Guild Wars 2

Windborne Dagger for ele. I was using it to free up an utility slot that was Signet of Air. There is a sorta-replacement in the air line, but it’s pretty much useless. I’m almost always in fire or water where it doesn’t work. When I build for/rely on air, I usually have a ton of swiftness anyway so it’s still useless.

chemiclord.3978:

There IS a lot of sentiment that $50 for an expansion is simply too much money.

Yes, there is. I’ve never seen it as a “vets vs newcomers” sentiment though so it seems odd that some people regard it as entitlement.

For me, it’s always been about how anet has handled it. While making it easier for newcomers is good, anet’s choices on how to handle it make it look like they are trying to double dip out of my wallet. That’s not a good way to convince me the expansion is worthwhile.

BrooksP.4318:

Off-Topic, but has anyone been noticing the forums running VERY slowly today. Not sure if it’s just me or Anet.

It’s not just you. They seem to be bogged down this morning.

pdavis.8031:

Do we know for certain that they won’t release just the expansion for a lower price?

That is the current official word.

Did I forget this is a B2P game?

No. This game being B2P does not mean I’m obligated to buy or like any price they put out.

MoonStoneX.9245:

People are confusing something here. You are not paying $50 for both the Expansion and the Core game. The Expansion itself is $50 ( I know its overpriced but that’s my opinion), BUT you get both the Expansion and the Core Game (for “Free”) if you buy Heart of Thorns on a new account.

It’s not confusion. People are seeing that and see it as anet including the base game as an excuse to charge that much for the expansion. Edit: In other words, they’re seeing it as a red flag.

As of right now, I can’t see how it’s worthwhile unless you’re really hyped for the expansion.

Doggie.3184:

Actually not sure anymore. I’m just going by rational logic but Anet may of broken that. ;o

You’d think with that price they’d create an entire new content the around the size of tyria but it’s hard to imagine that’s what we’re getting.

Yeah. It’s what I was afraid of when I heard there would be a paid expansion. It seems those fears were realized. :/

I agree. This had better be some amazing expansion if they want me to pay $50…

Doggie.3184:

What’s up currently is an xpan+core game bundle. Obviously that isn’t the correct product for existing players so the price for xpan isn’t 50 dollars so it’s not been added to the store yet and they didn’t finish the page properly/on time. So wait for them to add it.

I hope you’re right, but the fact it shows that price ingame makes me wonder.

DeWolfe.2174:

Jski.6180:

Ashen.2907:

Isn’t $40 – $50 pretty normal for an MMO expansion ?

It is ppl just want it for free.

No, not free at all. If the basic upgrade path for existing players was $35, there wouldn’t be such ill feelings and complaints. Especially when they’ve been putting accounts on sale and many of us have purchased additional accounts. Now it’s going to fracture our game play as Anet will be lucky if players buy one xpac, let alone a handful of them at these prices.

It doesn’t help that the expansion appears to be pretty small. I don’t see how what we know justifies $50. Including the full game with it does, but then we’re right back to previous buyers paying twice…

Pockets.3201:

JustTrogdor.7892:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

No you get 5 character slots since it’s a new account.

Good grief, for the 4th time or so, please read the FAQ. It isn’t a new account unless you are a new customer or decide to just buy it as a new account. For existing players it is just the upgrade.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/94582027-Heart-of-Thorns-Pre-Purchase-FAQ

So for an existing player you pay the same amount of money, but get less for it?

Pretty much, yeah. I don’t see anything in that link that changes that.

I’m not going to buy the game twice. I will not pay for something I already own even if there is an expansion attached.

Thaia.5146:

What I wanted is something that expands the abilities of my class and it sounds like they’ll just limit them because we get only ONE specialisation with HoT release. Thoughts?

For the most part, I agree. The system as described is all or nothing. New skills for the base class are unlikely as new skills and traits are likely earmarked for newer specializations. This also applies to older specializations. In addition, new skills/traits for the base class can cause balance issues between specializations as older specializations will not take them into account.

All in all, specializations can easy fail to fulfill the desire for new skills/traits for one’s class. It boils down to how well Anet handles it.

joeag.1862:

has nobody thought that they may add NEW weapons to the game ?

Actually, people were hoping spears were going to be added as a land weapon. Pretty sure it’s been confirmed that there aren’t any new weapons this time around.

Astralporing.1957:

Fenrina.2954:

I’m a bit iffy on the specialization system from what little we have. It seems all or nothing which is kinda boring if a person isn’t interested in a new specialization.

Doesn’t seem so. They said that we’d be able to “revert” back to the base class whenever we wanted, and implied that in some circumstances we might want that.

