Showing Highly Rated Posts By Danikat.8537:

TY Anet for Transgender NPC!

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

They’re hardly making a big deal of it. We’re talking about one NPC standing in Lion’s Arch who, if you choose to speak to her, will tell you about one of her recent personal life choices.

It’s hardly Anet making a political statement, any more than the asura in Rata Sum who talks about having a trial separation from her partner is making a grand political statement on divorce.

Obviously there will be some cross-over between real life people, events and opinions and those in-game because even when creating a fantasy world you have to start from what you know. But in this case I don’t think it has anything to do with real life politics, whether it’s a current ‘hot topic’ in your country (or anyone else’s) or not.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

IMO Anet went against their manifesto (& I'm glad)

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I’ve been meaning to make this topic for a while now, but I feel like it’s even more relevant in light of recent updates.

For those of you who don’t remember (and if you don’t believe me you can check) before the November update this forum was full of endless topics about how there is no “end game” in GW2 and this game “needs” a gear treadmill to keep people interested. And guess what? We got it.

Which lead to an interesting situation that looked a lot like a case of “be careful what you wish for” where the endgame/treadmill threads were replaced with (IMO a smaller number of) threads raging about how Anet have ruined the game forever and broke their promise in doing so.

But I suspect, given the number of people I see doing and talking about Fractals (positively) it’s actually that we had two groups – one who desperately wanted this and are now happy and focused on playing the game mode they wanted and another who didn’t want it and are still here raging about how they were lied to.

Now I’ve never played Fractals and I have no plans to do so any time soon. I have no interest in vertical progression and certainly not in the form of a gear treadmill. In theory I got absolutely nothing from this additional content, but I’m happy that it’s there.

Why?

Because Anet saw that a significant portion of their playerbase wanted something and they gave it to us. Even though it was something they themselves were not in favour of and had intended to avoid.

And I take that as a very good sign because it means they’re likely to do it again with other issues. In fact they already have. Not too long ago there was a thread with over 100 replies about dailies being boring and how people wished it would change like the monthly. And we got that too.

Then there were complaints that people were “forced” to grind things they would never otherwise do (like gathering and, ummm dodging) and should be able to pick what they did for the dailies. And now we’re getting that too.

I’d make some joke about asking for unicorns that shoot rainbows but they beat me to it.

And personally I think Anet did a kitten good job of sticking as close to their manifesto as they could whilst still giving players what they wanted. Fractals is pretty much a circular grind – you don’t need Ascended gear unless you want to play the higher levels aka the things that give you Ascended gear.

I have to admit I am slightly worried that one day they’ll also listen to the people who (jokingly I think) said everone should be given a fully geared level 80 of each profession and a full set of legendaries when they create their account. But I think that’s unlikely and I’d take what we’ve got over a lot of companies who seem dead set on giving their fans what they think we should want rather than what we’ve asked for.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

dungeon only has one flaw:Elitists

in Twilight Assault

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Whenever I’m not playing with my guild I specify that I’m forming a party where anyone is welcome and especially new/inexperienced players (or new to that content anyway) and this is one of the reasons.

I strongly suspect it scares off the elitists, the ones who weren’t already put off by me playing a ranger anyway, and I’d much rather play with people who are learning the content than people who want to skip everything and kick anyone who dies or doesn’t meet their personal expectations because in my experience it’s a much more enjoyable experience.

(Besides I doubt I’d meet those elitists standards either and I have absolutely no intention of ever doing so.)

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Marjory developing into Mary Sue?

in Tower of Nightmares

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

People are allowed to be good at things, even fictional characters. Someone somewhere even has to be the best.

It should have been obvious right from the start that Marjory has to be very good at some things at least because the Lion Guard, the Seraph, the three Orders and whoever else has been involved has brought her in to the investigation(s) and frequently stepped back and let her lead it. If anything I think it should have been made clearer exactly what her (and Kasmeer’s) skills are.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Moderator)

Discovered my Ascended anger was unfounded

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Very early on there were people on the forum complaining that unlocking all the weapon skills on pretty much any profession except engineer took too long and was too much of a grind.

A few weeks later people (probably the same ones) were insisting to new players that unlocking your weapon skills was nothing and you’d be done with it before you knew it, but getting a full set of Exotic armor took far too long and forced you to grind dungeons.

Then Ascended armor was released and all hell broke lose while getting Exotic armor was quietly relegated to no big deal, most likely something you’d achieve in the course of running dungeons anyway.

See where I’m going with this?

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

IMO this is another jumping puzzle.

in Bazaar of the Four Winds

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I agree, all they ever add is jumping puzzles.

It would be nice if they did something for people who like other aspects of the game, maybe something like:

  • A new PvP map
  • New mini games
  • Something to show for all our achievement points (besides titles)
  • A reason to explore the overworld again, some sort of scavenger hunt (not necessarily the precursor one, we could be looking for anything, just a reason to explore)
  • New world bosses and DE chains
  • New guild missions
  • Something new for WvW, like environmental effects we can trigger
  • A way to customise PvP matches and watch other peoples
  • Something to reward WvW players and give them a sense of progression
  • A way to compare our progress in all aspects of the game to other players, guilds and servers so we can see how we’re really doing
  • Something to make dailies rewarding
  • New dungeons, maybe a really kittene with some new mechanics that won’t be face-rolled right away by experienced groups
  • New item skins and items, maybe even new tiers if it won’t make too many people angry

But no, all we ever get is jumping puzzles.

(In case you’re wondering yes that is a summary of all the permanent content from the Wiki’s Releases page in rough reverse chronological order. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Releases )

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Enough is Enough

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I remember the days when each new campaign had utterly ruined GW1 to the point where no one played it any more. Balance across all game modes was completely, irreparably ruined by new classes and skills. All the new areas were horrible to navigate, had terrible mechanisms locking you out of parts to force you to grind through the whole storyline. New PvP modes were only ever farmed by bots because no real people would ever want to play them. And then to top it off the addition of heroes killed any hope that was left by turning GW1 into a single player game that was entirely for farmers.

Good times.

I agree, I’d like to see how Anet can completely ruin GW2 forever with an expansion. (I’ve heard Blizzard have managed to drive away every single player they had 4 times and are on track to do it a 5th time. I’m sure Anet could top them if they wanted to.)

On the other hand I’ve heard Season 2 is going to include some things players have wanted for a long time like more permanent content and a new zone (not confirmed but strongly implied) and I’m looking forward to how that will ruin the game forever too, it seems unlikely given that it’s exactly what players want but they’ve pulled it off before.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Why do PvE - players complain...

in The Edge of the Mists

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I doubt PvE players ever worried about queues or having equal numbers on each side, those are the kind of things you don’t even think about until you’re familiar enough with WvW to know it can be an issue.

