Showing Posts For Castigator.3470:
Another reason, why Glint opted for the Exalted is the jungle itself. Even without Mordrem, the Heart of Maguuma is home to nasty things like Bristlebacks, Wyverns, Rolling Devils and worst of all: Pocket Raptors.
And that’s just the Fauna.
The mushrooms are arguably worse. Then there’s other probable threats like tropical diseases, hunger and Chak.
Many things that may wipe out a newly established human settlement and even Rata Novus eventually fell.
Sure, human settlers may have managed to build the Tyrian equivalent of Tenochtitlan, but it’s fare more likely that they would have shared the fate of the Asura.
Instead of risking that Glint went with immortal golden guardians.
Well, the Pact is less than a singular entity and more like a joint operational command of the Vigil, Priory and the Order of Whispers. So with the exception of high command, the members of the pact are likely to retain the rank they already have in their respective order.
This can be seen in the Orr campaign. Here is my reconstruction of the pact command structure:
Pact Marshal – The official leader of the Pact.
Pact Commander(s) – The Marshal’s immediate subordinates, or his personal staff.
The size of the Pact suggests multiple Commanders.
The heads of the Orders and their representatives.
General Almorra Soulkeeper and Warmaster Efut for the Vigil,
Steward Gixx and Master Archaeologist Wynnet Fairhaired for the Priory Durmand,
Preceptor Riel Darkwater and Preceptor Doern Velazquez for the Order of Whispers.
The former are official, or in the Case of Riel ,acting heads of their respective Organization and are normally represented through their right hand people.
Then we have the Reinforcements from the five races: Human Seraphs and volunteers, Charr Warbands, Sylvari Wardens, Norn hunters and adventurers and Asura Peacemakers.
From what I’ve seen, at camp resolve behave more like auxilaries, not part of the main force, but receiving orders and instructions from Pact members.
Following the Maguuma Offensive, I expect the pact leadership to be reformed under the new Marshal. The new Pact will likely have a more centralized command, but it is still dependent on support from the orders and nations of Tyria to stay operational.
Maybe we find someone daring enough to draw an organizational chart of the pact?
I cannot tell, as I did not play Starcraft.
Plus, the game has some characters, that we know from the GW Novels, but are not featured prominently in the game. I mean did you know, that the Guild initiative is headed by Dougal Keane?
Your guild mission rewards carry his signature, because Jennah asked him to do it.
There are several minor things and flavourful places and dialogues in the game, but many people missed them.
There’s one thing I’d like though: More NPC dialogues in the new Lion’s Arch!
In old LA there were many NPCs, that could tell you something about their home, but nowadays all the NPCs ignore me, if I press [F] on them.
Did anyone of you have the pleasure to hear the listless glory that is the german version of GW1? Owing to that, most of the characters were as forgettable as their voice acting.
The german voice acting on the second game is so much better.
What I mean by that is, that a localization has succeeded, if it is preferred to the original by its native speakers. GW2 has succeeded in that.
Which leads me to a list of memorable GW2 characters. Keep in mind, that I replayed the PS whenever possible with guildmembers.
Characters are listed at the time they made the first big impression to me.
CharrPS:
Dinky, (I wonder how he’s doing?)
Reeva, (Still didn’t see her dance.)
Galina Edgecrusher and Snarl Backdraft (Whenever they show up.)
HumanPS:
Lord Faren, (Courtiers talk about him and so do I.)
Queen Jennah, (Has been dealing with corrupt ministers since she was a child.)
Countess Anise, (Spymaster of Kryta.)
Minister Caudecus (He will be remembered.)
Destiny’s Edge:
Rytlock Brimstone, (The only Charr that is allowed to call me “cub”.)
Caithe, (Despite her Secrects, she’s actually a good ally.)
Logan Thackeray, (“Is this the end for poor Logan?”)
Zojja, (Try to insult Snaff in her presence, I dare you!)
Eir Stegalkin(She was a levelheaded Norn. I miss her.)
Mentors:
Forgal Kernsson, (He can beat the snot out of a renegade warband.)
Tybalt Leftpaw, (So popular, that he’s recruitable in Stronghold mode.)
Magister Sieran (Don’t underestimate her, she’s capable and creative.)
Pact/Orders:
Trahearne, (He was always more of a scholar type. I liked that, others didn’t)
Steward Gixx, (Arguing with Almorra Soulkeeper.)
General Soulkeeper, (Arguing with Steward Gixx.)
Sayeh al’Rajid ( I feel she will try to kill us at one point.)
LS1
Taimi, (She started out an obsessed Asura. Now she’s an eminent authority on Scarlett)
Rox, (Despite losing her warband, she’s reasonable and often the only one to rez you.)
Scarlett, (Infamous for good reasons, but memorable.)
Evon Gnashblade (Owner of the BLTP, our only source of silly wings and outfits.)
Ellen Kiel (Council of LA. Has to deal with the other councillors.)
LS2
Councillor Phlunt, (“I’m too important to die!”)
Ogden Stonehealer (Still alive after all this time.)
Heart of Thorns
Baruush (Helped to rescue his village, now he rescued my opinion of the Quaggan.)
Scholar Keenwit, (Edit; How could I forget him!?)
LS3
Aurene (Despite her appearance, she will become big!)
(edited by Castigator.3470)
Clothes for race? (apparently this is obligatory?)
Well, we don’t know all that much about the Forgotten, hence their name.
What we do know, is that they observed the other races. You can imagine them as a sort of taskmaster for the powers in the Mists, the six human gods, but they also had their side projects with Glint.
It is unknown why they entered or left the world of Tyria.
Concerning their clothing, we have little to no knowlege about fashion among the Forgotten. We had access to two models in GW1 and from these, we can assume that they wear headdresses. Jewellery might be a common thing for them to embellish themselves with. The Forgotten we encountered in the Crystal desert were otherwise naked.
Considering that they might be poikilothermic, it makes sense for them to try and absorb the warm sunlight.
It is much more likely for them to wear robes with added heating devices, should they ever need to cross cold, or frozen areas.