I’m not sure what that has to do with that. If a person doesn’t like the specialization added and never uses it, they get nothing out of this system. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for that person to get excited about the change. Maybe there will be a new spec in the future that the person would get excited about. Maybe not.

shadowpass.4236:

Why would they remove attunements? That makes no sense haha

I’m referring to the whole “fundamentally change the way” a class plays. Big changes may not be desirable for what a given player wants.

I’m a bit iffy on the specialization system from what little we have. It seems all or nothing which is kinda boring if a person isn’t interested in a new specialization. Alternatively, if a person doesn’t like the tradeoffs (I play ele because of the attunements, if a spec removes attunements, but unlocks a weapon I like… I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.) I hope it turns a 2-phase system where getting a spec unlocks some stuff (like the weapon) and going into the specialization proper turns that up to 11.

Terrahero.9358:

I don’t see the part where the devs suggest you lose abilities when taking up a specialization.

[….]

Correct, and then you can swap back and forth, you can say “My character’s a druid, but I’m going to play as a ranger today.” It’s very similar to changing out your skills and traits, you can go in and change whenever you want, as long as you’re out of combat.

This quote muddies the waters again. But can really be read several ways, and if you assume the devs do not have an alternate example (or don’t want to give one) of a specialization for Rangers, it makes more sense aswell.

I think it’s a mix of quotes like that one and like this one:

and they get new profession mechanics that fundamentally change the way a Ranger plays when they become a Druid

Whatever that ultimately means.

Edit:

EDIT: Silly Fenrina, didn’t you know that it’s forbidden to ninja my posts? :P

I specialize in the forbidden.

Astralporing.1957:

i see no attunement effects

Minor note: the attunement effects only appear when weapons are drawn. She never does that. While it would be good for clarity, not having the attunements visible does make sense.

As an aside, does she even have an offhand weapon? I’m looking at the linked video, and it doesn’t seem like it. There’s a part that kinda looks like one, but that’s a part of her pants. I know only one weapon is a conjurer thing, but that’s doesn’t make much sense when applied to actual gear.

Death is cheap in gw2. The slit throat of a family member is only a nickel. It’s hard to care after all that’s happened. It doesn’t really help her death is completely non-sequitur. “You won! One of your allies is now dead. What.”

phys.7689:

but part of the training means people have to actively avoid dying, right now its officially a good strat to zombie as fast as possible.

No, “not dying” isn’t a major part of that. The game does not use death as the main indication of failure. It uses “event succeed” and “event failed” to show the players how well they did. While often times not dying and event success go hand in hand, it’s not 100% correlation.

phys.7689:

Die excessively and you lose things/have to restart
put the same exact mechanic in GW and its only effect is that its a time sink? odd logic.

You don’t see why? The contra example you provide is common among games from the nes and snes era. That system was used for two reasons. One was that many of those games are short games. It’s there to prolong them so players get their money’s worth despite being short. In other words, it is a proper time sink.

The other reason is many were ports of arcade games. Arcades used difficulty and frequent deaths to get people to put a lot of quarters into the game. In contras case, this is more likely as contra was originally an arcade game. As an aside for those that don’t know, the code mentioned is the Konami Code, and cheat codes like that were commonplace back then.

phys.7689:

And thats what it is, essentially GW2 is on training wheels right now.

That’s because the game’s difficulty curve is non-existent in the open world. The game never throws a new mechanic at the player unless it’s a new monster, and those new monsters are rare after the first ~30 levels. A Cave Troll doesn’t change even after 50 levels. Only in maps like the Orr maps does the game try to change this in the open world. The game does not try to prepare players for harder content.

This has nothing to do with the death penalty. Games with even weaker death penalties still outdo gw2 in having a better difficulty curve.

phys.7689:

progression is not about infinite attempts, its about getting better. You have not got better because you were able to zombie through.

And to get better, generally two things are needed: Analysis of what’s going wrong, and practice in getting it right. Death penalties often put roadblocks in the way of at least practicing as one can’t practice if one is undoing the effects of the penalty.

It’s also worth pointing out that gw2’s death system does not allow for infinite attempts. It allows for 7 attempts. After that, armor starts breaking which creates stat penalties. Sure, one can go repair to remove those, but that really isn’t any different than undoing any other penalty listed in this thread. It’s only a matter of how much frustration gw2 wants to put on it’s playerbase.

Rethandris.3789:

An advantage of the largos is their human-like body structure, amor skins that look good on humans/norn/sylvari will also look good on largos. (most likely)

One other thing about Largos, they have a master/student theme. It’d be somewhat easy to get them into something like the personal story structure.

If not Largos though, I suppose Tengu. They seem more interesting than the rest.