Most of them just don’t like the idea that other players can kill them. Yes things attack and kill you in PvE too but they’re usually a lot easier to beat and not as persistent. If you don’t get to close they’ll completely ignore you and if you run far enough they leave you alone. Whereas another player might well attack as soon as they see you and will chase you as far as necessary to kill you.

It’s especially jarring in GW2 because not only is there no PvP of any kind in PvE zones but players are actively encouraged to help each other. If someone else comes towards you then at worst they’ll run past and make no difference, ideally they’ll come and help out with whatever you’re doing.

But, speaking as a PvE’er who only recently started doing WvW and only does it rarely you do get used to it and although you might die more often it’s no big deal, the consequences are the same as in PvE so there’s no real risk. The worst part is having to run back to where you were if no one is around to rez you.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Stuck at 4/5 forever...

in Living World

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Your reason to log in and keep playing could be that you enjoy the content and want to do it.

I don’t understand this attitude that some people have where a game is only worth playing for the rewards. Isn’t the point of playing a game to have fun doing it? Sure getting a reward can be fun too, but if that’s your only motivation to play I think you’re already missing out on a lot.

(And in case you’re wondering I’ve missed achievements and items too. I wasn’t able to get the final version of Mad Memories at Halloween because I wasn’t at a high enough level for the zones, I couldn’t do the jump puzzle because it wouldn’t load and I missed some of the Wintersday achievements too. But it doesn’t bother me, I’m enjoying the other content anyway.)

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Sclerite Weapons Tickets - Next to Impossible

in Last Stand at Southsun

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Because every time they make one of these RNG boxes a handful of idiots spends about $200 each on them. Even people who spend a “reasonable” amount probably pay more than they would if it was a straight sale.

As long as that keeps happening they’re going to keep doing it for 2 reasons: 1) it’s profitable and 2) they’ll look at number of complaints on the forum vs. number of boxes sold and conclude that a vocal minority don’t like them but the majority do, even if it’s actually a minority of players buying huge numbers of boxes.

Basically your best option is to stop buying them and hope everyone else comes to their senses and does the same. And until they do there’s plenty of other cool weapon skins in the game.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Living Storylines with no choices

in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

As other people have said it’s a nice idea but it’s not practical to implement.

They’ve said before the Living Story is developed by 4 teams, each producing 1 months content, so each release starts being developed 4 months before it’s released.

So in order to give us choices they either need to make it a choice that won’t have any impact until 4 months later, or they need to develop 2 (or more) versions of each release, and then only release one of them. Which means at least 1/2 their time would be going into making content that will never be released. That adds up to a lot of wasted effort.

And that’s assuming it’s a voting system like the election back in the summer where every player gets to make a choice but only one version is taken forward as the ‘official’ choice. Letting us each make our own individual choice requires branching storylines which get much more complicated.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Bug: Ho-Ho-Tron Mini hates water

in A Very Merry Wintersday

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Ho-Ho-Tron is not able to go into water because it reminds him too much of his time on Southsun. The memories are too painful and he just shuts down as soon as he gets wet.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

[Suggestion] Should lying dead be more punishing?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

How does this affect anyone except the dead player?

All I can think of is that dead players still count towards even scaling and if that’s the case then I think changing that (so only living players count) would be a much simpler and less intrusive/controversial fix.

I agree that a lot of people just stay dead on the floor hoping someone else will rez them and save them the WP fee/time to run back and that it can be annoying. But I can also think of a lot of situations where someone might end up dead through no fault of their own (like parents with kids having to go afk quickly or anyone being hit with lag) and punishing them for it by removing any rewards they were earning or sending them all the way back to the point where they entered the map seems excessive.

Especially when there’s a much simpler way to make sure it doesn’t affect anyone else’s gameplay. Events already scale dynamically as people enter or leave the area, it shouldn’t be too hard to make dying count as leaving.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Royal Terrace Bug - No Commune Point

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Also, just a note on terminology because this is something that bothers me:

A bug is a fault with the game – something that’s not working as the developers intended it to. If there was a place or object in the Royal Terrace labelled as a commune point which you couldn’t actually commune with then that would be a bug.

Not having one in there at all is a design decision. It may not be one you agree with, it may not be a good decision, but it’s still a decision Anet have made (or not made), not a fault with the programming.

In other words calling this a bug is like buying a car without heated seats and then complaining that they’re broken because they don’t heat up.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Suggestions Wasted effort?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I think every single change to the daily achievements has been preceded by discussions on the forum. Most recently there were lots of topics from people asking for a cap on the total number of points and how many achievements you have to do per day – which lead to the current system of doing 3 achievements for 10 points (instead of up to 10 per day for 1 point each as it was before) – and then people said doing dailies after you reach the cap feels pointless and some people miss it, so they added 2g to the rewards.

There are numerous other examples too.

I suspect the main reason they don’t reply to say that they like an idea is they don’t want to set up unrealistic expectations.

Firstly because making anything for a game takes longer than many people realise. If they say they like an idea and will use it some people will be expecting it by next Tuesday, or the next big update at the absolute latest and in the majority of cases that’s just not realistic. But when it doesn’t happen it becomes another case of Anet “lying” and deliberately breaking their promises to disappoint players.

But it’s also highly unlikely that anyone at Anet has the authority to say that on their own. If they like an idea they’ll need to pitch it to the relevant people, who will discuss it and work out how to implement it. And even if it does happen it may be changed in some key ways from the original version, which might then disappoint people who saw the thread.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

future lw releases, open beta testing plz?

in Living World

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

My other MMO – Elder Scrolls Online – has a Public Test Server (PTS) and exactly the same thing happens there with numerous hot fixes and follow-up patches after an update is released.

I think there’s a few reasons public beta testing isn’t effective at stopping this:

1) The vast majority of people who play on the PTS are not actually interesting in finding and reporting bugs. Many simply want to mess around with the tools provided for testing (like instantly creating a max level character), or they just want to play the new release early, either just because they’re curious or so they can do things like practice raids so they can claim to be the first to beat it when it’s released.

2) Related to 1 in some cases people have actively tried to prevent bugs and exploits from being reported so they’d make it into the live game and could be exploited before being reported and fixed.

3) Even when people do provide feedback it’s usually not great. QA is as much a skill as any other part of game design – I’ve been told that a good tester can recite from memory every single action they took (as in every key they pressed, exactly where their character walked etc.) for the past hour. They need to be able to do that in order to correctly identify what’s causing a bug and replicate it. So a post from someone on the forum saying “X is bugged, plz fix” doesn’t really help the company at all – they still need to get someone to find out what’s actually wrong with it, what’s causing that and what needs to happen for it to be fixed.

