Showing Posts For Kranodor.8915:
Kranodor – There are an awful lot of people playing Guild Wars 2 and I hope you will take the chance to reach out to some of them. You may find your soulmate after all!
I wish you well in the future.
Thank you, Gaile. As player of probably one of the oldest standing Guild Wars accounts, it means quite a bit to me to get a reply from you (for some reason I always think of you when I see the Frog Pond in Lions Arch…). In any case: Thank you.
One of these days, I’ll muster up the courage to get into a new guild, or get players for my old guild, or maybe just find some people to finally do some fractals or dungeons with. (Might be harder than it sounds, as I think I’m sitting squarely between different player archetypes, and I really don’t want to waste anyones time.)
Then again, it’s not always been that hard for me, so it might get easier again. And over the last few days, I’ve realized once more how good this community actually is, thanks to random encounters while running around the maps.
Ah, I’m sorry for that long post. I had a few ideas floating around and wanted to post about a few things lately, and never quite got to it, so I guess it all bubbled up when I read this and wanted to congratulate and give my best wishes. On the upside: Yes, I feel a bit better now. Thank you.
Point still stands: This thread is inspirational, and all the best to those who have found their soulmate in or around games, and especially Guild Wars.
I know this thread has aged a bit, but since the date in the first post is still in the future, I’m going to jump in and wish all the best for the soon-to-be-married couple. May you always be able to enjoy games together.
For me, Guild Wars 1 was actually a defining game for my longest relationship. It was a girl I met online, somewhere else, and after a few talks over Skype, she… well… she kinda figured the best way to get to know me better would be to start playing Guild Wars (I had gotten most of my friends to play, ever since participating on the World Preview Event before Prophecies released – I was positively raving about it). She told me some made-up story about her friend being a gamer and having gotten a copy too many on some occasion (the spark of truth inside it was that she actually borrowed money from that friend to buy it…) and, well… we were a couple for almost five years.
Eye of the North and especially Ogden’s Benediction gave me a sense of closure on Guild Wars 1, and I played less for a long while. I played other games, we played some together, some we played alone (but both of us played them) and some we played completely separate. It was still a long-distance relationship: She had to take care of her mother and grandmother, I had my university degree to finish. At some point, we fell apart. Hard to say how without sounding cynical or like I’m blaming it on her. Maybe it was for the best, after all.
When Guild Wars 2 hit, I was enthralled again, unlike most of my old Guild Wars 1 guildmates. Some had moved on, past gaming, others were disappointed with changes between the installments. I re-established contact with an old friend, a young woman from the States (I’m German) and for a short while, a month or two, we had something going (and this time, I’ll admit it, it was entirely my fault – I blew it, probably my biggest mistake, ever). I got a second GW2 account to be able to play with her on NA. We’re still friends, but it has never been the same.
Where was I going with this…? Oh, yes. I envy you guys. And at the same time, I wish you best of luck. For me, at some point, I realized that the only real chance at a stable relationship would be a gamer woman. Preferably PC gamer, preferably with a tendency towards cooperative games, and, if possible, a Guild Wars 2 player.
Considering the low likelihood of that happening, I’ve made my peace with staying single. The trouble, you see, is that I can’t bring myself to establish any meaningful contact within the game these days. (Which is why I have yet to experience more than half of the Dungeon story modes, let alone explorable, or play through a fractal, despite having played GW2 since release day. Don’t get me started on Raids or a Guild Hall.)
Ah, sorry. Rambling. A sure sign of getting old and bitter and tired. Ignore that part of me, it’s the least charming bit. In any case, best wishes, I hope you’ll have a WONDERFUL (yes, in all caps!) wedding, and I will think of you guys on December 27th (I would have loved to attend a wedding in Lions Arch). This whole thread has a few inspirational stories that I will tell people. Thank you all for that.
For the couple: May the principles of the Eternal Alchemy always work in your favour, and the Pale Tree give her blessings. And, just for good measure: May Lyssa always watch over you two, and help you to see the beauty in what you have together.