Actually, this topic is really interesting, what would a fashionable Forgotten wear?
@Bobby Stein, I beseech thee! Share with us the secrets of Forgotten clothing.
Give us a short glimpse into their wardrobe!
(edited by Castigator.3470)
Message continues here because of 5000 character limit.
The campaign begins in 1325. At that point the negotiations for a peace treaty were underway, but the charr have been at war with the humans for 1400 years at this point. all the borders and diplomatic relations have to be fixiated for the first time in human/charr history.
While the defeat of Zhaitan certainly makes the formerly impossible seem achievable, the diplomats are working and trying their hardest not to let age old grudges get the better of them.
The present year being 1329, we have defeated another elder dragon, but humans and charr are still at the table working on the fine print of their treaties, making contingencies for all kinds of events. At this point the negotiations have been going on for four to five years.
While it isn’t 100% clear what the general populations think of each other, charr and humans may become uneasy allies in the face of the hardships, that still await us, including 4 elder dragons and a magical crisis event, that is caused by the absence of the aforementioned dragons. Hopefully Glint did plan ahead for that one.
(edited by Castigator.3470)
Well, as you probably already know, there is a lot of history between the humans and charr. Not that there isn’t history with the humans and everyone else, considering their own gods encouraged human expansion at every other races expense:
Volume 2—Balthazar: God of War.
Balthazar came in fire and wrath, carrying the head of his father and leading his fierce hounds, Temar and Tegon. He swept Orr with a cleansing flame.
It was he who claimed Tyria for humanity; he who said the other races would be easy to defeat. It would not be the only time that the Master of War was wrong.
Kryta has been at war with the centaurs for much of its history and the kingdom of Ascalon was built on land, that the charr claimed for themselves.
The kingdom was established in 100 BE, so one can assume that the charr were pushed back with divine help by the god of war, Balthazar.
And while much of early Ascalonian history isn’t written down, one thing is certain: The charr really hate losing territory.
During the 1100 years, the kingdom of ascalon never had any kind of peace treaty with the charr. It can be assumed that there were always border frictions, which prompted the humans to build the great wall.
From the perspective of the charr, this was the time of the Khan Ur. Whenever there was a Khan Ur, the charr were able to hold their ground or push back, but when their highest leader was taken out, the charr fell into disorder and the humans could abuse charr infighting to push them further towards north.
In time the ascalonians ventured past the wall, establishing settlements north of it.
The first game also suggests, that the humans didn’t view the charr as intelligent feeling beings, but instead as dangerous animals that were to be killed on sight.
For instance, you can acquire Charr Hide in pre searing Ascalon.
During the Ascalon campaign in the original Guildwars there is no interaction with the charr, exept killing them. Mind you, they are eager to return the favour, especially, if your character has managed to collect a full set of Charr Hide Armor.
Though it can be argued that Charr Hide Armor cannot be obtained in pre searing Ascalon, the armorer NPC just isn’t there.
Naturally, there are tales of charr eating humans and considering the state of post searing Ascalon, some of those claims may well be true, considering the conflict between charr and humans had devolved into all out war with no rules or standards adhered to by either side.
Add the Searing to the picture and you can see that many players of the original game don’t like that the charr successfully managed to take the land, while the humans from Ascalon had to resettle in Kryta.
But we’re not done, because the charr were guided by the Titans and their puppeteer Abaddon to go on a roaring rampage through the human kingdoms. Orr sunk and Kryta survived, because Saul d’Alessio brought an even bigger bad into Kryta. The Mursaat used spectral Agony on the Charr to easily win.
GW1 Wiki:The Unseen Ones appeared and decimated the Charr with their devastating magic. The Charr were defeated. Kryta was saved.
With the Shiverpeaks as a natural barrier between the remaining humans and charr, the latter of which were now in open rebellion against the shamans, we could be done, but there is another detail: Ebonhawke.
The place so far to the south that even the foefire’s magic didn’t affect it, but many charr saw this as another stain on what they felt was rightfully theirs.
So the war continued. Ebonhawke was the immovable object to the legion’s unstoppable force. Kryta stayed allied to this last remnant of old Ascalon.
Making no real progress, the Legions and Ebonhawke tried to negotiate a treaty, but the krytan Prince Edair was not in on that and instead reignited the conflict in the Fields of Ruin.
More bloodshed, but eventually the assault cooled off on the legion’s side. The Iron Legion was the last legion of the charr leading operations against the fortress, but at this point Blood and Ash legion didn’t participate beyond sending volunteers and Iron’s operations consisted mostly of half hearted shellings to test new ammo on the walls and to use their new fancy mortars shoot over the walls, leaving an embittered ebonhawke and keeping a lukewarm hatred of humans within the legions.
The second attempt to form a peace treaty has been made by Imperator Smodur the Unflinching and Queen Jennah. The latter sent the Claw of the Khan ur as a peace gift, which started the truce and the following negotiations in 1324.
The details are elaborated in Ghosts of Ascalon, which is generally considered to be the best of the current Guild Wars novels.
That is a good question.
Depending on the scope you’re going for, the work may be as short as a handbook or grow as large as an encyclopedia. I universe we have the Wikki Crewe as a tie in to the official wiki.
Of course there’s nothing preventing the creation of another in universe encyclopedia.
The one thing preventing me from writing a Historia Tyriae is the amount of incomplete data we have.
Let’s start with the Humans.
If I were to write about the Bloodline of tyrian royalty from King Doric to present day rulers, I’d find that there are maybe a few named monarchs and the rest is simply not elaborated on.
Elonian history may warrant a book of its own. I read the Nightfall manual, a book giving detailed information on elonian rulers and dynasties can make for a good long read.
Cantha is another place of significant human history. It may even be the place where humans first appeared on the surface of Tyria, the other theory maintains Orr to be the starting point of human expansion. We don’t know, as we’d have to visit Cantha to find evidence.
