Guild Wars 2

On the key ring thing would everyone be happy if that too cost 700 gems and would only store key or things used for finding or opening chests i.e. shovels and crowbars

I would say that one of the better uses would be with keys and other consumable items of that ilk. That would take it over 5 items.

I have not opened the bandits chest in my home instance in ages because of the hassle of distribution. Given that I will use the home instance to do the gathering daily or a chunk of that.

Buying 5 of them I think works out at 560 gems each, with 2000 gems costing about £16.

Of course I am waiting for the market to settle down before doing anything.

Yes they are expensive, but in line with other items.

My view on what they need to be doing is in line with Nike’s suggestions.

The personal story is in instances and therefore they can simply leave this as a (from the past thing) and change the world around it. I know jarring but this is a game not a book or a tv show, if I can just push a button to enter the mists I can just push a button to enter the past.

In having living world content available to future player; as it happened on a time line it could be tacked on to the personal story. The content could be reworked (after it has ended) to make it solo able and it could be sold at the gem story as additional content (if need be), I would expect it to be cheap.

I know that there will be people that don’t like the idea of purchasing it, but solves the problem of people wanting to relive the event without it causing continuing disruption.

As to what to keep as permanent and what to remove; it could be that there is a voting mechanism in game.

The current event could resolve (i.e. scarlet dies) but the tower remains spewing forth toxic alliance (make something up so this works). Then in game there could be a vote as to whether the government remove the tower and restore the zone or saves the money and leaves it there.

Nice player interaction on the decision making.

Please remember this is a game and not a tv show or book and therefore sometimes consistency can be broken to make a better game.

Here’s my thoughts for any that care.

I generally get to play for about an hour per session and maybe do 4 hours per week, I try and do the dailies and the living story, so that is where I am coming from.

Given my ability to play the 2 week cycle is too quick I can just about get it done but it has to be that and nothing else, which I don’t think is what the devs are aiming for in this content.

Now I will rant with no real directions and no real solutions:

Generally:

I have no doubt that if they reduced the amount of grind the content would be done in one session by people that play more and that they would be upset at that.

This is a difficult balancing act and the only suggestion I would make is that there be levels of reward with the effective reward (nodes) being easily available and the cosmetic rewards (skins) being more time consuming.

Also it wouldn’t hurt to have things run for longer and overlap.

Story/Plot:

The LW appears to be a bit disjointed and I as a casual player frankly have no idea if there is a continuing story as all I look at is the rewards and the stuff required to get it. Given my circumstances it is all about getting the most effective reward for time spent.

I am also not interested in the results because they (as others have said) make no difference in the long run. At the moment the LW runs like an episode of the Simpson (no consequences) rather than say the (new) Battlestar Galactica.

I do think that it is worth taking risks with the player. In fact tell the players that you know that you’re taking risks and accept that some of those risks may not work out and you’ll drop them or change them. I think we’ve generally created a society that is scared of accepting failure (you learn a lot from failure)

Let there be failure with real consequences for the world. If the player fail to defeat a world boss have it stay around and annoy the players.

Have players short term goals conflict with the long term goals. Sure faming champs is easy money, but not taking on the bigger challenge will have bad consequences long term.

Don’t be afraid to have multiple stories going on at the same time.

Don’t be afraid to make content or try things that you know some people may hate (admit that may be the case).

remember this is a game not a tv show. What I think GW2 is attempting is something that few have tried before and that means some things will work and some won’t.

2 week cycle

I frankly don’t know if it is too tight a cycle. I however believe that it is being handle wrongly.

Every 2 weeks there is announced an update, new content, new missions. That is not what I think the devs are aiming for, it is what has always happened in the industry.

This is supposed to be a living World, as far as I recall in real life I don’t receive a notification from god every morning informing me that he has added x, y and z content. I have to go out there and discover it or turn on the news.

The 2 week cycle feels rushed because it is governed by lists of things to do within a certain time frame.

feel free to produce new content every 2 weeks but there is no need to remove content at the same rate.

Perhaps LW content could be relived by allowing players to re-enter the content through talking to an NPC and entering the previous LW version of the map. This would allow access to previous content and allow progression, then kill off the NPC when numbers drop using that content.

Also

why can’t I waypoint to Lions arch or other home cities for free. Why I am made to load up PvP walk load up LA and then load up home city. surely resources and more importantly my time will be freed up if I could just go to the black citadel direct for free.

Please stop giving me lists of things to do as I then have to work out what is the most effective list to complete in the time available. That means I end up doing the same lists over and over again and never progress on to any other list.

yes I got this too.

It was placed in my junk mail so very suspicious.

Also appears on the pishing e-mail sticky above