it should be noted as you level up the boost decreases, my necro went from 35k to 24k leveling from 20 to 50.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I would add at least 2 new categories to map completion for each zone, though I wouldn’t unlock it until a character on the account has done 100% world completion (though I’d remove WvW from world completion because of this).

First category would be: Skill Trainers. Like Skill Challenges just a lot tougher, capable of challenging a small group but also not being a push over for a zerg. Each trainer would have at least 1 skill they can teach each class which can be learned after defeating the trainer.

Second category would be: Factions. Like Renown Hearts but more involved with a heavy focus on doing events (objective taking in WvW). Each faction would allow the purchase of at least 1 skill for each class via karma.

This would expand upon a system all players should understand and would help get some replay out of the “leveling” content. (though I think that’s an aspect of the game that should be improved regardless)

One comment I would add though is it would behoove ANet to put effort into adding new events to the zones, outside of the Living Story content. One of the things that sold me on the game was the idea I could replay a zone a couple years down the road and because so many new events had been added it would have a vastly different experience. While they may be true for zones touch by the living story I don’t think that is the only way they should be updated.

Rebound.3409:

Definitely not. An expansion is a huge PERMANENT update. All they did is scam us into thinking we are getting an expansion’s worth of content but in reality, apart from some “it should have been like that from the start” systems they did…there has literally been close to no permanent content in this game. What did we get? Some fractals that only a few ppl still do (compared to the numbers that play this game)…and a map ppl hardly visit. I can’t remember anything else other then those.

However u look at it…it’s not even a mile close to being an expansion’s worth of content.

For ex look at WoW’s expansions and what they add in general..the quantity and quality (and i am saying this as an avid anti-wow guy).

I am more then willing to pay for a real expansion instead of this living world thing they are trying to do. There’s a golden rule in life….nothing good comes cheap….and it doesn’t get cheaper then “free”. U get what u payed for. As long as u don’t pay for any real content, don’t expect to get that content.

And WoW is the poster child for exactly why they went this direction with the Living Story updates.

Population spikes when the expac comes out, drops like a rock after a few weeks when the content has been burnt, perhaps spikes up a little with a new patch, but then free falls until another expac is on the horizon.

That may be fine for a game with a soloable WoW-like daily system but cripples GW2’s community oriented event system. It is just flat out not as fun running through a zone where you’re the only one doing the events. Of course GW2 suffers from having a big world with ill-thought-out server design (i.e. PvE Zones shouldn’t be 1 to 1 vs Servers, they should be spun up as demand requires) which is why the LS are designed to put players focus onto a certain area/aspect of the game.

An expac would do the same but unless they continued with the LS type updates after the expac then the population would drop quickly once the new permanent content has been burnt though.

GW2 more than any other MMO to date needs a fairly steady amount of people playing the content in order for it to actually be enjoyable. You can’t accomplish that with a prolonged spike based content delivery model. Hell that’s why ANet went from their monthly updates to the 2 week model, since their concurrence numbers clearly showed a significant drop off 2 weeks after an update.

Is it a design philosophy for everyone? No. But if they feel it is the best design for the health of their game I’m inclined to agree with them. It certainly has made me play way more than any expac from WoW ever did.

With that said I’m not opposed to them doing an expac but think it would be way more disruptive if it was done as a free LS update instead. And really there is nothing stopping them from doing that, it’s just a matter having a team work on an LS update for a few months vs a few weeks.

Angelic.1365:

Have PPT auto adjust based on the size of the lowest populated server. If one server only has 10% of the most populated server make the PPT of each objective much less. This gives the servers with less coverage a chance to make up the point difference when they are equal in population. It also dramatically slows down the ability to jump 15,000 points in a couple hours when one server equals 80% of everyone on. Dominating during peak hours would become the leading factor for victory, as opposed to 24/7 coverage.

/signed

PPT should heavily favor where there is actual competition. You should get more PPT owning 40% of map where all 3 sides are about equal in strength than you should owning 100% of a map where 1 or 2 of the teams are outmanned.

