Guild Wars 2

Firebrand

Visually the skills looked great despite some animations being shared through all three tomes. Though it’s a shame that we don’t have physical tomes present along with the page aura, since the original tome elite skills had them floating in front of the character and looked really cool that way— it feels like that old concept and the new models for the virtue tomes could really live up to their aesthetic potential if combined. Even the firebrand preview image shows tome in hand!

When it comes to the contents of the tomes and functionality of firebrand mantras themselves, I’ve noticed that:

• Virtue tome cool downs are too long, can be wasted accidentally, and their cast times make them feel awkward when responding to combat situations.

• Virtue tome auto attacks being cones will cripple the specialization since the cones follow the direction of the character rather than the camera. It’s possible but hard to miss a PBAoE heal, splashing a water field, and applying auras for support but cone radius allows to miss your target entirely AND forces the firebrand behind allies in order to support them which is blegh. Why do this on a profession that doesn’t even have a passive speed boost?

• Virtue tome auto attacks on a sluggish specialization like firebrand renders them useless if the opponent in PvP knows how and when to kite. The original tome elite skills had ground targeted auto attacks and were much loved, so I’d propose that change. It’s pretty disheartening to have to wait on Judge’s Intervention to catch up to a kiting enemy in WvW, especially one that heals itself faster and with less effort while you’re both slow and a low health soldier profession.

• Firebrand’s axe symbol does not apply a boon. The symbol on axe is not OP and has to be traited to not be as boring, it’s also just as stationary as the other symbols even if it does apply cripple. It could be redeemed with a boon, since it can be dodged in PvP really easily but could be stood on willingly by allies. That’s how symbols should work!

• Some of the firebrand’s mantras could use ground targeting or even AoE application like mesmer mantras. The cone radius works on some of them like the Mantra of Flame or maybe even the Mantra of Truth, but the rest are lousy as cones. Think of it like this: not ALL mesmer mantras are AoE skills, some need targets too. Not all firebrand mantras have to be cones.

The projectile effect of the Flameseeker Prophecies legendary shield look really cool

pls make them work on guardian, the blue page trail fits the guardian theme so well

Thank you

1. It will affect the sigil and rune markets negatively.
2. It doesn’t get rid of the actual problem, just for legendary weapons which is unfair.

There are already a bunch of sigil and rune options costing vendor value on the trading post. Sometimes you won’t even find a buyer, forcing you to hoard or sell to a merchant vendor for the two silver. Adding this functionality to legendary gear will soak up this excess in runes and sigils but for the wrong reason— not because they’re good and balanced, but to assuage some collector’s OCD.

The problem will still persist in exotic, rare, masterwork, fine, and basic rarity gear. What problem, you ask?

All salvage kits in the game destroying gear 100% of the time for their modifications while a GEMSTORE kit salvages them without destroying gear, at the cost of a ridiculous gem price. This gemstore salvage kit, called the Upgrade Extractor was called the “Perfect Salvage Kit” in GW1 and could be crafted at the Eye of the North hub for in-game currency and materials.

ArenaNet are profiting off this problem. Selling kits with higher results to yield rarer materials and modifications in the gemstore is wrong, it was wrong at launch and it is wrong to this day.

Giving legendary gear swappable runes and sigils will not solve this issue nor will it be good for their respected markets. A lousy rune that costs 2-3g doesn’t make it anymore desirable in combat than when it was 2 silver. Just imagine how much the prices of meta runes and sigils will skyrocket if unlocking them required tons for a legendary rune/sigil recipe.

People want to be able to make adjustments to their meta gear without destroying gear and without paying 250 gems PER ARMOR/WEAPON PIECE. Adding the Upgrade Extractor as an in-game salvage kit will not stress the market with the end result totally eliminating the need for any rune or sigil off the trading post. People will be able to resell their modifications, but that beats paying double or triple digits of an unchanged Superior Rune of the Defender.

Here’s what I’m expecting for 2017:

• New outfits in the gemstore
• New black lion weapon sets for black lion claim tickets
• New gliders in the gemstore
• 1-3 devastating bugs that will render the game offline for maintenance, force a rollback, and/or change a certain recipe(s) because of said bug(s) along with some content being disabled for weeks
• No real effort into balancing the skills depending on what game mode they’re being used on. Same builds floating around and same skills being useless and at best, situational
• Living story episodes with scrapped content, tied to maps that are tiny and inconsistent in quality compared to core Tyria maps
• Some Quality of Life updates like the expanded material storage tabs
• More WvW updates that dance around the solution of just merging worlds, this year will remain the year of Blackgate. IF a WvW tournament happens, Blackgate will win
• More sPvP tournament seasons, no new legendary item to work towards
• Maybe 1-2 new legendary weapons
• New holiday decorations
• News on the expansion and perhaps some rash (read: desperate, foolish) decision on ArenaNet’s end to pull those who quit the game because of content droughts back in
• Collections tied to living world updates, because gold sinks are fun!!! Collect 16 bear paws for the mega paw!!!!!
• New raid with 4 bosses or whatever
• A new fractal or two thrown in somewhere
• Team queue for ranked matches

Okay 2018 here we come.

1. The Gemstore

I’d like to begin by linking a Reddit thread on the topic of raid rewards in the gemstore.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rde2u/gemstore_update_xeras_maskmake_over_kit/d51t04o/?context=1000

There are items in the gemstore that would’ve made for great in-game rewards. Back items, armor pieces, and even entire weapon sets. Items from GW1 that held prestige and are now mere cash vanity. Even the recent addition of the wardrobe unlock item in the black lion chest has it rewarding items from collections, prestigious items like the Royal Guard outfit, and achievement items.

Not only are skins a problem, but borderline pay-to-win items too.

Items like boosters that, at launch, landed ArenaNet in a bit of controversy since they gave combat benefits. Items like the upgrade extractor that extracts runes and sigils without destroying the armor/weapon piece they were extracted from. This stuff shouldn’t be in the store. There’s also the skinless, average unbreakable harvest tools IN THE GEMSTORE. I thought the whole idea of selling these was to sell animations. What’s left to justify these being in the gemstore if they’re average sickles, pickaxes, and axes?

I get that ArenaNet must do business to survive and thrive, but games shouldn’t be treated like this when core problems still persist. Content drought after content drought and the gemstore is overflowing with so many items that ArenaNet had to remove a portion to make room.

2. Removed Content

How many minigames have we lost or failed to come back for a year or multiple years?
How many recipes have we lost?
How many skins disappeared?
How many festivals gone for years or events removed?
How many..— we’re missing a kitten LS season, people. That comes with missing world bosses, story, and a whole list of other items.
Who here remembers ArenaNet removing a part of the personal story and calling it a feature?

Content is removed, left behind to rot away, or reintroduced in some way that diminishes its place in the world. Why go backwards like this?

3. Balance

At the root of every problem, that catch-22 that gets in the way of ArenaNet, lies a balance issue.

We still have skill types that are not viable, traits after the trait rework that nobody uses, gear stats that make no sense in all game modes and on some game modes, sigils and runes that are worth less than merchant price on the trading post, foods that are never used, ranger pets that are never used, weapon types that are regarded as a hindrance, etc. etc. etc. Why must some conditions and boons be so useless in PvE, PvP, or both?

The birth of Ascended gear rode on the failed ambitions of Exotic gear. It was too easy to acquire so ArenaNet added another tier of gear instead of tweaking the methods of acquiring exotic tier gear. Entire dungeon paths were largely ignored back during the golden days of dungeoneering because they were too long and unrewarding for the effort to complete them, it remained so when dungeons were given a gold reward with the promise of tweaking said gold rewards to incentivize those longer, harder dungeon paths. The way dynamic events scale up from embarrassingly easy to 10 minute zerg champion pinata fights. People have manipulated this by limiting the number of players in an area to avoid higher tiers of mobs AND to farm champions in the past.