I’m pretty wary about it. Good access to content is generally important for an mmo to survive. They’re already planning on making people pay for access to older living story releases. Those I’ve talked to feel uneasy about that alone. Adding more money-locked content may push that way to far.

We already have people complaining about armor skins always being released in the cash shop. Do we really want that for content too? I feel like that’s where it’ll lead to.

Edit: In other games, exclusive content for people who pay money to get gems lead to situations like “pay us $150 and we’ll give you a mount.” I don’t think that’s healthy for a game.

Doggie.3184:

You picked the wrong one. Go look at the entire armor list.

I looked at this armor list. Not counting the racial armors (as some of the pics make it rather difficult to tell what’s going on), I got around 33 “skimpy” armors in the game. The problem is I counted sets like Outlaw and Country as they had lower necklines. I tried to avoid sets like chainmail that were just a bit of arm showing.

33 may sound like alot, but that’s out of 117 sets or 28%. And that’s with a lot of potential false positives. Unless we’re talking about high-realism, I don’t see how most female armors in this game are skimpy.

Edit: If I had to guess at how many I consider honestly skimpy, it’d be around 20ish.

Arikyali.5804:

Less trenchcoats for males

I’d say less trenchcoats period. Medium armor is overflowing with them on both genders.

-More ‘pit fighter’ heavy armor designs for both male and female
—-Remains practical, within a fantasy game

Not that fond of pit fighter, but gladiator is probably about the limit I’d expect. An actual bikini would likely end up as an outfit which aren’t expected to be “practical.”

Crossaber.8934:

A work around is add a new female body type (or couple) thats not so female, which is closer to male one and by default these body type only wear male version of armor. But still there are issue for the open chest male armor, female in these armor will have their chest naked….

I suspect that leads to a female head awkwardly attached to a male frame.

That aside, do you really think anet is going to get their money’s worth on both creating this combination and having to maintain it for every future hair and face style that comes along?

Ryuujin.8236:

I wasn’t even aware you could obtain the weapon :o – it appears the game puts far too many assumptions on the player character being a sylvari, as all the stuff about Treesus and the mystical sword Saladbowl appear to come out of nowhere if you’re any other race.

It’s even stricter than that… I think only Vigil sylvari actually get to use it. At a minimum, the wiki implies that. The sword is mentioned to all sylvari though.

Ryuujin.8236:

Let’s not forget that once he gets his “sword of legend”, he also starts using Mesmer and Guardian skills, which seems to make him Tyria first triple-class character (exceeding even the dual class ascended of GW1)

Edit: On closer inspection his post-upgrade skill set has it’s own skill list, they just happen to look exactly like other class skills. ie. “Twlight Crash” is identical to “Illusory Wave”, “Maelstrom Strike” is identical to “Whirling Wrath”.

I had a similar experience with Caladbolg’s interactions. When he first got that sword, I thought the same. “He’s using skills from outside his profession?” Even just having a Necro with a Greatsword felt off. But after playing the personal story where I got Caladbolg for fight, I like that he could do that. It’s the sword’s power, and anyone can do that.

I think that’s one of the problems with the personal story. It seems like the story expects the player to have gone through specific personal story sections despite those sections being optional.

phys.7689:

• they need to come up with a system that works better with dynamic events/dynamic world and gives some level of permanance <—- this is the most difficult and time consuming issue, which i dont think they will ever solve. Fact is we probably have lost the potential for a dynamic world here, at least one you can go back to.

Of all the things involved with the megaserver, I think this is the one that stands out most in my mind. I liked the orr temple concept. The cross-map functionality that gw2 had was one of it’s unique qualities, and one I hoped would get improved upon and developed as time went on.

It’s gone now. Just “adjusting the algorithm” is not going to bring it back…

Aerlen.5326:

[….]

Links aren’t working. Near as I can tell, Aerlen is refering to the Apprentice, Embroidered, and Cabalist sets, respectively.

Aerlen.5326:

Low levels without a ton of wardrobe choices, lots of gold, gems, dungeon tokens, and transmute stones are sorta stuck with those two are choices for a lot of early levels.

While perhaps not ideal, is there a reason why Devout or Country sets don’t work as alternatives?

Edit: A friend of mine liked the Embroidered set because it reminded her of Princess Jasmine.

frans.8092:

And MUD implementations frequently used D&D rulesets, so you could say that modern graphical MMORPG mechanics do have their roots in D&D.

That’s true, but many of those MUDs are also almost as old as D&D itself. Enough time has passed for additional rpgs, muds, mmos, etc to come up with their own ideas and systems. One can’t say it works like this because it’s distantly related to D&D.

