Guild Wars 2

videoboy.4162:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Snipped

So, if I’m understanding you correctly, we’re losing the functionality of certain pieces of Town Clothing but, in doing so, we’re gaining a system that will allow you to provide us with even more variety, in a shorter amount of time?

That sounds like a good trade to me.

If your definition of “variety” is “more outfits, but the only way they can be customized is by dye color.” There’s only a single “outfit” slot, not a proper paper doll, so any outfit they create in the future will not be mix-and-match. It has been confirmed that they only way to change an Outfit is to dye it and to hide or show the hat.

There was also a rather troubling remark in there about how they didn’t like having to design an armor set for each different armor weight when they brought out new ones in the gem store. That means that new armor sets are also likely to be Outfits, since the stated purpose of Outfits is to provide a way to use an armor set without it being dependent on which armor weight you use, which means they won’t have mixable parts either. This might speed up the rate at which they can make new armors, but it also means that every single one of them will be uncustomizable because they will have to fit into only a single slot.

In other words, it really doesn’t look like a good trade at all unless they have some sort of Fount of Infinite Variety, because it will take a lot of variety in future to make up for taking away the ability to mix and match town clothes AND future gem store armors.

Part 2:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

In addition to armor skins that are easier and cheaper to collect across characters and the account dye system we do believe the options across a players whole account are much more attractive now.

Yes, the wardrobe in general is going to be lovely, but this thread isn’t about that. It’s about something being taken away that really looks like it didn’t need to be taken away in order for the wardrobe to function, and we still don’t have any answers as to why it apparently does have to be taken away in order for the other changes to work.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters.

I think it’s been fairly well-established that very few people use entire outfits. Why would more entire outfits make us happy? This answer also seems to assume that your clothing designers will suddenly become capable of designing entire outfits for Charr that do not look ridiculous. There is no evidence to support the idea that they have this capability, given that players of Charr have to pick and choose pieces of armor and town clothing very carefully to make them look decent in their eyes. I’m not saying I could do any better, but I am saying that dressing a Charr is not easy, and allowing some individual choice in the matter is probably safer than assuming that you’ll be capable of doing a very difficult task.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We try not to allow too much ‘hoarder’ design where we just keep stacking more and more options on leaving lots of unsupported things hanging around.

The town clothes paper doll has never broken before, to my knowledge. I sincerely doubt leaving it in the game would necessitate any further support beyond un-removing the ability to use it. That would even leave the designers with the freedom to create new outfits that aren’t all in one piece if they ever decide they want to! (And what designer DOESN’T appreciate a bit of creative freedom here and there? I can’t imagine they’re all satisfied with this unnecessary change either.)

Curtis Johnson.8456:

I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible.

Wait, hold on. I thought you were saying that there were problems mixing town clothes and armor. Now you’re saying a lot of them are going to be compatible? How is it easier to make them compatible with armor, which they weren’t designed to be compatible with, and not each other, which they are designed to be compatible with?

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We hope the benefits to the outfit system and wardrobe in terms of future support and additions will be clear

They are not.

Perhaps this answer was formulated before the people involved read the suggestions regarding being able to construct one’s own outfits using town clothes with other town clothes and not with armor pieces, since it is apparent that you will not be making town clothes compatible with armor, but only with itself as a full outfit or tonic. (Except for some items that you refuse to specify, so we have no idea how many or if you’re underestimating our threshold for surprise. I have to admit you’re doing a brilliant job of lowering my expectations, though.)

Right now, it seems like you’re saying that because some single items of town clothing can’t mix with the various weights of armor, you’re going to stop allowing any town clothes to be mixed with each other. In other words, your reasoning for being unable to do something we would like you to do is that you can’t do something that we didn’t really expect you to be able to do in the first place.

Your answer has described why you’d like town clothes to be useable in combat, and why you’d like some of them but not others to be useable with armor…? But there is not a single thing in there that describes why town clothes can no longer be used with other town clothes. Is there really truly no way at all to be able to cobble together your own “Outfit”? And if there’s something in the way of that, what IS it!? Otherwise, there is no logical reason not to give Outfits their own paper doll like town clothes have now.

(Looks like this is going to have to be a two-part post. But I’m sorry, this “answer” raises more questions than it answers.)

Curtis, thank you for the answer, and I’m sorry you have to be the mouthpiece for the decisions of a group and take all the flak for it. (Please read every “you” in the following post as a plural you or a y’all or something, because this is meant for everyone who came up with the words you posted, not for you personally.) But it still doesn’t make sense to me.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We do understand and sincerely apologize that there are creative combinations of town clothes that will not exist anymore. Many have asked why remove town clothes as a concept. It boils down to we believe better armor skinning and the outfit system is something we can add more options to more often and will produce a better supported RP game for everyone with more variety in the future. In short, a healthier game.