I’ll just add in my bit here, this time, as it’s a lot shorter than last time. I have mainly three points:
First up, thank you to ArenaNet about the changes to the beta equipment boxes – very good! It was really awkward on BWE1, getting ALL equipment, 70% of which I can’t use, and having to open two of those all-packs to get an item twice for main hand and off hand. Getting exactly the weapons I need, only those I can use, and twice if necessary, to be able to use ANY weapon config the character can use is so much better. Thank you!
Second, I can’t provide much to the point of specializations. I did play a bit of Chronomancer – like the new gravity well, the other wells still seem a bit cut&paste AoE DoTs – a bit of Tempest – considering my general inability to play Elementalist, it didn’t seem that weak – a bit of Berzerker … you should make that interface a bit clearer, hiding the Rage mode behind the normal burst skill is a bit odd. Maybe put F2 for Rage above the Burst Skill, and have the Primal Burst hiding behind the normal Burst instead?
Most importantly, I looked at masteries – On BWE1 I commented on how naturally gliding fits into the game (and I still think so), but I was still worried, as I was since the announcement, that masteries might take away too much of the game. But the events around Mellaggans Valor (getting parts from further up) showed me how well this can be implemented: You CAN absolutely contribute to it without Masteries. You might want to stay up and fight and thus free more parts for others to get, who might have an easier time delivering them down and getting back up again. You can run up, it just takes a bit longer, and you can jump down you just have to be really careful. If you do have gliding mastery, getting down is much easier and safer, and if you have the jumping mushroom mastery, getting up there is quicker and easier as well.
So far, I really liked that. There was one downside of that event, and that was that it was unclear when, how or why new parts appeared and it wasn’t evidently visible (to me, at least) that it had happened, and it seemed like the parts took a long while to appear (or just everyone else was so much quicker that I didn’t have a chance, even keeping CTRL and ALT pressed.)
About the opponents we get to fight. Still hate the “damage from front” beetles. New Hylek seem really interesting and a bit more varied. Severely dislike the Smokescales, especially since it’s relatively hard to get it out of its immunity zone (but that isn’t necessarily bad, I know that I’d have to kite it out of there, but a possibility to interrupt its casting would be very welcome). Mordrem are Mordrem.
Lastly, the defiance bar could still be a bit clearer – if an enemy is weakened when broken, does this mean while the shield icon is red and the bar is filling up again, or only during the stun? But I hope there will be more clarification added when they also add the mouseover tooltips.
Some of the arguments are not even related to the topic. HoT for someone who hasnt already bought the Core game is priced well in my opinion. Having to pay the same as those who have not already bought the core game for people who did is a bad deal all day long.
Some of you are comparing it to entitlement and to time enjoyed etc. I bought many games many years ago that I still get to enjoy when I feel like it. I still have PS1 games that I go back to from time to time. I still play GW1 from time to time. I bought this game so that I COULD enjoy it as much as I wanted.
Some are arguing that games like WoW would charge us monthly but I didnt buy WoW for that reason! I bought GW2 because I want to have permanent access to the games I spend my hard earned money on. If I am not mistaken (which is possible as noone is always right) the reason that most people who gave Guild Wars a chance is because they advertised that there was no monthly fee! Thats why I bought GW1 and thats also why I bought GW2.
I want to hear Anet say that my purchase is invalid and Ive used up my time with the game now that Ive had 3 years to enjoy it. It doesnt matter if you feel Ive had my moneys worth. If you feel like you have then you go ahead and pay again to renew your purchase and Im sure noone will try and stop you. We did not buy a time gated game and we did not buy a subscription based game and at least in my case this was done on purpose so the amount of time I got to enjoy it is irrelevant.
What is getting invalidated, and how? Your account stays a full, paid account, without F2P restrictions. Your characters and progress is still there, as is your access. You can still enjoy the same game you bought back then (plus everything they added in the mean time). The only thing you don’t get to play is Heart of Thorns if you don’t buy.
And this is how it was in GW1: I was a Prophecies player. Factions was standalone, Nightfall was standalone, EotN was an expansion and whenever something new came out, the previous installment got a little cheaper until there was a bundle offer with all previous installments and the most current ones, until people got all three base games plus EotN for less than I paid for any single one of them. I didn’t complain. That’s how expansions and then “Gold Editions” work.