That said. I think we’re on a nearby pages. Kasmeer can’t have survived the Tower of Nightmares because of “Deflection AC” since AC does not exist within GW2.

Serophous.9085:

(which shouldn’t be too far off since mmo RPGs are based on the DND system)

Mmorpgs trace their roots back to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon). Said roots are old and deep enough that experience with d&d is not applicable to an mmo. I don’t consider it reasonable to say magic in the Lord of the Rings is comparable to Final Fantasy’s magic because they’re both Fantasy. This is not any different.

Serophous.9085:

Well, we are still taking damage despite if any magic there is protecting us. Even so, the magic would have to be concentrated more in the largely open areas to make sure you don’t get skewered. Imagine the defense of the armor improving even moreso by the magic overall if not concentrated in one area.

We also still take damage despite any metal there to protect us. It’s more likely that the magic is always spread out and the metal is reinforcing it somehow.

Also, despite everything said, Kasmeer implied she went through the Tower of Nightmares without any clothing at all (wearing nothing but illusions). It’s questionable how much armor they actually need.

Edit: Added the screenshot. Sadly, I don’t have a better one.

Leo Paul.1659:

Is this the only way to discourage zerging?

That’s the troubling part. The event design naturally makes it harder for zergs by the bosses sharing abilities. If the zerg fights them one at a time, the last boss will naturally be the most difficult. In contrast, splitting up produces easier bosses. As such, the scaling issues are on top of this.

But when the event is effectively lost (aka bronze rewards), the ability sharing goes away. The scaling does not. The zerg has already lost the battle at this point. Why punish them further?

If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill?

Food for thought.

Nokaru.7831:

If you zoom your mini-map in, you can see when the healing turret spawns instantly.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I’m quite sure it also shows up on the minimap.

Noted, but it suffers the same problem as the status icon: it’s located within peripheral vision. That makes it harder to notice.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The heal turret on Boom-boom even specifically tells you that it heals Boom-boom, and its not even a normal-sized heal turret, its huge. And what do people do? 11111111111 on Boom-boom and wonder why she’s not dying.

For this one specifically, the turret spawns away from Boom-boom. Often the turret spawns offscreen for me so the size is irrelevant. After that, the only indication that the turret is around is a status icon and the purple tether. Both of those indicators are easy to overlook unless one is intentionally looking for them. In the case of the tether, I generally find the turret by simple camera movement than following it.

The only good part is the conversation between Heal-O-Tron*, Braham and Rox. That’s it.

*Shouldn’t he have a new name?

Hmm, sounds interesting. I’m not sure I’d fully lock a certain profession to a given type of content. Maybe a Soldier, Adventurer, Scholar could have more of a particular type of content, but still have others mixed in?

Audrey.7246:

I too agree that the inflexible world boss schedule is not ideal for those who have a limited but consistent time slot to play each day. Multiple world boss spawns does not appear to be a solution (would require more computing resources) but rotating the schedule on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis would help.

If I recall correctly, the reason given for synchronizing the spawns was that it’d be too problematic to have old system with the mega server. Having multiple spawns shouldn’t cause overall more map instances to be needed than it otherwise would. But admittedly, I could be wrong.

I’m looking over the list of requirements. It’s really not good. For starters, traits that unlock through wvw are extremely dependent on luck. Getting close to the Overgrown Grub, let alone killing it, is a problem if one is assigned to red or green. That grub is known for being insanely hard to kill, and now it has a big bullseye over it’s head so blue people may try to camp it and prevent others from earning their traits. It also appears that only blue has a wvw boss with a trait. That may cause additional strife in wvw due to the imbalance.

The towers Inferno’s Needle, Tytone Perch, and Stonegaze Spiral have similar issues. All 3 are in Edge of the Mists. One has to hope that either they get in while a given tower is unowned or that another team takes it and leaves it undefended. Which color one is assigned to will also affect this as it may prove difficult to get to other color’s towers if enemies decide to camp the towers or if a given color is stronger within the map.

In addition, the personal story quests can suffer from the story’s linear nature. If a person needs a trait to complete the step where they unlock that trait, it may prevent the player from continuing onwards. For this, as I previously stated, being able to pick which traits to unlock may prove better.

About the only thing I can recommend is to have the option to unlock multiple traits as a reward for completing a given challenge. Perhaps a similar method to picking which zenith weapon to unlock from achievement chests? Get an adept unlock, pick an adept trait, and so on.

There’s one additional thing of note. For new characters and/or new players, the ability to swap around multiple traits as the need arises is useless if there are no traits to swap. I’m having a hard time seeing many people going out of their way to buy or find enough new traits to make the “retrait anywhere” system worthwhile.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

so I may just have to pick and choose traits I will actually use (and perhaps buy some) rather than get them all.