The History of the Charr is another problem, as most of it isn’t written. There are ideograms, and you can reconstruct the history from their maneuvers, but that is a lot of piece by piece reconstruction with a bit of conjecture thrown in.
Modern Charr history on the other Hand is exceptionally well documented, but if an outsider asks to access the Iron Legion’s archives, he’ll most likely be denied.
Norn History suffers from the same problem as charr history. Oral retelling through skalds has been the only way to preserve the legends of old. Add to this the Norn’s propensity for bragging and you are faced with unverifiable tales offered by unreliable narrators.
Sylvari history has many advantages, though. It has excellent documentation, many contemporary witnesses are still around and a good amount of it has already been written down. The obvious downside: As of 1329 AE, it is about 30 years long.
Asuran history shares many of the advantages of Sylvari history, is longer and has a good amount of secondary literature. Some of it is conserved via optical record. The recent discovery of Rata Novus allows for groundbreaking discoveries.
If I turn to the natural sciences, I could write about the anatomy of the present day races. Hopefully the Charr won’t mind if I ask to keep their enemies’ bodies for later dissection. Anatomica Charrorum a book for aspiring surgeons and a valuable read for anyone operating in Ascalon.
Taken from an existing book on anatomy:
1) General anatomy
2) Skin, glands, hair and claws
3) Musculoskeletal system
4) Internal organs
5) Head, cranium and neck
6) Sensory organs
7) Nervous system
On books that are already ingame: many offer some insight into the world of Tyria, but I’d love to see more.
One thing is, that we don’t know the exact powers of the ministry, compared to the crown. We know that the ministry acts as an inhibitor to the king or queen of Kryta.
Apparently the ministry has legislative powers, but what else can the ministers do?
Can the queen unilaterally declare war or make peace, or can the ministry veto her?
All in all, the authority of the Krytan crown has been greatly diminished over time.
Let’s have a short look at the Kingdom’s history:
Kryta as a Kindom was founded by prince Mazdak, who left the kingdom of Orr to found his own realm.
Lion’s Arch was one of the first settlements of the petty kingdom.
The early Krytan history includes wars against the centaurs as well as being conquered by Elona in 300 AE,
which at the time was a unified kingdom, ruled by the Primeval Dynasty.
After gaining its independence in 358 AE, Kryta restored the orrian dynasty founded by Doric.
Between this time and the time of the original Guild Wars, there is an unbroken line of Rulers from the house of Doric, but we have to assume that the unfortunate events during the reign of Oswald Thorn, culminating in the death of his son and his own demise in 825 AE, lead to the succession of an unnamed relative.
If I was a krytan historian I may be able to name all these Kings and Queens and their notable accomplishments, but sadly, I am not, so we have to use what is available.
In the year 1072 the Charr invaded Kryta, prompting king Jadon to abandon the Throne, which breaks 714 years of stable dynastic succession.
During this time the White Mantle ruled Kryta while Princess Salma gathered the shining Blade to reclaim the throne and restore rightful rulership.
She succeeded with the help of certain adventurers assuming the title Queen of Kryta in 1079, after seven grueling years of White Mantle rule.
The following 140 years were certainly interesting, but contained stable successions of krytan mornarchs all from the House of Doric.
In 1219 AE Zhaitan awoke and caused the rising of Orr.
The resulting tsunami ravaged the coast and caused the abandonment of Lion’s Arch.
Being crowned in the same year, king Baede of Kryta had to reorganize his kingdom after losing its ancient capital.
It was he, who established the Ministry, so we can assume that all the kings of kryta were absolute rulers before this point, but the sudden loss of his demesne and administrative bodies forced him to cede authority to the Ministers.
The new capital, Divinity’s Reach was established on the forified plateau south of lake Doric, which already contained a Mausoleum and may have been inhabited before that point. The last years of his reign were marked by a regency, where the Ministers ruled in place of the old king, possibly further eroding royal privileges.
Baede passed away in 1256, leaving the crown to his son Edair.
The following years are quiet as far as the throne of Kryta is concerned, until 1310 AE, when the king died, leaving behind his young daughter Jennah, who, while a competent Mesmer, had been deemed to young to rule by the Ministry, prompting a six year long regency, eroding the crown’s privileges until there are barely any left and the queen is subject to her own laws.
At this point, the royal privileges can go nowhere but up and while the Ministry has grown into a festering and corrupt den of vipers,
there have been few kings or queens of Kryta, since the time of Salma, who could rule with such grace and dignity as queen Jennah.
When Caudecus falls, I guess the Ministers will lose some privileges in favour of restoring the crown’s authority over Kryta. I can see the Ministry Guard being merged into the Seraphs to avoid such wasteful fragmentation of krytan manpower and to prevent powerhungry ministers from trying to ursurp the crown for themselves.
On Lion’s Arch:
There are parts of the new city, that I genuinely like better than the old one. The city streets, the nooks and crannies, the old buildings, that still exist, the commodore’s quarter and the trolls revenge jumping puzzle.
There are even some characters that I like and can relate to. In real life I like to criticize modern architecture for all the cheap shortcuts it takes, which makes it very easy to relate to the tour guide.
Most of the characters need more dialogue, though. Old Lion’s Arch had many characters, that gave a good amount of background info on the city and life within its walls. I miss the flavour of those interactions.
But there is one place, that I do try to avoid as much as possible, yet due to its sheer size its not feasible. The ridiculously huge plaza in the northern part of the city.
Why?
Normally, a city plaza is enclosed by building and contains a fountain. The old Lion would have been most appropriate. Instead, once you enter the city, you are greeted with a wasteland that covers most of the habitable area and the buildings and streets and alleyways, where most of the actual living in a city takes place are sidelined by a pointless steel and glass dome, a ridiculous bank, a shell of a trading post, the crafting stations are hiding under a starfish and the distances are, well, impractical to say the least.
I call it the pointless plaza.
Which is sad, because I like the new turn Lion’s arch took. It looks less like an inhospitable landfill of salvaged ship pieces and more like a fortified coastal city, similar to mediterranean cities such as Dubrovnik, but with its own distinct style.
