Guild Wars 2

zealex.9410:

sokeenoppa.5384:

IMO every1 should pay for lws1,2 and3. More money to anet, More content faster ^^

Yeah should have been like this from the start. Paid Dlc with a season pass for who ever wants that. More money to anet more content in the game.

I think the only reason they let you unlock it for free was because they were transitioning from the Season 1 model where it was free but only available for 2 weeks then it was gone forever. As much as players kept asking for permanent content and new maps I can imagine it would have been extremely controversial to suddenly start charging for it.

I assume they get enough income from their current payment model that they can justify the free period, but I’m sure if they were struggling that would be the first thing to go.

Palador.2170:

Mike O Brien.4613:

We can’t wait to play Path of Fire with you!

Rein it in there, sunshine. You don’t want to be anywhere near us when we start to play.

Why?

Because you know what’s out there, and are waiting to see our reactions to your favorite parts. All of the devs are, I’m sure. And we… we’re going to go over and poke that random bush. Or talk to that NPC for the tenth time. Or go AFK right before the nifty event goes off. And so on.

Hang around with us on launch day, and I promise you some of you will break down into screaming fits of frustration.

Needless to say, I can’t wait for launch day.
::innocent grin::

Considering the way GW2 is designed I think some people at Anet absolutely want you to go poke the random bush or talk to the random NPC or even see what happens if you don’t complete an event.

I feel like this game is one of the best for encouraging and rewarding you to go off the beaten path. It may not always reward it in conventional ways – a lot of the time all you get is some interesting dialogue or something odd to take a screenshot of – but as someone who will always go left when I’m told to go right just to see if I can I certainly feel like it’s more encouraged in this game than most of the others I’ve played.

I could absolutely image a dev being there going “Nah, lets not bother with this event, it’ll only repeat in 10 minutes” because they know that actually if it fails a boss will spawn or something.

I don’t understand the appeal of various forms of season passes/pre-orders etc. either. It was a huge leap of faith for me to pre-purchase GW2 but I’d read a lot about the game and it seemed highly unlikely it was going to disappoint me. For various reasons it was much less of a gamble with HoT and PoF but it’s still not something I’d do unless I was absolutely sure I wanted the game/expansion.

With some games they start nagging you to buy a season pass before the DLC has even been announced – you have no idea what you’re actually buying but somehow you’re supposed to go for it anyway?

I have to admit when it was first announced as this great new thing I didn’t like the idea of DLC at all. It sounded to me like you pay full price for a ‘starter pack’ game and then have to keep paying out to get the full game. And in some cases that’s exactly how it’s used. But I don’t think GW2 is one of those. I certainly feel like I got a full game’s worth of content when I bought the base game, and whilst HoT was undeniably smaller I thought it was worth the price too (and now you can get both together for less than HoT cost originally it’s a great deal). So I don’t mind paying extra for additional storylines, just like I don’t mind paying extra when a new expansion comes out.

If you suspect someone of botting, hacking, cheating…whatever the best thing to do is report them.

It’s not an automated system – you won’t get an innocent person banned simply by sending a report (or even several reports). Nothing will happen until an actual person has looked into the situation and made a decision. So if they’re not doing anything wrong they have nothing to worry about.

If they move away before you can report them there’s nothing you can do, but chances are someone else will report them or Anet’s own systems will pick them up sooner or later.

Flatley.1620:

Actually, having. “Where” command might come in handy. For instance, /w would list all people in your current map so you could judge the population for possible event attendees. Maybe. Kinda.

Having a count of people in the map, and ideally some idea of where they are, would be very useful in some situations. It’s not uncommon for someone to drop into a map like Dragon’s Stand or SIlverwastes (where player numbers are important), look at the area immediately around the waypoint and declare the map “dead” and start telling everyone to leave based entirely on the number of people in that one spot.

Or do the same just because there isn’t a commander. Last time I did Dragon’s Stand the north lane didn’t have a commander until about 1/2 way through. We had about 20 people and were actually completing our events ahead of the other two groups but people were so fixated on the need for one person to have a signpost over their head that they kept on insisting we were going to cause the whole map to fail because there weren’t enough people.

Once someone gets started on that, and especially once they’ve told other people who may be new to the map and don’t know how it works it can be very hard for anything (even succeeding at the events) to get through to them. Whereas if there was a quick way for them to check the population when they enter (maybe showing a total as well – e.g. 53/150) they wouldn’t need to start worrying over nothing.

But I can’t see any benefit to providing the actual names of the people in the map.

The Living Story is DLC, just under a different name. And just like DLC in any game you have to buy it if you want to play it.

