Guild Wars 2

Ok… so Caith took the egg. What does that mean. Is she under the influence of Mordremor, is she working alone, or is she working with some group?

I don’t belive Mordermo is an option, she hasn’t shown any signs of corruption, on the other hand I don’t think she did it alone.

So that leave me thinking, she is working with Nightmare Court (but I doubt it), or she is working for mysterios new group. Also I noticed she doesn’t feel good about Zephyrites, she isn’t trusting them at all.

What are you guys thinking, I would LOVE to hear some of your fine theorycrafting

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

The CDI is starting up again. How would you like the topic/s to be chosen for this round.

Here are you options for now:

1: Anet chooses.
2: You list your number 1 topic and the one with the must number of votes wins.

Note: This isn’t a call for topics just asking how to pick them(-:

Chris

I already posted this in thread that Colin started, BUT I want to give it maximum attention so I will post here as well.

Chris, your CDI is fantastic idea, but it lacks like you said in many threads, a better way to communicate between devs and community. I don’t know if you heard of them or even played their games if you had enough free time, but they are called Amplitude Studios and they have their own CDI from the start of their company, indeed they are using that concept for more then 3 years, and they have benefited from it greatly.
I’ll give you link since it will be much easier to see what I mean

http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/G2G-Votes2

Not only does community vote on art, units, content, but they also vote what feature should get in the game. I think this is a great platform, and given the Anet resource it could be made even better. This way devs give options that they can talk about, and community gets to vote on what we should discuss . I call this win win situatiuon.
You “only” need to create platform where fans can vote on the topic

Cheers, I hope this will give you some ideas on how to improve CDI, and keep up the good work

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll separate out the idea now into a practical application of what this could look like for one existing thread:

Structured PvP Forum Thread

Key Discussion Point: New Game Mode for PvP

High Level Focus Points:

- What kind of game mode(s) would be best in PvP for Gw2 on top of the current conquest game mode type given the games fast past action combat style?

- How should players be able to decide which game mode, or even which map within a game mode to play each round? Can a solution to this also solve issues with bias towards certain existing conquest maps?

- What key moments can a strong game mode have to help make it feel strategic and exciting when a key moment occurs? Can they happen every frequently enough to make each match exciting, and help provide comeback mechanics? Can these key moments provide teams multiple options to ensure different strategies for playing that can stand out and be identified?

- Can viewers clearly see and understand key moments when watching a stream and feel they are exciting without needing to understand the nuance of the combat occurring?

- Matches should be short, compelling, and easy to jump in and out of to keep the game approachable – but have layers of depth and strategy that experienced players can master.

Last Update:

- Demo versions of some potential new PvP game modes were given on an episode of Ready Up. [link goes here]

Edited or better formatting!

I wanted to reply to you directly Colin, because I think there is already solution to this very problem, and it works rather well.
They go by the name of Amplitude Studios, they are small company but they are working together with the community in a way that I have never seen before. You might get some good ideas from them.
Here’s the link:
http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/G2G-Votes2

Community can vote on anything they put be it feature, art, content, choice is entirely theirs, BUT the community decides what goes in the game.
Hope it will give you some good ideas and keep up the good work

Well that escalated quickly haha

pdavis.8031:

Either way Anet has made their decision, it’s not going to break the game, the sky isn’t falling, and people will leave and more people will join, and life goes on.

Also known as “circle of life” Simba is GW2 and Mufasa is Anet haha

@Konig Des Todes.2086

“It is the innate desire of every male animal – and we all know that there are no girls on the internet – to assert their dominance into the fray of life. This desire heightens when they realize that their enemies do not know their location, thus believing instinctively that they hold the upperhand in the combative struggle for becoming the Alpha Poster.
Thus begins the Epic Battle of the Century. Featuring a lot of fat, pimplefaced, nerds with a moahawk, because we all know only single, fat, lonely, nerds surf the internet.”

Where did you get the inspiration for this You really made me laugh

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

SemmlerTh.2685:

For all these people calling this a “simply bad business decision” – do your homework, this is called a freemium pricing model and it works very good.

For all the americans Id like to give you a very interesting example, why this works very good for the rest of the world: We dont have hulu, we dont have neetflix (most countries that is); So for example, if the new GoT episode gets aired in, for example, the german tv, then you can rewatch it, if the tv station offers that kind of service. (I dont think they do)
Many Stations practice this “7 day rewatch”-thing, where you can watch shows 7 days after they have aired. If you wanna watch older episodes, you have to specifically buy them or have some sort of premium account. So if you missed this specific episode and you even missed the opportunity to rewatch it, then you have to pay, if you really want that content.

That is a working business model that doesn’t hurt anyone, plus, people are already very aware of that move. If you have watched the livestream or the recorded video, then youll know, that “bundles” are a matter of discussion.

Besides, if you think what an expansion would cost you, then its much cheaper to unlock these episodes. Lets say we have 24 episodes per season (even though it might be 20 or 18, because we had this long break – maybe only 15, because there might be some feature pack or festival releases), 2000 Gems = 25€ if you order it online, means 2,50€ for one past episode. That means, if you want to buy a whole year of episodes, that would cost you 60€. That is not much at all, especially if you consider, that there might be only 15 episodes per season, then we are at 37,50€.

The Third Season of Game of Thrones costs 29,90€ if you buy it digitally on iTunes. Thats 3€ per episode. Even more, if you buy it on DVD or blueray.

I dont know about you, but I have all available season of GoT & True Blood as DVD. It was worth my money, even though I had already watched them.