I could go on, this ties together with what I said earlier on aspects of the game being left behind to drag on like a corpse.

4. Lack of an in-game tutorial

Who here knows what brutal bolts do?
Who here blasts a poison field and is glad AoE weakness was placed on PvE mobs for like 4 seconds?
Of course none of this matters outside of fire fields and water fields, it’s fluff for combat.
I’ve heard of people who made it to the mid-levels and didn’t know how to jump.
There’s no tutorial guiding players on how break bars work.
The tutorial for GW2 is running to the big and bad Earth Elemental and smacking it with auto attacks and there. That’s it.

That’s why we lost the tic-tac-toe golem minigame thing from Metrica Province, that’s why we’re dancing for cows and rubbing crops to grow in Queensdale. Combined with low build diversity and useless options when it comes to building your character’s capabilities, newbies have to resort to googling builds or fetching YouTube vids to know just what isn’t lousy in a team environment AND learn how combo fields, break bars, unique class mechanics, etc initially on their own.

When outfits were introduced with the game, an instant gripe with them was the lack of customization options between them. They couldn’t be mixed around as individual pieces, they came stitched together and were worn as a single suit.

It’s probably easier on the developers to do so, but we traded a system where we had that functionality traded away for the current wardrobe system.

Imagine if instead of being forced to wear outfits as a single suit, we had slots for individual pieces of an outfit. Shoulders, top, gloves, bottom, and shoes. Lump outfit hats as regular combat skins so we can use any combat skin hat with outfits (top hat/monocle with the Noble Count outfit or the Dwayna Regalia outfit hat with combat armor, as examples).

If we had that option, we wouldn’t be drinking potions that tasted of khaki shorts and would be able to customize outfits to our liking. They’d still be their own separate system (from shoulders to toe, at least) but they won’t be as limited as they currently are. Clothing Tonics was a terrible solution and it will remain so until they do away with it. Clothing tonics could be integrated into the single-slot costume system as individual pieces to be mixed and matched around not only with each other again, but with outfit pieces.

Turning clothing tonics into single costume pieces to be mixed and matched among themselves limits that feature to only clothing tonics, so it’s not the solution to breaking them out of their tonic stage. Including them as combat skins is wrong because they’re casual clothes, can’t really walk around with a heavy chestplate, helmet, boots, and khaki shorts. Pls. Hats usually work because, well, they’re hats. But by separating outfits into pieces, clothing tonics could easily fit in and it’d be a feature that affects everyone, whether or not they own clothing tonics.

Hello there.

Last night I was organizing my account vault and found an old toy, the Sun Kite I bought years ago for 500 gems. It didn’t look very impressive to me anymore and I instantly remembered that we could pay extra gold to an NPC to have our guild’s emblem engraved onto it with a whole new color and everything! I loved my personal guild’s emblem, so I decided it was well worth finally sprucing up this old kite with a new design that I liked.

So I searched and searched.

Turns out, according to the GW2 wiki, the NPC that sold them was removed when Heart of Thorns launched for a reason only known to those who paid attention to a certain developer’s comments on the forums.

This NPC was added in the July 9, 2013 update and was to stay indefinitely according to a post by Paul Belz on the Guild Wars 2 Forum. He was later however removed with Heart of Thorns expansion.

- The Kite Maker

Streamlining features and content is one thing, but downright removing such a customization option from the game with an expansion makes no sense whatsoever. I can’t think of a reason why creating Guild Kites out of Sun, Lightning, and Wind Kites was negative for the game. Perhaps ArenaNet wanted Guild Kites to be a part of the guild system without requiring gemstore kites and simply forgot they ever were a thing?

They’re Guild Kites.
You wear them with one of your beloved guild’s emblems engraved onto them to show you appreciate said guild(s).
I’m here to suggest they’re added back into the game! It’s not an urgent suggestion, I’m sure there are better things for ArenaNet to focus on, but it’s something I feel is worth asking for and bringing attention to.

Randulf.7614:

I think the one we are missing most is The Gauntlet. We have Lunar New Year, SAB, Halloween and Wintersday. Which is a healthy number, but they are unevenly spread through the year. Adding Queens Gauntlet in the summer would balance things out and add in an excellent festival.

Summer is the worst, if it wasn’t for SAB all of the steam build-up from Legendary weapon development being halted would’ve kept on riling everyone up. I agree with you though, the Queen’s Gauntlet was fun and is the special event I miss the most. They need one or two special events happening during the Summer, the waits are too long and not everyone is patient enough to stick around in something they may have lost faith in.

I still feel like they could add Dragon Bash back somewhere else other than in Lion’s Arch. They did that the first time then blew Lion’s Arch up! Total waste of resources.

Something I liked about the original Guild Wars was how busy the game was on a schedule no matter how busy ArenaNet was.

- Major festivals/special events were events like Wintersday, Halloween, Canthan New Year, etc.
- Minor festivals/special events were events like Lucky Treats Week, Sweet Treats Week, Pirate Week, etc.
- We also had monthly PvP fluxes, weekend bonuses, Nicholas the Traveler’s daily pre-Searing Ascalon and weekly post-Searing Tyria scavenges. Wintersday even came back in July during the Wintersday in July special event.

Well as Guild Wars 2’s timeline went on, we seem to have lost a few festivals/special events that could be keeping people happy during the long content droughts and waiting periods between LS episodes.

- In August the Queen Jennah’s Coronation Day (The Queen’s Jubilee/The Queen’s Gauntlet) festival was introduced and we haven’t seen it back for a long time.
- In June the Dragon Bash festival was introduced and we haven’t seen it back for a long time, too.
- The Festival of the Four Winds was both part of the first living story season and a festival that has made its way back several times before Dry Top was released. Surely it could find more sources of trade goods without the Zephyr Sanctum?

My point is that as time went on, actual replayable content was removed from the game when it needs all it can muster to keep people from falling to the negative morale that a content drought brings. Bringing back special events/festivals serves as a nice padding to keep people entertained while the game is being developed for long periods of time. Just imagine how negative people would’ve gotten if the Super Adventure Box didn’t come back this year to make it like the 3rd year in a row.

Bring these special events back, please.

I miss town clothes

I do

What they did to town clothes that were single piece clothing items was WRONG and remains so to this day!

I can see why people are against bikini/any sort of swim wear options for OUTFITS, since outfits can be worn in combat, but what about in towns? The Southsun beach? Outside of combat?

Why keep such a weird concept? Clothing tonics? A tonic that tastes of shorts— come on! Bring back the ability to wear those old clothes as town clothes and then adding a couple of swimsuits would be a harmless addition to the game.

Think about it. No more gross tonics that taste like what.. pants? AND people can mix and match them around again! It’ll give ArenaNet some variation to split their gemstore aesthetics instead of always limiting themselves to “does this look like armor? Is this good enough to be worn in combat?”

Maybe instead they could sell swimsuits as an underwear skin? Replacing the undyable undergarment skins.

Also complaining about scantily clad characters in GW2 is funny, there are already armor skin combinations that expose a lot of skin and we have the ability to take off armor and run around in underwear. The only immoral decision here is showcasing and squandering swimsuit skins and dyed undergarments at Southsun Cove for years.

Yeah yeah I don’t like how often the gemstore is updated too, people play the game to play the game not buy most of their customization from a cash shop, at least that’s what I like to think. But clothing tonics are so bad… and if the town clothing system were back, swimsuits would fit nicely into such a system.