I can see the sense in Anet offering some kind of bundle where you can buy HoT+PoF+LS 2&3 all together, but it’s highly unlikely they’re going to just give it away to everyone. I think we’re lucky they make it free for the first few months, I don’t know of any other game that does that.

Also if you look there are a lot of player characters dressed realistically, for Tyria. They might have 1 glowing item or effect but nothing that makes them look out of place.

But they don’t tend to stand out as much, especially if they don’t provoke the same kind of emotional reaction.

Thanks for letting us know!

I hope ‘crunch time’ isn’t too stressful for you guys. I’m really looking forward to PoF and finally, actually getting my raptor (and the other mounts) but I’ve heard some crazy things about what developers go through to meet deadlines.

I think it’s also worth considering the world you’re trying to immerse yourself in. Fantasy worlds aren’t just about a lack of modern technology, it’s also (arguably more) about what’s been added.

Magic is extremely common in Tyria, even non-magicians are likely to know at least a few simple spells and/or have magical items. Likewise holographic technology is well established and common, and for small holograms the projectors can be tiny. I have absolutely no doubt that if the same was true in real-life both magical effects and holograms would be incorporated into clothing just like plastics, lazer printing and other modern technologies are in real life.

And whilst people in real life might not typically go into battle wearing bunny ears they can and do fight in all kinds of silly and impractical hats and throughout large parts of history the majority of people fought in their every day clothes because they couldn’t afford anything else and weren’t part of a standing army so they didn’t have armour or uniforms provided to them.

Edit: More generally if you think people wouldn’t wear something because it’s impractical I can only assume you’re male and haven’t spent much time discussing clothes with women. I spent 99% of my time in jeans and a black t-shirt and even I have 2 pairs of shoes which hurt if I wear them for more than a few hours but look amazing and various silly froofy dresses I have to wear for special occasions because apparently jeans are not ‘formal enough’.

All legendary weapons require 2 crafting professions at 400 – the one needed to make that type of weapon and one other. The Gifts are all account bound so there is no way around it unfortunately.

I strongly recommend looking up a guide for the quickest/cheapest way to level it. It can make a huge difference.

First point: Are you aware that your server only matters for World vs. World? All other maps are shared with all servers in your region, so the only reason to transfer is because you want to play WvW on a different server or because you want to switch to the other region.

Second point: It is impossible to transfer to a full world, so it’s best to check the one you want to go to before you start. Population is entirely dependant on the number of accounts considered to be active in WvW. It isn’t updated instantly and has nothing to do with the number of people currently online so checking at odds times of day won’t help. Populations update periodically based on how many people have been playing WvW recently. I’ve heard just after the Friday reset is the best time to check, but I don’t know how true that is. Popular servers are highly unlikely to have spaces open up so it might take several weeks before you’re able to transfer there.

If you still want to transfer there are 2 ways to do it:

1) Pay gems – As Widowmaker Z said you can do this via the World Selection button on the Character Select screen. The gem cost depends on the population of the server you’re going to, with lower population ones being cheaper.

2) Delete all your characters and you’ll be able to transfer for free. Anything stored in the bank and anything which is account-wide (like achievements) will be saved but anything in their inventory and anything soulbound will be lost. (Be aware that even if you make an identical character with the same name they still can’t use items soulbound to one of your old characters.) Names will be saved for 24 hours so you’ll have time to reclaim them after transferring.

At the time they were promoting the fact that Season 2 was permanent and infinitely re-playable, unlike Season 1. So the idea was the first time through you focus on the story and then repeat it for achievements (and unlike Season 1 they were actually a challenge, not simply grinding kills/clicks).

I don’t know why they didn’t update it later on when the novelty of repeating episodes later wore off and having to do it on every character just to attempt the achievements on them proved unpopular, but that was the reason originally.

A lot of dyes are like that – particularly the shiny/glossy ones. They’re affected by the material they’re applied to and the ambient lighting.

But in general Celestial is brighter than White and Permafrost is brighter than Celestial. In some lighting they’re almost indistinguishable, in others white looks almost grey and Permafrost is still bright white.

I think you’ve misunderstood how different races work in this game and/or how game design generally works.

All races are the same in terms of stats, weapons and other equipment they can use and apart from a small number of racial skills the skills they can use too. So that’s the easy part to carry over. Reducing it would actually be more work because Anet would have to work out what they can keep and what can be removed without destroying balance (and simply the ability to play the character in all situations) and then modify everything from the trait and skill windows to the combat UI to accommodate it. That’s a lot of work.