200 gems are about 20 exchanged gold atm. If you are doing a little bit of that and a little bit of this, then you get 5 – 10 gold per day easily. A player that is into the story will see this calculation and in most cases he/she will make the decision, that its worth the money.

I am so very happy about this decision. It show that anet knows what they do, and that they listen. I have expected this move for months now, seeing them doing now exactly what I predicted feels great

€: another thing: please dont use the word “pay wall” in this context. That is just incorrect.

There is one huge flaw in your theory. Give gamers the option to play and spend nothing, and they will do just that. The hard core gamers move from game to game. The few in comparison willing to spend real money in game, will dress their character as they wish, then they find no need to spend any further. I’m willing to say mt’s will die out. Ncsoft posted 113 million in revenues from GW2 the first year, 32 million the second year, and have said they are holding their own currently. Not very promising.. I hope it changes, but given their insistance to stick with the LS, I doubt it. We’ll see if the trickle effect of mt’s will exceed the tried and true influx every 6 months or so that true expansions brought to GW1. Which is alive and well, and holding it’s own also lol

I don’t want to be the jerk here, but I’m pretty sure that Anet is making enough money to continue the LS, otherwise they would have made expanison and said that LS was bad idea business wise. Also after last NCSoft’s conference call GW2 is their main earner after Lineage 1. So I think they are doing good, plus they just launched in China, so that will make some nice money for Anet and NC for next conference call.

@Tobias Trueflight.8350
Trust me… new players and returning ones getting screwed over was my first thought as well.
BUT then I got into thinking. And I realized, that you only pay for the story part of the release, everything else is still there (if it was permanent addition) for you to enjoy. And this is nice way of Anet to say.. Hey guys we still exist, look at all the cool stuff you get for FREE if you play our game even for one day in two weeks.
Then I thought about NEW players, and realised that by time that two, or three seasons have passed (I presume Anet will be adding more permanent content in other seasons as well, not just temp content where it makes sense. Like Tower of Nightmare, it wouldn’t make sense if tower was permanent addition to the game.) and we are in, lets say 4th season; there should be enough of a content for NEW player to enjoy. So once he/she is “done” with that content he/she can either buy it, or just convert gold to gems for episodes he/she would like to play while getting new episodes for free.
It would be cool if everyone gets it for free, BUT Anet needs to make money somehow. I personaly don’t find anything cool in gem shop to buy atm. But I would episodes if I missed.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Kohlteth.3715:

As a brand new player I would LOVE to be able to play LS1 first to “catch up” with what is going on, as LA before it was destroyed looks great and would love to be able to play up to current, so I am then up to date…

Would love as a new player to be able to jump in for Free and play LS1 so we can catch up, would suck if I had to pay for content that was Free and in my mind, should be included to build the story

If you’re a new player, then it’s your lucky day. You don’t need to spend any money outside of the box price you paid for this game! Just convert Gold to Gems, and you can get all the extra you want, for zero (0) dollars!

This message is brought you to today by #TeamGnashblade.

Also, be sure to keep playing that BLTC “Flip my Item” for big rewards if you’re lucky enough to be the first dozen or so to get it to drop.

. . . seriously, people cleaned up on that so hard it’s amazing.

One more aside – stop chopping up analogies by picking out semantics and such, that’s getting annoying. Any analogy is by nature imperfect, and I really wish it had stopped the instant I hit fractions in grade school and had the pie analogy used. “But I don’t like cherry pies…” came from the back of the room, derailing the topic for days. Don’t let this happen to you.

Time to return to topic.

Honestly, there are only two downsides I can see to this:

- Players who cannot, for whatever reason, purchase Gems to purchase the unlocks. Let’s face it, there is a considerable chance people will not be willing/able to put the grind time in to earn Gold enough to buy 200 Gems. There are also people who are without access to a credit card for buying them via the store. This can foster a feeling of dissatisfaction over the apparently insurmountable fence between them and content they missed.

- New players when we hit Season 6 could look back, see the huge pile of price tags for the previous seasons, and decide to just opt out of the game entirely as a “naked and blatant cash grab” is seen. Assuming we actually get new players six years from now . . .

I had to respond to this.
Let’s take an example you gave that GW2 is in 6th season. That would be in like 4-5 years:
1. You only pay for the story content of the episode, everything else that was released, like new zones, new boss, maybe new skills, proffesions, race, who knows how Anet is going to handle that stuff? is avaible to you as a new player for FREE.
2. I can see Anet selling episode, like season passes, more episode for lower cost, just like a LOT of single player games sell you season pass for their DLCs. And to be fair Anet way is more generous, because you only pay for story instances, other content that was introduced is free, so back to point 1.
3. Sorry but in this day and age is quite easy to get internet debit card. I got it when I was 18. If you are under 18, well then ask your parent to buy it for you.
4. And this is the biggest point… You don’t have to have seasons 1-5 to enjoy season 6. If you don’t want to conver gold to gem, or simply buy them. Then just read wiki about that story and you’ll catch up. And again all content that was introduced during the seasons 1-5 that isn’t a story instance is avaible to you.
5. They will probably sell GW2 super extra delux edition that contatins all seasons 1-5 for price tag of only 60$, and you save xx$ ammount of money.

TL;DR:
I don’t see how is this different from BMP in GW1, except that it rewards players that play this game on regular base. And I think thats the whole point. You aren’t punishing new players, you are rewarding your playerbase that is supporting the game.

Darkchief.5468:

Going to post some speculation here.