I wouldn’t base the modify solely on the lowest pop server but instead a comparison of all 3 servers map population. So like if 2 servers are about equal but one is outmanned PPT on that map, that would be worth more than the PPT on a map where 2 of the teams are outmanned.

Also to counteract the lower PPT on less competitive maps more meaning should be given to holding objectives over a long period of time. They should be good enough that tracking how long a server has owned an objective becomes a part of the meta.

Overall I love the design & the new mechanics (Zone 1 is amazing IMO) but definitely agree the zones are too big for being World 2, Zone 2 especially.

My biggest complaint about Zone 2 & 3 is a lot of times I didn’t feel like I understood what I was suppose to be doing or where to go.

In Zone 2 I had 2 cases of this:

• the Gong Temple – The Gong because I initially didn’t understand I needed to use it as a shield
• the Bell before the end boss – The Bell because initially trying the glove on the logs didn’t work (I probably wasn’t positioned correctly) & because of the the lack of Glove symbols on the logs made me question if that was what I was suppose to do at all

In Zone 3 the spot that stopped me completely was the room you have to jump upwards. I had to run Zone 3 on easy mode in order to understand the direction I actually needed to go and that was enough for me to figure out the rest but I could definitely see areas like knocking down the icicles being confusing since there isn’t a lot of direction given.

Lack of clear direction is definitely a fine design choice but the jump from World 1 to 2 in terms of the amount of direction being given is too great IMO.

Another problem I had was at least to me there seemed to be a ton more places you could jump to in World 2 which offered no way of getting back besides death. I honestly don’t recall any in World 1 (but I’ll have to check World 1 again to be sure) where as there are tons of them in World 2. Again another okay design choice but shouldn’t be so prevalent in World 2, IMO.

I wont rehakitten but Zone 2 definitely has too many enemies. Seriously that Gong Temple I would burn it to the ground, lol.

But with that said I am highly impressed with the new World and the new mechanics it brings. It is just amazing what yall are being able to put together with an MMO game engine and I’m highly looking forward to what’s next.

I doubt they will ever go to a weekly system since they have a clear example to look at to show it is a bad idea. WoW did it and all it ended up doing was reduce the amount of days people logged in. And once you start down that road it makes it easier for them to just stop logging in all together. While it is not as big of a problem with GW2 given the lack of sub, but I do think it is in ANet’s best interest to encourage people to log in more than just once a week.

With that said I do think ANet could give a little wiggle room to make it feel less of a daily chore. My suggestion would be the first daily completion of the week gives you 4x the usual reward and every other daily completion gives the normal reward. The max you can earn a week is 8 dailies worth and the weekly reset is the same as the Guild Mission reset. (reason for 8 being the max as reward for more dedicated players)

I would also apply this system to whatever other time-gated systems ANet is considering, the Ascended gear crafting mats for example.

Yeah I don’t think Mini’s will see any major update to them until they are ready to roll out Polymock.

cesmode.4257:

But this seems like more mini games, more achievements to be had, more minigames, and more minigames.

You have a VERY broad opinion on what is a mini-game if you think any of that listed could be considered one. ANet certainly doesn’t consider any of that mini-games since one of the devs working on the August content said “no instanced mini-games, no jumping puzzles for August”.

Both things sound more like the Candidate trials which is a far cry from a mini-game, IMO.

I don’t think they even need to make it put the guild tag in the chat, just let you set a different color for each guild and replying in guildchat should be as simple as /g1, /g2, /g3

But this is just one of a number of chat options that they should implement IMO but for some reason it seems like a part of the UI that has literally been given no attention (seriously tell me how many gems I need to buy to get a second chat window and I will do it!)

Seras.5702:

Only thing I’d change is a universal clock across all zones. Walking from one to the next (or even from overflow) is awkward when it’s suddenly night when it was mid-day 10 seconds earlier.

Totally agree with this!

And while we are talking day/night, WTB a Dark Nights option. There just isn’t enough difference between day & night IMO so at least giving an settings option for a darker night would be great.