That is the best choice.

Individually, the trait unlocks are not a massive problem. It’s when taken together that the design becomes toxic. Unfortunately, this applies to buying them too. 360 Skill Points is nuts especially since that number will go up if they add new traits. I don’t even have 150 on my main, let alone over double that.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Eh, maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Sure, execution could be better. It really shouldn’t be the same for every profession.

I have an alt that was leveled up to 40 by almost complete map completion. There’s no way I could level multiple alts like that, and that’s kinda what they’re wanting here. It’s just not doable without tearing one’s hair out.

Edit: I suppose I should clarify. Alts are a means for me to avoid burning out on a game. This setup promotes burning out. In other words, I can’t stay interested in the game without a large cost or burning out trying.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide

If accurate , they really did do a major copy/paste for this. That’s really shallow. So much for alt replayablity. Do it once, seen it all. That’s rather disappointing.

Almost every map after level 25 until Mount Maelstrom and Fireheart Rise has to have 100% completion to unlock all traits. Assuming no manuals, naturally. I can’t say I’m pleased that traits would require that much effort to complete. A lot of that stuff is really time consuming and oftentimes boring. Some of the required maps are rather underlevel for a level 60. Not happy that traits are strictly bound to the linear nature of the personal story either. If it was a “complete this story, pick a trait to unlock,” I think it’d be setup better.

I know you tried, anet, but this setup doesn’t look good at all.

Edit: Wait a minute. Weren’t the Adept traits suppose to be auto-unlocked?

Wishmaster.7693:

What the hell is this? To unlock a minor trait I have to get a zone to 100% completion???!!! This is complete kitten!

Which trait is this?

I agree that sounds, in general, way to high requirement for a trait. The new ones are simple “do x content” not a whole map’s worth.

“Casual” and “Hardcore” are words that most people throw out there, but don’t necessarily mean much. There really isn’t much of a strong definition to them. Closest I’ve seen is casual has less time and hardcore has more time. In any case, a person’s skill level does not reflect how much time they’ve spent ingame.

I think the devs are trying to look at a different audience than they have in the past. During the Marionette LS, there was a post by Josh Foreman that indicated as much. He expressed a desire to raise the average skill level of the playerbase. If they’re still trying to push and prod the playerbase into getting better, I think they’re doing more harm than good. Stuff like the boss schedules and costs for guild world events is not reassuring.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/madness/Well-I-defended-these-new-events-at-first/page/5#post3559127

Josh Foreman

Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

Looking back, I should have just said no to this. I feel like questions like this led to the assault knight debacle. Something that’s challenging but not interesting. The new Shadow Behemoth fight is similar. It’s harder I suppose, but it’s not interesting. It’s not enjoyable to fight. I wonder who those fights were intended for: the actual people who enjoyed the open world boss fights, who anet thought that group was, or someone else entirely?

Sola.7250:

FunnyCide.5426:

Earlier today I thought my little elementalist was shaping up pretty well with 32 trait points. I log in after the update and I only have 3 trait points. ;_; I feel like she god hit with a huge nerf bat and now I have to do a lot of work (again) to get her back to where she had been. I do not like how trait points are earned now. Those points mean a lot at low levels.

Do forget the trait points have been reduced from 70 to 14 (14 now equals 70), so you didn’t lose anything, other then trying to figure out where your original trait points were allocated. The 14 points unlock the same amount of traits.

Kinda irrelevant to what Cide is talking about though. 30/5 = 6, not 3, but 3 is what Cide got. That’s because they bumped the requirements for traits up 20 levels. That’s what Cide is upset about. Cide lost already obtained customization and access to master traits.

That would be a consequence of the Megaserver. They said they couldn’t do that without having waypoints contest when viewed from outside the map

Asmodeus.5782:

The husks are not a problem at all, if 95% of the zerg does not ignore them, as they’re used to.

In general, I don’t like boss designs that have them heal for that much mid-way through a fight. I feel it cheapens the fight as a single failure means the event can/will fail. In addition, this is suppose to be a “lesser” world boss after all. As for the wurm’s hp, I haven’t fought it. But ~50% at 8min is not reassuring.

Astral Projections.7320:

As for the corruption. I wonder if something like the Lemongrass Poultry soup would help, as well as traiting or putting in utility skills that help with conditions?

I don’t believe it’s classified as a condition. I don’t think my melandru runes were doing anything to it.

And yeah, not happy about that effect. It skips the downed state entirely. Just dead from out of nowhere with no indication as to why in the logs.