A lot of people have been asking about how this will affect big events like the Battle for Lion’s Arch, and if it will even be possible to have those types of events anymore, because they require groups. The journal post states that the story portions of the Living Story are made permanent through the journal and then there is also the open-world Living Story content that will expand or change the world.

Using the Battle for Lion’s Arch as an example, this means the following portions of it would be available to replay through the journal:
1. The cutscenes when LA is attacked
2. Any solo story instances with Braham, Rox, Marjory, Kasmeer, etc.
3. The final battle with Scarlet

The following would not be replayable, as it is open world content that would be classified under “content that changes the world”:
1. The battle for LA events
2. The retaking LA events
3. The Prime Holo battle

So the open world content will fall into three categories:
1. Content that expands the world and remains there permanently. (Will always be playable by going to those areas in the open world)
2. Events that change the world permanently (Won’t always be playable, the events are removed but the changes are permanent)
3. Temporary holidays and festivals

I have exactly the same thoughts. That is how I understood the new system as well.

Yep, I agree with the OP. It’s ok when you are in a dungeons with really organized group, but if you are in a pug, then forget about CC all together. I also feel that using CC skills to burn down stacks is really, well, not rewarding to a player as it is to deal damage. I can see the reason why Anet made the defiant stack, after all we don’t want to stunlock the boss, but this system is bad as well, and I hope that they are at least thinking about this problem.

You have proven it to me guys. GW2 has the best PvE boss encounters in game genre where every role is equall in it’s viability. Thank you so much.

Do you really think that those pathetic number of all bosses in dungeons + open world PvE is going to prove that CC is viable? And to go even further, 1 interrupt and then I have to waste 5 skills to get off the defiant stack? Not to mention some bosses even when interrupted has so low CD on their abilities it doesn’t make it worth while….
Control in PvE is pretty lacking, trying to prove it otherwise will take some convicing.

But honestly what upsets me the most, is that you are willing to say that CC is ok in PvE when clearly it isn’t. It doesn’t have any impact on the fight, you get off 1 interrupt, maybe 2 if your team has CC skills, and that’s it. For whole fight.

Can someone point me to a dungeon boss where control is viable? I honestly don’t know any.
As long as dealing damage is only thing to do against bosses, zerk gear will rain supreme. There should be a variety in bosses, but due to defiant stacks, control is well non existent.
Since GW2 skills were designed around 3 pillars : damage/control/support, which is shown in PvP…. PvE encounters seems to have been designed around damage/support.

Like thread name says Zerk stats is fine. Gear stats were never the problem. Bosses dealing slow and small auto-attack damage coupled with really high one hit attack put emphasis on dodging and skills that negate damage. Which is fine, we don’t want tanking in GW2. But control and to be honest support (it’s ok atm, but support roles should have bigger impact) needs to be see more use in PvE… then other gears will see more usage in game

I’m sorry if my thread name lead to the wrong conclusion… But in my defence I really couldn’t figure out better headline at the time.
I think some people here missunderstood me, and to an extend haven’t read my postS. In one of them I said that I dislike instanced content because it’s not MMOish enough, only 5 man, and that I’m all for big/medium group content, that is why I mostly play WvW and open world PvE. But having 100 people on my screen at all these big events/world bosses is sometimes too much. Like I said in previous posts, this content has it’s place in the GW2, and by all means they should keep adding zergish events. BUT please keep adding events that are focused on medium groups of 20-60 people.
Like Lishtenbird.2814 said, Crown Pavilion isn’t played as much because of the loot. And I might add two more reasons for it:
*people don’t read map chat and ignore everyone else (is that griefing in this case) because they don’t want to, or they have map chat language filter which makes organizing and communicating really hard if not impossible,
*lack off in game means of better communication. Commander tag isn’t enough for these kind of evetns, and getting random people on TS, raises a question which TS?

@rincewind.9528
I was talking about ordinary mobs, not champions.
Can you elaborate more on why would you need taunt if you give cleave abitlity to champs? Because as far as I know WoW bosses don’t cleave on auto-attack as well, yet palyers use taunt on them…
PvE in gw2 has a lot of problems, from stacking, zerker stats being the best gear for pve w/o a competition, to CC being uselss as well as support, A.I. being pretty dumb. It’s pretty extensive imho. But I still prefer it to any other MMO because of the combat system. Combat in GW2 is the best for me, but encounters and mobs were poorly designed to fit this new system at the launch of the game. They are getting better, but they have a long way to go. And no I’m not a hater btw, after all I play it every day from the BWE1 and I have over 1,8k hours of playtime.

@Umut how can someting be small scale zerg action? I don’t think you are using the term zerg correctly here. Honestly I disagree with whole spvp and your ‘unintended’ damage thing as well. So on WvW and sPvP I disagree. It’s not game mehanics that rewards zerg in WvW, it’s the map design and objective design as a whole that rewards the zerg…

On topic:
You are talking about tagging mobs with AoE to get loot, but that is present in every single MMO, no, every single game I’ve every played. Reason why zergs are effective in open world pve is for two reason: Scaling doesn’t work very well, and mob A.I. is quite stupid. Also pve mobs don’t have the cleave ability on their auto-attack as far as I can tell or they simply lack the aoe themself. Which is very wrong imho. I think Anet rushed the game, since I remember them talking that enemy scales with amount of people by gaining new abilities. This is in 90% not true. Only mob I can remember now is the drake broodmother, she is the only mob that gains new ability based on how many people are there for the event.