The titles are nice in my opinion, but something I never quite understood is why 1-30 is all rewarded but say.. someone with 49/50 HoM points or 47/50 HoM points receive nothing but previous rewards (1-30 items and titles every 5 points).

Reaching 50/50 takes a lot of time and dedication, so leaving 49 empty felt.. bad all of those years ago. The game right now needs attention so I doubt ArenaNet will ever revisit the Hall of Monuments when the main game needs content updates, bug fixes, the sort.

Nero.8047:

I largely support this notion.
I’m the leader of a small-ish guild and the Gilded Hollow simply feels empty.
We’ve managed to reach lvl 37 with just a few people but it doesn’t make the Guild Hall feel ours.

It’s as if we’ve set-up camp in a Shopping Mall.

the Dale Guild Hall would be amazing.

• Smaller
• European Medieval/renaissance-style
• Indoor decorating

map

I want this so much please yes…!

Allowing people to transmute all armor skins onto themselves regardless of profession seems silly to me, like the skins themselves are being forced onto certain identities instead of being designed around them.

I’m tired of trench coats for adventurer professions too, I’d like some leathery fighter straps for soldier professions myself, and some battlemage plates for the scholar professions sounds like a solid idea. But personally I’d want those armor sets designed with the aesthetic/design of adventurers, scholars, and soldiers in mind.

I’ve heard the number of armor sets from the gemstore greatly outnumber those earned in-game, same for weapons, and while I prefer ArenaNet to design armor sets that branch out of the exhausted concepts (trench coats for medium, solid metal plates for heavy, skimpy fabric for light) I doubt they’ll really up the ante on releasing armor sets earned for in-game effort or release gemstore armor sets without catering to the “Look at me, I’m wearing a Christmas tree for armor!” crowd.

Something about the frilly starter skirt for scholar professions with the Plated Boots skin and the Heavy Plate Chestguard skin looks so disrespectful and forced when it comes to immersion, like they really REALLY don’t belong together. I’m sure everyone is an experienced fashionista that can work miracles, but it feels forced, especially if combat stats do not carry over— not that I want them to, but still.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Thanks for voting and commenting. We’ve read through everything you’ve posted here.

Among people who expressed a clear preference for one of the options, about 230 people prefer to make the change, versus about 40 who prefer to leave it as is. We’ll make the change.

We’re also going to work on cleaning up the Charr tail clipping. And then our focus has to be on shipping the full legendary set.

Thanks everyone!
Mo

Will you be cleaning up the charr tail clipping on all armor sets or just on the legendary and precursor armor skins?

Also I appreciated your sentiment on whether the set has been in the game long enough for people to be strongly attached to it or not. I hope this mishap doesn’t discourage the design teams from venturing into feminine, revealing themes for any of the races (including asura) just out of fear of upsetting people.

Like I mentioned before, people do want to showcase the choices they picked at character creation. Charr fur patterns, norn tattoos, sylvari body markings and bioluminescence, asura skin markings, and just their bodies overall. I have plenty of solid, hefty plate armor sets on my characters and having the choice to go for some lightweight, yet metallic garments is a nice choice to still have.

I think the problem with the asura experimental precursor skin was that the chest was too beady and refined, like a resized human top, and thus it looked off. Asura do have major pectoral muscles on their chest though and I can’t fish out the pre-launch interview confirming them as mammals but in-game there are hints to them being mammals as well as a bellybutton under their strapless pink undergarments (if bugged off with preview codes).

Thank you for the reply and for reading everything!
(Attached example screenies of asura chest and a heavy set that isn’t quite as lightweight but still another favorite.)

Hello Mo,

Contrary to popular belief, your game models for flame legion charr (Gaheron to be exact) have been proven the charr have two nipples on their chest along with pecks. Female charr do not have prominent breasts so the breastplates do seem off. But female asura, along with male asura, do have breasts/mounds up there.

I’m worried this might lead to already established skins being changed for asura when people have already grown attached to them, no matter how much they cover or reveal. People do like solid and elegant pieces but a bit of skin shown isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. For the charr race especially, your game has showcased concept art way before GW2 launched that showed the charr wearing revealing armor that shows off their fur patterns but those are few in-game. People do want to show off their fur patterns, skin patterns, norn tattoos, etc.

Another thing that worries me is how loose the design for the armor tied to these races. As you can see, people seem quite persuaded that charr should have “six or nothing” when so far you’ve been designing it for two. What IS the charr anatomy? Asura anatomy seems straight forward with females having small breasts and males having pecks, both justifying some design to accommodate for those things when it comes to armor. But some armor sets you’ve designed have no holes for their ears, small or large, and the toes on the boots clip right through.

Thank you for asking us but I doubt the voice of the forums should speak for those in-game. You may think it’s too early for anyone to grow attached to these skins but some people might actually be looking to design their characters’ looks on those brand new skins

Good luck and thanks again

Thor IV.4621:

When Anet introduced the possibility to change the stats of ascended gear they lowered the value of legendarys. It was no longer necessary to craft new armors / weapons to get the right stats. I think it was the right decision. I love to be able to do it. But I am really sad about the value loss of the legendarys.
So what is the point to have a legendary nowadays?

1. The skin
2. The ability to switch stats out of combat instead of running to the Mystic Forge with materials for the new stat
3. The weapon strength on top of the additional convenience

One could argue that, because legendary weapons are so legendary, they should have higher stats than ascended weapons and that shouldn’t be the case. Legendary weapons are fine as they are statistically. The problem you’re presenting is something ALL types of gear suffer from.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upgrade_Extractor

For 250 gems, which far exceeds the gold value of any rune and sigil in the game, we can safely remove runes or sigils from a piece of gear, ONCE, as in on a single piece of equipment.

In Guild Wars 1, this salvage kit/extractor was called a Perfect Salvage kit.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Perfect_Salvage_Kit

It costed skill points, some materials, and a bit of currency to craft.

No other salvage kit in GW2 has the same chances as the Upgrade Extractor from the gemstore. Black Lion Salvage Kits destroy the equipment it is used on.

Instead of limiting the management of sigils and runes to one tier of gear, why not remove this kit from the gemstore and add it in-game somehow to solve issues like these? It covers more ground, the rune and sigil market will be less impacted, and the playerbase will have an easier time adjusting to the meta instead of throwing runes and sigils out the window whenever they switch the stats of their ascended weapons, destroy their exotic weapons, or replace sigils on legendary weapons.

Hello there,

I’ve been playing this MMORPG since the second beta weekend event in 2012 and to this day I still pop in and find something to do for varying amounts of time. I could logout minutes later to do something else with my time or spend a huge chunk of hours doing whatever interests me. I find that dailies and renewable goals are a huge motivator for me to come back and finish before they reset.

But that’s not why I’m making this thread with the request I want to make.

To this day I don’t have a legendary weapon. Personally I don’t like most legendary skins and find some of the simpler skins more appealing. Plus, I can get the same stats on an ascended weapon which is significantly easier to craft. But I’m glad we can craft the precursor now and I might even change all of this and go for the legendary shield someday, but I certainly wouldn’t come back to the game to craft a precursor or a more complex ascended weapon with interchangeable stats. Collections are nice, I’m glad they’re in the game and I say they changed the game for the better, but collections do not challenge me. Collections are there to give incentive and reward people’s efforts for completing them but.. what happens after you complete them? They’re done, gone forever.

What do you do then?

Collecting skins isn’t for everyone. Someone might love legendary weapons or the expensive weapons from the Mystic Forge but to others they’re not worth the effort or do not look appealing at all. What happens to those people? What about those who aren’t able to raid weekly or on a consistent basis?