If you wait, it gets cheaper. Someone else is now getting a restricted version of what we’ve been playing for up to three years for free now, to get them to buy an expansion. So what? What is this taking away from you? Nothing. Hence: Entitlement.
@Using trade post to move gold… isn’t the trade post built in such a way that you have to buy from the lowest seller or sell to the highest bidder? Yes, you can select a price, but doesn’t it automatically mark ALL other buy/sell offers before it, price-wise, so to buy that 100 g, 28s 03c Iron, he’d have to buy ALL Iron listed by other players at a lower price as well. Isn’t that so? I always was under the impression that the “best” offer (highest bidder / lowest seller) was “forced” upon the trader.
As far as F2P goes… I’m okay with it. I don’t know how they’ll handle the next expansion, if F2P stays Core only or then includes HoT. And frankly, I don’t care. By then, I will have been playing (and enjoying – otherwise I wouldn’t be playing, so the time I spent on the game is WHAT I GET OUT OF IT, not something ANet owes me anything for) Heart of Thorns for a year or two already, and getting ready for the next fix.
F2P will help me get people to try the game more easily, and maybe some of them will buy. I have high hopes for this, and the restrictions sound very well-made to me. Sure, there might be some adjustments in the future, but I’ve yet to be disappointed by ArenaNet.
The only thing worrying me (I can’t really judge (haha, okay, now I know why that got censored, my bad) how much of an issue WvW might see) is that a huge influx of new players might change the tone of the community. I’ve seen it happen before. But so far, community has been awesome towards the new players, and I hope that rubs off on the people actually joining the community in force. I had planned to start a new character anyhow (to see how start-up leveling had changed in the past three years), and made it on saturday, stumbling right into some sort of welcoming party for new players when entering Queensdale. An awesome job, GW2 community, I hope we can keep this up… it has me wanting to walk the starting zones looking for new players to help them find their way.
(edited by Kranodor.8915)
Okay, now I feel slightly stupid for suggesting doing a survey in my BWE1 Feedback, when there was a survey and I just didn’t get the mail (yet? – even in batches, it’s been at least 22 hours, that’s a hell of a delay…)
I sadly seemed unable to test the MAP REWARD SYSTEM (or the non-HoT masteries, for that matter) for some reasons… well, except for my non-beta main suddenly getting a beta-area map reward after logging in to get the daily chest after playing a few hours of beta (as of writing this – August 12th, 2015, around midnight CEST, my main character still has a blue ??? account-bound trophy item in her inventory – as I said above, I already filed an ingame bug report). It looks nice-ish, but I hope there will be some clarification on how to get those rewards.
I did play around a bit with one of the ADVENTURES. They seem to do what they are intended to do. As others have mentioned, it can be a bit confusing to have other people run around in “your” adventure, especially if they’re blocking your view (although you might glean some useful tricks from one of them) and the sometimes shifty and irregular naming and tagging of goals doesn’t help, either. I hope the leaderboard function will be expanded (with stuff like a friends leaderboard and/or a guilds leaderboard to switch between, telling you where you are in rank (with a total number of people on the list given for reference) and showing at least the top 5 or top 10, maybe even top 20). The leaderboard seemed a bit makeshift, still, but I like the concept of the feature in general. I did the Tendril Torchers one, and found Bronze rather easy to obtain, with a significant gap of what needed to be done to Silver and Gold, exactly how it should be. The reward structure could be a bit more clear, though.
Finally, my feedback for the CHRONOMANCER… I love the SHIELD I like shields in general. Considering it’s pretty much a signature weapon for the new specialization it’s a bit sad to only have two new skills and only be able to use them in combination with either Sword or Scepter. SKILL 4 is pretty cool (although a clarification on how long the second helping of it will be available after a block would be appreciated) even though it’s more risky than most other blocking skills – most of those have a “block, and do X, if not, do Y” formula, but this skill only rewards success. From that perspective, I’d almost expect it to be infinitely chain-able, which, sadly, it is not.