/signed

but with the caveat that they should make or add a couple of them that can’t be completed via Mesmer portal as part of the achievement so at the very least some effort had to be made to complete it.

2 things I think would help are:

1) Add a 3rd Character Sheet so you can have a WvW specific build/gear set without having to pay something to switch traits & not take up bank space with WvW focused gear.

One of the biggest problems is berserker gear/builds rule the way in PvE but get crushed in WvW. Not having a free & easy way to switch to something more appropriate I think is very offputting to a lot of PvE’ers. Especially if they go in and get completely owned over & over again since their gear/build isn’t viable for WvW.

2) On Thursday of each week make available a PvE clone of the borderlands maps & EB (the server winning at daily reset Wednesday night is the side that gets access to the PvE EB) that are fully filled PvE zones with a map wide meta event designed around players capturing objectives through NPC assisted siege warfare. Think breakout event on crack. The point this would serve is to get players use to the various aspects of how WvW works from capturing objectives, getting supply, building siege, and then using it to assault a tower/keep.

If the events are done well and show how much fun siege warfare can be I think it would make it easier for PvE’ers to step into WvW and feel comfortable since they would at least have an idea of what they need to do.

Not only is it not cheating, IMO when the new match up system rolls up a highly uneven match the game should implicitly support 2v1. Everything would work the same except the teamed side would be a single color & could use all the waypoints either of the teams controls.

I’ve always thought it would be interesting to see if the top 4-5 servers could handle such a setup :P

I would say coverage is the primary issue, not necessarily population, and that is the issue that needs to be addressed in some manner. To me with a PPT system then there needs to be a premium on the PPT earned on maps that are actually competitive. If you own 100% of a map where the opposing sides are both outmanned then that should not be worth nearly as much PPT as owning 40% of a map where all 3 sides have about equal man power.

I also agree the varying desires of different groups is a problem as well. To me ANet’s vision for WvW is the focus on siege warfare, not the open field combat. But the maps aren’t really suited for siege warfare. They are too flat & easy to traverse as a large group. There needs to be a lot more environmental interactions that effect groups ability to move around the map. Like bridges that can be built/destroyed or areas that can be made impassible from rock slides or tunnels that can be opened up, etc…

And while the GvG events that have sprung up are fun & interesting, they really need their own system. My suggestion being sPvP or custom arenas with bigger maps & higher player counts and a leaderboard system to accompany it. I would hope by now ANet understands it is something we want and hopefully something they are working on.

They’ve already been doing that. F&F added a couple of “town” instances (the Hatchery & Craigstead) and Southsun changed quite a bit.

With that said ANet has also recognized things like the F&F dungeon should be preserved in some way which is why it will probably become a fractal at some point. But it was their first go around with this idea and now that they have a better idea of what players like & want and what it takes for them to create the content I suspect as the Living Story continues on you’ll see permanent additions make up a greater mix of the LS content.

Great idea, but ANet seems hesitant to pump out different stat sets for whatever reason.

An alternative using your idea would be let crafting be the only way to get 4 stat gear outside of the Ascended items. ANet can limit it to just a handful of combinations but it would give crafting some actual usefulness & uniqueness at max level.

Sounds good in theory but execution is what will matter. I think Southsun is a good case study because now that the MF buff has been removed players have in essence decided that added difficult isn’t worth it. When I logged last night it had been 20 hours since the Karka Queen had been killed and that’s on TC which is a pretty kitten heavy PvE server.

Personally I love the hectic/difficult meta event but clearly the playerbase doesnt without the MF buff. So making the rewards match the difficulty is going to be the key thing in terms of player acceptance.

One suggestion I have is making it so Champs/Vets drop extra crafting mats (3-4 for Champs & 1-2 for Vets) rather than always just Blue/Greens which I don’t see any way of making more valuable. I’ll be glad if ANet proves me wrong but I’m not hopeful :P

One other suggestion is when these events start spawning Champions the event should upgrade to Group Event, status since they truly are at that point, and that distinction should be noticeable to the players in terms of money/karma/xp.