ArenaNet has taken a long time between living story seasons to focus on other parts of the game, leaving the playerbase to float about with limited reasons to login. Content droughts aren’t nice and I think bringing back a few festivals like the Super Adventure Box, Wintersday, and Halloween will help the longevity of the game.

I have a friend who hasn’t played in the Super Adventure Box until last month and they fell in love with it. The aesthetic, how they had to learn the routes to complete the Tribulation versions of all the levels, how they were rewarded for doing so, learning how the bosses functioned, and the Super Adventure Box even had furniture coins that reset on a daily timer.. it challenged people. Like a mixture between a minigame and a jumping puzzle, it catered to people who liked jumping puzzles. SAB was longer than regular jumping puzzles out in the overworld and rewarded the player better. It has a story too, one that they want to see finished someday.

It was fun. It’s a festival of sorts that will come back next year. It’s repeatable.

So it dawned on me.

Why not tweak the other festivals to pop in and entertain people as a means to dissipate the boredom that comes from a lack of updates? Between big updates?

I’m talking about:

• Dragon Bash
• The Queen’s Jubilee/Gauntlet
• The Labyrinthine Cliffs

• Dragon Bash was like a mixture between Halloween and the Lunar New Year festival that took its place but more centered around celebrating the mortality of the elder dragons and the successful fights against them.
• The Queen’s Jubilee/Gauntlet or what is listed as “Queen Jennah’s Coronation Day” catered to people who like social zerg events and 1v1 boss battles. It challenged people and rewarded them with prestige as well as money and recipes.
• The Labyrinthine Cliffs, though now lacking a Zephyr Sanctum, was a very beautiful area. Surely it can be repurposed to act as a zone for another festival? There was a lot of trade going on at that part of Tyria so it must have some significance even after the Zephyr Sanctum’s demise.

It’s also worth noting that bringing these festivals back can act as an outlet for discontinued items, skins, and consumables that were associated with them or currently cannot make their way back into the game without rare events like Mordremoth’s Minions Invade Tyria

I feel bringing back these festivals and spreading them out throughout summer and spring will help bring people back into the game to check them out and provide a breath of fresh air. A time to settle down from the normal routine with something that only comes briefly once a year. May take some effort to tweak/update them to a presentable state, like SAB, but it feels like a worthy investment for years to come. Who doesn’t want to celebrate a little every so often?

Why not keep one of the three borderlands as a desert map while the other two stay alpine and EB stays as EB?

Maybe line them up with EotM? Desert on the lower left, Alpine on the lower right, and ???? (alpine) on the upper north map with EB in the center. Discarding the desert borderland seems like a huge waste..

Believe it or not the Norn race were meant to be shapeshifters with beast forms relating to their Spirits of the Wild. They transformed into were-bears a lot in GW1.

GW2 Norns have them as elite skills with long cool downs. That and norn NPC’s/enemies in-game rarely transform.

What a way to go… but maybe the norn had the potential to have that flavor you’re looking for?

The “Permanent Bank Access Contract” turns into the “Permanent Bank Access Express” when you double click the contract because they’re sold as containers in the trading post. New icon and everything

That said, it’s a total waste of gold at anywhere near 1,000g in my opinion because of how easy it is to find a bank, trading post, and merchant NPC at the sPvP lobby and WvW home borderland map.

I like the permanent hair kit. Hairkits are actually worth buying so each use of the permanent one saves you 250 gems (30-40g) and allows you to change your ears (asura, charr, sylvari), horns (charr), beards on males, hair accessory color, hair color, and hair style. Hair styles will continue to be released and if your character looks good in more than one style you can change on the go~

I paid 1,550g for mine and have used it for months, close to a year? 3,000g-3,500g for bank access at the cost of 1-4 silver to waypoint to a city at best sounds like it’ll take a looooooong time until one breaks even. Besides the cities are nice and you get to interact with people instead of using it at the middle of Harathi Hinterlands or something. Ironically the luxury passes (Royal Terrance and such) give more for the price of less, lol

A signet and a shout.

Removing the tome animations leaves me sour, are people really okay with ArenaNet throwing these away?

Thanks a bunch Byo!~

Friendly and wonderful artist <3

How will this impact the market on sigils?

That is the question that should be asked here. The amount of work required to craft a legendary weapon does not warrant a ruined sigil market, the price of some costly sigils would plummet heavily.

Back in GW1 there was a salvage kit that removed weapon and armor addons without destroying the items tied to them, it was a salvage kit obtainable in-game. GW1 and GW2 were both B2P games with no subscription, why is this item not an in-game purchase in GW2? Gems can be bought with gold but the cost of such a kit far exceeds ANY of the sigils’s prices, it’s not worth it. Adding a Perfect Salvage Kit to GW2 would fix this problem without throwing the prices of sigils under the bus just to cater to the lazy.

Some items were meant to be exclusive.

I wonder how people would react if ArenaNet slapped the Hall of Monument rewards into the gemstore.

I wonder how they would also react to ArenaNet adding the launch day Celebration Hat into the gemstore.

Holiday hats are no longer sacred it seems. The first Guild Wars game only allowed people to get old festival hats because they abandoned GW1 for GW2, so GW1 wasn’t going to get any new holiday hats. GW2 is not in that boat, yet HOLIDAY items such as the horns that were handed out in the first year are on sale for 200 gems. If you don’t see that as a cash grab, then you’re beyond any reach of persuasion.

There was NO reason to add the Miniature Carlotta pet as a reward for candy corn or 700 measly plastic fangs. 500 gems for the miniatures then 1,000 candy corn just to get an exotic Carlotta THEN 500 MORE GEMS to keep the three miniatures as well was pricy. Now all you need to do is spend 30 minutes spamming 1 at the labyrinth and you got it.

Ripping people off is not good business and this feels wrong. Why?

They’re still selling the miniature pack (Costumed Mini 3-Pack) in the gemstore. Even the description still says that you can throw them into the Mystic Forge for the Carlotta pet.. are you kidding me? If you’re going to throw Carlotta into the candy corn/plastic fangs vendor then why not the minis from the Costumed Mini 3-Pack?

Just doesn’t add up.

I feel that guild vaults (stash, treasure cove, and deep cave) need an optional security step in order to keep them safe from compromised accounts.

Hacked/compromised accounts are given one life time account restoration (roll back) or more than one under some circumstances. Once a hacked/compromised account has been restored, everything except for Trading Post and Guild Vault items are reverted back to an earlier save state. Personal guilds with full vaults are not safe and trading post transactions are not safe because the damage done in those areas are permanent, irreversible for the sake of the in-game economy.

This issue also stretches far beyond personal guilds, since everyone is human and make mistakes. Large guilds with hundreds of people can be affected because the leader(s) or officer(s) were hacked and the malicious individual dipped his or her hands into a collection of items that cannot be rolled back, affecting even those who were not hacked.

Example: Video made by two brothers who have lost 11,000 gold from a compromised guild vault

Something as simple as a pin number code or secondary password for guild vaults would be nice, to keep hackers from stealing items that cannot be replaced with that one in a lifetime account roll back. An optional step for those who want to feel safer with another layer of security to keep an otherwise irrevocable nightmare from crippling an entire guild of people.

I’ve been hacked before and apparently that hacker was a gold seller since he/she linked gold selling addresses to my old compromised email (which is currently queued for termination). A step to keep guild vaults safe would be a step closer to hindering gold sellers from making even more substantial profits off the valuables stolen from guild vaults.

“No one is forcing you to use it.”
“Not only is the gem store purely unrequired to enjoy 100% of the games content, it doesn’t give an unfair advantage to paying players in any way shape or form.”