SKILL 5 is brilliant. I love it. A handy interrupt with buffs and debuffs and some damage. The pathing has a few problems with walls as well as with ledges and other abundant pitfalls, where it tends to disappear, never to be seen again. It also seems to return at varying lengths. While it could, of course, try to intercept me if I’m moving while it’s turning around, the distance it travels back shouldn’t be shortened by me moving towards it. The NEW SHATTER is… to be honest, it doesn’t feel like it does what it should. It sounded like a handy tool by description, but even if you do all the buildup and only blow it at full charge, it’s very short. Not that this is inherently bad, but it doesn’t really allow any significant repositioning or tactical play and thus largely boils down to “use your elite (or other powerful long-recharge skill) free of charge”. If you don’t have a full stack of illusions to sacrifice, it might not even last long enough to cast a skill that has a recharge. I’d rather have some downside to it (deal less damage, or deal part of the damage only AFTER the shatter expires, or even only IF the shatter is ended early by the player) but last a bit longer.
The WELLS are nice, but feel lacking in a way. That isn’t to say they’re useless. On the contrary, I used some of them a lot. I just think the effect between the normal and final ticks should be more accentuated (the final tick should be more noticeable, at least visually, if not by effect). Currently it feels like a normal AoE field with a somewhat low number and rate of attacks/ticks. Also, I wish there was a bit more to having the skill category of another profession than just having a nifty name (like some sort of interaction or cross-profession buff traits) to them.
And that’s that, my “quick write-up” of my impressions of HoT Beta Weekend 1. I hope someone actually read this, and that it may have proven helpful, I am GREATLY looking forward to HoT BWE2 and – as I am from that field – I do suggest creating a survey (and probably inviting participants by email) for further tests, as this could create some additional feedback.
I saw some part of the NEW DEFIANCE SYSTEM in place, although parts of it looked a bit make-shift still, I think it’s a step in the right direction. It could use a bit more clarity, and possibly variation. By clarity I mean that currently, there’s two different Defiances at work: One that has a grey, segmented bar when it’s depleted, and another that has a brown-ish bar filling up (that doesn’t get depleted by further control skills). Plus, 5 seconds of Daze are alright, but Daze is a relatively invisible effect. A knockdown or unique animation would probably be more helpful. The only foes I checked that didn’t have a 5 sec Daze as Defiance broken effect were… the spores, I think, and the description of what happens on Defiance end was unclear. But I think this might be due to the iteration this system is in right now.
Now for the EVENTS. I wasn’t able to enjoy too many of these, due to my limited access to the map, limited time. Most of the time I was on the event with the MORDREM BREAKER and the ELITE VINETENDERs. A lot of people said it was broken, I found it to be an interesting change in concept, and ideally challenging… that is, if it worked as intended. Sadly, the Pale Reavers didn’t snipe anything (or if they did, they did so without any sign of animation, and any visible effect) and for the small ledge (and limited player numbers when I was there) having four elite Vinetenders with bazillions of health that took ages to kill (in an otherwise very uninteresting fight) didn’t help this event. I don’t know how strong the effect of the Pale Reavers would or should be, but unless it is truly significant (which would also make the event a bit more engaging, as people would have to split up and actually fight) the Vinetenders should be toned down in number and in health amount. Also, why are those things even stun-able? If there was one left, and it was stunned, the shield stayed active, and since they don’t do anything besides casting the animation for the shield (which is only tied to at least one of them being alive, it seems) what’s the use of stunning them?
One other event that seemed either bugged or unclear was the collect tasty larvae as food for the Hylek one, with the Bats stealing the larvae. It was unclear if you could collect more than one larva at once (sometimes it seemed like I could carry two) and it was not clear if I had put them in the basket correctly (sometimes, it would be possible to pick them up again, sometimes not), or which baskets still needed filling.
Another even that I found fun (and that worked, like most of the simple kill X or deliver Y ones) but that was jarring because of a graphics glitch, was the “get explosives and blow up the vine by hitting its weak spots” one. The ever-present hovering explosives in that area made it seem like the players had stumbled into the aftermath of a magielectrical explosion in some Asuran lab.