And on top of that you’re suggesting that each of these new races should have it’s own, unique storyline, separate from the one everyone else is going through? That would be a huge amount of work. Seriously, writing narratives, building the models and constructing the instances and doing all the animation and voice acting is the vast majority of game design in an RPG. We were told during Season 1 and 2 that they were able to do 1-2 releases per month because the studio was split into 4 teams and each worked on 1 release. So 1 Living Story release took 1/4 of the people at Anet 4 months to build, and that was before they were adding a new map each time.

Unless you can think of a way to produce these “really rich storylines” chapter by chapter which requires fewer people and less time that typical game design you’re basically suggesting they double the amount of work necessary for every release.

And the end result is a severely limited new race with a story that will never relate to what everyone else gets to do?

I think this idea would have completely the opposite of your intended effect – it doubles the time and effort (and therefore money) required to produce new releases for very little benefit for players. For many people no benefit because a race that can’t even use all the existing builds is useless, for people who mainly care about the storyline or the novelty of a new race it might be an interesting choice for one alt, but I can’t imagine it ever justifying the effort required.

We don’t know.

Anet are not a publicly traded company (you can’t buy shares in Anet) they’re a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Which means their financial information is not made publicly available.

The nearest we have are NCSoft’s quarterly reports which show how much money they got from Anet, but there’s a lot of information missing from that – for example it could drop because sales are down or because Anet were permitted to keep a higher proportion of the profits to put towards developing new content.

But what we do know is that they’re about to bring out a new expansion and are planning further Living Story releases after that, so they’re obviously confident the game and the company will keep going for a while at least.

I agree. Whilst I’m not colour blind I do think it’s something that should be taken into consideration for all games. Especially since the same options can help other people too, sometimes even if you’re able to distinguish the colours normally things like red AoE circles can still be very hard to see due to the background and the option to change it would be very useful.

Will I be held back purely on the basis of not owning HoT?

In general no. There are a few things HoT allows you to do which might come in useful in specific situations – for example gliding makes reaching some vistas easier – but you will always be able to play without them.

Will I be able to ‘catch up’ with mastery points given I do not own (and do not want to own) HoT?

HoT and PoF have separate mastery points and tracks. Everyone will be starting from zero PoF mastery points and will have to get them from the new expansion so you won’t be at a disadvantage there, but you won’t have access to HoT masteries either.

Will I be outclassed by people who own specializations from both HoT and PoF? As an example, will I be fighting Reaper Necromancers who have access to Scourge abilities?

Not like that. You can only use one elite specialisation at a time so you have to be either a Reaper or a Scourge, you can’t be both together. It might be that HoT specs are preferred for some professions and it’s quite likely they will be better at certain things (for example if you want to play a support ranger then druid is a much better choice than soulbeast) but it’s not a straight-forward increase in power or abilities and at least at first it’s highly likely everyone’s focus will be on using the new specs.

Can the PoF expansion features be used in all aspects of the game, or are some features taken out in some areas? e.g. are mounts disabled in WvW?

I think mounts are disabled in WvW, but that may well change given they’ve just introduced gliding to WvW. You will be able to use mounts in all PvE maps however. There’s certain areas where they’re disabled (like jumping puzzles) but that’s all.

Overall people who own HoT and PoF will have more options. Whether those are better or simply different will depend on the situation. But you will never encounter a situation where you can’t progress because you don’t own HoT.

You will definitely need PoF to get mounts since they’re unlocked by finding them in the new maps, and trained through mastery tracks. But once you’ve got them you’ll be able to use them almost everywhere. There are already some places where you get a buff (debuff?) saying mounts are disabled – like the gliding disabled one. But that’s mostly just in jumping puzzles.

As for content, materials, gold farming etc. staying relevant I assume it will be much the same as when HoT came out – at first the focus will be mainly on the new stuff, most people will be in those maps, there will be a surge in demand for new materials which will then settle down, but people will still play other areas of the game, just like they still played in core maps after HoT was released, and will still need those materials etc.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

lothefallen.7081:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

lothefallen.7081:

I’m a cishet male

Wtf is a “cishet”?

Male assigned at birth, male identifying, but non-conforming heterosexual.

Okay… and what does any of that mean? Explain it to me like I’m 6.

Cis stands for comfortable in skin.

Your sex and your gender match up (you’re not transgender).

Then het for heterosexual. So, cishet.

Actually cis is a Latin prefix that means ‘same as’, the opposite of trans. For example in molecular chemist you get cis isomers where all the functional groups in a molecule are on the same side, and trans isomers where they’re on opposite sides.

I suspect ‘comfortable in skin’ is a backronym.

Dovienya.6597:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I play mostly female toons and in all the years of playing I can only remember once or twice someone saying something. I really don’t think that’s a common problem. If you’re getting remarks, maybe you’re saying things in chat that gets people to react.