I may be jumping to conclusions since nobody knows if ArenaNet will get rid of the Black Lion Key farm, but certain items in the gemstore are only justified because keys can be farmed and as we all know ArenaNet is reevaluating the rewards from each of the personal story chapters. Some items are only viewed as appropriate because access to black lion chests is available with the alternative method which is the personal story. People who pay real money for gems often say that buying keys with real money is a bad gamble. Even people in the ArenaNet guild with the ArenaNet tag have been caught key farming, it’s that bad. The OP brings up the gemstore’s Black Lion Chests as an argument for too much gemstore influence on the game’s rewards, if the key farm is indeed dealt with, should items exclusive to it remain to those who can afford keys?

Items such as:

• Black Lion Salvage Kit

In GW1 we had a special salvage kit that could remove inscriptions and runes from items without destroying them at a 100% chance. It was a game item that costed skill points and materials to craft IN THE GAME. GW2? Gemstore item and it’s a rip off at that.

Still doesn’t take out the fact that ALL salvage kits in the game right now fall short to the returns of a Black Lion Salvage Kit. That isn’t forcing people to play with Black Lion Chests/spend cash on the gemstore?

• Boosters of any kind and the Communal Boost Bonfire

As far as I know there is not a single consumable in the game that grants 50% crafting EXP, 50% karma, 50% magic find, etc. Nothing can be cooked up by chefs, no concoction can be made by artificers, there is no way to make these items in the game nor a consumable that stacks like these items with food and utilities like the boosters can. Putting combat boosters like Strength, Armor, Speed, etc boosters at an advantage over consumables that can be acquired in the game. Once key farming is gone, these advantages should leave the gemstore. Yes, they are advantages even if it’s a 5% strength booster. When the OP spoke of the gemstore digging it’s muddy fingers deep into the game’s reward system, I believe her criteria fits items such as these that give advantages beyond anything that can be acquired in the game, taking away from the potential of the crafting system and it’s benefits.

I say that when food has 15% EXP gain, magic find buffs when buffed with a boon, “Kill Streak-like mechanics” whenever one kills an enemy, etc. The boosters are gemstore items and they give better buffs to those who pay real money for Black Lion Keys. They can be purchased for in-game gold, but who is going to pay OVER 20 GOLD for a single booster?

Strength, speed, etc boosters cannot be bought from the gemstore. They come from Black Lion Chests, so even if one wanted to buy them with gold they’ll still have to gamble it on keys when 100 gems = +13 gold.

• Metabolic primer, Utility primer, and Revive orb

The primers speak for themselves. The revive orb is reminiscent of a craftable consumable in GW1 called the Scroll of Resurrection in which it can revive playable characters in battle at a chance of getting kitten again with revive sickness, 25% HP in GW1 with death penalty still active. Again, the potential of the crafting system is chipped at to make an extra buck on the gemstore.

Buffs and consumables should not be sold on a cash shop. The primers extend the benefits from food and utilities by 12 hours, that itself is not a buff but should be viewed as such when the maximum duration of some consumables in-game is 1 hour per consumption. Could be viewed as a convenience item if it weren’t for the fact that food and utility consumables are used in battle, unlike the harvesting tools which offer a convenience to those who want to harvest, nothing to do with combat, or the salvage-o-matics which offer convenience to those who want to salvage, again, nothing to do with combat. Both of the previous items do not make money back without investing decades of dedicated time into the game, so no big deal. But the primers offer convenience in combat situations and that is a line that should not be crossed, even it takes just as many decades to make the money back from buying them with gold and using them on the most expensive food and utility consumables.

This is a cosmetic item, same with the other potion that gives you floating horns.

Nobody is being “punished” for being “late-adopters” of the game. This does not grant any boons, any combat advantages, or effects any part of the game besides giving an aesthetic halo/horns to the player character that gets disabled every time you zone, get downed, or die.

They were not achievement items so they were not put into the laurel merchant. The baby dolyak potion and panda mini were not achievement items either, but they were added as festival rewards for those who already had them all as an incentive to run the little races and kill the bosses at the Pavilion. The Halloween items were put there because at that time ArenaNet decided to mix the Living World with Holidays.

Key word: Incentive. Why go through all the trouble of attending a limited time event (Siege of Lion’s Arch), go through all the trouble of finding heirlooms during that limited time, and spend the 10g per potion when months later they get added as gemstore items?

That is a huge slap to the face to those who worked for them. No, simply no. Would be fine if ArenaNet added them permanently in some event or minigame which required the player to collect time-gated tokens just like we did. But it still doesn’t address the fact that this was meant to be a limited time item exclusive to those who attended, yes, exclusive. Big scary word, oooo.

When the event was released, we were all under the assumption that the chance to acquire these potions was going to be gone after 2 weeks. At that time, for the first few days, we also didn’t know all of the locations of the heirlooms so in the duration of those 2 weeks we thought you could only get one based on your character’s reason for collecting them, selfless or thoughtless, for personal gain or to give back to those who lost everything. All that rushing, all that effort, would be for nothing if they were simply added to the gemstore.

Hello, my ticket is #781594 and currently I’m being aided by a GM who has received my ticket from a previous person of the support team because it required more investigation.

My current issue is that my hacker knows my GW2 access key and is using it to grab my account from me and steal my items. I know this because my first and previous email address (which is still compromised) has an email in it with my GW2 access key on it. I am still trying to contact the Yahoo Support Team to grab control of my previous email and delete it. But the damage has been done and my hacker knows my GW2 access key, how else would that hacker hijacked my account?

My current email is not known by anyone besides family, I have not used it for anything besides GW2, it has second sign-in verification (meaning even if my password is known, a code that Yahoo sends to my cell phone is needed at every login attempt), and I have the email authenticator enabled for my GW2 account. All of that was bypassed since my hacker knows my GW2 access key.

The GM attending me believes that my current email address is compromised. I sent him a screenshot of all recorded login attempts on my email (which are all of me, my IP address, etc). The morning I found out I was hacked I’ve scanned my entire computer three times and nothing came up.

I can switch emails, continue to change my passwords to 30-32 long character phrases with different capitalization and numbers, and can continue to switch emails every time I get hacked -_-.. but it won’t stop until the issue I mentioned on my first paragraph until it is resolved. My known GW2 access key is the problem I need help with.

This person is just waiting for me to grab my account back, fill it up with loot again, and then steal it and drain it.. I need help. I already used up my first roll back and now this happens.. this could happen multiple times no matter how many times I switch emails because hijacking my account no longer requires my passwords, my cell phone, or access to my email.

I’ve provided the last 4 digits of the credit card used to prepurchase my GW2 account, the name of the credit card used, the method of payment, the details needed of my account accessories and I can provide ALOT more, my GW1 access key, and I provided my GW2 access key to the support team member. My hacker only knows my GW2 access key and yet was able to grab it from me with just that bit of information. I can even go a step further and take physical photos of my GW1 boxes (the Trilogy edition and my first box of Guild Wars: Prophecies) as evidence that I’m the real owner. I prepurchased GW2 so I do not have a physical box, but from the beginning I always had my GW1 account linked so that should be enough evidence.

Zaxares.5419:

As someone who has all of the skins from HoM, I honestly would not mind if ANet opened it up to the gem store. Frankly, I don’t care what other players are using, and I’m not a big supporter of exclusivity. If the move makes players who missed out happy, and ANet gets some extra profits, then go for it. I got my skins for “free” as a nod okittennowledgement to my years spent playing GW1, so I don’t feel ripped off if someone wants to come along and pay money for them.

As someone who has all of the skins from the HoM, all the points, and GWAMM, it bothers me to think that people who are not even competent enough to buy GW1 right now, play the game for what it is; a game that’s still enjoyable to this day, and earn the rewards as they were meant to be, want to instead skip the whole process with a swipe of their credit cards. Nobody “missed out.” Everyone is still more than welcome to go to GW1 and earn them just as I did, just as you did, and just as everyone else did.