This is a reduction in variety, though. Every single “outfit,” including new outfits you make, will look the same with only dye changes and hat/no hat as the options, and the tonics will look entirely identical! How does combining everything into one piece make for more variety unless your clothing designers suddenly become clothes-making dynamos and put out dozens of outfits? (And I hope you don’t expect to charge the same price for a single uncustomizeable “outfit” as you did for a set of town clothes!) Is it really entirely impossible to implement mix-and-match outfits that consist only of town clothes, since they will continue to be separate from armor anyways? This is the exact opposite of “more options”!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

To expand more on what I mean by better support, It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor. Clothing was meant to offer visual options that break the class roles, however we were never completely happy with the way it was isolated from the rest of the game and still felt largely the same. Many pieces could have easily been mistaken for light or medium armor. In many ways it was more akin to building an alt character because town-clothes and armor were so separated. Additionally, every time we added something to town-clothes, it didn’t really help someone building their light, medium, or heavy look. And there was no way to add combat gear fairly without creating 3 versions on the back end (light, medium, and heavy). As a customization platform and sustainable expansion design it left a lot to be desired.

So town clothing was meant to act as a separate class of armor… but because it didn’t help people build looks in the OTHER three classes of armor, you decided it wasn’t working? Doesn’t the fact that people could wear it no matter what armor class they had mean it was working? If town clothes could be mistaken for light or medium armor, then how does giving them to Heavy armor wearers in combat but only as entire outfits without even the ability to change your hat fix that? I still do not understand the logic here. Also, there are plenty of people who buy sets of combat armor and then split those sets across different characters— so am I to interpret the desire to create armor sets that don’t have 3 different weights to mean that you want new armor sets to be “outfits” too, and ALSO unsplittable!?

Curtis Johnson.8456:

When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece).. There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together. So we needed something new to continue to grow in the future.

As you are going to implement them, town clothes will still not mix with armor. We won’t be able to mix armor with town clothes, but why are you taking away the ability to mix town clothes with town clothes? You still haven’t answered the question!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.

Yes, we have been enjoying doing that ourselves. Thank you.

I am a roleplayer in this game, and I have enjoyed being able to mix and match town clothes and choose the colours for the outfit to create a fitting look for my character. I will very much miss this because it has given me the option to make my mesmer look more like a street rat when I roleplay her (but she does look like a cute little pink cake when I do dungeons and level ).

Here she is:
http://i.imgur.com/zI07jrt.jpg

(and here’s an extra pic where she is wearing a bit warmer clothes when visiting Hoelbrak http://i.imgur.com/lCa4TJT.jpg)

Now, I enjoy Guild Wars 2’s soundtrack, but the regular combat music really gets on my nerves. It tends to pop up and drown out exploration music or play continuously during invasion events.

How can I disable combat music? I have a feeling that I can do that with the custom soundtracks — maybe through substituting a short blank music file? I want to keep boss music, but if I understand correctly, they are different playlists so altering regular combat music wouldn’t change it.

Thanks in advance.

Since the EoTM patch, there’s also a button (on the bottom right) to leave WvW on the WvW menu. It’ll teleport you back to where you were before entering WvW. So you don’t even need to relog anymore.

All of you complaining about it make me facepalm. Go to Black Citadel, Hoelbrak, Rata Sum, Divinity’s Reach, or The Grove if you need to craft. It’s not like there isn’t a portal that can take you to them. <_<

I do understand why mayhem cannot be joined as a group, but bell choir and wonderland? That’s just… sad.

And the bell choir. You mention the snowball game but not the bell choir?

I wish people would stop with the “Arena net doesn’t care” when they want to complain about something. By all means I critique, but when you cry “Mummy doesn’t care about me” it’s hard to not just look at this as a giant wall of complaining.

Second of all… don’t say “it’s okay for them to have holidays” and then have this attitude of well if the WvW guys deserve it so do we. Maybe the WvW guys are working on their holidays just because, heck, they decided to login why they were resting their stomachs between turkeys. The communication you get with Anet on the forums is a privilege not a right.

All that said, thanks for making a list and hopefully Anet will see it. We got caught on the Thaumanova Reactor but as long as you have two cooling rods and some hardy players you can just skip to the end of the “fire” room to by-pass it. Fractals are by far my favorite thing in the game and I don’t think the new patch was a disappointment or damages my fun I have in it at all!