My husband and I both play all female characters (in games that give the choice) and have had this discussion many times, as we are having it right now in response to your thread.

In 20+ combined years of online gaming playing female avatars, we can count the times we’ve been hit on by random players on one hand.

I think it varies a lot between games. In Ultima Online (back when I played it) it was fairly common, but then it was fairly common for people to respond positively too, so in a way it made sense.

These days it certainly happens to me more often in Elder Scrolls Online than Guild Wars 2, but it’s still rare and it’s happened to both my male and female characters. Sometimes its kind of ambiguous too – like someone following me around using the /bow emote and periodically whispering me asking if I’m female in real life and if I look like my character…I’m not sure it was flirting but I can’t think what else it could be.

I’ve known people who said they would never have made a female character in their previous MMO because they’d get too much hassle (both positive – like flirting, and negative – like being rejected for dungeon groups on the basis that they’re obviously an incompetent casual player who only cares about dressing up their character), but they’re happy to do it in GW2 and some other games because that kind of thing never happens.

Paralux.6714:

Third of all, in Guild Wars, as with most MMORPGS and other computer games, the majority of players are men, so most female characters you see in the game are actually played by men.

Actually recent reports have shown that the percentage of female players in many games, including many MMOs is about 40%, and rising. Female gamers really aren’t that uncommon any more online or offline.

In my experience it’s never been that unusual, but that may be biased by being a female gamer myself and gravitating towards people who share my interests. The main exception I’ve found is, oddly enough, Pokemon Go. Most of the time I’m the only woman who shows up for a raid, although definitely not the only female player in my town. In other games I’ve never had trouble meeting other female players, or meeting other women in real life and then finding out they’re also gamers.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

lothefallen.7081:

I’m a cishet male

Wtf is a “cishet”?

Cis gendered – physical gender matches the one you identify as. Het – short for heterosexual. I’ve not seen it written that way before, but in some circles it’s fairly common to clarify that when having a discussion like this.

Well I certainly feel lied to. I’ve been playing for an hour and a half and I haven’t been stressed at all.

Unless you count the moment I was fighting two veteran sand eels and then a sand shark jumped out at me. But I’m playing a Holosmith so I had about 15 different ways to explode them all and survive.

I’m not sure it would take much extra work to turn them into outfits. The tonics already give you a full set of clothes (most using the Riding Pants combined with the relevant top), and when they were town clothes they had dye channels.

So there’s no design work needed and I doubt it takes much work to combine a design with the ‘tech’ needed to make it function as an outfit since the whole system seems designed to allow them to produce new ones easily.

And if they did it would allow them to reintroduce these items to the gem store and all the people who have started playing since the wardrobe was introduced. Or simply didn’t get these when they were separate pieces but would get them as outfits.

I also maintain the belief that bringing back the original default town clothes as a free outfit would not only be great for players but for Anet too. At the moment you can completely ignore the outfit tab and outfits generally until you’ve already decided to buy one. If they gave everyone a free one it would give players a taste of the functionality, and get them used to using the tab and that could easily lead to previewing the other outfits and deciding to buy some.

I’d love this.

Sometimes if you start gliding while experiencing a bit of lag or while the area is still loading the glider doesn’t appear and it looks like your character is just flying on their own.

I’d love to be able to do that all the time.

Is it really that common to require you to buy all the preceding releases in order to play the newest one?

I guess I’ve been lucky in that all the online games (and offline games, I think) I’ve played didn’t do that – you could pick and choose which releases to buy.

Of course it was unusual at the time that you could buy Factions or Nightfall without having Prophecies – usually you do need the ‘base game’ to play an expansion, but then as far as I remember it’s been quite common for expansions to come bundled with the base game at a reduced price so the main difference was that you started in a new location.

Ariurotl.3718:

Rawr.9467:

Tbh you could have probably traded gems for gold and would have had enough for the skins you want.

Words of wisdom right there. Do the math, see how your drops from chests stack up against buying the item outright, and see what works best for you. Chances are, unless you particularly enjoy gambling, you’d be better off buying gems, converting them to gold and buying the skins.

Doesn’t always work. At least one skin (the Tempest Torch) isn’t currently available on the TP. Which is annoying since I was planning to buy one.

But as other people have said the Black Lion weapons do cycle periodically – even if the one you want isn’t available now it will come back later. It may cost 3-5 tickets when it does, but even then the price on the TP will drop.

Ardid.7203:

It would make sense if they were account bound. However, linking the birthday rewards to the characters instead to the account helps Anet to promote alt-ing between players: a player that want the birthday reward will not erase an old character even if bored of him/her, and instead could buy another character slot (more profit).