As far as the MASTERIES go… I like the system. I found me asking myself which track I wanted to prioritize because they sounded interesting! I went for gliding, then. For one weekend, to test, it was a bit much. If you want more detailed feedback to the content of the masteries, or how much higher tier progression changes the game, you’d have to dedicate some testing to it. AS far as the time consumption goes, I think it’s about right, as far as I could tell by the short time I was able to test. One thing bugs me, though: Why the redundancy between getting a level bar full of experience and in addition needing a MASTERY POINT or more than one?
I only managed to get GLIDING to the first tier, but I have to say: I really, really liked it a lot. It may have been because I was more than a little sceptical about it, but I was surprised how well it meshes with general gameplay, from a controls perspective, and as a means of mobility. It’s relatively free-style, yet there’s some relatively clear-cut intended uses that add value, but the free-style of it works really well. Kudos!
(And it really makes me wish I could have unlocked the updraft tier, or one of the other masteries, but the game was close to unplayable on my last night in, and I had to stop from frustration – I can deal with a lot of stuff, but unresponsive controls / lags just kill playability altogether)
So, okay. I’ve seen threads on some topics that I will touch, but since I’m going to cut through a variety of topics, and some of them may not have had their dedicated forum thread so far, so I would have to make one for the “other stuff” either way… well… I’ll try to be concise, and I’ll try to make it… readable. I’ll use CAPITALIZATION (and bold) for general topic overview.
First up: Hello. This is Kranodor, I’ve been a Guild Wars 2 player since the first World Preview Event, which was an open beta weekend for Guild Wars, back then just Guild Wars, not Guild Wars 1 or Guild Wars: Prophecies. I’ve been on all GW games since release and I am rather amazed by what Arena.Net has cooked up so far. For the HoT BWE1 I had limited play time, and I did play some Chronomancer (my main is a Mesmer) and a tiny little bit of Reaper.
I did already submit a bug report about the ??? map reward that I got on a non-beta character, which was very likely the map reward for Verdant Brink, which this character never has been to, since she’s not a beta character. That was strange, in any case.
Now, to business:
The ATMOSPHERE is great. The whole thing feels like the Maguuma, but on steroids. The greater vertical traverse does add to the feeling of being in a jungle, and considerably increases the size the map feels like (and finally gives true purpose to the three layers buttons on the map, I presume). It’s hard to find your way around for the first time, which can be irritating, but I think this is how it should be. The DAY/NIGHT shift works well, but could be a bit more accentuated, at least visually (a little bit darker, more blueish hue for night). I’ve read that this night was “night light”, a relatively simple iteration. It already looked good for that. It’s an expansion of the Sandstorm in Dry Top, but it feels better done.
As far as ATMOSPHERE IN LORE goes, the ruins look great, the whole crash and shipwrecks stuff feels much better done than with the Zephyrites in Dry Top and… please, do continue to weave in character differences into dialogue options and voiced dialogue. I started playing my Chronomancer (a Sylvari) and made my Reaper an Asura to check a few things. The different bit of dialogue by Canach when finding the first survivors and having to decide if to scavange materials for defense or try to save the captives with Laranthir did NOT go unnoticed, as did the nifty little detail of a voiceover by an otherwise silent character (that is: unless Sylvari) in an ingame video sequence therafter. (Even though that voice sounded a bit too human, considering how different Charr sound…) – I already liked how the character race and bio was used for sprinkled-in little details in Living World 2 (a dialogue option with one of the Delaqua sisters referencing my Mesmers noble birth, for example) – to me this had a greater effect of making this bio felt than the first missions that depended on the choices.
In regard to NORMAL FOES encountered, it’s a mixed bag, really. I felt that there were a few too many launching foes, at least at times it felt like being a ping pong ball. I really liked the Pocket Raptors, on the other hand, and most foes seemed interesting enough to matter. The ones I liked least were the bugs, because the “vulnerable from the front” thing makes it hard for a mesmer to really dish out damage (all phantasms are basically useless, and any clone will incur the risk of having the bug turn towards it and making it immune to the Mesmer itself) and the spotted bugs have some very quick attack animations, and others that feel like ages, which means risking an initial hit, or maybe wasting a blocking skill.
It’s incredibly frustrating spending so much time on something for no result.