Don’t get me wrong I can see what you are tying to say with AoE and multi shots, and you are right there, I’m not going to argue with that, but I don’t belive the problem lies with the skills, as much as it lies with mob encounters (mehanics and A.I.), and that annoying defiant stack

Umut.5471:

The game’s mechanic has full of multi targeted/aoe skills. This makes zerging unavoidable in both PvE and PvE aspects. Aoe and multi targeted/cleaving skills needs much higher cooldown to prevent spamming. This can allow skilled play in WvW and sPvP without just ‘zerging and zerging’ with multi-target attacks. Old mmos focused on single-target skills, that was why 1v1 ing and skilled play was a thing for these mmos.

AoE is anti zerg, problem is it’s capped to 5 people. If it wasn’t capped people would tend to “zerg” less in WvW. Also try running with organized WvW group, and you would see how much there is to GW2 big group combat. It’s quite fun and awesome btw.
Also from logical point of view, if you attack with the sword (cleave) and there are 3 people in front of you are you only going to hit one or all three?
Only thing I think they should have done is that the enemies that aren’t targete take 50% less damage from that attack(I’m talking about basic attacks not AoE skills).

I see that some of the posters are pretty motivated to make this into a thread that is about Rewards aren’t good enough in Crown Pavilion. For those people, my OP and this thread wasn’t based around reward discussion, we already have enough threads about it. This thread is about new mehanics that are put in place to discourage people from simply zerging the content.
You know how many people actually left GW2 or aren’t even playing the game’s open world PvE simply because well, it’s too easy all the time (Teq/Wurm not included). This is based on 5 guilds I am, 2 of them being pretty big with 300+ members, plust the number of threads on this forum on mmorpg forum, on gw2guru, on reddit, etc… I could go on and on, but there are a lot of people who dislike the idea of zerging the content.
I love playing MMO because of the number of people you can interact with, and that is why I really dislike instanced content for 5 players in MMOs. BUT GW2 needs some medium/hard content for that people as well.
Someone said in this thread that we should have a big variety of content, and I couldn’t agree more. There are easy/hard dungeons/fractals, but there simpy isn’t enough medium/hard content in open PvE beside Teq/Wurm. Also I don’t belive it’s good for the game if only hard content is the one taht requires minimum of 120 people to do it. We need content for groups of 20-60 people. And I think we can agree that 20-60 people is anything but massive.
I like easy content just as much as you do, and I do events all the time, I particapate in those WB, temple runs, but there just isn’t much of a variety in them. Now I saw in forums that people wanted hard mode from GW1 back because PvE is too easy, and they want challenge…. So what’s wrong with providing them with challenge in GW2, example Crown Pavilion… Only thing that is required is the coordination and people willing to listen to each other and read map chat.

Please guys, this thread isn’t about rewards being bad, and lack of good commander/organizing tools for this kind of things, I simply wanted to say that Anet should keep trying to continue with this idea. The crown pavilion may not be executed perfectly, but they are getting better with it. I’m sure that when devs didn’t want trivial content in ALL of the open world PvE.

TL;DR
GW2 needs easy AND medium AND hard content in open world PvE to spice up the variety of the said content. Currently there aren’t enough medium and hard content. There are people who want that in the game. Rewards were not point of this discussion because I belive there are more then enough threads about them.

DeWolfe.2174:

Faerun.3091:

So playing in zerg where you just spam #1 skill is fun?

Okay….

Actually yes, yes it is. Playing with a large group of people is exactly why I bought an MMO. If you’re such a baddie that all you have done in the past is spam 1, that is your fault. Besides leeching, you are just wasting your time and the time of every other player by making every fight last longer.

Way to take it litteraly, but ok… w/e.

Ok, I’ve come from some more runs in Crown Pavilion….
It’s unfortunate that most people don’t want to listen to anything I or any other commander on the map said. It’s basicly RNG if I’m going to get in a shard where people want to listen/read map chat. So I had some amazingly bad runs and some amazing runs

This event needs about 48-60 people. If you want to get a gold chest you need to split up 8-10 people per boss, no more since they upscale so hard that makes them HARD to kill, and it’s nor fun at all. When you do split you need to kill all bosses realtivly at the same time. So same stuff as with great jungle wurm, get bosses down to 10% of HP and then go for the kill. This is done so other bosses don’t get additional abilites from other bosses. We found out that this tactic is golden Since everytime we did it, we got gold chest. In gold chest you get 8 champ bags + festive tokens and gauntlet tickets.

Now this thread isn’t about rewards, cause like I said in my OP, rewards doesn’t seem balanced now… I just wanted to say that I love that Anet is adding hard content for medium sized group of people. We have Teq/Wurm for massive ammount of people, we have content for solo and small amount of people, but hard content for 40-60 people is missing in game.

@Prophet.6257
I got 3 silver chests and 3 gold chests. Gold chests contain 6 champ bags and more festival tokens + coin and karma if I remember correctly. So it’s more then you think.

And you can get that gold chest in under 8 minutes. How is that bad reward?

@Dakota… well tnx for reading what I had to say:
me in another post in this thread:
BTW I just returned from Crown Pavilion and I had a blast, we ended up spending over 2 hours playing the blitz boss event, and we got 3 gold chest and 3 silver chest. Event is actually quite “easy” if you spread out and communicate with others.
Here is the tip for those who are interested. Spread in 6 groups consisting of 10-12 people. DO NOT KILL them untill all bosses are about 10% – 15% down. When all bosses are at the same health go for the kill. This will help you avoid the additional abilities that are activated when you kill a boss. With this tactic we assured those 3 gold chests w/o failing. Hope it helps

@cainejw.7142 Tnx for not reading my posts in this thread, because if you did you would see that I want to play with the big group of people but no with zerg group of people. Anything above 40 people is a zerg imho. And no where did I say I want to prove my worth thru a game, I could care less about it, hence why I don’t care about rewards in game. I just want to have fun.