That works in the sense that people keep characters to get the newest birthday gifts.

But do you really think anyone is going to hang onto a character they don’t want anymore just because they have a Birthday Blaster no other character can use?

I’ve often wondered about the disparity between sources saying the gods first arrived in Orr and sources saying Cantha was the first human nation and it was explorers from there who founded the other nations.

I came to pretty much the same conclusion given here – that the gods first came to Orr (presumably drawn by the strong magic) but for whatever reason they/their followers decided it wasn’t the best location for the first human settlement and moved to Cantha instead.

I seem to remember references to humans only moving into Arah after the gods left, to become caretakers of the city. But I can’t remember where I saw that and can’t find it now.

The OPs suggestion would not allow anyone to get a Birthday Blaster early, or to get one when they shouldn’t have it. It would just mean that once you’ve got one all your characters can use it.

It seems silly that if I create a new character right now I can give them the Queen Jennah mini, the 3rd birthday finisher, the 4th Birthday backpack and mail carrier, two 5th birthday weapons and the 5th birthday title…but they can’t have a cake gun that gives a very short, basic food buff for 2 years.

Personally I’d love to have it account bound. It would enable me to free up 8 inventory spaces by deleting the extras I have and putting the 1 I keep into a shared slot. But also because I actually find it’s more useful when the characters are below level 80, when it’s not really worth buying food for them. But even I don’t have many 2 year old characters below level 80 and I make a lot of alts and level them ridiculously slowly.

My main wish is for them not to introduce anything that I want which requires farming insane amounts of candy corn/other resources. Halloween used to be my favourite Guild Wars holiday, but after the last few years with the mini Gwynefyrdd and then Oxidecimus I’ve come to associate it with nothing but stress and boring farming.

Yes I understand that it’s completely my choice to do that, and I have to admit I don’t regret it because I love having both those minis, but it would still be nice to have a year when I can simply enjoy the holiday.

Secondary to that I would like them to bring back the Mad Memories scavenger hunt. That was a lot of fun and added a lot of great backstory to Mad King Thorn and the event. Maybe there could be a follow-on as well exploring his feud with Palawa Joko, since we’re going back to Elona this year.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

OriOri.8724:

Wolfheart.7483:

Susy.7529:

I think there are more than enough bank tabs. Those who wish for more should learn to throw garbage items instead of amass them.

Your choice of what to save and not save is not everyone’s choice. What you might consider “garbage” items, someone else might find value in keeping.

More bank tabs are fine. There is no compelling reason for someone to be against it, makes absolutely no sense.

That’s a great sentiment and all, but doesn’t refute his point. The fact is, people who ran out of space just have trouble managing their inventory space. Adding more bank tabs will put that problem off for a few more weeks/months/years maybe, but eventually these same people will fill up those new tabs again, and request even more. And it comes down to not being able to manage inventory well.

Adding more bank tabs will not solve that problem, it just won’t. Eventually you’ll want even more, because you’ll fill up the new ones

Im sure hoarding is a valid point but other than that, what objections do you have to people giving money to ANet for more inventory space? What gameplay problems are caused by people having more bank tabs?

The gameplay problem is none on the players side, but it could be huge on Anet’s side.

What we don’t know is how Anet implemented storage and how it sends the storage data from the servers to the client in their code. Adding more bank tabs may be an simple coding change or it may require the whole system to be reengineered.

I’m good with their being more storage – more $$ for Anet with people buying bank tabs. I also know that hoarders will forever be slamming into whatever cap there is. Those folks can be an endless source of cash.

Considering the ability to buy extra bank tabs has been in the game since launch and they have previously increased the maximum (it was 8 tabs at launch, currently up to 14) it seems unlikely that adding extras is a huge undertaking for Anet. I suspect it’s more than a 5 minute job, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it took longer for the people who decide these things to agree on a new limit than to change it.

There’s more than enough storage space for me already (I have 5 bank tabs, 9 permanent characters, no storage characters and most of my inventory space is empty), and I agree that for people who do fill it up adding more space is only a temporary solution – they’ll just fill it again and then ask for more. But I wouldn’t be opposed to them increasing the limit if Anet thinks it’s worth it.

Funnily enough I just realised that as long as the screenshots are taken on the character select screen my elementalist qualifies.

In-game she uses the Bifrost and Suncatcher backpack and of course she glows (purple), but you can’t see any of that on the selection screen.

I agree.

I noticed it yesterday and meant to post pretty much exactly this, but then something distracted me.