I can see why the old city was still around, though, considering it’s been 42 years since Cobiah Marriner died.
EDIT: I would like to spoiler this, but apparently the spoiler tag does nothing.
The lore thing, that would surprise me the most is, that we finally get to meet Bangar Ruinbringer and Malice Swordshadow. The blood imperator is the only person with the definite authority to give Rytlock an order to explain revenant magic.
(edited by Castigator.3470)
Currently the the Charr are the only race that has a hairy chest.
Humans and Norn should have the option to grow hair on their chest. In fact, there’s even a Norn, who jokes with a female Charr about a drink so strong, she’ll grow hair on her chest.
This indicates, that Humans and Norn do have chest hair, but the ingame model doesn’t have it, since the player model is supposed to look generic enough to allow prettyboy type characters.
On the topic of Asura, I’m not sure if a male Asura is supposed to grow body hair. I don’t think I even encountered Asura with facial hair.
I think, the time gate is fine, as long as you can only farm 22 – 25 quartz crystals anyway. The worst thing about charged quartz is, that it’s suddenly account bound. If it was tradeable you could at least buy other player’s excess quartz, Or sell your own charged quartz at a high price .
Once we acquire additional means of gaining quartz, then I’m all for reducing the cap to one in 3 hours, or removing the timegate depending on how the market develops.
My point is, that removing the cap right now hardly makes a difference. Buying enough quartz crystals from the TP to make a second charged quartz is relatively pricey at 2G 74S 75C (as of 07-15-2015 2:00).
Looking at the data I found, that at it’s peak we had roughly 8.46 million units of quarts sitting at the trading post. In January 2015 the supply started to dry up, because many players felt compelled to craft ascended celestial armor. Raids were around the corner and we were told, that you needed ascended quality equipment to successfully do the raids. The supply dried up and our reserves lasted six months until July 2015, when the number of available quartz crystals dropped below 100,000 units. Since then, I assume the reserves have been depleted and the current supply is maintained through farmers and the price reflects their relative scarcity.
A distressed customer in Divinities Reach was able to give a short statement:
Maybe Ebonhawke is willing to pay these prices, but I’m not.
Allowing players to trade charged crystals will take some immediate price pressure off of the normal crystals, while initially charged cristals could spike, leading to increased farming activity in Dry Top.
We still need a more reliable source of quartz, though.
In real life industry quartz crystals are created via hydrothermal synthesis.
But Tyrias best bet is, that the Zephyrites rebuild their home in a timely manner and allow the world to share their magically grown crystals, while we keep their sanctum safe from any future threats.
(edited by Castigator.3470)
Cringeworthy. Whoever decided on the elite specialisation’s names needs to have a talk with the narrative team. It feels like they fail to communicate and thus go with whatever sounds “familiar” without ever checking what the terms actually mean.
Like Calcifire already mentioned, they did this with “Druids” and “Reapers” despite what the lore previously stated. Did they offer an explanation for those?
Also, the snippet of lore behind the change only makes sense, if someone outside of the legion society finds the term endearing and uses it.
The pact could have adopted the term as a nicname to troll get on the bad side of their charr engineers.
The more I think about this, the more it seem like the term developed outside of ascalon and is used to describe tinkerers, but then it got popular and is annoying the kitten out of all the lawful and obedient charr engineers, who like to use hammers.
To use an analogy:
It is like “Berliner Ballen” which are called “Bolas de Berlim” even in Portugal, but the people of Berlin call them Pfannkuchen, no matter what the world and even their fellow germans call them.
This makes more sense, than the given explanation. Charrikayu did a good explanation on that one. Charr society can be likened to a degree to wilhelminic Germany, where in spite of their beliefs in technological progress, the people’s attitudes towards social mores remained conservative and extraordinarily prestige oriented.
Back to Tyria.
I think a good way to make a tinkering charr engineer to decorate your face with his wrench is repeatedly calling him a scrapper.
As if there aren’t enough good terms you can call the class. How about “Machinist”, or “Repairman”, “Sapper”, “Metalworker”, even “tinker” would fit.
The Charr would likely end up adressing the makeshift mechanics as one of the above, while the rest of the world gets to push the Charr’s buttons.
I forsee dialogues such as this:
Pact Officer:" You’re one of the new Scrappers? We need you to salvage what is left of the ship."
Charr “Scrapper”:" I am NOT a scrapper! What is it with you mice to always assume the worst about people?"
Pact Officer:" But you fit the job description. You’re one of the people we need to get ourselvelves back into the air!
Charr “Scrapper”:" Look, I can get your machines running, and I can hold my own in a fight, but call me Scrapper one more time and I’ll push you into the gearbox!"
To add insult to injury, Charr born and grown up in Lion’s Arch would likely have little to no objections to being called Scrapper.
(edited by Castigator.3470)
I like the sound of Toxic, Serpentine is good too. How about Scorpion’s? They are small, highly poisonous creatures, that so resistant to radiation, they can live through a nuclear winter.
I’m not a fan of the tri-stat system. But one change I would have liked to see, is to remove the “major/minor” stat aspect. So all 3 was identical. I know a lot of people would dislike this, but it would simply remove useless clutter in the design.
This is an interesting point. Let’s do a quick calculation:
3 Attributes make 3 possible Combinations, then it goes like:
(Attributes, Combinations)(3,3) (4 ,12) (5,30) (6,60) (7,105) (8,168) (9,252) (10,360).
Which can be described with the function C(a)=(a^3-3a^2+2a)/2 .
Which is why I didn’t count magic find, boon duration, or condition duration as stats.
Plus, the weighting creates less desirable, but otherwise identical stat combinations, like Berserker’s and Assassins, that share the same triplet.
When we remove the weighting, we can reduce the total possible combinations by a factor of three without affecting build diversity.
The new possible combinations go like:
(3,1) (4,4) (5,10) (6,20) (7,35) (8,56) (9,84) (10,120).
Which is the fundamentally similar function C(a)=(a^3-3a^2+2a)/6 .