4) Sometimes they simply don’t have time to fix everything. There’s a lot of factors that go into deciding when to release even a small update and bug fixing is just one of those. They can’t put the release on hold indefinitely to make sure all the bugs are fixed, so the QA team just has to do as much as they can with the time they have. They’ll have a list of bugs ranked by priority (how badly they break the game) and they’ll fix as many as they can in the time they have and then fix the rest later. Often if a release has “tons of bugs” it’s 99% very minor things – they description on an item was wrong or you have to talk to an NPC twice before they’ll sell you something. What you don’t see is the ones they fixed instead – the one where talking to an NPC crashes the server or entering a story instance locks you out of your character or right-clicking on an essential item causes it to disappear, or something explodes and turns 1/2 a dozen surrounding items bright pink….

5) Sometimes bugs appear between testing and release. My favourite example of this isn’t from a game at all: In my old job we had a database we used to log enquires. When we got a new version it was tested by all 7 end users on the same PCs we’d be using the final version on and we all agreed it was pretty much bug free. The only thing that happened after that was we saved it to a new location on the server. Somehow that introduced a bug where if you clicked the empty space next to a button it asked if you wanted to save, and if you clicked yes the program crashed. I left the company a year and a half later and that was never fixed, because no one could figure out what was causing it.

On top of which they have to accept that a PTS means putting staff time (and therefore money) into moderating that community, collating feedback and ‘managing’ testers, and that it means there will basically be no surprises in anything they ever release. It’s bad enough when stuff leaks – imagine if there was never any mystery about any new release because everyone already knew exactly what was in it, right down to every single new item, and 1/2 the players had already completed it.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Mythbusters: Precursors

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

To be honest a lot of the ‘myths’ and superstitions are probably not worth typing out a post to disprove because people know they don’t really work, they just want to believe that they do.

Gamers are nearly as bad as gamblers for inventing their own superstitions (especially when it’s something that effectively boils down to gambling). You’ll be hard pressed to find a Pokémon player who never holds A+B or B+Up or whatever other combination when waiting to see if they caught a pokemon. We know for a fact it doesn’t work because people have extracted the code and gone through it line by line and there is nothing like that. But it doesn’t hurt either, and it makes you feel like you can do something to help your chances.

Human beings do not like random events. We like patterns, events that are caused by previous circumstances. Even if the pattern is incredibly convoluted and virtually impossible to follow it’s better than random events. Because if there’s a reason you got a specific outcome, and if you can find out what that is, then you can change it – you’re in control.

It’s actually an instinct that goes back a very long way in our evolution (and can be seen in many other species too) and has played a vital part in our survival. In real life there are very few genuinely random events, and most of those are not things that will directly affect us. (It’s things like the rate of decay of radioactive material, although even there it’s debateable whether it really is random.) So the ability to find, follow and change patterns of cause and effect is extremely useful.

Unfortunately a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into simulating as closely as possible a random event in mad-made systems, particularly computer games, in order to get around the human instinct to manipulate patterns for their own benefit. And part of the reason it works is because even if we know it’s actually random, and no matter how many times we hear, or say ‘RNG is RNG’ we don’t want to believe it.

Having said all that if you do want to do something constructive to debunk a lot of the theories about precursors a good start would be explaining what a percentage probability actually means. That a 1 in 500 chance doesn’t mean you have to do it 500 times to get the outcome you want. Or even that if you do it 500 times you are guaranteed to get one success. Because that seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Would this type of subscription be bad?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Firstly any subscription will be badly received in a game whose main selling point is that it has no subscription.

Secondly if your priority is not upsetting the economy giving ‘free’ access to over 50g worth of minis (assuming ‘common’ means blue rarity ones that are part of sets 1-3, it goes up dramatically if you include any others), and a similar value of dyes and removing one of the only consistent gold sinks in the game (waypoints) is not the way to go.

Also they can’t give you access to minis, dyes and outfits only when you’re paying a subscription because they’ve previously said it’s not possible for them to remove items from players wardrobes.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Gift of Battle/Catmander for WvW newbies

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Note: There’s a tl;dr version in Illconceived Was Na’s post below.

As you might know there are two new hungry cats, both in WvW. One requires a Can of Spicy Meat Chili and the other requires the Gift of Battle. Both sell mini versions of themselves for 100 WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets each.

For someone who hadn’t played WvW in years (and never played it much at all) obtaining all of that seemed like a daunting task. Then I got started and found I’d completed most of it in 3 evenings, or approximately 6 hours total. (I just need another 100 Claim Tickets.)

If anyone’s interested here’s my guide to getting the Gift of Battle (and the other stuff along the way) for WvW newbies.

Things to know before you start

It doesn’t matter which world you’re on
Leaderboard position has very little to do with your individual rewards so there’s no need to change servers. (I did all of this on Desolation, which is about ½ way up the leaderboard and was often in 3rd place in the skirmish.)

On a related note don’t worry about your worlds score, or potential points, or the difference between a match and a skirmish. The score does have a slight effect on how quickly you gain Claim tickets, but not enough to worry about it.

You will die, and die often
But waypoints and repairs are free so the only problem is having to run back. Do not wait around for people to revive you, there isn’t time. (Unless they’re right next to you and there’s no enemies nearby.)

It’s best to play at peak time & for a few hours at a time
Progress in WvW reward tracks is like HoT meta events – you build it up by doing stuff and then it decays gradually when you’re inactive and resets if you leave the map, so it’s better to play for as long as you can at once than to do a little bit at a time. Peak time is best simply because there will be more people online and so more activity.

WvW often involves waiting, but that’s ok
You’ll wait for a group to form, wait for the group to move off, wait for siege to be built, wait for siege to destroy walls, wait while you claim points, wait for the enemy to arrive, wait for the enemy to leave, wait for people to clear their bags/go to the toilet/get on the same group chat…and sometimes (at least if you’re not on the group chat) it won’t be clear why you’re waiting.

Sometimes you’ll also spend what seems like ages heading towards an objective only to abandon it and go somewhere else because plans have changed.

But that’s ok. As I said WvW participation for the reward track builds up and decays slowly over time, so you’re not really losing anything by waiting and it’s an important part of playing tactically, which will allow you to achieve more in the long-run.

Getting set up

WvW uses the same equipment as PvE, but you can set different traits and skills. I won’t suggest builds because I haven’t got a clue what to recommend, but the option to have a unique WvW setup is there if you want it.

I strongly recommend some type of speedboost however as it makes it much easier to keep up with a commander. (I find Signet of the Hunts passive 25% boost is fine.)

I also recommend unlocking WvW gliding as soon as possible. To do this open the WvW menu and select the last tab – Ranks and Abilities and scroll all the way down to the bottom. You need 3 World Ability Points to unlock gliding and you get those from gaining XP in WvW so you may need to play a bit before you get it, but it’s worth getting as soon as you can.

Also don’t forget to select the Gift of Battle reward track (3rd tab down). There’s no point working towards a reward you don’t even want.