A change is definitely needed in the reward system because the current stat bonus rewards are so inconsequential. Certainly not something Joe Schmo player would notice if they even had them (adding a persistent visible buff like we had in beta would be a good start).

I definitely agree Rating +/- needs to be stressed as the Win/Loss scenario given the new matchup system, but there needs to be a reason for servers to reach certain Score levels as well, especially once the match has been decided.

And finally any reward system should reward both the entire server & give some reward on top of it based on WvW participation. My thinking is something like this:

Server Rewards
1) Most Rating Gain = server access to a cloned PvE version of EB
2) Rating Gain = server access to a cloned PvE version of the home borderland
3) Highest Score = additional stat sets (MF being an obvious choice)

Score in general would dictate the stat bonus you get the next week rather than having to be rebuilt every week, so higher score = better stats you have for the next week. If they need to be adjusted because of this change, fine. But they should be something people notice & care about even if they dont WvW.

The cloned PvE maps would be just like normal PvE zones with events & maybe even a boss level meta event with a focus on using WvW mechanics like coordinating & sieging. I’m thinking breakout on crack & map wide.

Individual Rewards
Set criteria for a Gold/Silver/Bronze levels based on WvW participation.
Rewards are 3/2/1 reward chests which would contain 1 Rare+, 25 Badges, 1 Blueprint, 1000 WXP, & 50s.
As long as you reach Bronze participation you also get a bonus chest for each server “win” met, i.e. Most Rating Gain and/or Highest Score.

The key would be deciding what level of participation is needed for each and balancing it in a smart way.

Jimmy JimBob.2801:

Why on earth would you want to do that?! If I wanted a pve map… I’d go to all the other readily made ones out of wvw…

A multitude of reasons:

1) To give a hope of an option to people who won’t finish map completion otherwise
2) To allow for some community buildup of the next matchup (assuming the new system stays in place)
3) Because it is a very tangible reward & is similar in design to ones used in past games (WoW, DAoC, etc..)
4) Because it is an area ANet could make a real unique meta-event chain in using the WvW design/mechanics
5) And to add a little chill down period for WvW & its never ending warfare

Hell we are already doing it anyways when the match is no longer in question, this would just be formalizing it.

With that said, I’m also not opposed to just have a cloned PvE version open 1 day a week while the normal WvW zone continues on.

I’m in full agreement that there needs to a more meaningful reward system on the server level. The buffs just aren’t prevalent enough for anyone to even notice.

I definitely like the idea that the win condition is based on Rating Gain/Loss as that definitely works better with the new matchup system & means even if a server gets crushed by coverage….err Score, they can still “win” the matchup if they reach a certain level of performance.

Aside from your chest rewards I’d like to suggest 2 more rewards that could be implemented.

1) Shorten WvW to 6 days, making Thursday an off day. On that day the WvW maps convert to PvE versions of themselves and each server gets access to their Borderland map. The winning server is also granted access to a PvE version of EB.

2) Instead of ramping up the buffs throughout the match they should be “awarded” for the next week. They should have predictable score thresholds to unlock (5% = 50k, 10 = 100k, etc..) and should be something people notice when they are present/lacking.

I definitely like the ramping idea, it is kind of ridiculous a T3 Keep = the same points as a T1.

But while we are throwing out ideas, what would be the drawback of a system where the PPT was normalized against Map Population?

Meaning if 1 server is running at full strength but the 2 opponents our out-manned then the PPT earned from that map are 1/3 of what it would be if it was fully contested.

This would let servers with lesser coverage focus on a single map & if they are competitive counteract their coverage disadvantage at least partially.

Ignoring the problem of coverage being the end all to winning WvW, I’m totally for this idea. Frankly I think it would be good if they broke things up into Seasons and had a tournament like suggested at the end of them.

At the end of the Season I would also have like a week of free server transfers as long as you are going down, in the hope that maybe that would spur some shake-ups.

I seriously hope they are posted before the matches go live or at the very least let us know which borderland will be our home borderland before the match goes live.

Yshyr.8709:

Complicated. Guys sporting events have been around for thousands of years. Winner advances loser doesn’t. Why mess with what works?