Honestly people, try to read my posts, I’ve been really respectfull in my posts, and I read eveyrones post’s, but most of your comments are just attacking my opinion without even trying to understand it.

@Morrigan
I think a lot of people just focus on rewards, and imho that isnt the best way to enjoy a game to it’s fullest. It’s just one part of the enjoyment. I know a lot of people who don’t play Teq/Wurm because of the rewards, I wouldn’t dedicate my time to commanding those runs if only thing I wanted was the reward at the end. Like I said, getting the reward is just a byproduct of having fun.
If you are playing the game just for the reward and not having fun while you’re doing it… it’s ok, but there are people like me who don’t like that concept.
I agree game has thaught the players to zerg the events, cause it made them brain dead easy… and in return you got better loot then you should… see QD/frostgorge champ trains. It doesn’t require you to have any skill at all to get pretty good rewards. QD was killed because it was too toxic and new players were exposed thinking champ train/farming is the end game.
I agree that the game needs to have easy content where you just want to chill and relax, and that is something that I particapate as well. But there isn’t a lot of hard content in open world that doesn’t require to have big numbers like Teq/Wurm. We need hard events that can be done with 5-20 people that scales properly. Reason why Anet doesn’t want them to have BIG rewards is because everyone willl just zerg it and then what’s the point of the whole exersiese.
Next reason why then nerfed rewards is because of the inflation in game economy, something that I don’t understand, because I’m just an engineer/programmer but I can see why they have done it.

BTW I just returned from Crown Pavilion and I had a blast, we ended up spending over 2 hours playing the blitz boss event, and we got 3 gold chest and 3 silver chest. Event is actually quite “easy” if you spread out and communicate with others.
Here is the tip for those who are interested. Spread in 6 groups consisting of 10-12 people. DO NOT KILL them untill all bosses are about 10% – 15% down. When all bosses are at the same health go for the kill. This will help you avoid the additional abilities that are activated when you kill a boss. With this tactic we assured those 3 gold chests w/o failing. Hope it helps

@Lishtenbird.2814
Ah now I see what your talking about. You’re worried about rewards. Like I said in my OP, I agree that rewards for crown pavilion might not be good enough, but if you read my OP you would see that I don’t care about rewards. Also I agree that we need more crow control in game and support in general.
But why I like this event is that requires you to have 15-20 people per boss in order to get gold reward. Surely you would agree with me that 15-20 people is no zerg in any shape or form, after all we’re playin massive multiplayer here, not co-op game.

I think we need more of these difficult encounter, because what I saw is that general player skill is pretty low. You need to have hard content in order to get better at it. Sure people will continue to zerg, BUT if they continue to add this kind of mehanics, people will slowly learn that zerging is not the best option.
This game needs harder open world content, and I agree Anet may need to revisit the rewards for Crown Pavilion.
Hope this clears the missunderstanding After all my OP wasn’t about rewards but about breaking zerging mentality.

So playing in zerg where you just spam #1 skill is fun?

Okay….

I’m waiting for Phadde to tell me how active AA is, as it seems to be located in EU, so if it’s active then I wont make a guild and I’ll ask them to invite all of you. IF there aren’t active people I will either make a new guild, or ask from AA people to allow me to invite people and spam internet with our duneon run philosophy
Also I’ll add you to my friendlist so cya in game soon, I’m quite busy these days so I wont be online a lot

Bump just becuase there seems to be interest in non stacking runs, so keep replying people I might as well make a guild which is going to serve like a big shared friendlist

@OP Are you on NA or EU servers, I’m looking for people who don’t like stacking and skiping as well I’m on EU servers.
On topic: LFG is a broken tool honestly, OR people are broken, since I’m amazed how people can’t read the description I put on it, no stacking bosses in corner for AC, and people just come in. Then they are surprised when I tell them I don’t want to go to emo corner with the spider
Even more surprising is that newer players don’t even know how to run dungeons without stacking and skiping mobs… Shame imho, I don’t know if it’s in direct correlation with “exploiting” stupid AI with stacking mobs in corners, against the walls, but people are so bad once they fight in open field against AI I could be wrong….
Anyway TL:DR;
There is no correct way to play the game, speed runs, non speed runs, stacking, no stacking, everything is fine. BTW not wanting to do speed runs != NOOB.

@Phadde I will as soon as I get more then 5 people willing to run dungeons old school way hehe

Thank you Taffy Catt I wish forum search worked But since it’s the thread from 2 months, I don’t want to necro it

Phadde.7362:

Faerun.3091:

I’m already in more then one guild, that is why I’m looking for group of people or individauls that aren’t necessarily in a guild. That’s why I didn’t post in guild section, since I don’t want guild.

Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just gather up in a guild? =)
You can be a member of 5 guilds in total you know… I know I’d definitely prioritize a guild with friendly dungeon-runners that plays the game for the fun of it w/o stacking, before my current 5th guild!