As someone who has all the skins, do you really want these rewards to be thrown into the gemstore? You may not like exclusivity when it comes to certain items so your alternative suggestion is throwing them in the gemstore? In my opinion, as opposed to yours, that is taking two steps back in the wrong direction. The gemstore should not be the most rewarding aspect of GW2, placing the HoM rewards in the gemstore would only support that. “I don’t feel like earning this” is not a big enough reason to justify them being slapped in the gemstore or made easier to acquire.

These rewards are exclusive to GW1 players and that’s that. We all knew that dedicating stuff in the Hall of Monuments would give us something special in GW2 way before GW2 launched. All of that work cannot be devalued now, or ever. Instead of releasing Guild Wars: Utopia they ditched GW1 and spent the rest of their resources on GW2 so without us there wouldn’t even be a GW2 right now.

Nexxe.7081:

I can understand both sides of this issue.

On one hand, they should be unique for GW1 players, but as GW2 gets older and the GW1 population gets smaller, is this still going to be feasible? Have any of you logged in lately to GW1? They’ve already stopped updating it, and it’s literally on maintenance mode, and one day it will be shut down for good. What then? The HoM will become irrelevant someday. As the GW2 population moves on, there will be less people with those unique skins, and they will just end up taking up space on the wardrobe UI, just like some of the SPvP skins do. Keep in mind, i’m thinking long-term here. I don’t even want to mention the complexity of learning GW1, learning how to get to HoM, and then obtaining the points for it. It’s not an easy transition for GW2 players.

I think I would be more concerned about GW1 being shut down than the rewards devalued in the gemstore if this were to happen. I have friends who were not satisfied with GW2 and stayed in GW1, to this day there are certain places in GW1 that are still buzzing with players. I can’t provide a source, but I do remember ArenaNet saying that as long as one person plays GW1 they will not shut down the servers. My friends still enjoy GW1 and I get on to talk to them and play the game myself.

Stormcrow.7513:

There are very few characters in GW2 that are memorable and even well written. Taimi is one of them. She needs to stay and besides, I like her sense of humour

I like her sense of humor too.

• Idolizes Scarlet Briar and sings praise for her.
• Admits that Scarlet Briar is “misunderstood”
• Has yet to be slapped across the face by a survivor or by several survivors of the Siege of Lion’s Arch who have lost homes, family, friends, love ones, and/or may still be suffering from the effects of the miasma and other alarming injuries from the attack.

I want Taimi to be funny in Lion’s Arch lol. This is a video game, sure, but Taimi should totally praise Scarlet and mention that she’s simply “misunderstood” right in the middle of a ruined LA only to bump into some survivors who have lost EVERYTHING. I bet they’ll appreciate her humor too!

locoman.1974:

I have an alternative sugestion… add a new item that costs, let’s say, 1600 gems (hmmmm), that delivers you a big magical book called “history of tyria” (alternative books called “history of cantha” and “history of elona” also available for the same price). Once your character opens that book, it’s magically transported into the body of a mighty human hero that lived 250 years ago, so you can relive his/her story and that of his/her companions (AKA loads GW1), and once you end their storyline you get items that can make you earn unique rewards like these.

So, in a way, they’d be adding the HoM rewards to the gem story and keep everyone happy..

“(AKA loads GW1)”

All this trouble just to get a copy of GW1? 4,800 gems is $60. You can buy the Trilogy plus EotN for less than that. I also doubt ArenaNet will allow people to buy GW1 with GW2 gems, lol.

Also earning the HoM rewards and titles was alot more than just completing the campaigns. You had to buy unded miniatures, buy prestigious weapons, acquire prestigious armor sets throughout the game one of which is earned at the Fissure of Woe, earn titles, and dress your heroes up in hero armor, and to fill the monuments you had to get your hands on tapestries.

AKA, you had to play GW1 to earn them. Not just run from beginning to end at each campaign for goodies.

Jaken.6801:

Eodwen.2613:

The titles are enough proof you played gw1 imo. Some skins are nice and should be considered to be sold for gems maybe rework them a bit so they are not the same as the hom ones, then people wont have to feel “betrayed”.

However, if we get reskins of these exclusive items then people will still be betrayed.

You have seen Anets “reskinning”, haven`t you? Put some glitter on it and make it smooth, that`s what we got with our champion bags. Reused assets dumped in glitter.
Oh and look, they even transformed a HoM Greatsword into a champion 1-Hand-Sword… with purple glitter…

This.

It was a bad move when ArenaNet grabbed the HoM Fellblade, shrunk it down to a one-handed sword (the GW1 Fellblade was a one-handed sword btw, which some of us would have preferred it to be), then gave it a more prominent effect with purple patterns. All this while the GW2 Fellblade looks dull, chipped, and that effect it had in GW1 was replaced with smoke outside of the blade.

Do not touch the HoM items, don’t even reskin them. If you want the HoM stuff grab GW1 and earn them like the rest of us.

Nope.

Buy GW1 and earn them like everyone else.

Shadowmoon.7986:

So pretty much a female character who pretty much had has no story development is killed for as a plot device in this LS. She is involved in only one mission, and then is sent to her death off screen in the next mission. Pretty much this character was created to die for the A-team to feel emotion, but for me I feel nothing because she has as much development as the thousands of npcs I kill everyday. This is unlike the mentor you get in your PS who you actually develop a relationship with, and then dies in a heroic way. Personally I do find this type of story extremely lazy and somewhat offensive.

Shadowmoon.7986:

and somewhat offensive.

Uh oh somebody call the police, this one is offended!

The death of that character was not directed at you, but at her sister. That was the gimmick, “Oh no her sister ended up dying after reminiscing of the times they barely spent together when S2E1 rolled out. Oh no, what a turn of events! Now she will never be able to spend time with her sister, so sad.” It was meant to crush the morale of one of the characters, not yours.

She was also a Seraph. Soldiers die in battle. Many soldiers died protecting that fort and ArenaNet decided that she was no exception.

Also I like the title, trying to sway people. Did anyone make a “Man in Refrigerator” when Theo Ashford died last Dragon Bash?

It.. costed 0 gems. Something tells me the Wizard’kitten was meant to be a one time gift, a holiday hat to those who played during Wintersday.

So I have to disagree, holiday hats should be exclusive to those who played during the holidays or at least logged in to accept them from the gemstore during that time. LS season 1 rewards were thrown out of that pile, sure, but the miniature candy elemental and the mask of the night were part of the LS since Anet decided to mix holidays and living story content together at that time, which they quickly changed their minds on for season 2.

I only have over 200 miniature pets right now, my game would be absolutely, without a doubt, tremendously OBLITERATED if this llama isn’t stashed in my collection! Game-breaking indeed.

Watch what you do Anet or else the community will summon their beg threads with 200 pages and 10,000 complaints. Don’t reward elitist PvPers.

I don’t have a problem with it and I collect minipets. The llama is for those who participated in the ToL, not for farming champ trains/boss blitz and buying it off the gemstore/TP. Adding it to a reward track in PvP is just lame since you progress through those whether you win or lose.

I agree with some users above, they are not meta achievement rewards like everything in the vendor except for the new panda mini and dolyak tonic that was probably added in to motivate players who already had all the rewards to also run the races and stuff.

250 tokens, a week if you knew where all of the tokens were by checking dulfy or even more time finding them all on your own without guides. Then the merchants asked for 10g for each potion, 20g for both. People actually thought that update was 2 weeks long, so if you didn’t find them ALL everyday you had to pick either the Thoughtless or the Selfless potion before the event was over, that proved to be untrue but the extra effort was still rewarded.