Starting

When you open the WvW menu you have 5 maps to choose from – Eternal Battlegrounds, 1 Desert Borderlands, 2 Alpine Borderlands and Obsidian Sanctum. Ignore that last one – it’s a jumping puzzle. But you can choose any of the others. Lots of people prefer certain ones, but any is fine. I recommend picking one without a queue if you can just because it’s easier to get in. (I also recommend the desert borderland, for reasons I’ll explain below.)

You’ll start off in your team’s home base, which is completely safe from enemies and has a bunch of NPCs offering different services. This is a good time to sort your build out, and check out the map.

The WvW map
At first it’s really confusing, there’s loads of coloured lines and symbols, some of them are moving, and it will probably just look like a mess. Basically symbols are control points and the colour shows who controls them. The lines show the area controlled by that point – important because you can only glide in areas your team controls.

There are 4 main kinds of control points: Keeps, Towers, Camps and Ruins.

  • Keeps are the hardest to take over – they have several layers of defences and are the most likely to be defended, they need a big group.
  • Towers only have 1 layer of defences, but still need siege to get in.
  • Camps have no walls, just a few guards so they can be taken solo.
  • Ruins are undefended and often unclaimed because they’re not as useful ownership decays over time.
    There’s also Stonemist Castle in the middle of Eternal Battlegrounds, Shrines in desert borderlands and Sentries on all the maps.

The Match Overview tab on the WvW menu will show you what each team controls on each map. It may seem like a map where your team is winning is best, but that just means you have fewer objectives to take over and getting participation credit will be harder. I find maps where you’re ‘losing’ are often best.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Danikat.8537)

Party system

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I’m going to try and clarify some of the terminology being used in this thread, which might make it easier to understand each other.

Server: In real life this is the computer your PC connects to when you’re running the game, and where your account information is stored. In-game it’s your World – who you fight for in World vs. World.

In GW2 every server in a region (see below) is connected so they can all share data. Which means it’s possible for players on different servers to play together.

Unlike in some games players cannot create servers and there are no private servers or ones with special rules for joining (although some EU servers have tags to show their official language if it’s not English). Everyone can join any server and everyone will play together with people from all the servers in their region.

Region: North America or Europe. This is both the physical location of the server clusters (NA ones are in Texas and the EU ones are in Germany) and where players on those servers are most likely to be from, but anyone in the world can connect to any server (except China, they have their own system).

Map: These are different areas of the game world. Queensdale, Wayfarer Foothills, Lion’s Arch and The Heart of the Mists are all examples of maps.

Instance: This is a specific copy of a map. ‘Behind the scenes’ servers will create and delete instances as needed so the number for each map changes constantly. When you get that notification that the map you’re on is going to be closed and you can move to another one that’s moving you between instances. In this game there are (speaking generally) 3 kinds of instances, each used by different maps.

  • Public – Most maps are like this, everyone in the region can enter and leave them freely, either by logging into a character who was already there, using a waypoint or portal or using the LFG tool.
  • Private – Dungeons are an example of private instances. A new one will be created for each party that enters the map and the only way for other people to enter that instance is to join that party.
  • Personal – On rare occasions there are maps where every person entering will get their own copy even if they go in together. I can’t remember any definite examples but I think the Hall of Monuments works like this.

In general the term ‘instance’ is only used to refer to the last two kinds, because in most other MMOs public maps are not instanced, there is only ever 1 copy of that map per server.

Taxi: This is an unofficial term for a method used to move between different instances of public maps. You form a party with someone who is on the copy of the map you want to be on (for example a Silverwastes Map where the Breach event is about to start) and then right click their picture in the party interface and pick ‘Join in [map name]’ to move to their instance.

It works in private instances like dungeons too, but there the game will make sure to put everyone in the party into the same instance when they enter or will prompt you to move over if you were already inside when you joined the party so it’s usually not referred to as a taxi.

Map shard: This is another name for an instance.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Total infrastructure restructuring = $$$

in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I take it you haven’t actually logged in to look at the changes?

The gates in all the cities (and the Heart of the Mists) still work, they just take you to the Vigil Keep instead.

All the game features, services etc. that were in LA have been preserved.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

My Greatest Fear Plotline

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

New story summary part 2:

Temple of the Forgotten God
The entrances to these instances haven’t been moved, so you actually have to go to the location where the story starts. Which seems odd, because no explanation is given for why you can’t keep using the air ships.

Apparently none of the dialogue has been changed. The chapter starts with Trahearne talking about Tonn’s death and how Ceera reacted, including how she blames me, even though I’ve never met either of them. He then introduces me to Sayeh, who I was speaking to during The Source of Orr.

Through the Looking Glass
Fighting a regular Eye of Zhaitan seems somewhat anti-climatic after defeating the Sovereign Eye, and it seems strange that Trahearne wanted to go to all this effort to get one to study when we already know what they are.

What the Eye Beholds
Now that we’ve seemingly stopped using them (for transport anyway) Trahearne decides to introduce the airships and explain how and why they were created.

Surprisingly the characters reaction to another Eye doesn’t seem like a plot hole. Because the focus is mainly on the fact that it may have allowed Zhaitan to see and react to the experiment it’s easy to miss the fact that they’re also surprised by the existence of more than 1 Eye.

Although this is ruined by the story journal, which is entirely focused on our need to learn what the eyes are and what they do for Zhaitan – something we’ve already been told.

Estate of Decay
And now Snarl Backdraft and Galina Edgecrusher are treating me like a stranger and at each other’s throats, they were getting on so well back during The Source of Orr.

This is also the first point where IMO it becomes impossible to miss that the story is out of order – last time I saw them they talked about defeating the Mouth of Zhaitan and now, later on, we’re doing exactly that.

Ossuary of Unquiet Dead & Further into Orr
Nothing notable here, except for a lot of talk about the need to establish forward bases so we can move further into Orr. I’m not sure what happened to our air support but apparently being dropped in wherever we need to be is no longer an option.

Stealing Light
Now things are getting really strange. Elli is back, and Zott, who she said was dead, is here too. How does that work?

Conscript the Dead Ships & Ships of the Line
And now Zott dies. Pretty much confirming, even for people who have never played it before that the story is out of order. The Source of Orr is obviously supposed to happen after these missions.

And just in case anyone was still in doubt at the end of the mission Trahearne starts talking about having a ritual that might be able to clense Orr, if we can find the right spot and get Caladbolg there.

And as a final touch Trahearne specifically tells you to meet him at the Azebe Qabar royal crypt (the location for Against the Corruption) but then you move on to Victory or Death in Arah.

Victory or Death
I didn’t bother doing this because I assume it’s also unchanged, but it doesn’t really matter too much because it’s still at the end so any references to past events will be appropriate at this point.

Overall Impressions
Even if someone had never played the story before the only way I could see them missing the fact that it’s been changed is if they didn’t read/listen to any of the dialogue.