Well, to be fair, the areas we’re talking about do offer quite a few ingame rewards. But I know what you mean: Since the announcement I spent quite a few hours in Dry Top on and off and some time last week switched over to Silverwastes, and spent most of my weekend (including most of friday, which I took off from work) there. It’s been quite a ride, and I did get a few things – but no portal. And yes, people posting their stacks of two, three or even four portals doesn’t exactly decrease frustration.
But then again, we can’t have everything, can we? I’ve been on at least one pre-release event for each part of Guild Wars – Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North, and then Guild Wars 2. Seems like this will be the first I’ll miss out on. Sure, I don’t know how much time I would have had to play when the beta hits, but historically, I have always made time for that. But currently, I don’t have as much time, and I am worn out now, because I’m not used to farming the same area over and over and over again. Plus, on the German forums, I have read that the portal drops end this weekend. And since there’s work tomorrow, and I have to get some sleep as well, I am officially giving up now.
So, to all who got a portal (or two, or three…): Congratulations, and I wish for you to have great fun in the beta, just one thing: Please use your access, play, and provide feedback. Do not waste this opportunity, no matter how or why you got your portal.
But most of all, again: Have fun.
Yeah. I do not agree with everything, but they did make a pretty good game, and they’re mostly improving it every time they add something – like they did with GW1. I see many parallels between both games and their post-release developments, such as how different realms can play together (see Megaserver) or free refunding traits in GW2 / removal of Attribute Refund points in GW1.
I do have a few gripes. Traits could be more interesting, or rather, all of them could be as interesting as the more interesting ones. There’s a Mesmer focus trait that grants the focus skills the ability to reflect projectiles (and reducing their recharge), for the greatsword, you “only” get some 100 points in Power (and reduce recharge). When transition happened for GW1, I had hoped for more traits that add bounces or shots, grant additional functionality or abilities to skills, and less… stat-boosting. But maybe that’s just me.
I also hope that the Megaserver system will, at some point, allow me to play with one account on both NA and EU, even if it’d be just as a guest on NA. In GW1, it did start out quite similarly (although we always had the international districts) but it became easier, and easier to switch to “other realms” – from unlimited switching of the region to all regions being displayed as one in the district selection.
And yes, if that ever happens, I will request, politely, if it’d be possible to merge my two accounts into one.
Then there’s the grind-heavy legendary and ascended weapons – why do they have to have 5% better base stats than exotics? I liked it in GW1 to have maximum gear at an affordable rate, and with skills tied to weapons, it would seem even more important in Guild Wars 2… but, I know, exotic is still considered “max gear”.
And I do hope that, at some point, they’ll manage to re-work Living Storyline season 1 (or at least the most relevant plot points) into a purchasable package. Somehow. I’d like to see how my character met the people I adventure with in Season 2. I remember Rox and Braham, played that much of S1, but the others? I like them, I’d like to know why my character likes them, too.
You see, I’ve been playing Guild Wars 1 since before release. I always was a PvE player, but GW1 drew me in with with deck-building and more horizontal progression. I know a lot of things I loved about the first part weren’t there from the start, and most changes done to GW2 since release fill me with hope it might still be the same with GW2 – I think the changes are promising, for the most part.
GW2 solo is more fun than GW1 solo was, even though GW1 grappled me in a more powerful way, probably because of the company I kept in game at the time, with which I sadly was unable to truly reconnect.
A few of them have recently (re-)started playing GW1. And it’s funny to notice how they rave over things they see there that aren’t in GW2. “Fully customizable skill sets”, “actual quests with exclamation points”, and so on. You know, I was always the one in GW1 to say “Wait, I’ll have to switch up a few skills.” – but in the end, I don’t really miss it all that much. There’s still choice, and execution matters more. And I certainly don’t miss the traditional quests. Even doing all hearts in a GW2 zone feels more rewarding and more varied than the old GW1 quests.