I’m actually considering to make a guild that is focuses on doing dungeons in more “interesting” fashion, like all must have summons, all must wear cleric gear, etc.. Of course no skiping even the trash mobs, all sorts of things.
No i know this isn’t for everyone, but I got everything I want from the game in terms of rewards, I don’t play the game for rewards. I consider them a byproduct of me having fun with the game.
That is why I’m here trying to find people who are interested in this kind of sruff. When I find enough people I will make a guild who is all about doing dungeons/fractals without using speed running tactics.
Don’t get me wrong, speed running/skiping/stacking is all valid, but for me it’s no fun

I’m already in more then one guild, that is why I’m looking for group of people or individauls that aren’t necessarily in a guild. That’s why I didn’t post in guild section, since I don’t want guild.

Like topic says it, I’ve played since first BWE and I played lots of dungeons and I’m familiar with mehanics BUT I’m so bored of running dungeons with stacking tactic, it’s really starting to kill my enjoyment. I’ve found that playing the game without skiping bosses and w/o stacking to be more fun and more engaging.
So is there a group of people or guild or individuals that like to do dungeons without stacking bosses, I’m on EU servers? pm in game or replly here.

P.S. I don’t know if this thread belongs in this section, but since I couldn’t find correct forum section I decided to post here.

Vitus Dance.4509:

Hell on a biscuit – another ‘blah blah megaserver’ topic!
I understand that everyone wants to have their say…but could you have seriously not posted this in the feedback/questions thread that’s currently running?
All we’ve seen over the past few days are ‘megaserver this’, ‘megaserver that’ & ‘megaserver ate my homework’ threads – i wouldn’t mind so much…but it hasn’t even dropped yet!
/sheesh!

You missunderstood my topic. This thread focuses only on one thing and that is the schedule for WB, not about what megaservers are, how are they going to work, how will guild work, etc… I would love to post in one of those treads, but most of them have been derailed and have become a thread, share you feelings.
That is not what I want from this thread. Communication is the key here, and isn’t it easier to have one topic dedicated to only one thing, then to have topic where everyone is talking about 5 different things. MegaServer is such a huge topic that itdeserves to be examined right down the last detail, becuase this is the biggest change that is going to happen to the game.

I would like this thread to be a nice way for community and Anet to discuss over the schedule for WB.
Now I know that the schedule you have given us in blog post is not set in stone and that it can be changed, and in matter of fact it should be changed for number of reasons.
People with limited amount of time are not going to experience most of the WB because of the schedule. This is limiting the freedom of player and I know that is the last thing you wished for when you designed this system.
I think I read somewhere in other thread what Konig Des Todes said/asked.

Why aren’t some WB overlapping?

Now that we’re going to have megaservers there is no reason to concentrate big amount of people in one map. This is really odd to say at least. We should split the “zerg” sort of speak
Solution is quite obvious, decrease the spawn rate for WB all of them including Teq/Wurm.
I would even go to say, it’s better to have 3-4 WB active at the same time, because of the MegaServer we dont have to worry about spliting the community, because there will always be enough players to do them. This will also help players with limited time to choose which WB they would like to fight.

Now few rules I would like to set for this thread, since I think that schedule is the biggest issue with this new system:

• Please do not post negative comments just so you can vent your disatisfaction/anger about this changes!
• Try to provide solution that is meaningful to this new MegaServer system!

My personal opinion, this patch is full of good stuff, only negative side that I can see is this schedule.

BillFreist.1527:

Keep in mind that there are a few very different issues being mixed up here. “Skill Lag” as discussed in the original post here is referring directly to Game Server CPU usage. I want to ensure we are all on the same page, so here’s a little refresher:
—-

-Bill

Hey Bill have you ever considered using Maxeler for servers? It’s great way to speed up algorithms, especially while and for loops.

1. Ranger
2. Thief
3. Engineer

I decided to open this new thread, since I couldn’t find single topic dedicated to talking about Defiant and it’s effect in current PvE meta.
It’s no secret that current implementation of Defiant isn’t quite working out as intended, making it stack and making those stack disappear when new CC effect is applied to the boss isn’t really nice way of doing it. I find that Definat is the biggest reason why people don’t take hammers into dungeons, or any CC skills. And this is also reason why there are 2 roles atm, damage and support.
I understand the reason for it, we don’t want big bosses inturrepted whole time so they don’t do any of their big attacks and mehanics, BUT that is another way of skillful play that we can have in PvE. And we can finnaly have damage/support/control.

My suggestion would be to make Defiant a timed duration and not stackable.
For an example: Warrior uses 5th skill on his hammer to interrupt big boss attack in dungeon. After that boss gets Defiant as he would always, BUT instead of having 5 stacks of Defiant he would have Defiant that last for example 10-15 seconds. During that time he is immune to any CC and also applying new CC DOESN’T refresh Defiant duration. This way I don’t have to burn my CC skills to take down Defiant stacks, so when defiant is no more, my CC skills are all on cooldown and then I’m useless.
Of course this should scale to the number of players, those number would be hard to pinpoint, but at least this would make CC more desirable in dungeons.

This way PvE meta can change a little bit, “requiring” party to have 1 CC, 1 support and 3 DPS as an “optimal” group.
In my honest opinion, PvE encounters needs to be changed, but Defiant is the first step in solving current PvE meta.

I would like to hear from others what they think about defiant and their solution to this problem. PLEASE don’t make this thread into Zerkers are OP, Anet sucks, etc…
I’m pretty sure Devs want to see a good disscusion from us on this topic.

zamalek.2154:

Adding a new HP token may not be a bad idea. You could even stave off some of the nay-sayers by e.g. allowing players to trade in dungeon tokens/WvW badges for HP tokens.