35 Possible stat combinations are more manageable and there is no Berserker/Assassins/FER+POW+PRE redundance. This might end up making celestial easier to balance, as you can just half the major stat bonus for the same attribute total.
Urban, if I may suggest: Since Rabid is CON+PRE+TOU, and can mean “an animal infected by rabies”, which hints at a deteriorating body can we call the CON+PRE+VIT triplet Madman’s, to point at a deteriorating mind?
@Westwater: Interesting. Since it is neighboring Zealot’s and Valkyrie’s, would Hierophant’s fit the POW+FER+CON setup? Thinking of Burntsoul right now.
@Mikazuki Yuki: I have no idea why there isn’t at least one triplet, that has ferocity as its major stat. The stats seem to emphasize power, condition damage and for some odd reason healing power.
@Quiznos: I did? But they aren’t even triplets, so they’d fall into the outlier category. I am not too fond of irregularities and numerous outliers in my stat systems. Celestial is OK, since it’s a jack of all stats master of none tradeoff, but stat quadruplets feel strange. I never encountered a 4 stat item, nor did I read of it. Can you point me to this curious find?
(edited by Castigator.3470)
I had a little time on my hand, so I thought I’d compile a table, that lists all 105 possible stat triplets our game has to offer.
Plus three outliers, one of which is Celestial gear, as it isn’t a triplet and offers uniqe small stat bonuses, the other two outliers are Winter and Giver stats.
Winter grants only one main stat plus boon duration and magic find.
Giver stats aren’t even self consitent and differ between weapon and armor.
So to the real question in this thread: Which stat triplet, that isn’t already ingame, would you possibly want ingame?
Plus, if you want one stat triplet on your weapons/armor, that isn’t currently in the game, how would you name your triplet? Which archetype fits your triplet the best?
The original file uses the .ods format, but the forum doesn’t trust me to upload anything other than .png .jpeg .gif .txt and .log . So have a plain text file instead. I am sorry for all the people who would have liked the Excel file and would like to ask why the forum doesn’t just prohibit executable files?
Attachments:
This Ash Legion spy looks like he has the license to kill, but wait a second…
He seems to have knowledge of your exploits.
No! This can’t be possible. I must hide.
Anyways, the biggest issue with Mister E. being a Charr has been, that Marjory insists, that the person she spoke had hands, not paws with large claws and she didn’t seem to notice any reddish-brown striped fur.
On the other hand, mesmer magic has been largely responsible for the Biggest Fear mission, where we learned, that Tactician Syska had been replaced by Labwan the Deciever.
Disguises themselves seem to have some magic qualities. When I explored the Brisban Wildlands my Charr Engineer has been perfectly disguised as a human bandit, with no fur, horns, tails or claws poking out, which makes it seem trivial for a Mesmer to hide someones appearance behind an illusion.
While I have no authority over this developer’s personnel department, it is obvious, that the 3D artist possesses a great amount of skill and apparently dedication towards Guild Wars 2.
I would suggest to at least have a look at J. Homer’s portfolio and, if it suits your need for skilled asset creators, offer an entry position.
On a personal note: It has already been suggested, that lich form be race specific to avoid the weirdness of humanoid liches turning into Asura, Charr, or Sylvari Necromancers. The two former do not have a human skeleton and the latter may not have bones in the first place.
If time, space or budget constraints prevent you from hiring, at least contact the artist to get these lich form assets into the game. The quality of this model is just that good.
I understand, that animation is another highly work intensive process, but I think it might be worth it for all the necromancers, who will enjoy more immersive lich forms.
Trahearne isn’t all bad. In fact, after replaying the campaign for my alt, the vegetable leader kinda grew on me. Granted, he isn’t your standard high fantasy leader, who is at the frontlines with his troops, but that isn’t what he’s good at.
The green Necromancer did fill the role of a general, or a field marshal. Him being a scholar fits, as there have been many historical generals and officers, who were far more competent outside of the battlefield. (doesn’t mean they were incompetent there either)
Some areas where a general applies his Skillset:
Planning force and Equipment.
Remember, when in forging the pact the first thing we had to do was talking to the best smiths in order to secute quality equipment for pact soldiers? The pacts constituent orders were competently trained troops to begin with, but it never hurts to be able to place custom orders. Also, with the help of Whispers and the knowlege of the Priory, the pact became the fist aiship deploying military force in Tyria.
Planning mobilization and deployment.
The Vigil already has great tacticians and leaders, so Trahearne needed to decide on a strategy, brief the colonels and get everyone together to make war plans. This is not what most adventurers find interesting though, since it doesn’t involve much action. Instead you look at maps and coordinate your soldiers.
Logistics
Trahearne has the added benefit of great knowlege on the terrain of Orr. On a tactical level, terrain is merely important, but on a strategical level, it dictates your supply routes and restricts campaign movement. Accurate maps of Orr are likely scarce, so a Scholar, who has evaded the undead for years is actually qualified to direct a campaign against Zhaitan. Logistical planning probably won’t drive adrenaline to high levels either.
Personnel planning
The other important part He did right was to delegate. The orders were employed in their areas of expertise with enough liberty to make decisions on their own. The pact is large and complex, but the pact members know what they do. Trahearne didn’t fall into the micromanagement trap – When things didn’t go right, he sent his second in command to make sure they did.
Operational command and leadership.
This is the point, that would have disqualified Trahearne from Pact command. I make no attempt at claiming Trahearne to be an inspiring leader.
This is where the pact could have fallen apart, if it weren’t for another person. Someone, who probably wasn’t impartial when it cam to order politics. However, that someone has proven his or her competence in actual battlefield performance and leadership even before Claw Island.
Whenever there was a critical mission to lead, whenever something had to work on the first try, this someone would stick up for Trahearne and accompany him into dangerous places. Whenever the Pact needed answers, or results, this person would deliver them.
The problem with all that is, that all that stuff is only vaguely hinted at. You wouldn’t see Trahearne discuss strategical details with his staff. The Person to explain the three pronged invasion plan to you would be Tactician Falx and his northern and southern collegues.