Oh well, hopefully the complicated part only applies to tie breakers.

Maybe they are thinking about doing some more crazy than that, like an EPL style League with Regulation system (something Colin had mentioned in the past).

That would definitely warrant its own blog :P

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Outside from defending a “castle”, there’s really no room for strategy. You can place sieges in strategical locations inside the “castle”, but outside, it’s either a “zerg tactic” or “guerrilla tactic”.

This is something I hope ANet will address when they get around to making new maps. They could add a ton of strategic elements to the maps beyond keeps considering the engine already supports the idea of destroying bridges or blocking off / opening up passages, etc…

One of the reasons Zerg’ing works so well is because the maps play fast and it is very easy to move a lot of people fairly quickly. If there were elements on the map that you could use to impede that it could force the groups to spread out a bit more.

Terrahero.9358:

Why do people keep suggesting even more buffs to the defense meta as a means to fix Zergs? If Zergs cant take anything anymore, then who can!?

Laying siege to a keep/tower should be hard, that’s the point. Defense should always have a distinct advantage over the attacking force and it us up to the attackers to come up with a strategy to overcome that.

Right now unfortunately your choices are limited since ACs are still overpowered and too effectively against small groups. Here again I would prefer they work on a similar scaling factor (cause a nuisance to smaller groups but are deadly to larger ones).

However I’m also okay with the idea that taking a keep/tower should be a slow process. That you need to use catas/trebs to take down walls & clear siege before running in. That starving the supply chain is of high importance.

With that said one change I definitely would make to the supply trap is it shouldn’t be usable inside a supply camp. Take a supply camp only to have a thief come in and undo that is completely ridiculous.

Just my opinion but the supply traps should scale based on the number of people in the radius to determine how much it takes from each person.

1 Person = 1 Supply
5 People = 2 Supply
10 People = 3 Supply
20 People = 5 Supply
35 People = 10 Supply
50 People = 15 Supply

The net effect may only be that the zergs just spread out a little more instead of just being a ball but even that would be a small improvement IMO.

This is a good example why I think only custom arenas should maintain their “rosters”. Anything hot-join, be it sPvP or in this case a Holiday event activity, should randomly put together groups so people aren’t so tempted to do things like win-trading.

guza.6170:

why in hell are they making a new map, last thing the game needs is another map.

As long as the artists are taking into account that the map should be able to support more modes of gameplay in the future I’m all for letting them make as many maps as they want.

It’s not like the artists can be reassigned to do coding, so what does it matter if they just continue doing the job they are there for?

Yeah I have to agree this is a bit lame on ANet’s part. Unless the next patch is coming in the 3rd week of May, the new dungeon should be active until then IMO.

The comment wasn’t specific to F&F but everything done over the past 3 months for all parts of the game. In total that is a lot of content & new features that most companies would have saved for an expac.

I do however agree they oversold F&F

One of the devs, I think it was Collin, mentioned an idea they tossed around using something like EPL’s (English Premier League) regulation system, I’d love to see ANet’s take on that in the context of WvW.

I definitely think they could come up with something more interesting than we currently have but there are obviously other issues that need to be solved first.

Syd.2847:

Not sure if completing the instance keeps achievement from getting finished, or if having people leave affected it. Either way, it’s fast & easy to do while the instance is in progress. If you can’t get it, reset it.

I completed it after the rest of the party had left my instance so that should be working. I did however have to use the Thief Shortbow clusterbomb to complete it since there was a spot where 2 pieces were in the side of a hill that I couldn’t break any other way.

To me the Ascended gear is not the problem, the problem is the slippery slope ANet seems to be going down with the slotted Infusions.

By themselves Ascended vs Exotic makes for a reasonable tradeoff due to the flexibility Runes give. So sure you get better overall stats with Ascended but you can get better individual stats with Exotics + Runes. But because the slotted Infusions can add to base stats, & at least on the surface look like they will have a power progression, that tradeoff eventually gets null and void by the shear power increase.