I think it’s a really good change which should help with a lot of the confusion we’ve seen previously when returning items are mixed in with brand new ones in the Promotions tab.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

I suggest you make a free to play account first !! play the game see if you really do like it and then if you do like the game after playing it on the free account . then that will give you some idea of all the new stuff add to the game since you been gone. yes a lot has changed

then after you play the free account and still want to buy the game . you can do that with the free account . and then buy hot and the new pack coming out this month

I’m not sure why you’re recommending a free account when the OP already owns the full version of the base game and can just play on that. There’s no benefit to starting a new account and a lot of draw-backs because so many things are locked on free accounts.

(You have to own the game to post on this forum, even free players can’t post here.)

It is possible to buy both expansions together. When you buy Path of Fire there’s an option to add Heart of Thorns for a discounted price. Alternatively if you go to the main shop page you can buy them separately, but that’s more expensive.

You can also buy the Standard version of Path of Fire which doesn’t include all that extra stuff.

You will need Heart of Thorns to make a Revenant or to access the jungle maps, masteries (gliding is the main ones, the others are only useful within the jungle) or to get any of the items and achievements from the expansion. And yes, people do still play that content and likely will continue to play it after Path of Fire comes out.

As for the other stuff:

Max Level Boost – it’s aimed at new players but you’re right it’s best not to use it right away as you’ll learn the game while levelling whereas at level 80 you’re just dropped into it.

Additional Character Slot – You get 5 character slots by default, so if you’re only going to play 2 characters you don’t need another one.

Identity Repair Kit – This lets you change the name and appearance of a character (or change the name of one and the appearance of another since they’re 2 separate items).

Spearmarshal’s Presence – This unlocks an outfit based on the paragon armour from GW1. (Outfits are one-piece costumes with no stats which hide your armour so you can have an alternate style any time.)

Lily of the Elon Pass – This gives you access to what’s basically a tiny town – it’s got the bank, the Trading Post, a merchant and other useful services all in a small space for easy access. The pass allows you to teleport there for free from anywhere in the world.

4000 Gems – Whether they’re worth the money or not is debatable. I buy gems periodically anyway so to me it was worth it – the way I see it by buying the Ultimate Edition I got the gems at normal price, the expansion for the normal price and all the other items cost me £1.50.

I think at least two of my characters fit your criteria:

1) My charr thief. He’s Ash Legion turned Order of Whispers so he wears the whispers uniform, but in black and very dark grey.

2) My engineer. She’s a norn and her backstory is that she learned engineering from the charr so he takes a very practical approach to it. She wears practical clothing that won’t get in the way when she’s working or fighting and her gadgets don’t need flashy lights to tell you they’re working – you can tell it’s working because the enemy is dead or on fire.

Don’t forget they were able to pull off that release schedule during Season 1 because the entire studio was working on nothing else.

They then needed a break to carry out the work required to make the switch to permanent releases for Season 2. (Either 4 months or 2 months, depending on whether you count the April 2014 Feature Pack and May Festival of the Four Winds as part of Season 1 or part of the Intermission.)

Season 2 maintained the bi-weekly/monthly release schedule but then they needed 9 months with no releases at all while they worked on Heart of Thorns and then another 9 months focusing on updates/fixes to HoT and related releases like the raid before Season 3 started.

It’s one or the other – either everyone at Anet works on small, regular releases and we don’t get the big expansions (which they started doing because players demanded it) or we get fewer small releases and big ones in between.

(Or they hire a lot more staff, but that requires a lot more money.)

Now personally I’d prefer the first one (assuming these releases would still be permanent). I think there’s no reason they couldn’t release everything they’ve put into HoT and everything they’ve told us is going to be in PoF via the Living World approach, maybe with periodic ‘Feature Packs’ for less content related things like a new profession or new specialisations.

But apparently I’m in the minority. Before HoT was announce this forum (and Reddit and Facebook and everywhere else) was full of people insisting that the game needed expansions, that it was the only acceptable way to release content and the game could not survive without it. Anet listened, players got their expansions and the release schedule (and payment system) was adjusted to match.

(Now I need Just A Flesh Wound to post in this topic so I can reference her signature.)

As far as I know none of the ‘lobby’ areas have direct access to Southsun, or any other explorable map.

The only exception is the lobbies which are in an explorable map – for example the Noble’s Folly Pass gives you access to Verdant Brink, but only because that’s where the lobby is.

killermanjaro.5670:

This would be incredibly pointless.

Having gold does not make a player experienced, and definitely doesn’t mean they’ll automatically be a good comm, or that they’ll be a better comm than someone who doesn’t have the gold.

Also being experienced in metas, WvW etc doesn’t automatically mean someone will be a good comm, they might have done an event lots of times, but if they aren’t good at communicating, organising, explaining things well to others etc then they won’t be an effective leader.