I would have liked to see some more details on the organization and planning of the pact. I understand, that having you be part of many different staff meetings would have been tedious for many players, but I would have liked to see some of the reasons, why the invasion of Orr worked in the way it did. Some NPCs to talk to or, Trahearne visibly being engaged in pact leadership.
From what I could gather ingame, a lot of effort went into the campaign in Orr, but we, as players don’t get to appreciate it, because it is not presented.
TLDR: It is not about Trahearne being a bad general (he isn’t except for his people skills) . The problem is, that the Personal Story wasn’t presented in a way, that made it feel truly engaging. (there are exceptions, the “Greatest Fear” missions, for instance.)
More dialogue (not even voiceover, just text) for the interested players and lore experts would have helped.
That reminds me of the time in WvW, where you could lure your enemies into the water to play “Jaws”. Since no one expects actual combat to take place underwater, you can catch even players of the high skill bracket offguard.
Bonus points, if they haven’t familiarized with the underwater downed state, or instinctively swim to the surface, where they can’t attack you.
Could you verify, that you were on an english speaking shard? On Riverside [DE] shards the map chat is actually pretty alive, but unless you speak german, the conversations could mean anythig to you.
The problem here is, that the megaserver can and will toss you into shards regardless of language, so while english is often the to go language, I very much enjoy WvW for the simple pleasure of being able to speak my native language, without having to be afraid, that no one understands me.
This is a non issue for the US community, but on the EU server, there are many languages spoken and there is no guarantee, that everyone is able to use english, or a third language to bypass the language barrier. That is likely the reason, why the map chat is more quiet, since you can’t be sure, that you will be understood.
The most common languages you will encounter on EU are: English, German, French and Spanish.
But those are just the most likely ones. I’ve met Dutch, Russian, Greek, Romanian, Polish, Italian, Albanian, Croatian, Czech and Turkish players so far.
I am not sure Anet took that into consideration, when they introduced megaservers. Like I said, if you are on a server with a [DE] tag, at least you can use that language in WvW, but everywhere else, there’s just no certainty you’ll be understood.
There have been several suggestions to allow players to see which shard they’re in and allow them to switch to a different one. I know I’d like to use that feature.
Hmm. This would at least have the potential to give those, who want the challenge, the opportunity to get fun and excitement around every corner.
I suspect, however, that all the speedrunners would deliberately avoid this, as they see the unpredictability as a bad thing.
Still, this Idea has great potential. The technical issue would be, that the connectors between each part of the map would have to fit perfectly. The easiest way to achieve this is with a grid pattern and a tileset. These don’t have to be two dimensional, mind you, but it would quickly become apparent, that your dungeon is created from a limited selection of premande environment tiles.
This has actually worked well in games like Neverwinter Nights, but I am not sure how the technology is holding up, or how applicable it is to the GW2 engine.
There is a lot of effort behind systems, that create dungeons from algorithms. The algorithm has to create a dungeon, that doesn’t allow map breaking, although I do suspect, that the algorithm could do at least that without issue, provided the tilesets have been made with identical connectors.
Then, the dungeon has to be filled with some bosses chosen from a random encounter list. Again, if you plan some boss arena rooms in the tileset, that can work.
After that, the corridors connecting the parts of your dungeon have to be filled with patrols. This is the fun part, where many random exciting things can happen. Too high patrol density and even the best players will wipe a few times.
Spawn several patrols into a boss arena? Spawn multiple patrols on top of each other?
Good times.
The final issue is, that actually implementing a working random dungeon system, even with just one tileset is a good amount of work. Arenanet has many very talented coders and artists, but a project like this may reqire a concentrated effort from large parts of the team. I can’t see this happen in the next few months.
Don’t let that discurage you from making intriguing suggestions like this, though. Random dungeon crawls have definite potential and even though they could very well be described as their own game within the game, I can see something like this working in the game. Maybe one day there will be randomly generated “Unstable Chaotic Fractals” in the game?
Actually, I like the idea that water breathers fulfill the useful role of allowing you to breathe underwater and I’d welcome the change, that if you dive without breather, you get a breath timer and go into downed state, when the timer elapses.
That would give the breather actual purpose.
The other thing, that is long overdue is a standardized crafting recipe for aquabreathers. How comes we can craft Spears, Tridents and Spearguns, but cannot research the recipe for aquabreathers by combining the appropriate materials?
It would also allow us to decide what stat combination we want to craft for our breathers.
Technically, they can easily be added to the wardrobe and no, they were created to be worn by your standard character model.
The issue with town clothes was, if I recall correctly, that they were diverting developement time and maintenance work away from new content to a feature, that was mostly used by roleplayers.
You could mix, match and dye your townclothes, as you would with other equipment.
I think it wouldn’t hurt if town clothes can be remade at some point, but I can’t see them as anything other than light armor at best, if you want to put it into the standard equipment wardrobe, but not being able to use them makes the medium and heavy armor classes sad.
The problem with townclothes is, that they make no sense in a combat environment, but the tonic decision was bad, that the [Tonic Decision] should be made into a legendary tier item.
The players, who spent real money on their townclothes, to give their characters something to wear in their free time, felt cheated , when it was announced, that the town clothes would be converted into tonics.
Tonics are bad, because they count as a transformation, which disables any character skills and lasts 15 minutes. The tonic is extra arkward in that it can’t even be refreshed by drinking it a second time. You have to end the transformation, because that visual effect when you transform does wonders for your immersion and then drink it again, which evokes the mental image of an exotic dancer.
This is an interesting idea, since underwater combat has been regarded a boring by a vocal part of the community. I think underwater combat still has this huge potential to become a great part of overall gameplay and I think underwater specific builds might be a step in the right direction.
The other stuff, that could be giving more versatility to underwater activities would be the mastery system and maybe additional underwater weapons?
For me, the most fun classes to play underwater are Elementalist and Engineer, since their skillsets tend to offer the right skill for every situation. To give anectotal evidence: When I started with GW2, my Elementalist was better at fighting under water, than on the ground. I tended to enjoy the parts, where renown hearts would take you unterwater and I still remember when I found the Flooded Castavall.