If Infusions only gave power/defense increases that applied in areas with Agony then there wouldn’t be a problem IMO. Yeah people would need to “grind” to be able to do the higher difficulty PvE but as long as any content added works like FotM and lets everyone see the new content I don’t think there is problem having a barrier to reaching the highest difficulties of said content.

I think the worst part is a year from now when every slot has Ascended gear the grind ahead of a new player is going to be utterly ridiculous while at the same time crushing the market for Exotics. I mean why spend any time/money on Exotics when you have such a grind ahead of your for Ascended?

If Infusions only had any affect in areas with Agony then the power gain of Ascended gear would be a tradeoff for the usefulness of Runes and they could have been designed to make for a Tiered PvE progression. But Infusions with stats makes the point moot.

I have no problem with Tiered PvE progression as long as the progression doesn’t result in a higher power level in the rest of the game. As is that is not the case and that goes against what I thought was one of the main tenants of the game

While there are still a lot of questions about the new Ascended gear, Infusions, and how the new dungeon’s difficulty increase mechanic works, this is my hope on how it will work & how it could be used to add an interesting competitive PvE aspect to the game.

Infusions
They should offer no stat increases and should only be useful in areas that make use of Agony. That seems to be limited to Dungeons for the time being but my hope is at some point that will be expanded to include new Zones.

Ascended Gear
As long as the upgrade slots on the new Ascended Gear can only be Infusions then I think that tradeoff will at least partially counteract the power increase. But I would hope this is the last stat power increase will see.

My Suggestion – Agony Power Level & Infusion Tiers
So we know the new dungeon has this idea of increasing difficulty. My idea is to call this Agony Power Level. This would be a selectable setting for the party that defaults to the highest Power Level everyone in the group has unlocked. When the party completes the dungeon on the current Power Level the next level is unlocked for all the players in the group (it should be an account wide unlock).

Every increase in Agony Power Level (APL) makes the need for Infusions that much more important. By APL5 everyone in the party should have a full set of the available Ascended gear and Tier 1 Infusions. At APL6 the Infusions in the Loot Tables become Tier 2 which increases their power & effectiveness and makes it possible to continue progressing. By APL10 a full set of Tier 2 Infusions should be needed in order to progress. At APL11 the Infusions become Tier 3 and a set of unique armor & weapon skins are added to the Loot Tables. These would be purely cosmetic and would be the visual way of showing your progression.

This can then go on as far as ANet wants and maybe it hits a peak where it is impossible to progress until more slots of Ascended gear are made available.

The unlocking of the Power Levels will lead to groups making it a requirement to do certain content but this is meant to be a Progression PvE system so I think that is fine.

I would not make a new unlock for each new Agony dungeon, it should just be a game wide unlock. But that doesn’t mean new Agony dungeons would have the same difficulty per Power Level as FotM. If a new dungeon is added that adds new Ascended gear slots then that becomes the baseline for that dungeon. So while your group could try APL10 in the new dungeon without having the new Ascended slots your chances of success would be next to none.

Notes
To help with the competitive aspect of it I would add an in-game Leaderboard showing Server > Region > World leaders progression.

I wouldn’t necessarily make the loot drops progressively better, I’d probably just do it like Diablo’s Monster Power Level, extra Money/Karma and a modest increase to Magic Find per level.

I also wouldn’t do anything to fix the fact a highly progress party could go back to APL1 and be able to crush the content and perhaps eventually getting to the point where someone could solo lower Agony Power Levels.

Once the main push through the leveling content has been done by the majority the leveling areas (especially the mid-level zones) always become sparse of players. Every MMO with level specific areas sees this.

I can recall vast amounts of time going through the mid levels (esp Outlands) in WoW and never seeing a soul, beyond those flying by. Of course with WoW’s quest design this was preferable :P

But the effect is pretty common place and is why Blizzard added Cross-realm zones and why ANet needs to add an “underflow” system for its zones. Especially since GW2’s event system shines when there is a healthy amount of people in the zone.

Kudos, but….

…clearly we need more areas to get the T6 mats from if bots were having that big of an impact on supply.