There is a few things I do miss – the Mesmers interrupt playstyle, loved that, Vanquishing (including Hard Mode vanquishing) was seriously fun as an alternative to most other stuff. Generally, everything being instanced, not being jumped from behind by some freshly-respawned foe. I know that this cannot be helped, though. The possibility to get a max stats blue item from a collector some 2/3 of the way through the campaign, and upgrade it with little effort to be just as good as any endgame stuff, and keeping that cheap, blue, prophecies collectors item until the end of Eye of the North as my Mesmers weapon, because it was HER weapon, and with it came the memory of that tour we had through the southern shiverpeaks, and how I/she got it.
But Guild Wars 1 ended for me with Ogdens Benediction. I’m a sucker for narrated epilogues, thank you very much.
Guild Wars 1 spoiled me for most MMOs, Guild Wars 2 spoiled me for most other MMOs, and probably for Guild Wars 1.
Guild Wars 2 is a fine game, and in a lot of changes I still see the same spirit at work as it was back then. I hope that this spirit will prevail in the long run, against the ever-present ideas of traditional MMOs, but – as we said on GW2guru, pre-release – in ANet I trust. I have yet to be truly disappointed.
I also played GW2 on release, then less, and less, and less, and not any more, and relatively recently re-started playing, with more fun and vigour than ever. Yes. I really like most changes and additions.
/End rant (if anything seems out of place, it’s probably because I had to shorten the message. Probably overdid it.)
(Since it doesn’t take me editing my previous post…)
so I’m just wondering…and hopefully someone from ANet will answer this…
Cross Region Guesting is not impossible right? It’s just harder to code?
And is ANet working on making Cross Region Guesting a reality? I don’t really care if I have to wait a few more months, though I wish it would be sooner than that, but if ANet is going to do that, I’m willing to wait.
I’d like an answer on this one as well. Currently, it sounds as if they are not working on it at all, as they don’t want to divert any resources to fix that problem, or that they don’t even see it as a problem or don’t care enough about the impact.
Granted, I’d still be slightly disappointed for the delay, but at least knowing that they’re working on it would make it believable that it is indeed mainly a technical problem. Currently I’m in doubt about that.
So… I’m a bit confused @ the people saying they can’t play with friends outside of the US or vice versa. Why not have those friends join you in your server, or you join them in their server? Previously, server transfers are open once every week,
Let me stop you right there. Previously, before free server transfers were once a week (before November 1st, 2012, to be precise), they weren’t limited by that, because they were just a workaround for the still missing feature “guesting” that supposedly was to allow us to play with ANYONE at will.
And with that in mind, you’re basically answering your own question.
Or are you rotating every week, playing with your US friends, and then ditching them to play with your European friends, and rinse and repeat? (Please don’t say you do that… I’d feel sorry for your friends who see you for a week and then have to wait a week to see you again lol).
Even if server transfers were staying free, that’d be the decision we’d have to make, and as you see yourself, it’s not a good one. A few of us came by that way, because we hoped that guesting, once it was implemented, would finally solve that.
If you guys are friends, pick a server and play together lol. Free Transfers were bound to go away because that wasn’t available when I first started GW2. And with guesting, I can jump servers for dungeoning/world events or just play with other friends in PvE. Guesting is an extra in this case. Maybe one day guesting will have more features, but as it currently is, I’m having trouble understanding what people are so angry at.
I don’t know how you make friends, but I find friends whatever I do. And sometimes, they happen to be gamers, and into games that I like as well. Thing is: Just because I’m friends with one person, I’m not automatically a friend of that persons friends, or their friends down along the line.
To make an example out of my life: I have a circle of friends that I know from various places, and have known for years, and that’s the usual clique, the people I know best and play with most. The people I picked my server with, to play together like every day or every other day. Since we’re German, and a few of us are more comfortable with a German environment, we picked a EU DE server.
I have other friends that do not belong to that circle, let me name them N and S, just as two examples.
N I met ages ago in a browser game. Our contact was not as close due to time zones alone, so we mostly mailed for the time, exchanging a mail ever other week or so, chatting when we had the chance. She started playing GW2 with a group of her (more) local friends with whom she joined a US server, since she lives in the US, and most of her friends, and her friends’ friends do, too!