Underwater exploration definitely has its upsides and environments that are well done and elaborate, like “The long Way around” exploration challenge in the Straits of Devastation, it’s just, that the underwater combat needs some love.
The fight against the giant monster fish Fluffy in Mt. Maelstorm could have been great, but the fish’kittenbox seems all over the place and you sometimes can’t be sure that your attacks actually hit.
I have a feeling, that the current underwater combat system will get a major rework, or even a redesign when the Deep Sea Dragon expansion launches and we finally get to take the fight to Steve Bubbles, the most terrifying of the elder dragons.
Yes, you’re correct on that one. The T3 has been made for officers, while the rank and file soldiers wear a different set. However, this does not seem absolute, as there are sergeants wearing the tier 3 and lieutenants, who don’t. As seen in these pictures, there seem to be 3 types of armor. They seem to be worn sometimes, without regard to rank?
Sergeant Walters
Sergeant Rane
But:
Soldier Reina
Lieutenant Pickins
By the way, is there an official light armor uniform? I could find generic NPC clothing, but other than that, the Seraph, unlike the Pact seem to enforce heavy armor for fighting personnel.
Field Medic Leius
Your point still stands. Seraph armor is not always winged and elaborate. Like any fighting force, they value good armor without wings higher, than impractical armor with wings.
On the other hand, all the Seraph weapons feature wing decoration. The dagger and pistol are more subtle, while the shield, longbow and axe feature prominent wing shapes.
Also, according to the screenshots, it is perfectly valid to substitute some of the human T3 cultural armor for CM reward armor. Particularly the Council guard chest armor, as it can be found on Seraph and Fallen Angels ingame.
(edited by Castigator.3470)
I wrote up this speculative article on the Seraph.
The Seraph is the largest and second oldest military organization in Kryta and While the Shining Blade is the personal Guard/Service of the reigning King Kryta, the Seraph is closest to what we’d call the “Army” of Kryta.
Appearance
Members of the Seraph guard can easily be recognized as such, due to the wings on their uniform. These represent the wings of Dwayna, the goddess of life and air, who is depicted rising over the ground. Even the seraph badges are stiled as icons of dwayna.
Arguably the most prominent part of a Seraph’s uniform is the Shield, that has been made in the image of a wing with large protruding feathers. It is rumoured, that the edges can be sharpened, to give the shield additional offensive use.
History
Before the Seraph’s founding, the kingdom of Kryta relied on levies the nobility provided to the king to defend itself. This system was proven insufficient, when the Charr attacked. Driven by the mad visions of their shamans, they managed to defeat King Jadon of Kryta on the battlefield.
Having lost the Battle and the support of the Nobles Jadon fled, leaving a power vacuum, which was filled by the followers of Saul d’ Alessio, who, with the help of their masters assaulted the Charr encampment and killed their leaders. The leaderless Charr retreated back into Ascalon, but Kryta remained under the yoke of the White Mantle.
The Seraph was formally established by Queen Salma in 1079, after the defeat of the White Mantle and their mysterious overlords.
The Bartholos, the first captain of the seraph, was tasked to create a new army bound by the principles of faith in the six gods, loyalty to the reigning King or Queen of Kryta and devotion to its people and their safety.
To guarantee the strength, manpower and organizational integrity of the Seraph guard, there is traditionally no division between commoner or noble among servicemen of Kryta.
Organization
The Seraph guard is organized into companies. Each company is commanded by a captain and subdivided into four platoons, each commanded by a trusted lieutenant.
The lieutenant has a seargant as his deputy to command four squads, that are each supervised by a corporal.
During their patrols, the Squads of five people are often further subdivded into patrols of 2-3 Seraphs.
When an operation demands multiple companies to join forces, the senior captain takes control of the operation. There have been exeptions to this rule, though, as in some cases the most distinguished captain took responsibility.
In other cases, such as the appointment of Captain Logan Thackeray, the Queen can elevate a captain to oversee all the other captains.
Future prospects
There has been discussion within the Krytan services, whether or not it makes sense to formalize Thackerays position and create a new rank, that would essentially be playing a major role in larger battles.
Proponents argue, that the population of Kryta and the available manpower has grown significantly since the age of Queen Salma the new rank would allow to organize larger armies and simplify disputes over operational command.
Detracters maintain, that the current highest rank of captain is sufficient and that a major reform might hinder the war effort against centaurs and elder dragons and that the proposed larger armies would drain the krytan treasury.
Your lich form suggestion contains 100% yes.
I can see no reason not to do it, since the model can be determined by a simple race check and would be so much more immersive for all the Asura, Charr, and maybe even Sylvari necromancers out there.
I’ve wondered why the lich form was always human, all the time for all races. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, if there are creatures like Charr transforming into human liches, even though they have a different bone structure, or Sylvari, who probably don’t have bones in the first place.
Your examples almost look like screenshots from an upcoming beta.
The art team would probably have to do the skins for these examples plus female Charr, female Asura (if at all necessary) as well as male and female Sylvari (How does lich wood even look like?)
This would be developement time well spent and I’d like to ask the question, why these things haven’t been implemented already?
I like Galina Edgecrusher and Snarl Backdraft. These two have made an their appearance in “Test your Metal” and have been sent on missions together, since the adaptation of the ghostbore cannon/turrets.
The other team I like to recruit are the crazy engineers Barron and Fero. These two are so quirky that you can’t help but forget the dragons for a moment to try and process their language.
Oh, Anet. If you finally release a Linux client, I can ditch Windows for good. It doesn’t even matter if it’s unpolished. I have been saving for a new machine anyways and can throw hardware at the client until it runs flawlessly.
A release like that can take some time, but that only means my new PC fund is growing larger.
And even if it’s “just” a SAB standalone, that’s multiplatform, it’s still something.
I wish the best of luck to the graphics programmer, who gets the position.
