Guild Wars 2

Would be a great opportunity to give some more insight to the game’s lore. It even goes beyond Vistas. Several times when I visited a POI I somehow wished for an almanach or compendium of some sorts, giving a backstory to the wonderful visuals.

I really like a lot of those ideas for events and I agree that the more you can actually tie them into the game’s lore, the better. One thing I would urge you to avoid, though, is the adaptation of national holidays in contrast to international holidays.

Already there is talk of Independance Day, Memorial Day and the likes. I know these days are dear to some of you, but they are US specific and thus not really good for adaptation. Of course there is a possibility for having celebrations (or mournings) with a similar theme, but those shouldn’t match the exact same date of national holidays.

Imagine being in an epic fight to hold the keep against a massive onslaught of the combined forces of two servers. Both sides took heavy damage, but it looks like you might can make it and hold your position this time around. Suddenly bad luck hits and you die in the combined assault of several AOEs going off at once. You are booted from the battlefield and find yourself back with a five minute timer before you even can try to requeue.

All that fun turns to anger as you not only can’t help your friend anymore in this moment of need, but you also have no chance to see how the battle progresses. Sure, later people can tell you about it. But we know that isn’t the same as actually experiencing it live.

I don’t think that one needs to be a writer to be able to discuss a story. And there is value(!) in discussing things, even if the matter at hand is highly subjective. Especially for the writers themselves: It is feedback about the effect something has to a lot of different users. It can show, if something is working as intendet from a story perspective.

Did the readers connect the dots? Is the motivation believable? What characters are well liked and what are rejected – and why? —- There are lots of things for a writer to read between the lines when his audience has a discussion like this.

Also apart from the subjective there is another layer to the discussion where factual things are discussed, in particular the lack of choice and the lack of acknowledgement of those choices actually present in the game.

Rounder.6703:

I think you are mad because you are a kitten who dies a lot. Therefore your argument is invalid.

Personal insults neither have a place on this forum, nor do they work in favour of your suggestion. No argument is invalid merely because you say so. You don’t need to like somebody else’s argument, but please respect it and actually discuss it here in a constructive manner.

Kicking players will not chance on bit that there are too many players wanting into the WvWvW battlefields and not enough slots to fit them all in.

I know that using USD as a base will make me affected by exchange rates. And that is exactly what I want: I want the real exchanges rates, good and bad. Because they are more fair than a fictive flat rate. For the last five years the Euro has been stronger than the Dollar and people in Europe had to pay more in places that used the 1$=1€ mantra.

Is there a possibility that the roles may reverse at some point? Yeah and that is okay: This is not about always paying the cheapest price, it is about paying the same price as everyone else. Exchange rates and VAT are things that are out of Anets influence and I don’t mind paying them on top as long as they are measured correctly. A flat rate just makes things easy for the supplier, but usually ends up adding extra cost for the individual user browsing the store.

Let me add another thank you to the list. The fact that we got so many suggestions in here is more a case of enjoying this game and trying to help make it shine even more than anything else.
I really like the way all the devs and personal over at Anet work with us here and give us plenty of responses. Feels nice and I sure hope we can help each other out and make GW2 last for a long time.

Thanks for all your work and good luck on our journey together!

These exchange rates are far less than the current 80 cents. I paid MMORPGs in USD from Ultima Online days onwards, there is no problem doing that in Europe these days.

No, they are free to work with a curreny of their choice. Some companies already do this and advertise with “one world, one price” slogans and similar.

Tom Gore.4035:

Frankly, you are whining because of maybe 80 cents of difference. What the heck do you do for a living?

Tom, we are complaining because these 80 Cents add up. It is 80 Cents on a 10 Euro purchase. It is more the larger the purchase gets. And it still has the potential to screw us over when the value of currencies change, because they just use that 1$=1€ flat rate. If we are lucky this works to our advantage, but it could also mean that at some point the divide will be even bigger than it is right now.

Besides, I am happy if you have a situation in life that allows you to not care about small sums of money at all. But to suggest that because you are doing well it is okay to add extra costs for anyone else is not a mindset that I will share regardless of my income.

Lets face it: WvWvW wasn’t created just for the best of the best – it has something to offer for all players, regardless of their skill level and interests. If you like to zerk you can do that, if you like to do strategic work, fetch some likeminded people and do it, if you like to support you can do it there.

It never was intended to be a privilige for the elite. And I am quite sure ArenaNet will never let it happen that it turns into such a place.