Likewise someone might have done an event 100 times, but it’s quite possible they still don’t understand it as all they’ve done each time might have been to run with the zerg pressing 1 without really knowing what’s going on or what needs doing. Where as someone else might have done the same event 5 times, but has read up on it, understands all the mechanics, has knowledge of playing various classes so knows how each can best contribute, and is good at commutation, and organising with markers etc.

In addition it doesn’t really matter, as if you join a squad with a comm that is making a real hash of things then you can still try and give the squad advice in squad chat, or ask the comm if they want you to take over (I’ve often even seen some comms say others are free to take over as they’ve just created the squad to get things going). And if a comm is truly awful then chances are most people will probably stop following them anyway.

I agree with all of this.

I’ve done Dragons Stand too many times to count (but enough to get about 500 crystalline ore). I’ve got all the achievements for the map & meta event. I’d still be reluctant to lead it because I can never remember which events occur in which lane.

When the events start and I’m in the area I can remember what to do, but by then it’s too late to start giving people instructions. And I have no idea how some commanders seem to know in advance which islands the Mouth is going to attack at the end.

I’d do it if there was no one else, but I’d want to make it clear to my squad I was commanding in the loosest possible sense of the word – basically acting as a portable map marker and throwing in a few hints along the way.

Then again I’m sure there’s some people who wouldn’t even think about all that. They’d think “I’ve done the map a few times before, sure I’ll be the commander.”

(Apparently the forum restricts quote trees to the last couple of posts, so I’ve had to quote the discussion in two separate pieces, because I thought the full conversation was important for context here.)

Einlanzer.1627:

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

Actually I would argue that isn’t true for most people who use this reasoning. I try to make my character like me in as many ways as possible more often than not, even when I’m not playing a human (which isn’t as often – my mains are almost always human), I try to imagine myself as whatever race it is and approximate it as much as possible – this includes build type, facial structure, hair and eye color, and so forth.

Einlanzer.1627:

costepj.5120:

Einlanzer.1627:

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

Actually I would argue that isn’t true for most people who use this reasoning. I try to make my character like me in as many ways as possible more often than not, even when I’m not playing a human (which isn’t as often – my mains are almost always human), I try to imagine myself as whatever race it is and approximate it as much as possible – this includes build type, facial structure, hair and eye color, and so forth.

So how do you reconcile yourself with the fact your character is a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac?

Oh, please. That’s taking some liberties.

Maybe so, but that is exactly the point that was being made in the post you responded to:

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

In my first post I mentioned that all of my characters are fundamentally not me, regardless of their gender and appearance. You know why? They kill people. They’ve all killed a lot of people, without hesitation or remorse or any attempt to consider whether there may be an alternative solution. But somehow that doesn’t matter.

Now I’m sure someone’s going to respond to this with something like “anyone with any sense understands it’s just a game. Just because you do it in a game doesn’t mean you’d do it in real life”.

And I’d agree that’s absolutely right. But if I’m playing as a person who does things I would never do in real life (and wouldn’t do things that I will do) how is that person me? Even if they look like me, they’re still a different person because they’re acting completely differently.

And if they’re not me why do they need to look like me? Or be the same gender as I am?

Offair.2563:

If you don’t plan to play wvw it does not really matter what server you choose as its all megaserver instanced. Ofc na/eu makes a difference.

This is a good point.

If your friends aren’t wanting to play WvW with you they can pick any European server, as all the other maps are shared.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

As for players hitting on you, while it might be less common, you’d be surprised how many people do hit on male characters. I’ve had some very bizarre situations. XD

I once made a temp character who was a dark skinned human thief. Out of habit/generic thief theme I dyed his trousers Midnight Fire and then got some very amusing whispers from someone who thought he was 1/2 naked.

I think she may have taken screenshots too.

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

In my first post I mentioned that all of my characters are fundamentally not me, regardless of their gender and appearance. You know why? They kill people. They’ve all killed a lot of people, without hesitation or remorse or any attempt to consider whether there may be an alternative solution. But somehow that doesn’t matter.

I can play a tiny grey rodent whose only solution to a rival group of scientists showing insufficient consideration for ethics in their research is to slaughter them all on sight, and as long as their genitalia matches mine I can “relate to them on a deep level” and pretend they are me. But if he’s a boy and I’m a girl then we’re totally different and can never relate?

That makes absolutely no sense to me.

Honestly I wouldn’t want my characters to be me. Within the game it just wouldn’t work – if they were me they’d be the merchants staying in town and letting other idiots go out and get themselves killed. (Or judging by my old posts in the lore forum asking why we’ve never tried talking to the Elder Dragons and trying to reach a compromise instead of trying to wipe out a race older than humanity just because they’re a threat to us.)