Since they did not come from achievements I can understand why they weren’t added amongst the achievement rewards. If ArenaNet did put these two potions in the rewards it would be unfair for those of us who earned them because earning festival tokens earns you extra cash from Boss Blitz, the Queen’s Gauntlet with the chances that drop them prominently with rare chances at 100g+ items, and the favor of the bazaar from the Labyrinthine Cliffs which sells for even more gold.

Finding the 250 heirlooms did not earn us gold. We spent gold in buying them. It would be great if Anet added the instance to the story journal and the chance of getting these potions again, but who knows if that’ll happen.

The selfless and thoughtless potions weren’t achievement items in the LS, I don’t think they’d fit in.

Just an opinion, all of the items the vendors are selling (besides the new panda and tonic for this festival) have been meta achievement items. The potions required an extra effort to be earned and 10g each, they did not come from achievements. Would be kind of messed up if Anet slapped them here for festival tokens when earning festival tokens earns you gold (boss blitz) from champ bags and gauntlet chances (RNG luck).

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Huge snip

Replying to your unrelated statement regarding your style of gameplay within the old Queensdale champ train, of course I know you used skills, revived other players, and used your healing skill. You missed the entire point completely.

All one would have to do to participate and receive a champ bag in the Queensdale train was /join a random party, spam auto attack, pick up the drops and move on. When you’re in a party the damage requirement to get tagged in for item drops reduces significantly. That was not a personal insult to how you play the combat of this game, but remains correct on how easy it was, and is, to profit from a champ train.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

And I like how you ignore the part that specifically states how the nicect people to me in Guildwars2, save my guildmates from GW1 were; Train-Running Motherkitteners. The nicest people, who helped me way more that asking the “pro” gamers like yourself in High-End areas.

The people who do QD/Train were the perfect people to introduce me into this game. Sorry that wasn’t the same more others. Maybe it’s because I played on the German server, who knows. Even then, it never kittened them off that I barely know the language. They still helped.

Not a single reason is stated here on why the Queensdale champ train should have stayed beyond; “muh feelingssss.” You even acknowledge the fact that others fell victim to the abuse and online harassment of these farmers, is this not elitism? You’re defending these people dude. The only shred of text that mentioned the “nicect people” of your Queensdale train was, " But players would just thank me and be on their way to fight it. This made me feel useful." As well as, “..and I have NEVER been raged at by players for kittening up the train.”

So as long as it’s not you, it’s justified? The Queensdale train lashed out at newcomers who attempted to fight the champions, that is not a community aspect that will be missed.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Ok explain how I’m personally holding back the game by participating in trains?

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Also let me end with I never said the changes were bad/whatever for the game, just that -I- did not like them, and MY style of gameplay.

Don’t you love it when people answer their own questions? When you argue and make statements, you better be prepared to defend them instead of throwing your feelings out like they hold any merit. You trying to defend the champ train, this whole thread’s topic with the OP crying about content getting hard, that does not push the game forward, content-wise and economically.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Buying Twilight from TP is not exciting.
Buying skins is not exciting. (my opinion)

I agree with you 100% on this. You proved me wrong on what I said about you and dungeons, guild missions, and world bosses. I’m glad you liked them, with the quote above I believe we want the same thing. Horizontal progression that is rewarded to those who earn them instead of those who have the in-game coin/real world cash to buy them. Such additions would greatly improve the longevity of this game.

P.S – I never kick people out of dungeon/fractal groups for their builds or gear. I’ve carried and been carried in instanced content and try to help competent players in my parties instead of kicking them. The only people I kick are those who do not listen/rage at other party members and do not chill out. I would also refrain from attacking players you do not agree with by calling them names, instead of their arguments. It does not make you look good nor does it help your side of the argument look good. I joked about this on my last reply in italics, thought you’d catch on.

kokiman.2364:

Zaxares.5419:

Almost certainly, yes.

And by extension, now that supply is closed off, expect Set 2 prices to rise slightly.

The same way S1 pets rose?
The amount of pets in the market will never decline because you don’t have to acc/souldbind them.

This.

There’s no reason to dedicate minis in GW2 unfortunately. Unless they add the Polymock minigame and include minipets from sets I, II, III, and certain non-gemstore special minis as “chest pieces.” Maybe then they could add the option to turn them account bound so the supply of minipets will decline and older minipets will rise in price. As of right now all past minis, despite not being available in the gemstore anymore, have decreased in price and will probably stay that way.

Maybe they could pull off a Hall of Monument-esque thing for personal home instances/housing with dedicated minis (turned account bound) roaming around as ambient creatures.

Too bad any of the above will never happen ;-;

I doubt the price per 100 gems will stay at 10g for long… it’s probably all of the reintroduced minipet packs, the new gemstore items, and changes to the BLC’s that spiked it up this hard.

If it ever reaches 20g for 100 gems it’ll be because we have that much gold to spare/gold keeps getting easier to find.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

I should add, I’m not trying to offend nerds, I guess I am one, just thoooosssee kind.

I find this funny lol, especially with all the negative terms aimed towards those who have more than 1 and a half hours to play per day. Don’t apologize or feel shame for your views, even if they make you look unnecessarily bitter and childish towards people in a video game.

The Queensdale champ train got the bucket because it was in a starter zone. New players arriving in Queensdale would see this and get the wrong impression about what it is to play GW2 and make money, chasing after champion-rank monsters in a party spamming auto attack for money that rivals the amount dungeon runners make. Maybe not from Queensdale’s old train, but definitely from the hundreds of exotic bags from the train at Frostgorge.

There are still trains going on in zones above the starter zones. The option to chase after champions is still there, but not in Queensdale. I expected more from someone who has been playing for 2 years. How the Queensdale farmers would lash out, berate, and harrass newcomers and casuals who wandered back into Queensdale and fought champions by themselves. How these people would scream threats at those who fought the champions by themselves and played the game as is was intended to be played. You seemed to have forgotten about that kind of attitude, maybe you should actually play the game instead of wasting that 1 hour at the Hunting Lodge lol. You know you can activate dynamic events in others zones too, right? Just announce it in map chat and people will come, the megaserver should have done it’s job and grouped you up with fellow explorers, talking to those NPC’s will help you achieve that satisfaction of leaving that 5 minute mark in the world.

And surprise, GASP, it’s freeeee!

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Wardrobe:
Want to wear a certain style of armor? kittening wait for it to drop, or buy it. Help me understand this. “Unlocking” styles? What is this a console game for preteens?

Funny that you would mock such an inclusive addition to the game, such an elitist neck-beard nerd, pampered, basement-dwelling, loser!

You are ironic. Complaining about the purge of a “press 1 to cheese” zerg activity while complaining about World Bosses, which require alot more out of you than “press 1, receive champ box.” Your main issue is the lack of teamwork and social involvement but all you ever brought up about your experience in getting involved with the community is “I talked to this NPC and brought out the boar, WOOO!” That is basically how most dynamic events throughout the game work, you can do that anywhere and it will all revert back so you can do it again, and again, so the megaserver buddies can meet up at your location and complete the event with you. You also bash the game for lack of teamwork, but bash content that requires a team to complete.

There is no pleasing you, is there? Just because you’re too scared/turned off from enjoying the more demanding areas of the game (such as fractals, dungeons, probably guild missions, world bosses, etc) doesn’t mean the game should be HELD BACK. Guild Wars 2 is far from perfect, but you have not mentioned any negative consequences with the removal of the Queensdale train besides “I can’t summon the boar whaa whaa.”