On top of what you said; these HP tokens could possibly even be converted into Black Lion weapon skin tickets. You could even allow the player to purchase permanent boosts with the tokens (MF% etc.). You also forget that ANet asked for a way to unlock abilities, which this is a great for. The more powerful abilities could be unlocked using a combination of the HP tokens and the dungeon on the map (if present, otherwise maybe laurels). E.g.

• Ember Sword – Elite – 100 HP Tokens + 500 CoF Tokens – Either: A re-skinned Fiery GS (CoF-inspired), or: the missing summoned sword.

This would make these abilities somewhat unique in that they are time-gated; but you won’t be locked out of them forever (you will have to wait until he re-visits the map with the skill that you want).

Well incorporating dungeon tokens as well would be nice addition for some of the items that NPC would have. So for some items you can have karma+zone_token or karma+dungeon_token+zone_token. I think this would add a lot of replayability to old content while Anet is busy making new.
If this would be implemented in the game theoretically you will always have something to do and work for, dungeons that aren’t played a lot would see at least slight increase in interest, and zones like Timberline Falls, and other slightly forgoten zones would have more players on them and it wouldn’t feel dead

Nadesh.7953:

Faerun.3091:

Crazy idea about how to do specialization
What if wearing Berserker armor changes some of your weapon skills, but only if you want it to? Maybe we can do specialization of classes this way? Honestly I have no idea what rings, backpiece, etc would do in this implementation, maybe they can stay as they are.

I like that. I remember a game in which each piece of equipment give a skill.

We could have a new skill tab with “equipment skills”. This tag would have all the posible skills in gray and when a player equip that specific item, the skill become available to be selected at the quick bar.

To be honest that is my ideal system, to not have any stats tied to gear, but to have passive bonuses like minor traits and some new version of our skills tied to them But I have no idea if it would suit GW2, it was just my wish to be honest haha

Crazy idea about how to do specialization
What if wearing Berserker armor changes some of your weapon skills, but only if you want it to? Maybe we can do specialization of classes this way? Honestly I have no idea what rings, backpiece, etc would do in this implementation, maybe they can stay as they are.

Awesome ideas in this thread… I think CDI is starting to show it’s power and is growing into something that will, hopefully, help Anet improve GW2 over next few years.
That said, I would like to offer some of my ideas, which are similiar to the ones we have already discussed. (BTW I can’t belive I’ve read all 56 pages of this thread )

About HoM, I think we can use already implemented systems rather then have Anet make new ones. Home instance should be new HoM, and to a certain degree I’m sure devs wanted it to be like that, but obviously they didn’t have time to develop it.
I can see us having our own gardens, where we can plant seeds which can be earned by spending karma at the NPC in a zone. Each zone would have different types of seeds, and that NPC should be avaible at the end of DE, just for the funsies This could extend to minerals, trees, all sorts of stuff. Furnuture for our houses, trophies, etc…

Working upon that idea, we could also see return of NPC similiar to Nicholas the Traveler. He would stay in one zone for 3 days (time can be changed, after set period of time he should move to next zone), and would offer items, such as tonics, minis, weapon and armor skins, backpieces, dyes (maybe even new skill animations?, also you can sell it in recipe form so as to make horizontal progression a little bit longer and make Nicholas sell some special materials for those items), in exchange for karma and “zone item”. Zone item (new tokens?) can be earned by doing set number of DE and/or after killing set number of champions in the zone where Nicholas is located. Maybe we can even go further than that, incorporate some of the dailies that Nicholas would require you to do in that zone, like Jumping puzzle. OR we can even introduce some questing mechanins back in the game by adding list of stuff that Nicholas needs you to do for him.
In my opinion this would make old zones more attractive for people to visit and only thing that Anet would have to develop would be new items.
Only thing I dislike about my idea is that it would introduce new “token”, if I/we can figure out a way to do it without that “token” I would say in my humble opinion this would be AWESOME

GW1 skill cap can return to GW2, only thru instance quests.
Also I don’t think Anet should focus on making quests for obtaining new skills. To me GW1 skill caping was pain in the kitten , I didn’t like it one bit. I found myself being forced to do it, rather than wanting to.
It’s better to use those resources for making Order based quests and faction reputation.
Anet should focus on making new skills interesting to use… and fix PvE encounters rather than profession themself, but that should be different topic.

I agree with The Lost Witch and timmyf… Sub-classes at this point, wouldn’t bring anything good to the table and wouldn’t be worth Anet’s developing time. Like some people have noted, PvE encounters are heavily in favor of pure direct damage, hence why zerkers are the best choice.
To introduce Sub-classes we need to change pve encounters so support and control should have influence on the battlefield… For those who forgot Anet removed holy trinity in favor for their own trinity and it went something like this damage/support/control. Awesome idea, terrible execution if you ask me. It works in sPvP but in PvE damage is by far superrior to other two roles.
So if we were to have subclasses it wouldn’t change anything, it’s not going to introduce new builds, since everyone will spec into damage.

Bottom line, we need to change how PvE encounters work in game, and then we can talk about adding subclasses. This is mandatory and I urge people to support PvE discussion first.

My suggestion would be to:

• Properly scale toughness and healing
• Make Condition build in PvE be as good as in sPvP
• Remove or change how defiant stack works.

If these 3 things were to change, we would have so many viable builds and good options in PvE… and not Zerkers.

If I had to choose one, and it’s really hard indeed to do so… I would pick Role Diversification. I and as some have mentioned, find that PvE meta where Zerkers are optimal way to go is not good for the game. I know there can be only 1 optimal way to go, such is the way of life but if you can manage and make other builds like support and CC mather in dungeons and open world it would be great. That defiant stack needs to change somehow.