Uncategorized Fractal
• Very rarely the fans in the kitty poison room do not activate when pressed. If they do activate the poison starts up again half way through the fan cycle.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

I HAVE BEEN PREPARING ALL YEAR FOR THIS!!

SANTA FLOYD IS -MOSTLY- READY FOR WINTERSDAY
(Gotta get one of them wintersday staves)

ANYONE ELSE READY?!

Bubbles is ready, Santa Floyd! She has been a good girl all year!

Where is Lionguard Lyns

When I recovered from my transformation, I opened the door before me and found myself once more, as luck should have it, having come up by the back entrance to Two-T—

Er.

A fine…eating…establishment. Imagine my surprise when the bartender passed me not only my drinks (I’d just been through a harrowing experience as a skale, shush,) but a stack of letters. Ignoring for a moment the personal implications of people sending letters to a tavern instead of my house, I began to read…

Several days of watchfulness finally paid off, as my supporters’ letters laid out the heightened presence of krait around Lion’s Arch, and even a few skulking around the waters of the city itself! I also received, much to my surprise, a letter from the mermaid, Bubbles, attesting to the same observations my crews had made. Well then!

In light of these new developments, I’ve called off the search for the mermaid; all crews are to be on the lookout for krait instead, and all cargo will be double-checked in case of tampering. Now that we know what we’re up against, the krait are going to find their plans not going nearly so smoothly, by thunder! Could this whole crisis be coming to an end soon?

The mermaid’s letter smelled like an ocean breeze and water flowers. I burned it after reading, then left through the sewer exit, running my hands along the tunnel walls as I went. It would be a shame for the missus to kill me right after I call off the search for the pretty young lass.

Hrm. The lighthouse out by the Lion’s Gate appears to have gone out. With most of my people on watch for krait, I should probably take a look at it myself…

Saturn.6591:

No joke; this reminds me once more of how beautifully designed this game is. Just look at all the detail you can give those characters. Amazing!

(I am a GW / GW2 “photographer” from way back. All I need is a little time and a lot of emotes. Give us more emotes!)

EDIT: Below is one of my favorite examples of character expressions. It’s from “The Southsun Beach Diet”.

According to the Book, Sea of Sorrows, such just under the surface rocks are the only reason Lions Arch still stands.

Risen ships would get stuck on them, and then picked apart by canon fire.

Friendly ships are guided in by locals on row boats.

I’ve also noticed that music levels seem to be a lot softer than it was before, although bumping it up to maximum setting has alleviated the problem.

One other issue that’s come up is that when zoning or even waypointing within the same map, the music will often cut out completely, then start replaying once I regain control. It’s extremely jarring.

Chellae, you are my hero.

So i went ahead and looked at my Documents folder, looking for that Guild Wars 2 folder i never knew about. There i found my screenshots i took and didnt know where they disappeared to just a few days ago. There was no Music folder, but i created one and put my Battle playlist there (Save As function, not copy or move).

And voila, it really worked. I got my custom tracks back.

Sometime the source directory must have changed, or it is the fact that i have the game on a different drive than my system, and my system was reinstalled not long ago. The game worked flawlessly after that (not counting the custom playlist issue) so i never thought it might be connected.

Please re-enable the main menu theme for the character creation screen! For a few months now, the character creation screen has been devoid of any music. It is just eerie silence and quite depressing actually. When I first bought the game, the character creation process was accompanied by the dramatic looping theme of the main menu/character selection screen. Now, the entire process just feels incomplete and lackluster. Creating a new character is somewhat of a lengthy process for me, and the music really helped set the mood and excitement as I was going through each step. Please bring back the music that used to play there

I should also mention that the Grove seems to have the same issues. It doesn’t seem to have its own unique theme and plays only a bunch of unrelated tracks that don’t really match the setting of the city.

For reference, this was labelled as the Grove’s theme but never actually plays in the city. Imagine how much a track like this would add to the feeling of walking around the city. As with Rata Sum, please consider adding unique music tracks to these capital cities.

Does anybody else find the musical atmosphere in Rata Sum to be a bit lacking? It only seems to play generic music tracks that you hear in several other zones and doesn’t really have its own unique theme song (like you hear when you first enter Divinity’s Reach or Hoelbrak).

I’d always thought “Snaff’s Workshop” would be a perfect fit as Rata Sum’s main track, and it is a shame this brilliant piece isn’t being utilized. I’ve even seen this track labelled as Rata Sum’s theme previously, and I was disappointed to find out it didn’t play at all when I first visited the city.