The usage of the word ranch outside the United States is so uncommon, that the terms meaning in german translates to an american farm. After searching a dictionary it seems the term has spanish origin and wasn’t used until the late 19th century.
Well then. Cattle farming takes place all over the western Diessa Plateu, but the Charr also eat fish, wurm eggs and possibly devourer eggs, as devourer queens can produce large amounts of eggs in a short amount of time. It doesn’t seem reasonable to use all of them as warbeasts.
There is also a cattle farm in the plains of ashford near Smokestead, where the farmer claims to supply the entire town with cattle. This wouldn’t be feasible, if the game was an accurate depiction of the world. Naturally, the map designers take liberties with the ratio of farms to camps/barracks/towns/cities, as the map wouldn’t have the same variety, if we were looking over huge cattle producing estates for kilometers on end.
Cattle doesn’t seem in short supply, though, since Mad Mardine does extensive testing of his prototype and doesn’t seem concerned, that he’d run out of cows to launch at moorwatch tower.
The Iron legion seems to have most of its food production seated in the Diessa Plateu, western Ashford and the Iron marches (presumably). From what is shown in the game the Charr have a large lumber industry, mining operations, forges and kitten nals.
This gives an outline of their industrial capacity.
Their machinery is more advanced than the rest of tyria (except the asura) but we learn from warden Scourgejaw, that the Iron legion is suffering from manpower shortage, trying to balance their economy and fighting multiple wars.
Currently, the Iron legion produces enough food, but is running low on manpower, while Flame legion soldies hunger, as seen in the Iron marches, where Flame Soldiers will try to steal devourer eggs and several NPCs state that without the shamans, the Flame collapses into miserable, hungry, disorganized charr.
It is unclear where the flame shamans get their food from. They can buy it on external markets and teleport it in, but from what we see, Fireheart Rise has a somewhat poor economy, due to poisoned land. The only large operation there is the mine, that relies on slave labour.
To sum up: The charr economy is working like a robust war hardened machine, that if anything, is currently overproducing its needs.
Therefore the number of living charr in Ascalon is lower, than it could be under ideal circumstances.
The charr farmland seems to be less than Kryta, but with better equipment and technology. Let’s say they have comparable output.
This would but the number of Charr in Ascalon below Kryta in terms of population, but keep it comparable to a kingdom in size.
So, Southsun Cove goes marble as well?
Makes sense, since LA seems to be completly consortium designed.
Sell outs.
Marble? As far as I can tell the material, that was used to construct Lions Arch has been concrete. Both contain CaCO3, (Concrete on the surface, marble is usually a form of limestone.) but concrete is infinitely cheaper.
Evon Gnashblade even claims to have supplied the construction materials and that, without him the whole place would still be in ruins.
Did you find the explanation for the royal banners while Lion’s Arch was not under Krytan domination?
While Lions Arch is an independent city state, the territory may still be considered part of Kryta. This is similar to the republic of Genoa and other italian city states, that were formally independent, but belonged to the territory of Italy.
Currently, the kingdom of Kryta doesn’t rule over all the territory, that can be considered krytan, and in case of the duchy of Ebonhawke maintains control over land, that is not territorial Kryta.
Any theories?
I think the second “Evon” ties in neatly with the fact, that we have never seen members of the gnash-warband besides Evon.
Our doppelgänger might me a member of the warband posing as Evon, to help coordinate the massive enterprise.
The warband’s mission was to establish an ash legion foothold in LA.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-evon-gnashblade-disembarks/
We learn from the Cutthroat politics short story, that Evon Gnashblade is the current legionnaire, so he could order his warband to act as his eyes, ears and hands.
It may not be an illusion, but costumes in tyria seem to be rather convincing, as anyone, who did the bandit camp infiltration can attest.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrate_and_disrupt_Seanan%27s_bandits
As the OP said, one of them has been seen blackmailing Hero-Tron, while the other crushed merchants in the rebuilding of Lions Arch. This seems to indicate that they work in each other’s interest, since knowlege of political decisions in advance of everyone else on the market can be very profitable. It could also hint that the political disputes of the Captain’s Council are no secret to the ash imperator, who could use this information to stay ahead of the other legions in terms of intelligence.
What do you think, is there a possibility of ash-legion involvement in the politics of LA?
While I am downloading the game through a WINE virtual desktop, I started reading this and thought about the possibility of a native Linux version.
Like posters before me stated, there is a rather large variety of distributions to choose from. This can be adressed by picking Ubuntu/Debian/SteamOS and optimize towards this, while talented people in the community can make it work in the other distros.
Once you picked your target distribution, you’ll have to begin the actual work.
This can be done either inhouse, which is expensive, you have to hire additional personnel, or reallocate existing workforce. I doubt Anet can afford to start porting inhouse right now, as their teams are likely busy working on the expansion, that’s supposed to come out this year.
The other option they have is outsourcing. ArenaNet already partnered with TransGaming to get a working mac client. Maybe Transgaming would be interested to expand this partnership and provide a working Linux client? As long as it works, I wouldn’t mind a perpetual beta label, or occasional crashes. I crash on my Windows machine too, but I’d like to remove Windows from all my computers.
A third and a little crazy option is, that anet could take the engine’s code, strip all the art assets and ask the community to do the port. Unlikely, as Anet stated they have no intention of releasing the source code to the public.
I don’t think that ArenaNet will do a native Linux client this year, since their team is preoccupied with “Heart of the Thorns”, but I can imagine, that people at ArenaNet are watching the potential market carefully. There is a growing number of Steam games available for linux gamers. Not only small indie titles, but games like TF2 (naturally, as Steam has been the leader in adding linux support) , Civ 5 and Witcher 2
have been made available, on the GNU operating systems. Plus GOG.com has added a lot of backwards compatibility for many of my old favourites. It will probably be a few quartals until more big corporations realize, that a linux port now will be a good investment for the future, even EA seems to have acknowledged the existence of Linux gamers and offered a bundle of HTML5 games. (HTML5 games are inherently cross platform, but it’s the will to make money, that counts.)