• You have kids, that was your choice now take care of them.
• You have a job, congratulations? You’re not the only one fyi, expecting special treatment?
• Oh you know how to drive! You travel to work, read the above.
• Oh you buy food too, kitten people who play longer than 10 hours a week must be starved nerds with their scrambled priorities.

These things should be held high in everyone’s priority lists if they have them. Not everyone has children. Some people cannot work, while others are studying college students. Some study, work, AND play GW2. Be my guest if you want to avoid the above to play GW2 more often, but your life shouldn’t drag the entire game down/backwards. It most certainly shouldn’t drag your game to such a halt, learning meta builds and finding pug dungeon/fractal groups isn’t hard and taking part in community events like the recent festival and boss blitz can be way more fun than talking to an NPC for a boar and waypoint-racing through a zone.

Collecting hundreds of champion loot bags for spamming 1 in a crowd of 20-30 other people spamming 1 shouldn’t be an alternative way of earning gold, expensive skins through the RNG of those bags, and leveling. When a new player arrives and they are automatically directed to such brainless, yet profitable activity it is bad for the game. You are risking NOTHING, but gaining rewards that would rival those who actually run dungeons.

Don’t even get me started on dungeons. I’ve completed my Hobby Dungeon Explorer achievement 219 times and I was cycling through my daily dungeons way before I completed the Arah paths I needed with guildies for that title/achievement. People LOVE to complain about the difficulty of dungeons being too easy on players yet they are the same ones crying about changes like these. Boo hoo OH NO they changed the troll boss at HotW! It’s not as easy anymore! THIS IS WRONG! Give me a break, it’s sad that people found a way to range the troll from a safe spot on the roof, just goes to show that the community is too baby to handle encounters outside of their little safe holes and stacking spots, yet are eager to cry about how easy it is to hide in such spots.

Sad part is that the Spider Queen at AC can still be stacked on and rushed with the fiery exploitstick that eles drop, just have to let her spit her poison fields before pulling her behind the pillar. Pug groups still skip Kholer on a dungeon that rewards 1g50s… more than than other dungeons that have no skippable bosses. The Ghost Eater can still be cheesed to death with FGS with 1 trap active. Colossus can still be killed while stacked at the safe spot on the pillar. I do not understand the change to Malrona’s projectiles or the wurm’s egg projectiles, they need to tweak their attacks to not being projectiles somehow or add new ones for more danger instead of throwing Wall of Reflection under the bus with “super special” projectiles. Making the CoE golem mobile was random since now pugs can pull it out of the room and cause it to reset.

If you’re a player that has a problem with dungeons actually getting some attention for once and increasing in difficulty, the game would be better off if you did end up quitting.

Evalia.7103:

So let me start off by reminding you of these two specific items providing access to convenient locations:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Captain%27s_Airship_Pass_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Royal_Terrace_Pass
As we all know(or should know?), our home instance evolves with progression of our personal story. New characters appear, and it becomes more lively and busier overall.
With the introduction of Living Story updates(and gem store item), we’ve also gotten a possibility to get 6 resource nodes as well as a skill point inside our home instance. And that’s really great in my opinion. Now if I could use a Hearthstone(http://www.wowhead.com/item=6948/hearthstone) to get back to my home instance, it would feel even better!

The home instances do not become busier as NPC’s park themselves into them. Those NPC’s do not interact with the home instances at all and will not talk to you. When someone tries to interact with them they simply look at you and remain silent. Before launch ArenaNet told us that our choices in the personal story would reflect upon our home instances to the point that statues would be built for us. No such thing exists in GW2, I would not call what is currently in our home instances “progression.”

Also, as I’m reading your list of update suggestions, it seems like you’re trying to change the home instances into market places instead of homes. Like you’re trying to stuff a “miniature Lion’s Arch” into them when such services like repair anvils/NPC’s, armor/weapon vendors, trading posts, the mystic forge are already easily accessible in cities and corners of the explorable world. Your first post mentions that the Royal Terrance and the airship are not related to your character…

Yet you’re simply copy and pasting their services onto the home instances. I see no mention of anything relating to character achievements or even the giant trophy room that was GW1’s Hall of Monuments. I see nothing relating to character progression or horizontal progression, just copying services that are: A) In the gemstore, B ) Free to use if you have 3 silver to teleport to the cities or use the free LA teleport through sPvP, and C) Will do nothing but empty out the cities with services being closer/accessible from anywhere so no point being in taking the waypoints to cities.

Add legendaries, the GW2 dragon emblem t-shirt, and mini Mr. Sparkles to the vendor too.

Also all the unique dyes.

hurr hurr

No.

These items, amongst the other LSS1 items that weren’t included in this festival, still have some sort of prestige tied to them because they weren’t included. Leave them alone, there’s another season of the LS coming in a month, instead of quitting or ditching this game temporarily for another game, stay and earn the season 2 rewards like everyone else.

It seems the OP is still absolutely clueless on the message ArenaNet is trying to convey here.

You can ditch GW2, play a game you actually like, then once the “one time rare prestigious” items Colin said he wanted to keep prestigious are gone.. a few months later after the LS season 2.. you can get them again while farming events!

Wow! How convenient!

You don’t have to complete the content of the LS to get it’s rewards now. You don’t have to waste your time doing standard MMORPG quests like killing 50 butterflies and fetching signs anymore, just take a break and play a game you actually enjoy playing while this one milks it’s dedicated fanbase for gems, then come back and farm a gold blitz dedicated server or the bazaar for a few days and BAM, you got them and can now go back to quitting or playing some other game.

Oh that’s right even while milking players for cash they are still being slapped around lol. The first spring minis? You know, the baby hippo and the baby moa mini pets.. yeah those minipets that were released one by one each week for 400 gems a piece? You can buy them now or you could buy them a few days ago for less gems each AND all at the same time.

Learn. They don’t care that you stuck around and played the game, they don’t care for people who basically beta tested this game for China, earning these items as a incentive to continue playing those horrid 2 week updates riddled with “Kill x rat 100 times, find x NPC,, fix: x, open x amount of boxes, etc” MMO quests.

Also the mask and the candy corn mini are holiday rewards, not even holiday rewards are one time huh.

Actions speak louder than words people.

ArenaNet is telling you to NOT complete any Living Story Season 2 content because several months after season 2 is over, they will re-release all the skins, minipets, tonics, etc to festivals like this one for a few tokens, literally, for an hour of your time.

Oh you thought you had something unique for actually sticking around to play these 2 week long updates? You thought completing 20 “kill this garbage 200 times” and “play peekaboo with hidden garbage and find 10 of them” per piece was worth your time for the aesthetic at the end?

Nope. The people who missed those updates were off playing other games they actually had fun with while YOU were playing standard MMORPG grindfest garbage for these. With enough whining there is a whole festival filled with LS rewards AND holiday rewards (candy corn elemental and exclusive halloween hat).

Learn. You don’t have to grind now, look at the bright side. You don’t have to kill 250 annoying mobs throughout the whole world for a fraction of the progress for some backpack now. You don’t have to waste your time zerging garbage events until you complete an achievement. All the achievements were casual anyways and will remain so, the 2nd season of the LS will not have anything hard, no challenging achievements, because if there were difficult tasks tied to the rewards in season 2 (if there are any to begin with) it will be easier to ignore them and just wait until the season is over and grab the goodies by doing events at this festival and buying boxes with crafting mats, lol.

Just poke in, play a bit, then get out and you will be able to grab the same reward for much less grinding than those who stayed and earned them. You no longer have to push through this annoyance for the same reward.

I’m sure season 2 rewards and holiday rewards from now on will be available as rewards for a little bit of grinding in some festival, judging from today’s update, take a vacation.

Yup I can’t login on any characters in Divinity’s Reach but I can login on characters that are on other maps.

DR is broken, wow.