As a veteran player the thing that bothers me most is actually how anti-climatic the end felt. The big celebration, the moment when everyone felt like we really could defeat the dragons, came early on when we made our first big step. When we finally get to Arah it’s not celebrated at all, it’s just another mission. Combined with the anti-climatic fight against Zhaitan this ends the story with a sense of “Oh, ok we’re done” rather than any real sense of victory or hope.

Suggested Solutions (In order of preference)

  • 1) Put the story back into the original order. Yes this will make the last 2 chapters significantly longer than any of the others but I don’t see that as a problem.
  • 2) Change all of the dialogue and text to plug the plot holes, ensuring that events and people aren’t mentioned until they actually occur and (preferably) add some mention of the fact that we’re finally going after Zhaitan to the end of Ships of the Line. This would be a lot of work for Anet though, and it would involve getting all the voice actors back.
  • 3) Just pull out any dialogue referencing previous events. The story would be very empty, but at least it would be consistent.
Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Virgin to "Veteran" in one month

in WvW

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I’m jumping the gun a bit on this, as I actually still need to get another 20 World Ranks to finish the meta achievement, but that’s ok because I’ll get those just by playing normally.

Which is something I didn’t expect to be saying a month ago.

A month ago I’d never played World vs. World. I’d only entered the map 5 times (twice to do the EB puzzle for Living Story achievements, 3 times for the laurel/badge vendor). It wasn’t that I’d intended to avoid it, I’d liked the idea since I first heard about it but I kept finding “reasons” not to start playing – during the betas I wanted to focus on testing characters, then I wanted to learn the basics, get to 80, do dungeons, do the Living Story…by that point I’d started thinking I shouldn’t try because everyone else would be better than me and I’d just be in the way.

Then I found out the Season 1 meta achievement awards a mini Dolyak and all my excuses evaporated.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I’ll do almost anything to get minis but it’s not the first time I’ve been glad something has pushed me to try things I’d normally not do, and it probably won’t be the last. I don’t know why it took me so long to start but now I have it’s definitely something I’ll be sticking with.

Of course at first I did have no idea what I was doing. I started off with exploring the map and capping ruins just because it was something I could do solo, then running with the zerg and hoping no one would notice I didn’t know what to do.

I have to admit it did surprise me how nice everyone was. I decided early on to swallow my pride, admit I was new and ask if I didn’t understand and every time I asked a stupid question in /map like ‘Why shouldn’t we attack the door when it’s being rammed?’ or ‘Why are we taking a camp without taking the towers in front of it first?’ I got at least one helpful answer (and no one giving me a hard time), which both helped me learn and made me feel a lot more positive about playing WvW.

I think I’ve gotten a lot better now. I’ve definitely learned a lot, I’ve decided I like borderlands more than EB and prefer the enemy borderlands (taking their garrison is a great feeling), I’ve learned I can take camps solo and have some idea of when that’s more useful than running with a group. I’ve got a rough build worked out.

I put veteran in inverted commas in the title because in spite of having (almost) earned the Season 1 Veteran title I think it’d be hilarious to take that seriously. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ve loved the experience so far and I’m really looking forward to playing a lot more WvW in future.

I know there’s been mixed reactions to the Season 1 achievements and the fact that it’s drawn a lot of PvE’ers into WvW, but I also know there’s been threads every so often from people wishing more people would play WvW, properly, and wanting to know what it’d take to get them to start. I can’t speak for everyone else but I can say this approach has had at least one success, and I’d be surprised if I was the only one.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Suggestion: Rebalance Legendary Journey

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

You do realise that the finished legendary also has identical stats to the other, much easier to obtain, ascended weapons right?

Legendaries (and their precursors) were never supposed to be about stat progression. The entire point is that they’re entirely cosmetic, so it’s something you can get if you want a long-term goal to work towards after you’ve finished leveling or because you like the cool skin but if you don’t want to you’re not hindered by being able to get the best stats.

There’s already numerous ways to get level-appropriate equipment as you’re going along. Notably the level and story rewards and crafting. We don’t need legendaries changed into another way to do that.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Riddle me this batman

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Because it’s much easier to make new gliders and outfits than to balance the game.

One amateur modder working alone can make a new skin in a few hours, less if they’re familiar with the game they’re working on and have a clear design in mind when they start. And if no one likes it the only impact is that Anet paid someone for a few hours of work that didn’t turn a profit.

Balance takes multiple people because they have to consider all game modes, professions and all the ways those skills/traits could be used in combination with the others. It’s a bit of an avalanche effect – slightly buff one skill because it’s a bit weak on it’s own and someone might be able to use it in conjunction with others to make an OP build that makes an existing meta build too easily countered so people stop using it and start looking for counters to the new build and come up with new combinations (especially likely since they usually don’t change just 1 trait at a time) and after a week or so you may find you’re in a worse position than you were before. In the worst case scenario it may lead to large numbers of people avoiding a game mode or quitting all together (or the significantly less serious but much more common effect of telling everyone loudly and repeatedly that they’re quitting and everyone else should do and then carrying on playing as normal).

And that’s assuming the changes actually do have an impact. It’s just as easy for it to not have a significant effect and still upset players simply because it was changed.

If you’re unconvinced you could try and exercise: You explain exactly what you’d do to balance the game – which skills you’d change and how you’d change them. Then we’ll see what impact that has on other players (monitored through responses to the thread) and we can extrapolate from that what the effect might be if those changes were actually put into the game.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Maybe i am noob OR i have a point...

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

You used lol, didn’t you OP?
so, how is that different?
If y o u know what it means, its OK to use it?
;)

No it isn’t different.

However, in my defense i think it’s safe to assume ’’Lol" is a commonly used abbreviation by modern day forum users.

You cannot compare ‘’Lol"( My neighbor is 65 and doesn’t speak english but knows what this means by the way) to ’’DS’’, ’’CC’’, ’’TP’’ and so on….

Now take that winky face somewhere else LOL

Fun fact for you: back in ye olde days of the late 90’s when mobile phones were starting to catch on and text messaging (with a stupidly tiny character limit) was the new thing LOL was actually the subject of a lot of confusion and occasionally upset among some people.

Why? Because while many people used it to mean ‘Laugh Out Loud’ (and at the time it was restricted to things that were actually very funny) to others it meant ‘Lots of Love’.

So a text like “heard ur dog died, hope u ok lol” could accidentally cause a massive falling out between the sender and recipient.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

My concerns about GW2

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Regarding point 3 (gold sellers). If you read the EULA it already is against the rules and Anet can and do ban people for selling gold (as well as associated activities like botting and stealing accounts to get that gold).

If you know of a game that has a 100% success rate at preventing gold sellers please do say what it is. I’m sure Anet (and most other MMO companies) would love to find out how they do it.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Russian localization

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

(Your English is fine.)