I must agree with Vena on indicator on population of a server. I’m on Gunnar’s Hold, and we’ve been medium server for over 6 months, and only lately, about 1 month ago, we became high populated server.
Also like Vena said, basing population on some contest that is only known to one part of server is not really good. Hell I’m on Gunnars and only latetly did I find out we do Balthazar Temple everyday at 9 pm and Teq on mondays… and I’ve been playing this game regulary since first BWE

I decided to drop another post, yey me :P (obvious scarlet reference)

Since we had a nice summary by Chris and I think most people agree with everything you put in it, maybe we should start talking about future of Living World/Story, since most of what we talked were it’s faults and what was OK.

I remember Colin talking in blog, or was it in a interview, that GW2 may not see expansion in a traditional way, that you could expand the world thru Living Story. Now I don’t want to make this into an Expansion vs Living World disscusion, but I would like to see what other people, and hopefully Anet devs can in a small way say, what they think how it will be done.

Expanding world thru Living World/Story:
I think first point is pretty obvious one. In next 3-6 months we must see new zones. This is natural thing for an MMO, dead zones are a part of it as well, nothing you can do can stop it…. unless you do things like you did now with the Kessex Hills. Keep doing that, but please don’t be afraid to put new zones in the game.
New weapons, skills and traits. Pretty obvious again, you did introduce new skill in last updates so that could work in a similiar way, but let’s get more proffesion skills, not one skill for every proffesion, since it will naturally be bad, like antitoxin spray is.
New armor and weapon skins that are earned in the game, not by BLTP. I have nothing against it, but I would like to see more armor skins in the game it self.

This might sound like a whiny post about wanting more stuff, and maybe it is. But being GW1 player I can’t feel that we didn’t get enough content during it’s whole year. Maybe I get that feeling because it was mostly temporary, or it was in tiny bits. But I also belive this is a good feedback from a dedicated customer.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, what I (and possibly most of the community) want from you is to introduce NEW stuff in the game

Thanks for posting some nice info there Chris

Now this is my second post and I will try my best and write my thought about some points you wanted to see discussed.

Release cadence:

I really enjoy this bi-weekly release I don’t think this should change, but what needs to change is quality of this updates. I know that we are now starting to see work of people who had more time to work on this updates, and most releases as of late were better than previous one. Only thing that didn’t improve were achivements, some of them feel grindy, but some of them are fun, but I guess you can’t make everything 100% grind free, after all it’s quite hard task to do that.
But IF it will help you deliver better content you can always go back on releasing updates monthly.

Favorite updates:

Zephyr Sanctum, F&F 3rd and 4th update, Southsun Cove, halloween(2012) and wintersday (2012)

Least favorite updates:

Queens Jubilee, Dragon Bash, Blood&Madness
I named these since they were really either too zergy for my taste or/and didn’t really have much to do in them.

Future of LW:

Kessex Hills and Southsun Cove were great, since we can actually see something change in the world, of course Zephyr Sanctum was great since we got to visit new zone. What I want to see in future releases:
- New zones
- Changes to existing zones (Timberline Falls next please )
- New mobs and gear (try to make some of it obtainable in game not just BTL)
- Try to use existing lore and work up on it more
- Try to spread event on 2 or even 3 zones… I think this will help and decrease that feeling of content being zergy. And when I say spread across 2,3 zones I really mean it, not like we have now where we have to kill 3 krait witches in 3 zones, that is good begging, but meat of the content is still in Kessex Hills
- Please don’t put zerg/farm friendly maps like Labyrinth, Queens Pavilion, etc… If you do make new temporary maps, make them much bigger.

Thanks for listening to us. I’m glad you’re sticking to some of your ideas, since sometimes even fans are wrong and that is something all of US FANS should take in consideration. Please continue working hard, and if possibly even harded We need some interesting NEW content

Hey Chris and every other developer in Anet I’m really loving this collaborative approach, I’ll try to be as much as objective as I can.
First thing first, I was one of the few who supported Living World/Story concept, as I consider it to be a brilliant idea, and some of patches we got were really good. BUT Over the past few releases I kind of stoped caring about what is happening to the world. Reason I think is obvious… it doesn’t have an impact on the world or my character. Scarlet was nice addition, but I think she overstayed her welcome. For some reason I find Guild Wars 1 story and ideas to be more interesting and mature, something that is missing in Guild Wars 2 so far, I honestly can’t pinpoint in what way exactly but I belive I’m not the only one that feels this way.
I think that Living World should come with more content, I didn’t like Blood and Madness at all, I found it to be the weakest patch so far.
I would also like to see current in-game lore being used, there are plenty of all ready interesting facts, npc’s and ideas in the game, expanding on them would be right thing in my honest opinion.
As in other post, please find a way to bring those short-stories from website in the game somehow, I am of strong belive that story in game should be told via it’s mehanics. That is the best way to do it, if not then at least add some NPC or book in game where we can read about that story.
Pace of the living story is, well, slow and doesn’t flow at all, elder dragons seems to take a backseat here and I find it odd indeed. Why can’t we have living story that involves edler dragons and/or their champions. I think people will be far more intersted in that story.

I know I said a lot of negative things about Living World, but I think this will be better feedback then me saying how great it is, since it is… Idea is great, but some patches were really bad, and some were good.

P.S.
Please no more festive events and off-topic: I do hope you are planing expansion or some new zones