Your idea would harm a lot of players in favour of a minority. Also: How can inexperienced players work on their skill when you constantly boot them from the battleground? They need the time and training if you really want to turn them into good soldiers for your realm.

Like Hedyn said, not all EU countries have the same VAT (or even any on that kind of product). Then there is the matter that currently the sum they are taking is more than sales price + 20% – you just can’t set a flat rate at 1$ = 1€, global finance doesn’t work that way.

Well done housing is always a nice addon to a great game. There is a reason for the success of “The Sims” – lots of people love to build and design their perfect home. It also provides a good opportunity to add both special furniture drops to the game as well as provide for some more skins availiable via the Black Lion Trading Company.

There probably needs to be some instancing at work, but I kinda would like having real neighbourhoods, like that Salma district home zone from Divinity’s Reach – fill the plots in one of them up, assign it an instance code or something so that people can go and visit each other, then fill up the next village instance. That way you get the best from both worlds: A neighbourhood of real players while maintaining a visially appealing area (a real village/city district and not just a flat field filled with as many buildings as possible).

I haven’t seen it on the list on first glance, so here would me my addition:

- Open up the visuals of the Norn Spirit forms (bear, wolf, raven & snowleopard) for roleplaying purposes – an idea is to utilize the town cloth panel for this to make it a non-combat-thing similar to the already existing town clothes.

The same could be used for other races, too. One good example would be golem suits for our Asuran friends.

A barber shop would be great. Just recently I got an armor that I intend to keep with me for a long time, at least appearance-wise. Sad thing is: My current hair has a serious clipping issue with the back of the chest piece – so I would like to change the hair to something that goes well with that piece of equipment.

If possible, please make barbers some ingame feature – a real shop or traveling barber person. A mere ticket from the store would be a waste of good potential for a breathing world (besides the Black Lion Company will already benefit from the money the barber charges for a haircut).

Syphenion.5064:

Or…how about tonics sold in Hoelbrak that turn us into the Norn’s shapeshifted forms?

Tonics could be a way, but they would most likely be another money sink and take away space in your inventory. I would prefer to be able to roleplay whenever the mood strikes me, not only when I got the coin and/or mats at hand, so personally I would prefer a solution that has no mats involved.

I really like the idea to utilize the town cloth panel for special purposes. I am pretty sure you could find something for each race. The norn spirit forms are a given, but there could be a lot of other things – maybe big costumes for the humans who take part in the carnival. And I need to read up on that pollen/glow-stuff Ascari mentioned for the Sylvari.

Yes, that could give the whole town clothes panel some more usability. Maybe there are even more roleplay-related appearance events for the other races, too? Like toying around with a golem suit for our Asuran friends?

Back to the shapeshifting forms: I really would love for them to get more screentime. They are beautifully done – and finally with proper tails, something that I missed in serveral other games I played over the years.

I am a huge fan of the Norn, their lore and kinship to the spirits. Their shapeshifting forms are beautifully done in GW2 and add a nice spice to their racial elite powers. Sadly, due to being not a toggle skill, but a 30-second shapeshift, I can’t really use the animal shape for roleplaying purposes.

I can perfectly understand that for balance reasons we can’t have access to the skillset for an undefined length of time. But would it be possible to grant access to just the cosmetics, the visuals of the form, to allow for stories of our own while roleplaying the characters? It could be a non-combat thing similar to the town clothes.

John Smith.4610:

ZionNow.2138:

I won’t do the math now but the difference after currency exchange between the EU price and the US price is only a few cents.

This is correct. Our publishing is out of England, so we have a 20% VAT across the board on all EU sales. The difference is just inclusive vs exclusive taxation.

The exchange rates between Euro and Dollar are always in flow, very unlike to your static 1$ = 1€ interpretation. So even with that inclusive taxation European customers are likely to be on a varying disadvantage most of the time. (Right now, I would have to pay 7,67€, add 1,53€ VAT and we are at 9,20€. So you still gain 80 Eurocents on any sale with your current scheme.)

In these days it is pretty easy to work with a system that uses the same base prices for all your customers and then applies the local taxes based on the location of the account’s owner. Several webshops and gaming sites do it already. There just has to be a will on AreanaNet/NCSoft’s part to do that bit of extra work (setting up the system that way) in order to provide a better, fair service to their customers.

Our guild (“The Untamed Heart”, TuH on Aurora Glade, European Servers) had the build queue suddenly emptied out, too. The project in progress vanished, so far without paying back the influence points it did cost. Would be nice if this could be fixed – the log shows the correct start and payment for the project.