S is someone I know from work. Our contact is about as sporadic as is mine with N, but we do chat more, instead of writing emails. She had been with a gaming clan/guild way before GW2 was out, way before we met each other, and probably even before she started to work at our company (she started before me). These friends are mostly (if not all) German, so they started on a EU DE server – but another one than my group of people.
Now I’d like to play with my group most times, but every now and then, when I have the chance, like a weekend a month, or a day when none of my group or her group is around, I’d like to play with N or S.
Before Nov. 1st, 2012: Possible, by free server transfer.
From there until next monday: Only if I leave my main group of friends alone for a week, by free weekly server transfer.
After next monday:
With S: Possible, by guesting.
With N: Only if I pay for two server transfers AND leave my other friends for a week.
That is not even considering contacts we made on our home servers since we started playing – some of us, including me, since release.
But what really makes me angry is that, through this announcement, it was the first time I heard that the regions would be kept strictly separate, that since before release, from when they announced that instead of a global server with different districts we’d have actual fixed “homeworld” servers on, they made the impression that we wouldn’t have to worry about playing with friends, no matter what homeworlds we or them pick, the separation would be important only for WvW, and doing dungeons or general questing would be possible with anyone, regardless of which server we picked, just like in GW1 at the end. And that includes NA and EU servers together.
I had the idea today to buy the game again and make a second account, home-server-ing in NA. Then again, that would be equal to rewarding such a poor decision (that’s what it is: a decision – the problems in place are not insurmountable, otherwise transfers wouldn’t be feasible either, even for a fee) and I don’t want to do this. Of course, I’ll also refrain from buying gems in the near future, regardless of how much I wanted to make a sixth character.
And that’s not counting that I’d have to level characters on two accounts, get stuff on both accounts and so on.
I’m more likely, right now, to spend that money on some other game to play with my friends, even if it means buying half a dozen or more copies and gifting them. Which would be a shame, because GW2 is a good game, and – except for that guesting part – shaping up pretty nicely.
I’m not part of some large multi-national guild, but I do have friends over on NA (being on EU with most of my local friends) with whom I’d like to play. Still, this implementation of guesting seems like a bad idea to me.
I still hope that it’s “appearance changes in GW1”-impossible, and not actually impossible-impossible. What baffles me – apart from the fact that I, too, considered being able to play with anyone I know as being able to playing cross-region (I think that question was even asked in some interviews when we knew there would be more traditional server structures) – is that, quite obviously, it is technically possible.
Let’s see:
Playing on a different region server isn’t the issue – because an EU player could very well declare an NA server his home server and play on it. In some cases, there will be lag issues, in others, these will be minimal. This is a problem the player faces, and I don’t think ANet can really influence that. I also think that this usually stems more from the quality of internet services on a local level, than from the connection between ANets two data centers.
Transferring data from one data center to another isn’t the issue either – people can do that now for free, and will be able to do so for a fee in the future. So there have to be channels with enough bandwidth to offer that service. Yes, it may be some effort, and thus why they want us to pay for it, but I don’t think it can be that much of a problem if they managed to offer it for free for half a year.
So it all comes down to how to store and sync data (and gameplay / mechanics considerations). Maybe I’m seeing it as too simple, but I don’t see storage space as a problem. Syncing in real-time would be nigh impossible, sure. But syncing the character data (which is all the data we’re talking about – the data that remains between logoffs. No interactions, no positions of other players or monsters or any of that) could be done in longer intervals (when the player logs off, at a certain time, when the player chooses to guest or return to his home world)
What I’d ask of my techies, if I was in charge there, would be to devise something to effectively mirror and validate character data between data centers, and only sync them in long intervals (maybe only for active accounts in the last interval) and/or when the player tries to switch regions, with a waiting time. Also, only keep the mirrored data as long as the player is guesting regularly, i.e. delete the non-home files if no guesting has taken place in the last few weeks or months, and mirror them anew when the player tries to guest again (which means transfering data again and incurs a waiting time for the player that is probably longer than the validation/syncing as long as the files are kept).
If WvW or Guilds cause problems while guesting cross-server, they could still limit some of these things, such as not being able to represent a guild cross-region, but having to represent a guild in the region you’re currently in.
I really hope the silence of ANet is weekend-related and that they will answer next week.