This has been requested many times, along with support for other languages. Unfortunately it looks like Anet see it as an ‘all or nothing’ system – they won’t just add Russian text (even using the Latin alphabet) – they’d want to add Cyrillic text, Russian voice acting (which requires 10 new voice actors just for player characters), a Russian version of the website, the option to contact Support in Russian (and therefore Support staff who speak Russian) and probably at least one dedicated Russian language server (not sure if that would be EU or NA, or both, I don’t know which region most Russian players choose).

And all of that is a lot of work and expense for Anet. Apparently more than they think attracting more Russian players is worth.

Personally I don’t understand why they can’t settle for just translating the text. That’s still a lot of work to do, and would require hiring at least 1 new person to do it but much less than a full translation.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Strange Rock is a bad joke

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

This sounds more like the hungry cat scavenger hunt – which awards you cats running around your home instance – than anything that has ever been involved in making a legendary in this game.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Really, really disappointed

in Festival of the Four Winds

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I think I’ve got all the Living Story items (can’t check now) and I use many of them but I’ve never thought of them as prestige items. “6 months ago I did 15 easy achievements!” isn’t anything to brag about. They’re just nice skins/items. (Or ugly skins that will sit unused in my wardrobe.)

I’d much rather someone else be able to get an item they really want and “ruin” my “prestige” than they have to miss out on something they want so they might possibly one day be jealous that I’ve got it.

And that goes for everything. Living World skins, gem store items, limited-time promotional give-aways like the Wizards hat (which most players only got because the forums threw a tantrum that new players were getting something they couldn’t have), everything in the game should be attainable by everyone who is playing. (Note: I said attainable not easy, the mini Liadri is a good example, it came back but you still have to beat her to get it, before anyone complains about newbies being “given” their rewards.)

If it was up to me they’d all be available periodically at least, if not permanently, and many more would be tradeable so players who get them and don’t want them can sell them to those who do. (To me that’s a win-win, I can get rid of items I don’t think I’m going to use, players who want them can buy them and if I ever change my mind I can buy another one.)

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

The Replica Annoy-o-Tron

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I turned the dialogue off completely because I got sick of hearing my character (and everyone elses) saying the same things all the time. That silences this backpack too.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Its wrong only a few large guilds get Mega

in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

You don’t need all the achievements to get the meta-achievement, you can use dailies instead. In fact you could do nothing but daily achievements (which are often things like ‘kill 10 Aertherblades in LA’) and get the meta achievement that way.

I’m in a guild of 50 people, haven’t played the event with them at all and haven’t been able to get onto my servers main map (not that I’ve really tried) but I managed to get in to kill Scarlet and I’m 2 achievements away from the meta achievement.

I don’t feel like doing any of the achievements I’m missing so I’ll do two dailies (probably tonight and Saturday, depending on what they are) and get it that way.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Dear Kiel voters: We tried to warn you

in Fractured

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

So people who voted for Kiel based on the Fractals offered got exactly what they expected and voted for.

What’s the problem with that?

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Solutions to the mini pet issue

in Wintersday

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I think it’s been established that a lot of people aren’t happy with the way festival mini pets are being distributed. There have also been some good suggestions for how to fix it, but I’m worried they’re getting buried in between complaints and complaints about the complaints.

So what I’d like to do is collect them all into 1 thread, and try to find out which ones people like best. So with that as the aim please don’t post in this thread unless you’re offering a solution to the mini pet distribution issue, an improvement to an existing suggestion or voting for your preffered one.

Also just to clarify I’m not referring to the minis you get from the airship dungeon and/or buying direct from the gem store. I’m referring to the ones that come from the gem store chest – the Snowman, Festive Golem and Airship (and by extension the quaggan which you use them to create).

Here are the ideas I’ve seen so far, in no particular order:
1) Make the minis unbound. That way regardless of how they’re originally available everyone will have a chance to get them later on by buying them. It might be a small chance (because they’re rare or expensive or both) but that’s ok.

Some people won’t pay real money for them if this is an option, but other people will buy more in order to sell them and overall it will balance out.

2) Make them either cost real money OR be aquired through luck, not both. This seems to be the root of the issue, as it was with the halloween weapon skins. No one minds paying real money for cosmetic items, no one minds getting them by luck, but paying for the chance to get lucky is too many downsides for the reward to balance it out.

3) We buy a chest and get a bunch of random items, as now. But we are also guarenteed to get a ticket item and can trade a number of tickets for any of the items that come from the chest. So you’ve still got the gambling element, but with a maximum spend. We KNOW that if we open 30 chests, or 52 or whatever amount Anet thinks is reasonable we will have gotten enough tickets to get the item(s) we really want.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Danikat.8537)

lets make anet some money to fix this game

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I’m curious about exactly what changes you would expect to see as a result of this extra cash, and why you believe a lack of money is currently the main or only barrier to those happening.

(And how long you expect to wait before we see any results, bearing in mind we’ve been told 1 Living World release takes 4 months to create.)

Anet employs something like 300 staff at any given time and based on NCSoft’s financial reports they don’t seem to be struggling for cash (we don’t have any direct information about Anet themselves because they’re a wholly owned subsidiary so their finances aren’t available to the public), so I’m not convinced a lack of money is what’s holding back development.

My guess, and it is just a guess, is that it’s a combination of factors. Such as:

1) Anet have different priorities to some players – what one person sees as a major bug/oversight/balance issue etc. someone else may not even notice. Look at how long it took them to offer the ability to separate deposit and compact in your inventory, and we were explicitly told that was a very quick and easy fix once someone decided to do it.

2) Development takes longer than many people appreciate. We were told during Season 1 that they couldn’t offer us choices on the outcomes of a storyline (at least not often) because it took 4 months for a team of people to develop each release. I doubt that was some kind of freak exception to the rule and everything else is quicker and easier. Based on other games I play their development times are fairly typical.

(And if you think that’s bad I was told today that it will take up to 6 weeks for someone at my work to replace the text on a single web page.)

3) It can take even longer to decide what to do. This is probably the most speculative item on my list, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Particularly when you’re talking about things like balance changes. They probably can make minor changes like increasing/decreasing cool-downs, adding more damage to skills etc. very quickly, but simply churning out changes ASAP in response to every flavour-of-the-month build or unpopular skill would just make the situation even more confusing because players wouldn’t have time to adjust, get used to popular builds and find ways to counter them using existing options and without proper testing and consideration the changes may end up doing more harm than good.

4) They need to be sure the changes they’re making are actually good ones. Take WvW for example. I see a lot of people demanding they ‘fix’ it, but other than bringing back the old maps and/or starting another tournament I see very few suggestions on what exactly they should do and even less agreement on the suggestions that are offered. (And I seem to remember just as much complaining when the old maps were available and even more during tournaments so I’m not convinced either of those is really a fix.)