And the other way around, if I acted in real life like my characters do in games…I don’t even want to think about it. (Especially since in my other MMO one of my alts is a psychotic vampire assassin who kills people for food, for money, for fun…he once killed a man for bumping into him in the street and another for being annoyingly repetitive.)

Considered in that perspective their gender seems absolutely trivial and if the characters I play in video games reflects who I am then showing masculine traits (or lesbian traits, depending on whose view you go with) is the least of my worries.

Kako.1930:

The real life genders of players really means nothing unless you’re looking to connect on a more personal level with them. No one will know either way unless you tell them so don’t worry about it and ignore the thirsty ones hitting on pixels lol.

And if you do start getting to know someone outside of the game you can always sort that out in the process.

I met my husband on an internet forum and I thought he was female at first (in retrospect I don’t know why, just something about the way he talked), and he thought I was male. More of an issue was that we both fundamentally disagreed on a number of topics and thought the other person was being a complete kitten. More than a decade later some of those arguments are still on-going now and then, but at least we got the gender thing straightened out.

I suppose it depends on how you see your character/s.

I know to some people their character is a representation of themselves in the game world, so they not only play their own gender but typically only play humans (or races that look like humans) and try to make the character look and act like them.

I do pretty much the opposite – to me they’re characters in a story, no different to if I was writing a book or acting out a play. They are fundamentally not me so there’s no reason for them to look or act like me. Instead I think about the kind of person I want to make and ‘match’ everything to that. I’m equally liked to make a male or female character (in GW2 I currently have 5 females and 4 males).

My 1st/main character is usually female, but thats because she’s usually a recreation of the same character I play in all western RPGs (obviously race, class and skills will change between games but the overall theme is the same. But the only other thing she has in common with me is that when possible I give her waist length hair, but hers is black and straight instead of brown and frizzy like mine.

As for how people treat female characters honestly the most common problem I have is people assuming I’m male regardless of the character. Sometimes I correct them, sometimes it’s not worth mentioning. I’ve very rarely had anyone hit on me or otherwise act appropriately. (And once when it did happen, in a different game, I was not only playing a male character but playing an old, overweight, heavily scared guy with one eye and a grumpy expression. That was odd…dunno if they were into that or just flirting with everyone.)

Sometimes, when people tell me it happens all the time, I wonder if it’s just that I don’t try to make my female characters pretty. It was weird when I realised that – I certainly don’t try to make them unattractive either but pretty certainly isn’t my first concern (and according to my husband the results are mixed). Or maybe it’s the way I act when I’m playing them, or the people I talk to. I don’t know, but it’s certainly extremely rare for people to either try to flirt or to give me a hard time for playing a female character.

I don’t understand why they didn’t make it an actual rifle either. It’s a really nice skin.

It would be really nice if items placed in an invisible bag didn’t show up in the list of items which can be thrown into the Mystic Forge.

This is exactly why I have an invisible bag – so I don’t accidently sell/salvage/otherwise lose or destroy items I want to keep.

So it’s a little worrying when I go to forge some random items I’ve got and I see my two alternate weapons and a newly acquired trinket I’m holding onto until I have the full set in the list of items I can throw in.

To me this seems inconsistent with the way invisible bags work – I thought the whole point was to stop their contents from showing up in menus like this and therefore stop them from being lost or destroyed accidentally.

mazut.4296:

My suggestion is to everybody who play more then casually to have at least 1 of each professions.

That’s exactly what I’ve done. Even though I’ve found I rarely use some of them (the warrior and necro especially) it’s nice to know I’ve got the option if I want it.

Cyprien.4208:

Odd most MMO I’ve played tend to have the maps in the top right of the screen. I’ve never see any that has it in bottom middle.

Some games give you the option to customise the UI – moving each item wherever you want it. I assume the OP normally moves their map into the middle when farming.

I think it’s definitely worth it.

Firstly starting a new character is a good way to get back into the game and remember the way everything works. But also levelling up is relatively quick in this game, so there’s no sense in sticking with a character you’re not enjoying just because they’re level 80.

And if you do get bored with it there’s always the boost, or Tomes of Knowledge.

Apparently the story is that someone at Anet really wanted their character to be barefoot but the idea kept getting rejected. I don’t know why but the relevant people were opposed to adding a check box to hide your boots.

So one of their friends who makes items for the game made invisible boots and got them added to the game.

I can’t find information on the drop rate but my understanding is that the price is so high mostly because of high demand rather than limited supply. From what I’ve heard from people who farm treasure mushrooms invisible boot boxes are much more common than precursors – it’s just that a lot of people want it and are willing to pay a lot of money for it.