I think you’ll see a free trial at some point but there is no reason to do it right now. There are still bugs that need to be ironed out and plenty of things to improve on. No reason to in essence make a new marketing push until more of those issues are sorted out.

But if one were to happen in the near future I would expect it to happen in early-mid December.

Unless there is a long term goal to remove the zone boundaries and make it a free flow world, then IMO there shouldn’t even be zone instances dedicated to an individual server. I would just create instances as needed based on desired population levels for each zone. Maybe even give players the option to pick the population level they want, i.e. “Do you want to go into a zone instance with a low/medium/high target pop?”

Your’s is certainly a worthy idea but personally I think they should try to remove the barriers of being tied to a particular server for everything except WvW. Everything else should just work regardless of what “home” server you picked.

But if that’s too radical I can totally support the Underflow server idea :P

I do think they still need to fix some things before they could consider any such idea, like being able to see the WvW score & being able to join WvW when not on your “home” server. I also think the guild server restrictions need to be removed as well.

But I agree definitely a change is needed, especially when you think long term and potentially how much bigger the game could get in terms of new zones.

Gotta agree, the items being Rare vs Exotic & the stat’ing is very disappointing. Completing the high level zone maps reward 2 exotics, yes not of your choosing, but the point is the effort/time involved of completing a zone pales in comparison vs the effort/time put in the Personal Story.

As one of the major tenets of the game IMO it is completely reasonable that a single exotic should be the reward.

The 3 biggest changes I would like to see with the Dragon events, and in general any zone boss events are:

1) The precursors should be much more significant both in numbers & time to complete. A good chain example is the Flame Temple in Diessa Plateau that is a long chain that leads up to opening the temple. A Zone Boss should require as much lead-in if not more IMO

2) The bosses themselves need to have less predictable behaviors/mechanics. They should have a greater array of abilities that get randomly used and there should be a pool of mechanics that randomly change from spawn to spawn. Ex: Sometimes Shatterer is immune to player damage & must be killed by siege weapons while players protect them, other times the siege weapons have to solely be used to kill minions to keep from overrunning the players, etc…

3) There needs to be a definitive & significant lose condition. Time, NPC’s kept alive, equipment destroyed, whatever there needs to be a way for players to lose and in the losing there should be an effect on the zone.

I can’t decide if it is a lack of events in certain areas or that there are so many bugged events in certain zones it seems like the area is lacking.

It made me wonder if anyone is putting together a location map of all the events for the Wiki, because I would be very interested to see the number of events broken down into areas.

Like for example I’ve been doing the Ascalonian leveling path and found the Northeast Quardrant of both Field of Ruins & Iron Marches to be pretty lacking in events. Other parts of the zone were fine but it just seemed like there wasn’t much in those 2 areas.

Is there a reason that Charr don’t get the much nicer floating sword animation for Spatial Surge (GS #1) that the other races have?

Uniqueness can be nice but IMO this is a case where I’d rather not be :P The floating sword blast is just way better looking

The game already supports the splitting, best example = Confusion condition.

It is just pretty clear they aren’t going to rush to use it unless there is something truly unbalancing in one aspect of the game that isn’t true in the others.

Guardian GS, I see nothing in the patch notes that makes me think it is related to any one aspect of the game. They don’t want retaliation to be a perma-boon, seems like a fair across the board change to me.

Other than keeping track of it yourself or keeping track of how many skill points you’ve earned/spent, is there any way to tell how many times you’ve “leveled” after reaching 80?

Something like /levels that returned Level 80 (+10) would be nice :P

Amazing I was just coming to post this, lol.

Personally I would take it a bit further and add a temporary sub forum for each WvW matchup so the trash talking….err polite discussion can be focused there :P

My preference would be:

First button press gives you the target reticle
Second button press casts centered on your currently selected target, if no target selected it casts wherever you have the reticle

Maybe I’m unusual but I typically press the Mind Stab button then click where I want it to cast, so adding an option to change the default behavior like I’ve suggested would be perfect for me :P