If they go ahead with an idea and it turns out to be the “wrong” one it’s going to create even more backlash than if they did nothing. Look at what happened when they responded to players requests for traits to be more meaningful and for a mechanic like the skill captures from GW1 – they did exactly what players had asked for and made traits unlock as rewards for specific activities and people complained so much they had to change it back again.

More money might enable them to do things more quickly (might, I’m not convinced having a bunch of extra people doing my job would help because then we’d have to spend a lot more time coordinating who does what and tracking what’s been done and the amount of actual work getting done would probably be about the same), but simply doing things quickly isn’t always a good idea and I can’t see any guarantee at all that it would mean they’re suddenly making exactly the changes you personally want. They might make the changes I want instead, and then you’ll be even more upset. Or they might do something a 3rd person wants and neither of us is happy.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Marjory's Journal... Preferred a Jade ticket.

in Dragon Bash

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Personally I think the final reward for a Living Story arc should be a ticket that lets you claim any one of the other rewards, plus one special but largely cosmetic reward for people who got all the rest by other means.

So for example in this case instead of Marjory’s Journal we’d get a ticket that lets us choose one of the following:
Holographic Wings
Shatterer Wings
Jade Weapon Ticket
Dragon Helm Pack (Gift of the Dragon Bash)
Mini Racing Moa
Holographic Risen Knight
Or Marjory’s Journal

(I haven’t included items that can be bought directly from the gem store because if you want them you can already just buy them, so it’d be a bit pointless.)

The fact that this ticket would only be obtainable at/towards the end of the event, and the fact that you can only get one, would encourage people to still try and get the rewards through normal means, but it would provide a back-up for people who missed something and reduce the chance of people ending up with a bank full of special one-time items we don’t want to use but don’t want to destroy because it seems like a waste.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Do people prefer limited items or not?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I’d much rather everything was tradeable.

To me cool gear is stuff I like the look of. Or good combinations put together by players. It doesn’t matter how many other people can get it. I’d much rather everyone be able to get the skins they want, and sell the ones they don’t so they can get something else, than everyone be stuck with specific items based on the content they were able to play.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

How long to reach level 80 ?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

It will vary a lot depending on the person. My first level 80 took me over 200 hours, but I spent a huge amount of time doing things that would get me no experience at all (like trying to break out of the map and chatting in LA).

It’s possible to do it in less than 24 hours (without resorting to tomes of knowledge) if you know what you’re doing.

The main thing to know is probably that dynamic events give more experience than hearts, so if you see any events going on around you then you should join in.

Also make sure you have gathering tools and take the time to use then. Each gathering node will only give you a little bit of XP but it adds up fast and it’s an easy thing to do while exploring.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Core Tyria Could be harder if...

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

You have very different memories of the Queensdale champion train to me. The only challenge involved was trying to do enough damage to get credit in the time between other players deciding people were permitted to attack the champion and it dying.

And of course putting up with the torrent of abuse if anyone dared to attack a champion “out of order”. (Which is why they were removed – new players introduction to the game was getting abuse from players if they started an event without a zerg present and being told the “end game” was being part of that zerg, which unsurprisingly tended to put them off.)

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Would you support ANet w/ bonus missions?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Interesting. This thought emerged from story-driven side quests mentality, so no new cosmetic stuff, but mainly story to weave LS chapters better or give a bit of depth to some characters. Still, I’d like to know if these story bonus packages were around $5-$10 that would be OK (not with gems)?

They would have to include more story and/or gameplay than the Bonus Mission Pack did. $10 (or £7 at the current exchange rate) is about 20% of the price of a full game, so I’d expect about 20% of a full games storyline for that price.

Edit: To clarify I’m completely in favour of new story, whether it’s playing through historical events or seeing new developments. I’m not opposed to paying for that with real money. But like any purchase I want to make sure I’m getting reasonable value for money. I won’t go to the Chinese restaurant that charges about £30 a meal when the other one in town is just as good and charges £15, and I won’t pay £7 for 5 minutes of story when I can get 30 minutes of a (different but equally good) story for the same price elsewhere.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Danikat.8537)

Half Off For New Players

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I just feel like Anet has turned into Walmart, I refuse too shop at Walmart.

So you refuse to shop anywhere that has sales? Even Harrods has sales. (A UK department store famous for being extremely up-market, expensive and posh. Only shop I’ve ever seen with a dress code for customers. I’d use an American equivalent but I don’t know of one.)

I don’t see the problem. I paid full price to get the Digital Deluxe version on the first day of pre-purchase and I knew when I did it that sooner or later the game would be on sale because that’s just common sense. But I decided I didn’t want to wait, it was well worth the ‘extra’ money I paid to get to play from the beginning.

Unless you’ve never been inside a video game store, or looked at online shops, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that even the best games in the world go on sale sometimes. It doesn’t means it’s a bad game, or that it’s failing, it’s just another marketing tactic.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

The Original Digital Deluxe Edition & HoT?

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

People who owned GW2 before the free version came out don’t get anything extra on top of what they already had, but what they do get is an account without the huge list of restrictions that are placed on free accounts. Free accounts can only have 2 character slots, no map chat, barely any access to the TP, and a whole load of other restrictions.

Which version of the base game you have doesn’t affect what you’ll get with HoT. Just like with the base game there are 3 different versions with different prices and you can choose which one you want, but buying the Digital Deluxe Edition the first time around won’t get you anything extra, all the bonuses for that came with it.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Aurene's Father

in Lore

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

If I remember correctly none of the people of Tyria actually know the sex of the Elder Dragons, and they should therefore be referred to as “it” in English and “he” in languages where genderless pronouns are not an option and the default is male, but still without implying they are male. (If I remember correctly that’s French and Spanish, I can’t remember how pronouns works in German.)

But just like people in real life people in Tyria will make assumptions. The Sons of Svanir assume Jormag is male because they are giant misogynists. They believe men are always more powerful than women and that Jormag is the ultimate symbol of power. So to them Jormag being female is a complete contradiction.

And they only have those sexist beliefs because Svanir was corrupted by Drakkar (one of Jormag’s champions) and his sister Jora rejected the dragon’s power. Not because of anything Jormag, or even Drakkar, did.

I can’t think of any other specific examples of an NPC referring to a dragon as “he” but I know it’s happened. But I’d put it down to that individual making an assumption (or a mistake by the writer, I caught myself referring to Jormag as ‘he’ while writing this post).

All we know for sure is Glint self-identified as female. But for all we know dragon reproduction is completely different to human reproduction and we don’t have names that really match their sexes.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Would this type of subscription be bad?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

If you like the idea of paying a subscription you can just spend a fixed amount on gems every month, and then use those to buy whatever “subscription benefits” you want.

Including converting them to gold and using that to fund waypoints, buy minis or whatever else you want from it.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

It's the little things...

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

One of the things I love in this game is when I’m swimming along on the surface of the water, looking at the reflections and surface effects, and then I dive down and it all changes, all the blurry shapes under me are suddenly clear and bright and it’s like I’m in a different world.

It’s especially nice when there’s a big contrast between the two. For example earlier today I was swimming along the river in Archen Foreland in Bloodtide Coast, heading out towards Sorrowful Sound to mine some gold. It was grey and rainy above the surface, then I dove underwater and suddenly I’m in peaceful waters with bright, colourful reefs and a humpback whale in the distance.

It’s a very small thing in the grand scheme of things. But it makes me smile every time I do it and reminds me how beautiful this gameworld is.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Why Gw2 is drifting away from me.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

For anyone else who finds paragraphs helpful:

In the early years of Gw2 I have never had more fun with a game. I would come home from school everyday and play until I went to bed, rinse and repeat. However when people wonder why Gw2 is maybe not doing the best it can be its for a few reasons, stupid reasons in fact.

1) WvW server merges: I have had at least 50 people from my server who have called it quits after the server merges. It totally defeats the purpose of one server working together and eliminates what that server did as one. For example, my server would do “Theme nights” and reset parties at north camp before the WvW matchup reset. All of that stuff is eliminated when you have 2 other servers with you. Server merges completely destroyed my super friendly, super close server community.

2) Condi Metas: This is all about PvP and a little of WvW roaming. Basically Anet requires you, for PvP to either run the cheese condi builds and completely destroy anyone you want, since condis have been way over buffed in the past years, or your build better kitten well be able to cure condis like no other.

This is why PvP is growing less popular, I think, every day. There’s no thrill of winning a 1v1 fight if all you do is stand there and spam some condis and call it a day, take us back to the good ol’ days when we had to make builds from scratch not just jump on the condi bandwagon since they’re godly overpowered or just go to Metabattle and get a build that will make you seem like you know what your doing.

3) Buffing then Nerfing (MOST IMPORTANT): I never was able to understand why Anet (not trying to rip on anet I love them) can’t simply make all classes even. Every big nerf patch a few classes get nerfed, and rightly so (I’m looking at you Dragonhunters and Engis) but for some reason they feel the need to buff the HELL out of other classes.

So since I’ve been playing since the November after launch I dont believe I’ve ever witnessed all classes being equal. There is always 3,4, or even 5 classes ridiculously set above the rest. Like engi, I mained a engi for the longest time rocking my awesome rifle build (I’m still salty anet about removing Synaptic Overload) back when engi was believe it or not, hard to play!

Well thats my rant, I feel some of the skill and knowledge of our classes and the game are fading since new players can throw together this overpowered condi build from Metabattle and destroy everyone. I could be wrong, give me some feedback and long live Gw2 (with changes)

(I also removed the # because it was causing weird indents.)

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Danikat.8537)

Why "Edge 2.0" isnt a name choice?

in Lore

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I think this is covered in ‘thematically appropriate potential names’.

Whilst Destiny’s Edge 2.0 (or Edge 2.0/ DE2 etc.) is what players have been calling this group it wouldn’t realistically be what they call themselves.

For one thing it’d be incredibly presumptuous. Destiny’s Edge is probably the most famous guild in Tyria, you’d have a hard time finding anyone who hasn’t heard of them. Even for people who have just killed a dragon declaring yourself to be the continuation of that legacy is a huge statement.

But it also seems very disrespectful to the original. With HoT spoilers:a second death in the team and two members seriously injured it does seem like Destiny’s Edge is finished. But that should be for them to decide, not for someone else to say “ok, you guys had your chance, you’re done and we’re taking over now”.

Although with Eir’s son, Zojja’s protégé, Rox who seems to have some kind of relationship with Rytlock beyond wanting to join his warband, and the player character who brought DE back together and frequently joined them on missions as a sort of extra member I suppose there is an opportunity for them to pass the torch to us. But again that should be their decision and in that case we should stick with just Destiny’s Edge.

Although also maybe these guys just want to be their own guild instead of being seen as a new version of someone else’s.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

(edited by Danikat.8537)

stupidest / funniest thing you ever saw

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

Talking of freaking people out: I often make temporary characters, and because I know I’ll be deleting them soon I like to have fun with their names and appearances rather than spend ages making something lore appropriate.

One re-occurring one is Mr Pinkay, the charr Mesmer (see pic below).

One day I was playing Mr Pinkay in the Plains of Ashford when someone I’m pretty sure must have been new ran up (starter gear, starter dyes, no guild, no title). As often happens when playing a Mesmer one of my skills created a clone, and the new guy kept running between me and the clone, presumably wondering what the hell was going on. Then the fight ended and the clone disappeared in a cloud of pink butterflies, as they do.

The new guy literally backed away, said “wtf?” turned and ran.

(I did try to whisper him to explain, but he didn’t reply. I think two huge pink charr, one of whom turns into butterflies and disappears may have been a bit too much.)

Attachments:

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Pre-order next expansion?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I realise this will sound strange but to me HoT and the new expansion are largely unrelated.

Yes they’re both GW2 expansions but for all we know at the moment that’s where the resemblance begins and ends. So IMO it doesn’t make sense to decide if I’m going to buy this expansion based on what I think of HoT.

For an extreme example my other MMO, Elder Scrolls Online has released 3 DLC packs this year:
1) Open-world PvP themed zone where you sneak around fighting monsters and other players at the same time.
2) Traditional RPG quest where you’re the hero who saves the orcs from whatever the heck manages to freak out orcs (not played it yet).
3) Thieves Guild questline and zone where you’re committing crimes and evading the guards.

Obviously in that case if I’d decided to buy (or not buy) one entirely based on what I thought of another I’d be disappointed, and it might be the same with GW2.

So I’m going to wait until we know what content and features this new expansion will include and what it costs and then decide based on that. Which is what I did with HoT as well.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

Feedback for the developers

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

So you choose to play the parts of the game that involve zerg tactics and then complain about the fact that it’s boring?

If you don’t like that style of play that’s fine (I don’t particularly like it either) but there are many other things you could be doing. Such as the various storylines (designed to be played solo, or with a maximum of 4 other players), dungeons, Fractals, raids, sPvP.

Structured PvP and raids might be especially good for you since they require each player to fufill a specific role and the entire thing can fall apart if they don’t do that.

But even within WvW there’s roles like scouting (which can be boring admittedly), or manning siege where you are making a very obvious contribution above and beyond what you might do as part of the group.

It’s also possible to simply roam around exploring the world, completing events, talking to NPCs and finding things like jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. But I get them impression from your post that you’re very much driven by specific rewards or goals so I doubt that would appeal to you since you won’t get anything from it except the experience.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”